Israeli military’s own data indicates civilian death rate of 83% in Gaza war

[GladioliGreen]

Utterly shocking, an astonishingly high civillian death toll. As of May this year only 8,900 fighters were killed.

That apparent ratio of civilians to combatants among the dead is extremely high for modern warfare, even compared with conflicts notorious for indiscriminate killing, including the Syrian and Sudanese civil wars.

www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21/revealed-israeli-militarys-own-data-indicates-civilian-death-rate-of-83-in-gaza-war

Who referred to it as a 'non-story'?
This was the quote I was referring to.
'It actually doesn't. What it's data says is that 17% of those killed are known to the Israelis as militants. It doesn't then say that the rest are civilians, that's the Guardian's rather poor reporting.'
Its very much a story that the Guardian thinks it can extrapolate from one set of data to a conclusion that the data dorsn't actually support. But as we know anything that demonises Israel is absolutely fine and people on here are happy to lap it up regardless of facts.

Apologies it was @Gloriia who referred to it as a 'non-story'

“Known to Israel as militants”, Israel who have produced very dodgy documents to prove murdered journalists and paramedics militants were Hamas that were absolutely slated by the international media. Get an independent body to verify it, any charity, aid organisation, anyone? How anyone is thinking Israel has any credibility at this stage astounds me.

Look at the maths, from the official death toll, 70% of all deaths were women and children - Hamas banned the practise of recruiting children 20+ years ago and they are not exactly a modern bunch that have a female wing so that 70% can be instantly discounted as militants! So of the almost 30% remaining, ie adult men, over half of that are militants when prior to October 7th 1-1.5% of the entire population was a member of Hamas. That’s pretty impressive that they managed to weed out who was in Hamas when, for instance, they opened fire on starving people- over half the men they hit were Hamas? When they bombed hospitals, over half the men including doctors and paramedics were Hamas? When they executed paramedics and buried their ambulance in the middle of the night, Hamas? When they dropped dumb bombs on tents in crowded areas of displaced people? When they told people to use certain routes for evacuation and then bombed the people evacuating using those routes, Hamas? When they dropped over 85,000 tons of explosives, more than the bombing of Dresden, London and Hamburg combined in WW2 - equivalent to 6 Hiroshimas - over half the men killed in these bombs, including dumb bombs, were Hamas militants? Given as well that for every person killed in an explosion at least one other person is usually injured that must mean that Hamas is well and truly gone at this stage, unless as someone suggested that every time you kill one they recruit a new one like a mythological monster growing new heads every time you cut one off.

Also as the real death toll is likely to rise to 100k+ violent deaths once they include bodies in the rubble and bodies that are literally unrecoverable and 200k+ when you take into account indirect deaths then every single Hamas militant would have to die multiple times over before it justifies the civilian deaths.

That was just referring to the statistics in the report being wrong, it didn’t say anything about how they feel on a personal level about civilians dying.

Maybe engage with the argument rather than twist what she said into something 'chilling'. She didn't say killing civilians was a non story.

Sorry, I stopped reading at 'Hamas banned the practice of recruiting children 20+ years ago'. If you are that credulous there's no point in us having a conversation.

Hamas banned the practise of recruiting children 20+ years ago

I mean this is blatantly untrue in practice.

It's been clear to some onlookers for a while that the IDF have been increasingly reluctant to engage with many in the media, probably because they feel anything they say or release will be spun to suit a pro -Palestian agenda.

The way these figures have been misrepresented by the Guardian makes it look like they have a valid argument.

There appear the multiple sources of evidence emerging which is consistent with about 80% of direct kills being civilians.

It is also not at all surprising that this would be an underestimation looking at the destruction wrought by the IDF in Gaza. The views from the air show how neighbourhoods destroyed. There must be more buried under the rubble.

The figure of 20,000 Hamas killed is rubbish and easily understood to be so is someone genuinely wants to engage in a discussion about how almost all men killed must be Hamas for the Israeli figures to make sense.

Posters are desperately trying to find excuses for the figures - but they show Israel has shown little regard for civilian life.

