Financial Times Claims Gaza Has the Highest Rate of Child Amputees. Where’s the Evidence?
Journalists can be relied upon to treat a dubious claim as gospel provided the claim accords with their biases, is salacious (and therefore worth repeating), and has been advanced by institutions and individuals they consider like-minded and respectable.
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In this way, a baseless claim can be laundered into a statement of fact that all respectable people agree upon.
A writer for the Financial Times just provided an excellent example of this dynamic by claiming in a recent article that Gaza has the “highest rate of child amputees per capita in the world.”
The story in question, “The Gazan amputees turning to football,” centers on the Palestine Amputee Football Association. Cairo-based correspondent Heba Saleh cites the World Health Organization in claiming that “more than 5,000 [Gazans] have had one or more limbs amputated. At least 20 percent are children. Gaza now has the highest rate of child amputees per capita in the world, the U.N. says.”
The overall data on amputees comes from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, a Hamas-run agency that cannot be relied upon for accurate information.
But the eye-catching claim about Gaza having the highest rate of child amputees comes not from the Gaza Health Ministry, but from the United Nations, which appears to have first started circulating the claim in October 2024.
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), a pro-Israel watchdog, investigated the claim and found it “source free.”
The U.N. itself has cited the International Rescue Committee (IRC), but CAMERA notes the IRC’s August 2025 press release making the claim does not include any sourcing to back it up.
CAMERA also traced the “fact” back to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs director of financing Lisa Doughten, who claimed in October 2024 that Gaza is “home to the largest cohort of child amputees in modern history.” Doughten, too, failed to cite a source.
CAMERA notes Doughten’s comments were “remarkably similar to a quote from the discredited, pro-Hamas British-Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu Sittah in an interview at the New Yorker on March 21, 2024.”
Abu Sittah also didn’t cite a source for the claim, which later appeared in The Lancet and in a post on Save The Children’s website, both without attribution or sourcing.
“In fact, we were unable to find a comparative analysis of any kind that tracks the number of child amputees in conflict zones around the globe – yet alone one which encompasses hundreds of years of ‘modern history.’ Nor were we able to identify anyone who has even alluded to the existence of such a report,” CAMERA concludes.
The Financial Times did not respond to a request for comment from National Review.
This is the latest example of a pattern which repeats itself endlessly: The United Nations or another prominent NGO makes a wild claim, and that claim proliferates throughout the Western media ecosystem unchecked.
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Nicholas Kristof’s widely-discredited New York Times article accusing Israel of using sexual violence against prisoners “as organized state policy” was chock-full of dubious claims which Kristof attributed to biased NGOs.
The reported opinion column relied predominantly on claims from the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor and several individuals with checkered backgrounds. Not only does Euro-Med have documented links to Hamas, it also has a long record of making extreme, unverified accusations against Israel. Those unfounded accusations include that Israel was stealing organs from the bodies of dead Palestinians, that Israeli soldiers were executing patients in cold blood at al-Shifa Hospital, and, perhaps most notably, that Israeli forces have trained dogs to rape prisoners.
The dog-rape claim first picked up steam after it was amplified by Shaiel Ben-Ephraim. The former academic and Zionist-turned-“whistleblower,” who has recently trafficked in anti-Israel conspiracy theories, left UCLA in 2020 after multiple sexual‑harassment allegations, including one involving a minor.
His claims were later picked up by the Electronic Intifada, Owen Jones, and Novara Media. But what the media outlets failed to mention is that Ben-Ephraim has himself acknowledged the dog rape claims were “not verified.”
Canine behavior expert Michael S. Gould previously told NR that the suggestion that dogs could be trained to rape prisoners is “absurd.”
Headline Fail of the Week
“Trump just moved to target leftist organizations, including at least one in Portland. Here’s how,” The Oregonian reports.
But that headline is misleading. In fact, it was the Department of State that moved last week to designate an Italian extremist group as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist.” The group, Autistici/Inventati (A/I Collective), has quietly laid the groundwork for far-left groups in the U.S. and beyond to organize anonymously and execute violent attacks using its covert digital infrastructure, the U.S. State Department alleges.
While The Oregonian report claims the Trump administration is “attempting to single out leftist organizations, including Portland’s Rose City Antifa,” the designation specifically targets A/I Collective and only impacts U.S.-based leftist groups in that it prevents American organizations from using A/I Collective’s website servers, mailboxes and mailing lists.
Rose City Antifa, described as “one of America’s most violent communist groups,” previously used an A/I Collective site to dox Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Outside the U.S., A/I Collective’s services were used to carry out attacks on critical infrastructure throughout Europe.
Media Misses
• Rolling Stone designated controversial leftist streamer Hasan Piker as one of the Top 25 most influential content creators of 2026. Piker makes the list at number three: “The self-declared Marxist, 35, has found himself at the center of endless controversies, thanks to his inflammatory criticism of Israel on his daily streams — eagerly clipped by both Fox News and MS NOW — but also, he says, because he has become the chiseled face of a movement to push the Democratic Party to the left.” The blurb on Piker fails to recap some of his more controversial moments, which include his assertion that “America deserved 9/11.”
• The Canadian Broadcasting Company recently came under fire for telling reporters not to refer to the September 11 attacks as acts of terrorism. Instead, staffers were required to attribute any reference to 9/11 as a terrorist attack to a different news source, public official or government group. When describing the attack, reporters and editors should say that the “hijackings led to passenger jet crashes,” according to the memo obtained by the National Post. However, facing backlash, CBC has reversed course and said it will adjust the policy “to clarify that direct attribution is not required for describing the historic events of 9/11 as terrorism.”
