The massacre of Palestinians
Last updated: July 5, 20251
This section examines the massacre of Palestinians through kinetic military means such as airstrikes, bombardments and gunshots. The deaths of civilian populations through the parallel dismantling of the health system, absence of food, water and exposure are discussed in the Causing the Deaths of Civilian Populations section of this document. The discourse, statements and public sentiment that enabled these practices is discussed in the Dehumanization section.
Numbers and ratios
Key numbers
As of July 2, 2025, Israel has killed at least 57,012 Gazans – about 2.5 percent of the total population of Gaza.2 The death toll passed 50,000 in late March 2025, a year and a half after the beginning of the war.3 The number of dead Gazans is conservative as it will almost certainly increase (see discussion below).4 It does not include anyone whose death was not reported to Gaza’s overwhelmed health ministry.5 The death toll is accepted by Israeli officials (within a small margin)6 and media,7 despite sporadic attempts to cast doubt on them which have not been accepted (see detailed discussion in the Media section below). As of mid June 2025, 17,121 identified children have been killed.8 Notably, during the two months of the second ceasefire in early 2025 more than 155 Palestinians were killed.9
According to the Gazan Ministry of Health, a year into the war Israel had killed all members of 1,206 families in Gaza, with 2,271 additional families having only a single survivor.10 In June 2024, at least 60 families lost 25 or more members; one extended family lost 270 members.11 Polls among Palestinians in southern Gaza over 2024 found that approximately 60% of respondents had lost a member of their family during the war.12 Testimonies from Gazans who lost their family members attest to the shock and horror they felt.13
An academic study published in the prestigious Lancet journal in February 2025 estimated that deaths were substantially undercounted. The study compared three lists of Palestinian deaths to argue that mortality as reported from October 7 to the end of June 2024 was under-reported by 41 percent, putting the estimated death toll from traumatic injury at that point at 64,260.14 The Economist extrapolated the same ratio to the known death toll in early May 2025 and suggested that the actual death toll is between 77,000 and 109,000.15 A different study at the Lancet estimated that the life expectancy in Gaza decreased by about 35 years in the first year of the war.16 A June 2025 preprint academic article by war casualty expert Michael Spagat and others surveyed a sample of 2,000 Gazans household and estimated that by early January 2025 some 75,200 people died violent deaths and another 8,540 people died excess (i.e. not natural deaths) nonviolent deaths. Similar to the Lancet study above, the authors found that the Gazan Ministry of Health undercounted violent mortality by 39 percent.17 By June 2025, the total number of excess deaths in Gaza (violent and non-violent) was probably around 100,000.18
At least 134,592 people (almost 6 percent of Gaza’s population) have been injured.19 The large number of civilian injuries often receives far less attention than civilian deaths. Nonetheless, as periodic coverage demonstrates, for many of the injured these injuries change their lives, often in debilitating ways – such as the loss of eyes, limbs and movement.20 At least a quarter of those injured are estimated to have life-changing injuries that require years of rehabilitation services.21 The situation is exacerbated since in many cases the injured civilians must also cope with the loss of family members. Only a few of them can be evacuated from the Gaza Strip for further treatment, in which case they leave the rest of their families behind.22 The employees of one hospital in central Gaza stated that the second ceasefire in January 2025 was the first time in which they did not receive an injury in about 10 hours.23 Notably, for some Gazans even light injuries could end with their death because of the poor condition of Gazan hospitals.24
The official numbers of deaths and injured do not include an unknown number of missing people, many of whom were buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings.25 The specific number of these missing people is unclear. Before the second ceasefire estimates put it at over ten thousand.26 The spokesperson of Gaza’s Civil Defense claimed at the same time that 2,840 corpses of Gazans were incinerated by the use of weapons that produce very high temperatures.27 During the ceasefire hundreds of corpses were retrieved (845 until mid March 2025),28 and the estimate was removed from UN OCHA’s weekly summary (but maintained).29 Some sources within the Gaza Strip continued to make estimates that reached over 14,222 (sometimes including people who detained in Israel).30 The methodology for these estimates and their reliability are unclear but considering the destruction and the known casualties they do not seem unreasonably high.
Israeli estimates of Hamas fighters killed
The IDF provided very little aggregated information about Palestinian mortality since the beginning of the war, occasionally highlighting the number of militants killed. The general term used in Hebrew is terrorist (מחבל). These estimates are inconsistent, are not updated regularly, and are not based on any clear methodology beyond general unverifiable statements.31 Notably, several of Israel’s assessments have been proven wrong. Israel claimed to have killed at least three senior Hamas commanders who were discovered to be alive about a year later.32 Field commanders noted the low accuracy of many of the reports about killing militants in specific events or brief time periods since those reports included both more vague estimates of enemy kills as well as unarmed individuals who were shot at without checking who they were or whether they were actually killed (and not injured).33 Reporters have called attention to some of these cases where ten of 200 and potentially one of 90 killed Palestinians were armed yet the IDF spokesperson described all dead as militants.34
American sources estimated Hamas militants before the war at between 20 and 25 thousand.35 Israeli sources put the pre-war number at 20 thousand to 40 thousand.36 The number of Palestinians killed in the October 7 attacks inside Israel – probably including both militants and looters – was found to be 1,609.37 These are often counted separately from the militants killed during the war.
Early in the war, some Israeli estimates described all dead – using numbers provided by the Ministry of Health in Gaza – as militants (for example “over 4,600” in late October 2023).38 Senior officials stated even higher numbers than the Ministry of Health, such as about 20,000 dead, mostly militants, only a week later.39 The IDF spokesperson stated in late October 2023 that the IDF was not dealing with the number of dead or wounded in Gaza and pointed journalists to the Gazan Ministry of Health for those numbers.40
An early estimate of killed militants appeared in late November 2023 in an offhand statement that 1,000-2,000 militants were killed.41 At the same time, about 15,000 Palestinians had been killed.42 Three days later, Israeli sources began reporting much larger numbers of 5,000-6,000 militants killed.43 The significant jump suggests that this was an attempt at narrative control – specifically lowering the percentage of non-combatants killed – rather than an actual change (see also Media and Propaganda section). Israeli estimates of killed militants reached 7,000-9,000 in December (out of some 21,000 Palestinians); a named general stated the more specific 7,860.44 In late January, the IDF claimed it had killed 9,000 militants and neutralized almost 20,000 militants in total (including wounded and arrested militants) which were 48-60 percent of Hamas’ total fighting force.45
By late February, Israeli estimates increased to 10,000-12,000 (out of some 30,000 Palestinians killed),46 although the IDF spokesperson stated an even higher number of “more than 13,000”.47 The IDF estimates reached more than 12,000-13,000 in early April (out of some 33,000 Palestinians).48 Yet these numbers – that were provided by the IDF to the top Knesset security committee – seemed doctored to some of the politicians on the committee. When some of them physically visited the IDF units responsible for collecting intelligence data, they found out that the actual IDF estimates were “smaller. Much smaller” with a gap “in the thousands”.49 By mid July, the IDF estimated it had killed 14,000 militants.50
In mid August, the IDF stated that it had killed more than 17,000 militants (out of some 40,000 Palestinians).51 At the same time, an Israeli journalist claimed the confirmed kills “that IDF forces saw their corpses with their own eyes and counted them one by one” was about 15,000.52 This statement is extremely unlikely, as it appears that most people were killed from afar by air attacks (bombing or drones). Both the IDF and the State of Israel repeated the 17,000 number on October 7, 2024, but the IDF’s messaging moderated the number to 14,000 killed “with high confidence” and another 3,000 killed “with medium-low confidence”.53 In late November, Netanyahu stated that the number of militants killed was “close to 20,000”.54 In late January 2025 the IDF Chief of Staff made the same estimate.55 As of writing, since late January there have been no new estimates. To date, no independent evidence supports these estimates.
In January 2025 US intelligence estimated that Hamas has recruited between 10 and 15 thousand members since the beginning of the war.56 According to IDF data presented at a Knesset committee Hamas recruited new militants faster than the IDF was killing them (US messaging was more moderate).57 Israeli estimates put the number of active militants in January at 20 to 23 thousand.58 By April 2025 Israeli estimates of active militants grew to 40 thousand.59
Noncombatant ratio
Another ratio that drew much public attention was the ratio between combatants and non combatants killed, which is high according to all estimates. According to publicly available data some 55% of identified deaths in Gaza are women, children, and the elderly.60 Israeli spokespersons themselves – who have a vested interest in reducing the ratio – have estimated that two civilians have died for each Hamas militant, and stated that it is a justified ratio.61 In reality, the ratio is likely higher and civilian deaths could reach 75% and even more of the total death count.62 Other observers have reached similar percentages.63 A November 2024 UN Report independently verified the deaths of over 8,000 Gazans in the first six months of the war, using three independent sources for each death case. The report found that 70% of the deaths were of women and children and that the age group with the most deaths was 5-9 year old children.64 Other observers reached higher numbers of noncombatants, but did not base that on a clear methodology.65 An analysis by Action on Armed Violence estimated that 74% of casualties (but potentially as many as 91%) were of civilians.66 A Hamas member in Qatar claimed Hamas lost some 6,000 militants in February 2024 (meaning some 80% of deaths were of civilians), although another Hamas member later rejected that claim.67
According to the key investigative reports on the subject, Israel is aware of the high number of civilians that will be hit by its attacks and especially at the beginning of the war, has proceeded to bomb buildings with little oversight, often through employing an artificial intelligence system (“The Gospel”). The Gospel is a machine-learning software built on hundreds of predictive algorithms that allow soldiers to query a vast database (“the pool”).68 The number of acceptable civilians harmed by strikes against military targets (“collateral damage”) increased from dozens to hundreds of civilians already on Oct. 7 (see below).69 In some cases Israel assassinated Hamas commanders by bombing a densely populated area, killing over a hundred civilians and wounding hundreds more.70 As of late April 2024, the IDF had announced the names of only 75 targeted Palestinians despite over 34,000 reported fatalities.71
After the breakdown of the second ceasefire in March 2025 it appears that the ratio of killed civilians increased. After two months of fighting, the IDF claimed to have killed some 500 militants out of 2,780 reported Palestinian deaths (so 82% of deaths were of uninvolved civilians).72 In late May the IDF estimated that the ratio of non-combatants to combatants killed was 3:1 (so 75% of deaths were of uninvolved civilians).73 Some Israeli experts also noted the high ratio of civilian deaths, including on Israeli TV.74
Accepting the IDF overall number of militant kills at face value can serve as a minimum to the ratio of uninvolved civilians killed at the time of writing: 67 percent.75 This is very likely an underestimate. The ratio does not take into consideration the thousands of Palestinians still buried under the rubble, while the aforementioned anecdotal evidence that many killed Palestinians that were defined as “terrorists” were unarmed and had no known connection to militant organizations suggests that the ratio of killed uninvolved civilians is significantly higher.
A different indicator for the extent of civilian casualties in Gaza is the ratio between IDF fatalities and Gazan civilian fatalities. An Israeli scholar noted in November 2024 that this ratio was 1:68, more than double the ratio in the 2014 Israel-Gaza war (1:32) and significantly higher than the US’ most aggressive battle in the Iraq War (the Second Battle of Fallujah).76
Accuracy
The standard source of information for Palestinian deaths is the Gaza Ministry of Health. The Ministry releases daily updates about kinetic deaths, and periodically releases detailed lists of Gazan dead – ten to date – to the public.77 The evidence I have seen indicates that the Gaza Ministry of Health’s numbers are as accurate as can be expected given the circumstances.78 They are accepted as accurate by UN agencies, many academics and international NGOs and international media outlets,79 as well as some Israeli media outlets.80 Especially early in the war, the media highlighted attempts to doubt these numbers as discussed in detail in the Media and Propaganda section of this report.81
Closer analyses corroborate the Ministry of Health’s numbers. A study by Airwars, a British NGO that assesses claims of civilian harm in conflict, found that the Ministry of Health’s data in the first weeks of the conflict – in which it reported the deaths of 7,000 people – was credible.82 Experts, such as Mike Spagat from the Action on Armed Violence NGO, who examined Ministry of Health reports (lists of identified Palestinian deaths) found the first report credible, noted that the quality of data of the subsequent two reports (from January and April) deteriorated,83 and acknowledged that the accuracy improved in the September report.84 The October 2024 report further improved in quality, increasing the percentage of identified dead from 85% to 97%.85 The March 2025, the May 2025 and the June 2025 – the most recent one as of writing – reports identified well over 99% of the dead.86
Many of the earlier issues derive from the fact that the Gaza health system was clearly under immense strain as some hospitals stopped reporting deaths entirely.87 Due to the overwhelming number of deaths that continued to accumulate (up to 1,000 on some days, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health), the full identification and reporting of casualties has been slow and difficult.88 Independent observers commended the Ministry of Health for its ongoing efforts to produce accurate data, with one observer pointing out that “nothing of comparable quality is available” for other wars.89 In late September 2024, the Director of the Ministry of Health’s Information Center, Zaher al-Wahaidi, gave at least two separate interviews in which he explained the methodology and the challenges associated with the data, resolving many of the remaining open issues.90 Over time, even people who had been openly skeptical of the Ministry of Health’s data early on came to acknowledge its reliability.91
Non-kinetic (excess) mortality
Given the above, the actual number of deaths caused by the conflict – including indirect deaths, which are not included in the official tally above – is very likely much higher.92 Although there are certainly examples from similar events that demonstrate that such excess mortality is greater than mortality from kinetic means, and can continue long after the original event, it is also much harder to accurately measure. I split this discussion into its own subsection for these reasons.
