The headline reads: 'Gaza deaths surpass any Arab war losses in 40 years,' not specifying that it refers only to Arab wars against Israel. The article itself specifies that it only refers to wars between Arab nations and organizations and Israel.
Readers noted that in the Syrian Civil War, over 300,000 civilians have been killed, more than ten times the number of people killed in Gaza, which includes about 8,000 terrorists. About 500,000 people have been killed in total during the Syrian Civil War, according to most estimates.
The Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988 resulted in about 500,000 deaths. The Iraq War that began in 2003 resulted in 460,000 deaths as of 2011. The Yemen Civil War, which began in 2015, has claimed 377,000 lives to date. The 2013-2017 war against ISIS in Iraq claimed over 150,000 lives. Even the First Gulf War of 1991, which resulted in the relatively low death toll of about 50,000, claimed more than double the number of lives as the current war in Gaza.
According to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, about 20,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the October 7 massacre. According to Israeli officials, nearly half of this number have been Hamas terrorists or members of other terrorist organizations, meaning that a little more than one civilian has been killed for every combatant killed.
In comparison, American and NATO operations in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 20 years have resulted in a casualty ratio of about one combatant killed for every three to five civilians killed.
The Times article noted that the last time a war in the Arab-Israel conflict had such a high death toll was the 1982 First Lebanon War. Israel has struck back harder this times after Hamas murdered over 1,200 people on the morning of October 7 in the worst terrorist attack in Israeli history and the deadliest massacre of the Jewish people since the Nazi Holocaust.
