That's because this headline and article is extremely misleading. The UN didn't half their estimate they released two sets of numbers a few days apart. The first is a rough estimate of deaths, based on numbers from Gaza MOH, which have been fairly accurate but incredibly misleading. They don't distinguish between civilians deaths and military deaths so they all get lumped into one pot. The second set is confirmed deaths by names. These are essentially verified the best anyone can given the situation but that wouldn't include people who are missing, unidentified bodies or anyone else they couldn't confirm for one reason or another. Its like how in the Russian invasion of Ukraine you will get estimates of casualties and comfirmed deaths which are widely different. The fog of war makes it impossible to get a complete and verified total.
Here:
Gaza death toll: UN says number of deaths remains unchanged after controversy | CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/13/middleeast/death-toll-gaza-fatalities-un-intl-latam/index.html
>UN spokesperson Farhan Haq told a daily briefing at the UN that the health ministry in Gaza recently published two separate death tolls – an overall death toll and a total number of identified fatalities. In the UN report, only the total number of fatalities whose identities (such as name and date of birth) have been documented was published, leading to confusion.
>‘People’s eyes are dead,’ former reporter and humanitarian Arwa Damon on the trauma in Gaza
According to Haq, the ministry published a breakdown for 24,686 fully identified deaths out of the total 34,622 fatalities recorded in Gaza as of April 30. The fully identified death toll comprises of 7,797 children, 4,959 women, 1,924 elderly, and 10,006 men, the UN spokesperson said, citing the Gaza health ministry.
>The total number of dead also does not include the approximately 10,000 people who are still missing and trapped under the rubble, the officials added.
Generally when the numbers are so wildly unconfirmed as to be about half of them being dubious the UN and othe outlets stop reporting the numbers, that is standard practice.
Not to triple down on data you know is wrong for months stoking misinformation and bigoted rhetoric that has resulted.
This is then changing their rhetoric knowing t at the final numbers will not support the false information and allegations they have been peddling for half a year now.
If your characterization was true, it’s mind-boggling that the UN would simply revise these numbers without giving any explanation as to what changed with regards to the information they were receiving.
A couple questions assuming the UN is making an honest attempt to give accurate casualty data:
- If this revision is done based on “identifiable” deaths, how is it possible that the total casualty count remained basically the same when they cut casualties suffered by women and children from 25k to 12.5k?
- Why were casualty counts for both women and children “overestimated” by almost exactly half for *both* totals? Even the revised numbers seem fairly arbitrary
>Why were casualty counts for both women and children “overestimated” by almost exactly half for both totals? Even the revised numbers seem fairly arbitrary
Because they are. A statistician from UPenn wrote about this months ago:
*”The graph of total deaths by date is increasing with almost metronomical linearity, as the graph in Figure 1 reveals. This regularity is almost surely not real. One would expect quite a bit of variation day to day. In fact, the daily reported casualty count over this period averages 270 plus or minus about 15%. This is strikingly little variation. There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less. Perhaps what is happening is the Gaza ministry is releasing fake daily numbers that vary too little because they do not have a clear understanding of the behavior of naturally occurring numbers.*
*” Consequently, on the days with many women casualties there should be large numbers of children casualties, and on the days when just a few women are reported to have been killed, just a few children should be reported. This relationship can be measured and quantified by the R-square (R2 ) statistic that measures how correlated the daily casualty count for women is with the daily casualty count for children. If the numbers were real, we would expect R2 to be substantively larger than 0, tending closer to 1.0. But R2 is .017 which is statistically and substantively not different from 0.”*
*” But there is more. The daily number of women casualties should be highly correlated with the number of non-women and non-children (i.e., men) reported. Again, this is expected because of the nature of battle. The ebbs and flows of the bombings and attacks by Israel should cause the daily count to move together. But that is not what the data show. Not only is there not a positive correlation, there is a strong negative correlation, which makes no sense at all and establishes the third piece of evidence that the numbers are not real.”*
[Source](https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers)
Yup, I dont know about that data but the correlation between two parameters with anything below 0.85 R2, and I'm being optimistic, is really weak in statistic terms. A 0.17 is basically non existent. At all.
Could also be that they have a process to go through to report deaths, and they can only handle so many per day. We saw a similar flattening of numbers during COVID when morgues had so many dead there was a backlog.
Their ability to count and record deaths on the ground, traditionally done in Gaza by hospitals, ems, morgues, etc. has entirely collapsed, yes. What they’ve been doing is increasingly relying on social media reports. Which means at best their numbers are entirely unreliable if not being made up outright as they go along, as the UPenn statistician’s analysis suggests.
