Despite citing Hamas’s casualty numbers at a congressional hearing on Thursday, the Pentagon clarified to the Jerusalem Post that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin does not stand by those numbers per se.
During the hearing, Austin said that more than 25,000 women and children had been killed by Israel since October 7, adding that Israel can and should do more to protect civilians.
More specifically, at the congressional hearing, Austin was asked how many Palestinian women and children had been killed by Israel, and Austin replied: “It is over 25,000.”
In contrast, Israel has said that it has killed around 11,000-13,000 Hamas forces and that additional Palestinian civilians have been killed by 10-15% rocket misfires by Hamas. Presuming the 30,000 dead Palestinians number provided by Hamas‘s Health Ministry is correct, this would mean that the number of killed Palestinian civilians could likely be between 15,000-18,000, a good bit lower than 25,000.
Hamas has said the IDF has only killed 6,000 of its forces. For Austin to say the IDF has killed 25,000 civilians would then have seemed to suggest he was accepting Hamas’s numbers over Israel’s.
Asked to clarify the situation, Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh responded to the Post, “During the hearing today, Secretary Austin was asked how many women and children have died in Gaza. To clarify, the Secretary’s answer was citing an estimate from the Hamas-controlled health ministry that more than 25,000 total Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. We cannot independently verify these Gaza casualty figures.”
The Pentagon did not clarify which casualty figure they work with
The Post followed up by asking why Austin chose to cite only the Hamas numbers and not both the Hamas and IDF numbers.
The Pentagon had not responded to that question at press time.
Generally speaking, Austin has been one of the largest supporters of Israel within the Biden administration, but tensions between the sides have elevated lately as the Palestinian death toll has continued to spike and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has avoided committing to plans for handing over Gaza to a third party acceptable to the US, the West, and Israel’s Arab allies.
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