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Moral Clarity Is Missing From the Discourse on the War in Gaza
Red Cross transports the bodies of two deceased hostages, kidnapped during the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas, after they were handed over by Hamas militants, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, October 30, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Here is my one regret from the last two years of commentary on the October 7 War: we let ourselves get sucked into arguing the running death toll coming out of Hamas’ Health Ministry in Gaza.
In some ways, it was inevitable. Global outlets put those figures in every headline and chyron, so someone had to meet them on the field. Nevertheless, it was still a strategic mistake. We allowed Hamas’ daily ticker to become the global yardstick for morality in this conflict.
Start with a simple truth about war reporting: immediate casualty numbers after explosions are guaranteed to be wrong.
These are not fog-of-war errors from Hamas; they are straight-up lies. The Al‑Ahli explosion is a case study. Within minutes, the “500 dead” claim circled the world. Subsequent assessments from Western intelligence agencies put the likely death toll in the low hundreds, yet the first number did its work; it framed the narrative for days. We have seen this ruse time and again, and we fall for it each time it happens.
I am not saying the numbers do not matter at all; every innocent death matters infinitely to the people who loved them. But the “numbers game” — the breathless, running tally — turns a legal and moral analysis into a horse race graphic. It incentivizes speed over verification, from a single unverified source with a clear propaganda motive, and it collapses complex questions into a single, unreliable metric.
Even organizations and reporters who regard Gaza Health Ministry figures as broadly useful acknowledge the limits of instant counts and the likelihood of later revisions when conditions improve or bodies are recovered from rubble.
Here is the broader point. If the tally is 40,000, 68,000, or 100,000, the fundamental question remains unchanged: In no other conflict do we treat a running counter as the dispositive test of conduct.
Afghanistan’s war killed roughly 176,000 people through direct violence by 2021 — civilians, Afghan forces, insurgents, and others, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project. Iraq’s direct-war deaths from 2003 to 2021 total 275,000–306,000, including 185,000–209,000 civilians. Those wars are debated on strategy, aims, and legality, not by a daily, decontextualised ticker. Nobody alleges those wars were genocides.
Look around the world right now. Amidst the ongoing slaughter of innocents in Sudan, famine has been formally identified, with the UN-backed IPC system projecting expansion absent major relief. In the worst-case scenario, up to one million people could die in Sudan through war, famine, and pestilence. There are no mass marches in Western capitals keyed to that potential number, and no live tickers on cable news.
Even in the Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran legs of the same post-October 7 War, where thousands were killed over the past two years, death tallies were barely reported, and even then, only as background noise, not the central moral metric.
Why did Gaza become the exception?
Partly because Hamas and Gaza’s authorities understood the media economy and fed it a constant stream of numbers, which major outlets treated as the default baseline (sometimes with caveats, more often without). These figures were the central pillar of Hamas’ propaganda and information strategy, with a willing queue of allies and useful idiots ready to push the numbers and “verify” them through arcane and speculative twisting of formulae and surveys.
Partly because critics of Israel made the tally itself the argument: more deaths equals more wrongdoing.
And partly because many of us on Israel’s side took the bait. We tried to rebut, refine, and reclassify: are these militants or civilians? Does the ratio favor the IDF? In doing so, we validated the premise that Hamas’ death ticker was the thing that mattered most.
It is not. Not even the much‑vaunted “combatant-to-civilian ratio” decides the question. International humanitarian law asks something different and more exacting: did the attacker distinguish between combatants and civilians? Were feasible precautions taken? Was the expected collateral harm not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated?
These are the only metrics of proportionality. These are the standards commanders must apply in real time, and investigators should scrutinize on a case-by-case basis. A cumulative body count, especially one compiled in real-time under combat conditions, can neither prove compliance nor establish violations. It can only signal the scale of suffering (which we should never minimize), but it cannot, by itself, answer a single legal or moral question.
Yes, specific false claims must be corrected. When an immediate number is demonstrably wrong or wildly implausible, you challenge it with evidence and move on. But you do not let that back‑and‑forth define the whole conversation.
The lesson, as we advance, is simple. Do not play on the enemy’s turf when you do not have to. Engage where it matters: the law of armed conflict and the campaign’s purpose. What was the target? What was the necessity? What precautions were taken? What intelligence informed the strike? Those are hard questions, but they are the right ones. They do justice to the gravity of each loss without turning human life into a scoreboard.
Numbers should inform; they should not rule. Let us stop pretending a running death tally is a moral compass. It is not. The more we argue over the ticker, the more we concede the frame that Hamas designed to trap us.
Andrew Fox is a former British Army officer. Recent senior lecturer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Masters study in Middle Eastern strategy and Psychology. Now a think tank research fellow focusing on Defence, the Middle East and Disinformation. Read more about Andrew on his website. Follow Andrew on Substack. A version of this article was also published by The Investigative Project on Terrorism.
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‘For As Long As Necessary’: Katz Says Campaign Against Iran Entering Decisive Stage
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz and his Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias make statements to the press, at the Ministry of Defense in Athens Greece, Jan. 20, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki
i24 News – Israel Katz said Saturday that the confrontation with Iran had entered a “decisive phase,” as US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets continued and regional tensions escalated.
Speaking after a security assessment at Israel’s defense headquarters alongside Eyal Zamir, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, and senior military and intelligence officials, the Israeli defense minister said the campaign against the Islamic Republic would continue “for as long as necessary.”
“The global and regional struggle against Iran, led by American President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is intensifying and entering its decisive phase,” Katz said.