Three main pathways to such indirect deaths include economic collapse and food insecurity, damage to public services and health infrastructure, and environmental contamination.93 Children – about half the population of the Gaza Strip – are more vulnerable to malnourishment and death from starvation. They can suffer from four different kinds of undernutrition, which can co-exist: wasting (low weight for one’s height because of intense hunger), stunting (low height for one’s age), underweight (low weight for one’s age), and micronutrient deficiencies (essential nutrients are missing from one’s diet). The effects of undernutrition can last for years and some might be irreversible.94
A piece in the prestigious journal The Lancet noted that in recent conflicts indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. By applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths to one direct death, the authors estimated in July 2024 that up to 186,000 deaths could be attributed to the war in Gaza up to that point.95 Some experts endorsed these results and even suggested that they are conservative.96 Others have been more critical of them, but remained almost certain that the number of deaths exceeds the official death toll.97 In early October 2024 a group of 99 healthcare workers signed a letter estimating that the death toll had likely already surpassed 118,908.98 The chair of global health at the University of Edinburgh estimated in September 2024 up to 335,500 deaths in Gaza until the end of the year.99 The Rector of the University of Glasgow, who is also a surgeon who volunteered in Gaza, estimated the death toll based on excess mortality to be “closer to 300,000” in late December 2024.100 The Spagat paper listed above reached a much lower number of excess mortality – only 8,540 until January 2025.101 Although it is an outlier, it is the only estimate I have seen that featured a robust methodology and therefore should be considered more seriously than the other estimates.
Several doctors acquainted with the Gaza Strip’s health system pointed out that the destruction of its medical infrastructure and especially human capital would have consequences for years. For example, by February 2025 only one of six vascular surgeons working in the north had remained, and there were no more cancer pathologists or nephrologists (who specialize in kidney care).102 This destruction would likely increase the excess mortality although its precise effect would be difficult to measure.
Comparisons with other conflicts
An independent non-profit that collects data on violent conflict worldwide concluded that Palestine was “the most dangerous place in the world in 2024”.103 The number and rate of violent civilian deaths has been much higher in Gaza than other 21st century wars.104 Airwars, for example, asserted in an early report that “the first weeks of the war in Gaza were among the deadliest for civilians in modern warfare”.105 In a subsequent report, they stated that “By almost every metric, the harm to civilians from the first month of the Israeli campaign in Gaza is incomparable with any 21st century air campaign. It is by far the most intense, destructive, and fatal conflict for civilians that Airwars has ever documented”.106 One of the notable measures was the number of cases in which more than a certain number of civilians were killed in a given conflict. As of February 2025, Airwars had already fully recorded more than five cases in which more than 100 civilians were killed, compared to a handful of cases in all other conflicts in the previous decade combined.107 One expert claimed Israel’s war on Gaza may have been the fastest case of killing 1% of the population in the 21st century, and suggested that the death of 2% of the population placed the Gaza conflict among the five most lethal conflicts in the 21st century.108 Oxfam stated that “more women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the past year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades”.109
In Iraq, for example, the population in 2003 was 11 times larger than Gaza’s population in 2023 (27 million compared to 2.3 million).110 According to one analysis, Coalition forces (i.e. US and allies) killed 17,075 civilians over 15 years (2003-2017), of which 13,764 were killed in the first five years (2003-2007).111 A different analysis found that Coalition (i.e. US and allies) forces were responsible for killing 11,516 civilians over six years (2003-2008).112 Although the total amount of civilian deaths was much higher, the majority of civilians killed died in local sectarian warfare, for example through suicide bombings – rather than direct violence by Coalition forces. With regards to militant kills, during the first five years of the war in Iraq (2003-2007), the US forces killed 18,832 “suspected insurgents”.113
In the US war in Afghanistan (with a population of about 20 million in 2001),114 46,319 civilians and 52,893 opposition fighters were killed over the course of 20 years (2001-2021).115 Here too many of the civilians were killed by opposition forces rather than the US.116
The battles of Mosul (2016-2017) and Raqqa (2017) against ISIS were considered “some of the fiercest urban fighting since the Second World War.117 In October 2023 alone, three times more civilians were killed in Gaza than were killed in Raqqa’s deadliest month and twice more compared to Raqqa’s entire length of four months.118 The estimated daily average number of bombs dropped during the first week in Gaza, more than 850, was higher than the highest known number of bombs dropped in a single day on Raqqa.119 The percentage of fatalities known to be children was far greater in Gaza in October 2023 (36%) than in Raqqa (25%) or Mosul (9%).120 In Gaza far more women were killed in Oct. 2023 (1,213) compared to the entire battles of Raqqa (281) and Mosul (123).121 In the first seven weeks of the war, Israel dropped or fired at least 30 times more munitions than the US-led coalition in its campaign against ISIS in its first seven weeks.122
In 13 years of war in Syria (2011-2024), a recent tally found that through the war 15,671 women and 25,857 children were killed. Although Syria’s population in 2011 was ten times more than Gaza’s (almost 23 million people), the death toll for women and children in Gaza in one year of fighting was roughly half of that of 13 years of war in Syria.123
The aforementioned Michael Spagat collected information from various other conflicts on the percentage of women and children among violent fatalities based on the existing datasets he could find.124 As a reminder, in the case of the Gaza war as of writing the ratio is about 51%.125 In the rest of this paragraph the number of fatalities does not refer to the total number of fatalities in a conflict but to those identified with demographics in the source Spagat used. The Saudi war in Yemen (2015-2022) resulted in a ratio of 25.2% (842 women, 1,424 children of 8,983 known fatalities). The Kosovo war (1998-2000) resulted in a ratio of 20.4% (1,523 women, 1,235 children of 13,548 known fatalities). The Tigray war (2020-2023) resulted in a ratio of 9.1% (221 women, 186 children of 4,490 known fatalities). The Syrian Civil War (covering 2011-2016) resulted in a ratio of 20.1% (11,112 women, 17,734 children of 143,624 known fatalities) or 20.2% (16,515 women, 30,293 children of 231,889 known fatalities) through a different data source covering 2011-2024. The war in Columbia (1985-2018) resulted in a ratio of 21.6% (33,426 women, 64,084 children of 450,666 known fatalities). The war in Northern Ireland (1961-2001) resulted in a ratio of 15.7% (269 women, 285 children of 3,525 known fatalities). Among civilians in the Iraq war (2003-2008) the ratio was 17% (1,981 women, 2,106 children of 24,251 known fatalities). In the war in Bosnia (1991-1995) the ratio was 5.3% (8,548 women, 3,372 children of 96,895 known fatalities). In the war in Guatemala (1962-1995) the ratio was 25.3% (972 women, 1,289 children of 8,926 known fatalities). In the war in Sudan (2023-2024) the ratio was 23.9% (273 women, 222 children of 2,073 known fatalities). Among civilians in the Ukraine war (2014-2025) the ratio was 42% (4,125 women, 685 children of 11,445 known fatalities; the number does not include 200-300 thousand combat fatalities).126 These data demonstrate again the lack of proportion between the ratio of women and children killed in Gaza and the other conflicts listed above.
International responses
The amount of civilian deaths as well as the fact that their dying could be watched in real time online shocked many people worldwide. Many international officials and institutions have repeatedly commented on it throughout the war; the survey below is partial with additional content appearing elsewhere in this report. Already in November 2023 The UN Secretary General has stated that “We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict [in recent years]”.127 The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reiterated that there is no safe space in Gaza.128 Although the International Court of Justice on January 26, 2024 called upon Israel to take “all measures in its power” to prevent the killing of Palestinians, as of writing, Israel has continued to kill an average of over 50 Palestinians a day.129 A panel of UN experts stated in February that arms exports to Israel were illegal and must stop immediately,130 while a Dutch court ruled to halt the export of F-35 jet parts to Israel.131 Also in February, a former UN’s Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights stated that the Israeli attack on Gaza has probably the highest kill rate of any military killing anybody since the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.132 In March, Canada declared it would stop selling arms to Israel because of its conduct of war in Gaza, although some Canadian companies continued to do so in subsequent months.133 The UK’s Foreign Office received legal advice that Israel has broken international humanitarian law, yet the UK has refrained, so far, from making this information public to avoid acting upon it.134 By April 2024, Airwars, the aforementioned NGO documenting cases of civilian harm using open-source information, had compiled preliminary information about over 3,000 incidents, more than it collected during the entirety of the war against ISIS, and concluded that “this is a conflict that is far more deadly for civilians than pretty much any other conflict we’ve seen in modern history”.135 Also in April the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip,136 and backed a call for an arms embargo on Israel.137 Those countries that sold arms to Israel (especially the US, as well as Germany and the UK) faced pressure to stop sales as well.138 In late April, a leaked US assessment revealed that several bureaus within the US government raised “serious concern over [Israel’s] non-compliance” with international humanitarian law and asserted that Israel’s assurances were “neither credible or reliable”. Among the potential violations noted in the assessment were the repeated striking of protected sites and civilian infrastructure and “unconscionably high levels of civilian harm to military advantage”.139 In May, the ICJ ruled that Israel was to halt its military assault on Rafah and re-open the Rafah crossing to facilitate the movement of people and humanitarian aid.140 Israel refused, and in the following 48 hours, conducted more than 60 air raids on Rafah.141
In June 2024, the UN Secretary General included Israel on a blacklist of countries that harm children in conflict areas, alongside ISIS, Russia, Syria and Somalia.142 Doctors Without Borders stated that the massacres illustrated a “complete disregard for Palestinian lives”, while the head of the organization’s emergency unit asserted that “we can no longer accept the statement that Israel is taking ‘all precautions’ [to protect civilians] —this is just propaganda”.143 In July, the EU’s top diplomat described one of the Israeli operations as a “massacre” and stated that “the bloodbath must end”.144 In the same month, the ICJ ruled that Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories – Gaza was mentioned explicitly – is illegal. The Israeli Prime Minister responded that this was a “decision of lies”.145 The UN General Assembly voted to adopt a resolution demanding that Israel end its “unlawful presence” in the occupied Palestinian territories (124 for, 14 against, 43 abstentions).146 In September, the UN Secretary-General said that the death and destruction in Gaza were the worst he had seen during his tenure.147 In October, he expressed shock at the “harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction” in north Gaza.148 In November, Doctors Without Borders stated that it “witnessed an amount of suffering that is beyond imagination”, while its president stated that “Israeli forces had no intention to spare civilians and that… warnings [to civilians] are merely cosmetic”.149 In December, the organization stated that “people in Gaza are living in a death trap”.150 At the same time, the pope condemned the Israeli strikes on Gaza, stating “this is cruelty, this is not war”.151 Two media freedom organizations issued reports that accused Israel of carrying out a “massacre” of journalists in Gaza.152
In January 2025 the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights said that “a human rights catastrophe continues to unfold in Gaza before the eyes of the world”,153 while the pope described the humanitarian condition as “very serious and shameful”.154 International responses abated during the ceasefire that began later in January and March, but, when Israel attacked by surprise and brought an end to the ceasefire in March the executive director of UNICEF stated that the million children in Gaza “have been plunged back into a world of fear and death”.155 In April 2025, MSF stated that Gaza “has become a ‘mass grave’ for Palestinians and those helping them” and that “Palestinian lives are once again being systematically destroyed”.156
Indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks
This section examines Israeli attacks. According to international humanitarian law, attacks must distinguish between military objectives and civilian persons or property. Therefore, for example, using a method or means of combat whose effects cannot be limited is prohibited.157 Attacks must be proportional in two aspects. First, any attack must be proportionate to the threat that is faced, and retaliation must be proportionate to the attack suffered. Second, incidental civilian casualties or damages must be proportionate to the direct and concrete military advantages expected. Attacks that do not meet the proportionality requirement are considered indiscriminate.158
To determine whether an attack was indiscriminate and/or disproportionate, the attacker estimates of its attacks, their impacts and collateral damage as well as estimates of civilian population are important. On several occasions during the war it has been revealed that the IDF’s estimates of these variables were poor. As late as January 2025 evidence demonstrated that the IDF was unable to correctly estimate the number of Palestinians in a certain area. Although the IDF estimated only 3,000 people were left in Beit Lahiya, some 14,000 people subsequently evacuated the area after it was attacked. These misassessments made the IDF more inclined to employ more firepower in areas, resulting in higher civilian casualties.159 Other evidence suggests that civilian casualties in attacking a building were estimated based on superficial calculations such as dividing the number of people currently in the entire district by the number of people estimated to live in that district. Estimates of people currently in the district were based on cellphone usage, but did not take account of cases in which cellphones were off or children who did not have cellphones.160 Moreover, Israel’s evacuation orders to the civilian population in Gaza ahead of attacks contained many errors.161
Anecdotal evidence demonstrated the use of massive firepower within crowded urban areas, for example in the formation of “firebelts”.162 Other videos suggest that large explosive weapons were used against “soft” targets such as tents.163
Policy and the bombing campaign
Immediately at the beginning of the war, the Israeli Minister of Defense told soldiers that he had “released all restraints” in conducting the war,164 while the IDF spokesperson stated that the IDF was “focused on what causes maximum damage” rather than accuracy.165 In a meeting at the Israeli cabinet very early in the war, when the Israeli Chief of Staff noted that the IDF attacked 1,500 targets, Netanyahu burst out and shouted “why not 5,000?!”. The Chief of Staff responded that the IDF does not have 5,000 approved targets, to which Netanyahu answered “I don’t care about targets… take buildings down, bomb with everything we have”.166 The anecdote demonstrates the pressure to generate targets which was especially high early in the war (see below on numbers of targets).
