sombear said:
Redbrickbear said:
sombear said:
Redbrickbear said:
sombear said:
Redbrickbear said:
historian said:
Redbrickbear said:
historian said:
You are making ridiculous assumptions based upon the lies of terrorists
You think the UN is a lying terrorist organization?
[The humanitarian situation in Gaza has been termed a "crisis" and a "catastrophe". The entire population in the Gaza Strip is classified in Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Phase 3 - Crisis, or above. 50% of the population is in IPC Phase 4 - Emergency, and 25% is in IPC Phase 5 - Catastrophe. More than 23,000 have been killed. As a result of Israel's blockade, Gaza faces shortages of fuel, food, medication, water, and medical supplies. The blockade resulted in a 90% drop in electricity availability, impacting hospital power supplies, sewage plants, and shutting down desalination plants that provide drinking water. According to WHO, 27 out of 35 hospitals in Gaza were shut down by 23 November 2023. On 13 October, UNRWA commissioner Philippe Lazzarini said, "The scale and speed of the unfolding humanitarian crisis is bone-chilling".]
Actually, yes.
.
Uh ok
So how are we supposed to have a discussion about the war if the only people you believe are Mossad and the IDF?
There are plenty of discussions to be had, and none require taking the Hamas health ministry's #s at face value.
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Did the UN take the health ministry #s at face value or come up with their own?
I don't think anyone (other than you) has denied that Israel has killed 30,000 Palestinians.
You need to step outside your echo chamber. Even pro-Palestinian analysts dispute their #s. I suppose you buy Putin's #s hook line and sinker also.
What exactly do you think my "echo chamber" is?
I'm literally just googling "Gaza war casualties"
Virtually (maybe literally) every article I read from every political perspective cites Hamas' numbers and more often than not includes some kind of disclaimer.
BTW, I have no idea how many have died in Gaza. I know that Hamas lies about everything, and I know innocents are being killed. Beyond that, I don't think anyone could accurately estimate within 50%.
There are also questions about how the IDF counts potential combatants vs civilians.
[To try to contextualize and make sense of the claims and counterclaims, I reached out to Sarah Parkinson of Johns Hopkins SAIS. She has deeply researched these questions in Lebanon and a range of other Middle East wars, and is also one of the sharpest, clearest and most original thinkers in our field. Our
conversation has now been published at Good Authority (the TMC successor you should all be following). It ranges widely over the logistics of casualty counting and the critically relevant academic literature on the topic. Following many others in the academic literature, she highlights the ways in which a focus on numbers can distract attention from the humanity of the victims and how arguments over necessarily imprecise numbers become a way to distract from the crushing reality of mass civilian death and displacement.
Midway through our conversation, Parkinson points out one of the most glaring problems with the way "civilian" is defined: the studies assume that all men between 18-59 are potential combatants. That's horrifying and absurd, to put it mildly. Parkinson doesn't talk about this in our conversation, but if it's true (as the IDF claims) that Hamas has 30,000 fighters in Gaza, then this method would almost certainly lump many hundreds of thousands of civilian men into the number of "Hamas militants" reportedly killed. Just recall those humiliating photos and videos of Gazan men in their underwear being presented as "Hamas surrendering"; the IDF later
admitted that "of the hundreds of Palestinian detainees photographed handcuffed in the Gaza Strip in recent days, about 10-15 percent are Hamas operatives or identified with the group." Consider the work that "or identified with the group" is doing in that acknowledgement… and then work backward to the claim of 5000 "Hamas militants" killed. As Parkinson puts it, "Out of respect for basic human rights and humanity, media reports should emphasize that Palestinian men can be, and mostly are, civilians."]