How many people have been killed by Israel in Gaza since 7 October 2023?
It’s an almost impossible question to answer but, as the likes of the New York Times publish atrocity-minimizing op-eds that argue Israel hasn’t killed all that many people really – certainly not as many people as it could kill if it wanted to with all the big-boy bombs US taxpayers have helped fund – it’s an increasingly important issue to grapple with. “The first question the anti-Israel genocide chorus needs to answer is: Why isn’t the death count higher?” Bret Stephens asked in his recent New York Times op-ed. Here’s the thing, Bret. It almost certainly is.
Let’s start with the official figure from Gaza’s ministry of health, the one all media outlets cite, which is around 60,000 direct deaths – 18,500 of whom are children. These numbers, according to the Economist, are derived from two lists. One is based on information from hospitals. The other is based on an online survey in which people report their relatives’ deaths. While there are numerous pro-Israel voices keen to discredit the death toll, the Economist notes that “[i]ndependent investigators have confirmed that those on the ministry’s two lists have almost certainly died”. Humanitarian agencies have also said that, historically, statistics from the ministry of health are reliable.
While Stephens may not think 60,000 dead Palestinians is much to worry about, it’s a huge number: the equivalent of a 9/11 happening every day for 20 days. But, due to limitations in capturing data, that number is also almost certainly a massive underestimate. It is far more likely that the real death toll is in the hundreds of thousands. And by “real death toll” I mean direct deaths from military campaigns and indirect deaths due to the famine created by Israel’s siege on Gaza, as well as deaths from preventable illnesses or medical conditions that couldn’t be treated due to Israel’s blockade on medical supplies and destruction of hospitals. It also means bodies that are rotting under the rubble and may never be formally identified. In January of this year, it was estimated there were at least 10,000 bodies buried under the wreckage of Gaza…..
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/08/gaza-death-toll-higher
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