Samuel Stern

I’ve been playing around with May’s Hamas fatality lists today, because what else are Saturdays for? Gaza’s recorded deaths are heavily concentrated among adult males. In the May 2026 dataset, which contains 72,835 deaths, men aged 18–45 account for 41.12% of those killed, whereas that age/gender group comprised 20.52% of the pre-war population. Their share of recorded deaths is almost exactly twice their population share. Widening the bracket to males aged 15–45 produces much the same result. They represent 24.39% of the population and 45.68% of listed deaths: 33,268 fatalities against approximately the 17,762 deaths we would expect if deaths had followed the population’s age and sex distribution. Among men aged 25–34, the death share reaches 2.18 times the population benchmark; among those aged 35–45, it reaches 2.35 times. The 14–18 age group also warrants examination because Hamas has a documented history of recruiting and training minors. The UN’s 2019 report verified the recruitment and use of a 17-year-old by Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades. Its following annual report recorded Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad camps exposing children as young as 14 to military activities. Hamas itself has publicised children’s military training through its Telegram channel, including instruction in firearms and guerrilla warfare. This evidence requires us to consider under-18 combatants within the casualty figures. The list contains 5,551 males aged 14–18, against approximately 4,661 under the population-proportional benchmark, a difference of 19%. That disparity is considerably smaller than the adult-male concentration. Of course, it does not mean every teenage boy killed was a fighter, but we cannot pretend that Hamas’s recruitment of children has no bearing on the analysis. Across all ages, the Gaza list is 69.96% male and 30.04% female. In Gaza, Hamas’s conduct is central to that examination. In the Henry Jackson Society report I co-authored with @Aizenberg, Hamas’s Human Shield Strategy in Gaza, we documented military infrastructure embedded within civilian neighbourhoods, including tunnel entrances inside homes and weapons stored in residential buildings. The report also examines Hamas’s instructions to civilians to ignore evacuation warnings. These practices placed civilians around military objectives and exploited the restrictions their presence imposed on Israeli attacks. Any account of civilian deaths that removes Hamas’s battlefield organisation from the explanation discards a central cause of civilian exposure to harm. Israel’s civilian protection measures also form part of the record. OCHA estimated that approximately 50,000 people moved south through an Israeli military corridor on 8 November 2023 alone. It recorded danger and shelling around the route, as well as the extension of the corridor’s operating hours while people continued to leave. This establishes that organised evacuation operated on a substantial scale. The IDF has also published footage of strikes being aborted when civilians appeared. This evidence cannot be omitted from any judgement about Israeli intent. Even NAZA, a film constructed around allegations against Israel’s conduct, describes intelligence personnel identifying Hamas targets and calculating anticipated civilian casualties. Its most sensational claim, concerning approval for an attack anticipating 500 civilian deaths, comes without any corroborating evidence. The film provides neither a named target nor enough detail to verify its accounts of the alleged high-casualty strikes. Those allegations remain completely unsubstantiated. A collateral damage estimate belongs within a military targeting process. In its detailed response to the film, the IDF explains that preliminary estimates precede operational review, during which commanders can change the weapon, timing or scope of an attack, require further precautions, or refuse approval. An Israeli targeting source told me 50% of planned strikes in Gaza were aborted due to civilian presence by July 2024. The IDF also distinguishes thresholds requiring senior authorisation from permission to inflict a specified number of civilian deaths. By proving the existence of those calculations, NAZA establishes that anticipated civilian harm was being assessed. When considered alongside Hamas’s human shield strategy and the evidence of Israeli civilian protection measures, the casualty patterns do not indicate a genocidal campaign. The concentration of deaths among adult males is consistent with substantial combatant losses in a war fought through civilian neighbourhoods. Evacuation arrangements and decisions to withhold fire further undermine any claim of an intention to destroy Gaza’s population.