Why would you ignore a platform for perfectly good journalism? Its like saying I don't use newspapers. But so you don't miss out, here is the text. It is heavily referenced and this means you lose the links ut its the whole text.
Few aspects of the Gaza war have been more weaponized than fatality statistics. The latest claim, published yesterday in 972 Magazine and The Guardian is that 83% of fatalities in Gaza are civilians. On the surface, it looks like hard data, the kind that might prove Israel guilty of indiscriminate killing or even genocide. But it is nothing more than a statistical sleight of hand, a number manufactured on flawed assumptions, selective counting, and deliberate omissions. This is not sloppy analysis or an innocent mistake; it is a deliberate manipulation of numbers designed to manufacture a false charge of Israeli criminality.
At present, we have just two main data points on casualties, neither of which is verifiable.
Experts note that the very idea of tabulating fatalities in real time during an active war is preposterous. Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist group claims 62,000
people have died in Gaza, without disclosing combatants killed. Israel reports at least 22,000 combatants killed: 20,000
widely cited and another 2,100
since the March 2025 ceasefire expired. Taken at face value, these numbers yield a civilian-to-combatant ratio of under 2:1. That figure is not only within the norms of modern urban warfare, it is far lower than the 3:1 to 5:1 ratios reported for U.S. and allied campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. For anyone pushing the “genocide” narrative, the lower Gaza numbers collapse the claim.
That is why anti-Israel activists and their media allies twist the figures. First, they inflated Gaza’s toll beyond even Hamas’s claims. Now, they have shifted to undermining Israel’s count of combatants killed. The objective is always the same: to manufacture numbers that can be wielded as “evidence” of Israeli criminality. The target is not simply to reach a 5:1 ratio, but to stretch both ends until they can claim a 9:1 ratio
— closer to the threshold needed to brand the war as “genocide.”
The centerpiece of the new claim rests on a single data point: according to a “classified database” (no disclosure of how this was obtained) writer yuval Abraham of 972 Magazine
, along with Emma Graham-Harrison of The Guardian, assert that, as of May 2025, the IDF had killed only 8,900 combatants in Gaza since 10/7, far below the 20,000 it has reported. From this, Abraham conjures the statistic that “83% of the dead are civilians.” The calculation is crude: take Hamas’s then-claim of 53,000 total deaths (a number that itself includes natural deaths
and fatalities caused by Hamas), subtract 8,900, and label the rest civilians.
The IDF rejected the story, stating that “the figures presented in the article are incorrect and do not reflect the data available in the IDF’s systems.” After publication, it reiterated
its position, calling the claims “not only false but also a reflection of a fundamental lack of military understanding.”
The “8,900” figure is not evidence, it’s a statistical distortion. Even Abraham admits it counts only combatants killed who were identified by name. Anyone not named simply disappears from the tally: fighters buried in tunnels, struck in airstrikes where bodies were never recovered, or killed in close combat where Israel had no way to collect bodies or IDs. By this logic, unless the IDF could produce a name tag for every militant killed, those deaths are rebranded as “civilians.” The result is a cooked statistic designed to deflate combatant totals and inflate civilian percentages.
This is an absurd standard. No war has ever required soldiers to supply the names of enemy dead for their deaths to count as combatant fatalities. If the same criteria were applied to the
Battle of Mosul, virtually every ISIS fighter killed would be reclassified as a “civilian.” The fact that Israel has been able to identify 8,900 combatants by name is remarkable, not damning. And once you examine what this figure leaves out, the entire 83% claim collapses:
Ground combat action: Israel’s campaign has included months of brutal close-quarters fighting in Khan Younes, Rafah, Zeitoun, Jabalia, Shejaiya
and elsewhere. These battles cost the IDF more than 3000 casualties, including 450 dead. It is thus impossible to argue that the IDF killed only a small number of combatants on the ground while suffering thousands of its own casualties. It is equally nonsensical to expect Israel to have collected and identified every body in the chaos of real time urban fighting, tunnel warfare, and collapsed buildings.
