You’ve probably heard by now if you’re a regular reader that the immediate claims that 500 or more people were killed in the Gaza hospital explosion last week has not held up to scrutiny. Hamas eventually settled on the figure 471 but western estimates have ranged from 100-300 or, from a separate estimate, maybe closer to 50.

What I have not seen anywhere was an explanation of exactly where the media came up with that 500 figure which wound up in headlines at the NY Times, the Washington Post, WSJ, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc. within hours of the blast. The figure was attributed to the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry but none of these sources gave a precise source or an exact quote. Given how significant this claim was, you would think someone would report on a named source using their exact words.

Author David Zweig, who runs a Substack blog, decided to try to find the source and the quote or video that first relayed this information to the world.

Since this statistical claim had rocketed around the world, I wanted to hear or see the actual statement itself, rather than references to it. Not that I assumed if I heard the actual statement that that would mean it was correct. But at least it would satisfy my curiosity.

Except there was a problem. In all of the news reports I saw—from the Times on down—none of them linked to the original source of the more than 500 dead claim. It was simply attributed, variously, to either the Gaza Health Ministry, a “Ministry spokesperson,” “Palestinian authorities,” or Hamas.

Zweig contacted 12 different reporters at the Times, AP, WSJ, etc. who had worked on stories using the 500 deaths figure and asked them directly where they got it. None of them responded except the Times which directed him to their editor’s note/mea culpa but wouldn’t offer anything else.

After more digging with the help of a friend, Zweig came across a tweet from Al Jazeera’s Arabic language account which was posted shortly after the blast. The tweet included a video clip and the caption mentioned the death toll. Here it is along with an English translation.

Notice the tweet says “500 victims.” Zweig hired two Arabic translators to translate the tweet and they both confirmed that the word victims here means something like casualties, not deaths.

One of the translators seconded the use of the word “victim,” and he made it clear to me that in this context it was different from “killed.” The other translator, in referencing Al-Qidra’s comments, translated the word as “casualties.” I pressed the translator: sometimes words in one language do not have a direct translation into a different language. Was it possible that the word Al-Qidra used could be translated as “deaths”? No, she said.

So maybe the original claim was 500 casualties, i.e. deaths and injuries? If so that would better line up with the US estimate of the actual death toll (100-300).

But Zweig then came across another tweet posted by Al Jazeera’s English account. But this one doesn’t say 500 casualties, it says “500 Palestinians killed.” This tweet was posted 11 minutes before the one in Arabic seen above.

BREAKING: At least 500 Palestinians killed in an Israeli air strike on al-Ahli Arab Hospital in the besieged Gaza Strip, says health ministry https://t.co/msxr0m1DFu pic.twitter.com/xwAksIn4Qn

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 17, 2023

So Zweig’s conclusion is that US reporters may have been monitoring Al Jazeera’s account and took the claim from there. If you follow the link in that tweet, this appears to be the first report about the death toll of 500.

This was part of a live blog which was being updated every few minutes. Interestingly, a previous report posted just 5 minutes earlier had a different death toll.

So we went from 200 killed to 500 killed in minutes. Also, notice the Health Ministry claim about “‘hundreds of victims’ under the rubble.” But as we would all find out the next morning, there was no rubble. No buildings had been collapses. The blast happened in a car park.

So what really happened here? Did western journalists get the 500 figure from the Al Jazeera report? Were they told the same thing as Al Jazeera? If so, did they think it at all odd that the figure could jump from 200 to 500 so soon after the blast? Did they have second thoughts about all of this once they saw that the claim about “hundreds” trapped in the rubble when there was no rubble? And was the 500 claim mistranslated? Should it have been casualties instead of deaths.

Given how significant this was, it would be nice if the media outlets that ran with this would explain themselves but of course they won’t. I’m assuming they won’t because the truth of how they came by this would only make them look worse.

Update: My friend Jeryl Bier dug into the archives a bit and found some interesting things. First, notice that the Times also started with 200 killed and then upgraded to 500 killed just 19 minutes later. That seems to be following what was posted by Al Jazeera.

@verumserum @davidzweig – The very first archives of the Times' home page after the story broke includes "At least 200 people were killed, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry…" By the archived copy 19 minutes later, the 500 number appeared. pic.twitter.com/sgeu8lsw6K

— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) October 28, 2023

He also found this. Just like the Arabic page, Al Jazeera English started with 500 casualties and then got edited minutes later to 500 killed. Compare the edits in the 2nd tweet below.

They literally stealth-edited the body of the piece from "Gaza health ministry says at least 500 casualties in hospital blast" to "The Gaza health ministry said at least 500 people died in the hospital blast."https://t.co/Ivu988vfzZhttps://t.co/BNQqeBhNpR pic.twitter.com/1DlH0Y7ROh

— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) October 28, 2023

So in a very short time the story went from 200 killed to 500 casualties to 500 killed and it seems the Times (and probably others) just skipped over the 500 casualties claim and went from 200 killed to 500 killed.

But again, even the 200 claim came along with a claim that hundreds were trapped in the rubble and we’d later learn there was no rubble. So right from the start these claims were bogus.