Dissecting IDF propaganda: The numbers behind the rocket attacksIn this brief study, I examine the many numbers cited by the Israeli military relating to Gaza rocket attacks into Israel.
To begin, Israeli spokespeople frequently remind the world that a million Israeli citizens are within range of Gaza rockets, twelve thousand of which have been fired into Israel in the last twelve years, inflicting thousands of injuries and several dead.
However, we are rarely told exactly how many people have been killed by these rocket attacks.
Counting the dead
Below is a list of all the fatalities of rocket and mortar attacks fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel in the entire history of these attacks. Throughout the years of rocket attacks into Israel, a total of 26 people have been killed altogether.
Fatalities from rocket and mortar attacks in Israel from the Gaza StripDate of attack Name Age Location Weapon
2004.06.28 Mordechai Yosephov 49 Sderot Qassam
2004.06.28 Afik Ohion Zehavi 4 Sderot Qassam
2004.09.29 Yuval Abebeh 4 Sderot Qassam
2004.09.29 Dorit (Masarat) Benisian 2 Sderot Qassam
2005.01.15 Ayala-Haya Abukasis 17 Sderot Qassam
2005.07.15 Dana Gelkowitz 22 Moshav Nativ Ha‘asara Qassam
2006.03.28 Salam Ziadin* ? Nahal Oz Qassam‡
2006.03.28 Khalid Ziadin* 16 Nahal Oz Qassam‡
2006.11.15 Faina Slutzker 57 Sderot Qassam
2006.11.21 Yaakov Yaakobov 43 Sderot Qassam
2007.05.21 Shirel Friedman 32 Sderot Qassam
2007.05.27 Oshri Oz 36 Sderot Qassam
2008.02.27 Roni Yihye 47 Sderot Qassam
2008.05.09 Jimmy Kedoshim 48 Kibbutz Kfar Aza mortar
2008.05.12 Shuli Katz 70 Moshav Yesha Qassam
2008.06.05 Amnon Rosenberg 51 Kibbutz Nir-Oz mortar
2008.12.27 Beber Vaknin 58 Netivot Qassam
2008.12.29 Lutfi Nasraladin*† 38 IDF base near Nahal Oz mortar
2008.12.29 Irit Sheetrit 39 Ashdod Grad
2008.12.29 Hani al Mahdi* 27 Ashkelon Grad
2010.03.18 Manee Singueanphon* 30 Moshav Nativ Ha‘asara Qassam
2011.08.20 Yossi Shushan 38 Be’er sheva Grad
2011.10.29 Moshe Ami 56 Ashkelon Grad
2012.11.15 Yitzchak Amsalem 24 Kiryat Malachi rocket
2012.11.15 Mira Sharf 25 Kiryat Malachi rocket
2012.11.15 Aharon Smadja 49 Kiryat Malachi rocket
Total fatalities in the history of rocket and mortar attacks
from Gaza into Israel:
26Operation Cast Lead: December 27, 2008–January 18, 2009
Operation Pillar of Cloud: November 14, 2012–
The shaded rows in the table refer to fatalities sustained during Operation Cast Lead (December 27, 2008–January 18, 2009) and Operation Pillar of Cloud (November 14, 2012–).
Note that of the 26 fatalities from rocket and mortar attacks, more than one out of every four deaths occurred during these two operations, which were ostensibly designed to deter rocket attacks.
For the entire duration of the 2008 Hamas–Israel cease-fire—even after Israel had broken the cease-fire on Nov. 4—not a single person was killed by rocket or mortar fire into Israel. Yet approximately two hours after Israel’s commencement of Operation Cast Lead, one person in Israel was struck and killed by shrapnel from a Qassam rocket. Two days later, three more people were killed in Israel from Gaza rocket and mortar attacks.
And for an entire year before Operation Pillar of Cloud, not a single Israeli was killed by rocket or mortar. Yet approximately sixteen hours after Pillar of Cloud commenced, a rocket from Gaza killed three Israelis.
It was during both military operations that Israel endured the highest number of fatalities from Gaza rockets and mortars in the shortest time spans.
The data is too scant to a draw a more definite conclusion (and it is scant because fatalities are so rare), but one can suspect a pattern:
Rocket fatalities are more likely to happen during major Israel “anti-rocket” operations. Note that I say that fatalities are more likely to happen, rather than fatalities increase. Because fatalities are so rare, when they do happen in a burst, they appear more as instigations rather than incidental progressions.
This disputes the clichéd notion that rocket attacks are “designed to maximize civilian casualties.” Indeed, with such a low fatality rate and with the characteristic imprecision of the weapons, they cannot be expected to inflict a fatality most of the time.
At the same time, armed groups in Gaza are capable of increasing the likelihood of fatalities when prompted.
A verrry slow genocideIf we borrow the IDF’s claim that more than 12,000 rockets have been fired into Israel in the last twelve years (which I dispute later), we get a kill rate of less than 0.217%. Thus in order to secure a single kill, we should expect to fire about 500 rockets. However, if the goal is to specifically kill Jews rather than foreign workers and Palestinian laborers, then it gets harder. Only 21 Jews have been killed by this method, bringing the kill rate down to 0.175%.
If this sounds disturbing or even anti-Semitic, note that I am just testing the argument of the current Israeli ambassador Michael Oren, who, during Operation Cast Lead, co-wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal claiming that the Gaza rockets and mortars were “more than a crude attempt to kill and terrorize civilians—they were expressions of a genocidal intent.”
Yet the statistics demonstrate that it is much less than a “crude attempt to kill.” One can imagine easier ways to kill a random person than to manufacture and fire 500+ homemade rockets.
