Wait, Israel is Jewish!? Who knew…
I see lots of numbers getting thrown around. So I’ll do my thing and try to give an informed estimate, hoping that it’ll help the discussion.
tl;dr: Likely number of people dead definitely over 100.000, likely number of casulties overall if fighting were to stop immediately still gives a lowest estimate of ~ 377.930
My edits: lots of typos and clarification.
Let’s get some numbers
Let’s look at a study from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) and the Centre for Demographic Studies (CED). The study is from March 2025, so the numbers are not current, but they give you an idea.
First: Can we trust the numbers?
Recent studies have found no evidence of systematic overreporting in Gaza Ministry of Health data, so it’s safe to work with those. In fact recent results from the Gaza Mortality Survey, a large-scale household survey, suggest that conflict-related deaths from October 7, 2023 to January 5, 2025 substantially exceeded official reports, with the GMoH’s reported death toll approximately 35% below the survey’s central estimate. So the Gaza Ministry of Health appears quite trustworthy not to overestimate numbers.
The study itself seems also quite trustworthy, since it’s estimate aligns with the actual data from the Gaza Mortality Survey.
Our conflict-related death toll estimate of 78,318 (70,614-87,504) by the end of 2024 closely aligns with the independently conducted Gaza Mortality Survey’s estimate of 75,200 (63,600-86,800) violent deaths between October 7, 2023, and January 5, 2025
The study suggests that:
a conservative estimate would assume four indirect deaths for every direct death in Gaza
So 4 indirect to every 1 direct death, that means we multiply “conflict related deaths” by 5 to get a total number. And 5 is a conservative estimate, because for example Sierra Leone, another protracted conflict had a 16:1 ratio. But I think going conservative is the correct way, because:
Non-violent excess deaths, although substantial, are lower than some projections have suggested.
Ok, let’s get current numbers.
Gaza Health Ministey says since Oct. 7 until September 2026 there have been at least 75,586 Palestinians killed in conflict related deaths (counting only those that were officially reported). Including at least 21,000 children. Those numbers seem to be used by the CIA and the Mossad, though neither Israel nor the US officially accept them. This is 3% of the pre-war population.
Speculation
Now if we multiply this by 5 we get a lowest, conservative estimate of 377.930 deaths if we include cold, starvation, lack of medicine and other indirect causes. This corresponds to 18% of Gazas pre-war population of 2.1 million.
But remember! This number includes people who have yet to die because of already set in stone statistics. Even if fighting stopped today and international help arrives immediately, that number would still be reached in the aftermath, but likely hasn’t been reached yet.
The study says that the direct and indirect numbers almost certainly already exceed 100.000, but more importantly, life expectancy in the Gaza Strip has fallen by 47% (2024 numbers), equivalent of losses of 36.4 years. Life expectancy in Gaza is now only 40.4 years! For men it is 36.2 years, for women it is 45.9 years.
The study also found that the age and gender distribution of violent deaths in Gaza between October 7, 2023, and December 31, 2024, closely resembled the demographic patterns observed in several genocides documented by the United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME).
The study itself was not concerned with wheather this is a genocide or not. But it clearly states that it has the hallmarks of one.
“If you keep insisting calling out atrocities is antisemitic, eventually people will believe you”
thankfully hasn’t very obviously manifested at scale…yet.People seem to be radicalizing against the population of Israel instead of against Jews like their propaganda keeps calling for.
It would be better if people kept their heads and asked for the extermination of the war criminals, and nobody else. But compared to the alternative, I guess that’s progress.
A few years ago I didn’t know anything about Israel or Palestine. I couldn’t care less about jewism but Israelis are fucking assholes.
The audacity of the comments here…
I dont care if a state killed 700k, or 7 People…
The moment a “state” kills innocent people, by starting a war I hate that state.
Doesn’t matter if its Israel, Palestina, Russia or USA.
Killing innocent people just because you think owning a country is your birthright makes you a piece of shit for which I am hoping that those people rot and die alone somewhere, where only after years somebody realized that they are gone.
