#gaza casualties numbers

[socialjusticefail]

This article explains why the Hamas controlled Gaza Ministry of Health is providing numbers that are likely fake.

[booasaur]

Can you imagine the violence and indiscriminate brutality that would do this? The intention? In a tiny strip of land where the people are trapped and even the survivors are left traumatized, wounded, and starved in such a comprehensive way they'll carry this for the rest of their lives?

I remember when the number was more than one year of worldwide conflict. Can you imagine not doing everything in your power to stop it then, and instead helping it continue?

[silicacid]

No evidence of inflated mortality reporting from the Gaza Ministry of Health

Benjamin Q Huynh, Elizabeth T Chin, Paul B Spiegel

Published: December 06, 2023

Mortality reporting is a crucial indicator of the severity of a conflict setting, but it can also be inflated or under-reported for political purposes. Amidst the ongoing conflict in Gaza, some political parties have indicated scepticism about the reporting of fatalities by the Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH).

The Gaza MoH has historically reported accurate mortality data, with discrepancies between MoH reporting and independent United Nations analyses ranging from 1·5% to 3·8% in previous conflicts. A comparison between the Gaza MoH and Israeli Foreign Ministry mortality figures for the 2014 war yielded an 8·0% discrepancy.2 Public scepticism of the current reports by the Gaza MoH might undermine the efforts to reduce civilian harm and provide life-saving assistance. Using publicly available information, we compared the Gaza MoH's mortality reports with a separate source of mortality reporting and found no evidence of inflated rates. We conducted a temporal analysis of cumulative-reported mortality within Gaza for deaths of Gazans as reported by the MoH and reported staff member deaths from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), from Oct 7 to Nov 10, 2023. These two data sources used independent methods of mortality verification, enabling assessment of reporting consistency.

We observed similar daily trends, indicating temporal consistency in response to bombing events until a spike of UNRWA staff deaths occurred on Oct 26, 2023, when 14 UNRWA staff members were killed, of whom 13 died in their homes due to bombings. Subsequent attacks raised the UNRWA death rate while MoH hospital services diminished until MoH communications and mortality reporting collapsed on Nov 10, 2023. During this period, mortality might have been under-reported by the Gaza MoH due to decreased capacity. Cumulative reported deaths were 101 UNRWA staff members and 11,078 Gazans over 35 days. By comparison, an average of 4884 registered deaths occurred per year in 2015–19 in Gaza.

Cumulative reported mortality rates (Oct 7–Nov 10, 2023)

Data are calculated by separate death reports from the Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH; red line) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA; blue line).

If MoH mortality figures were substantially inflated, the MoH mortality rates would be expected to be higher than the UNRWA mortality rates. Instead, the MoH mortality rates are lower than the rates reported for UNRWA staff (5.3 deaths per 1000 vs 7.8 deaths per 1000, as of Nov 10, 2023). Hypothetically, if MoH mortality data were inflated from, for example, an underlying value of 2–4 deaths per 1000, it would imply that UNRWA staff mortality risk is 2.0–3.9 times higher than that of the public. This scenario is unlikely as many UNRWA staff deaths occurred at home or in areas with high civilian populations, such as in schools or shelters.

Mortality reporting is difficult to conduct in ongoing conflicts. Initial news reports might be imprecise, and subsequent verified reports might undercount deaths that are not recorded by hospitals or morgues, such as persons buried under rubble. However, difficulties obtaining accurate mortality figures should not be interpreted as intentionally misreported data. Although valid mortality counts are important, the situation in Gaza is severe, with high levels of civilian harm and extremely restricted access to aid. Efforts to dispute mortality reporting should not distract from the humanitarian imperative to save civilian lives by ensuring appropriate medical supplies, food, water, and fuel are provided immediately.

[eretzyisrael]

by Abraham Wyner

Taken together, what does this all imply? While the evidence is not dispositive, it is highly suggestive that a process unconnected or loosely connected to reality was used to report the numbers. Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily. We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real. Then they assigned about 70% of the total to be women and children, splitting that amount randomly from day to day. Then they in-filled the number of men as set by the predetermined total. This explains all the data observed.

