Did Israel Just Admit That 83% of Gaza’s Casualties Were Civilians?

A widely reported story from The Guardian was headlined: “Revealed: Israeli military’s own data indicates civilian death rate of 83% in Gaza war.”

Yet neither Israel’s data — nor even The Guardian’s own article — actually support that absurd headline.

At RealityCheck, we don’t typically bother with absurd headlines, because our focus leans more toward making real policy changes. This particular headline, however, has been widely quoted on social media and even in some policy circles as “proof” that Israel is targeting civilians.

To reach its delusional conclusion, The Guardian claimed, “Figures from classified IDF database listed 8,900 named fighters as dead or probably dead in May, as overall death toll reached 53,000.” [emphasis added]

The Guardian goes on to reason that 8,900 named terrorists account for roughly 17% of the total number of people Hamas claims were killed.

Based on this logic, The Guardian unilaterally concluded that all other deaths (i.e. 83%) must have been entirely civilians.

That, of course, is not what the quoted data says: just because the IDF did not list a fighter’s name does not mean that person was a civilian.

Furthermore, The Guardian’s logic assumes that Hamas’ total figure is completely reliable, which is also doubtful — because Hamas is an internationally designated terror organization, listed alongside ISIS and Al-Qaeda: groups that have never been considered reliable news sources.

A few of the many non-civilians eliminated by the IDF in Gaza, via IDF.

The Guardian got its story from +972 Magazine, an Israel-based website that is both foreign funded and furiously anti-Israel. The website bases its entire article on — you guessed it — anonymous sources.

As we’ve discussed before, anonymous sources are notoriously unreliable, and sometimes can even be entirely falsified.

So what are the real numbers?

The most recent IDF figure from January states that 20,000 Hamas fighters were killed (far more than the 8,900 The Guardian claims), and there has been over half a year of intense combat since that time, which means the actual figure is now even higher.

Yet there is an even more dramatic development in Gaza casualty data: this month, Hamas’ “Ministry of Health” published a list of the more than 60,000 alleged deaths in Gaza in this war, up to the end of July.

As a rule, Hamas figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, however, according to Hamas’ own figures:

• 32,113 deaths were males of combat age (15–65)*
• 12,875 were children (under 15)
• 12,067 were women (15–65)
• 3,094 were elderly (65+)

*According to Hamas’ rules, “combat age” is (tragically) as young as 15.

Photo: Screenshot from the Hebrew language portal of the Gaza Ministry of Health website, originally captured by the Israeli website Abualiexpress.

If one does some basic math on those figures, they reveal that MOST of the casualties in Gaza (53.3%) were males of combat age, even though that demographic accounts for only 29% of Gaza’s population.

This is according to Hamas figures, which are notoriously unreliable. In all likelihood, the truth may be even more skewed toward the combat demographic.

That means the myth that most casualties are women and children (which was never true) is now supported by — literally no one.

Yet, somehow, none of this made it into The Guardian’s article.

I wonder why?

Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.