Twice the Dead, Half the Truth

The humanitarian cost in Gaza is far higher than we’ve been told.

They were eating breakfast. Sleeping. Playing. Praying. And then the building came down.

According to official figures from Gaza’s Ministry of Health, more than 52,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023. Most of them women and children. That figure alone is horrifying. But mounting evidence shows the true number is far higher. Perhaps double.

A recent report from Radio France Internationale brings this into sharp focus. Drawing on analysis from The Lancet, the University of London, and other independent sources, it shows the actual death toll in Gaza is at least 77,000 and potentially over 100,000 people. That’s up to five per cent of the pre-war population. One in twenty of Gaza’s people.

These were sons and daughters. Grandparents and toddlers. Families crushed in their homes. Children dying slowly. Not just from bombs, but from infection, starvation, and thirst. Because the hospitals are gone. Because humanitarian aid is blocked.

The reason for the undercount is painfully simple. When buildings collapse from aerial bombardment, entire families are entombed. With Gaza’s rescue services overwhelmed and its infrastructure obliterated, thousands of bodies remain unrecovered. Indirect deaths from hunger, untreated wounds, waterborne disease, childbirth without medical support, and chronic illness without medication could account for at least another 20,000 fatalities.

People are dying not just from missiles, but from the systematic collapse of everything that keeps them alive.

The idea that this is a war against Hamas is becoming harder and harder to accept. What we’re seeing is not a targeted campaign but a war on a trapped civilian population.

Hamas has no excuse for its 2023 atrocities. But its crimes do not give Israel the legal or moral right to wage a campaign of collective punishment against an entire civilian population.

The United Nations, Médecins Sans Frontières, and human rights groups across the world have issued repeated and urgent warnings about the catastrophic consequences of Israel’s campaign. These warnings have been met largely with silence, or worse, justifications.

And what is Australia’s role in all this? Our government says it supports a “rules-based international order,” yet it still remains quiet in the face of attrocities demanding more than diplomatic ambiguity.

We cannot claim ignorance any longer. We need to ask ourselves a difficult question: Are we complicit? If this isn’t genocide, then what is?

When our leaders fail to call for a ceasefire; when we continue military trade partnerships without demanding accountability; when we turn our eyes away from verified human suffering and punishment of civilians, we become part of the machinery that enables it.

Silence is a choice. And Australia’s silence right now is complicity. What will we say to our children when they ask what we did, while Gaza was buried in silence and rubble?

People searching in the rubble for their loved ones. Photo Al Jazeera.