Responding to Special Envoy Jillian Segal’s claim of a “grossly inflated” death toll in Gaza, UN spokesperson for Secretary-General António Guterres backed the Gaza Ministry of Health. Aleta Moriarty reports.
The integrity of Australia’s Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion depends on an accurate factual record. Public confidence in its findings relies on evidence being tested and claims being verified.
Too much is at stake. Hate is on the rise, and the safety of the Jewish community is rightly being examined in the wake of the Bondi Terror Attack. With distrust and polarisation at near-record levels, the process deserves to be respected.
Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, told the Royal Commission on July 9 that Gaza death toll figures from the Gaza Health Ministry reported by SBS and the ABC were “grossly inflated,” and that this was “well known and even accepted by the United Nations”.
I’ve spent most of my career working for the UN and its agencies. I’m not an official UN employee right now, but I remain a firm believer in the institution and its integrity, which is why I sought clarification regarding the UN’s position on the Gaza death toll directly from the office of the Secretary-General.
The UN responds
Responding on behalf of Secretary-General António Guterres, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said:
“For us the Ministry of Health in Gaza is a source we, and many others, often cite. Independent validation of subsets of the data has found no significant discrepancies in their numbers.”
The Department of Home Affairs was asked if it would issue a clarification. A spokesperson provided the following response:
“The Special Envoy has been appointed as non-statutory Ministerial appointment. The Department does not comment on statements made by individuals.”
Misinformation broadcast nationally and left unchallenged doesn’t just cast aspersions on the UN. It cheapens the seriousness of the allegations Israel is facing, and it’s an insult to the scale of civilian life already lost. It also undermines the commission’s noble cause of promoting greater social cohesion.
Envoy Segal’s testimony before the Royal Commission was also rejected by the ABC Alumni whose Jonathan Holmes referred to as “propagating serious inaccuracies, and some outright untruths, in her sworn testimony to a Royal Commission”.
On the Gazan Health Ministry numbers referred to by Ms Segal as “grossly inaccurate”, Holmes wrote:
This is simply untrue. The UN has said repeatedly that the Gazan Ministry of Health estimate of 70,000 deaths in Gaza since October 2023 is probably too low because so many bodies are still buried under the rubble. And even the IDF admitted in January this year that those statistics were “broadly accurate”.
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Aleta is a practitioner researcher in human rights, disability inclusion and gender. She is completing a PhD at University of Melbourne and has twenty years of experience working across agencies including the United Nations, UN Women, World Bank, and the University of Melbourne. She is currently standing as an Independent Candidate for Western Victoria. Her website is www.aletamoriarty.com