Three years after October 7: 1,029 civilians killed, 40,000 recognized as disabled, and the cost of war in hundreds of billions of shekels

Three years after October 7, 2023, can be summed up in a few large numbers. 1,029 civilians killed. 1,318 military personnel and security forces killed. More than 87,000 civilians recognized as victims of hostile actions. More than 40,000 have already received a state-established degree of disability.

Author: Alexander Khmelnitsky

And then the billions begin: more than 58 billion shekels in payments to reservists, over 9 billion to victims, families of the deceased, and hostages, billions to evacuees and those who lost their jobs. The Bank of Israel separately estimates the budgetary cost of the war in the hundreds of billions of shekels.

But if you simply add all this up into a long column of numbers, you get statistics and people almost disappear. Therefore, I tried to understand what exactly the state counts in these reports, whom different departments account for separately, and what today’s data actually say about Israel three years after the morning of October 7, 2023.

1,029 civilians killed — and here it’s important to understand who is counted

Bituach Leumi — the Israeli National Insurance Institute, which is responsible, among other things, for payments to civilian victims of terrorism and war — reports 1,029 civilians killed since the start of the war. This category includes foreign citizens but does not include military personnel, police officers, and other security forces: they are handled by another state system.

In the attack on October 7 itself, 778 civilians were killed, including 70 foreigners. Of the total number of those killed since the start of the war, 668 were men and 361 were women, 88 people were foreign citizens.

The age breakdown looks particularly grim: 63 of the deceased were children and teenagers under 18. Six were no older than three years, five were between four and six, six were between seven and ten, 19 were between 11 and 14 years old, and another 27 were between 15 and 18.

Here, by the way, there is a small but fundamental problem in the published statistics. With a total of 1,029 and 778 killed directly on October 7, arithmetically after October 7, 251 people remain. This exact number of 251 is cited by Ynet. In another current retelling of Bituach Leumi data, 252 is indicated, which would already give 1,030. Therefore, until a corrected primary table appears, it is more accurate to use the combination 778 + 251 = 1,029, rather than mechanically transferring contradictory numbers.

This is a trifle only at first glance. When it comes to the deceased, arithmetic should not become approximate.

87,286 affected — but the most severe number here is different

Since the start of the war, Bituach Leumi has been dealing with 87,286 new civilian נפגעי פעולות איבה — “nifgaei peulot eiva”, that is, people officially recognized as victims of terrorist, rocket, and other hostile actions.

This is a legal status, not just a household definition of ‘victim’. It opens access to treatment, compensation, rehabilitation, and, if there are long-term consequences, to the procedure for establishing disability. Military personnel injured during service go through the rehabilitation system of the Ministry of Defense.

Of these 87,286 people, 43,004 have applied for the establishment of a degree of disability. Decisions have already been made on 40,407 applications, the rest are under consideration by medical commissions.

And here appears a number that, in my opinion, much better describes the consequences of this war than another billion in budget expenditures.

34,878 people received disability based on psychological trauma.

Another 3,171 people were recognized as disabled due to physical injuries, and 2,355 due to a combination of physical and psychological consequences.

That is, the overwhelming part of already recognized disability among civilian victims is associated not with amputations, burns, or shrapnel wounds, but with what is often impossible to see externally.

For Israel, this means that the consequences of October 7 cannot be measured only by cemeteries, destroyed houses, or the number of people who ended up in hospitals in the first days. The state system continues to record trauma months and years later.

A year ago, on the second anniversary of the war, Bituach Leumi reported 36,315 disability applications and 33,983 already established cases. Psychological trauma was then the basis for recognizing disability in 30,462 people. Now there are already 43,000 applications, and almost 35,000 psychological cases.

In other words, the war did not end for a person the moment the siren ended.

Behind one deceased person, there are often several broken biographies

Since the start of the war, the circle of civilian mourning has been joined by 1,216 orphans. Of these, 345 were minors at the time of losing a parent.

300 people were widowed — 231 women and 69 men. 1,204 parents lost a child, and 156 of them had no other children after the death of a son or daughter. 2,281 people lost a brother or sister.

These data are important because the Israeli state counts not only the deceased. For Bituach Leumi, an entire family appears that may need benefits, psychological help, rehabilitation, and support for many years.

