Two Australian academics, Dr Richard Hil and Dr Gideon Polya, claim the real death toll of the genocide in Gaza is beyond 680,000, 12 to 14 times higher than the figure commonly accepted.
They reveal how they established these figures in their article “Skewering History: The Truth About the Scale of Genocide in Gaza” published on July 11, 2025.
The key is to also include “indirect deaths.” They write, “When deaths resulting from imposed deprivation (indirect deaths) are factored into mortality data, the total figures will be higher than those from only violent deaths (direct deaths). Eminent epidemiologist Professor Devi Sridhar (chair of Global Health, University of Edinburgh) reported in an article in The Guardian a ‘conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death’. Assuming that deaths from deprivation were four times the violent deaths, then the 136,000 violent deaths after 15.5 months of killing (25 April 2025) would imply 544,000 Gaza deaths from imposed deprivation, and that the total Gazan death toll would accordingly be 136,000 violent deaths plus 544,000 from imposed deprivation, leading to a staggering total of 680,000 deaths by 25 April 2025. Most of these victims, as indicated in earlier counts by the Ministry of Health, are women and children.”
