Israel's Netanyahu says militants make up about half of Gaza deaths

EVERY PALESTINIAN IS A TERRORIST

OR AT LEAST HALF OF THEM ARE

CBSNews
Updated Tue, May 14, 2024 

Israel's Netanyahu says militants make up about half of Gaza deaths


Jerusalem — Israel's prime minister said on a podcast that almost half of those killed in the Gaza war are Hamas fighters, again addressing a civilian toll that has sparked global outrage. Benjamin Netanyahu maintained the overall toll is lower than that given by authorities in the Palestinian territory.

According to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, at least 35,091 people have been killed in the territory during more than seven months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.

Last week, the United Nations changed its estimate of the number of women and children believed to be among the civilians killed in the Palestinian territory, shifting from figures previously provided by the Hamas government in Gaza to numbers stated by the enclave's health ministry.

According to the ministry's figures, which have been cited by the U.N. since May 10, about 13,000 women and children have been killed in Gaza since the war began on Oct. 7, when Israel launched its strikes against Hamas in retaliation for the group's terrorist attack.

The estimate is significantly lower than the figures provided by the Hamas administration in Gaza and previously cited by the U.N., which had said almost 24,000 of those killed were believed to be women and children.

Speaking Sunday on the "Call Me Back" podcast, Netanyahu said the death toll in Gaza was around 30,000, and that Hamas fighters accounted for nearly half of that toll. He insisted to podcaster Dan Senor that Israel had "been able to keep the ratio of civilians to combatants killed... (to) a ratio of about one to one."

"Fourteen thousand have been killed, combatants, and probably around 16,000 civilians have been killed," he said. He gave similar figures in March during an interview with Politico, at a time when Gaza's health ministry was reporting a toll of at least 31,045, and again in an interview with Dr. Phil in early May.

Neither Israel nor Hamas have provided evidence to show how they reach their respective death toll estimates. The Hamas-run Gazan administration and health ministry do not differentiate between civilian and combatant casualties in their war tallies.

The U.N. and a long list of countries, including the U.S., have voiced alarm at the number of civilian deaths in Gaza. United Nations rights chief Volker Turk warned in a statement last month that children especially were "disproportionately paying the ultimate price in this war."

Netanyahu's latest comment came amid intensified pressure from Israel's chief military supplier, the U.S., over the Palestinian toll from the war. Washington paused delivery of 3,500 bombs, and President Biden warned he would stop supplying artillery shells and other weapons if Israel carries out a full-scale invasion of Rafah, where around one million people are sheltering.

Palestinians search for casualties at the site of an Israeli airstrike on a house, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Hamas militant group, in Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza, May 14, 2024. / Credit: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/Getty

A U.S. State Department report said Friday that it was "reasonable to assess" that Israel has used American arms in ways inconsistent with standards on humanitarian rights but that the United States could not reach "conclusive findings."

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas' unprecedented Oct. 7 terrorist attack, which saw the militants kill some 1,200 people and take about 240 others hostage. About 100 of those captives are still believed to be alive and held in Gaza. Israeli officials believe more than 30 others are dead, but their bodies are still being held.

Biden administration says more civilians have died in Gaza than Hamas terrorists

Brendan Rascius
Mon, May 13, 2024 



President Joe Biden’s administration believes more civilians have been killed in Gaza than Hamas terrorists.

In a May 12 interview on CBS News, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. government concurs with an Israeli assessment that 16,000 civilians and 14,000 terrorists have been killed since the outbreak of war.

“While Israel has processes, procedures, rules, regulations to try to minimize civilian harm, given the impact that this operation, this war in Gaza has had on the civilian population…those have not been applied consistently and effectively,” Blinken said.

The interview comes as the Israel-Hamas war, which is entering its seventh month, has led to widespread destruction in Gaza. In addition to tens of thousands of deaths, the majority of the territory’s residents have been displaced and many face a “full blown famine,” according to United Nations reports.

“Given the totality of what we’ve seen in terms of civilian suffering — in terms of children, women, men caught in this crossfire Hamas is making who’ve been killed or been injured — it’s reasonable to assess that in a number of instances, Israel has not acted in a manner that’s consistent with international humanitarian law,” Blinken added.

Blinken also spoke about a newly released State Department report on the Israeli military’s conduct, which was required under a presidential national security memorandum.

He said the report did not conclude that the Israeli military has violated U.S. laws and arms sharing agreements.

“We’ve concluded is in the case of the the use of weapons, as you said, this is an extraordinarily complex military environment,” Blinken said. “That makes it very difficult to determine, particularly in the midst of war, exactly what happened and to draw any final conclusions from any one incident.”

He added that American assessments of the war will remain ongoing.

The interview comes just days after Biden said he would pause the transfer of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel if it invades Rafah, a city in southern Gaza where more than 1 million people are estimated to have taken shelter.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which (the Israeli military) go after population centers,” the president told CNN on May 9.

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven’t gone in Rafah yet — if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities — that deal with that problem,” he added.

The president’s announcement sparked mixed reactions from lawmakers, with progressives hailing it as a policy win, while Republicans have condemned the move as one that would bolster Hamas, according to Politico.