There are other obvious red flags. The Gaza Health Ministry has consistently claimed that about 70% of the casualties are women or children. This total is far higher than the numbers reported in earlier conflicts with Israel. Another red flag, raised by Salo Aizenberg and written about extensively, is that if 70% of the casualties are women and children and 25% of the population is adult male, then either Israel is not successfully eliminating Hamas fighters or adult male casualty counts are extremely low. This by itself strongly suggests that the numbers are at a minimum grossly inaccurate and quite probably outright faked. Finally, on Feb. 15, Hamas admitted to losing 6,000 of its fighters, which represents more than 20% of the total number of casualties reported.

Taken together, Hamas is reporting not only that 70% of casualties are women and children but also that 20% are fighters. This is not possible unless Israel is somehow not killing noncombatant men, or else Hamas is claiming that almost all the men in Gaza are Hamas fighters.

Are there better numbers? Some objective commentators have acknowledged Hamas’ numbers in previous battles with Israel to be roughly accurate. Nevertheless, this war is wholly unlike its predecessors in scale or scope; international observers who were able to monitor previous wars are now completely absent, so the past can’t be assumed to be a reliable guide. The fog of war is especially thick in Gaza, making it impossible to quickly determine civilian death totals with any accuracy. Not only do official Palestinian death counts fail to differentiate soldiers from children, but Hamas also blames all deaths on Israel even if caused by Hamas’ own misfired rockets, accidental explosions, deliberate killings, or internal battles. One group of researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health compared Hamas reports to data on UNRWA workers. They argued that because the death rates were approximately similar, Hamas’ numbers must not be inflated. But their argument relied on a crucial and unverified assumption: that UNRWA workers are not disproportionately more likely to be killed than the general population. That premise exploded when it was uncovered that a sizable fraction of UNRWA workers are affiliated with Hamas. Some were even exposed as having participated in the Oct. 7 massacre itself.

The truth can’t yet be known and probably never will be. The total civilian casualty count is likely to be extremely overstated. Israel estimates that at least 12,000 fighters have been killed. If that number proves to be even reasonably accurate, then the ratio of noncombatant casualties to combatants is remarkably low: at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1. By historical standards of urban warfare, where combatants are embedded above and below into civilian population centers, this is a remarkable and successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians.

The data used in the article can be found here, with thanks to Salo Aizenberg who helped check and correct these numbers.

[haruchicken]

That @whenmagicfilledtheair blogs blatant antisemitism while simultaneously denying it scares the shit out of me.

Yeah, they are by far the worst I've seen.

The thing that I find the most frustrating about people like them, and why I even bothered to comment on their pinned post is that they demand answers to questions, but do so already knowing nothing anyone says will appease them. They are not looking for a debate or even open to changing their mind in anyway. You can see that if you look through their blog and see how they respond to anyone trying to provide them with evidence of their antisemitism.

That's why I didn't try to answer their pinned post, because I'm not going to spend hours going through their their blog taking screenshots and then compiling my own sources for why what they said is wrong or antisemitic when they will just deny anything they don't agree with as wrong or Israeli propaganda.

The thing is, it's easy to criticize Israel without being antisemitic--just look at how other Israelis have been doing it for years. But that's not what this person wants--they want to paint Israel as the most evil country on Earth, with the most evil people, who do uniquely evil things that no other country has ever done before.

I'm not Israeli, I'm not even Jewish, so for the most part I haven't said anything about this war. I come to Tumblr for memes, art and fandom shit. Yet, the rise of Antisemitism is really worrying me, especially when it's so easily brushed off with the excuse that it's just Israeli propaganda.

Like, I just don't understand why it's so hard to admit that, yeah, given how old antisemitism and how it's shaped a lot of cultures worldwide that it's possible some of it has slipped into the 'free Palestine' movement. This doesn't mean it's an inherently bad movement or that Palestinians deserve to die or lose their homes. It just means that maybe sometimes people should take a step back and see if some of their inherent biases have effected how they talk about this war as opposed to others that do not involve the Jewish State of Israel.

