True. Many “civilians” are terrorists in action without membership.
Hanas don’t wear uniforms as required by the “rules of war”, and hide among civilians and protected sites. There is no good way to verify the numbers, if a fighter is shot in civilian clothes and someone else picks up his weapons it’s easy to claim whatever you want.
Also some statistics are manipulated. Some consider people under 25 to be children. The UN considers 14-24 as “youths” in their official data. So it’s easy to misinterpret or intentionally obfuscate (or lose in translation) the word youth to suggest children. But clearly men aged 17-24 can fight, and die, and without a uniform they could be called “innocent children”.
I don’t know what’s true, but the fog of war is confusing enough without having definitions that aren’t clear. Then add in fighters aged 14-24 who don’t wear uniforms it gets more difficult to figure out. But when a 19 year old Israeli soldier is killed, they don’t announce it as the death of an innocent child since he clearly is a man, in uniform, who died engaged in combat.
I am sure innocent people have been killed in Gaza. But there is a propaganda component to war as well and Hamaswill use that to the maximum advantage they can. Would’ve been nice if Hamas dropped leaflets on October 5th and 6th announcing they would attack the music festival and neighboring villages on October 7th and warning people to get out of the way.