People are dying in Gaza. That much is certain. Who, how, how many, and why is much harder to pin down. This project asks hard questions and pulls answers from around the world, trying to get as close to the truth as we can.
Why is it so hard to get accurate information from Gaza?
- NPR: “Barred from Gaza for 2 years, international journalists are still fighting for access” — Israel has blocked all independent press access since the war began, meaning nearly all on-the-ground reporting comes from Palestinian journalists already living in Gaza. NPR
- Columbia Journalism Review: “The Push to Get International Reporters into Gaza” — an Israeli media critic describes the ban as a calculated public relations strategy, not purely a security measure. Columbia Journalism Review
- TheWrap: “AP, Reuters, BBC News ‘Deeply Alarmed’ Journalists in Gaza Face ‘Threat of Starvation'” — a joint statement from four major news organizations says independent journalists in Gaza have increasingly been unable to feed themselves. yahoo
- Al Jazeera: “World’s top media outlets urge Israel to allow independent access to Gaza” — editors from more than two dozen media companies, including the BBC, CNN, Reuters, and AP, jointly called being on the ground “essential” to question official accounts from all sides. Al Jazeera
- The Conversation: “Israel is still not allowing international media back into Gaza, despite the ceasefire” — the only access Israel has granted for two years has been embedded trips with the Israeli military; unescorted access has never been permitted. The Conversation
Summary: Every source above indicates that independent press is not allowed into Gaza. What limited access is permitted comes with an Israeli military escort, which controls where journalists go, what they see, and who they speak to. Even the world’s largest and most resourced newsrooms have been reduced to secondhand and single-channel reporting for over two and a half years. This seems to support claims that events are being withheld from the world.
Why is US reporting on Gaza different than overseas?
- The Intercept: “Coverage of Gaza War in the New York Times and Other Major Newspapers Heavily Favored Israel, Analysis Shows” — an analysis of over 1,000 articles found major US papers disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths, used more emotive language for Israeli casualties than Palestinian ones, and gave lopsided coverage of antisemitic incidents relative to anti-Muslim incidents. The Intercept
- Arab Center DC: “The Sunday Talk Shows on Gaza: A Study in Media Bias” — US news organizations have drastically cut back on foreign reporting since the 1980s, even as American global power and involvement abroad have expanded. Arab Center DC
- American University, School of International Service: interview with journalist Elise Labott — international outlets tend to offer a broader range of perspectives, more directly critique Israeli policy, and use terms US media is more hesitant to use. American University
- Arab Center DC: (same study) US coverage of foreign policy largely reflects the range of views already debated among influential members of Congress and the political establishment, rather than the fuller range of views held internationally. Arab Center DC
- Wikipedia / Media coverage of the 2014 Gaza War: US news sources were generally more sympathetic to Israel during the 2014 Gaza war, while British sources were more critical, suggesting this pattern predates the current conflict. Wikipedia
Summary: Across these sources, US coverage of Israeli activities and the Gaza War differ from international coverage. There are at least three visible and consistent ways: narrower foreign reporting generally, a tighter range of “acceptable” political framing, and measurably different word choices when covering Israeli versus Palestinian deaths. This suggests an enduring structural tendency to slant reporting in one direction.
Have international media and members of the press been targeted?
