Let’s be fair about this...those who believe Hamas claims about the incident can assume that 500 Palestinian were killed. Those who believe the fault for the incident lies at the feet of Hamas can probably safely assume that maybe only about 100 were killed.
True.
They extremely quickly counted all the dead to make the 500 announcement. In reality even the Israelis are now estimating and re-evaluating how many people must be missing, hostages, dead, American, Israeli and so on. Days after the Hamas attacks. So how are the NYT and Hamas so quick at math?
Also, the hospital was hit by Israel was the story sent around the world immediately. Protests started in the streets and at college campuses.
Then it was seen that the parking lot of the hospital has been hit directly. So another story went out.
Then video of abortive rocket launch by Hamas within Hamas held territory was seen. Well, deny it, maybe photoshopping tricks with cgi or spliced video or something. But technical experts concluded the video was genuine.