The current death toll in Gaza is close to 42,000, but experts believe that figure is likely a gross undercount.

  • abff08f4813c
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    12 months ago

    This is just outrageous and unacceptable. While I don’t think any reasonable person would deny that Israel has the right to defend itself, I find it next to impossible to see how “national defense” can be used to justify killing children. wtf?

    • @dlatch
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      62 months ago

      Don’t do this. Not only is your response actually antisemitic, but relating Israeli and Zionist policy to Judaism is exactly what Netanyahu is doing in order to be able to play the anti semitism card. If you are against Israel’s actions, fight to make it clear that it is not the same as Judaism and support the Jewish people that speak out against Zionism and the Israeli government.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      62 months ago

      It’s the Zionists who are killing children, and what you say is totally antisemitic.

  • @[email protected]
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    -362 months ago

    About half the inhabitants of Gaza are under 18 years old, so 1/3 of the dead being children corresponds to a ratio of two civilians killed for every combatant. This is not out of the ordinary for urban warfare conducted in a manner intended to reduce civilian casualties.

    • @[email protected]
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      242 months ago

      It is out of the ordinary. Either the Israeli military is extremely incompetent or they are deliberately targeting children and it is the second.

      • @[email protected]
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        -212 months ago

        Many people seem to think so but the evidence doesn’t support their argument. A 2:1 ratio of civilians to combatants killed isn’t particularly low but it is far closer to the best that Western armies have been able to accomplish than it is to the ratio seen from armies that are not trying to reduce civilian casualties. For example, Russia’s ratio in Mariupol is approximately 8:1 and that was against Ukrainian soldiers in uniform who weren’t deliberately hiding among civilians. Urban warfare always involves heavy civilian casualties.

        • @[email protected]
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          122 months ago

          This is assuming that the 2:1 ratio has come from anywhere other than original commenter’s asshole

          • @[email protected]
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            2 months ago

            If we assume that (1) the civilian population is 50% children and (2) none of the combatants are children then:

            (fraction of the dead that is children) = (fraction of the dead that is civilians) * (fraction of the civilians that is children)

            (1/3) = (fraction of the dead that is civilians) * (1/2)

            (fraction of the dead that is civilians) = (1/3) ÷ (1/2) = (2/3)

            This is where my 2:1 civilians to combatants number comes from.

            The fact that among the dead, the ratio of civilians to combatants equals the ratio of adults to children is a coincidence.

            • acargitz
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              2 months ago

              The amount “civilians” in your calculations is tricky. The first time it appears it refers to dead civilians, the second time it appears to the overall civilian population (hence the 1/2 using the rule of thumb that half of Gazans are under 18).

              I.e you can’t say

              #deadKids/#allDead = #deadCivilians/#allDead * #deadKids/#allCivilians

              Because #deadCivilians << #allCivilians

              • @[email protected]
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                -22 months ago

                That’s not what I’m saying - I don’t have a term that represents “#deadKids/#allCivilians”.

                If I were to use your notation, I would write:

                #deadKids/#allDead = #deadCivilians/#allDead * #allKids/#allCivilians

                I recognize that it’s macabre to treat this as a word problem, but the math works out if you do. If out of 100 dead people, 33 are combatants and 67 are civilians (the 2:1 civilian to combatant ratio I have calculated) and half of the dead civilians are children, then there are 33 dead children, which is the “one third” in the headline.

                • acargitz
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                  22 months ago

                  I thought originally that you were suggesting a simple syntactic manipulation of the fraction but you’re not. I don’t understand why the equation you propose is reasonable.

              • @[email protected]
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                02 months ago

                Children are killed even in a just war, so morality on the scale of nations is necessarily different than morality on the scale of individuals.

                • @[email protected]
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                  02 months ago

                  And this is an immoral, unjust war. You’re so insanely disconnected from this that these kids just become numbers, pretty fucked up.

                  Your username is strangely apt.

        • @small44
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          72 months ago

          Torture, rape and civilians kill was always part of war of aggresion, so i don’t care about those stats. Not to mention all the genocidal statement of people in power in israel

        • @filister
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          52 months ago

          Sometimes I wonder if people are really so unable for any critical thinking?

    • @[email protected]OP
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      212 months ago

      We must face the hard truth in Gaza: Israel has lost its moral authority - The Hill - 07/18/24

      I reviewed thousands of incident reports and tens of thousands of individual data points from several dozen credible organizations, as well as the Israeli military itself, as a part of a nonpartisan task force analyzing Israel’s campaign in Gaza.

      Our report, submitted to the Biden administration and briefed to Congress, establishes compelling and credible evidence of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law and U.S. military best practices, utilizing U.S.-provided munitions. It shows how the Israeli military has demonstrated a “systematic disregard for fundamental principles of international law, including recurrent attacks launched despite foreseeably disproportionate harm to civilians.”

    • acargitz
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      2 months ago

      Phew. So, like, this is OK, right? Nothing to to see here, move along? Nothing to worry about 15000 (fifteen fucking thousand, like fifteen times a thousand, something like a thousand times my kid’s classroom size) dead kids, because it’s not out of the ordinary for urban warfare conducted in a manner intended to reduce civilian casualties? Thanks man, that really will help me sleep at peace with my conscience tonight.

      (If we were talking about 15000 dead Israeli kids, we’d be -rightfully- freaking the fuck out. But 15k of those other kids, that’s fair game. Super ethical too.)

    • @filister
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      2 months ago

      Isn’t it kind of naïve to think that all non kids victims are even terrorists? Where is the proof for that. Because according to your logic even the hostages that Israel killed, and the WFK personnel should also be labelled terrorists, which apparently is wrong.

      • acargitz
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        102 months ago

        Something something they voted 20 years ago. /s

        It’s actually genocidal language…

      • @[email protected]
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        -32 months ago

        That’s not what I am assuming. My assumptions are only that none of the dead combatants are children and that the age distribution of dead civilians matches the age distribution of the civilian population.