The children’s record, 1948 to the present
Across every period this record can count from a single source that counted both sides on one methodology, 22,237 Palestinian children and 185 Israeli children were killed. That is 120.2 to 1.
The sum of the three fully counted windows and of nothing else. The uncounted years would add to both sides; they are not estimated here, and the total is therefore a floor, not the whole record.
Why does this matter?
Because a child is not a combatant, cannot be one, and is the one category of person about whom the two sides of this argument agree. Every other figure in this record can be met with a claim about who was fighting whom. This one cannot.
And because the ratio settles the question the rhetoric is built to avoid. When 99.2 per cent of the children killed are killed by one party, the question of who is defending whom has an answer, and it is not the answer that party gives. You cannot claim to be defending a child while killing 120 others.
That formulation is not this record’s. It is the argument countingthekids.org has made since 2012, from its own count of the years 2000 to 2014, where the ratio ran at about eleven to one. This record does not reproduce their figure; it computes its own, from its own sourced series, and the second-Intifada window below — 11.8 to 1 — is where that earlier claim can be checked.
7 October 2023 – 10 September 2026
One figure for every hundred children. Count them.
One figure is 100 children.
Fewer than 100. Drawn as one figure so the row is visible at all; to scale it would be 0.38 of a figure.
20,417 Palestinian children in 2.9 years: a child every 1.3 hours, without a pause, for three years.
The Palestinian figure is Gaza plus the West Bank from the same daily series the rest of this site plots. The Israeli figure is the children killed on 7 October 2023. B’Tselem does not publish a separate count of Israeli children killed after that day; the small number since is inside its 151 for 2000–2025, listed under the gaps below. The comparison is therefore stated against the larger of the two published 7 October figures and still errs against this record’s own argument.
Gaza Ministry of Health and OCHA, via the Tech For Palestine open datasets; the same series this site plots on the Gaza and West Bank pages.
The two windows a single source counted on both sides
The asymmetry is not a product of this war. It is what the record showed in every period anyone counted.
The first Intifada and the Oslo years
9 December 1987 – 28 September 2000 — 16.9 to 1
One figure is 1 child.
B'Tselem, Fatalities in the first Intifada (9 December 1987 – 28 September 2000).
The second Intifada years
29 September 2000 – 31 December 2012 — 11.8 to 1
One figure is 10 children.
Remember These Children, 2000–2014 compilation (American Educational Trust / Washington Report on Middle East Affairs), last updated 22 July 2014.
B’Tselem counted both sides on one methodology and published the table year by year. Its cut-off is under 17, not under 18, so the Palestinian figure is a floor. Palestinian minors killed inside Israel in this period are not broken out by age in the source and are therefore not included.
Remember These Children names every child on both sides, under 18. Its own stated header totals for 2000–2014 are 131 Israeli and 1,587 Palestinian, while its year blocks sum to 131 and 1,653 — a discrepancy of 66 in the source itself, which is recorded here rather than resolved. The window used here stops at the end of 2012 because the 2013 block is missing from the compilation and the 2014 block was left incomplete when it stopped being updated on 22 July 2014.
Every year the record can count
Two scales, because the counts differ by three orders of magnitude and one axis would render the earlier years as nothing. Red is Palestinian children, blue Israeli children.
1987 to 2012
B’Tselem to 28 September 2000, then Remember These Children. The two use different cut-offs — under 17 and under 18 — and the join is marked here rather than smoothed.
B’Tselem; Remember These Children.
2023 to 2026
2023 begins on 7 October. The Israeli figure is the children killed on that day; no separate annual count is published for the years after it.
Gaza Ministry of Health and OCHA, via the Tech For Palestine open datasets; the same series this site plots on the Gaza and West Bank pages.
Children on the named list of the dead, by age
One bar for each year of age from 0 to 17, from the 72,835 named records the Gaza Ministry of Health publishes with a date of birth. There is no age at which the count falls away.
