Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Most Victims of Israel Strikes on Gaza Were Palestinian Civilians, Children

More than half those killed killed during Israel’s operation in the Gaza Strip last November were innocent civilians and a third were children, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said in a report released this week.

The B’Tselem based its findings on Operation Pillar of Defense on statements issued by the Israel Defense Forces, the Shin Bet security service, and on an internal investigation.

The IDF killed 167 Palestinians during the operation, at least 87 of them non-combatants, according to the data presented in the B’Tselem report.

Thirty-one of these non-combatant civilians, or 35 percent, were minors. Of these minors, 20 were under the age of 12, according to B’Tselem.

The B’Tselem report also segments the number of Palestinians killed on each of the eight days of fighting: during each of the first four days, an average of four “non-participant” Palestinians were killed; over the next four days, the number in this category soared by more than four to an average of 17.5 per day. The report also notes that during the first days of the fighting, the number of Palestinian combatants who were killed was nearly twice the number of non-combatant fatalities. In the subsequent days of the operation, this proportion was reversed.

For more, go to Haaretz

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.