In Gaza, Civilian Deaths Keep Decreasing

We routinely are given updated new on the number of those killed in Gaza, provided by the Hamas-run Ministry of Health. There are three things to keep in mind when you learn of these numbers. First, these statistics come from Hamas, which has a long record of lying about civilian deaths. Consider how it reported on the so-called “massacre in Jenin,” where it claimed that 500 civilians had been killed by the IDF. It later turned out that 52 people, at least 45 of them terrorist combatants, had been killed. Or more recently, there was the clam that an Israeli airstrike had hit the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, killing 500 — this seems to be a favorite Hamas number — “innocent civilians.” In the end, it was proven that there had been no Israeli airstrike on the hospital. Instead, a missile fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad had misfired, falling inside Gaza, not on the hospital itself, which remained unscathed, but on the parking lot adjacent to the hospital. And not 500, but “between 10 and 50” people were killed. American intelligence has confirmed the Israeli version of events. That hasn’t stopped Hamas from continuing to claim that “500 people were killed in an airstrike on the Al-Ahli Hospital.” So we should be wary of accepting any statistics offered by Hamas.

Second, note that Hamas never breaks down its casualty figures between civilians and combatants, giving some the mistaken impression that the figures are mostly, or exclusively, of civilian deaths. And Hamas never mentions the number of its operatives who have been killed, which according to the IDF now amount to more than 10,000.

Third, we cannot properly pass judgment on the casualty figures in Gaza without comparing them to the ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths in other wars. Civilian deaths are an unavoidable consequence of modern urban warfare. The question is: how does the IDF compare to what other armies have achieved in lowering the ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths?

More on the IDF’s record in minimizing civilian deaths can be found here: “Civilian Deaths in Gaza: Relatively Low,” by Alan Dershowitz, Aish, February 4, 2024:

You wouldn’t know it from the hectoring decision just rendered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel, but the death toll among civilians in Gaza — even including children and women — is among the lowest in the history of comparable warfare. Over the past several months, it has become even lower.

According to The New York Times, “The daily death toll in Gaza has more than halved in the past month,” and has fallen almost two-thirds since late October. Moreover, the percentage of civilian to combatant causalities has gone down considerably as well.

The IDF’s warnings — by messaging, leafletting, telephoning — have had their intended effect. As the fighting in Gaza goes on, more and more of the civilians have been heeding the IDF’s warnings, and moved to safer zones as directed. That contributes to the decrease in civilian casualties though it does not eliminate them. The IDF’s decision to rely less on airstrikes — that inevitably cause the most civilian casualties — and more on ground troops to ferret out individual terrorists from their hideouts in schools, mosques, apartment buildings, and, especially, from the vast network of tunnels that Hamas has constructed under Gaza has also led to a decrease in civilian casualties but, alas, also to an increase in IDF soldiers who are killed or wounded.

In a massive understatement, The New York Times also reported that these considerable reductions in civilian deaths have been “somewhat overlooked” by the media and critics. “Somewhat”! They have been totally buried and ignored. The New York Times also opined that Israel’s “harshest critics are wrong to accuse it of wanting to maximize civilian deaths.”

It is no accident that this reduced civilian death toll has been “somewhat overlooked” by the media and by Israel’s critics, including previously by The New York Times itself. Israel is subject to a discernible double standard when it comes to covering its military actions.

Even before the recent dramatic reduction in civilian deaths, Israel’s military actions produced far fewer deaths and a far lower ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths than in any comparable urban warfare. This is especially significant considering the reality that Hamas deliberately increases civilian deaths by using women and children as human shields and by hiding its military personnel and equipment among civilians. The current ratio of civilian-to-combatant is well below two-to-one, which compares extremely favorably with ratios achieved by other Western democracies in urban warfare….

In fact the civilian-to-combatant deaths ratio in Gaza is indeed “well below two to one”; the latest figures are 27,000 deaths reported by Hamas, which does not break them down in to civilians and combatants, and 10,000 of those are Hamas combatants, as reported by the IDF. That means a civilian-to-combatant ratio of 17:10, which is considerably less than 2:1. And this ratio, which is the lowest achieved by any army in the history of modern warfare, is even more remarkable when one considers that Hamas embeds its fighters, and hides its weapons, always and everywhere among civilian buildings such as schools, apartment houses, mosques, and hospitals. Gaza is also one of the most densely-populated areas on earth; in this environment of urban warfare, where Hamas has done everything it can to maximize civilian casualties, the Israelis have made amazing efforts to minimize those casualties by warning those civilians away from areas that are soon to be targeted. The IDF warns using every means at its disposal: six million leaflets, four million messages, 72,000 telephone calls testify to its efforts. And those warnings have worked: one million Gazans moved from the north to south of the Wadi Gaza before the IDF began its campaign in the north. Later, when the IDF turned its attention to the south, it released other warnings, sending people in southern Gaza maps in email messages and in leaflets, that showed precisely the areas that were going to be targeted, and those where it would be safe to move. And throughout the last four months, in more granular fashion, the IDF has warned civilians about individual buildings that are going to be targeted and that they should leave.