Talk:Casualties of the Israel–Hamas war

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Controversy regarding the number of Palestinian casualties in the 2023 Israel–Hamas war was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 26 January 2024 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Casualties of the Israel–Hamas war. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

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Definition of "killed in the Israel–Hamas war"

It's still not clear in this article how the GHM defines which deaths to include and which not to. I assume they don't include natural deaths; has this been stated explicitly anywhere? The current lede claims 'The GHM count does not include those who have died from "preventable disease, malnutrition and other consequences of the war".', but the NPR source doesn't back up this claim. Does the GHM at least publish other death tolls (such as from disease or natural causes), so the numbers can be compared?

(The same of course applies to Israel, but the smaller death toll and clear breakdown in the article makes the question less relevant.) Ornilnas (talk) 04:01, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Professor Spiegel of AOAV says GHM only count trauma deaths in those figures. There's a Palestinian report that the natural death rate has also gone up by a factor of more than six - I haven't see much more details but that would mean something like 50,000 'natural' deaths in the last year as well I believe, so it is in the same order as the deaths from bombs etc. Before the war the death rate was 3.85 per thousand per year as it is quite a young population. NadVolum (talk) 11:37, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I saw your link above about natural deaths, but I couldn't find the report it was based upon. I also found the quote from Spiegel you mentioned, but he doesn't say where he gets it from. If it was just plainly stated by the GHM together with the numbers, what the numbers mean, that would be enough for me to resolve the issue. Ornilnas (talk) 00:10, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is what they mean when they say 'martyr', see Martyrdom in Palestinian society. Those are all martyrs according to the GHM. NadVolum (talk) 09:00, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Gaza strip 'civilians' section

Displaying the Gaza death toll graph (which does not make distinction between militants and civilians) right at the beginning of this section gives a misleading impression to readers of excessive civilian death.

The Pie Chart expressing a breakdown of deaths by age and gender uses significantly outdated data, and contradicts source 50, which offers a more complete and up to date count. Changing the pie chart to express those values is likely to give a more accurate view of the conflict.

It is currently October 2024, and deaths are still around 40,000. Including speculation that deaths 'may' approach 186,000 by the end of June 2024, which has long passed, is not useful to the reader and not encyclopedic knowledge. Yilmaz1001 (talk) 20:54, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Those seem reasonable and fairly straightforward edit request. We don't have any good reliable estimate of militant deaths but I don't think taking it out of that graph would make the number of civilian deaths less excessive in any meaningful way. Yes it would be good to update the pie chart though it wouldn't look all that much different - a 5% increase in the number of adult males. The 40,000 is bodies of people that have died of trauma that aren't under the rubble. There's maybe another 10,000 under the rubble and and a rougly equal number of excess deaths due to other reasons bringing the actual total to somewhere in the region of ninety or a hundred thousand. Which is far less than the 186,000 mentioned. I'm not sure how to phrase that. There's been a lot of criticism of that figure so either that could be put in or just quote the Palestinian report about excess natural deaths plus the figure in June for the direct casualties of the war. NadVolum (talk) 22:35, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've updated the pie chart to reflect the last release of complete data, on Aug 31.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 19:47, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 8 October 2024

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

The line "(123-129 Palestinian, 2-4 Israeli, 3-5 Lebanese and one 1 Syrian)" should be changed to "(123-129 Palestinian, 2-4 Israeli, 3-5 Lebanese and 1 Syrian)" because you wouldn't ever say "one 1 Syrian" it should just be "1 Syrian" Strictlymipsing (talk) 04:52, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

fixed Rainsage (talk) 05:11, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Table

@Onceinawhile, once again, I've tried to use a table to make sense of a lot of confusing data. Please check it out and give me feedback. :-) VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 03:19, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Combatant casualties

This article is missing any discussion of combatant casualties in the Gaza strip. Please rectify this 93.173.53.240 (talk) 08:37, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your request does not appear to be related to this article. Perhaps try the read aloud option in your web browser. Sean.hoyland (talk) 10:45, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The recently added table at the top of Casualties of the Israel–Hamas war#Civilian to military ratio may answer their query. Until recently it has been hard to find any reliable source for this. We still don't have accurate figures but this at least gives a reasonable range of estimates. NadVolum (talk) 10:59, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@NadVolum any feedback on that? I don't think we should all multiple IDF claims to that table as that would be undue. We should take the latest Israeli claim as representative of their position, so the June entry should be enough.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 17:35, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seems reasonable to me. Actually they came out with a claim of 17,000 in August. [1]. NadVolum (talk) 20:00, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sensationalism

This article includes a lancet projection stating that by June 2024 fatalities would reach 180,000 in summation of one of the subsections. It is September and confirmed fatalities have risen marginally from the 35,000 at the time of publication. Seems clearly irrelevant now 93.173.53.240 (talk) 08:39, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that the Lancet letter was published in July 2024 is a clue that assuming the Wikipedia accurately reflects the contents of the letter was a mistake. The context of the projection is "Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as...etc.", and the projection itself is "it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza". It looks like the Wikipedia article needs some corrections. So, the explanation appears to be faulty summarization rather than sensationalism. Sean.hoyland (talk) 09:44, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

First of all that figure was for all excess deaths because of the war and not just direct ones - that figure currently would be about 90,000 to 100,000 I believe. Also that was in the context then of a looming major famine, that was a real possibility and could easily have led to that figure. Thankfully Israeli then loosened their blockade to allow more food in and the worst of that possibility has been averted. Possibly the bit around there could be improved to make the context clearer. NadVolum (talk) 10:44, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indirect and total deaths

Talk:Israel–Hamas_war#Total_deaths has a couple of new citations which provide numbers for indirect deaths so far. As always they may be many thousands out but I think they're credible and a reliable source. They give an indirect total of about 67,000 and total death figure of 120,000 so far in the war including both Israeli and Palestinians. NadVolum (talk) 10:41, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Deaths caused by malfunctioning rockets fired at Israel and falling back into Gaza

It would make sense to include this in the discussion, since not all the deaths during the war were caused by Israel. As of six months ago, more than 2000 of the rockets fired at Israel had malfunctioned and fallen back into Gaza. ONE of them hit the courtyard outside a hospital, early in the war, and according to Hamas's own figures, killed 500 people. At first, Israel was blamed for the incident, but it was eventually proved that the exploding ordinance was from an Islamic Jihad misfire. Both American and French intelligence agencies confirmed this. It has been estimated that as many as one in five rockets launched from Gaza at Israel malfunctioned. Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth. If one malfunctioning rocket falling back into the city killed 500 people, how many deaths were caused by over 2000 of them? There is confirmation for all the facts mentioned here, and they can be located and cited if this subject is included in the article. Noble Oni (talk) 12:03, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See the note Warning: active arbitration remedies at the top of this page. Please say whatever you want to say as a specific edit request and please supply a reliable source. NadVolum (talk) 20:47, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]