Manufacturing doubt about the dead
Recurring official and surrogate strategy, analyzed across coverage of casualty-figure disputes; the pattern outlived every specific debunking.
How it works
The goal isn't proving the casualty numbers wrong — no alternative count is ever offered. The goal is making the numbers feel unknowable, so each death becomes debatable and the aggregate becomes abstract. Doubt is the product.
How to recognize it
'Hamas-run health ministry' as a full argument; zero engagement with the UN's, Lancet's, or Israeli intelligence's own historical corroboration of those counts; never an alternative figure with a methodology.
How to answer it
Two moves: cite the corroboration record (past-war verification, peer-reviewed undercount studies), then ask the question the tactic cannot answer: 'What is your number, and what's its source?' Silence there is the argument ending.