Israel Gaza: Checking Israel's claim to have killed 10,000 Hamas fighters
Israel Gaza: Checking Israel's claim to have killed 10,000 Hamas fighters
BBC Verify examines the evidence on combatant deaths, as concern grows about the scale of civilian killing.
The toll of at least 30,035 killed, from Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry, has previously been described as trustworthy by the World Health Organization's (WHO) regional emergency director Richard Brennan.
The WHO says the ministry has "good capacity in data collection" and its previous reporting has been credible and "well developed".
But its overall tally of those killed does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The Gaza authorities' last demographic breakdown from 29 February indicated more than 70% of those killed had been women and children.
No one who commits genocide should be believed. They are genocidal liars.
Defund Israel.
Out of 30,000 dead Gazans, the IDF says they killed about 10,000 Hamas fighters. That's terrible performance for such a well trained and well equipped military. It's almost as if they were just wantonly bombing Gaza with zero concern over collateral damage because it's a genocide/ethnic cleansing.
This is assuming all the men killed are Hamas.
A 2:1 civilian to soldier killed ratio is actually pretty much average for urban combat. Mosul and Aleppo were both closer to 3:1. Neither were labelled genocide.
“Fighters” aged under 12 and carrying toys.
Hamas had 10,000 fighters? 🤔
"According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies' (IISS) Military Balance 2023, Israel has 169,500 active military personnel in the army, navy, and paramilitary.
Crucially, a further 465,000 constitutes its reserve forces."
vs.
"In 2021, The Times of Israel quoted an unnamed senior Israeli commander as saying Hamas had an army of 30,000 men."
Not a lot of new information in this article. My summary is that there's no way to verify either Israeli claims about the number of Hamas fighters killed or Hamas claims about the number of Palestinians killed. However, the two groups' claims are mutually consistent, with Israel reporting approximately 10,000 Hamas fighters killed and Hamas reporting 30,000 Palestinians killed.
In December, [the IDF] described an assessment that it was killing two civilians for every Hamas fighter as "tremendously positive", given the challenges it faced on the battlefield.
Of course, (30,000 - 10,000) to 10,000 is 2 to 1.
As Arete says in another comment, 2 to 1 is ordinary for urban warfare. It's better than I expected, actually, given how heavily fortified Gaza is.
There's an interesting blog post by a military historian here. In his words,
The IDF claims that they are killing one Hamas soldier for every two civilians they kill in Gaza, a ratio of 0.5, which their spokespeople have claimed is ‘unprecedented in the modern history of warfare,’ but which looking at the figures above is not actually a particularly scrupulous or discriminating ratio – though of course one may well argue the vast differences in circumstances. It is still both far from the best and far from the worst performance for armies operating in civilian spaces.
I'm not endorsing everything he says but I think he gives some good context on the topic of civilian deaths during urban warfare. (IMO he's being somewhat uncharitable to Israel, given that Hamas spent billions of dollars fortifying Gaza in preparation for exactly this and also has an unusual incentive to have civilians on its own side die due to the role of international opinion in this war.)
So according to you, all the male individuals Israel killed in this war of fighting age are Hamas fighters? That's very convenient to believe but it is far from the reality.
In Gaza, before the 7th of October the Hamas military division was supposed to have 30K fighters. Israel has been proven to use unguided munitions and a lot more powerful bombs than they should.
Even considering that all of their targets were legitimate, which I am pretty sure wasn't the case claiming that they killed 10K is extremely presumptuous.
If you accept the Hamas claim that
The Gaza authorities' last demographic breakdown from 29 February indicated more than 70% of those killed had been women and children.
but you also think that Israel is getting its 2:1 value by counting corpses rather than by just making it up, that would imply that they're counting all dead men (and 5% of dead women and children) as Hamas fighters.
However, given that approximately half of the population of Gaza is under 18, 70% would imply that over 93% of Palestinian casualties are civilians (based on the assumption that adult men make up 100% of Hamas fighters but only 25% of the civilian population). That's 14 civilians killed for every fighter, more than twice as bad as the Russian siege of Mariupol. I don't believe this because (1) it doesn't correspond to the level of destruction we're seeing, (2) I think Biden would act very differently if it were true, and (3) Hamas has a great deal of motivation to lie.
If Israel were killing literally everyone, women and children would be 75% of the dead. This is what Hamas is saying when they say "more than 70%". I think it's absolutely ridiculous but it's what some people apparently believe and what the Western media reports uncritically.
Note that if if we accept the 2:1 casualty ratio Israel claims but believe they're counting dead Hamas fighters completely accurately, that would mean 50% of casualties would be women and children and 17% of the casualties would be civilian men. If we think Israel is also exaggerating, then 7500 Hamas fighters killed, a 3:1 casualty ratio (pretty bad but not necessarily unjustifiable) would mean 56% of the casualties would be women and children and 19% would be civilian men. So I think the true fraction of women and children among the dead is somewhere between 50% and 56%.
Just curious, would a 17 year old with an AK count as a child in this statistic?
I believe they would, because Hamas is the one putting out these numbers and they have every incentive to do this as a propaganda win.
Teenage soldiers are a particularly tragic part of this war, being both victims and legitimate targets. Hamas has used child soldiers extensively in the past, and given that the average age in Gaza is about 17, we would expect a large fraction of Hamas soldiers to be teenagers. Further, they would represent the lowest ranking members who would be put in the most danger.
Under IHL, if Israel captures a child soldier they are required to separate them from other POWs and give them counseling and treatment. As a practical matter though, it may be difficult to verify that someone with no ID is 17. It will be interesting to see to what extent they complied with this in a few years.
Hmmmm, killing 30k in 4 months, destroying half of all homes in Gaza, displacing 75-80% of the population, destroying all the hospitals and a large chunk of the civilian infrastructure and causing a humanitarian catastrophe sounds to me like a textbook example of how you radicalize the entire population in Gaza.
Do you think you will stay indifferent if you were on the other side of the fence? I don't think so. And then act surprised when people are radicalized and blame outside forces for this radicalization.
If there weren't a siege in Gaza, Hamas wouldn't exist. How many peaceful and prosperous nations do you know with terrorist organizations? Exactly none, because terrorism is flourishing from the hardships of people. And it is a bit naïve to think that the current events would lead to a long lasting peace.
Honestly most of the hamas soldiers are probably under-age.
This war is so boring it is not news anymore