[opencommunion]

[ID: instagram post from @.GazaMedicVoices. Text over the gridded numbered map of Gaza released by the IOF reads: “We are no longer in Rafah, we are in ‘block XX.’ The reality is uglier than anyone can imagine because what is happening to us has never happened before.” - Surgeon displaced to south of Gaza, 1/12/23. The post caption reads: Israel has started using a numbered grid system for evacuation warnings, accessed via a QR code on leaflets dropped from the sky and via social media. This has led to terror and confusion as people struggle to find refuge from the heavy bombardment. /end ID]

These “evacuation zones” are extermination zones. The IOF has 0 intention of letting anyone move freely in Gaza. They shoot people who try to move to the places they’re told to evacuate to, and many people can’t move at all because everything around them is under constant bombardment. Most Gazans don’t have internet to view these “evacuation notices” in the first place, because the IOF bombed Gaza’s communications infrastructure. This map is another weak attempt to convince the world that they’re trying to “minimize casualties,” but like most Zionist propaganda, it’s just more evidence of their atrocities. They have literally divided Gaza into death chambers.

[fairuzfan]

"The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the massacre at al-Shifa was one of the largest in Palestinian history, estimating that at least 1,500 people had been killed, injured, or reported missing, “with women and children making up half of the casualties.”* The organization also confirms that at least 22 patients were shot while in their hospital beds, while the number of displaced persons sheltering at the hospital who were forced to evacuate southward was estimated to include 25,000 people. Moreover, 1,200 housing units in the vicinity of al-Shifa were destroyed.

Despite the army’s claims about the al-Shifa operation’s strategic and military importance and the number of alleged Hamas and PIJ members it had arrested and killed, it obfuscated the real intended purpose of the operation, which was to destroy the health system in northern Gaza and worsen the already disastrous humanitarian conditions. The entire compound is now unfit for use. Even the morgue, containing countless bodies of the slain, was burned down."

[intersectionalpraxis]

Families are on SIDEWALKS and streets in Jabaila because of these bombardments. There is NO where safe in the Gaza Strip. This also isn't the first time they attacked Jabaila -hundreds of Palestinian people have been genocided during those strikes and after having been stuck under the rubble for so long. It's beyond horrific -these are places of REFUGE, and none of these war criminals in the IOF are being brought to face their crimes. The IOF must be held accountable.

[soon-palestine]

The House of Representatives has voted to effectively conceal the death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza.

On Thursday, lawmakers voted 269-144 on an amendment to prohibit the State Department from citing statistics from the Gaza Health Ministry. The measure is part of the annual State Department appropriations bill. It was led by Democratic Reps. Jared Moskowitz, Fla., and Josh Gottheimer, N.J., and Republican Reps. Joe Wilson, S.C.; Mike Lawler, N.Y.; and Carol Miller, W.V.

In total, 62 Democrats joined 207 Republicans in supporting the amendment.Here are the 62 Democrats who joined 207 Republicans to ban giving funds to the State Department to cite the Gaza Health Ministry, undermining the organization’s death & injury figures. https://t.co/n7DveMQaPQ pic.twitter.com/Nas0Fgm4Ag

— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) June 27, 2024

While party leaders often push their members to vote “yes” or “no” on any range of proposals, Democratic leadership gave “no recommendation” to its members on how to vote on the amendment. After the House passes the full bill, it will head to the Senate for consideration.

Mohammed Khader, policy manager at the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action, told The Intercept that the amendment is part of a trend of anti-Palestinian sentiment in Congress since the start of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. “By preventing any recognition of the number of Palestinians killed since October, this amendment is a clear example of genocide denial and is no different from what was done towards victims of genocides in Rwanda and Armenia.”

On Wednesday, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., the only Palestinian member of Congress, took to the floor to make a similar argument. “This is genocide denial,” she said.

After reciting the death toll and other statistics about casualties, Tlaib said she intended to introduce the list of Palestinians killed in Gaza to the congressional record. “It is important to note this to everyone here: The list is too long that I can’t even submit it because of the text limit,” she said. “That’s how many have been killed.”

