The Demographics of Mass Murder
The Israeli Air Force's Bombing Campaign in the First Twenty Days of the War: 7-26 October 2023
Pictured above: Tomer Bar, Commander of the Israeli Air Force.
Introduction
The data published by the Gaza Ministry of Health near the end of October, which fully identify 6,747 of the 7,326 Gazans killed in the first 20 days of the war (7-26 October, 2023), have been largely overlooked since they were released. Yet these data deserve sustained attention. I say this for three reasons.
First, these data provide compelling circumstantial evidence for radically indiscriminate killing and indeed mass murder carried out by the Israeli Air Force, in the 20 days prior to the 27 October 2023 land invasion of Gaza by the IDF. As I will show, the data indicate that the ratio of civilians to combatants killed (CCR) in these bombing is going to be 8:1 or worse—quite possibly much worse. That is, Israel’s CCR in these 20 days was probably worse than that of the United States in its nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.
Second, the data are very reliable. The aforementioned 6,747 persons by the Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) are fully identified—with full names, genders, ages, Israel-issued ID numbers. Therefore any scepticism of the credibility of these data is ill-founded. (More recent data for unidentified deaths is more open to criticism. And the overall death toll reported by the MoH in recent months is surely undercounted due to its degraded infrastructure.)
Third, the 6,747 deaths listed in the data preceded Israel’s land invasion of Gaza, which began on 27 October 2023. Thus, these deaths—though they will include a very small number of deaths from IDF raids into Gaza, and small-scale ground incursions1—give us specific insight of the character of the IAF’s bombing of Gaza. As Israel has total air supremacy over Gaza, these deaths speak to conscious, autonomous targeting and collateral-damage decisions made by the IAF, as opposed to the more chaotic situation of an invasion, which features among other factors large numbers of civilian deaths through crossfire.
I should add one qualifier before analysing the data. The insights from these data, especially the CCR, cannot be projected onto the war as a whole. Indeed, the IDF’s current conduct—while utterly criminal—is substantially less brutal than its conduct in the period under study here. Israel’s overall CCR in Gaza, though still criminally high, will certainly be considerably lower than its CCR in the first 20 days.
However, even if its conduct has changed in the face of US and international pressure, Israel and the IDF are responsible for what it did in the early weeks and months of the war. The victims of these early massacres deserve a full accounting of the IAF’s targeting practices in this period, and estimating the CCR is a first step towards that accounting.
Breaking Down the Data
As noted, the MoH released the names and full identifying information of 6,747 Gazans killed in the first 20 days of the war (7-26 October 2023). To estimate the percentage of these who were civilians, we can break these Gazans down into two demographic categories. First, “Gazan Males 15-64,” and second, “Everyone Else.” The latter category is comprised of demographic sub-groups of killed Gazans—males 14 and under, males 65 and up, and females of all ages—literally 100% of whom were civilians in the two major recent Gaza wars, Cast Lead (2008-2009) and Protective Edge (2014), according to the B’tselem database.
Thus, we can assume that all or virtually all of these Gazans are civilians this time too.
Our “Everyone Else” category—comprised of 1218 male children 0-14, 154 males 65 and over, and 2902 females of all ages—adds up to 63.3% of all Gazans (4274/6747).2 Thus, before even analysing males 15-64, we have approximately 63.3% of our total killed Gazans between 7-26 October being civilians. (Remember, the “Everyone Else” category is comprised of sub-categories of killed Gazans literally 100% of whom were civilians in the two major recent Gaza wars.)
Gazan males 15-64 are a messier category. Many of them will be civilians, and many will be combatants. We can generate a lower-bound estimate of how many of them are civilians by assuming that at least as many civilian males 15-64 were killed as female civilians 15-64.
To justify my assumption that there are at least as many killed civilian males 15-64 as killed female civilians 15-64, I quote from a previous piece of mine that engaged different data from the Gaza Ministry of Health, using the same demographic methods:
In the first place it’s important to highlight and resist a tempting fallacy. Specifically, it is tempting to infer from the fact that the percentage of females killed who are civilians is much higher than the percentage of men killed who are civilians, that a higher raw number of female civilians are killed than male. But this would be as illogical as inferring that, because the percentage of one-year-olds killed in war who are civilians (100%) is much higher than the percentage of adult males killed who are civilians, that a larger raw number of civilians killed in war are babies than adult male civilians.