They don’t realize that their own sense of empathy has been warped out of true. That the bent around the discourse doesn’t just affect their “enemies”.
It really doesn’t matter which “state” anymore than it ever mattered which monarch.
In fact, the best way to promote antisemitism is by using it as a shield against accusations of genocide
Which is their goal. Antisemitism is their greatest weapon. That’s how they get a lot of countries to comply.
I do have the urge to let it work that way on me sometimes.
I get it, but please resist that false dichotomy. It’s playing into their hands.
I think life used to be way more precious before bartering gave way to “money”. Now money is the one ring to rule them all.
Nice meme. Although we’ve been saying this for years now. Many of us already said it before the most recent iteration of unproportional retaliation*, or the one before that. Or before that one.
* yes, that’s a euphemism for genocide
Gatekeeping isn’t helpful here. Popular sentiment in the West has shifted towards Palestine and that’s a good thing.
I’m not gatekeeping anything, just adding context. History, one might say.
“I said it first” is not adding context nor history.
talking about things they did is antisemitic.
OTOH, people pay more attention to atrocities against Palestinians than those against, say, Rohingya or Sudanese or indigenous Amazonians, for which a plausible explanation is a subconscious belief in Jewish malevolence, ingrained through a thousand years of stories and stereotypes throughout historically Christian European culture.
No, it’s because despite being incredibly unpopular amongst it’s citizens, the US is still funding Israel’s genocide of Palestine. Stop trying to play the racism card.
People pay more attention to this particular genocide because the US government consistently vetoes UN attempts to address this, financially supports the Israeli regime with billions of dollars, and goes to war with Iran on behalf of the Israeli regime.
I’m sure those other things you mention are big issues, are they issues that the US is repeatedly responsible for year over year?
Not only the US, the EU is also financing it big time
700 000? So the pro-palestinian side is just blatantly lying now?
Why are you assuming this is including only since 2023?
The history of atrocities goes back quite a bit further back than a couple of years.
Why are you assuming this is including only since 2023?
I’m not assuming that.
Then its not blatantly lying and I’m not following your comment.
Estimates of direct deaths since 2023 number a little above 80k, and just starvation alone doubles that. Estimates for indirect deaths - again, just since 2023 - are between 185k and 335k.
There isnt much historical data to work off of considering humanitarian agencies didnt track indirect deaths decades ago, but we can estimate (going off modern wars we do have that data for) of anywhere between 3 and 15 times the number of direct deaths.
700k is a fairly moderate estimate.
Isn’t it great when you can confirm that you tagged someone accurately?
Its oddly reassuring when you see it, skips a whooole lot of the process of figuring out what kind of person they are!
You do realize that palestine’s own estimate for palestine deaths caused by Israel since 1948 is less than 150k? And that is probably also inflated? 5 times that in the last 3 years a “fairly moderate estimate”?
The numbers put out by the Gaza Ministry of Health have been consistently found to underestimate the real numbers of directly conflict related deaths by ~ 35%
The 150k estimate includes solely direct conflict related deaths, not indirect deaths like cold, starvation and lack of medicine.
PCBS counted direct deaths, not indirect and not mortality due to policies that caused indirect deaths - purely conflict based, and purely things like shelling, airstrikes, and other kinetic violence. Indirect deaths don’t often go through hospital wards, so those numbers have to be estimated as mentioned.
Your claims that they are inflated - they increased the numbers to include Palestinian refugee camps in neighboring countries btw - are worthless.
Please understand the numbers before making bullshit comments.
Setting aside the “I hope that helps ;)” dipshit phrasing, 700,000?
I hope you’re drunk, I’m getting dishonest exaggeration vibes :(
Direct from attacks since 2023 is likely around 80k, but indirect deaths (starvation, exposure, infectious diseases, sanitation problems, medical complications, etc) just since 2023 drastically increases the numbers - estimates vary from 180k to 350k just since 2023.
Include prior decades, and 700k is a fairly conservative estimate.