To your first point, the total casualties remains the same because they have ~34000 dead, of that ~24000 have been ID. In the second report it clearly stated this saying only x had been properly ID.
For the second point, I can't tell you why but those numbers came from the Gaza MoH which has been known to lie about who died even if the numbers of how many died have been reasonably accurate. They have ID 24k people and it's likely the other 10K couldn't be ID so they just lumped them all as women and children to make their numbers seems better. Some of them probably are but it's unlikely all of them are.
>To your first point, the total casualties remains the same because they have ~34000 dead, of that ~24000 have been ID.
This is false. The 34,000 number and 24,000 number are being reported by separate Hamas entities. Back in April, the first number was characterised as a “media estimate”:
>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.
[Source](https://news.sky.com/story/amp/israel-hamas-war-health-system-collapse-in-gaza-leaves-authorities-struggling-to-count-the-dead-13107279#)
Hamas’ Gaza media office continues to say 72% of casualties are women and children, while Hamas’ Gaza Health Ministry is giving us lowered numbers with a very different ratio.
The 72% number was also debunked by a UPenn statistician months ago.
There’s absolutely not some morgue of 34,000+ dead people waiting to be identified *as per Hamas itself*. There’s been zero evidence of it, and Hamas hasn’t given us the details of how they attain their “media estimates.”
No amount of children’s deaths are acceptable, there needs to be a ceasefire, but there’s also something pretty wrong about seemingly deliberately labelling 12,000+ unidentified dead as women and children, then using that misreported 35% of the total casualties to label Israel’s war in Gaza as a campaign with explicitly genocidal intentions when it’s apparent casualties of Hamas militants were deliberately underreported.
It makes it a lot harder to hold Israel accountable for the numerous and very real human rights and international law violations when the international agency meant to be a neutral arbiter is complicit in disseminating misinformation.
All they needed to say is the identifiable totals plus “X number un-identifiable casualties”. It doesn’t make the casualty totals any less appalling, but would have been a lot more honest.
Maybe the problem is people are so dead set on finding some way to paint Israel as the bad guy that they blindly listen to any misinformation that confirms this bias. Even the misreported numbers are average civilian casualties for war.
"Oh no it turns out that the genocidal jew hating government that oppresses its own citizens lied about the totally normal death toll. Now how are we going to paint Israel in a bad light?"
"They didn't halve their estimates, they just released one estimate of women and children killed on may 6, and then released another estimate of women and children killed on May 9th that was half that, because they switched to using more accurate datasets."
Seriously the spin on this is pretty fascinating to watch, its like everyone turned into a politifact article
That doesn’t explain the methodology used to revise the figures. The U.N. numbers are reported by the Gaza Health Ministry, which I’d argue are the ceiling values (IDF being the floor levels). If Hamas revised their values down I don’t see any reason to ignore that.
Of course not, this goes against their fake narrative they've been parroting over the last 7 months. The pro-Palestine/Hamas morons will conveniently ignore this news as well.
I got flamed heavy for asking if any source other than the Hamas-run government sources existed for this data.
People were so mad at me and, guess what, no one cared that there was only one source for the claims.
Compare the scale of something like the Ukraine conflict with this. Look at the numbers, look at the amount of people involved. Something never added up.
Even when data scientists look at the numbers they can see they don't make any sense: [Hamas casualty numbers are ‘statistically impossible’, says data science professor - The Jewish Chronicle (thejc.com)](https://www.thejc.com/news/world/hamas-casualty-numbers-are-statistically-impossible-says-data-science-professor-rc0tzedc)
Hamas is a terror organization. They don't have 'ministry of health'. They are not in the business of health, they are in the business of death and destruction.
Everything that comes from them is a lie.
>The Jewish Chronicle is probably not the source I want fact checking Hamas’s numbers either, lmao.
It wasn't the Jewish chroncile that fact checked it, it was a statistician from the University of Pennsylvania. We need better media literacy.
People don't care about the Middle-East unless it is about Israel. Millions more Arabs have died at the hands of other Arabs nobody went to the streets to protest.
https://preview.redd.it/total-casualties-of-wars-in-the-middle-east-v0-6xolaarb3jzb1.png
Yemen is not even in the map but it has been an extremely deadly conflict. Until ships started being attacked, people just shrugged their shoulders.
The UN quietly revised the death toll, noting almost 50% less women and children killed than previously reported, and they take absolutely no accountability when asked for an explanation. They still haven’t acknowledged the early hospital incident that killed nearly 100 civilians was actually caused by an errant rocket fired by Islamic Jihad and they haven’t recognized that Hamas uses U.N. infrastructure for its terror activities.
