Tone-deaf Hamas supporters complain about Israel's hostage rescue operation

On October 7, Hamas terrorists butchered over 1,000 Israeli civilians and took hundreds more hostage. Since then, Hamas has refused to release the remaining hostages, and reports have begun to mount about the number of hostages who have been found dead during the course of Israel's military operation in Gaza.

Over the weekend, the Israeli Defense Forces mounted the largest hostage rescue operation since the start of the war. The raid took place in a crowded area full of civilians because Hamas chose to hide the hostages there. By all accounts, when Israeli forces began their operation, Hamas returned fire from civilian buildings with heavy weaponry, including RPGs. To the extent that civilians died during the rescue, most reasonable people would conclude that the fault for this lies with the group that took hostages, hid them among its own civilians, and then used those civilians as human shields against the hostage rescuers.

Not, however, the usual cadre of current and former MSNBC personalities who serve as de facto mouthpieces for Hamas. Immediately the coordinated campaign began to suggest both that Israel was at fault for these civilian deaths and also that the death toll was much higher than it likely was.

The campaign began by uncritically repeating the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry's death toll, which claims over 200 civilian deaths.

Liberal writer and Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali typified the response:

MSNBC host Ayman Mohyeldin continued the refrain of Hamas talking points:

Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan was likewise horrified that civilians were killed during a hostage rescue — horrified at the people who rescued the hostages, of course, rather than the people who took the hostages.

It is worth noting that even the Associated Press, which continues to uncritically report casualty figures from Hamas' "Gaza Health Ministry," was forced to concede in a recent report that death totals reported by Hamas are "at odds with underlying data." The outlet further noted that Hamas has systematically overestimated the number of women and children killed, which is often used as a proxy for estimating civilian deaths: "In February, ministry officials said 75% of the dead were women and children – a level that was never confirmed in the detailed reports. And as recently as March, the ministry’s daily reports claimed that 72% of the dead were women and children, even as underlying data clearly showed the percentage was well below that."

The IDF estimates fewer than 100 total casualties in the raid. It is impossible to know for certain right now which figure is correct, but the side that has not spent this war systematically inflating civilian casualties for political gain ought perhaps to be entitled to the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the head count of this raid.

Overall, Hamas' efforts to redirect public opinion, as attempted by Ali, Hasan, and Mohyeldin above, have perhaps unsurprisingly not been persuasive with the American people, who by most estimates still side with Israel in the conflict by about a 2:1 margin.