Much later, it was revealed that a formal order given already on October 7 gave officers the authority to risk killing up to 20 civilians in each strike against a bank of thousands of militants and military sites.167 On October 8, a formal order permitted strikes on military targets in Gaza to endanger up to 500 civilians a day before removing the limit only two days later.168 The mood within the IDF at the time, according to five senior officers, was “harbu darbu”, i.e. attacking without restraint.169 The rules of engagement were later tightened up to an extent, although they remained far looser than they were before October 7 (see also below).170 As of writing, I know of no indications from within Israel that any of the individuals involved in the lenient use of force was held accountable (e.g. was indicted).171
Already in late October 2023, US officials knew that Israel was regularly bombing buildings without solid intelligence that they were legitimate military targets.172 About 40-45% of the air-to-ground munitions Israel dropped on Gaza by December 2023 were unguided.173 These bombs have a wide margin of error of about 100 feet around the intended target.174 According to a former IDF officer, the IDF’s form of combat in the first half year of the war was “unusually wasteful” as it attacked “innumerable targets, without asking whether it’s worth attacking them”.175 A similar situation occurred during June 2025, when Israeli air force planes tasked with responding to Iranian missiles and drones finished their daily missions by using any leftover munitions on targets in Gaza, resulting in hundreds of additional targets attacked in Gaza.176
When targeting junior militants marked by the IDF’s AI system (discussed below), the army preferred to use such “dumb” bombs rather than precision bombs because of their lower cost, despite their significantly higher collateral damage. An IDF source claimed to have authorized the bombing of “hundreds” of private homes in such a manner. Frequently, the target was not even home when the bombing happened, so that entire families were killed without even hitting the target.177
As discussed above, in the first weeks of the war, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians (as opposed to 0 in the past) for every junior Hamas operative. These junior operatives were not tracked before the war. When targeting senior officials the killing of more than 100 and up to 300 civilians was authorized, “crossing an extraordinary threshold for a contemporary Western military”.178 Experts in international humanitarian law expressed alarm at these ratios.179 For comparison, for the US the number of permissible civilians deaths to kill Saddam Hussein was 29.180 When the US assassinated Bin Laden the authorized number of permissible civilian deaths was 30 while the number was 0 for most low-level commanders in the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.181 In at least three cases such major Israeli airstrikes did not kill their high-value targets.182 For context, a former legal adviser to the IDF stated that in 2014, the acceptable civilian casualty ratio was “one civilian for a high-level terrorist”, indicating the significant change in this policy over the past decade within Israel.183 This mass-generation of low-value targets was stopped later partly due to American pressure,184 but subsequent attacks continued to be authorized despite knowing that many uninvolved citizens would be harmed.185 In April 2025 a senior IDF officer admitted that they approve killing 70 other Palestinians to kill a Hamas platoon commander.186 Notably, Israel’s long-standing use of targeted assassinations, including against high-value targets, has not dismantled Palestinian resistance movements.187 In May 2025 Israel’s Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich declared that the IDF was now conducting a campaign against the civilian rule of Hamas, including medical officials (see below).188
Since the beginning of the war, Israel used highly destructive weapons in the vicinity of hospitals. A study found that in the first 40 days of the war, Israel regularly used one ton bombs (Mk 84) near hospitals. Of the 36 hospitals in the Strip, nine had at least one bomb crater within their lethal range (360m) and 30 had such a crater within their damage range (800m). These results suggest indiscriminate bombing in dangerous proximities to hospital infrastructure.189 Moreover, if in October 2023 the IDF claimed it does “not target hospitals”, by mid 2025 attacks on hospitals were relatively common. In one week in May 2025, for example, ten hospitals and clinics were hit by IDF attacks.190
The extent and results of the bombing campaign
A large portion of the Gazan deaths result from Israel’s bombing campaign.191 This campaign was particularly intense in first few months of the war and has been declared to be “one of the deadliest bombardments of the 21st century”.192 During 25 days in October 2023 alone, at least 5,139 civilians were killed, at least 1,900 of those were children, and there were at least 65 incidents in which 20 or more civilians were killed.193 According to Airwars, all of these measures were far worse than those in other conflicts Airwars has tracked since its establishment in 2014.194
On October 7 alone, the Israeli air force dropped 530 tons of bombs on Gaza, using more than 500 one-ton bombs.195 In the first two days of the war, the Israeli air force attacked 1,500 targets.196 Over the first five days of the war, Israel attacked 2,687 targets.197 In the first week of the war, Israel dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza weighing 4,000 tons.198 As of December 2023, Israel had dropped 29,000 bombs, munitions and shells on Gaza.199 These numbers were much higher than those of previous recent Israeli military offensives.200 They were also higher than other recent conflicts. Experts estimated that in the first two weeks of the war Israel used at least 1,000 air to surface munitions daily, while in the most intense period of the coalition campaign against ISIS in Mosul (March 2017) some 5,500 munitions were dropped throughout the month.201 During the first six weeks of the war, Israel deployed 2,000-pound bombs in areas it designated safe for civilians on at least 208 occasions.202 Especially during the beginning of the war, Israel used irregular shipments of 155mm shells that included shells dating back to the 1950s, increasing the risk of missing the target and misfiring.203 More broadly Israel has used lower quality ammunition, so that between 10 and 20 percent of bombs do not explode upon impact.204
By October 2024, Israel had carried about 40,300 airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.205 At least until November 2024, Israel did not release more information about the scale of weapons it used.206 In December 2024, the Israeli air force stated that it carried out more than 1,400 airstrikes in Gaza.207 In the first 200 days of the war, Israel is estimated to have dropped more than 70,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip.208 Over the first year of the war, the number reportedly increased to 86,400 tons.209 For comparison, during the Iraq War the US and UK militaries dropped a total of 29,199 bombs on Iraq in 2003, with another 3,678 munitions dropped from 2004 to 2010. Iraq is over a thousand times larger than Gaza (437,000 km² vs. 365 km²).210 During the renewed bombing campaign after the ceasefire in early 2025, the IDF attacked about 2,900 targets over two months (March-May 2025).211
An in-depth investigation of the casualty events over October 2023 reveals the indiscriminate nature of Israel’s attacks. Of 551 incidents of civilians being killed over October 2023, 63 percent involved the death of at least one child, while the average number of children killed in these incidents was five (in 47 incidents more than ten children were killed; the highest number of children deaths was 69, on Oct. 31).212 Of 606 published incidents of civilian harm (including injuries) over Oct. 2023, at least 26 include public evidence of the death of at least one militant (including cases where militant status is ambiguous or contested). This corresponds to about four percent of the incidents that caused civilian harm. In these 26 incidents, at least 522 civilians were killed compared to a total of 32-60 militants (an average of 20 civilians killed in each of these events).213 Even if one acknowledges that additional militants were not identified or registered, the ratio is very low.
Interviews with IDF officials reveal that Israel bombed “just for ‘deterrence’ – [for example] highrises that are evacuated and toppled just to cause destruction”.214 Israel also bombed public buildings such as universities, banks and government offices, defining them as “power targets” (“matarot otzem”).215 In the first five days of fighting, half the targets bombed (1,329 of 2,687) were such power targets.216 Other sources explained that by attacking these power targets that are mainly intended to harm Palestinian civil society the purpose was to “create a shock” and put pressure on Hamas. One intelligence source said that “for the most part, when it comes to power targets, it is clear that the target doesn’t have military value that justifies an attack that would bring down the entire empty building in the middle of a city, with the help of six planes and bombs weighing several tons”.217 Despite IDF protocols allowing for the attack of power targets only when buildings were empty of residents, testimonies and videos from Gaza suggest that since October 7 such targets were attacked without prior notice.218
By early-mid 2025, some voices within the IDF claimed to be more aware of harming civilians and concerned about the high numbers of civilian casualties, leading also to a letter on which a thousand present and past air force personnel signed (the letter called for stopping the political war and bringing back the hostages but mentioned innocent civilians in Gaza).219 Reports from within different units indicated that after March 2025 the quality of targets, considerations about the harm to Gazan civilians, and the quality of internal investigations all decreased without leading to better operational gains.220 A series of interviews with air force personnel revealed that many of them presented dilemmas about continuing their service and highlighted that that responsibility for these attacks was decentralized.221 Some pointed out that harming civilians was normalized in Gaza and confessed that they did not know whether AI mass-supplied their targets. One service person admitted that “the amount of [uninvolved] people killed is astronomical and this is a stain on the Israeli Air Force and on Israel”.222 Ultimately, however, the vast majority of personnel continued their service and these sentiments did not translate to a publicly observable change in the bombing campaign.
Specific weapons
Some of the weapons Israel has used during the war have been controversial as well. Israel has commonly used drones in Gaza – including drones that launch grenades and bombs,223 suicide drones,224 and drones that attack in swarms.225 There have been several reports of drones that emitted sounds of crying babies, perhaps to lure Gazans.226 According to eyewitnesses, Israel is also using sniper drones in Gaza, sometimes referred to as quadcopters.227 These and other quadcopters have fired on civilians, with dozens of documented cases of purposefully killing civilians, as documented by a human rights group and witnessed by doctors, among others.228 Several sources indicate that quadcopters were used to wound and kill dozens of Palestinians in or near hospitals, schools and queues for aid.229 One doctor said he had seen more than 20 injuries in a single day from drone shootings in November 2023.230 By August 2024, the Israeli commander of one fleet of drones claimed his unit was responsible for 6,000 kills.231 A late April 2025 investigation by Drop Site News found five cases in a week in which a specific type of suicide drones killed a total of at least 30 Palestinians (including 14 children) sheltering in tents.232
Israel has knowingly and purposefully used gas – carbon monoxide released from bunker-buster bombs – to attack Hamas’ tunnel system. Since the IDF encountered difficulties in acquiring intelligence about where exactly were the high value targets in the tunnels, it launched massive attacks that included “the erasure of entire residential areas”.233 These attacks often killed the people in the tunnels, including several Israeli hostages (see the Hostages section in this document). Some vehicles fleeing the airstrikes were attacked as well without specific information about who was in them – even as that behavior would be typical for civilians.234
There are some indications that Israel has used thermobaric (i.e. aerosol) weapons, which have been internationally banned by several Conventions and international humanitarian law.235 Israel has also detonated remotely-controlled large armored vehicles packed with tons of explosives. These vehicles are indiscriminate weapons since they case much damage (Israeli reports claimed their explosions were felt in Tel-Aviv, more than 60 kilometers away) and their effects are not limited to military targets.236 Several of these vehicles were found in Gaza after the ceasefire, presumably out of service.237 Israel has also used dogs – over a hundred of which have been supplied by a Dutch company during the first 17 months of the war – to attack Palestinians in their homes and during Palestinians’ presence in the Israeli incarceration system.238
Israel has used artificial intelligence (AI)-based programs for military purposes, founded on cooperations with large IT companies such as Google and Microsoft.239 The “Gospel” system analyzed huge amounts of data to produce coordinates for potential targets.240 Such data has been used to generate far more targets than in the past. If in previous wars – three weeks in 2014 and ten days in 2021 – an attack rate of 100 to 200 targets per day led to a situation that the Israeli air force had no targets of military value left, in the current war it had bombed 15,000 targets in 35 days, and continued to bomb targets until the time of writing.241 According to a former Israeli chief of staff, the AI helped create 100 targets a day when in the past there were times when 50 targets were created in an entire year.242
Other AI systems generate massive kill lists for assassination. The “Lavender” system is designed to mark all suspected operatives in Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, including low-ranking ones, as potential bombing targets.243 As many as 37,000 Gazans were marked as suspected militants by the automated system at the beginning of the war, including children under the age of 17.244 An IDF source claimed they would devote only “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing, despite a high rate of errors in the system (~10%). In May 2024, a project that sounds like the Lavender system won the Israel Defense Prize.245 The IDF systematically attacked targets at their homes, often at night with their whole families present, after tracking them with another AI system named “Where’s Daddy?”.246 As above, Israel often used a simplistic statistical model to assess the risk of civilian harm – estimating the number of civilians in a building based on estimates of cellphone usage in the surrounding neighborhood.247 Another AI system, “Genie”, is modelled after ChatGPT and allows commanders to type natural language queries and receive answers based on data from across the army’s operational systems. Genie is supposed to identify anomalies, summarize events and generate operational insights, therefore assisting commanders in selecting targets.248 Other systems provide services such as identifying the location of an individual based on audio cues, matching partly obscured or injured faces to real identities, or a chatbot that scans and analyzes text messages and social media posts in Arabic.249
Mortality and impacts on groups in Palestinian society (children, journalists, aid workers, etc.)