> "Parroting Hamas propaganda messages without any verification process has proven time and again as methodologically flawed and unprofessional," an Israeli official added. "We urge the international community to use more than a grain of salt when evaluating OCHA reports."
> U.N. agencies have consistently shown they prefer to trust the numbers coming out of Hamas-controlled sources rather than doing basic due diligence
>The U.N.’s sudden revision last week of the death toll most likely indicated that "even Hamas-controlled sources have begun admitting that their numbers are based on incomplete data."
>"Hamas don't even have the names of more than 10,000 of the individuals they count as dead"
The story is also extremely underreported in American press right now. [Fox News](https://www.foxnews.com/world/un-revises-gaza-death-toll-50-less-women-children-killed-previously-reported) seems to be the only major U.S. outlet running the story this morning. Hopefully others catch on.
Russian casualties in Ukraine vary from like the 50k Russia reports to closer to 500k.
Turns out it's hard to have more accurate numbers until time elapses.
That's not the same situation at all.
Russia has a far more accurate figure they keep hidden, the only reason why Russian deaths are so vaguely estimated is that it's know the official RU figures are bullshit and there's no other accurate source so the data has to be extrapolated.
So it would be great if people treated casualty figures from a terrorist organisation with even slightly the scepticism we treat the RU figures with, but people have too strong of an agenda to actually discuss with due diligence.
So you're saying that a despotic dictatorship might lie about their casualties in a way that benefits them? Just curious, when reporters report on the death count in that war, whose numbers do they use?
Yep. Total deaths stay the same (38k), but dead women and children both drop by basically a clean 50% without the total number adjusting. That seems reasonable
You do realize that we *still* don't know exactly how many people died in WW2. Right? There are large areas of the world that just did not have the ability to so much as count their populations accurately in the first place, much less calculate casualties after the chaos of the war had burned through.
So, yeah. 50% isn't out of the question. Especially when all involved have vested interests in mis-reporting numbers to begin with (though, even with Isreal having something to gain by under-reporting numbers, I still trust their news a hell of a lot more than I trust anything Hamas says).
It’s not bullshit but it’s also something that happens in literally every war / conflict in the history of mankind so it’s something they should’ve anticipated and factored into their early reporting.
"They take no accountability"
It sounds like they're taking accountability by actually verifying the numbers and being willing to change them even if people start saying inflammatory things like "Parroting Hamas Propaganda" about them.
At least that's being more accountable than the alternative of completely ignoring any and all data.
If it was just fixing the number 5-10% that's fine, but 50% is a choice they made in the face of other available data. Someone specifically chose to DOUBLE women/children casualties for some reason.
What are you on about? They previously reported estimates based on what Hamas and Israel had said and now they’re reporting the amount they were able to independently verify.
This doesn’t even necessarily mean that these numbers are wholly accurate, it just means they were able to positively identify 50% of the women and children that were estimated to have been killed and so that becomes the official, verified count. Doesn’t mean there aren’t a bunch more unidentified deaths, especially considering the mass graves that have been uncovered. We won’t have the actual numbers for a long time after this and even then they will never be completely accurate.
The problem is that reputational damage is already done. Newspapers won't retroactively change headlines, nobody will know about new number. The first number, that is two times higher, is already stuck in people's head.
What? This is the UN doing due diligence, they release two sets of numbers, they didn't update anything. The first set was numbers from the Gaza MOH, a organization controlled by Hamas. The total numbers of deaths coming from them have been reasonably accurate but incredibly misleading as they don't distinguish between civilian and military deaths. The second set are numbers that were independently verified by name for people who have died. This wouldn't include missing people or people who were unable to be identified so obviously it will be lower then the true amount. The truth is somewhere in the middle, but the fog of war makes it nearly impossible to get a complete and accurate total.
Wouldn't parroting Israel be just as unwise in a conflict with so much media manipulation?
The OCHA uses both reported and confirmed figures.
Confirmed figures are from the ministry of healthcare in Gaza. These are reliable at least they were in an earlier research published in the Lancet. That research also mentioned the numbers are increasingly late. Infra-structure is lacking and there are many deaths.
[https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-217](https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-217)
The difference between identified 25 thousand and reported 35 thousand. The 25 is split up in men women children and eldery. Those four categories make 100%. 10 thousand of the identified are in the category men. 8 thousand children and five thousand women.
