A child waits for food in line at a private food distribution center in Rafah, Gaza Strip, March 2025. Photo: Laoy Ayyoub.
By Steven Donziger – Jul 23, 2025
Most informed observers know that the actual death count in Gaza due to Israel’s attacks on the territory is far worse than the large media outlets are reporting. Last February, my colleague Coll McCail—an astute college student in Glasgow—worked out a basic mathematical calculation that the corporate media refuses to do. The result of this calculation back then was chilling; now it is much worse.
Here is the latest data, updated as of yesterday (July 21): based on a statistical model developed by a prestigious medical journal called The Lancet, Israel has killed roughly 434,800 people in Gaza since the country’s military started to attack the territory on 8 October 2023. That’s 20.7% of Gaza’s entire pre-conflict population dead. Over half are women and children.
If the same level of killing and indirect death that took place in Gaza during the 594 days of the conflict happened in the United States proportional to population, roughly 70 million Americans would have been killed.
I repeat: It is likely that the number of deaths in Gaza is the rough equivalent of 70 million Americans in proportion to current population. That’s the equivalent of every person in the 28 least populous states in the United States. Or roughly every person in the entire states of California and New York.
In February of this year, I wrote that roughly 306,000 Palestinians had been killed by Israel directly or indirectly—the latter a result of starvation, disease and lack of access to health care—since 7 October 2023. (The UN recently declared Gaza the “hungriest place on Earth” and its mission to deliver aid into Gaza as “one of the most obstructed” in recent history.)
My colleague Coll extrapolated from the model on a piece of scrap paper. The data he used is freely available in the public domain. It is a clear dereliction of journalistic duty that The New York Times and other US-based outlets have not bothered to compile such estimates.
The failure of these institutions enables Israel’s blatant violations of international law. It also shields the American people from knowing the full extent of the Netanyahu regime’s brutality.
Here’s how one arrives at the rough estimate of 434,800 dead in Gaza:
- First, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet conservatively estimated in a peer-reviewed analysis that as of 19 June 2024 roughly 186,000 Gazans had died from “direct” and “indirect” deaths since 8 October 2023. That article and an explanation of the statistical model used is here. To be clear, “direct” deaths under the model are caused by the Israeli military; “indirect” deaths are caused by a lack of access to food, water, and medical care (all largely denied by Israel to Gaza) and by disease.
- The Lancet found that on average, 732 people died every day from “direct” and “indirect” causes since Israel started attacking Gaza.
- There were 469 days between 8 October 2023 and 18 January 2025 when a temporary ceasefire was implemented and there was relative quiet in the territory. There were 125 days between the collapse of the ceasefire—on 18 March—and yesterday, 21 July 2025. This amounts to 594 total days of killing.
- Based on The Lancet’s data, if 732 people died every day for the 594 days of conflict, then the true Gaza death toll is now more than 434,800. The calculation—which for various reasons might underestimate the actual death toll—is laid out below:
According to the World Health Organization, Gaza’s October 2023 population (prior to the conflict) was 2.1 million. This means that Israel has killed approximately 20.7% of the enclave’s population over the last 20-plus months, by our calculations.
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Now, a few caveats.
Obviously, this number is a rough estimate. But it does something important: it uses an intelligent statistical model to try to calculate the rough extent of the carnage in Gaza in a way that official statistics from the territory’s Health Ministry are not capturing. While the number it produces is horrifying, it also might be an underestimate given that the severe deprivation in the territory that produces “indirect” deaths has worsened considerably since the original analysis in The Lancet.
On the other hand, for various reasons it could be an overestimate. The reality is that the reporting system for fatalities in Gaza has collapsed due to Israel’s destruction of hospitals, health care infrastructure, and morgues. There are no precise numbers anymore. But that is not the end of the story. We absolutely can make educated estimates. This is one attempt based on extrapolating from a model that I believe holds up well.
The larger issue is we need to think about what the scale of death means in terms of the human tragedy, and the extent of the legal impunity obtained thus far by Netanyahu and his extremist government. That matters greatly as a question of accountability, and will matter greatly in Israel’s genocide trial in the International Court of Justice. It is also simply undeniable in my view that the scale of Israel’s level of killing in Gaza is now comparable to what Pol Pot did in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. (Pol Pot also was credibly accused of genocide. He died before he could be brought to justice.)
The refusal of corporate media outlets in the US and elsewhere to report on how Israel has transformed the entirety of Gaza into a mass killing field is a moral and institutional failure. It also allows the architects and perpetrators of this industrial-scale violence—including Netanyahu and his ministers—a short-term escape hatch from full accountability. We must work to ensure that escape hatch is sealed shut.
