How Hamas Fiddles with the Figures on Casualties

We know what Hamas says. It claims to have so far endured 17,000 casualties in the fighting in Gaza. It does not break down that number between civilians and combatants, preferring to let the world believe that those killed are overwhelmingly “women and children.” But an analysis of the figures, and how Hamas changes them — manipulates them — from day to day, shows how deliberately the terror group minimizes the number of dead combatants and maximizes the number of dead civilians. More on this sleight of numbers can be found here: “The Battle Over Casualty Counts in Gaza,” by Salo Aizenberg, Algemeiner, December 12, 2023:

The war between Israel and Hamas rages not only within Gaza, where Israel has a decisive advantage, but also on the battlefield of public opinion, where Hamas seems to be winning. Among the most important and contested items in this information war is the number of Gazan civilians killed.

The military action in Gaza has tragically resulted in many civilian deaths, including children, mainly because Hamas deliberately embeds itself inside and under Gazan cities. Hamas’s human shield strategy, which its leaders acknowledge, is deliberately intended to lead to elevated civilian deaths, thereby ratcheting international pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire that would leave Hamas intact.

Hamas therefore has a strategic interest in inflating the death count. A close review of the Hamas casualty statistics, which the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs publishes daily, citing the Hamas-run Ministry of Health and Government Media Office, suggests that the figures are falsified. Specifically, they vastly inflate the death toll among women and children, as opposed to men and combatants….

Keep in mind that Hamas has a long record of lying. Six weeks ago, Hamas claimed that an Israeli airstrike had hit the Al-Ahli Hospital, killing “500 people.” It turned out that there had been no airstrike. Instead, a rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad from Gaza misfired, and fell inside Gaza, not in the hospital itself but in the parking lot of the hospital. And the numbers of those killed was not 500, but between 10 and 50. This conclusion came not just from Israel but from American intelligence as well. Remember the “massacre of Jenin,” where the IDF was accused by Hamas of massacring “500 people,” and the actual number of casualties turned out to be 52 Palestinians killed, almost all of them combatants? That is why, when the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry releases figures, we are justified in being skeptical.

Press reports from Dec. 5 indicate that the IDF believes the total death count of approximately 15,000 Gazans appears accurate, but that the figure includes more than 5,000 Hamas members, mostly men. [as of Dec. 9, Hamas provided a figure of 17,000 Gazans killed] On Dec. 9, Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said that at least 7,000 terrorists have been killed. These figures haven’t been independently verified, but the balance it would imply between men, women and children makes much more sense than Hamas’s figures.

The resulting ratio of roughly two Gazan civilian deaths for every one Hamas combatant killed would also compare favorably to other recent urban combat actions by Western armies.

Actually, the ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths is much less than 2 to 1. See the comments just below.

The Battle of Mosul against ISIS saw 9,000 to 11,000 civilian deaths, about three to four times the number of combatants killed. Richard Kemp, the retired colonel who commanded British Forces in Afghanistan, recently noted that allied forces there killed between three and five civilians for every one combatant.

Colonel Kemp has said that the United Nations has concluded that in all the conflicts fought since World War II, the average civilian-to-combatant ratio has been 9 to 1, that is nine civilians killed for every combatant. Those conflicts include such ruthless states as Syria and Russia, whose rulers care nothing for civilian life, and kill indiscriminately. The British and the American armies, on the other hand, try very hard to minimize civilian casualties; the civilian-to-combatant deaths in Iraq were 2 to 1; in some cases of urban warfare, as in the Battle of Mosul, where the Americans and British were fighting ISIS, the ratio was higher: between three to four civilian deaths for every combatant killed.

What is Israel’s civilian-to-combatant ratio in the Hamas war? Hamas claims that so far there are 17,000 total dead in Gaza. It does not tell us how many were civilians, and how many combatants.Israel believes that to date it has killed 7,000 combatants. If we accept Hamas’ total of 17,000 dead, that would mean a civilian-to-combatant ratio of 10,000 to 7,000, or 10 to 7, a historic low in the annals of warfare, far lower than what the Americans or the British have achieved in any of their campaigns involving urban warfare. If the world were not so consumed with anti-Israel animus, it would recognize this feat, all the more remarkable because Hamas has done everything it can to cause civilian deaths among its own people. It does this first, by hiding its rocket launchers, storehouses of weapons, command-and-control centers, and its operatives, in civilian structures, such as schools, mosques, hospitals, and apartment buildings; second, by firing at the IDF, and hurling rockets into Israel, from places packed with civilians; third, Hamas also prevents civilians from escaping to safer areas that the IDF has marked out, in some cases by firing on those civilians as they try to leave.

The next time you hear someone lamenting the “extreme loss of life in Gaza” or berates Israel “for killing so many women and children,” answer them by reference to the following:

1. The total number of casualties in Gaza, as released by Hamas itself.
2. The total number of Hamas combatants killed, according to the IDF.
3. The number of casualties that Hamas keeps changing from day to day, so as to keep minimizing the number of men killed and maximizing the number of women and children claimed to have been killed.
4. The record of Hamas as a teller of lies (Jenin “Massacre,” Al-Ahli Hospital airstrike).
5. The record of Israel as a truth-teller (the unintentional killing of Shireen al-Akleh, as determined by the IDF after investigation).
6. The total number of civilians killed in Gaza to date, determined by taking the total number of people killed and subtracting the number of combatants killed.
7. Calculating the civilian-to-combatant ratio, which works out to about 10,000 to 7,000, or 10 civilians killed for every 7 combatants killed. .
8. Comparing that 10 to 7 ratio to ratios of civilians to combatants killed in other wars: the UN declares 9-to-1 as the average for all wars since World War II; there was a 3-1 ratio in Iraq, and between 3 and 5 to 1 in Afghanistan, according to the commander of the British forces in that country, Colonel Richard Kemp.

This exercise should open some eyes, as they come to realize just how badly they have been taken in by Hamas’ statistics, and their own ignorance of civilian-to-combatant ratios in other conflicts, conducted by other armies. Those who are in the grip of that pathological condition known as antisemitism will continue to believe the worst of the IDF. and Israel. They are resistant to facts and logic.  But there are others who simply do not realize that Israel has attained the lowest civilian-to-combatant ratio in this war than has any other army in the world, in any other conflict. Hamas can fiddle with the figures, but eventually, as in this careful piece by Salo Aizenberg, the truth will out.