Gaza: More than 327,000 Lives erased by the Zionist war machine

The tragedy in Gaza cannot be described solely through images of buildings reduced to dust, of children torn apart by bombs, or of entire families buried beneath the rubble. This genocidal war waged by “Israel” since 7 October 2023 is also expressed in figures that reveal the scale of a human catastrophe without precedent in this century. Counting the martyrs in Gaza has become part of the very political and moral struggle that runs parallel to the massacre.

On one side are the official figures from Gaza’s Ministry of Health, recognised by the UN and routinely cited in humanitarian reports. On the other, independent studies and prestigious international scientific publications draw attention to the fact that the statistics released daily represent only the surface of a far graver reality.

On the 717th day of the Zionist massacre in Gaza, marked on 23 September 2025, the Ministry of Health of Gaza reported that more than 65,300 Palestinians had been martyred since the start of the offensive. It is a staggering figure, but one that reflects only those deaths caused directly by traumatic injuries: those who succumbed to the bombings, the bullets of Zionist snipers, or demolitions.

Left out are those who die slowly from hunger, thirst, or illnesses that would be treatable under normal conditions, but which become fatal in a besieged territory. Not included in the count are the babies who do not survive without incubators, the elderly without access to essential medicines, cancer patients without chemotherapy, pregnant women who die because there was no fuel for ambulances, chronically ill patients abandoned to their fate, those buried under rubble never recovered, and those hastily interred without record.

It is into this void that science steps. A study published in the renowned scientific journal The Lancet (July 2024) suggests that the number of martyrs officially recorded as dying from traumatic injuries represents only around 20 per cent of the real total, since for every documented death up to four others may have died due to indirect causes of the war such as hunger, thirst, untreated illnesses, lack of medicine, the collapse of hospitals, and so on.

If we apply this reasoning to the most recent figures, the 65,000 official martyrs become approximately 327,000 lives lost in less than two years – around 13 per cent of Gaza’s population of about 2.5 million people in October 2023. We are faced with one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of the 21st century.

The contrast between 65,000 and 327,000 is not an accounting detail: It is a qualitative shift. In the field of International Humanitarian Law, the number of civilian victims is decisive in characterising war crimes and genocide. The difference between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of martyrs alters the place of this conflict in the history of modern warfare and should increase the urgency of an international response.

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To draw a comparison with Brazil’s population of around 215 million, this 13 per cent would represent more than 28 million people – nearly twice the population of the city of São Paulo, with its 11.5 million inhabitants!

This is why numbers themselves have become weapons. “Israel” and its allies attempt to delegitimise the data from Gaza’s Ministry of Health, claiming they are manipulated to benefit Hamas. However, international organisations such as OCHA (the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) use this data, recognising that if there is any flaw, it is not exaggeration but under-reporting.

This “statistical silence” hides thousands of erased stories.

It is crucial to understand that we are not facing a natural disaster, an earthquake, or an uncontrollable epidemic. What is happening in Gaza is a deliberate and systematic process: a blockade that prevents the entry of food, medicine, and fuel; attacks that systematically destroy hospitals, schools, water reservoirs, and the minimal civil infrastructure required for the survival of a population of more than 2.5 million people.

That is why speaking of “more than 327,000 martyrs” is not inflated rhetoric. It is recognising the true scale of a tragedy that the world prefers to see only halfway. A genocide that takes 65,000 lives is already intolerable. But a genocide that may have killed more than 327,000 people exposes a colossal failure of humanity to prevent the repetition of the worst horrors of the 20th century.

Counting Gaza’s martyrs is, above all, counting the truth. The official figures are already an indictment of the ongoing Israeli policy of extermination, but it is when viewed through the lens of science that the depth of the catastrophe becomes clear. To accept only the official version is to normalise a partially visible massacre. To acknowledge under-reporting is to accept that Gaza has become one of the darkest chapters in contemporary history.

More than 327,000 martyrs are not merely a number: they are destroyed families, extinguished dreams, generations torn from the future. And if the counting of corpses has become a matter of dispute, let that dispute at least serve to remind us that behind each figure there is a name, a face, and a story that should never have been interrupted.

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