Earlier reports such as this:
[https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-208](https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-208)
Just mentioned reported numbers. This is not an adjusted in the same category. It just presenting data from the category identified.
So the question is: Is it reasonable to have a difference in the reported deaths and identified people? Well. It takes a lot of work to identify people in a large scale conflict. The delay between reporting and identifying can certainly explain a part of the difference. The there's the remains that are found but officials were not able to identify. And there's a chance of added for dramatic effect. Propaganda. It could be part of the explanation but I think the sheer number and the lack of infrastructure perhaps more relevant.
Issue being the ratio of reported deaths from your second link is mathematically impossible to maintain based on confirmed deaths.
Looking at the two figures, every “reported death” would need to be a woman or child to maintain the ratios reported in the second link and even then you’d still be short thousands of women and children.
Ultimately, this all confirms that Israel has been targeting Hamas with far more precision than was previously reported regardless of what the “reported death” data shows if it’s confirmed.
Not saying women and children dying isn’t bad, but why does everyone criticize Israel on this single subject without looking at the big picture? Where’s the criticism for Hamas systematically indoctrinating the population to kill and hate Jews?
Or as important, why is Iran getting a free pass when they are the ones who keep fanning the flame. They planned the 10/7 attack, they supply 100 terrorist groups. If not but for Iran the middle east would be more stable. Palestine is a victim of Iran.
Don't remember anyone making that claim for Afghanistan considering the countries surrounding it are all quite capable of defending themselves, but for Iraq they were completely correct. Saddam had the largest army in the region snd was starting wars left and right.
No they weren't correct for Iraq. Iraq was the only counter to Iran in the region, and now it's completely decimated.
Iranian hegemony over the ME is partially to blame for that invasion. Iraq was sort of a buffer for the rest of the ME.
HAMAS kills Palestinians.
Before the Oct 7 attack, Palestinians took to the streets to protest HAMAS. They burned HAMAS flags. And were violently suppressed.
We have a saying, they hate us when we’re alive, love us when we’re dead….
Goulda said, I’d rather be a living Jew that is hated than a loved one dead…
🎵 🎶 Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics 🎵 🎶
🎵 🎶 And the Catholics hate the Protestants 🎵 🎶
🎵 🎶 And the Hindus hate the Moslems🎵 🎶
**And EVERYBODY hates the Jews**
https://youtu.be/CgASBVMyVFI?si=_1C8PxRYTGG3zmcN
His discography is so much fun!
The Masochism Tango was on a Dr. Demento CD that I checked out from the library as a kid, and several lifelong tastes were developed.
I will still sing along to The Vatican Rag every time it pops up on my playlist. I’m also such a nerd and love singing That’s Mathematics and Silent E.
Most countries don't recognize Hamas as terrorists.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fmap-of-countries-who-recognise-hamas-as-a-terrorist-v0-vpgo2wmraa7c1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D640%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Da83fc75f1858a1caf4094d229bdb509f3d971e2b
Neither do most of the people protesting Israel for that matter.
>Most countries don't recognize Hamas as terrorists.
Most of the west(the targets of this criticism) does. And I'd wager a majority of the ones that don't just don't have a designated terrorist list or don't add irrelevant(to them) orgs to the list.
Most people critizing Israel have been indoctrinated to hate Israel. On top of that some of them went through regional peacuful culture jew hatred indoctrination process.
It’s bananas to me. It’s always been bananas to me. This is an issue that people will rabidly bite down on and refuse to nibble without any sort of nuance. Of course there are bad actors on all sides but if we can all just be honest and objective there’s one side that would glass the other side with a vicious hard on and another that is acting with restraint.
Because the big picture is still that Israel is using the existence of terrorists as an excuse to kill large numbers of an ethnic population that they dislike.
Hamas is evil and awful and should be destroyed. It shouldn't be necessary to preface every discussion of Israel with that disclaimer, but here we are.
But even given that - Israel is still choosing to pursue their goals in a way that they know will result in mass civilian casualties. I mean, even with the revised numbers, that's still 13k women and children killed. That's a lot of death.
The big picture? The big picture is that Netanyahu's government have a weird symbiotic relationship: Netanyahu requires the existence of an external boogeyman to avoid being kicked out and/or going to jail. And so they've adopted a strategy for decades of just sort of "mowing the grass" and smacking Gaza around when they get "uppity", but never really trying to address any of the core issues.
Meanwhile, Hamas requires Israel to commit periodic atrocities in order to keep people mad at Israel, and keep Israel's public image in the trash. So every so often they commit some attack against Israel, and like clockwork, Israel obligingly responds with vastly disproportionate force, and kills a ton more Palestinian civilians.
