Hamas has indicated it is currently unable to identify and track down 40 Israeli hostages needed for the first phase of a ceasefire deal, according to an Israeli official and a source familiar with the discussions, raising fears that more hostages may be dead than are publicly known.
I mean IDF has been dishonest certainly but this is something that has been thoroughly examined and vetted by this point. We would know if there were doubts about the number.
These events are also different because they are singular points in time—the lies serve to diffuse criticism until the public attention has faded so that less invested members of the public never learn the truth. So I’m not sure I agree they are foolish unfortunately, though there is of course a long term risk with using this tactic too often.
The hostage count is an ongoing thing. If they continued to stand by numbers that people are commonly discussing and have learned are incorrect, it would be much more embarrassing for them than the above incidents which are mostly forgotten by the general public, excepting perhaps the most recent one which did seem to break through a bit more.