NANews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency has already written about why, a thousand days after the attack, the issue of October 7 in Israel remains not only a matter of memory but also a matter of state responsibility and investigation of what happened. A thousand days after October 7 — Israel demands memory, answers, and a state commission

Now the statistics show another side of this process: the state has to not just remember the catastrophe. It has to live with its social consequences for decades.

216 civilian hostages returned — alive or for burial

A separate system of payments and support had to be practically built for hostages and their families.

According to current Bituach Leumi data, 216 civilian hostages were returned from Gaza. 154 returned alive, including 29 foreign citizens. The bodies of another 62 civilian hostages were returned to Israel for burial; six of them were foreigners.

Here, too, an explanation is necessary: this is specifically the civilian category of Bituach Leumi. It should not automatically be perceived as a universal account of all the people captured on October 7, because military personnel and some security forces are accounted for under different departmental rules.

This is why the numbers from different Israeli institutions sometimes seem contradictory, although in reality, they simply count different categories.

Another 1,318 killed — already in the Ministry of Defense system

Separately from civilians, the Ministry of Defense reports 1,318 fallen, included in the category חללי מערכות ישראל — “halalei maarachot Yisrael”, that is, those killed in wars and while performing security system tasks.

Of these, 1,153 are IDF soldiers. This figure includes 43 members of local kitot konenut — armed rapid response teams at settlements, who on the morning of October 7 were the first to engage terrorists in many kibbutzim and moshavim.

In addition, the state statistics include 116 deceased police officers, nine employees of the Shin Bet — Israel’s General Security Service, five employees of the fire and rescue service, 11 employees of the Prison Service, and 24 people with military disabilities who later died from their injuries.

Since the start of the war, more than 7,150 relatives have been added to the official circle of families of the deceased in this system: 2,143 parents, 355 widows, 880 children, and 3,772 brothers and sisters.

There are two huge parallel systems — civilian through Bituach Leumi and military through the Ministry of Defense. Simply adding 1,029 and 1,318 and calling the resulting number ‘the number of war dead’ is tempting, but methodologically not quite accurate: the categories are formed by different departments and according to different legal rules.

58 billion shekels — just for reservists

Another cost of the war usually remains outside the photos from the front.

Over three years, Bituach Leumi paid more than 58 billion shekels in compensation for service in the miluim — the Israeli army reserve. Due to prolonged mobilizations, the state had to switch to paying reservists monthly, rather than waiting for the end of the entire service period.

To understand the scale: in 2024 alone, payments to reservists amounted to about 26 billion shekels, in 2025 — about 21 billion. The Bank of Israel directly links the mass mobilization of reservists not only to budget expenditures but also to limiting the supply of labor in the economy. בנק ישראל

Miluim is not an army that exists separately from the civilian economy. It is a small business owner, an engineer, a doctor, a high-tech employee, a builder, a father or mother of a family, who are taken from ordinary life for weeks and months.

Therefore, the state simultaneously pays a person for service and loses part of their civilian productivity.

Another 9 billion — to victims, families, and hostages

According to the current estimate of Bituach Leumi, over three years more than 9 billion shekels were directed to victims of hostile actions, families of the deceased, hostages, and their relatives.

The distribution shows how this account grew: more than 800 million shekels in the last months of 2023, about 2 billion in 2024, 3.5 billion in 2025, and at least 3 billion in 2026.

Separately, more than 750 million shekels have already been directed to rehabilitation: professional and higher education, payments during training, transportation, housing rent, auxiliary services, and ensuring accessibility.

Special assistance grants to victims of October 7 amounted to about 662 million shekels for 83,563 people. More than 526 million were received by 74,802 people who lived or were in settlements near the Gaza Strip.

This is no longer the emergency aid of the first weeks. Over three years, a huge permanent system of expenses has formed.

Evacuees, those who lost their jobs, and a few more billion

After October 7, the state evacuated entire settlements in the south, and then in the north of Israel.

More than 5 billion shekels were paid to approximately 190,000 residents who evacuated and organized housing themselves instead of being placed by the state in hotels. Another about 1.4 billion went to approximately 110,000 people in the form of grants for returning home. Almost 74,000 workers received about 1.2 billion shekels in incentive payments for returning to their previous jobs.

There is also the Israeli concept of חל״ת — HALAT, unpaid leave. The employer temporarily stops paying wages, but employment relations are not necessarily formally severed, and under special military schemes, a person can receive an allowance from the state.