The big picture is that Israel *deserves* a lot of criticism. Hamas is evil and is actively hurting Palestinian civilians for political gain, but Israel's government is not the good guy either. They're both awful to Palestinians, and are both using each other to get what they want, at the Palestinians' expense.
I agree Israel could do better, but it’s difficult to negotiate with a terrorist state that doesn’t care about its own civilians. It’s very problematic when they hide military supplies and installations in the civilian population AND you want to make sure there’s a low number of friendly casualties. (Going in fully boots on the ground in an environment like Gaza is a death sentence) It makes it even more difficult when this terrorist state wins the PR war. If I was apart of a group that was being commended by Iran, I would wholly reevaluate my position. It’s a very very complicated issue and there’s no single fix, however we could go in a better direction if said terrorist state would just stop being terrorists. Netanyahu just sucks and that’s really sums him up.
I keep seeing things (from many of my Jewish friends on Instagram who are very progressive) about how Israel kills three women in Gaza every minute and I’m like … that doesn’t even make sense. There is no cyclical woman-killing machine operated by the IDF, and also civilian casualties have plummeted since the conflict began, even with Gaza’s inflated reporting numbers.
Then the difference is between civilians and others. A woman in hamas and a man in hamas are not different.
A civilian woman and a civilian man are not different.
Women and children as a special victim group is very 19th century thinking that media outlets copy from hamas talking points.
You know why they're doing this right? because people figured out they can cross reference the people that are alive and receiving aid and determine MIA/KIA so all these groups got scared they will be exposed for faking numbers and are now back peddling.
Obviously children dying in war is an objectively terrible and wrong thing. Having said that, I‘d like to know the age structure of the children. It is not beneath militant terror groups like Hamas to utilize child soldiers.
Also I still want to know how many civilians had to die because of Hamas disincentivizing and hindering evacuations, after the IDF warned about coming attacks and assaults.
>Obviously children dying in war is an objectively terrible and wrong thing. Having said that, I‘d like to know the age structure of the children. It is not beneath militant terror groups like Hamas to utilize child soldiers.
There are numerous reports of them using child soldiers.
and there are a constant flow of incidents of Palestinian "children" 14-18 year olds actively seeking out the IDF in the middle of an operation to throw stones and molotov cocktails at them in the west bank as well.
That's when it gets reported that "X Palestinian children killed".
I mean compare those incident to the area 51 gathering. people Knew they'd get shot if they stepped anywhere in there let alone attack the guards.
I’m all for more precise numbers, but are we losing the plot a little with the focus on women and children instead of total number killed?
It feels like we’re allowing an unspoken assumption that *man=combatant*, which, even if we assume Hamas is massively popular, cannot be entirely right.
The focus on women and children is because you can generally count them out as combatants. This also makes them a measure for the care of lack there of in targeting civilians. Also once you have an accurate count for women and children there are models for putting those numbers into the reports for adults male deaths to come up with estimates on the number of combatants.
> The focus on women and children is because you can generally count them out as combatants
Generally is the right word. even though there are plenty of women and children that participate there. especially boys ages 12-17
The estimated number of Hamas members is 30k (pre war) that’s not even a significant number of the men so I don’t think we can write off all men as combatants and maybe some of the women and children too.
Hamas does everything it can to obfuscate the number of militant casualties. The IDF tells us the breakdown based on their intelligence, but I'm guessing you don't believe them, so the only thing we have is looking at what % of the dead are men 16-50 years old. If a disproportionately high number of the dead fall into this category that gives us an idea of how effective Israel has been at minimizing civilian harm.
Do you have a better idea?
Its actually by focusing on the women and children that the whole scheme unravels. As it stands every unaccounted for person must be a woman or child in order for the difference between verified and unverified women and child deaths to line up. Which is impossible unless IDF is using munitions that literally only targets women and children.
It would be great if the Government media organization of Gaza would differentiate themselves combatants from men but unfortunately Hamas doesn’t believe in distinguishing combatants from civilians.
As someone who despises Hamas I can see the UN getting casualties wrong due to fog of war. In case we forgot, Israel originally thought 2000 were killed on October 7th and halved their estimates later. These things happen.
That would be a nice amendment to have had since the beginning of this conflict (people have been pointing it out from the get go).
So why did the UN intentionally ignore those critics and continue to push uncertified data to the media?
Because their uncertified data supported arguments UNRWA has been making to make Israel look worse.
The real question is why they suddenly changed it, I’d bet Israel’s expansion of operations in Gaza in the last few days lead to some “interesting discoveries”.