Children
Since the beginning of the war, Israel has killed dozens of children on average every day with kinetic means.250 As of writing, over 17,121 identified children were killed in Gaza.251 The number of children killed over the first four months of the war was reportedly greater than the number of children killed in conflict zones worldwide over 2019-2022 combined, and is far greater than the rate of children killed in other 21st century wars.252 In the first month of the war alone, the number of killed Gazan children was about 10 times higher than the number of children killed in the entire first year of the Russia-Ukraine war.253 A year into the war, Oxfam found that even according to a conservative count, more children (and women) had been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza than in any other recent conflict in a single year.254 Parents sometimes write their child’s name on their limbs so they could be identified if they die, and some children have done the same themselves.255 Some young children have written their own wills.256 By mid June 2025, 180 newborns (up to a month old) had been killed in Gaza.257 Anecdotal evidence reveals several cases of fetuses killed during the war.258 Of identified children as of early October 2024, at least 3,100 children under five were killed, and about 710 of those were babies aged under 12 months.259 By June 2025, 5,454 identified children aged 5 and under were killed, and 937 of them were less than one year old.260 By late May 2025, over 50,000 children were killed or injured.261
As UNICEF’s Executive Director put it, Gaza is “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child”.262 The UN Secretary General’s annual report for children and armed conflict zones for 2023 already concluded that the conflict presented “an unprecedented scale and intensity of grave violations against children”.263 Testimonies from Gaza provide additional evidence for these details.264 Several international doctors volunteering in Gaza noted the large number of children they operated on. One, for example, said that 70-75% of the people he operated on were elementary school age or younger.265 An Al-Jazeera documentary spoke with 20 American doctors who volunteered in Gaza and reported treating children with gunshots.266 Additional testimonies by doctors are in the corresponding subsection below.
UNICEF estimated in early February 2024 that at least 17,000 children are unaccompanied or separated from their parents.267 An international NGO estimated this number was “likely much higher” in subsequent months.268 One British charity found that 40% of Gazan households were taking care of a child that was not their own.269 By late January 2025, over 38,000 children in Gaza lost one or both parents.270 Individual cases demonstrate the effects of these losses on children.271 Written testimonies from Gaza provide more specific evidence for these broader statistics.272
Violent children deaths are prominent in videos from Gaza, often filmed by their own families.273 There are many stories about the loss of one’s children. For example, one father who went out to obtain birth certificates for his newborn twins discovered upon his return that they had both been killed together with their mother and grandmother.274 Airstrikes tore children to pieces.275 Others were burned alive.276 In one case, a missile on the home of the Faraj family killed the family’s father and all five daughters. The son, the seven year old Ali Faraj Faraj, survived although the blast threw Ali to the roof of a neighboring building where he was surrounded by the remains of his family members.277 There are many additional stories.278
Children are particularly susceptible to injuries and their aftereffects,279 and they are far more likely to die from blast injuries than adults.280 As of early October 2024, some 25,000 children have been injured.281 Six international doctors who worked in Gaza noted that they encountered extensive wounds on Gazan children caused by “fragmentation” weapons (according to one doctor, small metal cubes some 3mm wide).282 These fragmentation weapons are designed to maximize casualties and have an inordinate effect on children’s bodies.283 Other international doctors stated that they commonly saw cases of children with head injuries.284 Evidence from individual cases from the Strip – some without pain relief – confirms their statements.285
Because of the war’s widespread death and destruction, children are exposed to difficult psychological experiences.286 In late February 2024, the head of Doctors Without Borders stated in front of the UN Security Council that children as young as five told members of the organization that they would prefer to die than to continue to endure fear, displacement, and witnessing the killing of their family members.287 By October 2024, 52 American doctors, nurses and paramedics who volunteered in Gaza observed nearly universal psychiatric distress in young children, including some who were suicidal or said they wished they had died.288 A Gazan journalist wrote an open letter to Israeli society in which he narrated a case of a 6 year old boy who lay down to sleep under a truck and turned blue from the cold. When a passer-by woke him up and asked him what he was doing, the boy responded that he wanted the truck to drive over him in the morning because his entire family had been killed. The boy died the same day from hypothermia.289
Already in January 2024, UNICEF estimated that 1,000 children in Gaza had lost their limbs, a number that reached between 3,105 and 4,050 by January 2025.290 The UN’s OCHA called it the “largest cohort of child amputees in recorded history”. Despite bringing in an increased number of prosthetic limbs, wheelchairs, crutches and other devices during the ceasefire in January and February 2025, it only covered 20 percent of the total need.291 A documentary focusing on the individual case of a 13-year-old girl demonstrates the massive disruption in the lives of these children, as well as the long and uncertain recovery waiting for them in the future.292 Additional stories do the same.293
Journalists
Between 171 and 291 journalists and media workers have been killed since the beginning of the war.294 These attacks on journalists have drawn a significant amount of media attention.295 According to a Brown University research project, the number of media workers killed in Gaza is unprecedented compared to past wars.296 The lower end of these figures represents over 10% of the total journalists and media workers in the Strip.297 A senior member of the Committee to Protect Journalists described the situation as “unprecedented” already in late October 2023, when 20 Palestinian journalists had been killed.298 In November 2024, the UN Secretary General stated that journalists were killed “at a level unseen in any conflict in modern times”.299 The Committee to Protect Journalists stated that there was a pattern of Israeli military behavior against journalists in Gaza: they first received threats, and their family members were subsequently killed.300 The journalist Anas Al-Sharif, for example, said that he received multiple calls from IDF officers who demanded that he stop his coverage and leave North Gaza, as well as voice messages that disclosed his location.301 There were many similar cases.302 In December 2024, Reporters Without Borders described Israel’s killing of reporters in Gaza as an “unprecedented bloodbath” in its annual report.303 By January 2025, it found that 41 of the killed journalists were working at the time of their deaths.304 As of June 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists found that at least 19 journalists and media workers were directly targeted.305
One al Jazeera journalist was detained, released, and targeted and killed a few months later.306 Over a 24-hour period in early July, Israel killed five journalists.307 An airstrike in late October 2024 killed four and injured others.308 Four journalists were killed in 48 hours in mid December 2024.309 Later that month the IDF shot up a vehicle with five journalists near a hospital, killing them.310 It subsequently referred to those journalists as “combat propaganda” terrorists.311 When the IDF killed three journalists in mid March 2025 it described each of them as a “terrorist under the cover of a journalist”.312 The journalist Hossam Shabat – who had drawn a lot of attention because of his reporting on the late 2024 operation in North Gaza (see Zoom In 3) – was killed a week later after receiving threats and being publicly targeted.313 According to an American journalist, Hamas conducted an internal audit that found that Shabat was not affiliated with Hamas.314
Some journalists were killed with their families, while other journalists lost their family members (some on multiple occasions).315 One was reportedly shot in the head by a drone in the courtyard of a hospital.316 Other journalists were injured.317 In one case that drew more attention, Fadi al-Wahidi, a journalist that was seriously injured and paralyzed did not receive permission to evacuate to a hospital outside the Strip from early October 2024 to early February 2025 despite requests by both UN experts and Reporters Without Borders.318
In early April, an IDF missile hit a cluster of journalist tents near the Nasser hospital, killing two and injuring at least eight.319 The target of the strike was Hassan Eslaih,320 one of the main sources of videos coming out of Gaza with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, who was injured in this incident.321 A few weeks later, Israel assassinated Eslaih in Nasser hospital, where he was receiving treatment.322 Israel claimed that Eslaih was associated with Hamas,323 a claim rejected by many voices from Gaza as well as Eslaih himself.324 In an interview Eslaih acknowledged that Israel could attack him again and stated that he was not fighting but working as a journalist.325 In mid-April, Israel killed the photojournalist Fatma Hassouna alongside seven to ten family members. Hassouna’s death received more attention than usual because she was the subject of a new documentary film that would be screened in the Cannes Film Festival in May that was announced the day before she was killed.326 In one day in mid May 2025 Israel reportedly killed five journalists.327 Four others were killed in a strike in early June.328 In June 2025 another injured journalist who had lost an eye and leg was killed in his home.329
The IDF was accused of targeting journalists and their families from early on in the war, including by outlets such as the Washington Post and the Guardian.330 An IDF spokesperson went so far as to say that there was “no difference” between working for a media outlet affiliated with Hamas and belonging to Hamas’ armed wing – contradicting the standard interpretations of laws of war and eliciting criticism from media outlets who suggested that Israel was attempting to conceal the realities in Gaza.331 In August 2024, the killing of journalists during the current war has led over a hundred journalists (4 of which won a Pulitzer Prize), 20 news outlets and 7 press freedom organizations to write an open letter to Antony Blinken urging a stop to weapon transfers to Israel.332 For context, the IDF has killed at least 20 journalists in the 22 years preceding the current war. Despite numerous probes of the IDF into these cases, no one has ever been charged or held responsible for these deaths.333 A further investigation found a pattern of the IDF attacking Gazan journalists operating drones, even when there were no IDF forces or active fighting nearby.334
The killing of journalists and their family members,335 the threats they have received, and the detention of journalists (in December 2024 Israel was the country with the third highest number of detained journalists, 41)336 reduced the amount of information coming out of Gaza both directly and indirectly through a chilling effect that discourages other journalists from speaking up (on this, see also the Media and Propaganda section below). Other journalists left the Gaza Strip for medical reasons, further reducing the information coming out of the Strip.337
Healthcare workers
Over 1,580 health workers have been killed.338 By June 2024, 55 specialist doctors (4% of the total in Gaza) were killed,339 with more killed subsequently.340 More general physicians were killed.341 Many health workers lost their family members.342 In mid-late May 2025, at least 22 healthcare workers were killed over ten days, often with their entire families at home.343 In one case that drew more attention in late May, Dr. Alaa al-Najjar left her ten children at home with her husband, also a doctor. An IDF airstrike on their house killed nine of her children, badly burning most, and injured her husband, who died later of his wounds.344 Other doctors were reportedly deliberately targeted, including in their homes in what may have been part of a stated policy of “war against Hamas’ civilian government” in late May 2025.345 In October 2024, Doctors Without Borders issued a statement in which they expressed that they were “outraged by the repeated killings of our staff in Gaza”,346 indicating that this occurred on multiple occasions. Eleven of their staff members were killed as of writing.347
Israel’s attacks on hospitals have killed hundreds of Palestinians, many of whom were patients. By late June 2025, for example, Israel attacked the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital complex at least 13 times, reportedly killing 22 Palestinians.348 More have died due to lack of supplies349 or forced evacuations, including four premature babies in intensive care after the IDF forced the nurse taking care of them to leave the hospital. The babies were left in their beds and later found during the ceasefire in late November in a state of decomposition as no one had been able to care for them.350
Other groups
As of July 2025, at least 479 aid workers have been killed.351 The number of humanitarian workers killed in the first three months of the war exceeded the deadliest year ever recorded for aid workers globally and almost three times the death toll recorded for any single conflict in a year.352 By early September 2024, over 75% (284 of 378) of aid workers killed worldwide since October 7, 2023 were killed in Gaza or the West Bank.353 The death toll of humanitarian workers made 2024 the “deadliest on record” in this regard.354
By the end of June 2024, at least 195 UN staff members had been killed, alongside at least 172 of their dependents.355 The number of UN staff members increased to 326 by July 2025.356 On some occasions, the IDF attacked UN or NGO buildings.357 More than 100 university professors, including several leading Palestinian academics and three past or current university presidents, were also killed.358 As of May 2024, more than 243 athletes (of which 161 are footballers) have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank.359 By June 2025, 785 athletes and sports officials were killed, of which 438 were registered footballers.360
Rules of engagement, massacres and examples
Rules of engagement (ground forces)
For the IDF and the vast majority of Israeli officials, Palestinian lives are incredibly cheap. One reservist pointed out that Palestinian lives are worth less than the lives of the thousands of dogs roaming the Gaza Strip since soldiers cannot shoot dogs unless the dog is actively biting the soldier while there are no real reservations against shooting Palestinians.361 Already before the current war, the rules of engagement around the Gaza Strip since 2018 – in the context of the Palestinian Marches of Return – were hidden from the public. An Israeli journalist later revealed that they permitted the use of lethal force even in cases of non-imminent danger or in cases where it is impossible to identify a person who can be identified as an imminent danger to IDF forces.362
A senior official in Israel’s security apparatus as well as IDF officers pointed out that there were no fixed rules of engagement and that different commanders developed their own rules in the field.363 One IDF reserve officer stated that “parts of Gaza are ex-territory… for some commanders, in junior ranks, the laws of the IDF and international law do not exist… the senior command is unaware of this or simply doesn’t seem to care”.364 By June 2025 one reservist noted that “Gaza doesn’t interest anyone anymore… it has become a place with its own rules. The loss of human life is nothing, not even ‘an unfortunate incident’ as they [IDF] used to say”.365 This reality had parallels in the destruction the IDF wrought in the Gaza Strip. Soldiers reported wanton destruction of buildings without any clear purpose.366 Others reported wanton torching of Palestinian houses without any military value as well as commands to do so (for more on the destruction see the Ethnic Cleansing section).367