Katz also praised US strikes on Kharg Island, a key Iranian oil hub, describing them as a “severe blow” to the Iranian regime. He said the attacks were an appropriate response to Iranian threats against the strategic Strait of Hormuz and to what he called Tehran’s attempts to pressure the international community.
At the same time, Katz said the Israeli Air Force was continuing a “powerful wave of attacks” against targets in Tehran and other parts of Iran.
He accused the Iranian leadership of using “regional and global terrorism” and strategic blackmail in an effort to deter Israel and the United States from pursuing their military campaign, warning that such actions would be met with a “strong and uncompromising response.”
Katz added that the outcome of the conflict would ultimately depend on the Iranian population. “Only the Iranian people can put an end to this situation through a determined struggle, until the overthrow of the terrorist regime and the salvation of Iran,” he said.
According to the minister, the confrontation now pits the Iranian regime’s determination to survive against growing military pressure from Israel and its allies.
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Trump Rejects Efforts to Launch Iran Ceasefire Talks, Sources Say
US President Donald Trump speaks on the day he honors reigning Major League Soccer (MLS) champion Inter Miami CF players and team officials with an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, March 5, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
President Donald Trump’s administration has rebuffed efforts by Middle Eastern allies to start diplomatic negotiations aimed at ending the Iran war that started two weeks ago with a massive US-Israeli air assault, according to three sources familiar with the efforts.
Iran, for its part, has rejected the possibility of any ceasefire until US and Israeli strikes end, two senior Iranian sources told Reuters, adding that several countries had been trying to mediate an end to the conflict.
The lack of interest from Washington and Tehran suggests both sides are digging in for an extended conflict, even as the widening war inflicts civilian casualties and Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz sends oil prices soaring.
US strikes on Iran’s Kharg Island, the country’s main oil export hub, on Friday night underscored Trump’s determination to press ahead with his military assault. Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has vowed to keep the Strait of Hormuz shut and threatened to step up attacks on neighboring countries.
The war has killed more than 2,000 people, mostly in Iran, and created the biggest-ever oil supply disruption as maritime traffic has halted in the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil is transported.
ATTEMPTS TO OPEN LINES OF COMMUNICATION
Oman, which mediated talks before the war, has tried multiple times to open a line of communication, but the White House has made clear it is not interested, according to two sources, who like others in this story were granted anonymity in order to speak freely about diplomatic matters.
A senior White House official confirmed Trump has rebuffed those efforts to start talks and is focused on pressing ahead with the war to further weaken Tehran’s military capabilities.
“He’s not interested in that right now, and we’re going to continue with the mission unabated. Maybe there’s a day, but not right now,” the official said.
During the first week of the war, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that Iran’s leadership and military were so battered by US-Israeli strikes that they wanted to talk, but that it was “Too Late!” He has a history of shifting foreign policy stances without warning, making it hard to rule out that he might test the waters for restarting diplomacy.
“President Trump said new potential leadership in Iran has indicated they want to talk and eventually will talk. For now, Operation Epic Fury continues unabated,” a second senior White House official said when asked to comment on this story.
The Iranian sources said Tehran has rejected efforts by several countries to negotiate a ceasefire until the US and Israel end their airstrikes and meet Iran’s demands, which include a permanent end to US and Israeli attacks and compensation as part of a ceasefire.
Egypt, which was involved in mediation before the war, has also tried to reopen communications, according to three security and diplomatic sources. While the efforts do not appear to have made progress, they have secured some military restraint from neighboring countries hit by Iran, according to one of the sources.
Egypt’s foreign ministry, the government of Oman and the Iranian government did not respond to requests for comment.
POSITIONS HARDEN ON ALL SIDES
The war’s impact on global oil markets has significantly increased the cost for the United States.
Some US officials and advisers to Trump urge a quick end to the war, warning that surging gasoline prices could exact a high political price from the president’s Republican Party, with US midterm elections looming.
Others are pressing Trump to maintain the offensive against the Islamic Republic to destroy its missile program and prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon, according to Reuters reporting.
Trump’s rejection of diplomatic efforts could indicate that, for now, the administration has no plans for a quick end to the war.
Indeed, both the United States and Iran appear even less willing to engage than during the opening days of the war, when senior US officials reached out to Oman to discuss de-escalating, according to several sources.
One source said Iran’s top security official, Ali Larijani, and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had also sought to use Oman as a conduit for ceasefire discussions that would have involved U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
But those discussions have not materialized.
Instead, Iran’s position has hardened, said a third senior Iranian source.
“Whatever was communicated previously through the diplomatic channels is irrelevant now,” said the source.
“The Guards strongly believe that if they lose control over the Strait of Hormuz, Iran will lose the war,” the source added, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite paramilitary force that controls large parts of the economy.
“Therefore, the Guards will not accept any ceasefire, ceasefire talks, or diplomatic efforts, and Iran’s political leaders will not engage in such talks despite attempts by several countries.”
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US Strikes More Than 90 Iranian Military Targets on Kharg Island, CENTCOM Says
A satellite image shows an oil terminal at Kharg Island, Iran, February 25, 2026. Photo: 2026 Planet Labs PBC/Handout via REUTERS
United States forces executed a large-scale precision strike on Kharg Island in Iran on Friday night, the US Central Command said on Saturday.
“US forces successfully struck more than 90 Iranian military targets on Kharg Island, while preserving the oil infrastructure,” CENTCOM said.
The strike destroyed naval mine storage facilities, missile storage bunkers, and multiple other military sites, the US military said in a post on X.
President Donald Trump threatened on Friday to strike the oil infrastructure of Iran’s Kharg Island hub, unless Tehran stopped attacking vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.