On August 10th, the UN reported that there had been 1948 casualties in Gaza. Of those, 320 could not be identified, and about 1400 were reported to be civilians, meaning that about 220 were terrorists. The IDF has claimed that they eliminated about 900 fighters. Of those reported civilians, about 80% were male.

The chart above shows the breakdown by gender and age, according to the Gaza Minis­try of Health. It includes only those whose age was able to be determined. This shows that 55.6% of the casualties were men between the ages 16 and 35. This group of men are about 18% of Gaza’s population. The New York Times noted that men between the ages of 20 and 29 (in their analysis, the most likely to be terror­ists) made up only 9% of Gaza’s residents, but were 34% of the casualties. All of this data indi­cates that there are a disproportionate number of casualties among fighting age men, which seems to show that Israel is not indiscriminate­ly attacking civilians.

The BBC, which ran a similar analysis, quoted Jana Krause, from the war studies department at Kings College London, saying that it is possi­ble that there would be a higher rate of death in that demographic, since “these would be ‘high-risk’ social roles that young men are often ex­pected to fulfill.”

In addition, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Execu­tive Vice Chairman Malcolm Hoenlein noted in an announcement that “In one case, a reporter for Italian media said he saw that the nine chil­dren killed in a blast were hit by an errant Ha­mas rocket. Yet, Israel was quick to be blamed and condemned.” The IDF reported that there have been 475 rockets fired from Gaza to land in Gaza over the course of the fighting.

This information makes the numbers even more telling. More of these events cannot be reported, because Hamas has been accused of harassing and threating foreign journalists, according to Honlein.

In a new development, as JLBC went to press, Hamas operatives attempted to dis­assemble an Israeli missile Gaza without cordoning off the area or taking precau­tion. Five people were killed, including an AP reporter from Italy, and others were crit­ically injured.

By Yanky Krinsky (from combined services)