Myth #5: “Collateral Damage”

The myth is not that children weren't killed. Nobody denies the killing. The myth operates at a more sophisticated level — it is a framework of explanation that transforms documented mass killing into regrettable military necessity. It has four components, each appearing regularly in official Israeli statements, Western media coverage, and international diplomatic discourse.

First: Hamas uses civilians and children as human shields — therefore civilian deaths are Hamas's responsibility, not Israel's. Second: The IDF takes "more measures to minimize civilian casualties than any military in history" — a phrase that appears verbatim in briefings from the Israel Defense Forces and is cited by sympathetic commentators. Third: Civilian deaths are "collateral damage" — unintended byproducts of legitimate military operations against Hamas. Fourth: The death toll figures are inflated — sourced from the Hamas-controlled health ministry and therefore unreliable.

This article addresses each component with the primary source evidence. The counter-arguments are sourced to the same international law framework, the same evidentiary standards, and — in several cases — to Israeli sources. Not because Israeli sources are more authoritative, but because they are harder to dismiss as bias.

Within 72 hours of October 7, 2023, the three most senior figures in Israel's political and military hierarchy made statements that established the operational climate in which the subsequent killing of children occurred. None of these statements were condemned by any senior Israeli official. None resulted in disciplinary action. All three are confirmed from primary sources.

On October 9, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant — the official with direct military command authority over IDF operations — told an IDF Southern Command briefing: "I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly." [1]

On October 10, IDF Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian — head of COGAT, the military body controlling all civilian goods entering Gaza — addressed Gaza's population directly in Arabic via video: "Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water in Gaza, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell." [2]

On October 12, President Isaac Herzog held a press conference at which he told ITV journalist Rageh Omaar: "It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It's not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It's absolutely not true. They could have risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime." [3] The ICJ cited this statement specifically in its January 2024 provisional measures ruling as contributing to the plausibility of genocide allegations. The UN Commission of Inquiry cited it in September 2025 as evidence of direct incitement. Herzog later disputed the interpretation. He did not dispute the words.

On October 28, on the eve of the ground invasion, Prime Minister Netanyahu told a press conference: "You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember, and we are fighting." [4] The biblical Amalek commandment commands the destruction of "men and women, children and infants." Netanyahu's office confirmed the reference. In December 2023, IDF soldiers were filmed and recorded chanting "wipe off the seed of Amalek" and declaring there are "no innocent civilians" in Gaza. The IDF confirmed the video's authenticity. [7]

Ben-Ari is not a member of the governing coalition's extreme right. She is from Yair Lapid's centrist opposition party and had previously chaired the Knesset lobby for children and youth at risk. She was making this statement about children — as children — on camera in the Knesset. It was not condemned by any party. [5]

Former IDF Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland — former head of Israel's National Security Council and senior research associate at the Institute for National Security Studies — published an op-ed in Yedioth Aharonoth, Israel's largest newspaper, on October 15: "Israel needs to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal. Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist." B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, documented that not one army representative or politician condemned this statement. [6] [25]

The climate established by these statements was not accidental. It was operationalized through a documented AI-assisted targeting system that made the killing of civilians — including children — a pre-authorized mathematical outcome of command policy.

In April 2024, +972 Magazine and Local Call published a joint investigation sourced from six IDF intelligence officers, all speaking on record. The investigation documented the "Lavender" AI targeting system, which marked 37,000 Palestinians for assassination. The human review time per target was approximately 20 seconds — only enough to confirm the target was male. [8]

The system pre-authorized the deaths of 15 to 20 civilians for every low-ranking Hamas member killed. For senior commanders, the pre-authorized civilian death toll exceeded 100. Targets were struck at home — at night, using unguided "dumb bombs" — to maximize operational efficiency. A companion system called "Where's Daddy?" was built specifically to track when targets returned to their family homes, so they could be struck there rather than during military activity.

One intelligence officer: "A lot of targets have been hit without prior analysis or estimates." [8] The investigation was confirmed by The Guardian, Human Rights Watch, and Foreign Policy. The IDF acknowledged the systems exist while disputing the characterization. The IDF's own response: the systems "do not replace the intelligence analyst, but improve access to relevant information." [9]

The IDF's own internal assessment, reported by the Times of Israel on January 29, 2026, accepts a total death toll of approximately 70,000. The IDF claims to have killed approximately 22,000 combatants. If the IDF's own figures are accepted at face value: 48,000 civilians were killed — a minimum civilian-to-combatant ratio of 2.2:1. OHCHR's verified data and independent analysts suggest the actual ratio is approximately 4:1. [10] The claim that the IDF has killed one civilian per combatant — which would be required for the "unavoidable collateral damage" framing to hold at any meaningful level — is mathematically impossible given the IDF's own figures.

Larry Lewis, Director of the Center for Naval Analyses and former civilian harm advisor to the US State and Defense Departments, stated in December 2025: "The IDF also appears to have adopted a high threshold for acceptable civilian loss in Gaza. This leads to the IDF making targeting decisions that create significant numbers of civilian casualties." [26]

Every strike on a school or shelter sheltering children follows an identical response sequence from the IDF. The pattern itself — repeated identically across five incidents over 20 months — is evidence of policy, not of error. Military sources told The Guardian that bombings of schools were a "deliberate Israeli policy" which loosened "controls on actions targeting Hamas operatives at sites with large numbers of civilians present," including when sites might contain "only low-ranking militants." [20]

By May 2025, an estimated 95% of all school buildings in Gaza had been damaged or destroyed. 406 school buildings — 72% of the total — were directly hit. 312 of 312 UNRWA installations were impacted by armed conflict. At least 851 people were killed sheltering in UNRWA buildings. [21] No military in any documented conflict in modern history has accidentally destroyed 95% of a territory's schools. The word "accidentally" cannot be sustained against this documented scale.