The cost of such programs in three major military periods reached approximately 4.2 billion shekels: about 2.5 billion after the start of the war on October 7, about half a billion during Operation ‘Am ke-Lavi’ — the war with Iran in June 2025 — and about 1.7 billion during Operation ‘Shaagat ha-Ari’ in 2026.

That is, the war is paid for not only by the Ministry of Defense. It appears in the social security budget, unemployment benefits, housing, psychiatric care, rehabilitation, business compensation, and interest on the national debt.

352 billion — but this is not ‘the bill Israel has already paid’

This is where the confusion with the loudest number begins.

The Bank of Israel estimated additional government expenses caused by the war for 2023–2026 at 352 billion shekels. This is an estimate of the budgetary impact of the war, not a bag of money already entirely taken out of the state treasury by this morning.

In the annual report of the Bank of Israel, it is stated: 249 billion in additional defense expenses, 33 billion in compensation for direct and indirect damage through the property tax fund, 57 billion in other civilian expenses, and 13 billion in additional interest payments on the national debt. בנק ישראל

But in the March presentation by the head of the Bank of Israel, Amir Yaron, the same total of 352 billion is broken down differently: 243 billion in defense expenses and 19 billion in interest, with unchanged 33 and 57 billion for the other two items.

And this is precisely an official document of the Bank of Israel, not a journalistic error.

Therefore, I would not try to portray one of these breakdowns as the only existing one. It is more correct to say: The Bank of Israel gives a total of 352 billion shekels, but in two official materials, the internal classification of 6 billion shekels between defense and interest expenses differs.

The main clarification is written by the Bank of Israel itself: the calculation was made at the end of 2025 and did not include subsequent decisions made after the start of Operation ‘Shaagat ha-Ari’ in 2026.

In March, the government decided to increase the defense budget by another 32 billion shekels and create a reserve of about 13 billion for additional military and civilian needs in case of continued hostilities.

Mechanically adding 32 and 13 to 352 and declaring that ‘the war has already cost 397 billion’ would be incorrect. Part of the amount is a budget reserve, not already incurred expenses; moreover, subsequent forecasts of the Bank of Israel changed along with the situation on the fronts. In the July forecast, for example, an increase in the defense budget by 15 billion shekels was assumed, mainly due to the already provided reserve.

Therefore, the formulation ‘the budgetary scale of the war approached 400 billion shekels’ is possible only with these reservations. The formulation ‘Israel has already spent 400 billion’ is not.

And there are 175 billion more that cannot be added to 352 at all

There is another number that is especially easy to misuse.

The Bank of Israel estimated that over nine quarters, the war led to approximately 175 billion shekels of accumulated GDP lag from the pre-war trend. This is equivalent to about 8.5–8.6% of annual GDP.

But this is not additional budgetary expenses.

352 billion — money and obligations of the state budget related to the war.

175 billion — an estimate of how much economic activity Israel missed compared to the trajectory the economy could have followed without the war.

Adding them up and getting ‘527 billion as the cost of the war’ is not allowed. It’s like adding the repair bill of a closed store to the revenue that store didn’t earn during the closure and presenting the result as the same category of expenses.

NANews previously separately compared the economic cost of wars for Israel and Ukraine. The same principle applies there: beautiful sums are easy to put side by side, but without understanding the methodology, the comparison begins to mislead the reader. The cost of war: Israel and Ukraine — why the sums cannot be compared directly

What these numbers mean three years later

If you remove the billion-dollar sums, a rather unpleasant picture remains.

Israel managed to continue the economy’s work, return reservists, restore production, and even demonstrate periods of rapid growth after sharp declines. NANews recently analyzed why huge quarterly GDP recovery figures cannot be read as proof that the war ‘passed for the economy almost for free’. 14.9% GDP growth in Israel: why the huge figure appeared after the military decline

The economy indeed withstood.

But ‘withstood’ and ‘nothing happened’ are completely different statements.

The national debt has grown. Interest expenses have increased. Security expenses have become structurally higher. Tens of thousands of people received official disability status. Thousands of families entered state systems of long-term assistance. Billions continue to go to reservists, evacuees, victims, and those who could not work due to another round of war.

And 34,878 citizens with recognized psychological disabilities mean something else: a significant part of the bill for October 7 will be paid when October 7 itself is long gone from daily headlines.

That is why the third anniversary is no longer just a conversation about how much Israel lost in one terrible day.

It’s a question of what that day continues to cost the country every subsequent year.