It's absolutely not worth noting that because it simply isn't true.

If anything, the MoH numbers are lower than the actual death toll. Even the IDF said internally the numbers were right and their own statistics state that 83% of casualties in Gaza have been civilians.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21...

https://www.vice.com/en/article/israeli-intelligence-health-...

Indeed, Hamas is the governing party in the Palestinian authority following the 2006 elections. So, the ministry of health is "Hamas-controlled", similarly to how, say, the French ministry of health is "Rennaisance-party-controlled". (Yes, 2006 is a really long time ago and there should have been elections; the split between Gaza and the West Bank, and Israeli restrictions, have frustrated efforts to hold them again; and then came the last two years and now who knows what's going to happen.)

> have already been statistically dubious

No, they have not. You're citing an opinion piece in a pro-Israel publication, the author of which has never conducted any investigative work on the matter, and its arguments are rather frivolous.

For a discussion (and refutation) of that claim in the professional press, see:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

What _is_ certainy the case, though, is that the ministry is not counting deaths where the bodies do not reach its employees/representatives. And - it is not including deaths which may indirectly caused by the Israeli onslaught. For example, if you die of cancer and you might have gotten treatment had it not been for the destruction of the hospitals and the lack of water, electricity etc. - you are not included in the count.

The AP ran a story about how they count:

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-health-mini...

which also includes their record from past Israeli military campaigns against Gaza, vis-a-vis the UN figures.

Additionally, it's crucial to recognize how Hamas's health ministry numbers never distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths

That is true. And Hamas has always had very a imaginative use of statistics.

However, if you look at the few times that IDF published casualty estimates, they were pretty close to the numbers published by Hamas.

That's perhaps one of the saddest things about this war: there are so many casualties that even Hamas doesn't need to inflate the number.

And The Lancet?