As the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) change tactics to seize and hold territory in Gaza, with a military occupation underway, figures reported in Israeli media reveal a higher death toll than previously announced.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry claimed 51,266 people had died in Gaza by late april 2025 since the Hamas terrorist raids of October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251. The Health Ministry figures have been heavily criticised for being unreliable or unsubstantiated.
However, IDF figures paint a more grim picture.
A commonly asserted figure by Israeli sources is that some 20,000 Hamas combatants have been killed in Gaza. Occasionally a slightly higher figure is reported, but this is the IDF estimate.
A recent report in the Times of Israel reveals the IDF’s estimates of civilan deaths. “According to the IDF, there has also been no change to the amount of collateral damage in strikes in practice, and the combatant-to-civilian deaths ratio has remained relatively the same throughout the war, with two to three civilians killed for every dead Hamas terror operative.”
These ratios, whether the high or low one is used, means that the Gazan death toll is higher than the Hamas Health Ministry number.
If two civilians have been killed for every Hamas combatant, then the total is 20,000 Hamas combatants + 40,000 civilians = 60,000.
If three civilians have been killed for every Hamas combatant, then the total is 20,000 Hamas combatants + 60,000 civilians = 80,000.
The discrepancy with Gazan Health Ministry statistics is understandable given the nature of the Israeli strategy at the start of the war, and more recently, of using the Airforce to bomb Gazan cities. The Hamas health ministry figures which at the start of the war are based on bodies bought into clinics, while, tragically, other bodies are likely to remain under collapsed buildings, rendering the Heralth ministry figures an underestimate.
The Times of Israel report is also useful in that updates readers on the change of tactics by the IDF, and their plan to concentrate the Gazan population into smaller areads of the territory, using American contractors to provide food aid.
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Anglican.ink’s george Conger reports that a Jewish couple murdered in Washington on May 21 were attending an Epicopal (Anglican) Church. Yaron Lischinsky (30) and Sarah Lynn Milgrim (26) were shot outside a Jewish Museum by a gunman who shouted “Free Palestine.”
The couple were staffers at the Isreali embassy, and Lischinsky plabnned to propose to Milgrim this week in Jerusalem. “While of Jewish heritage, the couple worshipped at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension and St Agnes in Washington,” Conger reported. “The Rev. Dominique Peridans told Anglican.Ink: ‘Yaron and Sarah have been worshipping with us for several months. They even attended our Newcomers Series in March.’ He added the parish was ‘In prayer with you for them and their loved ones—and the whole Church.’”
Image: Gaza Damage October 2023. Image Credit: Wafa Photo by Naaman Omar