21,637 children in total, spread almost evenly across every year of childhood. The bars do not fall away at the ages a combatant would be found, because these were not combatants.
Gaza Ministry of Health named list, via the Tech For Palestine open datasets.
What the war did to the children it did not kill
Children injured
Between 7 October 2023 and 7 October 2025, against 20,179 killed over the same two years.
UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry, report on the targeting of children, 23 June 2026.
Children left with a permanent disability
Amputations, spinal injuries, blindness and deafness among them.
UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, cited by Save the Children, 6 September 2025.
Children killed before their first birthday
About 450 of them were born after the war began and killed before it ended.
Save the Children, 6 September 2025.
Children who starved to death
Deaths attributed to malnutrition and starvation in children, in a territory where famine was declared on 22 August 2025.
Gaza Ministry of Health, via the Tech For Palestine open datasets.
Under-fives at risk of death from acute malnutrition
A projection made when famine was declared, not a count of deaths.
IPC and UNICEF, cited by Save the Children, 6 September 2025.
Share of Gaza’s schools damaged or destroyed
94 per cent of hospitals were damaged or destroyed over the same period.
Save the Children, 6 September 2025.
Children on the named list of the dead
Of 72,835 people named with an identity number, date of birth and sex. Children are 29.7 per cent of the named dead.
Gaza Ministry of Health named list, via the Tech For Palestine open datasets.
Nineteen forty-eight to the present, period by period
Including the periods no one counted. A blank cell is a gap in the documentation, not a period in which no child died.
The full year table, including the years with no figure
Rows marked partial cover one side only, or one territory only. No total on this page is computed from them.
The gaps, stated
A record that filled these in would be easier to read and would not be a record.
1947–1966
No count of children exists for the Nakba or the years after it.
—
1967–1987
No systematic count of children exists for the first twenty years of the occupation.
—
2013
The Remember These Children compilation has no 2013 block; it runs 2012, then 2014.
Remember These Children.
2015, 2017, 2019, 2020
No annual figure counting both sides on one methodology is published here. DCIP recorded at least 159 Palestinian children killed across 2015–2019 as a five-year total.
Defence for Children International – Palestine.
Israeli children, 2013 – 6 October 2023
B’Tselem records 151 Israeli children under 18 killed by Palestinians between September 2000 and 31 July 2025, excluding 7 October 2023, but does not publish it cut by year. Subtracting the 129 counted here to the end of 2012 leaves about 22 across the twelve and a half years after it, which is not attributed to individual years.
B’Tselem.
Israeli children after 7 October 2023
Included inside the B’Tselem figure above and not published separately. The war window therefore counts 38 on the Israeli side, and the ratio it states would survive that figure being several times larger.
B’Tselem.
How this page counts
Three windows are counted in full. Each is taken from a single source that counted both sides on one methodology, so the ratio inside a window is a comparison the source itself supports. Periods no source counted are published as gaps. Figures that cover only one side, or only one territory, are marked partial and no total depends on them.
Definition. A child is a person under 18, except in the B’Tselem window, where the published table is cut at under 17 and the Palestinian figure is therefore a floor.
B'Tselem, Fatalities in the first Intifada (9 December 1987 – 28 September 2000). · Remember These Children, 2000–2014 compilation (American Educational Trust / Washington Report on Middle East Affairs), last updated 22 July 2014. · Gaza Ministry of Health and OCHA, via the Tech For Palestine open datasets; the same series this site plots on the Gaza and West Bank pages. · Defence for Children International – Palestine. · OCHA, occupied Palestinian territory casualties database. · Israel National Council for the Child; Israel National Insurance Institute. · Save the Children, Gaza: 20,000 children killed in 23 months of war, 6 September 2025. · UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the OPT, 23 June 2026.
The whole file is published as data/children.json, under no login and no key. Every figure above is read from it; nothing on this page is typed by hand. See open data.