When we look at the actual historical record, we find that male civilians are much more likely to be killed in war than female. This is because men are going to be more likely to be out and about in war and running risks than women. (We see this all the time in clips of the streets in Gaza, where civilians roaming about are skewed male.) And civilian men of military age are also more likely to be wrongly suspected of militant activity and killed for this reason.
This phenomenon of many more male civilians killed than female is borne out in statistics of wartime casualties in general, and in the previous Gaza Wars more specifically. For example, in Operation Protective Edge (2014), 878 male civilians were killed versus 491 female civilians, according to B’Tselem. So 79% more male civilians died than female. Among killed Gazans in our critical demographic (aged 15-64), 592 male civilians were killed versus 280 female civilians, a difference of 111%. These differences—and the over-representation of overall male civilians and male civilians 15-64 killed relative to females—are even more dramatic for Cast Lead.
Thus, it is extremely reasonable and conservative to assume that at least as many Gazan males civilians 15-64 have been killed as Gazan female civilians of the same age. This is the assumption we will make in pursuit of a lower-bound (“at least”) estimate.
The Final Calculation for the CCR
Therefore, of the 2,473 Gazans killed between 7 and 26 October who were males 15-64, we can assume that at least 1,710 were civilians, equal to our figure of female civilians 15-64 killed.3 We add that to our 4,274 killed civilians from the Everyone Else group,4 to arrive at a figure of at least 5,984 total civilians killed.
The at least 5,984 civilians killed divided by our total 6747 Gazans killed=at least 89% of those killed between 7-26 October being civilians. The remaining at most 763 Gazans killed will be combatants, or at most 11% (763/5984) of the total.
This equates to a civilians-to-combatants-killed ratio of at least ≈8:1 for the IDF between 7-26 October.
Remember, we have almost certainly heavily underestimated the number of male civilians 15-64 killed. (We estimated it using the number of female civilians 15-64 killed, which is in reality going to be lower than the number of male civilians 15-64 killed.) Thus, Israel’s actual CCR in this period will very probably be worse to much worse than 8:1.
Implications for the CCR
A CCR of at least ≈8:1 is almost unheard of outside of grave war crimes: indiscriminate bombing, deliberate mass murder, or genocide. (As I have noted before the claim that the average CCR in warfare or urban warfare is 8:1 or 9:1 is a bogus popular myth.)
For purposes of comparison, an 8:1 CCR would be nearly three times higher than that of the siege of Aleppo carried out by Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin (this was 3:1). It would also probably be higher than the CCR of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.5 The ratio suggests that Israel was—while certainly trying to go after Hamas above all else—either purposefully or at least with reckless indifference killing civilians in its bombing campaign between 7-26 October.
Implications for Raw Number of Gazans Killed
In terms of the raw number of Gazan civilians killed in the 20 days of bombing, our figure of at least 5,984 is extraordinary. And it should also be remembered that this is likely an underestimate.6
For purposes of illustration, 5,984 civilians is about two-and-a-half times as large as the 2,357 Iraqi civilians the US Coalition killed through airstrikes during the full invasion period (March-April 2023), according to Iraq Body Count (whose chart for airstrike deaths is pictured below). This is in spite of the fact that Iraq was a vastly larger theatre with vastly more civilians in potential harm’s way, and the Coalition airstrikes took place over six weeks (as opposed to 20 days), during the conquest of a massive country.
It is also possible that these deaths include deaths from the al-Ahli hospital incident, which was caused by Palestinian militants, not Israel.
However, there is no evidence of this. I believe it is most likely that the al-Ahli deaths are among the unpublished names, rather than the 6,747 published names. The MoH has pointedly refused to identify who was killed in the incident.
This includes 1218 male children 0-14, 154 males 65 and over, and 2902 females of all ages.
We infer that females killed is=to female civilians killed, since literally 100%. If this assumption is wrong—say there are 5 female combatants killed among the 1710—it will be wrong to such a trivial degree that it will not impact my overall computations for Israel’s likely CCR in 7-19 October 2023.
The 4274 figure includes 1218 male children 0-14, 154 males 65 and over, and 2902 females of all ages.
The CCR for Nagasaki was much higher than Hiroshima, because unlike Nagasaki, Hiroshima contained a large military garrison.
5,984 is a lower-bound estimate out of the list of 6,747 Gazans published by the MoH. The 6,747 figure excludes 579 killed Gazans whose names and identifying information were not published by the MoH back in October (although I suspect that these 579 include victims of the al-Ahli incident, which was the fault of Palestinian militant groups).
Our figure also excludes more than 1,000 Gazans who went missing in the first 20 days of the war (most likely dead and buried under the rubble).
Infographic pls