“I think this is really speaking to the large swath of the Democratic Caucus that needs to see a change,” Rep. Becca Balint, a Democrat from Vermont, told the outlet. “It has been very satisfying to see the message, I believe, is getting through, it’s getting delivered.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, in a post on X formerly Twitter called Biden “the most anti-Israel president we have ever seen” who “has undermined Israel at every turn.”

As a result of the president’s comments, House Republicans have unveiled legislation that calls on Biden to use congressionally approved security funding for Israel “as Congress intended.”

Gaza death toll: how many Palestinians has Israel's campaign killed?

Reuters
Updated Tue, May 14, 2024

Aftermath of an Israeli strike on a house in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip


(Reuters) - Palestinian health authorities say Israel's ground and air campaign in Gaza has killed more than 35,000 people, mostly civilians, and driven most of the enclave's 2.3 million people from their homes.

The war began on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants stormed across the border into Israeli communities. Israel says the militants killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and dragged 253 into captivity in Gaza.

This explainer examines how the Palestinian death toll is calculated, how reliable it is, the breakdown of civilians and fighters killed and what each side says.

HOW DO GAZA HEALTH AUTHORITIES CALCULATE THE DEATH TOLL?

In the first months of the war, death tolls were calculated entirely from counting bodies that arrived in hospitals and data included names and identity numbers for most of those killed.

As the conflict ground on, and fewer hospitals and morgues continued to operate, the authorities adopted other methods too.

A May 7 Health Ministry report gave an overall toll of 34,844. It said 21,058 of those deaths were counted from bodies that hospitals reported arriving at morgues. Another 3,715 were deaths reported online by family members who had to input information including identity numbers.

It listed the remaining 10,071 deaths as having "incomplete data". Omar Hussein Ali, head of the ministry's emergency operations centre in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said these were bodies that had arrived at hospitals or medical centres without personal data such as identity numbers or full names.

IS THE GAZA DEATH TOLL COMPREHENSIVE?

The numbers "do not necessarily reflect all victims due to the fact that many victims are still missing under the rubble", the Palestinian Health Ministry says. In May it estimated that some 10,000 bodies were uncounted in this way.

The U.N. human rights office and the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health have also said during the conflict that the true figures are likely higher than those published.

HOW CREDIBLE IS THE GAZA DEATH TOLL?

Pre-war Gaza had robust population statistics and better health information systems than in most Middle East countries, public health experts told Reuters.

A spokesperson for the World Health Organisation said the ministry has "good capacity in data collection/analysis and its previous reporting has been considered credible".

The United Nations regularly cites the ministry's death toll figures, while naming the ministry as the source.

Early in the conflict, after U.S. President Joe Biden cast doubt on casualty figures, the health ministry published a detailed list of the 7,028 deaths that had been registered by that point.

Academics looking at details of listed casualties said in a peer-reviewed article in the Lancet medical journal in November that it was implausible that the patterns shown in the list could be the result of fabrication.

However, there are specific questions over the inclusion of 471 people said to have been killed in an Oct. 17 blast at al-Ahli al-Arab hospital in Gaza City. An unclassified U.S. intelligence report estimated that death toll "at the low end of the 100 to 300 spectrum".

DOES HAMAS CONTROL THE FIGURES?

While Hamas has run Gaza since 2007, the enclave's Health Ministry also answers to the overall Palestinian Authority ministry in Ramallah in the West Bank.

Gaza's Hamas-run government has paid the salaries of all those hired in public departments since 2007, including in the Health Ministry. The Palestinian Authority still pays the salaries of those hired before then.

The extent of Hamas control in Gaza now is difficult to assess with Israeli forces occupying most of the territory, including around locations of major hospitals that provide casualty figures, and with fighting ongoing.

WHAT DOES ISRAEL SAY?

Israeli officials have said the figures are suspect because of Hamas' control over government in Gaza. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Mamorstein said the numbers were manipulated and "do not reflect the reality on the ground".

However, Israel's military has also accepted in briefings that the overall Gaza casualty numbers are broadly reliable.

Last week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said 14,000 Hamas fighters and 16,000 Palestinian civilians had been killed in the war.

HOW MANY CIVILIANS HAVE BEEN KILLED?

The Health Ministry figures do not differentiate between civilians and Hamas combatants, who do not wear formal uniform or carry separate identification.

Israel periodically provides estimates of how many Hamas fighters it believes have been killed. The most recent was Netanyahu's estimate of 14,000.

Israeli security officials say such estimates are reached through a combination of counting bodies on the battlefield, intercepts of Hamas communications and intelligence assessments of personnel in targets that were destroyed.

Hamas has said Israeli estimates for its losses are exaggerated but has not said how many of its fighters have been killed.

The Palestinian Health Ministry says more than 70% of the dead are women and children under 18. For most of the conflict its figures showed children as representing slightly over 40% of all those killed.

However, conditions in hospitals compiling figures have worsened amid the fighting and many of those killed may not be identifiable due to their injuries.

In May the ministry updated its breakdown of the fatalities to be based only on the 24,686 bodies it said had been fully identified, and not on the more-than 10,000 bodies it said have not yet been identified.

When it made this change, the numbers appeared significantly less, prompting Israel to raise further questions over the figures.

(This story has been refiled to restore dropped question mark in the headline)

(Compiled by Emma Farge, Nidal al-Mughrabi, Ali Sawafta and James MacKenzie, writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Gareth Jones)