During the war, based on sources inside the IDF, an investigative report has pointed out that dead Palestinians are defined as “[Hamas] terrorists” based not on what they did but on where they were killed.368 Other reports found similar evidence.369 Palestinians who were killed in an area near IDF troops, “the combat zone”, were often de facto shot on sight even if unarmed.370 Soldier testimonies suggest the same.371 A considerable number of these people were likely looking for food and other supplies after months of fighting.372 Already in December 2023 Israeli journalists received indication from troops on the ground that “anyone walking on two legs [in Gaza] and is not a soldier – is [shot] dead”.373 An officer stated on radio that any person walking in North Gaza is shot.374 There is evidence of an officer ordering his troops to fire at people raising their hands while holding a white flag.375 The said officer was subsequently promoted.376 Other soldiers claimed they fired out of boredom, and described that they were authorized to fire at will, including at civilians (“it is permissible to shoot everyone, [including] a young girl, an old woman”).377 As a result of these lenient rules of engagement, during the ceasefire in January 2025 the IDF mistakenly shot and killed an Israeli civilian contractor who had been working for Israel.378
One division commander – i.e. a senior officer – told his subordinates that “there are no innocents in Gaza” – not as his personal opinion but as an operational perspective.379 A sniper stated in an interview that people of military age were shot upon sight within an invisible line they did not know of, even when unarmed and when trying to retrieve the corpses of other Palestinians who had been shot dead. Shooting women and children was “under discussion with command”.380 Visual evidence has corroborated his statements.381
These “broad and permissive” rules of engagement remained the norm even a year into the war.382 Therefore for example the commander of Golani’s reconnaissance unit was filmed telling his soldiers that “Everyone you meet is an enemy. You recognize a person, open fire, eliminate them and move on”.383 In other cases, the rules of engagement were more limited, for example not shooting at people carrying white flags, women or children.384 One soldier stated that the IDF fire was restricted in some areas, but “special permissions” to fire were granted easily through a simple formal process. He added that the current war differed from the past in that no rules of engagement were passed from the division command to the brigade command (and from there further down to the troops on the ground).385 These findings were re-affirmed by the testimonies of several other anonymous soldiers, one of whom stated that there was no change to the rules of engagement after Israeli forces shot and killed 3 Israeli hostages who fled their captors. Others stated that the IDF shot civilians who were trying to collect food, or that soldiers shot a Palestinian family in the area.386 On a separate occasion, IDF soldiers described a holiday event in which the entire battalion shot together in a general direction but without a clear target in what was presented as a fun event.387
Some IDF soldiers expressed serious doubts regarding the number of Hamas “terrorists” killed by the IDF, and believed that the actual number of Palestinian deaths was higher than reported – as even in a small area one or two Palestinian civilians on average were being killed every day.388 In one case, an officer in one of the divisions in Gaza recounted how the IDF spokesperson claimed his division killed over 200 terrorists. The officer pointed out that according to procedure, every corpse is to be photographed and sent to military intelligence. Of the 200 people killed, only 10 were verified as Hamas members.389 In a different case, a battalion served in Gaza for three months in which 90 Palestinians were killed in the area. Only one was suspected to be armed but his corpse was never checked. The IDF spokesperson reportedly claimed that the battalion killed 90 “terrorists”.390 These low ratios are another indicator to the massive firepower directed at Palestinians.
Visual evidence and testimonials outside the IDF confirm the above. A video reveals how starving Gazans who rushed to collect airdropped aid were shot at by IDF soldiers, with at least one of them shot dead.391 One video shows an Israeli drone dropping a bomb on a wounded, apparently unarmed, Palestinian, while another shows a drone filming a wounded man from above as what appears to be a missile hits him.392 There are several filmed cases of Palestinians walking along the coast and getting shot.393 The UNICEF spokesperson stated that as he was attempting to deliver aid, tanks came and shot up two nearby fishermen, adding that this was not a unique event in Gaza.394 A UN official that traveled inside Gaza filmed two people walking as fire was opened on them from behind, injuring at least one. The official reported that they witnessed a woman shot in the back of the head, and that a young man who tried to retrieve her was shot as well.395
A series of reports focused on the Netzarim Corridor bisecting the Gaza Strip that became a “kill zone”, in the words of the senior commander responsible for the area. Any person entering the range of Israeli snipers was shot dead.396 In one case, a Gazan was identified in range, so for a minute or two IDF troops fired at him, and then at his corpse, dozens of bullets. The troops then approached the corpse and discovered it was an unarmed teenager, maybe 16 years old, who was soon found not to be affiliated with Hamas. The battalion commander defined him as a terrorist, and after one soldier protested, added that “anyone crossing the line is a terrorist. No exceptions, [there are] no civilians. Everyone is a terrorist”.397 In a different episode in the area, four unarmed Palestinians were shot at by tanks and machine guns (“hundreds of bullets”). Three were killed and a bulldozer soon buried them in the sand.398 In a different case, an adult and two children crossed the line and were identified by the IDF troops. Although they were clearly not a threat, one soldier recounted how an attack helicopter fired a missile at the Palestinians, killing them immediately.399 One reservist noted that when they identified and detained five Palestinian civilians who attempted to cross the Corridor, the IDF interrogator who questioned the Palestinians pointed out that the reservist was new to the area because he was still bringing detainees for interrogation (and not simply shooting them).400 Few of these events drew broader attention. In October 2024, for example, Palestinian civilians attempted to move from the southern Gaza Strip back to their homes in the north. Israeli soldiers shot and hit them, including firing at them a missile from a drone, until they turned back.401 At least 8 people, including children, were killed, with dozens injured.402 A long investigative piece in December 2024 described the reality on the ground from the perspective of IDF troops in that area.403 There were difficulties moving between other areas of the Strip as well. A video shows civilians who tried to move south from northern Gaza to Gaza City that were shot.404
The high number of civilian fatalities is also the result of the IDF’s targeting practices: from early July to mid August 2024, for example, the IDF targeted at least 21 schools – locations where displaced Palestinian civilians took shelter.405 In at least some cases, the IDF did not warn civilians before the bombings.406 In one case that drew more attention in early July, a school in Khan Younis was attacked, killing at least 30 displaced people, including people who were playing soccer at the time.407 Attacks on schools continued, killing the displaced Palestinian families who had taken shelter in them.408 Between early October and early November 2024, the IDF attacked 64 schools and educational facilities (compared to 226 attacks for the first year of the war).409
In several cases, the IDF attacked areas where displaced people concentrated. Many of these attacks took place within Al-Mawasi, the small (some 14 square kilometers) so-called “humanitarian” or “safe” zone in the Gaza Strip.410 In early September 2024 Israel dropped 2,000 pound bombs in its attack within the humanitarian safe zone it had defined previously that targeted Muhammad Deif – the fifth attack on that area at that point.411 Over November 2024 the number of attacks in the area increased – at a time when estimates of the density in it reached some 30,000 people per square kilometer.412 In response, the IDF noted that these were “safer” areas (i.e. not exactly safe) but acknowledged its attacks in them.413 Visual evidence provides further evidence for these attacks and their impact.414
According to IDF soldiers and officers, during May and June 2025 the IDF regularly shot at people who headed towards aid distribution sites before they were opened or after they were closed for the day (discussed in detail in the Causing the Deaths of Civilian Populations chapter).415 One soldier described they treated the Gazans seeking aid as an attacking enemy force, using heavy machine guns, grenade launchers and mortars resulting in “a killing field”. After a week or two the use of firing tank shells at the aid seekers became common. An officer recounted that the one division commander decided to shoot at Palestinians who were looting UN trucks for their personal needs (the UN accepted this form of looting as legitimate because of the circumstances).416
Massacres and examples
There are many thousands of examples from Gaza that illustrate the harm to civilians that resulted from IDF policy. Many thousands of these, according to Airwars, are airstrikes and bombings.417 These bombings caused not only most casualties but also particularly gruesome results.418 On many occasions, identifying the victims was difficult.419 Many Palestinians were trapped under the rubble.420 In some cases, Palestinians who were injured were initially mistaken for dead.421
One specific case that received more public attention was that of 19-year old Shaban al Dalu who was filmed burning alive in the remains of his tent after the IDF bombed the area near the hospital in October 2024. Al Dalu had been injured previously and appeared to have an IV line connected to his arm as he was burning.422 The area where he was sheltering was hit five times in the previous seven months.423 Many other Palestinians – including children – burned to death as a result of airstrikes.424 Whole families were buried under the rubble. The young adult Hosam Al-Khalidi, for example, filmed himself under the rubble experiencing the deaths of his family members in late October 2023. He lost a total of eight family members.425 In another case, Israel attacked an UNRWA medical clinic which was used as a shelter for displaced families, killing at least 22 Palestinians.426 In other cases uninvolved Palestinians were targeted from the air. In late May 2025, for example, Mohammad al-Farra, a man with special needs, was killed while being recorded despite visibly limping.427
In mid-March 2025 Israel attacked by surprise after midnight by a widespread bombing of the Gaza Strip, reportedly killing 409 people including 173 children and 88 women (the total number was accepted by Israeli media, who did not make further distinctions).428 One Palestinian who experienced the attacks described the many body pieces that he and his neighbors found in the street which were not picked up by ambulances at the scene as those were full of the wounded.429 An Australian medic present stated that it “was just mostly women and children burned head to toe, limbs missing, heads missing”.430 One international doctor performed 15 operations in that night, while another said she “cannot process or comprehend the scale of mass killing and massacre of families in their sleep” that she saw.431 Over the next few days many videos and stories from Gaza emerged to show the results of this attack and the ones that followed, often focusing on the deaths of children and their families.432 This attack heralded a stage of the war with “new and more aggressive tactics”.433 A large percentage of the fatalities in this attack and in subsequent weeks were of women and children.434 This series of attacks included video evidence of attacks on soft targets such as tents435 and a flour distribution point.436 In a few weeks Israeli strikes had hit refugee tents in supposedly safe areas (Israel stopped designating safe zones on its maps in January 2025) at least 23 times, and in at least 36 documented strikes, all casualties were women and children.437 Some IDF attacks in the supposedly safe zone were not documented.438 Sources from within the IDF noted that it attacked targets without examining how many Palestinians are expected to be in the target building or how many civilians were killed in each airstrike.439 In one school that was attacked, for example, the number of dead civilians was three times higher than the number of people who were supposed to be in it according to the IDF’s intelligence.440 In the months after the March 18 attack most targets were low ranking militants in Hamas or Islamic Jihad who did not even have a rank. Moreover, many attacks were approved despite the uncertainty that they would hit any military target.441 In others, collateral damage was unnecessarily high. In one attack in Gaza in early July 2025, a Hamas militant was targeted after he sat at a table at a café, killing at least 26 and up to 40 people including him.442 Notably, the number of Hamas attacks on the IDF was low at first – according to Israel Katz, Israel’s Minister of Defense, IDF troops came under fire only once in the first three weeks after March 18.443
Despite the large number of casualties in air-based attacks throughout the war, attention and reporting often focused on ground-level encounters. In one case that drew much international attention, a car with six civilians was attacked, killing four. A 15 year old girl called the Palestinian Red Crescent from the car but was apparently killed during the conversation. When the Palestinian Red Cresent called back, her cousin Hind Rajab, a six year old girl, answered, terrified and surrounded by her dead family members, and stayed on the line for three hours. The Palestinian Red Crescent sent two paramedics to retrieve her, informing the IDF of their movement and receiving permission to proceed according to an agreed upon route. All contact with Hind and the paramedics was lost. Twelve days later, the decomposing corpses of the girls and their family members were found in the car, while the paramedics had been killed nearby when an IDF tank destroyed their ambulance about 50 meters away from the car that were trying to reach.444 Although the IDF claimed that its troops were not in the vicinity of the car, subsequent investigations found this claim did not correspond to the available evidence, some of which was supplied by the IDF itself.445 According to one forensic analysis, the tank that shot at the car was around 20 meters away from it.446 Hind’s father was killed in an Israeli attack several months later.447
Reports have “documented dozens of cases of field executions carried out by the Israeli army”.448 There appears to be a concentration of these in December 2023, particularly in Jabalia. In one well-investigated case from December 2023, an Israeli sniper killed a boy from the Abu Saleh family who ventured outside a shelter to see what remained after the area was bulldozed. His family found his body and prepared him for burial. Upon their return to the school all six family members – who were holding a white flag – were shot by Israeli forces. Their corpses were bulldozed into a garbage pile where they were discovered later.449 Also in December, IDF troops entered a Gaza apartment building full of civilians and reportedly executed the men, killing at least 11 (or 19).450 A third case from December had Israeli troops opening fire at people within a house, killing five immediately, and apparently executing the injured later.451 In a fourth case from December, according to a testimony of a Palestinian doctor, the IDF raided a school and executed an injured man next to her and shot (and likely killed) a group of women who were attempting to evacuate.452 Also in Jabalia in December 2023, an IDF soldier raided an older Palestinian’s couple home, killing their daughter and the husband’s brother. The wife was shot twice, resulting in long-lasting injuries.453 In yet another case from December 2023, IDF troops entered a family home in northern Khan Younis and killed the two parents in front of their children (aged 11, 9 and 5; the youngest, with cerebral palsy, lost his eye to a grenade the soldiers threw).454
There are many cases of IDF troops running over live and dead Gazans with heavy vehicles.455 A detained Gazan had his hands zip-tied before driven over by an Israeli tank, potentially while he was still alive. An image of his mutilated corpse was shared on an Israeli telegram channel with a post stating that “You are going to love this!!!”.456 In one case the AlJamal family were attacked at their home in Shujaiya with grenades and gunfire despite waving a white flag. The grandmother Safiya, who attempted to protect her family by standing in front of them, was seriously injured. Hours later, IDF troops allowed her son Muhanad to evacuate her, taking them in a tank blindfolded and handcuffed, while hurling abuse at them both. Muhanad recounted that in the middle of the way they stopped, used him as a human shield for a while, then took Safiya out of the tank as well and reversed over her about one meter away from him.457 In a different case, a man recounted witnessing an Israeli bulldozer running over his sister’s head in front of him.458 A Palestinian doctor saw an Israeli bulldozer drive over three Palestinians.459 A doctor said he found the bodies of four former patients crushed by a bulldozer near his hospital.460 Rajaa Hamdouna described how a tank ran over her husband and two children apparently inside their tent. The three were killed, while she was run over but somehow survived and was able to crawl away with her remaining two children.461