- CPJ: “Record 129 press members killed in 2025; Israel responsible for 2/3 of deaths” — CPJ documented 47 cases of journalists murdered specifically because of their work in 2025, with Israel responsible for 81% of those cases. Committee to Protect Journalists
- NBC News: “Israel kills Al Jazeera journalists in airstrike, claiming one worked for Hamas” — the Israeli military claimed the journalist was a “terrorist who posed as a journalist,” a charge Al Jazeera and the individual denied; Israel did not respond to a request for supporting evidence. NBC News
- Al-Monitor: “Israel military says Al Jazeera journalist killed in Gaza was Hamas militant” — the Israeli military says it never deliberately targets journalists, but has admitted to killing press members it accuses of operating “under the guise of” journalism. AL-Monitor
- Al Jazeera: “Here are the names of the journalists Israel killed in Gaza” — more journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 2023 than in the US Civil War, both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the former Yugoslavia conflicts, and post-9/11 Afghanistan — combined. yahoo
- The Independent: (via AOL) “Israel kills five Al Jazeera journalists in targeted Gaza strike” — reports a strike on a tent sheltering journalists at Al Shifa hospital, killing five, including a correspondent who had posted a final statement anticipating his own death. aol
Summary: Sources agree Gaza has become the deadliest conflict for journalists on record, and most of the deaths are attributed to Israeli strikes. Where sources diverge is intent: press-freedom monitors and Al Jazeera describe a pattern of deliberate targeting, while Israel maintains it does not target journalists as such, though it has killed individuals it accuses, without providing public evidence, of being militants operating under press cover. Both claims can be true in different individual cases; distinguishing which applies to which death is difficult given the same access restrictions covered in the first section.
Are people still dying in Gaza?
- WAFA: (Palestinian news agency) “Gaza death toll rises to 73,349 amid continued Israeli ceasefire breaches” — as of August 1, 2026, the Gaza death toll continues climbing despite the ceasefire, with the count described as mostly women and children. Wafa
- UNICEF: “Famine Confirmed in Gaza” — July 2026 was Gaza’s deadliest month yet for child malnutrition deaths — 24 children under five died — bringing the total to 112 children dead from malnutrition since the war began, with 43,400 more children projected at severe risk by year’s end. UNICEF USA
- UN News: the UN Secretary-General described children sleeping in flooded tents and buildings collapsing under heavy rain and wind, warning that humanitarian needs continue to grow faster than aid can be delivered even as ceasefire terms remain in place. UN News
- MSF: (Doctors Without Borders) “Deliberate restriction of food and aid led to alarming malnutrition in Gaza” — MSF recorded higher rates of infant prematurity and mortality tied to maternal malnutrition, and one mother described her five-month-old son’s death from severe malnutrition, calling the crisis “entirely manufactured.” Doctors Without Borders
- OHCHR: the UN Human Rights Office reported 738 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the six months since the ceasefire took effect, an average of roughly four deaths a day, even with active combat sharply reduced. OHCHR
Summary: Gunfire has dropped since the ceasefire, but the dying hasn’t stopped, it has shifted form. Alongside a steady trickle of deaths from continued strikes and shootings, a second and larger toll is building from starvation, malnutrition, exposure, and collapsed medical infrastructure. The kind of death that doesn’t make for dramatic footage and rarely leads a US broadcast. If US coverage of Gaza has quieted down since the ceasefire was announced, that’s arguably the most important distortion of all: it can leave the impression that the worst is over, when multiple UN and medical sources on the ground describe conditions that are still actively killing people, just more slowly and less visibly than bombs did.
Are hospitals being targeted?
- CNN: “Israeli strike leaves crater at Gaza hospital, destroys medical supplies” — a strike demolished two medical warehouses at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital and damaged two others, coming less than 48 hours after a ceasefire advancement was announced. CNN
- Al Jazeera: “Israeli strikes kill seven across Gaza, destroy medical supply warehouse” — Gaza’s Health Ministry called the strike a “heinous crime,” and its director-general said destroying medicine “turns medicine and illness itself into a tool of war.” Al Jazeera
- NBC News: “Israeli military strikes Gaza City hospital, Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital” — the hospital’s director said the strike “completely destroyed” the last central medical center in Gaza City, taking it out of service. NBC News
- AP: (via PBS NewsHour) “Israeli strikes destroy evacuated health center in Gaza City, Palestinian medical charity says” — Israel accuses Hamas of using medical facilities for military purposes, which could strip them of legal protection, but the report notes Israel’s military has often provided little or no evidence of a significant militant presence at specific sites struck. PBS
- UN Human Rights Office / NBC: by late 2025, the UN said Israeli attacks had pushed Gaza’s healthcare system to “the brink of total collapse,” with at least 70% of infrastructure, including hospitals, destroyed. NBC News
Summary: Hospitals have been struck repeatedly and consistently throughout the war, a pattern every outlet above documents regardless of political leaning. Where accounts differ is on intent: Palestinian and UN sources describe a sustained pattern amounting to targeting, while Israel’s stated justification is that Hamas uses medical sites for military purposes, forfeiting their protected status, a claim it has not consistently supported with public evidence at the individual strike level. As with journalist deaths, both dynamics can be real in different instances; the ongoing lack of independent access (see the earlier section) makes it very difficult to verify which explanation applies to which strike.