The Ministry of Health is the only official entity tracking the death toll in Gaza; its figures have been cited broadly, including by the U.S. and Israeli governments. Over the last eight months, Israel has killed at least 37,765 people and injured another 86,429, according to the ministry’s latest figures. These numbers are likely an undercount due to the decimated medical infrastructure, killed medical workers, and thousands feared trapped under the rubble in Gaza.

“It’s despicable but not shocking that 62 Democrats joined Republicans to refute the Gaza death toll,” one Democratic staffer told The Intercept. “Democratic leadership should be ashamed for refusing to take a stand and call out the blatant anti-Palestinian racism and genocide denial in our party.”

Moskowitz and Gottheimer are among several Democrats who have repeatedly worked to undermine the movement for Palestinian rights and pro-Palestinian speech.

In April, the pair joined Republicans to lead a resolution condemning the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as antisemitic. In December, the duo joined Republican Reps. Elise Stefanik and Steve Scalise to lead a resolution condemning university presidents and calling for their resignations for allegedly tolerating antisemitism on campus. In November, the two Democrats joined 20 others in censuring Tlaib, for reasons that included posting a video calling for a ceasefire that contained the phrase “from the river to the sea.”

Gottheimer has gone even further, calling Democrats who don’t support Israel a “cancer” and suggesting that Muslims in America are “guilty” of Hamas’s attack on October 7. Along with Lawler, he headlined a call hosted by No Labels, in which he spoke with university trustees about how to push the FBI to take a bigger role in investigating campus protests. During that call, Lawler suggested that student protests for Palestine were the type of activity that inspired the TikTok ban.

The pair also joined 60 other Democrats in expressing their “disgust” at South Africa’s 84-page suit accusing Israel of genocide and praising White House spokesperson John Kirby for calling it “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basic in fact whatsoever.” Not long after, the International Court of Justice concluded that Israel is plausibly committing genocide.

[sayruq]

Though the exact number of casualties from the atrocity is still unknown, preliminary reports suggest that over 1,500 Palestinians have been killed, injured, or are reported missing as a result of the massacre at Al-Shifa, with women and children making up half of the casualties. Euro-Med Monitor is able to confirm from its initial investigation and testimonies that hundreds of dead bodies, including some burned, and others with their heads and limbs severed, have been discovered both inside Al-Shifa Medical Complex and in the hospital’s surrounding area. The massacre claimed the lives of at least 22 patients who were killed in their hospital beds during the Israeli siege of the Medical Complex, amid the willful deprivation of their access to food, medical care, and supplies. Israel’s army also purposefully prevented relief teams and representatives of international organisations from entering Al-Shifa to carry out humanitarian missions or evacuations, plus purposefully cleared the Complex of all working personnel—particularly medical personnel—either by summary execution or forced displacement or arrest. The whereabouts of some of these individuals are still unknown.

Members of the Israeli army forced more than 25,000 Palestinian civilians to evacuate their homes in the vicinity of Al-Shifa Medical Complex. These forced evacuations occurred after Israel committed horrendous crimes against local families, including killing, direct targeting, besieging, and starving them, as well as arbitrary arrests and destroying and burning homes and civilian objects. According to initial estimates, the Israeli army demolished and set ablaze over 1,200 housing units in the vicinity of Al-Shifa Medical Complex.

[nasserakar]