Setting aside the specific number of innocent Palestinian deaths (I’m not sure where they got that number either), I feel like a sarcastic “I hope that helps” is a perfectly appropriate response to a disingenuous accusation of antisemitism when confronted with very legitimate allegations of genocide.
When do you start counting to get to 700k killed? What types of deaths count?
People killed from starvation disease and hardship. A few days ago a newborn died of hypothermia and a mum and her daughter were killed from collapsing sand. All this caused by the Zionists refusing construction material and bombing tents forcing hundreds of thousands to exposure from winter weather. These deaths are deliberate and should be added to the death count in addition to the 100 a month killed directly by Zionist munitions since the “ceasefire” last year.
When do you start counting to get to 700k killed?
When do you start counting to get to only 700k killed?
Ftfy
Glad to see that peoples’ misconceptions about Israel are based on actual wrong numbers. That should be easy to fix, but will the underlying feeling still persist?
Edit - just noticed the original figure is an order of magnitude out. I’ll assume its just a typo on ops part
Hopefully.
So some figures.
As of 9 October 2026, at least 77,632 people (75,586+ Palestinians[f] and 2,046+ Israelis)[7][8][9][10] have been reported killed in the Gaza war
And in case we think it’s just the bombing and the military.
Regarding the west bank
The frequency of injuries directly caused by Israeli settlers has risen sharply, from an average of one Palestinian injured every three days in 2020, to two per day in 2025 and more than three per day so far in 2026.
And in case we think its only a recent thing
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has been tracking deaths in the conflict since 2008 and its data shows that 5,600 Palestinians died up to 2020 while 115,000 were injured.
I was really disappointed about the lack of easily accessible numbers for indirect deaths, so I tried my best to get some more reliable numbers: https://feddit.org/comment/16069900
I’d be interested to get some feedback from you.
Why would you exclude certain deaths from a death toll?
As an extreme example, dying of old age in Palestine is probably not regarded as Israel’s fault by even the leftiest of the left.
dying of old age in Palestine
Is more rare than dying of heat stroke in the Antarctic region, thanks to the actions of the West’s favorite fascist apartheid state.
People don’t die of old age in Palestine.
The Gaza war has decimated life expectancy in Gaza to a mere 40.4 years.
Not even if you count from the beginning of modern Israel as a country would you get 700k. The official figure from Palestinian’s own statistics is 171k (end of May 2026). That’s over about 78 years.
It’s difficult to say what portion are so-called legitimate war-time kills and what are civilian collateral damage or deliberate terroristic murders from Israel. Estimates range 60-85% for civilian deaths.
Looks like they’ve added an extra 0. Estimates for the Gaza genocide so far are around 77,000. So about 45% of the deaths you’ve said happened in the last 78 years have happened in the last 3 years.
That’s not a genocide. That’s war. Check casualties of other wars versus other established genocides if you’re confused about this difference.
People who dedicate their lives to studying genocides disagree with you.
I’m gonna go with them.
Srebrenica was a genocide. A genocide is not determined by numbers.
War is when bomb civilians and steal their land. That makes it okay!
All sources I read say the number is more like 70k than 700k.
Still outrageous.
Edit: if you down vote then you think I’m wrong. But in reality it means “we don’t want to talk about this”. It’s a shame, as I want to know what the accurate figure is :(
nobody has ever tried to downplay the severity of an atrocity by pushing smaller numbers.
By atrocity you mean genocide, right?
that is one kind of atrocity, but atrocities are a vibrant and varied world not limited to just genocide! I encourage you to explore the whole rainbow of atrocities!
Yeah but in this case it means genocide. Right?
70k is an undercount since it doesn’t include indirect deaths or direct deaths that simply weren’t counted (the Gaza Health Ministry’s methodology prioritizes certainty over accuracy), but 700k is definitely too many.
I read 700k and was horrified. So I just searched for figures on the war, ignoring Israel affiliated BS but all I could find was 70k or there abouts. I expected it to be a lot more like you.
