More than 62, 000 people have been killed by Israeli bombings of Gaza since almost two years ago, according to the Gaza-based Palestinian Ministry of Health, but the actual number is likely much higher.
A leaked military report reveals a different story than Israel’s claim that it is attacking Hamas fighters and not civilians.
According to the report, 83 percent of the Palestinians who were killed by Israel in Gaza were civilians.
Israel has murdered how many people? What did Israel say in relation to their killing? What makes this most recent report so significant? What we are aware of is:
What was stated in the report?
Based on an internal Israeli intelligence database that records the deaths of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fighters, the report was based.
According to data from May, Israel has killed 8, 900 fighters as per estimates from the database. Because 1, 570 names are listed as “probably dead,” that is an estimate.
The 8, 900 figure is out of 47, 653 people whom the database lists as active fighters – 34, 973 Hamas, and 12, 702 PIJ.
Let’s compare that to the total number of people killed in Gaza by Israel in May, which was 53 000, according to + 972 Magazine. That means that about 16.8% of Israeli victims were fighters, or “probably” killed.
In Gaza, how many Palestinians were killed by Israel?
In its 22-month offensive against the enclave, Israel has killed at least 62, 686 people, and injured 157, 951 according to the most recent figures from the Health Ministry. More than ten thousand people are still missing.
According to research, there are significantly more casualties than injuries. According to a peer-reviewed study, the number of people killed during the first nine months of the war may have been 40% higher than the initial estimates.
Many of the bodies of Israeli soldiers are burned down during bomb or missile strikes, left rotting in military installations, or crushed beneath the rubble of destroyed buildings, where rescuers are unable to reach them.
Israel’s assault on Gaza City, which it claimed has already begun, is even more terrifying because of the high civilian death toll.
What does Israel have to say about killing people in the streets?
Israel has consistently disputed the Health Ministry’s figures, saying it will do everything to reduce civilian casualties.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Israel had the lowest ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in modern urban warfare in September, claiming that the army was killing one civilian for every fighter it killed.
However, this happened several months after Local Call and + 972 reported on a Lavender-based Israeli army AI targeting system that, according to sources in Israeli intelligence, identified tens of thousands of people in Gaza as potential fighters and eligible to die.
According to two of the sources, the army decided in the beginning of the war that Lavender could kill 15 or 20 civilians for every junior Hamas operative designated for death.
And when speaking to their own audiences, far-right supporters of Netanyahu have shown little concern for Palestinian lives.
Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu stated on Israeli radio last month, “Thank God we are erasing Gaza.” Jewish people will be the only people in Gaza.
What would be exiled to a small landmass in the south would be exiled, according to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich at a settlement conference in May.
They don’t, either.
Al Jazeera has been able to find numerous accounts of civilians being massacred while trying to get food, heavy weapons being dropped on displacement camps, the deliberate killing of Gaza’s medical personnel, as well as the use of starvation as a weapon of war.
Anyone who has closely followed the genocide in Gaza shouldn’t have been surprised by the report, according to Local Call’s Orly Noy.
“Everything we knew about the war suggested that there was indiscriminate mass murder, destruction, and brutality there.” This is the nature of the conflict. Its logic is this. Israel is using a genocidal strategy that it has developed across Gaza.
What has Israel’s army done to combat it?
Local Call and + 972 reached out to the Israeli military to confirm the database’s existence.
The Israeli government responded to The Guardian’s request, saying they had decided to “rephrase” their initial statement.
The paper received a brief response to the query, which stated that the “figures presented in the article are incorrect” without identifying which parts of the article Israel was contesting.
Without identifying the systems it was referring to, it added that the media outlets’ quotes “do not reflect the data available in the]Israeli military’s systems.”
What numbers does the Israeli army have?
During the war, they have radically changed.
A senior Israeli security official claimed that Israel had killed 20, 000 people in Gaza, the majority of them fighters, in November 2023.
That number decreased to 7, 860 fighters in the month following. The Israeli army claimed to have killed about 13, 000 combatants in February 2024, but a week later it had reduced the figure by 1, 000.
It made the claim that it had killed 17 000 fighters in August 2024, but it later changed it to 14 000.
A Hamas operative is being reported dead, but I believe the majority of those who were accompanied by Israeli forces to Gaza are not actually Hamas operatives, according to a source who was with Israeli forces there.
After their death, people are elevated to the position of terrorist. We had killed 200 percent of Hamas operatives in the area if I had listened to the brigade, according to what I now know.
Ironically, the Palestinian Health Ministry’s consistently used figures is the only one.
Do civilian casualties in other wars compare to those in other conflicts?
Not consistently throughout a conflict.