@RandomWordsThrownTogether

Your article that sources suggest 200,000 will be dead directly or indirectly - which means 10% of then population of Gaza will be dead.

Half will be children if the deaths are proportionate through population- 100,000 children! There should be a specific word for mass killing of children. Maybe it will be coined after this war. There continue to be photos of older relatives cradling their dead children in white shrouds.

There will be a day of reckoning - as we will know how many people Israel has killed. It is such a shame the world is now not stopping them bombing Gaza city.

Keep denying. It’s only humans after all….

Children are not terrorist

Its not denying. Its not minimising human deaths. You can't just make stuff up. That doesn't help anyone.

I’m assuming more people have been killed by bomb attacks than hand to hand combat, so posters saying IDF won’t know the name of the people they are shooting as they come towards with a gun, are ignoring the majority of deaths.

If will be interesting to know how many of their own the IDF have accidentally killed in their bombing.

Posters are desperately trying to find excuses for the figures - but they show Israel has shown little regard for civilian life.

If they had so little regard, why vote through (admittedly, with some opposition), an increased aid budget for Gaza, at the expense of internal spending?

www.timesofisrael.com/government-votes-to-add-billions-to-state-budget-including-473-million-in-gaza-aid/

A few seconds on google will give you that number as openly reported by the Israeli authorities and discussed in the Israeli press. Its a high number proportionally, reflecting the difficulty of this sort of war zone. What you will find more difficult to find is figues from the Palestinian side, whether through human error, malfunctioning equipment, children used as lookouts and being in the wrong place at the wrong time, civilians killed in buildings booby trapped by hamas, and also including numbers of those murdered by Hamas for not toeing the line in some form or another, and generally not giving a shit for their civilians. Good luck finding that figure.

This Israeli government is doing a spectacular job of demonising itself, it doesn’t need the help of mumsnetters.

I’m sorry but it is both. If anything the totals for civilian deaths given are underestimates for the reasons given by other posters.

In the early hours of yesterday morning, Israel bombed a forced displacement camp in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza. The video footage is apocalyptic, you can see the crater of the bomb. The camp was been completely destroyed, leaving widespread devastation.

This wasn’t just another conflict zone being hit- it was a shelter for over 200 already displaced families.

Israel ordered them to leave, then bombed where they’d been told to go.

Aid agencies warn there’s simply nowhere safe left in Gaza. That’s not civilian ‘collateral’- that’s a policy forcing displacement and destruction.

MSF Doctors Without Borders) said the forced displacement is “inhumane” and that people have “nowhere left to go”- worsening disease, overcrowding, and sanitation crises. United Nations and Red Cross have raised alarms that new offensives (especially in already overcrowded central Gaza) will lead to a full-scale humanitarian catastrophe.

The WHO facilities in Deir al-Balah were attacked, which severely disrupted medical and humanitarian operations. Staff were detained, and infrastructure damaged.

Over 50,000–80,000 people in Deir al-Balah were told to evacuate, with 87.8% of Gaza under evacuation or declared military zones—leaving just 12% of safe space for 2.1 million people.

The pattern has been chilling: evacuation orders issued, followed by bombing- leaving civilians with no safe place to go and increasing their vulnerability dramatically.

You have got to be kidding- none of this is justification for the murder of children or civilians. The IDF did the killing, not Hamas

No one has to ‘spin’ anything! They’re committing war crimes.

I don't know what you are talking about. I was responding to a pp who wanted to know how many Israelis had been killed in friendly fire. I don't think we were talking about what killings were 'justified'.

The issue is the difference between making stuff up to suit a narrative and interrogating the evidence to establish what has happened. If a person does a wrong thing, and Iarael have undoubtedly done wrong things, it doesn't mean you dispene with all the normal processes of collecting and verifying evidence and just assume everything they do forever is bad, or in bad faith.

So if we go by your own standard- interrogating the evidence rather than making assumptions- do you agree the evidence shows Israel are directly targeting civilians (see post above)?

The expression "war crimes" is thrown around as a an attempt at spin with abandon, both on this and parallel threads yet I suspect many posters and journalists using the term have no idea what is and isn't a war crime, let alone all the caveats in the fine print in a lot of the conventions.