Drone & airstrike operations: Hundreds of real-time IDF operations have targeted rocket-launch teams, RPG squads, armed cells, Hamas operatives posing as aid workers, etc. These engagements are unlikely to produce names, and many bodies are inaccessible. Yet under the +972 formula, every one of these militants vanishes from the record and is reclassified statistically as a “civilian.” Some suggest, without any evidence, that most IDF airstrikes hit named militants at known locations, but no one has data on how many were killed that way versus in the hundreds of other strikes that took place in active combat operations.
New recruits: During the war, Hamas is estimated to have recruited 15,000 new fighters, specifically to replace those killed. Reuters
noted that “many recruits are young and untrained.” These individuals are unlikely to appear in Israel’s databases and would not be “named” after death. Under the +972 methodology, they are erased from the combatant tally.
Non-Hamas & PIJ combatants killed: Abraham admits that the 8,900 figure excludes operatives from groups outside Hamas and PIJ. Yet factions like the Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, Mujahadeen Brigades (responsible for the Bibas baby kidnapping), the PFLP, and others have been active. The omission alone guarantees the “83% civilian” claim is false. Abraham also excludes Hamas political leaders, dismissing them as illegitimate targets. But under international law, leaders of designated terrorist organizations are legal targets. Figures such as
Ismail Barhoum Ismail Barhoum
, head of the Hamas government, listed as a terrorist by both the US and UK
, and later killed by the IDF, clearly fall into this category (see U.S. Law of War Manual
5.7.3). No one would call an ISIS or Al-Qaeda political leader a “civilian,” yet Hamas apologists are happy to do so for Hamas.
Ignores U.S. intelligence: Abraham brushes aside U.S. intelligence assessments that directly undermine his narrative. In January 2025, American officials estimated Hamas had lost roughly 10,000-15,000 fighters, almost the same number it had recruited during the war. +972 ignores this, cherry-picking from the very
Reuters report it cites while omitting the sections that corroborate Israel’s figures. And that U.S. estimate covered Hamas alone. If we add a proportionate share of PIJ fighters (around 12,700 at the war’s start), that would mean another 4,000–5,000 killed, aligning with the IDF’s claim of 20,000 combatants.
Hamas admitted 6,000 killed in Feb 2024: In February 2024 a Hamas official in Qatar told
Reuters that 6,000 of its fighters had been killed. Abraham’s claim that only 2,900 more were killed in the 18 months of fierce combat that followed defies logic.
U.S. intelligence in early 2024 estimated that Israel had killed 20%-30% of Hamas’ force. Even at the low end, that was about 7,000 Hamas fighters, plus another 2,500 PIJ fighters if we assume similar proportional losses. In other words, by early 2024 the number of combatants killed was already likely above 10,000, long before the battles of Khan Younes, Rafah, and Jabalia.
Israel's combatant lists are not perfect: The +972 article states that the IDF had names for 34,973 Hamas and 12,702 PIJ operatives. These rosters, drawn from seized Hamas/PIJ documents and other intelligence sources, are substantial but cannot be considered comprehensive. Crucially, having a list of named operatives does not therefore mean the IDF could identify every combatant killed, for all the reasons noted above. It only explains how the military was able to identify 8,900 operatives killed by name in the first place.
+972 and The Guardian use the cooked 8,900 figure to compare Gaza to other wars, but no other conflict has ever demanded named verification of every enemy dead. By that standard, most if not all U.S. and allied kills in Mosul or Fallujah
would have been classified as “civilians.” The comparison is rigged from the start.
The “83% civilian” claim is not analysis but propaganda. It takes a deliberately narrow slice of data — named combatants only — and pretends it represents the whole to make sweeping claims about Israeli military conduct. It erases thousands of fighters killed in ground battles, airstrikes, drone operations, and tunnel warfare. It ignores Hamas’s own admissions, smaller factions, new recruits, and multiple U.S. intelligence assessments. It applies a standard of proof never used in any other modern war, while at the same time accepting Hamas’s casualty figures at face value, even though Hamas has repeatedly inflated civilian death counts in previous conflicts.The truth is that Israel’s casualty ratios, even by
Hamas’s manipulated figure, fall within or below the norms of modern urban combat. That fact enrages those who devote their careers to
demonizing Israel. The “83% civilian” headline is not journalism. It is propaganda, crafted to delegitimize Israel’s right to self-defense by inverting the reality of 10/7 and
recasting the victim as the perpetrator.