“Israel MUST open the borders and allow the United Nations to deliver supplies in sufficient quantities.”
“The United States, which has helped fund the Israeli military for years, cannot sit back and allow hundreds of thousands of innocent children to starve to death,” Sanders (Vt.) said in a statement. “As a result of Israeli bombing and restrictions on humanitarian aid, the people of Gaza are facing an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.”
Israeli forces have killed more than 30,200 Palestinians in Gaza—most of them women and children—while wounding over 71,300 others and displacing around 90% of the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million people. Children are now starving to death, and experts say adults, especially elders and other vulnerable people, will soon follow absent urgent intervention.
The 25,000 number given Lloyd Austin wasn’t based on US intelligence.
WASHINGTON, Feb 29 (Reuters)
But Gaza health minestery has already said they counted at least 30.000 bodies. Does Loyd Austin have a week brain delay?
Even the Hama-run health ministry in Gaza isn’t claiming that Israel directly killed 30,000 women and children. The claim I see repeated is that the “majority” of casualties are women and children. They also don’t differentiate between combatants and non-combatants.
Additionally, all casualties are counted as victims of “Israeli aggression,” regardless of how they were killed. Meaning, if Hamas or the Islamic Jihad misfires a rocket, or accidentally shoots a bystander, it is counted the same as if an IDF soldier pulled the trigger.
Source
Personally, I am increasingly concerned with deaths from disease, dehydration, and starvation. Effectively delivering and distributing humanity aid needs to be a top priority.
Of course aid should be a top priority. But even if supposedly Hamas did everything you said (which they didn’t as the BBC wrote an article detailing the fire came from israel), the aid one is one you cannot possibly attribute to Hamas.
The only one responsible for the little children that already starved to in Gaza to death is israel .
Uh, did I miss something?
When in my comment did I say what Hamas did?
Your claim directly implies that Hamas is killing civilians which we know they don’t. The only party that is willing to kill their own civilians is israel
Hamas has at the very least accidentally killed civilians, but I don’t think we’ll come to an understanding on this.
Sure they might have. That amount will be negligible and I don’t see how it has any relevance to this current situation.
I wouldn’t differentiate between combatants and non-combatants either. The assumption that every military aged male in Palestine is a combatant is probably close to correct, as military-aged men are going to be the most likely to take up arms to defend their home
Fuck Israel, btw, if that didn’t get across in the last paragraph. Jerusalem needs a well-placed suitcase nuke; hit the people in charge, not the people in general
Hamas-run is sure a weaselly way of implicating disinformation. Their numbers have been consistently confirmed to be very accurate and trustworthy. Which is probably why Israel keeps bombing all those hospitals; so the deaths will stop being tallied accurately.
Do you prepend all information coming out of Israeli institutions with “Likud-run” or everything that comes from the US with “democrat run”?
It’s a factual and neutral statement. Hamas has been governing Gaza since they were elected in 2006. Any governmental officials in Gaza hold power because Hamas gave it to them. They are not, and could never be a neutral party.
Statements about Israeli officials, intelligence, and the IDF are the same.
In the US these same news outlets do refer to officials as Democratic or Republican frequently. Hell, they even talk about which judges were appointed by which president. Similar reporting happens with different government officials throughout Europe.
That man consciously chose to put the phrase “hamas-run” in there. What do you propose is the reasoning for doing so, if not to call into question the accuracy of the numbers through that association? It is absolutely not a neutral statement; context exists.
I have never once seen the phrase “Likud-run” next to any of the statements, tallies, or intelligence from Israel that the media reprints without any fact-checking or investigation.
The author likely made the choice to include “Hamas-run” for factual accuracy and neutrality. Merely writing “Gaza health ministry”, would imply a neutral 3rd party. Any official in Gaza is appointed by Hamas and cannot be neutral. As such, it is fair to question the accuracy of the numbers provided.
That said, while their numbers are not something I would take at face value, their death count is still the best one we have.
The Gaza Health ministry existed before 2006. It’s continuity is contingent upon the same personelle doing the grueling work day in and day out. The rank and file are first and foremost medical professionals.
From the Wikipedia entry:
So if more than vague conjectures, share it.
2 points.
I don’t see any issues with the information presented in the Wikipedia section you linked.
