The official death toll in Gaza since Israel's genocide began has surpassed 40,000.

Now this has been widely seen as a horrifying milestone.

Les Siscient of Volker Turk, he's the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Today marks a grim milestone for the world.

The people of Gaza are now grieving 40,000 Palestinian lives lost, according to Gaza's health ministry.

Most of the dead are women and children.

This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the Israeli Defence Forces to comply with the rules of war.

As the world reflects on and considers its inability to prevent this carnage, I urge all parties to agree to an

immediate ceasefire to lay down their arms and stop the killing once and for all.

The hostages must be released, Palestinians arbitrarily detained must be freed,

Israel's illegal occupation must end, and the internationally agreed

two-state solution must become a reality.

Well, the official death toll is wrong and we shouldn't be using it. We certainly shouldn't be relying on it. It shouldn't be at the center of how we describe this genocidal onslaught and the human impacts. Now before you get alarmed and think I've become an

atrocity denial or an apologist for this genocidal onslaught I'm saying this

because the official death toll is much too low.

And I'm going to come on to that.

Now, firstly, as the brilliant Asal Rad and Academic,

I've interviewed on this channel

who monitors headlines exposes,

media organizations have stripped accountability from Israel

when reporting on this milestone in the official statistics.

Let's look at these examples.

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