The median age in Gaza in 2014 was 18. According to researchers in the US, 50%-61% of buildings have been damaged or destroyed. If Israel didn't kill tens of thousands of children it would be a statistical miracle.
Not sure how we got to "tens of thousands of children" when even the Hamas reports don't claim that. I think 12,300 is the last claim I saw a little bit back which is not "tens of thousands" but I agree is a large number.
You're assuming the children are evenly distributed and buildings are attacked randomly and evenly. None of which is true.
Many buildings have been demolished with explosives or bulldozers while empty. Many buildings were damaged during combat with walls being breached to provide access.
In many cases buildings were attacked in areas that have been ordered to evacuate. (yes not all cases).
There's no doubt many children have been killed. We've all seen terrible photos of individual children dead. I don't think it's "tens of thousands" and I'm not sure we'll have accurate numbers. Other than that as you note there's a large number of children and so they've definitely and unfortunately impacted.
The article under discussion says that even by internal Israeli calculations in the early days of the war on a typical day “another thousand Gazans have died, most of them civilians.” Given the population demographics of Gaza, I do not think it’s a stretch you might get to 20,000 minors killed.
The article also questions your claim that the IDF was careful to protect civilians by eg destroying empty building. On the contrary, the IDF accepted extremely high civilian deaths to kill even one suspected minor militant.
I didn't claim that the "the IDF was careful to protect civilians by eg destroying empty building". I made no particular observation about the IDFs efforts or lack thereof to protect civilians.
I'm claiming many of the destroyed buildings have been empty. This really has nothing to do with the article. I'm addressing the parent's logic/argument. There have been many examples of buildings destroyed while empty, for example to make up the new boundary area Israel has created from the border. The attempt to calculate casualties via the number of destroyed buildings is a very poor methodology. Your statement and mine are not mutually exclusive- it's possible the IDF targeted buildings that had many civilians in them to get at one target. I don't know the demographics of those civilians. I don't know whether what happened in the early days of the war continued throughout the war. I would agree that early in the war Israel very likely accepted a larger number of civilian casualties to get at Hamas targets. I think the new thing potentially in this article is questioning the degree to which the targets were valid military targets.
What do you possibly get about trying to hairsplit the number OF DEAD CHILDREN. Oh, yes, you’re right. It wasn’t 20,000 so we shouldn’t say “tens of thousand” it was just twelve thousand three hundred children.
“Impacted” is definitely one word for it. Murdered another.
Hopefully I get you to be more accurate and specific when discussing this loaded emotional topic. Words literally kill. I think using defusing language is conductive to de-escalation.
Words are important. And you're right those are different words. The word murdered has a specific meaning, e.g. "to kill (a person) unlawfully and unjustifiably with premeditated malice". The word impacted means: "strongly or directly affected by something especially in a negative way." The word "child" also has a definition. In this context it usually refers to people under the age of 18.
I'll turn the question back at you, what are you trying to get out of claiming "tens of thousands" or "murdered"?
I think the word murdered is IMO more appropriate to the children Hamas killed in Israel on Oct 7th and civilians it has killed in Israel over the years and less appropriate for the children killed in Gaza by IDF action during a war. That said my heart breaks for every single child, whoever they are, that lost their lives. It's not their fault. This war didn't need to happen. We should try our best to protect children, here and everywhere, and I do recognize that at some level you're trying to do so, thanks for that.
I'm just really annoyed with the use of language that is meant to evoke emotions and leaves incorrect impressions. This is all bad enough without riling people up to make it worse. There's little doubt what images someone seeks to invoke by saying "10's of thousands" and "murder". Even if I interpret it as people genuinely wanting to minimize human suffering I think it ends up with the opposite result and is really not how anyone involved here makes progress. Also I know we live in a post-truth reality but I for all of us to have debates based on facts is still important. For me as someone who is generally pro-Israeli I have no problem with fact based criticism of Israel. What I have a problem with is that the anti-Israeli side is basically making stuff up. If something is factual then it is. If there are unknowns then we should openly say they're unknowns. And no, if you're pointing out something is a lie, you're not "justifying the killings of children". If you point out certain information is still not clear or comes from questionable sources you're not either.
