Gaza Civilian Death Count is Anywhere Between 20,000 to 2,000,000

But who really cares?

This is a photo of Syria, not Gaza. Photo by Mahmoud Sulaiman on Unsplash

I don’t know the true number of civilian deaths in Gaza since the war broke out in October 2023, and neither do you. The total estimated mortality number currently agreed upon between Hamas and Israel is somewhere around ~45,000 in a territory with a total population of about 2 million, after 14 months of war. That estimate does not distinguish between militants and civilians. The UN recently concluded that adult men made up about half of the total number in contrast to previous claims that 70% were women and children. The UN is an organization directly involved in propping up Hamas’s terror infrastructure via its UNRWA arm. So, an organization with zero interest in making Israel look good is basically admitting that the civilian-militant death ratio is roughly 1:1. If that’s true, it’s very much to the IDF’s credit.

Still though, consumers of media get inundated with all kinds of outrageous estimates of the death count from this particular war, and the performative outrage that comes with it. Recently, The Lancet published a preposterous “study” estimating the death toll to be closer to 200,000 (which would constitute 10% of the total Gazan population). From the moment it was published, the anti-Israel loons have grabbed onto it like rabid dogs. I’ve heard this study from The Lancet repeated at least 100 times on different outlets in an effort to prove Israel’s “genocide.”

This week,

Andrew Fox

, a former British Army officer, released a comprehensive report on the Gaza Health Ministry’s questionable fatality numbers. His conclusions point to obvious data manipulation on the Health Ministry’s part. Here are the most interesting graphs from it:

The only thing surprising about Fox’s report is nothing. Those of us who have been following this war and all events leading up to it know that Hamas has a history of manipulating the international press with false information. The media, desperate to get to the story quickly, will report the Hamas-provided numbers uncritically. The most famous example of this phenomenon during the current war was in late October 2023 when a rocket from the Islamic Jihad misfired, hitting a hospital parking lot. The Hamas PR machine then reported to the media that an Israeli bomb had hit the hospital, killing 500. It was a complete and utter lie, and after Israel proved they weren’t the culprit (and that the hospital building wasn’t even bombed in the first place), most of the media outlets issued retractions. But the damage had been done already; the false story had been shared on social media millions of times by then. Even after that error, the same journalists kept reporting Hamas-reported mortality numbers unquestioningly.

Still though, how can we be so sure about this particular report’s accuracy? It takes some case studies of questionable data and interprets them as false. How do we even know that the individuals under the ID numbers and names cited in the report even existed at all? Answer: we don’t. We are trusting this analysis under the assumption that the individual carrying out the study has the expertise to debunk false claims by a foreign government. This is no shade at all to

Andrew Fox

, and I hope that’s clear; it’s just the situation I find myself in as the consumer of information who sits thousands of miles away from the actual conflict.

Then there are those who will waste no time pouncing on information like Fox’s report above to declare it false. I have heard the following statements about Palestinian deaths in the Israel-Hamas War stated with complete confidence by shrill podcasters (many with over a million followers) living in safe western cities who have made demonizing Israel their entire personality:

• The deaths in Gaza are 90% civilians.

• The death rate reported by Hamas is undercounted because it doesn’t account for “the bodies under the rubble.”

• IDF is shooting babies in the head for fun, and then using specialized weapons to vaporize them so they won't be included in the death count.

• IDF giraffes supplied by the USA are trained to hunt children hiding in treetops and eat them.

How much does the total number of deaths in an ongoing war really matter to anyone unconnected to the actual war zones? They don’t, and here’s how I know: the rage of the anti-Israel protesters doesn’t adjust for other global conflicts according to their mortality rates, no matter if they’re 20,000, 200,000, or 2,000,000. Those who express outrage about the Gaza mortality rate don’t seem to give a flying fig, for example, about the estimated 600,000 Syrians (30,000 of them children) massacred by their own government in a country bordering the one that they are yelling about. Logic would indicate that, given the comparative casualty numbers, protests against Syria killing (their own) kids should be at least 10x more intense than the ones claiming to free Palestine.

None of this is to take away from the hell of war and the tragedies that accompany it. I don’t wish what the victims of October 7th or what ordinary Gazans are going through on anyone. But I write what I know, and I’m now fully adept at calling out pathetic western virtue signalers. What the public obsession over the Gaza mortality rate illustrates is our propensity for confirmation bias, our willingness to believe whatever statistics—truthful or not—that suit our own narrative. It has nothing to do with actual human lives. As long as it makes us feel certain in our beliefs, it’s true. And that, chaverim sheli, is the significance of the Gaza death count.