Are people being allowed back to their homes?
- PBS NewsHour: “Displaced Gazans begin returning to shattered communities as ceasefire takes effect” — tens of thousands headed north to Gaza City once the ceasefire took hold, many displaced multiple times over two years, only to find entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble — one resident asked simply, “for those who are going back, what are they supposed to find?” PBS
- UN News: the continued expansion of areas under Israeli control since the October ceasefire has placed pressure on returnees; one family briefly returned to their standing home during an earlier ceasefire, only to be displaced again and forced to build a makeshift shelter from clothing, wood, and nylon sheets on the site where their home once stood. UN News
- OCHA Situation Report: even under the current ceasefire, military incursions have continued to force sudden new displacements — 33 households who had only recently returned near the “Yellow Line” were forced to flee again after an incursion in Khan Younis in January 2026, and about 100 more families were displaced the same week near Gaza City. OCHA OPT
- OCHA Situation Report (May 2026): most people in Gaza remain displaced, sheltering in overcrowded tents or damaged structures with no safer alternative, while collapsed sewage infrastructure floods residential areas and displacement sites alike, worsening disease risk. OCHA OPT
- MSF: (Doctors Without Borders) describes people unable to return home, rebuild, or recover with dignity almost a year into the ceasefire, quoting a Gaza City father: “today we suffer from flooding with sewage water, we lack clean drinking water, and we are living in tents next to destroyed houses.” Doctors Without Borders
Summary: People have technically been “allowed back” in the sense that movement restrictions eased when the ceasefire began, and large numbers did return north. But return has not meant restoration. Many found their homes and neighborhoods completely destroyed; some who did return have since been re-displaced by continued Israeli military incursions inside supposedly ceasefire-protected areas; and even those who stayed are living in tents beside rubble, without reliable sanitation, water, or rebuilding progress ten months into the truce.
Can children go to school?
- UNICEF — “Rebuilding hope: UNICEF expands ‘Back to Learning’ for hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza” — as of January 2026, 60% of school-aged children in Gaza had no access to in-person learning at all, more than 90% of schools have been damaged or destroyed, and over 335,000 children under five are now at risk of severe developmental delays because early childhood services have collapsed.
- Save the Children — “Education under attack in Gaza, with nearly 90% of school buildings damaged or destroyed” — as of an earlier count, 87.7% of school buildings had been damaged or destroyed, with 212 school buildings taking direct hits; more than 14,500 of Gaza’s 1.1 million children have been killed since October 7, with thousands more missing and presumed buried under rubble.
- AP (via Yahoo) — “Most of Gaza’s schools are destroyed and hundreds of thousands of children cannot go back to class” — more than 600,000 children have missed two full years of school; even with a ceasefire largely holding, one mother described being turned away from makeshift tent schools repeatedly: “every school I go to tells me there is no room.”
- PBS NewsHour — even since the ceasefire took effect last October, Israeli strikes have killed roughly 229 children; one 11-year-old now studies at night using a solar-charged lamp inside a shelter that’s “partly a shattered wall, partly a sheet of tarp,” her father saying “every child in Gaza has lost their innocence.”
