It’s directly relevant to the linked article in the comment I was responding to, which uses the IDFs reported Palestinian civilian to soldier death ratio to claim that Israel’s military actions are uniquely humane. That conclusion is challenged by a showing that Hamas’s achieved Israeli civilian:soldier death ratio.

The question I’m implicitly raising is why would one be worse than the other?

In fact, Israel is counting every adult male as Hamas in their death counts. If we were to use “IDF rules” and count every adult male victim of the Oct 7th attack as a “soldier” (a claim made by Hamas, bolstered by the fact that almost military service is required of most Jews in Israel), then the ratio would be less than 2:1.