Harry Shannon
You’ll occasionally hear arguments about the accuracy of the numbers of casualties in the Gaza war. Media reports tend to refer to the “Hamas-run” Gaza Ministry of Health when quoting its statistics, as if that makes them suspect.
Several central points:
- Israeli military intelligence considers the numbers from the Gaza Ministry of Health reliable.
- The current death count is almost certainly an underestimate, as several thousand people are missing, e.g., under rubble of destroyed buildings.
- The indirect death toll from conflict is almost always greater than the direct toll. Given this, a letter in the leading medical journal Lancet in July 2024 stated that “it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.”
- Some numbers from Israeli authorities regarding Hamas fighters and those killed are flawed. Even the right-wing Jerusalem Post has reported that the IDF has revised downward the number of Hamas fighters killed.
Details:
How many Gazans, especially women and children, have been killed? Can the Gaza Ministry of health numbers be trusted?
One particular issue is the question of how many women and children have been killed (as if male non-combatants don’t matter). In early May, the UN released figures that supporters of Israel jumped on to cast doubt on the numbers. For example, the Jerusalem Post had a headline “UN seemingly halves estimate of Gazan women, children killed.” (See also a misleading article in The Atlantic and the devastating critique of that article on Common Dreams.)
The misinterpretation was based on numbers from the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). On May 6 OCHA stated that 34,735 people had reportedly been killed in Gaza, including over 9,500 women and over 14,500 children. Figures announced on May 8 stated that the number of identified deaths as of April 30 was 24,686, including 4,959 women and 7,797 children.
It’s easy to miss the word “identified” in the May 8 data. It means that the Gaza authorities have determined the sex, dates of birth and death, and ID number. So it’s not surprising that there are many deaths for which all this information is undetermined, even though one can mostly see if a body is male or female and whether the deceased is younger or older.
The issue is complicated. There are still questions about the accuracy of the numbers, in part because Israel has not allowed independent observers to enter Gaza. Following past conflicts in Gaza, independent investigations have found that the Gaza Ministry of Health figures were broadly accurate. As well, in March, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that 14,000 combatants and 16,000 civilians had been killed, a total of 30,000, which was very close to the 31,000 being reported at the time by the Gaza ministry.
For their part, the Gaza Ministry of Health does not report separately male casualties in combatants and in civilians. They also have a category of ‘elderly’ that does not distinguish men and women and also does not define who is elderly. Hamas also does not release the names of combatants killed, with only a few exceptions.
Bottom line: Israeli military intelligence considers the ministry numbers reliable. Even the lower figure of 7,797 children killed is horrendous. Current figures don’t include several thousand more people lying dead under rubble. Moreover, the number of injured, many maimed for life, is about 2.5 times the number of deaths.
What about indirect deaths?
The Global Burden of Armed Violence is an effort to document the full tally of deaths from armed conflict around the world. Its 2008 report included a chapter on indirect deaths. Indirect deaths include those resulting from malnutrition, infectious diseases, lack of access to health care, unsanitary living conditions, etc. and occur both during and after the conflict. Based on a review of the evidence, the report stated: “Studies show that between three and 15 times as many people die indirectly for every person who dies violently.” It further stated: “A reasonable average estimate would be a ratio of four indirect deaths to one direct death in contemporary conflicts.”
A July 2024 letter in The Lancet applied this 4:1 ratio to estimate how many direct and indirect deaths might occur from the current Gaza war. Using the June 19, 2024, figure of 37,396 people killed in Gaza since the war began, the authors wrote that “it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.”
[Disclosure: I was on the PhD thesis committee for the lead author, Rasha Khatib. I have been a co-author with second author, Salim Yusuf. I have also been a co-author with the other author, Martin McKee.]
Can numbers from Israeli officials be trusted?
International humanitarian law accepts that civilians will die in war. Civilian casualties must be avoided as much as possible. If they cannot be avoided, they must not be disproportionate to the explicit military gain anticipated from a specific action. Thus it helps Israel’s public relations – and defence against a possible prosecution – if the proportion of casualties they deem terrorists is high. To that end, Israel has an overly broad definition of terrorist, including people working for the Gaza government even in non-combatant roles, on the grounds that Hamas is in charge.
Aryeh Neier is the co-founder of Human Rights Watch. (His family fled the Nazis in 1939 when he was two years old.) He has questioned Israel’s numbers. In a letter to the New York Review of Books, Neier first noted that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Israeli forces had killed about 14,000 Hamas combatants and 16,000 civilians. Neier continued: ‘In most armed conflicts, at least two or three times as many people are wounded as are killed. That is reflected in the figures reported by the [Gaza] ministry, and that is what one would expect in a war in which many deaths are attributable to the bombing raids that have devastated Gaza.’ Using the lower ratio of two injured for each one killed, if there were 14,000 fatalities, there would be 42,000 fighters who have been killed or injured. This is considerably more than the Israeli pre-war estimate of 30,000 fighters cited by the Times of Israel and the BBC.
The Jerusalem Post gave a revised figure of 40,000, which is still less than 42,000. Moreover, Israel’s Defense Minister in early July said that 60% of Hamas terrorists had been killed or injured. So if the 42,000 killed or injured is just 60%, then Hamas must have had 70,000 fighters.
In other words, Israeli numbers make no sense. Either they underestimated how many Hamas fighters there were or they have overestimated the number of Hamas fighters among those killed. As Neier wryly noted, if Netanyahu’s numbers were correct, ‘Israel should declare victory, and the war would be over.’
Indeed, in early November 2024 the Jerusalem Post noted that the IDF has revised downward its stated number of Hamas fighters killed. In July 2024 the IDF said 17,000 had been killed. But the article noted that the IDF said the number was 15,000, even though, based on daily announcements, between 1,000 and 2,000 more had been killed since July.