Former US presidential candidate Ralph Nader claimed that over 400,000 Gazans have been killed by the IDF, without evidence, since the start of the war in October 2023, in a Monday article on the left-wing online magazine CounterPunch.
In his article, titled "The Vast Gaza Death Undercount," he says that Gaza's civilian population would not "withstand over 115,000 tons of bombs, plus artillery, grenades, and snipers targeting civilians, with uncontrollable fires everywhere." He also makes the claim that "five thousand babies a month are born into the rubble."
Nader had run in the US presidential elections on four separate occasions, but never as a Democrat or a Republican. In 1996 and 2000, he ran under the Green Party, with the latter year acting as the party's nominee for the presidency. In 2004 and 2008, he ran as an Independent.
Arguments over Hamas's reporting of casualties
Nader's estimate is also nearly eight times the amount of what the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry reported as the death toll, which they claim has passed 50,000 last month. However, he rebutted Hamas's numbers, claiming that the terror group is reporting lesser numbers "to lessen the ire of its people for not protecting them."
His argument for the death toll reaching 400,000 also includes indirect deaths and mentions higher estimates than Hamas's numbers, which were made by UN agencies and The Lancet, the latter of which claimed in a publication last July that the death toll was around 186,000, but is less than half of the number that the former presidential candidate claimed.
Nader also wrote that the terror group "Hamas counts only names of the deceased given by hospitals and mortuaries."
The day after Nader's piece was published, non-profit organization Honest Reporting's Salo Aizenberg told The Telegraph that the terrorist organization had quietly removed the names of thousands of Palestinians it had previously alleged were killed during the war after looking at the terror groups' casualty updates from last month, which.
Hamas's updated list shows that nearly three-quarters of those killed were men aged 13-55, which is the demographic that makes up the Palestinian terrorist organization.
The terror group had previously claimed that 70% of their casualties were women and children. Israel, meanwhile, has said that 20,000 Hamas terrorists have been killed since the beginning of the war as of late March.
Yonah Jeremy Bob and Ohad Merlin contributed to this report.