NAZARETH, (PIC)
A report published by the Iranian Tasnim News Agency, which estimates the number of Israeli deaths at about 1,281 during the first weeks of the Israeli war on Iran, has reopened the debate about the mechanisms for announcing losses in Israel, and the role of military censorship in shaping the official narrative, amid a recurring gap between unofficial estimates and declared figures.
According to data reported by the “Isnad” platform, the agency’s estimates relied on analyzing cemetery data and burial records, in addition to tracking the activity of teams specialized in handling bodies, in an attempt to bypass what Tehran describes as “Israeli blackout”. However, these figures remain disputed, within the context of an information war parallel to the military confrontation.
The platform indicates that the Hebrew section of the agency relied on comparing daily death rates in Israel, noting that the normal average is about 150 cases per day, while it rose during 21 days of the war to 211 burial cases per day. This means, according to this estimate, a daily increase of 61 cases attributed to the repercussions of the war on Iran, leading to a total of 1,281 deaths at minimum.
The report is based on reviewing data from “Chevra Kadisha” institutions, which are responsible for burial affairs in Israel, as the monitoring included ten major cemeteries, including cemeteries in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Petah Tikva, in addition to Rehovot and Ashdod.
The report also pointed to tracking the activity of the “ZAKA” organization, which specializes in handling bodies at incident sites, clarifying that 703 movements of its teams were recorded during the same period, which the agency considered an additional indicator of a rise in the number of deaths to levels exceeding what is officially declared.
The agency noted that these estimates do not include victims of the recent missile attacks that targeted areas in southern Israel, including Dimona and Arad, which suggests the toll is likely to rise with the continuation of burial operations.
Military censorship manages numbers and image
Military censorship in Israel is considered a structural part of the national security system, as it works to control the military and security image presented to the media, in a way that enhances deterrence power in the awareness of adversaries. At the same time, this censorship is a central tool in managing the flow of information, especially during wartime.
This censorship is based on a security doctrine that dates back to David Ben Gurion, which is based on considering Israel in a constant state of threat, which imposes managing wars quickly and decisively, while maintaining an image of military superiority, making control of information an integral part of the battle itself.
In this context, censorship is not limited to preventing the publication of sensitive military information, but extends to “engineering the image” that reaches the public, whether inside Israel or abroad, by highlighting successes and reducing the impact of losses, reinforcing what is known in Israeli literature as the “Iron Wall theory”.
Between partial blackout and information management
The discussion among specialists shows variation in describing the extent of the blackout. Researcher in Israeli affairs Muhannad Mustafa believes that Israel cannot completely hide the numbers of killed and wounded in a relatively open society that has multiple media outlets and social media platforms, especially regarding civilians or soldiers whose identities become known later.
However, Mustafa points out that the core of the issue does not lie in the numbers themselves, but in the information associated with these numbers, as Israel imposes strict censorship on everything related to the details of losses, especially regarding strike locations, the nature of targets that were hit, and the extent of damage inflicted.
He indicates that this data has high intelligence value, as its publication allows the adversary to assess the accuracy and success of its strikes, and thus improve its military performance in later rounds. Therefore, military censorship is not only aimed at controlling media discourse, but is part of managing the battle itself, and part of managing the conflict at its informational level.
In this context, Mustafa explains that military censorship in Israel operates within a clear legal framework that allows it to prevent the publication of any information that could be considered harmful to national security, especially in times of war, when its powers expand further, and Israeli media becomes obligated to comply with its instructions.
He also links this behavior to the psychological and social dimension inside Israel, as reducing the visibility of losses or withholding their details aims to maintain the cohesion of the home front, and prevent erosion of public trust in the military and political establishment, especially with the transfer of battles into the Israeli interior, which he describes as an unprecedented reality in the Israeli experience.
Mustafa concludes that what is happening is not a complete concealment of numbers, but rather precise management of information, numbers that are difficult to hide are announced, but their real military implications are concealed, in an attempt to maintain moral and security superiority at the same time, and to preserve the cohesion of the home front at the same time.
