When Alon Arvatz, a high-tech entrepreneur and a veteran of both the IDF's elite Egoz commando unit and Unit 8200, was watching international TV coverage of the latest round of hostilities between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, as well as reading reports about it in the left-wing Haaretz newspaper, he rubbed his eyes in disbelief at how the media were portraying the deaths of innocent civilians.
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"I'm very frustrated, and certain that a lot of the people of Israel feel that way," he told Israel Hayom last week.
"There is a biased narrative. Deaths are being counted rather than discussing Israel's justification and the moral criteria we want ourselves to have. Numbers of people killed are thrown out and that becomes the face of everything. That led me to delve into what was happening and try to explain how the numbers need to be looked at," Arvatz continued.
Arvatz began collecting information about the casualties on both sides. He took the number of casualties in Gaza, published by the UN, and the number of casualties in Israel and examined who they were – more precisely, whether they were innocent civilians or combatants.
Arvatz pointed out that the information was not exact because both Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were loath to announce how many of their fighters had been killed, although the data could be inferred by their ages and locations at the times of their death.
According to Arvatz, "the main and clearest data point is that 93% of the casualties on the Israeli side were innocent civilians, who had nothing to do with weapons or the fighting," he said.
"With the exception of the late Nahal Brigade Staff Sgt. Omer Tabib, who was killed by an anti-tank missile on the Gaza border, all 13 other Israeli casualties were innocent civilians. On the other hand, out of the 283 casualties in Gaza, most were terrorists. According to numbers from the Palestinian Health Ministry, the Shin Bet, and the IDF, about 250 of the casualties in the fighting were terrorists, and even Haaretz – which is extremely stringent in its approach – thinks that at least 50% were terrorists," he explained.
Arvatz noted that "the numbers prove that there is collateral damage in the form of innocent civilians who were killed, but that is the reality in a world where terrorists hide among women and children."
"Someone needs to tell the correct story. People who count the dead on each side without saying where they came from and why it happened just incite the discourse … We want to attack our enemies and do everything possible to avoid hurting innocent people," he said.
Meanwhile, Hamas last week provided an initial tally of its operatives killed in the 11-day Operation Guardian of the Walls: 80 terrorist casualties.
Leader of Hamas in Gaza Yahya Sinwar told The Associated Press the count included 57 members of Hamas' armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, 22 members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group and one member of the Popular Resistance Committees.
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