"Israel MUST open the borders and allow the United Nations to deliver supplies in sufficient quantities."

“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.

  • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 months ago

    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:

    On 10 November 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US intelligence community has growing confidence that death toll reports from the Gaza Health Ministry are roughly accurate. The article also reported that despite US officials had growing confidence, they did not have enough information to confirm for sure. On 6 December 2023, a comparative study published in The Lancet based on publicly available mortality reports stated there was no evidence of inflated mortality reporting from the Ministry The US Assistant Secretary of State said that actual death toll was most likely “even higher” than what the GHM reported. In January 2024, Israeli news magazine Mekomit reported that Israeli intelligence officials had concluded that Health Ministry casualty reports are generally reliable and are used in briefings to senior officials.

    So if more than vague conjectures, share it.

    • DolphinMath@slrpnk.netEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      2 points.

      1. I don’t see any issues with the information presented in the Wikipedia section you linked.

      2. 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.

      • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
        0·
        8 months ago

        You don’t have any evidence that their numbers are a misrepresentation. You said:

        it is fair to question the accuracy of the numbers provided.

        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.

        • DolphinMath@slrpnk.netEnglish
          0·
          8 months ago

          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.

          • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
            0·
            8 months ago

            You continue to be vague. Can you provide anything more than speculation and suspicion? And some how you ignore this from the article:

            In past wars with Israel, the Gaza health ministry’s death tolls were mostly in line with counts by the United Nations and Israel, though there have been discrepancies in the past with Israel on the numbers of civilians vs. militants killed.

            An analysis published in the Lancet medical journal in December found that Gaza’s health ministry has “historically reported accurate mortality data,” with discrepancies between 1% and roughly 3% when compared with U.N. analysis of deaths in previous conflicts. The study found “no evidence of inflated rates” in the current war and noted that difficulties in obtaining accurate death counts “should not be interpreted as intentionally misreported data.”

            The numbers have been historically accurate. And even the organization isn’t as cut and dry as you see it. I’m not saying there’s a chance they are making up numbers, but you have to provide evidence. And you can’t and you won’t.

            • DolphinMath@slrpnk.netEnglish
              0·
              8 months ago

              Firstly, the evidence is not vague. Unless Israel started deliberately targeting women and children, while ignoring men, there is something wrong in their data. I wouldn’t personally ascribe a specific reason without more information.

              Secondly, the scale of this conflict has far surpassed any other since the founding of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in 1993 (which split to become the Gaza Ministry of Heath in 2008). Accurately recording ~30,000 deaths vs 1,440, 2,310, or 260 is exceedingly challenging.

              • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
                0·
                8 months ago

                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.

                The vagueness isn’t in the numbers being inaccurate or not, but rather ascribing intentional distortion of those numbers. Again, provide evidence of them making up those numbers above and beyond expected clerical errors.

                • DolphinMath@slrpnk.netEnglish
                  0·
                  8 months ago

                  I see.

                  So you think it is unfair to question the numbers, and that we should blindly accept the Gaza health ministry numbers as authoritative and exact?

                  This despite the fact that the organization reporting these numbers is led by people appointed by one of the participants/instigators of the conflict? Not to mention the fact that there has been a shift in methodology for counting, and that this conflict is happening on a drastically different scale.