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This site claims that, in modern warfare, about 3 civilians are killed for every combatant killed.

This concept can be scientifically proven by understand (sic) the basic concept of “civilian casualty ratio”, that is in every conflict you need to look at the number of civilian causalities versus the number of combatant causalities. This ratio obviously differs from conflict to conflict, but the average in modern day warfare is between 3-4:1. Estimated ratios in NATO operations in Afghanistan were 3:1, western campaigns in Iraq and Kosovo were believed to be 4:1, and the conflicts in Chechnya and Serbia were much higher than 4:1. That is to say that for each combatant that is killed 3-4 or more civilians are killed.

They then compare this statistic favorably to Operation Cast Lead and Operation Pillar of Defense, in which the civilian casualty ratio was about 1:1 (i.e. much more focussed on avoiding civilian deaths).

I had a bit of trouble finding the specific UN statement to which they referred.

Can anybody here please determine whether that statement is accurate?

SIMEL
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Publius
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  • I am sure they are talking about the modern "wars", not just war in general. Militant is also a difficult to define term. When are they militant, and when are they just enemy soldiers? I am sure many civilian casualty has gone down in the statistics as "militant". – Hendrik Beenker Jan 31 '13 at 08:13
  • I don't know what statistic they're using in general, but when counting Hamas, they use armed members of Hamas (e.g. the army or the police that also participate in the war, etc.). – Publius Jan 31 '13 at 08:34
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    I am sorry that I don't believe the statistics of the IDF, just like I don't believe the statistics of the Pentagon, just like I don't trust the statistics of my own government when it comes to such sensitive subjects. I am sure they have come up with some number that seems agreeable to the public. – Hendrik Beenker Jan 31 '13 at 09:09
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    @Hendrik which is pretty much Skeptics.SE raison d'etre, right? – Andrew Grimm Jan 31 '13 at 09:36
  • Avi, perhaps @Coomie's point is that you are making a bold claim that Israel is "transparent" and "egalitarian", without providing any references to support that. Unless you want us to look into an unreferenced claim, you should be careful about making it. I am about to edit the question; I will take the opportunity to lose that part. – Oddthinking Jan 31 '13 at 09:45
  • Perhaps, but coomie made that point rather poorly. Anyways, I'll edit to add links if you want. Apparently somebody edited regardless, a bit more than I think is reasonable. Anyways, the question remains intact. – Publius Jan 31 '13 at 09:53
  • btw. what is the official definition of "militant"? For example if you have angry mob throwing stones, would they all be considered militants? – vartec Jan 31 '13 at 11:21
  • Yeah. Considering the use of the word in expressions like "militant atheists" and "militant feminists", it seems that caring deeply about an issue is enough to count as militant. On a more serious note: The word that IDF uses is "combatant", so the question should maybe also use that. – Zano Jan 31 '13 at 12:39
  • Avi, it was me who made those edits. The edits were non-trivial because, when I actually quoted the text from the IDF, it was clear they didn't use the same terms the original question did. – Oddthinking Jan 31 '13 at 14:16
  • The claim is not made by the IDF, nor by any other official Israeli representative. I've removed all the parts related to the claim being made by the IDF from the question. If you've seen the IDF making such a claim, please cite the source. – SIMEL Jan 31 '13 at 19:56

2 Answers2

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Well, just looking at the Wikipedia page for Civilian Casualty Ratio there is a special section for the Israel-Palestine conflict.

This is where it gets murky.

In 2006 and 2007 according to the government this Ratio was 1:4 (one civilian for each militant), according to Haaretz this was closer to 1:2

But with airstrikes by the Israeli airforce in 2002-2003 this was 1:1, but improved to 1:30 by 2008.

The official Israeli ration for the war in Gaza was 1:3, a more critical Israeli organization B'Tselem (NGO) claimes 3:2.

So these figures are hard to call truly reliable, but they won't be of that much.

But, the page ends with a UN figure, which supports the 3:1 claim, and makes it "official":

The UN estimate that there has been an average three-to-one ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in such conflicts worldwide. Three civilians for every combatant killed. That is the estimated ratio in Afghanistan: three to one. In Iraq, and in Kosovo, it was worse: the ratio is believed to be four-to-one. Anecdotal evidence suggests the ratios were very much higher in Chechnya and Serbia. In Gaza, it was less than one-to-one.”

Hendrik Beenker
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    For which numbers are you using civilians:militants and for which are you using militants:civilians? Could you normalize to civiliants:militants, as that's what the original IDF number was? – Publius Jan 31 '13 at 10:08
  • Also, which numbers are global ratios and which ones are within Israel's operations? – Publius Jan 31 '13 at 10:15
  • All numbers are Israeli-Palestine conflict numbers. But, the UN quote where it states 3:1 ratio, which is what the IDF was referring to as well is a global and current number. – Hendrik Beenker Jan 31 '13 at 11:03
  • All numbers are Civilians:Militants – Hendrik Beenker Jan 31 '13 at 11:04
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    Rather than quoting the unreliable Wikipedia, it would be better to quote from its sources. – Oddthinking Jan 31 '13 at 14:17
  • In this case the Wikipedia page has all the sources listed in it, so I am not sure how it would be unreliable when I would list the same sources. The dry numbers and stats don't leave much room for discussion. But, I agree. Wikipedia cannot be blindly trusted. – Hendrik Beenker Jan 31 '13 at 15:29
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    Ah, the secret trick isn't to merely LIST the sources from Wikipedia, which adds little, but to CHECK them. – Oddthinking Jan 31 '13 at 20:47
  • That's exactly what I did. I just would have ended up with a lot more sources. But, I'll take notice for the next time. Thanks – Hendrik Beenker Jan 31 '13 at 20:52
  • And wikipedia isn't unreliable. – Publius Feb 03 '13 at 11:52
  • Wikipedia is as unreliable as it's sources. I did follow those, and looked at other sources. I'll make sure to mention those next time as well. – Hendrik Beenker Feb 03 '13 at 19:22
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The statistics for the IDF missions are only favorable if you agree with IDF's definition of a combatant.

