The toll of at least 30,035 killed, from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, has previously been described as trustworthy by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) regional emergency director Richard Brennan.
The WHO says the ministry has “good capacity in data collection” and its previous reporting has been credible and “well developed”.
But its overall tally of those killed does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The Gaza authorities’ last demographic breakdown from 29 February indicated more than 70% of those killed had been women and children.
So according to you, all the male individuals Israel killed in this war of fighting age are Hamas fighters? That’s very convenient to believe but it is far from the reality.
In Gaza, before the 7th of October the Hamas military division was supposed to have 30K fighters. Israel has been proven to use unguided munitions and a lot more powerful bombs than they should.
Even considering that all of their targets were legitimate, which I am pretty sure wasn’t the case claiming that they killed 10K is extremely presumptuous.
I suppose one’s point of view on this depends on which side one finds more trustworthy. There’s no way to be absolutely certain, but in this case I don’t believe Hamas. Consider the claim that
Given that approximately half of the population of Gaza is under 18, this claim implies that over 93% of Palestinian casualties are civilians (based on the assumption that adult men make up 100% of Hamas fighters but only 25% of the civilian population). That’s more than 13 civilians killed for every fighter, about twice as bad as the Russian siege of Mariupol. I don’t believe this is true because (1) it doesn’t correspond to the level of destruction we’re seeing, (2) I think Biden would act very differently if it were true, and (3) Hamas has a great deal of motivation to lie.
Note that I’m not saying “all the male individuals Israel killed in this war of fighting age are Hamas fighters”. if we accept the 2:1 casualty ratio Israel claims, that would mean ~50% of casualties would be women and children and 17% (not 0%) of the casualties would be civilian men. If we think Israel is also exaggerating, then a 3:1 casualty ratio (pretty bad but not necessarily unjustifiable) would mean 56% of the casualties would be women and children and 19% (again, not 0%) would be civilian men.