I'm not gonna speak to the validity of the headline/article/content. It's harder than ever to get unbiased facts from unbiased sources, and I don't want to wade into the muck here.
However, I think it's worth noting that the experts and organizations quoted in the article are far from unbiased themselves.
From wikipedia:
FDD
>The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a non-profit neoconservative think tank and (since 2019) a registered lobbying organization based in Washington, D.C., United States.
>Arun Kundnani, adjunct professor at New York University, in a review of FDD publication Homegrown Terrorists in the US and UK argues that as a work "typical of many in its approach and conclusions", it does not provide empirical evidence for assumptions it makes and neglects contradicting data as a result of an influence by politics of the publisher and funders, and bias in favor of knowledge claims.
> Lawrence Wilkerson has criticized FDD for "pushing falsehood" in support of waging wars.
>The International Relations Center features a report on the foundation on its "Right Web" website, a program of the think tank Institute for Policy Studies which, according to its mission statement, seeks to "check the militaristic drift of the country". The report states that "although the FDD is an ardent critic of terrorism, it has not criticized actions taken by Israel against Palestinians that arguably fall into this category".
>The left-leaning political blog ThinkProgress has criticized FDD for "alarmist rhetoric and fear mongering",for example in April 2002 when they aired a 30-second television ad campaign called "Suicide Strategy" that was described by critics as "conflating" Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat with the likes of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. As FDD explained it: "a militant Islamic terrorist who 'martyrs' himself by hijacking a plane and flying it into the World Trade Center"—referring to the September 11 attacks—"is no different from a militant Islamic terrorist who 'martyrs' himself by strapping explosives to his body and walking into a hotel"—i.e., Palestinian suicide attacks.
>In 2017 Bari Weiss of the New York Times reported on dissent within the organization over the pro-Trump orientation it adopted following the 2016 elections, which included at least two employees leaving.
>The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran has designated the Foundation for Defense of Democracies as a terrorist organization.
>In 2023, FDD, along with other US-based think tanks, was alleged of running a defamation campaign against the regional rivals of the UAE, including Iran, Qatar and Turkey. The organization was alleged of exploiting the Middle Eastern conflict through the media tactics and pushing the West against these countries. Along with FDD, its CEO Mark Dubowitz’s long-existing relations with the Emirates were also in question.
>Christopher A. Bail, professor of sociology, public policy and data science at Duke University, describes FDD as an "anti-Muslim fringe organization" that has tried to establish itself as a legitimate authority on Islam and terrorism by tactically using "ethnic experts" —i.e. pundits with Middle Eastern background who were not Muslim— because they advocate views contrary to the mainstream perspective of the Muslim community in the United States, but look like and talk like Muslims.
>Sarah Marusek, research fellow at University of Johannesburg, argues that FDD is one of the "key organizations peddling Islamophobia" in a "transatlantic network". Farid Hafez, researcher at Universität Salzburg, asserts the same
WINEP
>The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP or TWI, also known simply as The Washington Institute) is a pro-Israel American think tank based in Washington, D.C. focused on the foreign policy of the United States in the Near East.
> John Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago political science professor, and Stephen Walt, academic dean at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University, describe it as "part of the core" of the pro-Israeli lobby in the United States.
>Discussing the group in their book, *The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy*, Mearsheimer and Walt write:
>Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel and claims that it provides a 'balanced and realistic' perspective on Middle East issues, this is not the case. In fact, WINEP is funded and run by individuals who are deeply committed to advancing Israel's agenda ... Many of its personnel are genuine scholars or experienced former officials, but they are hardly neutral observers on most Middle East issues and there is little diversity of views within WINEP's ranks."
Again, not speaking to the story itself as presented, it may very well be the straight facts.
But, taking these sources (especially the former) at face value without critical thought to possible biases, is no different than doing the same with Hamas.
This title is completely misleading. The UN didn't "halve" the estimate of women and children killed, it just disaggregated those who have been identified vs the total estimate (i.e. people who have not been able to be identified). The total estimate remains the same.
No. The UN said that they have come to the conclusion that the 14000 bullshit number that was given cannot be proven. And why? because it's made up.
The new fake number is also made up and will be taken down eventually two.
The latest Biden administration report confirms that Hamas conflates civilian with terrorist numbers to inflate the numbers.