As for genocide, at the going kill rate, it would require 4,477,714,286 rockets and mortars, and 4,477,714 years to kill all the Jews in Israel. This is assuming that Israel’s Jewish population does not increase. And of course we would need to factor in the limited range of the projectiles, which would require Israel’s non-growing Jewish population to all congregate in the western Negev by the year 4479726 CE, give or take a few years.
But by then, all of Israel’s Jewish population will have already been exterminated by the country’s other violent killer, automotive accidents.
It makes more sense, then, to suppose that there are political rationales for the firing of rockets and mortars.
The IDF’s mysterious deathsNow that we’ve established that a total of twenty-six people have been killed by high-trajectory weapons from Gaza into Israel, let’s look at some of the numbers that the Israeli military has been peddling.
In keeping up with its social media focus, IDF 2.0 has been distributing infographics through Facebook, Twitter, and an official blog, encouraging subscribers to share the images. One recent infographic makes the following claims about the number of Israeli casualties from rocket attacks:
First, let’s compare the IDF’s fatalities numbers to the numbers that I’ve established:
Number of rocket/mortar fatalities by year, 2006–2011
IDF claim Established
2006 9 4
2007 10 2
2008 15 8
2009 2 0
2010 5 1
2011 3 2
For every year listed, the IDF’s rocket fatalities number is higher than what has been established. Could it be due to different interpretations of the figures? We can try to find out by examining the fatalities for each year:
2006In 2006, at the tail end of the second intifada, there were several Israeli fatalities, including a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, another suicide bombing in the West Bank, several shootings of soldiers and settlers in the West Bank, two soldiers killed by sniper fire in separate incidents in the Gaza Strip, and the capture of Gilad Shalit in a Hamas/PRC operation that left two other soldiers dead. However, there were only two people who were killed in Israel by rocket strikes. Another two, a Bedouin father and son, were killed while attempting to move an unexploded Qassam rocket for salvaging. Their deaths are not listed in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs page as deaths by Palestinian attacks. Nevertheless, I included them in my listing, making four deaths by rockets in 2006.
For 2006, it is unknown how the IDF transformed four rocket fatalities into nine.
2007In 2007, two Qassam rockets killed two people in Sderot. There was one other incident in Israel that produced fatalities—a suicide bombing that killed three people in a bakery in Eilat. Beyond that, four soldiers were killed by gunfire in the West Bank, one settler was gunned down in a drive-by, another settler was stabbed to death by unknown assailants, and three soldiers were killed in separate gunfights in the Gaza Strip. Altogether, sixteen were killed, only two of whom were by rockets—not ten, as asserted by the IDF. The IDF’s claim is also contradicted by Shin Bet (the Israeli Security Agency), which reported that in 2007, “rocket fire killed two Israeli civilians.”
For 2007, it is unknown how the IDF transformed two fatalities into ten.2008In 2008, eight people were killed by rockets and mortars from Gaza. Four were killed in the first half of the year prior to the “tahdiya” ceasefire. As soon as Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, four more people were killed by Gaza rockets and mortars. Yet the IDF graphic claims 15 fatalities. Again, this claim is contradicted by the Shin Bet, which reported that in 2008,
8 people (4 during the final days of December) were killed by high-trajectory fire (rockets and mortars) from the Gaza Strip.
For 2008, it is unknown how the IDF transformed eight fatalities into fifteen.
2009
In 2009, there was one conflict-related civilian death in Israel by Palestinians: A Jewish Israeli taxi driver was strangled to death by three Palestinians as revenge for the IDF killing of a relative. Outside of that, a 16-year old boy in the Bat Ayin settlement was killed by a lone Palestinian with an axe, two police officers were shot to death in the Jordan Valley, a settler near Nablus was shot in a drive-by, and a soldier was killed by an explosive detonation on the Gaza border. No one in Israel was killed by rocket or mortar from Gaza, even though the IDF claims two.
This is corroborated by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), which stated that
In the two years since Operation Cast Lead there has been a significant decrease in the number of Israelis killed and wounded by terrorist organizations operating in the Gaza Strip. There have been five deaths, one civilian (a worker from Thailand) killed by a rocket attack [which was in 2010] and four IDF soldiers killed during counterterrorism activities.
At the start of 2009, during Cast Lead, nine IDF soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip, four of which were by friendly fire. Of the remaining five, one was killed by a mortar round while the other was killed by an anti-tank missile.
2009In 2009, there was one conflict-related civilian death in Israel by Palestinians: A Jewish Israeli taxi driver was strangled to death by three Palestinians as revenge for the IDF killing of a relative. Outside of that, a 16-year old boy in the Bat Ayin settlement was killed by a lone Palestinian with an axe, two police officers were shot to death in the Jordan Valley, a settler near Nablus was shot in a drive-by, and a soldier was killed by an explosive detonation on the Gaza border. No one in Israel was killed by rocket or mortar from Gaza, even though the IDF claims two.
This is corroborated by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), which stated that
In the two years since Operation Cast Lead there has been a significant decrease in the number of Israelis killed and wounded by terrorist organizations operating in the Gaza Strip. There have been five deaths, one civilian (a worker from Thailand) killed by a rocket attack [which was in 2010] and four IDF soldiers killed during counterterrorism activities.At the start of 2009, during Cast Lead, nine IDF soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip, four of which were by friendly fire. Of the remaining five, one was killed by a mortar round while the other was killed by an anti-tank missile.
For 2009, there were no deaths in Israel from Gaza rockets or mortars. The only way to claim two fatalities would be to include the deaths of two soldiers engaged in a military invasion inside the Gaza Strip, which would be misleading for the message being conveyed by the infographic.