There is evidence for these practices from the Israeli side as well. One IDF bulldozer operator who was deployed to Gaza later committed suicide; his co-driver said that they had driven over hundreds of “terrorists” both alive and dead.462 A friend of an IDF soldier who was killed in action eulogized him by recounting that the dead soldier had tried to count how many Palestinians he killed – but eventually stopped including the ones he drove over because “he was tired of cleaning arms and legs [i.e. of people he ran over] from the tank’s tracks”.463 A human rights organization documented other occasions in which Israeli soldiers have deliberately driven over dozens of Palestinian civilians while they were alive.464
There are many other cases of the killing of helpless or surrendering Gazans. For example, one Gazan father recounted how he coordinated safe passage from his home and left with his family holding white flags. The IDF shot his son, and when his wife and three daughters ran to help him, they were shot and killed as well – some of the fire reportedly came from quadcopters. The IDF then called him, and did not allow ambulances to retrieve his family members.465 A different family carrying white flags were shot at, killing the father and a brother.466 Another video shows evidence of a sniper killing the son of a man carrying a white flag who was walking with him.467 A Gazan captured, used as a human shield and detained said he was shot at while waving a white flag.468 In a different case, the IDF sent a handcuffed prisoner to deliver a message to evacuate a hospital in Khan Younis, then shot him as he tried to walk outside the gate in front of his mother.469 The IDF subsequently bombed the hospital.470 In another case, an IDF soldier shot and killed Najeeb Salem Sadeq, a Palestinian man with special needs, in front of his mother in a Gaza hospital after the man shouted in fear and did not keep quiet as the soldier commanded.471 Muhammed Bhar, a man with Down’s syndrome was attacked by an IDF dog and left to die. His decomposed corpse was found a week later.472 A different soldier killed an unarmed 73-year old Palestinian who signaled to him not to shoot. In response, the soldier’s commander said “He signaled ‘no no [with his hands]’ and you took him down? Excellent”.473 When the IDF evacuated a Gazan family from their building, they forced them to leave behind their 94-year-old grandmother Naifa Rizq al-Sawada, suffering from Alzheimer’s and unable to walk or speak. The building was burned and her charred remains were reportedly found on her bed.474 Two Israeli mothers recounted that their soldier sons told them about shooting old Palestinian women: one was killed in her wheelchair while another was shot in her bed.475 In other cases, Gazans were killed while restrained with their hands zip-tied.476 In one case from early July 2024, several Gazan detainees were released, and three were reportedly killed by Israeli forces shortly afterwards, when their hands were still zip-tied.477 A similar case occurred in early November 2024 when four Gazan detainees were released, only to be used as human shields before three were reportedly shot dead.478
There is visual evidence of IDF soldiers purposefully killing civilians.479 In one case, a video filmed from an IDF drone shows the IDF killing four clearly unarmed Palestinians from afar as they walked in daylight amidst the rubble in Khan Younis.480 An Israeli soldier shared a video showing the killing of five other Palestinians walking in the rubble in North Gaza.481 A different video showed IDF soldiers shooting two unarmed Palestinian men before burying them under the rubble with a bulldozer.482 A different video shows an airstrike on a Palestinian walking amidst the rubble in broad daylight in an unthreatening manner.483 Another video shows an airstrike on two Palestinians carrying something as they walk in broad daylight in an unthreatening manner.484 More videos show similar situations.485
Other attacks appear to have specifically targeted the family members of prominent Palestinian figures. Thus, for example, many members of the family and extended family of professor Refaat al-Areer, a renowned poet whose work and activism drew much attention who was killed earlier in the war, were killed in attacks.486 Similarly, at least 19 close family members of Ismail Haniyeh, including small children, were killed in Israeli attacks (dozens of more distant relatives were killed as well).487
Investigated massacres
The high number of mass casualty events and the difficulty to obtain clear information out of Gaza have led to a low ratio of investigated cases to the overall number of massacres. The partial exception here is Airwars, which as of writing investigated 1,084 of over 11,650 cases they have been tracking over 21 months. Evidence suggests that on many occasions the IDF killed civilians with little oversight, accountability, or consequences. As of late December 2024, for example, only two IDF officers are known to have been fired for their role in the air campaign, after they oversaw a drone strike that killed several foreign aid workers back in April 2024.488 There have been a few attempts to examine cases in academic writing as well.489
Amnesty International investigated three massacres that killed a total of 44 civilians (of whom 32 were children) in April 2024. The organization collected photo and video evidence and interviewed locals. Their findings revealed no indication of military targets in or around the attacked areas. Instead, the strikes killed children playing outdoors and people sleeping in their homes.490 A different investigation, by Airwars, examined hundreds of video clips released by the IDF during the first month of the war in which the IDF stated it was targeting militant groups in Gaza. The videos show bombs hitting their targets, suggesting that the IDF used the videos to portray its bombing campaign as precise towards supposedly military targets. Airwars matched 17 of these strikes to specific locations and found that they killed 448 civilians (including 204 children and 123 women).491
In February 2024, Amnesty International closely investigated four attacks that killed at least 95 civilians. All took place in the southern governate, which was supposed to be safe at the time. Amnesty found no indication that the buildings were legitimate military objectives or that occupants were military targets.492 In April, Human Rights Watch investigated an IDF airstrike that consisted of four aerial munitions that hit a residential building within 10 seconds, without warning. The attack killed at least 106 civilians, including 54 children (“among the deadliest single incidents for civilians” in the war). The identities of all civilians have been confirmed. The NGO found no evidence for a military target in the vicinity of the building during the attack. Israeli authorities provided no justification for the strike.493
The German publication Der Spiegel conducted for several months an investigation into an attack on a residential building that killed at least 129 people, identifying 20 more than Airwars and 24 more than the UN. Der Spiegel was unable to find out why the building was targeted, but suggested that the attack might have been guided by artificial intelligence or alternatively, intended as a “power target” meant to increase the pressure on the civilian population.494
The NGO Euro-Med Monitor examined a two-day massacre from November 2023, which resulted in the deaths of around 70 civilians (61 were verified), the injury of about 100, and the displacement of about 900 individuals. There was also destruction of private property, while corpses of people from earlier strikes were repeatedly bulldozed. The investigation “found no evidence of any military targets in the targeted area at the time of the attack or before it”, and the NGO concluded that the attack constituted both a war crime and a crime against humanity.495 Euro-Med Monitor also investigated an attack on the Juha family home in early December 2023, which killed about 90 civilians including 71 women and children. The investigation found no justifiable military purpose in the building and Israel provided no visual evidence to justify its attack.496
NPR investigated one of the deadliest attacks of the war – the strike on the Abu Naser family building in Beit Lahia in October 2024 as part of the IDF operation in North Gaza (covered in the Zoom in 3 section below), which killed 132 members of the family as well as two others. More than 40 people were wounded. More than 40 percent of the dead were children.497 The attack was in response to the IDF claiming to see a spotter on the building’s roof (it did not share any footage). Gaza rescue services could not help because they were blocked by an IDF siege.498 Airwars was able to identify at least 126 individuals killed in the strike, and estimated that between 129 and 254 civilians were killed in the strike based on a large amount of evidence.499
One of the most controversial events of the war has been the al-Ahli hospital explosion from mid-October 2023 which resulted in hundreds of casualties. Both sides appear to have used misinformation to blame the explosion on the other, both withheld important evidence and avoided providing clear evidence. While the public debates raged, early investigations by most observers tended to identify the source of the explosion as a Palestinian rocket or pointed out that the evidence was inconclusive.500 The only analyses that surfaced more than a couple of weeks after the attack – which did not examine it as a current event – did not find evidence supporting the conclusion that a Palestinian rocket caused the explosion and further debunked the IDF version.501
Israel has not cooperated with most external investigations. In July 2024, an Israeli MK proposed a bill aimed at shielding Israelis from ICC jurisdiction by prohibiting collaboration with the ICC and actively obstructing its actions. The bill is currently under discussion.502
Attacking aid workers and aid seekers
Cases in which the IDF kills civilians rarely make the news in Israel and the United States.503 When such cases are reported, coverage is often limited to brief mentions of the number of dead, sometimes aggregated over a day. An exception occurred in early April 2024, when the IDF killed seven workers of the international NGO World Central Kitchen (all international citizens) within their clearly marked vehicles operating in full coordination with the IDF.504 An IDF source stated that a drone targeted the convoy of three vehicles under a belief that a Hamas member might be present. A later investigation suggested this was uncertain, as the person merely appeared armed.505 After the first vehicle was bombed, some NGO workers evacuated to a second vehicle, immediately notifying the IDF. Despite this, the second vehicle was also bombed. The survivors then evacuated it to a third vehicle that was also bombed, killing them all.506 The geolocation of the bombed vehicles revealed that the distance between the first and third bombing was 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles), indicating that the event involved multiple targeting decisions over time.507
Israel attacked aid workers on other occasions as well. Later in April 2024, a UNICEF truck delivering humanitarian aid was hit by IDF fire (directed at nearby civilians) while a water truck operated by a Canadian NGO was bombed in a targeted attack.508 The first international UN worker was killed in May when an Israeli tank fired on his vehicle, which was marked as a UN vehicle.509 By mid May 2024, Human Rights Monitor found at least eight Israeli strikes on aid workers’ convoys and premises in Gaza since the beginning of the war, killing or injuring at least 31 aid workers and those with them.510
An investigative report found that back in January 2024, five Palestinian technicians were on their way to fix a cellular operator unit in Khan Younis with prior coordination with the IDF. They were fired upon by an Israeli tank in the area, killing two in their vehicle. The report found that the IDF spokesperson’s version of events was likely false.511 Aid workers continued to be killed in subsequent months. In November 2024, for example, one Save the Children worker was killed,512 while another vehicle of the World Central Kitchen was attacked three times, killing three employees in it (compared to the April attack on the organization global outrage was lesser this time because the workers were Palestinians).513 Israel claimed that its target was a WCK employee who participated in the Oct. 7 attack, but did not provide evidence.514 In response to the World Central Kitchen attack the organization paused its Gaza work.515 Several days later, the World Central Kitchen fired dozens of its Palestinian workers after Israel claimed that at least 62 were linked to militant groups. The World Central Kitchen fired those individuals without receiving proof or evidence, or even knowing the basis for Israel’s decision to flag them.516 UN vehicles were attacked on other occasions as well even after coordinating their movements with the IDF.517 In mid March 2025 one UN staffer was killed and five injured after an explosion at two UN guesthouses in Deir al Balah (Israel denied responsibility and reportedly launched in investigation in response).518 Partially in response, the UN decided to reduce its footprint in the Gaza Strip, withdrawing about a third of its international workers in Gaza.519 At about the same time, Israel also hit a Red Cross building in Gaza.520 The major incident in which the IDF killed 15 paramedics and first responders near Rafah in late March 2025 is described in detail in the Zoom-In 4 section. In early June 2025 Israel attacked the family home of a UNDP (UN Development) worker, killing him together with seven of his family members and reportedly more than 36 members of his extended family.521
Israel also attacked Palestinians seeking aid. In one particularly notable event in late February 2024, known as the “flour massacre”, at least 115 civilians were killed and over 700 were injured as they attempted to get food from a convoy of lorries delivering humanitarian aid.522 Palestinians claimed that the IDF shot at them,523 while the IDF claimed that casualties resulted primarily from overcrowding and the general mayhem during which the lorries ran over the civilians.524 In either case, the IDF, as an occupying power, is obligated under international humanitarian law to ensure the food and medical supplies of the population.525 UN experts and human rights organizations,526 as well as the media,527 largely confirmed the Palestinian account. The IDF failed to substantiate its version of the story, partially because it did not provide evidence to support its claims, presenting a video supposedly showing the event that was clearly edited several times and refusing to release the full video. Eyewitness testimonials from Gazans who survived the massacre further corroborated the claims of targeted gunfire. One IDF soldier claimed his friend laughed about this event and boasted about the number of “terrorists” he killed.528 The director of the al-Awda hospital reported that the vast majority of injuries treated after the event (142 out of 176) were gunshot wounds.529 A CNN investigation found inconsistencies with, and cast further doubts on the IDF’s version, and leaned towards accepting the Palestinian version.530 An investigation of a sample of 200 dead and injured victims found that they were hit by bullets of the diameter used by IDF troops.531 A subsequent report by the UN Committee of Human Rights concluded that the IDF was likely responsible for the deaths of civilians by firing at them.532 According to UN experts as well as online sources and videos, Palestinians seeking food were shot at on many occasions on the days before and after the “flour massacre”.533 Israel’s National Security Minister nonetheless praised the IDF soldiers for their conduct during the event.534 In the context of international law and Israel’s aforementioned obligations it is important to remember that Israel and the United States were the only two countries who had voted against declaring food as a human right in the United Nations in 2021.535
There are many other cases in which Israel attacked Palestinians waiting for aid.536 A report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor found that between mid-January and late March 2024, Israel killed a total of 563 Palestinians and injured 1,523, all of whom were either waiting for aid, present in or around distribution centers, or were responsible for organizing, protecting and distributing aid.537
Attacks on people who were queuing to receive aid continued in subsequent months.538 When the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating in the Gaza Strip in May and June 2025 (described in the chapter on Causing the Deaths of Civilian Populations) the number of aid seekers who were shot increased substantially and they were targeted with heavy weapons such as mortars and tank shells.539 In a month, 549 Palestinians were killed and 4,066 were injured near aid distribution sites.540
Testimonies by international health workers volunteering in Gaza
Trigger warning: this section includes more graphic descriptions than the rest of this document.