‼️Please don’t skip taking a look 🍉🇵🇸

Welcome; I am Nasser Abu Akar, 23years old, a survivor of five wars, from the Gaza Strip - occupied Palestine, and this is my beautiful family, my father Muhammad (martyr), my mother Indira, my brothers Haitham, Fayez, Fayek, Ahmed and Farid and 4 sisters, a family full of love and peace, a family that is accustomed to living In her warm little house. We lived our lives in the Gaza Strip, a life full of wars and conflicts, a very harsh life, and we went through many painful and harsh experiences. We suffered from devastating wars, poverty and severe siege. But despite this, we maintained love in our hearts and purity in our souls, and until what happened during the past six months, we faced situations that cannot be described in words. Horrible things happened, situations that no one could bear. We lost our small house and had to move to another area (in the camps), leaving our dreams, our love, and even our lives in the rubble. What a difficult life we ​​face now, a life full of pain, poverty and displacement. All our dreams have turned into only one dream, which is to survive, but deep in our hearts we still have a glimmer of hope. There is a small speck of light in the midst of this absolute darkness. We have survived (so far). My father did not survive. The occupation killed him, may God have mercy on him. But we believe in the saying, “I don’t want to live, I want to survive.” There is a big difference between them. In order to preserve our lives after my father’s death, we must leave the Gaza Strip to a safe place, a place that will restore to us the humanity we have lost, which means saving the lives of ten people, along with thousands of dreams and dreams. Ambitions. Our support means we're not just numbers breaking news, and we're not just anonymous victims. Our support means that ten lives will not be mentioned in the casualty statistics. This means that there are ten people who will not stand in line for long hours just to get a loaf of bread, or a bottle of water. . This support will save lives, and what is more important in the world than saving a life? With your support, we will carry in our hearts hope and beautiful memories of the house that was our home before the missile arrived. Your help means survival in this humanitarian crisis. Is there a crisis greater than the Gaza crisis? We trust that there is a hand that will extend to save us before we drown

https://gofund.me/c48a7cc4

https://gofund.me/c48a7cc4

[i-am-aprl]

🚨 ISRAEL BURNS HUNDREDS ALIVE IN SCHOOL - EMAIL YOUR ELECTED OFFICIAL 🚨

Israel has killed over 100 Palestinians during morning prayers at Al-Taba’een School in the Al-Daraj neighbourhood of eastern Gaza City.

Israeli military aircraft targeted the school while worshippers were performing Fajr (dawn) prayers, according to reports from the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

The sheer power of the bombing tore people apart and incinerated what remained. The photos and videos from inside the school are beyond words.

At the time of the bombing, over 6,000 Palestinians were sheltering in the school. The current death toll is expected to rise, with the number of injuries still being counted, though they are anticipated to be in the hundreds.

“The school area is strewn with dead bodies and body parts. It is very difficult for paramedics to identify whole bodies. There’s an arm here, a leg there. Bodies have been ripped to pieces.” - Mahmoud Basal, Gaza Civil Defence.

Israel claims with every heinous war crime that they are targeting Palestinian resistance fighters. However, evidence for this is often non-existent. Even if it were true, in some of these school bombings, the death and injury toll has seen up to 80% of the casualties being children.

Families and children are sheltering in these schools. Under no circumstances is it ever acceptable or legal under international law to bomb a school. Yet, Israel, with the full backing of the US, UK, and Germany, has bombed over 150 schools in Gaza with impunity.

WHEN WILL ISRAEL BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR WAR CRIMES?

👉 EMAIL YOUR ELECTED OFFICIAL NOW! USE THE FREE TEMPLATE IN @HumantiProject’s bio or visit HumantiProject.org 👈

——

* Sources: AJ, Middle East Monitor, Ahmed Kouta, Sky News, and other journalists on the ground.

[notyourtoday]

TW: Distressing Content

"The scene here cannot be described" At least 100 people have been killed in an Israeli attack on al-Tabin School, which was housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza's al-Daraj neighbourhood, on Saturday. The Gaza government media office said in a statement that "the lsraeli strikes targeted the displaced people while performing Fajr (dawn) prayers, [which] led to a rapid increase in the number of casualties."

By @mahmoud._.shalha20 / @middleeasteye on Instagram.

Link to post.

[eretzyisrael]

Source

[the-library-alcove]

One of the many, many, many reasons why seeing "Antizionists" claim that "Israel is acting just like the Nazis!/Jews are the New Nazis!/Israel is committing a genocide!" and other forms of Holocaust inversion is so incredibly offensive is that these claims undersell the horror of the Holocaust itself.

Let me just give two comparisons to show why the claim of "Zionists are genocidal!" is flat-out wrong.

