***

With the aid of Palestinian political scientist Dr. Khalil Shikaki, the team surveyed 2,000 households in Gaza, comprising almost 10,000 people. They concluded that, as of January 2025, some 75,200 people died a violent death in Gaza during the war, the vast majority caused by Israeli munitions.

At that time, the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip placed the number of those killed since the war’s start at 45,660. In other words, the Health Ministry’s data undercounted the true total by about 40 percent.

Data compiled and published by Spagat indicates that the proportion of women and children killed via a violent death in Gaza is more than double the proportion in almost every other recent conflict, including, for example, the civil wars in Kosovo (20 percent), northern Ethiopia (9 percent), Syria (20 percent), Colombia (21 percent), Iraq (17 percent) and Sudan (23 percent).

Another extreme datum found in the study is the proportion of those killed relative to the population. “I think we’re probably at something like 4 percent of the population killed,” Spagat says, adding, "I’m not sure that there’s another case in the 21st century that’s reached that high.

  • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
    10·
    19 hours ago
    • The number is a lot higher than 100,000. The Lancet estimated 186,000 as a conservative lower bound almost exactly a year ago.
    • The Health Ministry never said the number was 45,660. They said the number of specifically named and identified people they could count up and prove were dead was 45,660. Implicit in that was that the true number was much, much higher, but of course the worldwide press will misconstrue everything they have to say, so they had to limit it to deaths that were absolutely ironclad and provable (not that it stopped people from claiming they were lying.)
    • A lot of people have died since January 2025. That was before the starvation really set in.
    • Counting up the people who directly died by violence is going to miss a ton of dead people.
    • It’s not a “war.” As this whole analysis should make clear to anyone who’s looking at it honestly. Calling it a “war,” framing things in terms of “how many women and children have been killed in this war, which is inappropriate conduct in the course of fighting a war, they shouldn’t be doing that while they fight their war” is absolutely and completely missing the point of what is happening.