The US and even Israeli governments consider these numbers as accurate. The Health Ministry provides the social ID numbers of every death so the deaths would be impossible to fake.
I don't think the US or Israel made any statements regarding the accuracy of the composition of the numbers. Only that the total ballpark numbers are more or less accurate. If you have a link to the US government statement about the breakdown accuracy of the numbers I'd be interested to look at that. Also this is extrapolating from previous rounds of violence and this one is very different.
Do you have a link to the officially published name, sex, age, ID, of all the victims so far, by date, in the conflict?
When large buildings are demolished by bombs and can't be excavated because of active violence what's the process for figuring out who potentially was or wasn't in that building? with all the refugees moving around the chaos how do you know if someone who used to live there is dead or sheltering somewhere else out of contact?
Hamas reports everyone as civilians (or doesn't make a distinction).
"Of the 21,703 identified fatalities whose details have been shared by the Hamas-run health ministry, 13,207 were women, children or elderly (61%)."
"Until recently, however, the ministry had been reporting a figure of 72%."
"Mr al Wahaidi told Sky News that this was a "media estimate". He was not able to explain the basis for this estimate or who had produced it."
"Since speaking to Sky News, he has stopped using this figure in his reports for the health ministry. It continues to be used by the government media office, a separate branch of Gaza's government."
...
"media estimate". Another by the way is that I think we should assume that given the significant bombing campaigns are more or less over the more recent casualties likely include less randomness and more targeted. I would guess that the ratio of women/children/elderly is much lower in more recent stages of the war.
There’s a simple explanation about why the numbers are now a “media estimate”. The health ministry used hospital figures, which are now unable to obtain because they have no health infrastructure anymore. I’m sure Israel would love for the health ministry to stop counting deaths since they don’t have the tools to accurately do so, but it’s absurd to assume that would be more truthful than media estimates.
I'd like to look at it. I just don't want to download Telegram's app. I haven't given up yet. The article was just a by the way while Googling and had this nugget of the made up 72% number in it.
They have released those at points in the past; I'm not sure if they're doing it on an ongoing basis, and their numbers include a large number of unidentified casualties. I think those usually make up about a third or so if I remember correctly.
Not included are a large number of missing people, and all the people who die of secondary causes like maltutrition, disease outbreaks, and poor access to proper medical care.
Nobody really knows what the real casualty figures are, but I'm inclined to take the Gaza Health Ministry's numbers seriously -- as do Israel and the US, as you already mentioned.
Because you can cross reference these with the Israeli controlled population registry and make sure e.g. the same person isn’t listed twice under a different name, that they are actually dead, that they are actually from Gaza, etc.
This link again. People keep posting it and it keeps—rightly—getting flagged. This source is a schoolbook example of lying with statistics, and so far HN seems prerry aware of that.
Wouldn't it be better to discuss it and for you to take it down point by point and show everyone why it is "lying with statistics"? I only have a B.Sc. and my only observation was the sample size seemed to small and there might have been some cherry picking of the date ranges. You might be correct but we're not getting to discuss that and what are the proper statistical methods one can apply here if we had the data (and I don't think we have data).
This link being wrong however doesn't negate the fact that the only numbers we have come from Hamas that is 1) in most western countries is considered a terrorist organization 2) is one of the sides in this war 3) clearly benefits from distorting the numbers 4) shouldn't be considered a reliable source for anything.
The numbers discussion seems to always come back to in previous rounds of violence those same numbers seemed more or less in the ballpark though there have been major revisions in the past re: the ratio of combatants. (I don't have the link handy but I can find it if you dispute this last bit).
Intended by who? You don't kill 13,000 children by accident.