The informational dimension of war
The motivations behind this policy are multiple. From a security perspective, Israel aims to prevent its adversaries from assessing the accuracy and effectiveness of strikes, which may help them develop their attacks, making control of information part of direct operational calculations.
At the political and social level, reducing declared losses is linked to maintaining the cohesion of what is known in Israel as the “home front”, and preventing a decline in public support for the war, especially in light of what specialists described as an “unprecedented shock” within Israeli society due to the extension of battles into the Israeli interior.
Israeli media reports also show that the scale of losses in some stages was “shocking” even within military and media circles, with warnings about the difficulty of absorbing the announced figures themselves, let alone unannounced ones, reflecting the sensitivity of numbers in Israeli public awareness.
In this context, the estimates of Tasnim News Agency appear as part of a broader war over the narrative, using open data and analysis of indirect indicators, such as burial records or the movement of emergency teams, to attempt to challenge the credibility of Israeli figures, in contrast to an Israeli legal system that allows imposing blackout in wartime and justifies it on security and deterrence grounds.
Israeli researcher in military affairs Omer Dostri believes that Israel is engaged in a “complex conflict” that is not limited to the battlefield, but includes managing information and its impact on the operational environment, in light of the growing role of social media in shaping public awareness during wars.
Similarly, researchers in security and strategic studies indicate that restricting information, especially regarding losses and strike locations, is a practical measure to prevent the adversary from obtaining “open-source intelligence” that can be used to improve the accuracy of attacks, which explains the Israeli military censorship’s focus on qualitative details more than abstract numbers.
How do numerical gaps turn into a war of narratives?
Other researchers also read this phenomenon within a broader framework of a “war of narratives”, where victim numbers are not fixed data as much as they are raw materials that are politically and media restructured. A study published by the Journal of Communication issued by Oxford University Press shows that victim data in conflicts, including the war of genocide on Gaza, is subject to several layers of uncertainty, starting from the moment of collection and not ending at publication.
Researcher Michael Hameleers explains that this “uncertainty” is not only related to the difficulty of documentation in wartime conditions, but also to the multiplicity of entities producing numbers, and the difference in classification standards, such as the definition of “civilian” and “combatant”, or whether missing persons are included among the dead or excluded.
This leads to the emergence of “conflicting numerical maps” of the same event, allowing each party to build its own narrative based on numbers that serve its discourse, and allowing each party to reinterpret reality through numbers.
The study suggests that these gaps do not remain technical, but quickly turn into a tool of conflict, as governments and media reframe numbers through three main mechanisms:
1-Selection, by highlighting certain figures and neglecting others, in a way that reinforces a specific narrative about the victim and the perpetrator.
2-Reframing, where numbers are presented in different contexts, as a high death toll may be presented as evidence of the enemy’s brutality, or conversely as evidence of the necessity of military decisiveness.
3-Delegitimization, by challenging the sources of the numbers themselves, and accusing them of bias or politicization, which undermines trust in any figure regardless of its accuracy.
The study notes that media outlets do not merely transfer those numbers, but participate in “constructing their meaning”, through choosing headlines, determining sources of quotation, and the way data is presented, so that the same number can be used to indicate completely contradictory meanings, once as a “catastrophic humanitarian toll”, and once as “collateral damage in a military operation”.
It also indicates that the digital media environment has exacerbated this phenomenon, as numbers spread rapidly without sufficient verification, allowing them to be inflated, reduced, or taken out of their temporal and spatial context, and with repetition, “alternative facts” are formed that are difficult to dismantle, even with the issuance of corrective data.
The study concludes that victim numbers in wars are no longer merely humanitarian indicators, but have become a field of confrontation in their own right, and a central tool in the battle of legitimacy, as they are used to determine who possesses moral right, who bears responsibility, and who succeeds in gaining the sympathy of international public opinion. In this context, the battlefield and the narrative battle intertwine, within an open conflict over truth and meaning.