- CAMERA (pro-Israel media monitoring organization, critiquing BBC directly) — argues the BBC has repeatedly failed to report Israeli military claims that Hamas used school buildings — including the Nasr and Hassan Salama schools, allegedly sheltering a senior Hamas commander — to shelter fighters, while acknowledging the IDF has “rarely provided solid evidence” for such claims in specific cases.
Summary: The core statistics are remarkably consistent across independent trackers. UNICEF and Save the Children, tracking at different points in the war, both land in the same 88–97% range for school destruction, and both wire (AP) and broadcast (PBS) reporting confirm hundreds of thousands of children remain without in-person schooling even after the ceasefire. That consistency across independent counts is what makes this one of the more solid findings in the whole project. The genuine point of dispute, raised by CAMERA, is whether Israeli strikes on specific schools were justified by militant use of the buildings, a claim CAMERA itself concedes Israel has “rarely provided solid evidence” for at the individual-strike level. So: the scale of destruction is essentially uncontested; responsibility for specific strikes is not and remains the least resolved piece.
Does Hamas threaten aid delivery to its own people?
- Times of Israel: “UN official says Hamas obstructing Gaza aid: ‘Dangerous pattern of intimidation, violence'” — a UN statement said armed men linked to Hamas forced their way into a food distribution point in Jabalia; the same report notes that alleged looters elsewhere have frequently been “desperate and starving Palestinians” rather than organized Hamas fighters. The Times of Israel
- USAID Office of Inspector General: USAID’s own independent oversight body investigated UNRWA staff and found evidence connecting three current or former employees to the October 7 attacks, and affiliated 14 others with Hamas, though the UN’s internal oversight office redacted the names involved, limiting further verification. usaid
- ABC News: “USAID analysis finds no evidence of widespread aid diversion by Hamas in Gaza” — a USAID analysis of over 150 reported theft or loss incidents found no evidence of widespread Hamas diversion, and in most cases couldn’t identify a perpetrator at all. The IDF disputed the finding but did not produce contrary evidence in its rebuttal. yahoo
- CBC (Reuters): “U.S. analysis finds no evidence of widespread Hamas theft of Gaza aid” — the same US analysis, examining 156 incidents of theft or loss of US-funded supplies, found no reports alleging Hamas benefited. The State Department disputed the findings and claimed to have video evidence it did not produce, while the White House questioned whether the analysis was authentic at all. cbc
- Yahoo/AOL (CENTCOM): a CENTCOM-released video allegedly showed Hamas operatives looting an aid convoy; Hamas called the claim fabricated and accused the US of amplifying “Israel’s narrative,” while Secretary of State Rubio said “Hamas is the impediment” to aid delivery. yahoo
- Fox News: (citing the UN’s own admission) — the UN has acknowledged that most aid sent into Gaza after May 2025 was diverted by “armed actors and hungry Gazans” — while its OCHA office maintains Hamas specifically was not responsible for widespread diversion. Fox News
Summary: Aid diversion in Gaza is real and acknowledged even by the UN, that isn’t in dispute. Who’s responsible is. The most independent analysis available, compiled by US government auditors, not partisans on either side has twice found no evidence of widespread Hamas theft, and when that finding was challenged, the challengers (the State Department, the White House) offered accusations rather than the evidence they claimed to have. Sweeping claims that Hamas is systematically starving its own population by stealing most aid is not supported by the independent evidence gathered so far.
Does Hamas mistreat or kill its own people?
