UN Inquiry Member Says Gaza Growth Leaves Israel Genocide Claims Unverified

Allegations that Israel committed genocide in Gaza faced renewed scrutiny this week after Chris Sidoti, a senior member of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Israel, reportedly acknowledged that key casualty claims had not been independently verified. The development came as Palestinian Ministry of Health figures showed Gaza’s population increased in 2025.

Critics argue that the genocide allegations have contributed to antisemitism worldwide and say those who promoted the claims—including major international media organizations—should be held accountable for their reporting.

In September 2025, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, released a report concluding that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza since October 2023. The commission cited a Guardian article claiming that civilians accounted for 83% of Palestinians killed in the conflict.

In an interview last week reported by JNS and shared on X, Sidoti was asked whether the commission had independently determined that the remaining Palestinians reported killed in the fighting were civilians. “No, we didn’t because we don’t have that information … We literally do not know, nor does anybody else know, including the IDF, how many militants were there,” he said.

Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, the commission’s former chair, received the Nobel Peace Prize last week.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health’s Health Information Unit recently published Gaza mortality figures for 2025. The release marks the first update since 2022 to include deaths from nonviolent causes, predating the conflict that began after the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks.

The ministry recorded 24,650 deaths in 2025. Of those, 18,085, or 73.4%, were males, while 6,565, or 26.6%, were females. Direct targeting during the war was listed as the cause of death in 17,286 cases, representing 70.1% of the total.

The ministry also reported 50,227 live births in 2025. News Outlet contacted ministry officials for comment but had not received a response by press time.

Elliot Malin, president of the Stratos Council, told News Outlet that the figures provide additional evidence against genocide allegations. Because live births in 2025 substantially exceeded deaths, Malin said it was “very hard for us to infer the intent of Israel was to destroy Palestinians in Gaza to a substantial portion.”

“We’re not seeing a population under threat. We are seeing that it is actually able to sustain itself,” Malin said. He also challenged the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification’s declaration last year that famine had reached Gaza during the summer of 2025. “If the population is sustaining and growing through this, what they call a famine, it indicates that there is enough caloric intake to sustain the population,” he said.

Gabriel Epstein, a senior policy associate at the Israel Policy Forum, likewise told News Outlet that the Health Ministry’s report does not support widespread genocide allegations. He said the data “absolutely” demonstrates population growth in 2025 and noted that it would be “surprising” if Gaza, home to “one of the youngest…in the world” populations, were not growing.

Although factors such as emigration and immigration make the precise growth rate difficult to determine, Epstein said the figures would require more than a doubling of both violent and nonviolent deaths to establish that Gaza experienced population decline in 2025.

Andrew Fox, a senior associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, told News Outlet that “the data now shows that there was no famine in Gaza.” He argued that the allegations invoked “the ages-old blood libel of Jews killing children” and had undoubtedly intensified antisemitism around the world. “Agencies and the media who shared these false allegations have blood on their hands,” Fox said.

Epstein said the new ministry figures also challenge outside organizations that used estimates and ratios of nonviolent deaths from other conflicts to argue that Gaza’s official death toll was inaccurate and could have reached several hundred thousand. Those estimates were widely cited to support claims that Israel was committing genocide, he said. The latest figures “really eliminate the possibility that there is a much higher death toll driven by non-violent or non-trauma deaths,” Epstein added.

He said that comparing the new report with the ministry’s ongoing war-casualty data indicates that the Health Ministry was not “missing the vast, vast majority of [malnutrition-related] deaths you would have needed to be missing to justify the IPC’s assessment” that famine had reached parts of Gaza in the summer of 2025.

The IPC did not respond to News Outlet’s questions about how new information impacts its prior declaration of famine.

In the MOH’s favor, Epstein said that the current tranche of figures supports a real attempt at honest accounting from the health organization, which was accused of inflating civilian casualties — particularly those of women and children — during the early days of the war.

In its latest report, however, the MOH does not distinguish how many terrorists were among those killed in the conflict. In fact, it states that “The number of deaths among males was approximately 4.9 times the number of deaths among females within this group — attributed principally to the direct targeting of working-age men during military operations.”

A spokesperson from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told News Outlet that, “The IDF targets terrorists and military objectives, not civilians based on their age or gender. The fact that more military-age men are disproportionately among those eliminated is consistent with the fact that terrorist organizations are predominantly composed of men in this age group. It does not demonstrate that the IDF targets individuals because they are men or of a certain age.” 

The spokesperson added that, “Targets are selected based on their military nature or an individual’s involvement in terrorist organizations or participation in hostilities, in accordance with international law and IDF directives. Unlike Hamas, which deliberately targets Israeli civilians, the IDF takes all feasible precautions to mitigate harm to civilians and operates under a structured targeting framework designed to ensure the identification of lawful military objectives.”

Epstein also pushed back against the MOH claim that working-aged men are being purposefully targeted. Epstein said that “military-aged men aren’t appearing disproportionately because the IDF was targeting military-aged men as such, but because the vast majority of militants come from that range.” He said that “Gaza is unique in how heavily militarized its male population is.”

Epstein added that available 2025 data does not support the claim that the IDF acted with the intent to cause harm to the population. Not only do the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks and hybridization of civilian and military structures in Gaza provide a rationale for military targeting, Epstein emphasized that the IDF has taken numerous mitigation measures to avoid civilian casualties.

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