Summary
A scholar whose Gaza family survey with Khalil Shikaki (December 2024-January 2025) is used and criticised in Debunking the Genocide Allegations (Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025, PDF p.9-10, p.22).
Details
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The authors were in ongoing dialogue with Spagat over methodological questions in the survey, most glaringly the over-representation of imprisoned family members and low household size and number of children reported (PDF p.9-10).
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Insofar as the survey is representative, its low non-violent, non-accidental child mortality does not, on the authors’ reading, support widespread malnutrition or starvation-driven excess mortality (PDF p.10, p.32, p.39). The point is carried at PDF p.32 with the authors’ own caveat that questions remain regarding the methodology and findings of the survey, and that the data indicate this assuming the responses are honest and representative.
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Spagat is thanked among those who assisted the research (PDF p.21). A full appendix on the survey’s geolocation and statistics is listed as to be published later (PDF p.5).
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Chapter 5, section M (PDF p.143-150) assesses his family survey with Khalil Shikaki in full: the survey, carried out by 10 teams of Gazan Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research employees, concluded the GMOH undercounts, with 75,200 violent deaths as its central count against GMOH’s 50,021, and the authors answer with the prisoner extrapolation (52 of 9,729 mapped individuals extrapolated to 9,400 prisoners, against B’Tselem’s 2,216 Gazans held on security grounds at end-December 2024), household size of 4.5 against PCBS’s 5.3, peak mortality in households of 3-4, the Gaza 3 and Gaza 9 outliers and Zlochin’s geolocation critique, concluding provisionally that the survey’s uncertainty is too high to determine whether the GMOH undercounts or overcounts.
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The authors record direct communication with Spagat, who answered their questions candidly and provided the Arabic questionnaire on request, and that he has responded publicly to Mark Zlochin and Sergio Della Pergola (PDF p.144).
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His earlier work is the frame for the survey’s standing: he debunked the overcount of methodologically flawed family surveys in Iraq and the more egregious overestimations of Gazan war casualties, and had criticised deteriorating GMOH reporting standards between November 2023 and April 2024 (PDF p.143); Sarah Zaidi told him her guess that “some” Iraqi surveyors recorded deaths that did not take place (PDF p.154).
Related pages
Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025, Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, Khalil Shikaki, Gaza Ministry of Health