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.
Out of 30,000 dead Gazans, the IDF says they killed about 10,000 Hamas fighters. That’s terrible performance for such a well trained and well equipped military. It’s almost as if they were just wantonly bombing Gaza with zero concern over collateral damage because it’s a genocide/ethnic cleansing.
A 2:1 civilian to soldier killed ratio is actually pretty much average for urban combat. Mosul and Aleppo were both closer to 3:1. Neither were labelled genocide.
That said, the amount of murdered civilians vs soldiers is not the deciding factor on whether something is genocide or not. You can massacre a village of a few dozen people and it can be labelled genocide. It’s in the intent.
Well said. Genocide has a few definitions, but all involve the intent for wholesale destruction of an ethnic or religious group.
In most cases, we look for large population drops of established groups due to murderous actions as a way to infer intent. The systematic killing of 99% of the Vietnamese population living in Cambodia under Pol Pot might be the most clear example. The killing of ~80% of the Tutsi ethnic group in Rwanda is another.
There are also small-scale examples, such as ISIS killing off ~5000 Iraqi Turkmen. In this case the ethnic group was only targeted in regions ISIS controlled, limiting the damage, but the intent to kill as many as possible was clear.
How you apply this to Gaza is a personal value judgement right now. Only about 1% of the population has been killed, but there are also statements by some Israeli officials demonstrating intent, and some of the IDF actions are at best cavalier.
Just curious, would a 17 year old with an AK count as a child in this statistic?
I believe they would, because Hamas is the one putting out these numbers and they have every incentive to do this as a propaganda win.
Teenage soldiers are a particularly tragic part of this war, being both victims and legitimate targets. Hamas has used child soldiers extensively in the past, and given that the average age in Gaza is about 17, we would expect a large fraction of Hamas soldiers to be teenagers. Further, they would represent the lowest ranking members who would be put in the most danger.
Under IHL, if Israel captures a child soldier they are required to separate them from other POWs and give them counseling and treatment. As a practical matter though, it may be difficult to verify that someone with no ID is 17. It will be interesting to see to what extent they complied with this in a few years.
