Gaza’s Population Grew Last Year and There Wasn’t a Famine, Hamas’s Own Figures Show, Debunking Claims That Most Gaza Deaths are Women and Children

The most recent mortality figures in Gaza show that the population grew by more than 1 percent last year, faster than in most of the world, and that a major hunger crisis failed to ever materialize. The data—supplied by Hamas’s own Ministry of Health—undercut claims by the United Nations and other anti-Israel groups that the Gaza war is a “genocide” that has led to a deadly famine, according to an analysis of the figures.

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, the Australian Jewish community’s premier public affairs organization, determined in a recent analysis based on the data that Gaza’s population increased by 1.2 percent in 2025, a steep rise for a populace supposedly facing a genocide by Israel. Moreover, the number of nonviolent deaths in Gaza that year, meaning those unrelated to direct conflict, was less than in 2022, a year before Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror spree ignited the war.

The figures “absolutely rule out” the U.N.-affiliated Integrated Food Security Phase Classification’s headline-grabbing claim in 2025 that major areas of Gaza were facing a “worst-case scenario of famine.” The Washington Free Beacon exclusively reported at the time that the IPC used a less reliable reporting metric before declaring famine, and the newly released figures offer further proof that Gaza was never on the precipice of a humanitarian crisis in which thousands would perish.

“The most notable element of the recent all-cause mortality report for 2025 in Gaza … is the lack of the term ‘genocide’ anywhere in the report, and the fact that the numbers contained in it seem to completely contradict claims by the United Nations-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification in August 2025 that, at that time, major parts of Gaza were experiencing category 5 ‘famine’ conditions,” the Jewish Affairs Council concluded.

The Health Ministry figures also dispel another widely disseminated claim by Israel’s enemies that women and children accounted for 70 percent of casualties in Gaza, an unverified statistic that has been used to peddle conspiracy theories that Israel intentionally targets civilians. In fact, “as is the norm in warfare, most casualties are military-aged males,” the study found.

While the Jewish Affairs Council notes that data from the Hamas-controlled ministry are historically unreliable and often skewed, the organization argues “that claims about genocide, famine and casualty breakdowns that are contradicted by what even Hamas claims about such casualties should immediately be viewed as exposing the individual or organisation making the claim as either extreme or cavalier about accuracy.”

The Hamas ministry reported 24,650 total deaths in 2025, of which 18,085—or 73.4 percent—were men. Females accounted for just 6,565 deaths, or 26.6 percent. Around 18,870 people were killed violently, such as in battle, suggesting that 76.6 percent of those killed were likely battlefield combatants. Similarly, the figures show that 17,286, or 70.1 percent, were killed through “direct targeting” by Israel. Just 5,780 were classified as “non-violent” deaths or “indirect deaths,” again suggesting that Israel is not wantonly killing the civilian population.

The claim that Israel is prosecuting a genocide in Gaza continues to be peddled by the United Nations, U.N.-affiliated advocacy groups, and anti-Israel political candidates across the country. But there is little factual basis for the accusations, which have become a rallying cry on the left.

More than 75 military professionals recently penned an open letter declaring “the allegations that Israel committed this crime do not meet the established definition and standards of genocide, are unsupported by established facts, nor do they stand up to common sense scrutiny.”

“Israel’s accusers allege genocide mostly because of the supposed number of civilians killed in Gaza,” the letter continues. “Such claims are rife with flaws. Genocide is not a quantitative crime; there is no number of civilian casualties that constitutes genocide. Nor are the claimed casualty numbers from Gaza credible. Issued by Hamas themselves and, at the very least, not distinguishing between civilians and combatants, they cannot be relied upon.”

But even Hamas’s own figures do not meet the threshold.

“Gaza in 2025 experienced natural population growth of 25,577, 1.2% of the population,” according to the report. At least one analyst noted that the numbers show “higher population growth than most countries in the world and more than the world average.”

“Populations are not expected to grow rapidly during genocides,” the Jewish Affairs Council notes in its study. “Among the acts listed under the Genocide Convention is ‘Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group,’ something Israel clearly is not doing.”

The much-hyped famine predicted by the United Nations in June and August 2025 is also unsupported by the raw statistics.

In 2022, there were 6,061 deaths in Gaza, a number that was elevated by the COVID pandemic. But the number of deaths in 2025, including those who may have died from starvation or malnutrition, is “clearly not significantly higher than the natural deaths which occurred in 2022. We know this because the numbers for 2019, before COVID, are only slightly lower,” according to the study.

By the IPC’s own standard, there would need to be several deaths per day to constitute a famine. This would have caused at least 8,600 indirect deaths during the time of the supposed famine. But the Gaza Health Ministry figures record only 5,780 nonviolent deaths across the entirety of Gaza in 2025, a significant shortfall.

“There is no evidence of famine conditions ever existing anywhere in Gaza, as the numbers of non-violent deaths for both children under 5 and the general population are orders of magnitude below the IPC thresholds,” the study concluded.

There is also little factual basis to claim that civilian deaths in Gaza were significantly undercounted and much higher than believed, another claim that has been weaponized by Israel’s enemies.

Middle East analyst Gabriel Epstein determined at the end of September that there was less than 1 nonviolent death, 0.43, for every direct death through 2025. In line with this finding, military-age males are overrepresented in the mortality figures, as expected in a time of intense war.

“Despite widespread claims that 70% of casualties in Gaza have been women and children, the [Hamas ministry’s] own published data has shown significant and growing over-representation of military-age males since early 2024,” the study notes. “Claims that women and children account for 70% of injuries are also belied by the [Ministry] data.”