The Israeli Cost of the War in Gaza

Gwyne Dyer, a widely syndicated British-Canadian columnist, who describes himself as a military historian knowledgeable about the Middle East, recently compared the number of civilian casualties in Gaza with the number of civilians killed in Ukraine from the ongoing Russian invasion. Dyer claims that about four times as many civilians have died in Gaza in about half the time.

Dyer’s comparison is like comparing apples and oranges. The war in Ukraine is a conventional war fought by uniformed soldiers from Russia (the attacker) and Ukraine. Ukrainian civilians die, or are injured, when the Russians aim their artillery, rockets, and drones at civilian targets, such as apartment buildings and markets. There are no Ukrainian military personnel systematically shooting at the Russians from civilian infrastructure.

In Gaza, it is the opposite. Hamas (the attacker) has weaponized the deaths and injuries of its own people by making it impossible to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and by placing and using weapons in civilian homes, in schools, and in hospitals. All of these are war crimes.

Nothing emphasizes the disregard by Hamas for the welfare of ordinary Palestinians more than the 500 kilometers of tunnels built over 18 years to protect Hamas combatants and weapons, not civilians. (Of course, the tunnels also hide the Hamas hostages, also a war crime.). Recently, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri played down the significance of Gaza casualties, saying, “Our women’s wombs will produce many more babies — 50,000 were born in Gaza during the war.”

Dyer, like the vast majority of the world’s news commentators, uses information on casualties provided by Hamas, a genocidal Islamist terrorist organization that has tyrannized the people of Gaza for the past 18 years.

Why should the numbers provided by Hamas (the Gaza Health Ministry), an organization that is against all progressive societal norms, including; a free press, gender equality, LGBQT+ rights, and free democratic elections — and which have proven to be false in the past — be taken at face value?

In fact, a detailed analysis of Hamas casualty reports by Andrew Fox, identifies errors and questionable counting by Hamas.

For example, the numbers may include natural deaths, and deaths from before the war started. And, of course, the numbers never mention how many were Hamas combatants. Yet, more than 90% of articles on Gaza in major English language news outlets accept and repeat the information Hamas provides.

The articles on Gaza never mention Hamas’ human shield strategy in Gaza. This means that Hamas is essentially erased as an active party in the conflict, instead placing full blame for civilian casualties on Israel. It is as if Israeli soldiers are not fighting a war, they just shoot unarmed civilians.

Looking back at the Gwynne Dyer article that I mentioned at the outset, there is one statistic missing. There is no mention of Israeli military casualties in Gaza.

I scan the news often, every day, and sometimes several times a day. I glance at the news emanating from my own country, Canada, also the US, and the UK, and of course the news from Israeli outlets. (A number of Canadian news sources, especially the Toronto Star and CBC, are consistently biased and negative when it comes to Israel.)

IDF casualties are always mentioned in the Israeli news, always by name and, sadly, quite often. They are usually a result of IEDs (improvised explosive devices), booby-trapped buildings (so many buildings in the Gazan city of Rafah have been booby-trapped), and snipers. IDF casualties in Gaza almost never come up in the reports published outside Israel.

IDF casualty statistics are easy to find since IDF casualties are published online and updated continuously. Excluding the hundreds of soldiers killed and thousands wounded in the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, 435 Israeli soldiers have been killed and 2,740 wounded in Gaza thus far.

All civilian deaths and injuries in war are terrible and it is heartbreaking to read about the toll in Gaza, especially when it comes to children. The truth is, however, that Israel is fighting a war in Gaza against Hamas, the government of Gaza. Hamas is intentionally hiding among the civilian population of Gaza in order to maximize Palestinian civilian casualties. It is Hamas, not Israel, that is guilty of war crimes.

When David Baddiel wrote Jews Don’t Count (2021), he was trying to make the point that when it comes to racism and identity politics, Jews and antisemitism are usually not included. He was referring to live Jews. When Dara Horn wrote People Love Dead Jews (2021), she was referring to topics such as the global focus on the story of Anne Frank. It turns out that people don’t love dead Jews. They don’t even count them.

Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.

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