Leadership in the Gaza Health Ministry has definitely changed since Hamas took control, I doubt all the workers are the same either. That isn’t super important though, except in understanding that they aren’t a neutral party.
You don’t have any evidence that their numbers are a misrepresentation. You said:
Thier non-neutrality is a non-issue if they are providing accurate numbers. The only reason to include Hamas-run, then, is to cast a vague sense that something ain’t right.
How does their non-neutrality effect their numbers? Give me something concrete.
Pulling from this NPR Article
The Hamas-run Gaza heath ministry has used “reliable media sources” for 13,000 of the 30,000 reported deaths. According to the “reliable media sources” 86% of those killed are women and children. However, hospital staff report that 58% of the 17,000 deaths they have recorded are women and children. That’s a pretty significant deviation.
I see, so providing context is conjuring up the image of a boogeyman and using it to call into question the exact death toll of a genocide, but not looking into the accuracy of those numbers or the record of those who provided them and how they held up over time. It’s not really fair to question accuracy when they have no history of fabrication or misreporting in the entire time they’ve been “hamas-run”.
You seem very insistent that neutral facts are just de-facto unassailable but there are so many ways to present “neutral facts” in a way that is absolutely biased. The most simple of which is simply curating which “neutral facts” you choose to present. What important context is provided here other than a flimsy bullshit reason to question the legitimacy of something which has no reasonable justification for being questioned? Why isn’t the context that they have been providing accurate reporting for literal decades also being mentioned when the very thing being questioned is the accuracy of the numbers and not their political association?
Providing context is accurately identifying your source of information. When the IDF gives a statement, that is cited as well, often mentioning the Netanyahu government in-tandem.
For some up-to-date reporting on this subject, I’d like to share this recent NPR piece.
The Gaza health ministry has relied entirely on “reliable media sources” for ~13,000 of the ~30,000 reported deaths so far. ~17,000 of the deaths were input electronically from a hospital.
In addition, “Gaza’s health ministry says 70% of those killed in the territory are women and children. Its most recent breakdown of casualties recorded in hospitals shows women and children make up 58% of those deaths. Al-Qudra could not explain the discrepancy.”
So according to the Hamas-run Gaza heath ministry, “reliable media sources” report that 86% of those killed are women and children, but hospital staff report that only 58% are women and children. This discrepancy is significant and it’s clear that the non-hospital sources skew the data overall.
In addition, they intentionally assign all deaths to “Israeli aggression,” and do not differentiate between combatants and non-combatants.
All that to say, I think it is a perfect valid approach to specify that Hamas runs the health ministry when their numbers cannot be independently confirmed and appear to have significant distortions.
Their numbers have repeatedly been independently confirmed and shown to be largely accurate in the past. They have never given any cause to doubt them and calling into question their methodology now is disingenuous at best, and malicious at worst.
I’m glad, at least, that we seem to have agreed that the addition of “hamas-run” is purely meant to cast doubt on the numbers but you seem to think this is justified despite all evidence to the contrary. Even the article you linked seems to reach the conclusion that the numbers are likely mostly accurate, if not under counted. It’s far more likely that any discrepancies that may exist are due to the difficulties of maintaining a health system while a hostile nation bombs your health infrastructure into rubble rather than a literally unprecedented manipulation of the data by Hamas.
Here’s some context for you, from your article:
I guess you didn’t need this lesson on how to lie by omission with “neutral facts”; you already knew what you were doing.
Or maybe there are significant deviations from their previous methodology, that skews their numbers to make it look like Israel is intentionally targeting women and children? It may or may not be malicious, but the bias in their counting is clear as day.
Cast doubt? No. Provide context and showcase potential bias? Yes. I suspect the overall numbers are roughly correct (potentially even undercounted), but their updated methodology shows significant deviation from the past in terms of who they say is being killed. All that to say, I would not blindly trust their data.
Yes. I did read that and I suspect there is a translation issue. Clearly when people die in incidents like February 29th, their deaths are added to the count. It’s not merely "occupation bombardment.”
I’m not lying or omitting facts. You keep repeating the term “neutral facts,” but I have never once expressed that is what I want. I’m ok with bias as long as it is factual. Reading multiple perspectives is helpful in understanding complex topics.