Beginning a few months after the onset of the war, international medical staff – often doctors and nurses – provided an important series of testimonies from the Gaza Strip in lieu of international journalists (see media section). These health workers tended to focus on their own experiences.
The healthcare workers often framed their experience in Gaza in strong words, sometimes comparing it to their earlier experiences in warzones and disasters. Two American surgeons, Mark Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa, wrote that “as humanitarian surgeons we thought we had seen all manner of cruelty in the world, but neither one of us has ever experienced anything like what we found when we arrived in Gaza.”541 They described what they saw as “unspeakable” and “horrors [that] defy description”, comparing it to what the first weeks of a zombie apocalypse would look and smell like. Among others, they mentioned a series of children, mostly preteens, who were shot in the head, allegedly by Israeli forces. They also met many healthcare staff who were detained and abused by Israeli forces.542 On a different occasion Perlmutter said “All of the disasters I’ve seen, combined, combined – 40 mission trips, 30 years, Ground Zero, earthquakes… all of that combined doesn’t equal the level of carnage that I saw against civilians in just my first week in Gaza”.543
Many others said similar things. British surgeon Nick Maynard who was in Gaza in January 2024 said that the situation at the Al-Aqsa hospital was “beyond any doubt the worst thing” he has seen in his career.544 Abdullah Ghali, an orthopedic surgery doctor who was in the southern Gaza Strip in April 2024, described his time there as “the most difficult experience I’ve ever had”, and recounted that he “spent around 48 hours working constantly without a break or sleep” because of the non-stop work.545 James Smith, a British doctor who was in Gaza between April and June 2024, said that he had never worked anywhere as violent, frightening and unstable as Gaza.546 Ana Jeelani, a British surgeon who was in Gaza twice (March and September 2024) pointed out that “the day after [the war] looks like a population that has no infrastructure, whose healthcare has been purposefully taken out, there’s no way of recovery from that”. Her room in one of the hospitals overlooked the morgue and she pointed out that every day for 30 days she “saw at least 10 to 15 funerals”.547 She also recounted how her security person “was in an airstrike, he woke up 48 hours later with a rat trying to eat his ankle because they thought it was dead, and his two friends were being eaten by dogs”.548 British doctor Javid Abdelmoneim spent two months in Gaza (June-August 2024) and discussed “mass casualty after mass casualty after mass casualty” among people living in a so-called safe zone, many of whom were healthcare workers and noted they ran out even of supplies such as basic painkillers.549 Amer Shoaib, a British military veteran and surgeon, noted “indiscriminate” violence against people of all demographics and believed he was deliberately targeted in an Israeli bomb.550 Adam Hamawy, a plastic surgeon from New Jersey with 20 years of experience in humanitarian relief, including in Iraq, recounted his experience in Gaza in May 2024: “I’ve seen combat in war zones… this is nothing like this… the amount of children that I’d seen is unprecedented… I’ve done more amputations and seen more traumatic amputations of children than I’ve seen during my entire career in the last two weeks… this is not like a war, this is just a complete and utter destruction”.551 He also noted the discrepancy between media reports of aid getting in and Israel taking care of civilians, and witnessing a completely different story on the ground, while American surgeon Zena Saleh noted that “we didn’t even have hand sanitizer or alcohol or soap most of the time”.552 Nizam Memode, a British surgeon who was in Gaza in August 2024, spoke about Israeli targeting of UN convoys and stated that “my biggest fear while I was there was being killed by the Israelis”.553 Samer Attar, another American surgeon who volunteered in northern Gaza, said in October 2024 that “most people died… some days the most you could do was just hold people’s hand and look them in the eye as you watched them die either because they were malnourished, they were starving, we had no blood to give them, every day felt like that. Every day in the North [Strip] felt like that.”554 Mohammed Mostafa, a British-Australian emergency medicine doctor who was in Gaza in March 2025 recounted to CNN that in the chaos during a mass casualty attack he was operating on a patient when he felt someone grab his ankle. Looking down, he saw a woman who was missing half her leg that begged him to help her. Since he was in the middle of the operation and had not assessed the woman yet he finished the operation and discovered the woman had bled out.555 Razan al-Nahhas, an American emergency physician, said that there was only one CT scanner left in northern Gaza, and because of the long wait times to receive imaging, some patients died while waiting for their images.556
Some healthcare workers described what they saw in Gaza as a genocide. In October 2024, American pediatrician Tanya Haj-Hassan asserted on live TV on CNN that “This is not a humanitarian crisis, Kate, and I’m going to say it very clearly for your viewers to hear: This is genocide” and that “Countries will have to reckon, media agencies will have to reckon with their major role in the genocide of an entire population and in the destruction of humanitarian law and rule of order”.557 In an UN event she added “spend just five minutes there and it will become painfully clear that Palestinians are being intentionally massacred, starved, and stripped of everything needed to sustain human life”.558 Another British doctor, Mohammad Tahir, stated in August 2024 that what he “witnessed was nothing short of an outright genocide”, and added in early 2025 that “Gaza is destroyed”.559 Heba al-Nashef, a Canadian midwife who was in al Awda hospital over June and July 2024, described what she experienced as a genocide.560 A group of 19 Canadian health workers who returned from Gaza described the war as a genocide as well in November 2024.561 British surgeon Victoria Rose described “systematically bombing a population indiscriminately” and “a systematic starving of the population and strangling the healthcare system” upon returning from Gaza in June 2025.562 British emergency physician James Smith described the situation as “beyond dystopian… this is the most horrific thing that most of us have ever witnessed or followed in our lifetimes… this is a live streamed genocide, there is no limit to the atrocities that Israel is committing against the Palestinian people”.563 British surgeon Tom Potokar said that “if Cambodia was the killing fields then Gaza is the slaughter house”.564
A common theme in the healthcare workers’ testimonies was the impact of the war on children.565 Many reported that the IDF has shot at children, causing “single bullet wounds to the head or chest” that killed some of them.566 American emergency medicine physician Mimi Syed noted that that during August 2024 she treated at least 18 children who were all shot with bullets in the head or chest,567 and that over the winter she saw eight children who died of hypothermia.568 The British surgeon Victoria Rose said that some 80% of those she treated in August 2024 were children under 16, and that all the injuries were related to explosions or burns. She had never seen anything like this.569 The bulk of her work, she stated, was to remove bits of shrapnel.570 In October 2024 she described the frustration felt by Palestinian doctors as the world was doing nothing to help them.571 In May 2025 she reiterated that 75% of those she operated on were children “tiny, underweight, malnourished”.572 Feroze Sidhwa also recounted that more than half the patients he took care of after the end of the ceasefire in March 2025 were children.573 The Greek surgeon Christos Georgalas who was in Gaza in April-May 2025 stated that this was “a war mainly against children”.574 In late June 2025 American Dr. Mark Brauner described treating “children, adolescents, teenagers” with “isolated gunshot wounds to the head, neck and center of the chest” which seemed like “execution-style… targeted types of injuries”.575
Many others discussed the children they saw and treated. American pediatrician Ahmad Yousaf pointed out in July 2024 that the hospitals were overwhelmed and called attention also to the mental and psychiatric state of the many children he had to take care of based on the horrors they experienced, the effects of which would linger for generations. He, too, said that “there is nothing like this [Gaza]… this is a killing box”, mentioned “children who would be carried in pieces by their loved ones”, and referred to the lack of supplies as “the hospital is empty of the supplies you need”.576 Asma Taha, an American pediatric nurse, stated that she saw babies starve to death every day.577 Thaer Ahmad, an emergency medicine physician, pointed out that “700 infants never saw their first birthday in Gaza over the last year”.578 British surgeon Nizam Memode described that after bombs went off “the drones would come down and pick off civilians’ children… it was a persistent targeting of civilians, day after day”.579 Tanya Haj-Hassan recounted story after story of children deaths and injuries in Gaza.580 Mimi Syed, who visited Gaza for the second time in December 2024, mentioned the severe malnourishment in children she observed, adding that “almost every child has necrotic or rotten teeth” and reported on widespread diarrhea and babies dying from hypothermia.581 She also stated that she saw 18 cases of gunshot wounds in children on her last trip to Gaza.582 The aforementioned Adam Hamawy who volunteered in Gaza in February 2025 pointed out that “you could see the malnutrition [among children] everywhere you look”.583 The British-Iraqi surgeon Mohamed Taher recounted a story in which he comforted a lonely child as he died on the hospital floor.584 US surgeon Samer Attar described how children died for lack of simple supplies such as blood transfusions.585 In May 2025 Feroze Sidhwa spoke at the UN Security Council, pointing out that children died not because their injuries were unsurvivable but because the healthcare system lacked blood, antibiotics and basic supplies, and added that he treated 13 cases of children shot in the head or chest in two weeks in Gaza.586
Another recurring theme was the impact of the war on their Gazan colleagues. Tanya Haj-Hassan described in August 2024 the “massacre after massacre” she experienced in Gaza and said she did not know a single healthcare worker in Gaza who did not lose several family members.587 Ben Thomson, a Canadian doctor who was in Gaza in March 2024 recounted the story of a Gazan doctor who was forced to strip naked and stand for two days, urinating and defecating where he stood. Only then was he allowed to treat his child patients while naked.588 The aforementioned Mark Perlmutter recounted the story of Tamir, an orthopedic nurse who was shot in the knee by an IDF soldier after refusing to stop operating on a wounded patient. He was then taken into custody and received no wound care for 45 days. After it was determined he was not involved with Hamas, he was released in Gaza after an IDF soldier hit his face with a rifle butt, destroying his eye. Tamir had to crawl for 3 kilometers until picked up by a passerby.589 Victoria Rose spoke about how her anesthetist was evacuated from his home so had to walk 22 kilometers to pitch a tent for his family then return to complete his 24 hour shift.590
The testimonies of several healthcare workers combined many of these themes. American doctor Tammy Abughnaim recounted how Palestinian doctors and nurses told her they were specifically targeted by Israel as they were pulled out of a line at a checkpoint, then detained and tortured by Israel for months before their release. She also noted that there were patients at the ICU that had to have maggots cleaned out of their mouths every day because of the lack of soap (that Israel was not allowing into Gaza). She estimated that 60-70% of the patients who made it to the hospitals were children, and asserted she saw wounds that indicated the deliberate targeting of children.591 Mohammed Tahir, a British surgeon stuck in southern Gaza during Israel’s offensive there, noted in May 2024 that he worked on 150 cases in 10 days and that they were receiving “People literally, their limbs and their bodies torn to shreds. Children with mutilated faces, kids whose limbs we’ve had to amputate because of the complexity of the injuries.”592 In October 2024, he noted that the hospital he was in was bombed, adding that “people are traumatized… they feel that there is no hope, no one is coming to help them, no one is coming to save them”.593 Monica Johnson, a Portland wound and care nurse who spent three weeks at the European hospital in Rafah in May 2024 recounted that she “helped a young boy in the OR who was apparently opening a can of tuna, this was reported to me, and he lost one hand, part of another, and his legs needed to be amputated”. The number of severe cases she saw in Gaza every day was comparable to what she saw over a year of work back home. Because of the lack of medical supplies, she added, “you just can’t keep these people alive”. As she was unable to leave for a while she recounted that she felt “tremendously guilty and tremendously afraid”.594 Khaled Dawas, a British-Palestinian surgeon who was in Gaza in April 2024, met a person who was detained while handcuffed and blindfolded for 50 days during which he was beaten by metal bars and suffered from multiple rib fractures on both sides as a result. He also noted the filthy conditions, “Everything is infected – every wound, every surface, every patient”.595 The midwife Heba Al-Nashef recounted that her first day in the Strip in early June 2024 coincided with the IDF’s operation in Nusseirat that freed four hostages and killed 274 Palestinians. That night, a woman who came to give birth recounted that during the operation her husband and five children were killed in front of her eyes. Australian surgeon Sanjay Adusumilli recounted “we would be doing these horrific surgeries where you’ve amputated legs and explore people’s abdomen and open their chests, yet they won’t have adequate analgesia to be able to cope with afterwards and they would be on simple Panadol. So it was heartbreaking to see them in agony”. He also pointed out that children’s deaths were very common.596
Some international healthcare workers were in hospitals or other locations that were attacked. In late March 2025, for example, the aforementioned Feroze Sidhwa was in al-Nasser hospital when Israel attacked a Hamas official who was receiving treatment in it – together with a 16 year old boy that Sidhwa had treated and three other patients.597 Tanya Haj-Hassan was in the floor below the attack at the same time.598 Several days earlier, she recounted the sense of “pure terror” as she woke up when bombs went off around her in the middle of the night. It took her 20 minutes to calm down.599
There have been a few attempts to bring the voices of the health workers together. In July 2024, 45 American physicians and nurses (including some of those cited above) wrote an open letter to US President Joe Biden, describing conditions in Gaza from their own perspective.600 They stated that “with marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both” and that “every single signatory” to the letter treated children who “suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them” – specifically that each of them treated on a daily basis pre-teen children who were shot in the head and chest. Their own observations led them to believe that the death toll was “many times higher” than what is reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health.
