A German foreign ministry spokesperson expressed “caution” over death tolls published by Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Christian Wagner was quoted by AFP as saying at a government press conference in Berlin:

    We cannot independently verify Hamas information, which is why a certain degree of caution is needed.

On Friday, the health ministry in Gaza said the Israeli bombing of Gaza had killed 7,326 Palestinians, including more 3,000 children, in the nearly three weeks since Hamas killed about 1,400 Israelis and abducted more than 200 others in its cross-border attack.

“Hamas is not a source of information for us,” a spokesperson for Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said at the same press conference, describing Hamas as a “terrorist organisation”.

On Wednesady, Joe Biden questioned the reliability of Gaza’s health ministry, saying that he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”"

In response, the Hamas-mrun ministry issued a 212-page list of the names and identity numbers of every Palestinian it says has been killed in the Israeli bombardment.

On Friday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said that the tolls had proved to be “credible” in previous conflicts.

Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said he saw no evidence that the numbers were being manipulated.

“We have been monitoring human rights abuses in the Gaza Strip for three decades, including several rounds of hostilities. We’ve generally found the data that comes out of the ministry of health to be reliable,” he said.

“When we have done our own independent investigations around particular strikes, and we’ve compared those figures against those from the health ministry, there haven’t been major deviations.

“Their numbers generally are consistent with what we’re seeing on the ground in recent days. There have been hundreds of airstrikes per day in one of the most densely populated areas of the world.

“We’ve looked at satellite imagery. We’ve seen the number of buildings, and the numbers that are coming out are in line with what we would expect with what we’re seeing on the ground. So you put all those things together and we’re quite confident in the overall casualty numbers.”

Genocide scholar Adam Jones proposes a framework for genocide denial that consists of the following motives and strategies:

    "Hardly anybody died." When the genocides lie far in the past, denial is easier.

    "It wasn't intentional." Disease and famine-causing conditions such as forced labor, concentration camps and slavery (even though they may be manufactured by the perpetrator) may be blamed for casualties.

    "There weren't that many people to begin with." Minimizing the casualties of the victims, whilst the criminals destroy/hide the evidence.

    "It was self defense." The killing of civilians, especially able bodied males is rationalized in preemptive attack, as they are accused of plotting against the perpetrators. The perpetrator may exterminate witnesses and relatives of the victims.

    "There was no central direction." Perpetrators can use militias, paramilitaries, mercenaries, or death squads to avoid being seen as directly participating.

    "It wasn't/isn't 'genocide,' because ..." They may enter definitional or rhetorical argumentation.

    "We would never do that." Self-image cannot be questioned: the perpetrator sees itself as benevolent by definition. Evidence doesn't matter.

    "We are the real victims." They deflect attention to their own casualties/losses, without historical context.

Diluted Dante wrote:

I've a seen a lot of "it's not a genocide/ethnic cleansing because the population is growing".