First, it's been about (as of this writing) 200 days since the Hamas mass murders in early October--just under seven months. In that time, 34,262 Gazans have died according to the Hamas-run Gazan health bureau's official statistics. They are not distinguishing between Hamas' own combatants and civilians (by design), but that is the current death toll as of 29 April, 2024.

And this is a number that is claimed to be proof that Israel is attempting, with intent, to wipe out the Palestinian Gazan population.

Meanwhile, historically, 33,771 Jews were murdered in two days at Babi Yar in what is now Ukraine, near Kyiv, on the 29th and 30th of September, 1941. Three weeks later, on the 22-24th of October, 1941, another 34,000 Jews were killed in Odessa.

Those are just two massacres, each of which was accomplished with 1940s technology, while in the middle of a war with the USSR, each with a death toll comparable to the current death toll of Gazans, including Hamas combatants, each of which took two or three days to do all of the killing.

Compare that to Israel, with far greater technology for killing at its disposal, a civilian populace that is packed into a smaller area, and not having to fight against a technological peer...

And their death toll, while tragic, is at under 1% of the Nazis' own genocidal efforts. And that's because, as hard as it is for people to accept, they're not trying to kill all of the Gazans. They are, in fact, taking tremendous efforts to minimize the casualties (although there are legitimate criticisms to be made about their thresholds for what constitutes acceptable collateral damage to get at Hamas fighters).

But clearly, since they're (((Zionists))), they're the epitome of evil and must be worse than the Nazis.

And all the Jews hear from those claims is a slap in the face to both our dead and the efforts by the IDF to not kill, despite how easy it would be.

The thing is...

If the IDF did want to kill all of the Gazans, they could have easily done a Babi Yar or Odessa level massacre every day starting from October 8. At 33,000 deaths per day for 200 days, that's 6.4 million, or three times the total population of Gaza.

Instead, 98.5% of the Gazan populace is still alive.

But that apparently counts for nothing, and, in fact, "antizionists" are upset that more of them aren't dead, and are instead inflating the numbers...

Because it's more important to them to defame Israel than it is to actually improve the lives of Palestinians.

[tungledotedu]

prismatic bell is shamelessly doing genocide denial again (archive org version), with some points such as:

'the keffiyeh is a symbol of arab colonialism'

'Every civilian killed is a travesty to be laid on Sinwar’s bloody hands. But…it’s actually also REALLY GOOD for urban warfare'.

no amount of 'it's tragic, i know it sucks, it's heatbreaking' will make up for the fact that xe LITERALLY SAID THERE IS A 'GOOD' AND 'PROPORTIONATE' NUMBER OF DEAD CIVILIANS. including children and babies. and this is right after xe called them colonisers.

xe's still desperately trying to deny the death toll. 'the numbers as given have been proven false. Someone was literally able to show they’re generated with a math formula. (I have articles backing this up, but again, will have to add when I’m off mobile, sorry.)'

also known as 'i can't add more sources right now, but i DEFINITELY have them!' (uses memri tv as a source)

'actually it's completely legal for israel to target hospitals because they fabricate evidence of weapons in those hospitals.' who's going to tell xir about how the iof mistook an arabic calendar for a list of names. also, legality=/=morality.

'DELIBERATE TARGETING OF HOSPITALS: yes, Israel has bombed or raided several hospitals because they were being used as weapons depots or missile launch sites. This is completely legal—what would be illegal would be raids on hospitals not being used as military sites.'

'hamas is the one that's committing genocide! if israel was really trying to eradicate all of gaza it would be done already!'

62% of homes and 84% of healthcare facilities have been damaged or destroyed. as well as more than 80% of schools.

'what is happening in ukraine IS genocide! but not palestine!'

since this person seems so fixated on 'proportionate' death tolls...

ukraine has a population of 34 million, and the 2022 russian invasion has resulted in around 34,000 civilian casuallties as of june 2024. that's a lower ratio of civilian casualties to total population (1:1000). mariupol and the rest of donetsk oblast (population: 4 million) have sustained the highest number of casualties, with over 25,000 dead. this means the ratio is 1:160. according to this user, this is enough to warrant the label of genocide.