In early October 2024, a subsequent version of the letter was signed by 99 American medical professionals who returned from Gaza, having spent there a cumulative 254 weeks.601 They otherwise reiterated their statements from the previous letter, with stronger urgency and more examples, noting also that none of the doctors had seen any type of Palestinian militant activity in Gaza’s hospitals or other medical facilities. They estimated that the death toll was likely already greater than 118,908 (the official death toll was about 42,000 at the time).602 The author of the letter, Feroze Sidhwa, also surveyed a total of 65 professionals in a poll published by the New York Times.603 In the survey, 44 medical professionals saw multiple cases of preteen children shot in the head or chest in Gaza; 52 observed “nearly universal psychiatric distress in young children”; 25 saw babies who were born healthy return to hospitals and die of dehydration, starvation or infections; 64 observed that even the most basic medical necessities such as soap and gloves were usually unavailable.604 After online commentators doubted the testimonies, the New York Times clarified that they stood behind the poll.605 Sidhwa himself noted in a subsequent interview that “it’s misleading to call this an Israeli war, it’s a US-Israeli attack on Gaza”, adding that “We have normalized a situation in which it’s normal to kill doctors, it’s normal to kill nurses, it’s normal to bomb hospitals from the air, with tanks, with artillery, with drones, anything you like.”606 In response to the letter of American doctors, 117 Israeli medical workers signed their own letter against the war, supporting their American colleagues and speaking out against a culture of silence and fear of punishment.607
In November 2024, a group of 25 Canadian health workers who volunteered in Gaza – reportedly all the Canadian health workers who had volunteered in Gaza during the war – held a press conference in which they discussed their experiences stating that they were unified in their understanding of the situation. Members of the group spoke about the mass casualties in Gaza, the impact of the war on children, the lack of medical supplies, lack of food and water, and the poor humanitarian condition in and around the hospitals. The group called upon Canada to demand a ceasefire and condemn Israel.608 Another group of Canadian healthcare workers spoke out against the war in late May 2025, again sharing their experiences in a press conference. This time, the group also criticized the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, pointing to it as symbolizing the collapse of the humanitarian system. The group called for an arms embargo, sanctions on Netanyahu and his cabinet, and the recognition of Palestine as a state.609
Although Israel has alleged that Hamas regularly uses hospitals, the only international doctor I could find whose testimony referred to Hamas’ presence is the Kurdish doctor Baxtiyar Baram who was in two hospitals (al-Awda and Kamal Adwan) in Gaza over April-May 2024. Baram claimed Hamas exploited the hospitals for its own needs, treating its own people and refusing treatment to others. He also claimed that Hamas and Gazans “hate Kurds”.610 Other than the aforementioned letter of 99 medical professionals, Feroze Sidhwa said that he did not see Hamas using hospitals and rejected claims about Hamas tunnels under hospitals, stating instead that the IDF spokesperson was not telling the truth about those matters.611 Other doctors said similar things. UK surgeon Goher Rahbour said he saw “zero, absolutely zero” evidence of Hamas inside and around the hospital he was at in May-June 2025.612
Mass graves and anonymous dead
The number of Palestinian deaths has led to digging graves and mass graves everywhere, including in formerly built areas, parks and schools.613 Already in late October 2023 there were at least 10 mass graves.614 An NGO documented around 130 random mass graves of Palestinians across the Gaza Strip.615 Some corpses have been interred in improvised burials within built areas.616 Others appear to have been more organized. On several occasions since the beginning of the war, Israel returned to Gaza dozens of often unidentified corpses, which were then buried in mass graves. A partial list includes over 100 corpses of people reportedly detained in hospitals in November 2023,617 80 corpses in December 2023,618 100 corpses in January 2024,619 over 80 corpses in August 2024,620 and 88 corpses in September 2024.621 Some of the mass graves were later reopened and the human remains within them were reburied in a regular cemetery.622 In one case, over 30 Palestinian corpses were found in black plastic bags, blindfolded and handcuffed.623 Similar events were reported in al-Shifa hospital, according to several eyewitness accounts (see also Zoom-In 1 below).624 Few of these cases have even been covered in Israeli media.625
Additional decomposed corpses626 and skeletons remained on the streets for prolonged periods of time.627 Many of these have been eaten by stray animals according to video and written evidence from Israeli, Palestinian and international sources.628 One soldier had noted that Palestinian corpses were left to rot on the streets, but that before the arrival of humanitarian convoys, an IDF bulldozer would come in and bury the corpses under the rubble to prevent further images of decomposed corpses emerging from Gaza.629 On some occasions, Palestinians were not allowed to take or bury the corpses of their loved ones and were forced to leave them behind.630 During the second ceasefire in early 2025 human remains were retrieved from many locations,631 such as the Kamal Adwan hospital’s vicinity where dozens of corpses were found,632 Gaza City,633 the Netzarim corridor, where the IDF had killed hundreds of Palestinians,634 the major Al-Rashid highway,635 or Rafah, which was held by the IDF for months.636
In some cases, the weapons used, or the fires they cause, destroy most of the human body, leaving only pieces that can often be impossible to identify.637 In at least some occasions, Palestinians had to place in bags human remains that were often unidentifiable.638 In at least one case, the Al-Taba’een school attack in August 2024, these remains were counted in kilograms and families were given an bag of anonymous human remains to bury.639
Israeli public opinion and lack of accountability
The Israeli public has been uncritical towards these cases, with many also supporting the continuation of the war, at least until the summer of 2024. Subsequently, polling questions changed asking whether respondents would prefer reaching a ceasefire deal in exchange for the remaining hostages. In a January 2024 poll, two thirds of Israelis favored continuing the war in its current form of “intense fighting” (i.e. excessive bombardment and violence).640 In a poll from February, about three quarters of Israeli Jews supported extending of the military operation to Rafah.641 A poll from March-April found that only 4% of Israeli Jews believe the military campaign had gone too far.642 According to a March-April poll (published in August) Jewish Israelis thought people should not be allowed to post some types of content on social media such as expressing sympathy for civilians in Gaza (70%) or graphic violence in the war (76%).643 A poll from August 2024 found that 66.5 percent of Jewish Israelis thought that Israel could achieve more militarily in Gaza.644 A September poll found that 45 percent of Israeli Jews thought it was time to end the war (the most common reason was to return the hostages).645 The same poll also found that only 6 percent of Jewish Israelis thought that IDF’s moral conduct during the war was poor.646
An October 2024 poll found that Israeli Jews rated the IDF’s moral conduct during the fighting at 4.43 (of a maximum of 5).647 In a November poll, 63.5 percent of Jewish Israelis believed that a “terrorist” must be killed after neutralized, even if he was in a non-threatening state. In the case of rocket fire from Gaza on Israeli population, 55% believed that the IDF should fire heavily at Palestinian civilian populations to “burn into their consciousness the price of provocation”. And 49 percent agreed that the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields to check an area to avoid risking IDF soldiers is legitimate. The first two questions had been asked previously, and support for them increased significantly (by over 25%) in the past six years.648 The same poll also found that 60 percent of Jewish Israelis believed that the IDF’s ethical conduct prevents it from conducting its missions.649 A December 2024 poll found that 64% of Jewish Israelis thought that the IDF properly investigates or investigates too many cases in which soldiers may have acted against the law.650 By the end of 2024, only 10 Israelis openly refused to serve for moral reasons.651 The war became substantially less popular in early 2025, primarily in light of a potential hostage deal that would bring back the Israeli hostages and general war fatigue. In late February, for example, almost 70% of Jewish Israelis (73% of all Israelis) wanted to continue the hostage deal and put a final stop to the war.652 At the same time, life for most Israelis returned to normal. A March 2025 poll found that 70% of Jewish Israelis and 46% of Palestinian Israelis returned to their normal lives or close to it.653 By June 2025, despite the paucity of reporting in Israeli media on suffering in Gaza (discussed in the Media and Propaganda section), 64% of Israelis saw no need for more such reporting and a similar number believed that there were no innocent people in the Strip.654
After the inauguration of US President Donald Trump in January 2025 and his proposal to empty the Gaza Strip of Gazans, a series of polls found strong support among Israelis for these ideas. Two Israeli TV polls found that 72 and 69 percent of Israelis supported Trump’s plan.655 A Jerusalem Post poll from February found that 65 percent of Israelis supported “relocation”, with another 14 percent supporting the plan only if it involved “voluntary relocation”. Only 10 percent of respondents said the plan was morally reprehensible.656 A research institute poll reached similar results, highlighting that among Israeli Jews only 3 percent considered the plan “immoral”.657 A March 2025 Penn State University poll found that 82 percent of Jewish Israelis supported forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, that 47 percent of Israelis supported the biblical idea of killing all the inhabitants of a conquered city, and 65 percent believed there was a contemporary Amalek (for more on this see the Dehumanization section).658
Israeli state institutions have refrained from accountability or taking responsibility in the past. Not only does the Israeli security apparatus actively obstruct the ability of Palestinians to file claims,659 but it also maintains, even before the war, a negligible rate of indictments for those complaints that are submitted. Of the 1,260 complaints filed regarding Israeli soldiers harming Palestinians in the West Bank and their property between 2017 and 2021, less than 1% resulted in indictments.660 This pattern is part of a long-standing policy aimed at assuring international observers that Israel was indeed investigating such claims. The miniscule number of indictments, trials and punishments serves as a fig leaf masking many other cases where no criminal action is taken.661
At the same time, the Israeli legal system – which is praised by Israelis internationally, as in the ICJ case by then Judge ad hoc Barak (“Israel is a democracy with a strong legal system and an independent judicial system”)662 – remained silent. A survey of the Israeli Supreme Court’s rulings over the course of the war revealed that it green-lighted Israel’s policy to starve the Gaza Strip, the disappearing of people, preventing journalists from accessing the Gaza Strip, and preventing the Red Cross from visiting Gazan detainees despite widespread reports on the abuse they suffered in the Israeli prison system.663