Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Ok, so what is the casualty total? We don’t know because it’s never been reported. Haaretz said it was 260 as of April 2024. Al-Jazeera said 860 five days ago. I’m sure you can tell me all the reasons those are wrong, but won’t actually be able to tell me a number.
That figure is probably correct. Haaretz is an extremely leftist publication which is very hostile to Likud government, and if that government went crazy enough (which it wouldn't because as I said that would be idiotic) to try and hide massive death toll, they'd expose it gladly. Except in this case there's nothing to expose.
Al Jazeera is full of shit. And I mean it as the most general assessment possible, anytime they say anything about Israel you can assume they are full of shit and you will be right pretty much every time. If there ever is a conspiracy in Israel government, whatever it be, Haaretz can be plausibly the one that would uncover it (of course, given it's a Likud government, otherwise they'd just shut up, they wouldn't attack a leftist government), but not Al Jazeera.
How would they even do that? How many sources in top Israel government positions would leak to freaking Al Jazeera? Let's assume Israeli government and IDF and the Home Front Command and Hevra Kadisha and everybody else are all in on the conspiracy to hide hundreds or thousands of casualties. How the fucking Al Jazeera would know then? From where exactly? Who would tell them? When they have a at least half dozen of perfectly good media outlets in Israel itching to stick it to Bibi? Again, that would be completely idiotic. I like conspiracy theories but a conspiracy theory must make at least a minimal sense.
I don't know where Al Jazeera pulled that number from, and I wouldn't even bother to check. If you are interested in real numbers, get some from some place that isn't full of shit. You could use Haaretz if you want to - if they link to official figures, they usually wouldn't lie about it. Haaretz publishes a lot of lies, but lying about what could be easily checked against official figures would be too stupid, they don't work this way.
I don't know the exact number, I haven't looked it up, so I'd estimate it as several dozens from Iran thing and about the same from Gaza activities, overall probably between 50 and 100 casualties in the last 3 months.
Did you try checking Wikipedia? While it's not the most reliable of sources, they have a habit that most traditional press neglects, that is linking to primary sources, and those links usually contain such information. I'm pretty sure every death in Israel, be it civilian or military, is reported (though military deaths are reported after a delay due to family notification requirements). You just need to look it up.
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