naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #3
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
I specifically wrote that it is half-complete. It is possible that more under-18s will come out in the full list, but 40 is also the widely distributed number of children killed.
The Haaretz paper has every name and age of half the killed… which I linked and specified. So your original point wasn’t very relevant, though I grant the unlikely possibility they are holding back on the children’s’ names. If you look at the number provided, it’s half the total of the dead. Here’s someone doing an age breakdown: https://twitter.com/lqgist/status/1717623479225241672
The only number we have ever gotten on children killed is 40, which came from the original reporting, and was briefly (and falsely) amalgamated with a story of beheaded babies: here’s a link. Israel has been opaque on total numbers.
Anyway, I stand by my original sentence as being adequately sourced and qualified:
The Haaretz figure on the original Hamas incursion, half-complete, is that Hamas killed just 20 under-18s
... your defense, when someone points out that the first and only number you provided in this context is wildly inappropriate as a value, is to point to a higher count, which is over three weeks old, and which is no more clearly a complete total.
I’m genuinely at a loss trying to understand your position. Is your argument that the half of names and ages cleared for publication are not representative of half of the sample? Why not specify that, and importantly,
why do you believe that? Do you have evidence to believe that they are intentionally withholding the names and ages of under-18s? Or do you believe that someone would read the half and assume a total?
The higher count is a (surprise) twice the value of the half amount I specified, and it’s three weeks old because the original Hamas incursion was four weeks old.
What’s so interesting about this back and forth (beside the fact that either I am embarrassingly missing something obvious or you are aiming for criticism like Hamas aims their rockets) is that we are comparing 2,664 children killed by Israel to the “40 children” figure. Let us suppose that the 40 figure is wrong, and the final count comes to 100. Then my figure (which is based in evidence) did turn out inaccurate, and that will be important to note in the future. Do you think that impacts my point being made? It would be 26x more children, rather than 66x, and the point I am getting across would stand.
Do you suggest that Israel use children as human shields, so that they can increase the number of Israeli children killed, in which case it would be proportional.
You're just penalizing Israel for being able to protect their own people.
There is a serious question of whether Hamas was ever using “human shields” during the air bombings in the current conflict, given that they have 300 miles of semi-sufficient infrastructure underground and it was not in their interest to scare the Gazan population from fleeing infrastructure. If the members are overwhelmingly underground, safe from bunker busters, then they were not at all using human shields, and Israel was just punishing the civilian population.
They will definitely be using “human shields” during the ground invasion which we have already seen, but this is no different than how various other rebellions have used human shields, like the Zionists against the British and the resistance against the Nazis.
Another question is whether Israel is actually targeting Hamas members with reasonable precision, when they can just claim an ambulance convoy was being used by Hamas and their supporters will simply believe them. There is almost never evidence provided to the public for these strikes.
The fact that out of a densely populated city of two million, using modern missiles, even the Hamas health ministry declares only 9000 people have died suggests an extreme degree of targeting. The allies killed 25,000 in a night in Dresden, which had a population of perhaps 800,000 at that time. The British lost 50,000 men on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, of whom 20,000 were killed.
If Israel wanted to, they could have killed hundreds of thousands by now. But even Hamas has alleged they have killed fewer than 10,000.
The ‘number of children’ argument is ridiculous because civilian casualty demographics depend on wider demographics. Civilian casualties in Niger will, as a proportion of the total, involve more children than civilian casualties in South Korea will.
Gaza has a very high total fertility rate (and it was still higher years ago), so of course child casualties will be high. Half the population is children, it is unsurprising that children will make up a substantial proportion of civilian casualties.
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Notes -
This is a list of names cleared for publication, not all killed.
I specifically wrote that it is half-complete. It is possible that more under-18s will come out in the full list, but 40 is also the widely distributed number of children killed.
And now you don't even have a link.
The Haaretz paper has every name and age of half the killed… which I linked and specified. So your original point wasn’t very relevant, though I grant the unlikely possibility they are holding back on the children’s’ names. If you look at the number provided, it’s half the total of the dead. Here’s someone doing an age breakdown: https://twitter.com/lqgist/status/1717623479225241672
The only number we have ever gotten on children killed is 40, which came from the original reporting, and was briefly (and falsely) amalgamated with a story of beheaded babies: here’s a link. Israel has been opaque on total numbers.
Anyway, I stand by my original sentence as being adequately sourced and qualified:
... your defense, when someone points out that the first and only number you provided in this context is wildly inappropriate as a value, is to point to a higher count, which is over three weeks old, and which is no more clearly a complete total.
I’m genuinely at a loss trying to understand your position. Is your argument that the half of names and ages cleared for publication are not representative of half of the sample? Why not specify that, and importantly, why do you believe that? Do you have evidence to believe that they are intentionally withholding the names and ages of under-18s? Or do you believe that someone would read the half and assume a total?
The higher count is a (surprise) twice the value of the half amount I specified, and it’s three weeks old because the original Hamas incursion was four weeks old.
What’s so interesting about this back and forth (beside the fact that either I am embarrassingly missing something obvious or you are aiming for criticism like Hamas aims their rockets) is that we are comparing 2,664 children killed by Israel to the “40 children” figure. Let us suppose that the 40 figure is wrong, and the final count comes to 100. Then my figure (which is based in evidence) did turn out inaccurate, and that will be important to note in the future. Do you think that impacts my point being made? It would be 26x more children, rather than 66x, and the point I am getting across would stand.
Do you suggest that Israel use children as human shields, so that they can increase the number of Israeli children killed, in which case it would be proportional.
You're just penalizing Israel for being able to protect their own people.
There is a serious question of whether Hamas was ever using “human shields” during the air bombings in the current conflict, given that they have 300 miles of semi-sufficient infrastructure underground and it was not in their interest to scare the Gazan population from fleeing infrastructure. If the members are overwhelmingly underground, safe from bunker busters, then they were not at all using human shields, and Israel was just punishing the civilian population.
They will definitely be using “human shields” during the ground invasion which we have already seen, but this is no different than how various other rebellions have used human shields, like the Zionists against the British and the resistance against the Nazis.
Another question is whether Israel is actually targeting Hamas members with reasonable precision, when they can just claim an ambulance convoy was being used by Hamas and their supporters will simply believe them. There is almost never evidence provided to the public for these strikes.
The fact that out of a densely populated city of two million, using modern missiles, even the Hamas health ministry declares only 9000 people have died suggests an extreme degree of targeting. The allies killed 25,000 in a night in Dresden, which had a population of perhaps 800,000 at that time. The British lost 50,000 men on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, of whom 20,000 were killed.
If Israel wanted to, they could have killed hundreds of thousands by now. But even Hamas has alleged they have killed fewer than 10,000.
The ‘number of children’ argument is ridiculous because civilian casualty demographics depend on wider demographics. Civilian casualties in Niger will, as a proportion of the total, involve more children than civilian casualties in South Korea will.
Gaza has a very high total fertility rate (and it was still higher years ago), so of course child casualties will be high. Half the population is children, it is unsurprising that children will make up a substantial proportion of civilian casualties.
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