An update to the Death Toll post.
France 24 has a very detailed breakdown of the casualties from the October 7 attacks.
The final death toll from the attack is now thought to be 695 Israeli civilians, including 36 children, as well as 373 security forces and 71 foreigners, giving a total of 1,139.
This excludes five people, among them four Israelis, still listed as missing by the prime minister's office.
695 Israeli civilians, 71 foreigners, and 5 missing people. So, 771 civilians killed. And 373 mebers of the security forces (they give this breakdown too - 305 soldiers, 58 cops, 10 members of Shin Bet - the Israeli Security Agency). My count includes hostages killed by bombings - but I am not going to count the three hostages that escaped and were shot dead by the IDF as they waved a white flag and pleaded for help in Hebrew. There's got to be a line - and while Hamas is responsible for the hostages that die in their custody - and reasonably, hostages who die while making an attempt to escape to safety - these hostages reached "safety" and were killed by IDF soldiers. That's on the IDF. The France 24 article lists 8 hostages confirmed dead and 19 more presumed dead (of which I'm not including 3). So 24 dead hostages where I assign blame to Hamas.
795 civilian casualties caused by Hamas. In an attack that killed 373 members of the security force that holds their territory under military occupation and blockade. I had earlier put the ratio at 3:1 (mostly because I was working off of only 300 security forces killed) but 2:1 is much closer to the actual ratio. So consider this a correction to my earlier incorrect estimate.
So when the IDF says "I’m not saying it’s not bad that we have a ratio of two to one" - they are conceding that they have the essentially the same disregard for civilian life as Hamas. And again - this is based on the IDF definition of Hamas fighter being "any male and military aged Palestinian in Gaza".
The killing of the three Israeli hostages by the IDF really does hammer this point home. Sure there have been numerous reports of the IDF opening fire on people surrendering - but those reports have been ignored since the people killed were Palestinians. "Maybe they were Hamas!" argue the IDF defenders. But they cannot make the argument here. They will just ignore it because they cannot concede that the IDF kills people who try to surrender despite the obvious evidence that this is true.
It's actually quite breathtaking how the IDF and their supporters keep stepping on rakes. Their hostage killing happened just one week after they did a media blitz of "Hamas fighters" stripped to their underwear and made to kneel on the ground with their hands bound behind their backs. Apparently the IDF campaign was so "successful" that hundreds of "Hamas fighters" surrendered. And that the IDF not only did not shoot them dead, like they do when they aren't filming the interaction, but let them keep their assault rifles so they could turn them over in front of the Israeli media team.
One more note about the death toll. Not all of the Israeli civilians killed on October 7 were killed by Hamas. Some were killed by the IDF. How many? We will never know:
Casualties fell as a result of friendly fire on October 7, but the IDF believes that beyond the operational investigations of the events, it would not be morally sound to investigate these incidents due to the immense and complex quantity of them that took place in the kibbutzim and southern Israeli communities due to the challenging situations the soldiers were in at the time.
When Israel kills Israelis, that's fine. So fine in fact that it would be morally unsound to even investigate. That's the type of value the IDF and the Israeli government place civilian lives.
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