- AP (via Washington Times) — “Militants and police executed and maimed dozens of Palestinians in Gaza, U.N. report says” — a UN Human Rights Office report documented hundreds of cases of extrajudicial punishment — including executions, kneecapping, bone-breaking, and beatings — often carried out publicly to instill fear, with punishments framed as responses to collaboration with Israel, aid looting, theft, or rivalry with other factions. Washington Times
- UN Commission of Inquiry (via Question of Palestine) — the Commission identified 249 cases of executions and severe violence in Gaza in 2024–2025, resulting in at least 108 deaths and 384 injuries, with Hamas-affiliated forces involved in at least 60 of these incidents, including two public executions of 11 men total. The Commission called these acts war crimes. United Nations
- Times of Israel — the report cites specific documented cases, including three blindfolded men shot by masked men outside Shifa Hospital in front of a crowd in September 2025, and eight men shot after being dragged into a public square a month later — all accused of being spies or collaborators, with punishments carried out by Hamas’s military wing and police rather than any judicial process. Ynetnews
- Times of Israel — “The return of Hamas: With wave of executions, terror group reasserts control in Gaza” — a Gaza City business leader described witnessing masked, armed men he identified as Hamas operatives near his office, and a local source said the executions targeted people who worked with anti-Hamas militias, stole and sold aid, or collaborated with Israel. The Times of Israel
- Wikipedia / 2025 Hamas executions — documents a wave of public executions between September and October 2025, carried out by Hamas’s Interior Ministry police and internal security forces, with victims including Popular Forces soldiers; the article notes Hamas has a documented history of similar executions of suspected collaborators dating back to the First Intifada and the 2006 Gaza conflict. Wikipedia
Summary: Hamas killings are credibly documented, not merely alleged. A UN Commission of Inquiry, the same body responsible for finding that acts of genocide occurred in Gaza (making it hard to dismiss as pro-Israel), separately and directly found that Hamas-affiliated police and military forces carried out extrajudicial executions, torture, and mutilation against Palestinian civilians, explicitly labeling these acts war crimes. This is the strongest, most credibly sourced evidence that Hamas poses a direct danger to its own people, not just to Israel or to the war’s outward narrative, documented by an investigative body with no evident motive to protect Israel’s reputation.
What is killing people in Gaza now?
- CNN — “Cold and malnutrition claim more victims in Gaza amid winter rains” — ten children died from hypothermia over the winter, including a three-month-old, months into the ceasefire; a pediatrician noted infants and premature babies are most vulnerable because of limited fat tissue and low energy reserves. aol
- +972 Magazine — “‘Wet tent syndrome’ is killing Gaza’s infants” — a Gaza-based microbiology professor describes a cluster of conditions — respiratory infections, pneumonia, skin and fungal infections — driven by extreme cold, damp, and poor ventilation in tent shelters, including an image of a one-month-old who died of cold exposure. +972 Magazine
- International Rescue Committee — diarrhea is killing children at rates 25 times higher than before the war, from conditions normally easily treated with fluids and antibiotics; over 330,000 respiratory infections were recorded in just four months, half in children under five. International Rescue Committee
- WHO / UN (via Question of Palestine) — as of spring 2026, respiratory infections, acute watery diarrhea, and infestations like scabies and lice remain widespread, worsened by cold, overcrowding, and damaged sanitation — with critical shortages of hygiene kits and treatment supplies limiting response. United Nations
- UNICEF — July 2026 was Gaza’s deadliest month yet for child malnutrition deaths, with 24 children under five dying that month alone and 43,400 more children projected at severe risk by year’s end. UNICEF USA
Summary: Strikes and gunfire are only part of the current death toll, and arguably no longer the dominant part. Cold exposure, waterborne and respiratory disease, and malnutrition are independently killing people, especially infants and young children. This is driven by damaged sanitation systems, inadequate shelter, and restricted medical and hygiene supplies. These deaths accumulate slowly and rarely produce a single dramatic headline the way a strike does, which is likely why they’re underrepresented in US coverage relative to their actual toll. A ceasefire that stops missiles doesn’t stop a child from freezing in a flooded tent or dying of dysentery from contaminated water.
CLOSING: Criticism of this project is sure to follow, so keep this in mind; Anyone who disputes a finding here is welcome to do so, but if truth is our goal, the real argument isn’t if “the sources are biased.” The real question needs to be why not allow independent reporters into Gaza to report the truth?
