Palestinians gather next to donkey-drawn carts loaded with water tanks for sale, as drinking water and fuel become increasingly scarce, in Nuseirat in Gaza Strip, amid ongoing battles between Israel and Hamas. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages Nuseirat Gaza Strip Palestinian Territory

As of last week, Israel has struck over 11,000 terror-related targets in Gaza since October 7, according to a new report. In a separate report, the Gaza Ministry of Health claimed that Israeli strikes have killed over 8,500 people in Gaza during the same period. Even if the Gaza Ministry of Health can be trusted (and it cannot), this would mean that Israel has killed, on average, less than one person per strike, and that more than 20% of Israel’s strikes have killed no people at all. And we don’t know how many of those killed were Hamas terrorists vs civilians.

For an army with firepower and accuracy capable of killing hundreds or even thousands in a single strike, these figures represent an absolutely astonishing degree of precision and restraint.

The Massacre of October 7

Hamas, the US-designated terror organization that controls Gaza, perpetrated the largest massacre of Jewish life since the Holocaust on October 7, 2023 — including massacring and burning some 40 babies, raping Israeli women, murdering over 1,400 people, almost all civilians, and kidnapping hundreds of hostages. Many of the hostages are women and the elderly, and 30 are children and babies.

In an action reminiscent of America’s targeting of Al Qaeda after 9/11, Israel has responded with a military campaign, to free the hostages, but more important, to remove Hamas and stop its promise to carry out similar massacres of Israeli civilians and destroy the Jewish State.

As the campaign proceeds, there has been much discussion of how many civilian casualties have occurred on “both sides.” Yet developing an accurate count is not as easy as it seems.

The Gaza Ministry of Health is intentionally misleading

The Gaza Ministry of Health, the sole source of information on Palestinian casualties, is not an independent health agency, but merely an arm of Hamas — a terror organization designated on the same international lists as ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

An unusually frank report last week by the Associated Press revealed that “the [Gaza] ministry [of health] never distinguishes between civilians and combatants.” The report further states that “The Health Ministry doesn’t report how Palestinians were killed, whether from Israeli airstrikes and artillery barrages or other means, like errant Palestinian rocket fire. It describes all casualties as victims of ‘Israeli aggression.’”

It’s also impossible to know if their numbers are accurate. Evidence proves they are not. For example, in the aftermath of a hospital blast that was blamed on Israel, but was actually caused by Palestinian terrorists, the Gazan Ministry of Health claimed that 500 people had been killed. This later was exposed as a complete lie, with one European intelligence agency reporting the number of actual deaths was between 10 and 50.

Hamas kills Palestinians

Hamas both endangers and directly kills Palestinian civilians itself, before subsequently, and dishonestly, blaming the deaths on Israel. For example, last week Israel released a mountain of evidence, including intercepted conversations by Hamas operatives, revealing that a major Hamas military headquarters is located inside Gaza’s Shifa hospital.

Reports this week indicate that Hamas is firing on the civilian evacuation corridor established by Israel inside Gaza. Both of these acts result in the death of Palestinian civilians at the hands of Hamas — whether through direct attack or indirectly by using civilians as human shields – and all such deaths are included in Hamas’ unreliable figures.

Incomprehensible restraint

If Israel acted without restraint, it could likely accomplish its mission of destroying Hamas, and protecting Israelis, by bombing Gaza indiscriminately and thoroughly from air, sea and long range artillery — in the style of the Allied attacks on Dresden and Berlin in World War II.

Yet as a rule, the Israel Defense Forces prohibits its forces from intentionally targeting civilians — or from carrying out any military objective that would lead to large-scale civilian deaths.

Accordingly, Israel has sent in ground troops in order to act against military targets with a precision not possible from afar. Dozens of Israeli soldiers have already fallen in these operations, with many more likely to follow. Israelis have been holding painful funerals almost daily since the ground campaign began, with many of the dead no older than 20 or 21.

It is therefore no exaggeration to say that Israelis are literally giving their lives to protect Palestinian civilians. Such an act is simply extraordinary in the history of human civilization.

Even if one were to accept Hamas’ exaggerated figure of 8,500 casualties, the math shows that each Israeli attack results in an average of between one and zero actual casualties. Given the horrific massacre of Israelis on October 7, and the enormous military machine that Israel is now tasked with destroying in order to prevent further such massacres, this degree of restraint is not only impressive, it’s barely even comprehensible.

Daniel Pomerantz is an expert in international law, a lecturer at Reichman and Bar Ilan Universities in Israel, and the CEO of RealityCheck, an nonprofit NGO dedicated to clarifying global conversations with verifiable data. Daniel lives in Tel Aviv, Israel and can be found on Instagram at @danielspeaksup or at www.RealityCheckResearch.org.