Lately I’ve encountered many who claim that the IDF is attacking Palestinians “indiscriminately”. Watching Al Jazeera one can see that the majority of those who were killed in Gaza were young men. This does not go hand in hand with the claim that the killing is random, considering Gaza’s demographics.
With that in mind, yours truly decided to carry out some simple calculations in order to test the claim that the IDF kills combatants and civilians indiscriminately.
First, let us look at the size of the population in Gaza, which is estimated at 1,805,000 (based on the 2010 census + extrapolated population growth).
The size of the various armed organizations in the Gaza strip is estimated at 25,000. This is also the figure the Hamas boasts (the Zionists have larger estimates, but why trust them?)
Therefore the number of uninvolved civilians in Gaza is 1,780,000.
At this point, according to the press, the number of Palestinian casualties in Gaza is 572, with 28% being combatants and 72% being civilians.
Therefore, as simple calculation shows that the odds for being killed by the IDF is 0.0064 if you’re a combatant/terrorist and 0.000247 if you’re a non-involved civilian.
That means your odds of being killed by the IDF if you’re a Hamas terrorist (or combatant, depending on one’s point of view) is 28.48 times greater than if you’re a civilian. It appears that there is a very cut and clear distinction with the IDF specifically going after Hamas and not civilians.
Some people, not familiar with the basics of the science of probability may ask, “So how come there are more dead civilians than combatants?” The answer is simple. Most of the people in Gaza are non-involved civilians. The terrorists are only 0.0138% of the population.
Consider this: Had the IDF truly been killing people indiscriminately in Gaza, considering there are only 1.385% Hamas terrorists in Gaza, one would expect to see only 7 dead terrorists out of the total of 572 fatalities.Of course, Zhorov is accepting the Hamas-created statistics as to who is a civilian and who is a combatant at face value. In fact, evidence shows that the number of terrorists killed is probably around double these figures, so the actual chances of being killed if you are a Hamas terrorist is closer to 50 or 60 times the chances of being killed if you are a civilian.
Anyone who claims that the IDF fires "indiscriminately" is either completely innumerate, or a liar.