Updated study on Palestinian Health Ministry death tally reiterates unprecedented terrorist to civilian ratio.
The terrorist to civilian ratio of Palestinian deaths in Operation Protective Edge is an unprecedented 1:1, a news study released last week reveals – supporting earlier findings regarding the so-called “civilian casualties” Hamas touts to international media.
According to the highly respected Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), 49% of the “martyrs” listed on the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry (PHM) list were found to have been linked to terrorist organizations; just 51% were confirmed civilian casualties.
The study, which has examined PHM’s death tally since the war’s early stages, has now tracked roughly 40% of published casualties during the war – some 842 people.
According to the ITIC, of those 842:
- 354 of those killed were terrorist operatives.
- 367 of those killed were non-involved civilians.
- 121 people who were killed are unidentified at this stage. Therefore, it is not possible to determine whether they were terrorist operatives or non-involved civilians.
- Of the 721 dead who could be identified, terrorist operatives constitute approximately 49% of the names. Non-involved civilians constitute approximately 51%.
- In addition, two names deemed originally as civilian casualties have now been re-identified as members of Hamas’s “military wing,” the Al-QassamBrigades. A third has been re-identified as a member of Islamic Jihad.
PHM – the officiating body for casualty counts in Gaza which has enacted a monopoly on Western media – is run by a known Hamas terrorist, Dr. Ashraf Al-Qurda.
The PHM does not differentiate between terrorists and civilians, but several “Palestinian rights groups” – including one UN-based group – do, and have estimated the civilian casualty rate at between 72-82%.
Israel, however, has maintained since the early stages of the operation that some 900 of those killed, or 47%, were terrorists.
Such a ratio of combatant to non-combatant casualties – roughly 1:1 – would be almost unprecedented in the history of urban warfare.
ITIC’s results surface in the midst of the Palestinian Arab leaderships’ continued insistence that Israel has committed “genocide” and “war crimes” during its fifty-day self-defense operation, and days after Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas perpetuated the accusation at the UN General Assembly.