In case of "Operation Cast Lead", IDF operates with 1166 casualties, of which at least 709 were combatants (appr. 0.5 civilian per combatant). The numbers from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights are very different: They count 1417 casualties, of which 236 were combatants (appr. 5 civilians per combatant).

Tor-Einar Jarnbjo
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  • Police officers are fighters. Recalculate. – Publius Feb 03 '13 at 11:54
  • Also, the PCHR lies about people killed. They say that some militants are innocent children. – Publius Feb 03 '13 at 12:12
  • According to the IDF, police officers are combatants. According to the first protocol of the Geneva Convention, they are not. The protocol has been ratified by 170 countries, but not by Israel. Do you have any resources to backup your claim that civilian children counted by PCHR are combatants? – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo Feb 03 '13 at 12:24
  • yes (http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1603) Israel ratified the geneva convention (http://www.icrc.org/IHL.NSF/WebSign?ReadForm&id=375&ps=P) Then the problem here is nomenclature. I'll admit that police usually aren't combatants, but when you're ordered to take off uniform (against convention) and you belong to militant groups, you no longer get to call yourself police (see the wikipedia article on operation cast lead). – Publius Feb 04 '13 at 00:27
  • I was talking about the first protocol of the Geneva Convention, and it is *not* ratified by Israel (http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/WebSign?ReadForm&id=470&ps=P). If CAMERA (a pro-israel lobby organization) finds that "it is not unreasonable to suspect that a number of these teenage fatalities resulted from them having participated in combat" because the number of fatalities among men in the age group 15-17 is higher than their fraction of the overall population, that is hardly an evidence that PCHR counts combatants as civilian children. – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo Feb 04 '13 at 00:40
  • The CAMERA article mentions that in some cases PCHR specifically lied about militants being younger children when they weren't. – Publius Feb 04 '13 at 06:26
  • The article mentions *one* person, Mohammed 'Abed Hassan Brbakh, which according to PCHR was a 16 year old civilian, while CAMERA claims that he was a 22 year old DFLP member. If you look into the details of the PCHR report (http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news/15505.txt), this person was killed together with four of his family members in an IDF attack on their home. One of his brothers, Mahdi 'Abed Hassan Barbakh, is listed at age 22. The name or age of the two brothers may have been unintentionally swapped. Being a DLFP member alone does not justify a classification as combatant. – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo Feb 04 '13 at 12:49
  • You're cherry picking without looking at CAMERA's links. – Publius Feb 04 '13 at 14:26
  • I've already skimmed the links from the CAMERA article and found nothing but quotes from IDF, unreferenced claims or dodgy conclusions. CAMERA e.g. disputes the civilian status of "Bilal 'Abdul Hadi 'Ali" and links to an article in "Der Spiegel", where he is allegedly named as a combatant. The article in fact mentions the combatant "Bilal Haj Ali", a different name. Both names are obviously (according to Google) quite common and I find it very difficult to follow CAMERA's arguments here. – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo Feb 04 '13 at 18:26
  • I don't know exactly how to respond to that. I guess I can concede that some of the data are ambiguous? – Publius Feb 05 '13 at 04:59
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    Hamas themselves admitted to 700 casualties. So Israel's figures for 700 combatant deaths were right, and the human rights organisations were wrong. http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/hamas-admits-600-700-of-its-men-were-killed-in-cast-lead-1.323776 "Hamas admitted last week that between 600 and 700 of its militants were killed during Operation Cast Lead – a figure consistent with that reported by the Israel Defense Forces. The figure is several times higher than the previous number of fatalities that Hamas claimed it sustained during the operation." – barlop Sep 20 '13 at 11:01
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    and in Goldstone's reconsideration in his washington post article, he said "The Israeli military’s numbers have turned out to be similar to those recently furnished by Hamas (although Hamas may have reason to inflate the number of its combatants)." – barlop Sep 20 '13 at 11:02
  • I don't read Arabic, so I am not able to read the complete Interview with Fathi Hamad in Al Hayat (if it's available online somewhere), but there's nothing in his statements quoted by Haaretz to confirm the casuality figures from IDF. Being a member of Hamas is not the same as being an armed combatant and members of Hamas not directly participating in the armed conflict are not legal targets, just as the IDF switchboard operator is not a legal target when eating supper at home with his family. – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo Sep 20 '13 at 16:48
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    Hamas has a standing policy of presenting its fighters' casualties as civilians when delivered to hospitals/morgues. There was reporting on that in 2014 as well. There was also statistical analysis by BBC that clearly and unequivocally showed that "civilian" casualties were hugely demographically disproportionate to civilian demographics in Gaza, indicating that Hamas fighters were presented as "civilians" in death tallies. That is not unexpected when one considers that Hamas violates Geneva convention by not having its military wear uniforms in the first place. –  Aug 18 '14 at 10:30