The Israeli Defense Force’s own database has confirmed what has been obvious for almost two years now: The overwhelming majority of Palestinians killed in Israel’s war on Gaza are civilians, not Hamas fighters, as Israel has claimed.
On Thursday, +972 Magazine reported that recently declassified documents reveal five in six people killed in the genocide in Gaza were noncombatant civilians—around 83 percent. Israel has stated that it killed or “probably killed” 8,900 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters.
The total reported death toll in Gaza is around 62,000, although the true number is thought to be much higher.
While the IDF did not object to +972’s report when it came out, it told The Guardian that “figures presented in the article are incorrect.”
These numbers, though, appear to accurately reflect the indiscriminate killing campaign that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched on Gaza after the attacks of October 7, 2023. Israel had occupied Gaza and subjected Palestinians to violence for many decades before the war began.
Even the IDF’s own soldiers admit to exaggerating the number of Hamas deaths in the war.
“People are promoted to the rank of terrorist after their death,” one source on the ground told The Guardian. “If I had listened to the brigade, I would have come to the conclusion that we had killed 200% of Hamas operatives in the area.”
Israel has always claimed it was killing militants in order to justify the bombings, aid-drop assassinations, targeted killings of more than 250 journalists, and a brutal famine.
It’s worth noting that nearly 20,000 of the Palestinians killed in Gaza have been children.
Itzhak Brik, a retired Israeli general, said serving Israeli soldiers were aware that politicians exaggerated the Hamas toll.
Brik advised Prime Minister Netanyahu at the start of the war, and is now among his most strident critics. “There is absolutely no connection between the numbers that are announced and what is actually happening,” Brik told The Guardian. “It is just one big bluff.”
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