SHOCK: Israel Has Killed At Least 14% of Gaza's Population. That's 306,000 People.
You won't read this in the corporate media. Official data from the Gaza Ministry of Health ignores indirect deaths from disease, starvation, and lack of medical care.
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The actual death count in Gaza due to Israel’s attacks on the territory is without question far worse than the large media outlets are reporting. I’m not an expert, but I can work out a basic mathematical calculation that the corporate media refuses to do. The result of this calculation (explained below) is chilling: if the same level of killing and indirect death that took place in Gaza during the conflict happened in the United States proportional to population, roughly 46 million Americans or 14% of the entire US population would have been killed.
I repeat: It is likely that the number of deaths in Gaza is the rough equivalent of 46 million Americans in proportion to current population.
There is a solid evidentiary basis to conclude that since the Hamas raid on October 7, 2023 at least 306,000 people in Gaza have been killed by Israel directly (from bombings and missile strikes) or have died indirectly as a result of the country’s destruction of the health care system and its refusal to allow in adequate levels of food, water, and medicine. That number is far higher than the “official” count of the Gaza Ministry of Health, which documents only direct deaths and as of this week calculated that approximately 46,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel. My calculation suggests that 14% of the enclave’s estimated pre-conflict population of 2.1 million has been killed either directly or indirectly from famine, disease and other causes related to the forced deprivation Israel has imposed on the territory.
This calculation can be done on the back of a napkin, as my assistant Coll McCail did (see the image below). Here’s how it works:
First, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet conservatively estimated in a peer-reviewed analysis that as of last June 19 roughly 186,000 Gazans had died from direct and indirect deaths since October 7. That article is here.
This means that on average 654 people died every day since the conflict began until June 19 of last year, the last day of The Lancet study.
Since The Lancet study was published, there were 214 additional days until the ceasefire on January 19th. If one were to extrapolate out the same rate of death of 654 people per day over the additional days, the result is a total of 306,000 dead between October 7 and the beginning of the ceasefire.
This is the equivalent by population of 46 million Americans dying — or an amount of death roughly equal to the impact of 13,617 September 11th events proportional to the US population in 2001 of 285 million.
These obviously are estimates. It is impossible of course to know the precise number of deaths. But I have a great deal of confidence that our calculation accurately captures the shocking scale of what has happened — and continues to happen, given that direct deaths (Israel reportedly has killed at least 80 Gazans since the ceasefire began) and indirect deaths (from disease, starvation, and lack of medical care) are still occurring.
Here is Coll’s ‘back of the napkin’ calculation to update The Lancet’s figure:
To be clear, it is possible that the rate of death dropped in the last few months compared to the beginning of the conflict. But is is also possible it rose, given the long-term impacts of famine and lack of medical care along with the continued Israeli bombing campaign. I’ll add that one reason the number of civilian deaths is so high is that Israel’s military arrogated to itself the legal right under the laws of war to kill 300 civilians at a time just to eliminate one Hamas fighter, which to me is a clear violation of the principle of proportionality and a war crime. (This 1:300 ratio recently was reported by the Israeli outlet 972 Magazine, citing IDF sources. The article is here.)
Understanding the scale of what has happened is important for several reasons. It shows in my view the level of depravity of the Netanyahu government. It shows the degree of US complicity, given that without our tax dollars this likely would not have happened. It also shows the increasing importance of South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice as a path to accountability. This will without question be the most important genocide trial since Nuremberg — and the country in the docket is none other than the one “created” largely via population displacement of Palestinians to be a safe haven for Jews after the Nazi genocide. (For an excellent history of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, read Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi’s book The Hundred Years’ War On Palestine.)
What’s most amazing is how Israel’s military threw everything it had at the people of Gaza in what is arguably the most intense and sustained aerial bombardment in modern history. Through it all, Hamas still exists as a fighting force — a defeat for Israel’s main war objective. The Palestinian people are as resilient as ever. The Netanyahu-Smotrich project to force Palestinians out of the territory has failed. In the meantime, Israel is facing the genocide trial and has turned itself into a pariah state almost everywhere but in the United States and a small coterie of its close allies.
These calculations do not include the even higher proportion of the Gaza population injured in the conflict, including roughly 4,500 amputees. More on this soon.
— Steven
At two dead per bomb dropped, and doubling for disease, starvation, and lost in the rubble, Ralph Nader says over a million have been killed through the end of 2024.