UN Fact-Finding Member Says Some Genocide Claims Against Israel Unconfirmed, as Gaza Reports Population Growth

Experts say the Palestinian Health Ministry's mortality figures contradict famine declarations and genocide claims, as Gaza's population increased in 2025.

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Accusations of genocide against Israel received more attention this week after a reported admission by a senior member of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry into Israel that the claims had not been independently verified. Meanwhile, data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health show that the population of Gaza has increased in 2025.

Critics say the accusations fueled anti-Semitism around the world and that those making the genocide claims - including major international media - should be held accountable.

In September 2025, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem and Israel (COI) released a report stating that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza since October 2023. In the report, the COI cited a Guardian article that claimed 83 percent of Gaza's civilians were killed.

Israel denounced the UN report as a "political blood libel" for alleged deliberate targeting of Palestinian children.

After the release of the data, COI commissioner Chris Sidoti was asked in an interview last week reported by JNS and published in X whether the COI had independently proven that the rest of the Palestinians were said to have been killed in the war. "No, we haven't because we don't have that information... We literally don't know and nobody else, including the IDF, knows how many militants there are," Sidoti said. were."

The committee's former chairman, Navi Pillay, received the Nobel Peace Prize last week.

The Health Information Unit of the Palestinian Ministry of Health recently released statistics on overall deaths in Gaza for 2025. This is the first update to include non-violent deaths from 2022, before the conflict began after the October 7, 2023 terrorist attacks.

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The Ministry of Health reported that 24,650 deaths were recorded in 2025, of which 18,085 (73.4%) were male and 6,565 (26.6%) were female. 70.1% of the deaths or 17,286 were attributed to direct targeting in the war.

"We don't see a population that is threatened. We see that it can actually sustain itself," Malin said. He disputed last year's announcement by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) that famine had reached Gaza by the summer of 2025. Malin said that "if the population can sustain and grow through what they call a famine, it shows that there are enough calories to sustain the population."

While he says it's impossible to determine the true rate of population growth given factors such as immigration and emigration, Epstein said that "the argument to be made is that negative population growth in 2025 will more than double the number of violent and nonviolent deaths."

Epstein said the latest data from the health ministry is strong evidence against claims by foreign organizations that use estimates and ratios of non-violent deaths from other conflict zones to suggest that the health ministry's count of casualties in Gaza is inaccurate and that the death toll is likely in the hundreds of thousands. These estimated figures were largely used to drive the narrative that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. He said the current figures from the Department of Health "really rule out the possibility that the number of deaths is due to non-violent or non-trauma deaths."

He noted that a comparison of the latest report with the Ministry of Health's current data on overall casualties during the war showed that the Ministry of Health "missed the vast majority of deaths [from malnutrition] that would justify the IPC's assessment that famine had reached parts of Gaza by the summer of 2025."

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the UN lawyer who accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.

To the health department's benefit, Epstein said the current batch of figures support a genuine effort at honest accounting by the health agency, which was accused of increasing civilian casualties — especially those of women and children — in the early days of the war.

However, the Ministry of Health did not specify their number in its latest report. Terrorists were among those killed in the conflict. In fact, it states that "the number of deaths among men was approximately 4.9 times the number of deaths among women in this group - largely attributable to the direct targeting of working-age men during military operations."

The Israeli military claims it is targeting journalists in Gaza, saying 170 were part of terrorist groups, including Hamas.

The spokesman added: "Targets are selected based on their military nature or an individual's participation in terrorist organizations or participation in hostilities, in accordance with international law and the instructions of the Israeli army. Unlike Hamas, which deliberately targets Israeli civilians, the Israeli army takes all possible precautions to reduce harm to civilians and operates based on a military target framework designed based on structural law."

Epstein also pushed back on the Department of Health's claim that working-age men are being targeted. Epstein said that "men of military age appear disproportionately not because the IDF targets military men, but because the vast majority of militias are from this range." "Gaza is unique in terms of the militarism of its male population," he said.

Epstein added that the data available in 2025 does not support the claim that the IDF acted with the intention of harming the population. Not only the October 7, 2023 attacks and the combination of civilian and military structures in Gaza, Epstein stressed that the Israeli military has taken several mitigation measures to prevent civilian casualties.

Requests for comment to the Palestinian Ministry of Health were not returned by the time of publication.