"A column is opinion, and Mr. Kinsella is entitled to his. The facts it rests on are a separate matter. The Canadian Association of Journalists’ Ethics Guidelines require journalists to be disciplined in verifying facts, and to correct errors of fact or context promptly and transparently, acknowledging the nature of the error, regardless of the platform on which they appeared."
7 August 2026
Dear Adrienne Batra,
Re: Request for correction — "Boy George earns wrath of cultural fascism for Oct. 7 song," by Warren Kinsella, Aug 04, 2026
I am writing as a reader to request a published correction to a factual error in Warren Kinsella’s column of Aug 04, 2026. You may review the article here.
The column states:
"Israel was ‘targeting children,’ declared The Guardian. ‘The overall Palestinian death toll since the war started is more than 73,000.’ Well, no, it isn’t. But facts are inconvenient to haters, so they make up their own facts, or they rely on a terror group as a source."
The figure The Guardian reported is accurate. The assertion that it is not is false, and four independent lines of evidence establish that.
First, United Nations reporting. Ministry of Health figures reported through the UN Health Cluster record 73,231 Palestinians killed in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 12 July 2026, as published in UNRWA Situation Report #230. OCHA maintains casualty data at https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties.
Second, peer-reviewed independent research. The Gaza Mortality Survey, published in The Lancet Global Health, is the first independent, population-representative household mortality survey conducted in Gaza during the war. It estimates 75,200 violent deaths between 7 October 2023 and 5 January 2025, a figure already above 73,000 some eighteen months before this column was published and finds the Ministry of Health count for that period fell 34.7% below its central estimate. An earlier capture-recapture analysis in The Lancet reached a comparable conclusion by a different method.
Third, independent documentation. Airwars maintains a public, incident-by-incident record of civilian harm in Gaza, compiled from open sources and available at gaza-civilians.airwars.org.
Fourth, and most directly, the Israeli military. In January 2026, a senior Israeli military official briefing reporters said the IDF assesses that approximately 70,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, and that the Ministry of Health’s figures have been largely accurate. This was reported by The Times of Israel, CNN and The Guardian, among others.
That last point bears directly on the column’s second claim. Mr. Kinsella characterizes the source of the figure as a terror group, implying the number is fabricated. The source is the Gaza Ministry of Health, whose count Israel’s own military has now accepted. The independent research indicates the real toll is higher than the official count, not lower.
A column is opinion, and Mr. Kinsella is entitled to his. The facts it rests on are a separate matter. The Canadian Association of Journalists’ Ethics Guidelines require journalists to be disciplined in verifying facts, and to correct errors of fact or context promptly and transparently, acknowledging the nature of the error, regardless of the platform on which they appeared.
I ask that the Sun publish a correction acknowledging the error and append it to the online version of the column.
I would also raise a matter of disclosure. Mr. Kinsella is listed as an Exigent Witness Fellow on the Exigent Foundation’s website. PressProgress reported in February 2026 that the Foundation, which organizes sponsored trips to Israel for Canadian journalists and commentators, was approved for roughly $175,000 from Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Where a columnist writes on the credibility of casualty figures in Gaza, that affiliation is material context, and readers are entitled to it. I ask that it be disclosed in his author biography or in future columns on this subject.
I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Meghan Raza