From its very start, the Israeli war on Gaza has seen a whirlwind of fake news and misinformation intended to keep the mass slaughter of Palestinians going as long as possible, often promulgated by mainstream media and powerful officials going right up to the president. The past few days have seen one of the most glaring examples yet.

Yesterday, a game-changing revelation spread like wildfire through the pro-Israel community: the United Nations had quietly halved the number of women and kids that it concluded were killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). First reported by right-wing Israeli paper the Jerusalem Post on May 11, the report concerned two of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ (OCHA) regular death toll updates in particular, with one May 6 report putting the number of women and children killed at 9,500 and 14,500, respectively, and the agency revising these numbers down to 4,959 and 7,797 two days later.

The shocking rate at which Israel has killed Palestinian civilians, children in particular, has been core to the rising global disgust at the war, while Israeli officials have all but declared war against the UN, in an attempt to delegitimize a body long critical of their policies. The war’s boosters eagerly seized on this new revelation.