(edit: the number of dead ukrainian civilians may be higher at 100,000, making it 1:340).

but the gaza strip had a population of 2.4 million in 2022 (see the quote below), and the estimate of around 40,000 deaths has been outdated for some time now due to israel's destruction of gazan healthcare infrastructure and staff. even without a more accurate death toll, the ratio is higher (1:60). but for some reason (racism), it's not enough to be called a genocide.

the death toll in gaza is estimated to be much higher. according to the lancet,

Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2 375 259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip.

and this is a conservative estimate.

also, according to this user's 'logic', with a lower ratio of casualties, russia is actually 'doing urban warfare' better than israel. so much for being pro-ukraine.

all of this disgusting vitriol is tacked on a post with artwork of jesus christ, because one of the sketches depicted him with a keffiyeh. i don't think prismatic bell has anything of worth to say about christianity.

(edIted on 20 july)

changed pronoun to xir. explanation here.

i've added a link to a source for 100,000 killed civilians in ukraine.

but still, given the choice between an academic article and an internet user, i'm going to trust the academic article to have actual research with sources and not 'fake numbers' for gaza.

i wrote a bit about how the alleged 1:1.5 civilian death ratio is incorrect under the read more, but then i realised, does it actually matter? should this be the metric by which we measure proportionality in the first place? should we forget how more palestinians have been killed by israel since its founding than the other way around?

if we only focus on this, we overlook the bigger picture, the alarming number of people who have been killed or left sickened and disabled. we have to keep the total population in mind, and the fact that israel also mass murders palestinians 'indirectly'. through starvation, cutting off electricity and water, blockading medical supplies as well as other resources, denying life-saving healthcare, and other means. what prismatic-bell said about russia targeting aid workers applies to israel too.

what about how israeli militants rape and sexually torture palestinian hostages? how they don't distinguish between combatants and civilians, and their 'definition' of terrorist includes elderly men and kids they've captured and stripped to their underwear? or how they've maimed people as part of rabin's 'break the bones' policy since the first intifada? or when the iof lied about letting an ambulance rescue hind rajab, only to kill the paramedics and shoot 335 bullets at the car where she was hiding? or how they haven't stopped bombing and sniping people despite orders from the icj and credible evidence of them committing genocide?

and 'fake numbers'? sounds like projection to me. here's what prismatic-bell said:

'And finally, let’s look at the civilian-to-combatant death toll. [...] With that said, the best data we have at this moment suggests one civilian killed for every 1.5 Hamas militants.'

no source given, but i'm guessing it came from wikipedia (where the sentence is unsourced as well).

here's an actual analysis by yagil levy on ha'aretz. it's outdated, but it argues that even early on in the genocide, the israeli army failed to show restraint in targeting civilians. none of that 'it's actually also REALLY GOOD for urban warfare' or 'entirely proportionate', or however you want to cruelly dismiss human life.

It follows that with a high proportion of noncombatants among the total number of those killed, we can conclude that the principle of discrimination was not adhered to, and an unusually high rate will reflect either a departure from the principle of proportionality or a highly flexible interpretation of it. [...] Thus, rather than this being a case of "collateral damage," it was the reverse: Because most of those harmed are civilians, what was produced is "collateral benefit," in the form of a low number of Gazan combatants killed.

This calculation shows that out of the total of 6,747, at least 4,594 individuals of both sexes who can be categorized as noncombatants were killed – 68 percent of the total. 

this is a different way of calculating the ratio. it takes civilian deaths and divides it by the total number of people killed, not by combatant deaths (as the 1:1.5 ratio does). with 2,153 combatants killed, the ratio is actually around 2:1, meaning it is biased towards civilians killed. this is an outdated estimate and is probably higher in reality.

or take the iof's more recent but probably inflated estimate of 16,000 dead hamas fighters, meaning 24,000 civilians out of the 40,000 killed. the ratio would be 1.5:1. or 170,000 civilians if we go by the lancet.. that's 10.5 civilians dead for 1 militant. (if anyone has better sources let me know.)