Every figure in this section is drawn from T1 or T2 primary institutional sources — UNICEF, UN Women, OHCHR, Save the Children, Gaza Ministry of Health verified by OCHA. These are not advocacy organizations. They are the UN's own specialized agencies with field presence in Gaza.

The comparison that ends the incidental argument. In the first three weeks of the war, more children were killed in Gaza than in all global conflicts combined in any single year since 2019. Save the Children documented this figure and presented it to the UN Security Council on October 29, 2023: 3,195 children killed in 21 days versus 2,985 killed globally in 2022, 2,515 in 2021, and 2,674 in 2020. [12] This is not a proportion. It is an absolute number. More children died in Gaza in three weeks than in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, and all other active conflicts combined in an entire year.

By February 2026, UNICEF confirmed: at least 21,289 children killed, 44,500 injured, more than 64,000 killed or injured combined, more than 56,000 children left without one or both parents. [13] One child killed approximately every hour for 28 months.

By April 2026, UN Women confirmed: over 38,000 women and girls killed between October 2023 and December 2025 — an average of 47 per day, every day, for 26 months. At peak, two mothers were killed every hour. [14]

OHCHR's verified study found that 70% of Palestinians killed in residential buildings were women and children. In 88% of cases, five or more people were killed in the same attack — consistent with the Lavender system's methodology of striking family homes with wide-area weapons. [15]

As of June 19, 2026, UNICEF confirmed that 265 children were killed in Gaza since the October 2025 ceasefire — one child per day on average for eight months of a declared ceasefire. [16] The pattern does not stop when military operations are formally declared over.

The Lancet, in a peer-reviewed analysis published February 2025, found that the Gaza MoH figures undercount trauma-related deaths by 41%. The actual toll is higher than the documented figures — not lower. [11] The IDF itself, in an internal assessment briefed to reporters in January 2026, accepted a total death toll of approximately 70,000 — consistent with the MoH. The "inflated figures" argument has been explicitly rejected by the IDF's own intelligence assessment. [10]

The question of intentionality is not only an evidentiary question. It has been formally adjudicated by the most authoritative international legal and human rights bodies in existence. Their findings are documented here attributed to the institutions that made them — not as editorial conclusions of this platform.

ICJ — January 26, 2024. The International Court of Justice found it "plausible" that Israel's conduct constitutes genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention. The court cited the statements of Herzog, Gallant, and others as contributing to that plausibility finding. It ordered Israel to prevent genocide and ensure humanitarian access. [22]

UN Commission of Inquiry — September 16, 2025. Formally concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Found that Netanyahu, Gallant, and Herzog had engaged in "direct and public incitement to commit genocide." Identified specific military units responsible for war crimes. [23]

Amnesty International — December 5, 2024. Concluded independently that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. [27]

B'Tselem (Israeli human rights organization) and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel — July 28, 2025. Joint report: "An examination of Israel's policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads us to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip." [25] This is an Israeli organization. These are Israeli researchers and physicians. The word "intentionally" is theirs.

UN Commission of Inquiry — June 23, 2026. Commission Chair Srinivasan Muralidhar: "The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces. By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future." [24]

Counter-argument 1: "Hamas uses human shields — therefore Israel is not responsible for civilian deaths."

International humanitarian law does not transfer full responsibility for civilian deaths to the party using human shields when the attacking party fails the proportionality test. The Lavender system pre-authorized 15–20 civilian deaths per low-ranking militant — a ratio that international legal experts confirm violates IHL regardless of human shield use. Even accepting the human shields claim in full: the law still requires proportionality. The IDF's own 4:1 civilian-to-combatant ratio — by their own internal estimate — fails that test at the documented scale. The ICJ confirmed this analysis in its January 2024 provisional measures ruling. [22]

Counter-argument 2: "The death toll is inflated — sourced from Hamas."

The IDF itself, in a January 2026 briefing to reporters published by the Times of Israel, accepted a total death toll of approximately 70,000 — consistent with the Gaza MoH figure. Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an editorial: "The IDF Admits It Killed 70,000 Gazans. What Other Accusations Could Turn Out to Be True?" The WHO, UN, and Israeli intelligence all consider the MoH figures reliable. The Lancet (February 2025) found the MoH undercounts by 41% — the actual toll is likely higher, not lower. [10] [11]

Counter-argument 3: "The IDF takes more precautions than any military in history."

The Lavender system — documented by six IDF intelligence officers — shows approximately 20 seconds of human review per target. One source: "A lot of targets have been hit without prior analysis or estimates." Paul Biggar, software engineer and founder of Tech for Palestine, analyzed the Lavender system's architecture and concluded: "Lavender has no investigative component — it cannot learn who militants are. The only conclusion is that it is a system to provide plausible deniability, and to blame civilian bombing on a machine instead of a human." [8] [9] The "precision" of the munitions is irrelevant when the targeting methodology pre-designates an entire family home as a legitimate target.

Counter-argument 4: "Individual soldiers may have acted improperly — this doesn't reflect policy."

The Guardian's military sources confirmed that bombings of schools were a deliberate policy — not individual soldier conduct. The Lavender system is a command-level decision. The pre-authorized civilian casualty ratios are command-level policy. The statements by the Defense Minister, President, and Prime Minister establishing that Gaza's population are "human animals" for whom "there are no innocent civilians" are not individual soldier conduct — they are the documented statements of the three most senior figures in Israel's political and military hierarchy, made within 72 hours of October 7. [20]