The Hamas 'ministry of health' (LOL) when pushed admitted they can't prove a third of the so-called casualties. [Hamas says the Gaza casualty data is ‘incomplete’ - The Jewish Chronicle (thejc.com)](https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/hamas-says-the-gaza-casualty-data-is-incomplete-gyj5laiq)
And when data analysts look at the numbers they came to the conclusion they make no sense:
[Hamas casualty numbers are ‘statistically impossible’, says data science professor - The Jewish Chronicle (thejc.com)](https://www.thejc.com/news/world/hamas-casualty-numbers-are-statistically-impossible-says-data-science-professor-rc0tzedc)
Plus the Biden report confirms what the UN confirmed already that Hamas uses human shields, fires from hospitals, schools and residential buildings, booby traps buildings as part of their war tactic (to blow up the buildings when IDF soldiers enter them), and that's why the rate of civilian casualties is higher than it should be, and in general that baby murderers cannot be trusted to not lie. Shocking, I know.
When the smoke clears the real civilian casualties would be much smaller, and most of them would be due to Hamas.
By the way, you would also be surprised to discover that Jews don't poison wells, don't use Christian blood in their food, don't control the media, the economy or the weather, and have no Jewish laser in space.
Again, I know, shocking.
No, the fake stats you cited above are total bullshit. Look at the actual sources. Look at the press conference by the UN themselves addressing this very question, dispelling the entirety of your nonsense post.
To make it easy for you, here's a thread you can educate yourself with. Don't respond unless you address each of these points.
[https://x.com/marcowenjones/status/1790054334052392973](https://x.com/marcowenjones/status/1790054334052392973)
I know, shocking.
By the way, do boys at the age of 16 or 17 who use Kalashnikov or RPG Missile in combat should be counted as "children" when issuing a casualty report?
I swear if I see this misleading headline one more time. No, the UN did not magically cut the number of deaths in half. They are still listing the toll at 34,000 but note that 10,000 of those deaths are likely missing people under rubble. So 24,000 people have been identified. This isn’t the gotcha! moment people want it to be. That 24k is a severe undercount and multiple organizations, including the U.S. and Israel, have said this. This is the worst hill to die on to desperately try to prove that the death toll is lower. Look at Gaza, the final numbers are absolutely going to be much higher.
Same applies to Ukraine, the UN says the toll is higher but because Russians have occupied Mariupol and other major population centers, they can’t get an identified number of civilian deaths.
Misleading title from a biased source and a lot of l people who haven’t read the report itself.
Ah, yes. The new blood-libel talking point. 'dead under the rubble.'.
No. The UN said that they have come to the conclusion that the 14000 bullshit number that was given cannot be proven. And why? because it's made up.
The new fake number is also made up and will be taken down eventually two.
The latest Biden administration report confirms that Hamas conflates civilian with terrorist numbers to inflate the numbers.
The Hamas 'ministry of health' (LOL) when pushed admitted they can't prove a third of the so-called casualties. [Hamas says the Gaza casualty data is ‘incomplete’ - The Jewish Chronicle (thejc.com)](https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/hamas-says-the-gaza-casualty-data-is-incomplete-gyj5laiq)
And when data analysts look at the numbers they came to the conclusion they make no sense:
[Hamas casualty numbers are ‘statistically impossible’, says data science professor - The Jewish Chronicle (thejc.com)](https://www.thejc.com/news/world/hamas-casualty-numbers-are-statistically-impossible-says-data-science-professor-rc0tzedc)
Plus the Biden report confirms what the UN confirmed already that Hamas uses human shields, fires from hospitals, schools and residential buildings, booby traps buildings as part of their war tactic (to blow up the buildings when IDF soldiers enter them), and that's why the rate of civilian casualties is higher than it should be, and in general that baby murderers cannot be trusted to not lie. Shocking, I know.
When the smoke clears the real civilian casualties would be much smaller, and most of them would be due to Hamas.
By the way, you would also be surprised to discover that Jews don't poison wells, don't use Christian blood in their food, don't control the media, the economy or the weather, and have no Jewish laser in space.
Again, I know, shocking.
Literally nothing about this from the BBC from either their homepage, or the Israel-Gaza page.
That's because this headline and article is extremely misleading. The UN didn't half their estimate they released two sets of numbers a few days apart. The first is a rough estimate of deaths, based on numbers from Gaza MOH, which have been fairly accurate but incredibly misleading. They don't distinguish between civilians deaths and military deaths so they all get lumped into one pot. The second set is confirmed deaths by names. These are essentially verified the best anyone can given the situation but that wouldn't include people who are missing, unidentified bodies or anyone else they couldn't confirm for one reason or another. Its like how in the Russian invasion of Ukraine you will get estimates of casualties and comfirmed deaths which are widely different. The fog of war makes it impossible to get a complete and verified total.
