Israel Accidentally Praised Hamas: Killing Only Two Civilians Per Militant on October 7 is a “Tremendously Positive” Ratio
The IDF spokesman meant to praise Israel, but the kill ratio he called “tremendously positive” in Gaza is the same as Hamas’s on October 7
Two months after the October 7 attack, the IDF’s official spokesman, Jonathan Conricus, announced that Israel was killing only two civilians per Hamas militant:
“I can say that if that is true — and I think that our numbers will be corroborated — if you compare that ratio to any other conflict in urban terrain between a military and a terrorist organization using civilians as their human shields, and embedded in the civilian population, you will find that that ratio is tremendous, tremendously positive, and perhaps unique in the world.” — Jonathan Conricus, IDF spokesman
Conricus said this because he knew that between 1990 and 2000, 90 percent of the world’s four million war-related deaths were civilians.
What Conricus did not notice was that on October 7, 695 Israeli civilians, 71 foreigners, and 373 security forces were killed by Hamas— a ratio of two civilians for each militant.
And since Israel employed the Hannibal Directive, an unknown number of Israel’s dead were killed by the Israel Defense Forces. Which means Hamas’s kill ratio may be even better than the kill ratio that Conricus called “tremendously positive”.
Soon after Conricus made his claim, someone realized it was, as wishy-washy people love to say, “problematic”:
…an unidentified Israeli official said that it was hoped the ratio will be “much lower” in the next phase of the war. “I’m not saying it’s not bad that we have a ratio of two to one,” the official was quoted as saying.
I’m sure Hamas also hopes their civilian to militant kill ratio will be “much lower”. In that regard, they seem to be doing better than Israel: since October 7, most of the Israelis killed by Hamas have been part of Israel’s military.
Israel does not seem to worry that killing Palestinian civilians only creates more militants. Currently, “the Israeli operations have killed at least 41,788 people, including more than 16,000 children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, with 95,000 wounded.”
PS. If you don’t trust the Ministry of Health, remember that most people who have studied the conflict accept their numbers, including the United Nations, the World Health Organization, Human Rights Watch, and the IDF itself:
According to a story in Mekomit by Yuval Avraham, who last year broke news about the Israeli military’s use of AI for targeting purposes, the numbers were accepted for inclusion in briefings to senior Israeli officials after intelligence services conducted operations and analysis to monitor the health ministry’s information collection methods and its internal communications and determined the statistics were credible. An Israeli intelligence official confirmed the Israeli government’s use of the Gaza ministry numbers to VICE News, while two officials from European intelligence services said they were widely used in official briefings internationally.
