Far more terrorists than civilians were killed in Lebanon war ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, January 02, 2025

Far more terrorists than civilians were killed in Lebanon war

Hezbollah used to publicly announce and celebrate all of its "martyrs." As of September 23, it said that it had lost 513 members, and as of that point the vast majority of deaths in Lebanon had been terrorist group members.

Since then, when Israel escalated its air and then limited ground campaign against Hezbollah, the group stopped admitting any deaths besides prominent leaders. Instead, it adopted the Hamas model of pushing a narrative of Israel killing nobody but civilians.

Lebanon has announced 3,402 deaths between September 15 and the ceasefire on November 27. How many of those were terrorists?

L'Orient le Jour attempted to find out.

A Syrian researcher with the nom de plume of Qalaat al-Mudiq has been scouring Facebook to count the number of funerals held in southern Lebanon for Hezbollah fighters. So far, they count 1,742 Hezbollah members killed in that timeframe plus 80 members of other militant groups. However, they note that this is a conservative estimate:

"Fighters whose affiliation with Hezbollah was unclear were excluded, making this a conservative estimate,” they explained.

They added, “The analysis indicates that Hezbollah has lost an average of nearly 20 fighters per day since Sept. 23, particularly Syrian war veterans and young reservists. The actual number is likely higher, exceeding 30 per day based on our monitoring, but we lacked the resources to verify all cases.”

If the number is 31 per day for those 65 days, then at least 2,015 terrorists were killed - about a 1.4 to 1 ratio of terrorists to civilians.

Lebanon says that 1,040 women and children were killed in that time period.

One other detail to note from the article is how many foreign forces allied to Hezbollah have been killed:

Although not exhaustive, L’Orient-Le Jour identified several dozen foreign combatants likely killed in Lebanon, despite Hezbollah's denial of deploying external forces.

Among them are five Yemeni fighters affiliated with Ansar Allah, the official name of the Houthi rebels, six Syrians associated with Hezbollah in Syria and Islamic jihad. Additionally, two Iraqis from Kata'ib Hezbollah, one Iranian from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and one Saudi member of the Saudi branch of Hezbollah have been documented. Various Palestinian factions present in Lebanon have also suffered losses.

At the moment, it appears that the ratio of militants to civilians killed exceeds 1.4 to 1; if you include all deaths since October 7 in Lebanon the ratio is closer to 1.9 to 1.

These numbers aren't perfect. A few dozen have been killed since the ceasefire, the total militant count includes about 40 Hezbollah members killed in Syria, and bodies are still being found in the rubble. But it seems pretty clear that this is an exceptional result for urban warfare and that Israel's warnings to civilians to leave areas saved thousands of lives that could have been lost if any other army was fighting under similar circumstances.