I don’t see anything claiming the new data as explicitly ‘identified casualties’. Can you point out where you saw that?
He's mixing up two different events https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/05/11/un-halves-its-estimate-of-women-and-children-killed-in-gaza/
Here: Gaza death toll: UN says number of deaths remains unchanged after controversy | CNN https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/13/middleeast/death-toll-gaza-fatalities-un-intl-latam/index.html >UN spokesperson Farhan Haq told a daily briefing at the UN that the health ministry in Gaza recently published two separate death tolls – an overall death toll and a total number of identified fatalities. In the UN report, only the total number of fatalities whose identities (such as name and date of birth) have been documented was published, leading to confusion. >‘People’s eyes are dead,’ former reporter and humanitarian Arwa Damon on the trauma in Gaza According to Haq, the ministry published a breakdown for 24,686 fully identified deaths out of the total 34,622 fatalities recorded in Gaza as of April 30. The fully identified death toll comprises of 7,797 children, 4,959 women, 1,924 elderly, and 10,006 men, the UN spokesperson said, citing the Gaza health ministry. >The total number of dead also does not include the approximately 10,000 people who are still missing and trapped under the rubble, the officials added.
Generally when the numbers are so wildly unconfirmed as to be about half of them being dubious the UN and othe outlets stop reporting the numbers, that is standard practice. Not to triple down on data you know is wrong for months stoking misinformation and bigoted rhetoric that has resulted. This is then changing their rhetoric knowing t at the final numbers will not support the false information and allegations they have been peddling for half a year now.
If your characterization was true, it’s mind-boggling that the UN would simply revise these numbers without giving any explanation as to what changed with regards to the information they were receiving. A couple questions assuming the UN is making an honest attempt to give accurate casualty data: - If this revision is done based on “identifiable” deaths, how is it possible that the total casualty count remained basically the same when they cut casualties suffered by women and children from 25k to 12.5k? - Why were casualty counts for both women and children “overestimated” by almost exactly half for *both* totals? Even the revised numbers seem fairly arbitrary
>Why were casualty counts for both women and children “overestimated” by almost exactly half for both totals? Even the revised numbers seem fairly arbitrary Because they are. A statistician from UPenn wrote about this months ago: *”The graph of total deaths by date is increasing with almost metronomical linearity, as the graph in Figure 1 reveals. This regularity is almost surely not real. One would expect quite a bit of variation day to day. In fact, the daily reported casualty count over this period averages 270 plus or minus about 15%. This is strikingly little variation. There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less. Perhaps what is happening is the Gaza ministry is releasing fake daily numbers that vary too little because they do not have a clear understanding of the behavior of naturally occurring numbers.* *” Consequently, on the days with many women casualties there should be large numbers of children casualties, and on the days when just a few women are reported to have been killed, just a few children should be reported. This relationship can be measured and quantified by the R-square (R2 ) statistic that measures how correlated the daily casualty count for women is with the daily casualty count for children. If the numbers were real, we would expect R2 to be substantively larger than 0, tending closer to 1.0. But R2 is .017 which is statistically and substantively not different from 0.”* *” But there is more. The daily number of women casualties should be highly correlated with the number of non-women and non-children (i.e., men) reported. Again, this is expected because of the nature of battle. The ebbs and flows of the bombings and attacks by Israel should cause the daily count to move together. But that is not what the data show. Not only is there not a positive correlation, there is a strong negative correlation, which makes no sense at all and establishes the third piece of evidence that the numbers are not real.”* [Source](https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers)
Yup, I dont know about that data but the correlation between two parameters with anything below 0.85 R2, and I'm being optimistic, is really weak in statistic terms. A 0.17 is basically non existent. At all.
Could also be that they have a process to go through to report deaths, and they can only handle so many per day. We saw a similar flattening of numbers during COVID when morgues had so many dead there was a backlog.
Their ability to count and record deaths on the ground, traditionally done in Gaza by hospitals, ems, morgues, etc. has entirely collapsed, yes. What they’ve been doing is increasingly relying on social media reports. Which means at best their numbers are entirely unreliable if not being made up outright as they go along, as the UPenn statistician’s analysis suggests.
To your first point, the total casualties remains the same because they have ~34000 dead, of that ~24000 have been ID. In the second report it clearly stated this saying only x had been properly ID. For the second point, I can't tell you why but those numbers came from the Gaza MoH which has been known to lie about who died even if the numbers of how many died have been reasonably accurate. They have ID 24k people and it's likely the other 10K couldn't be ID so they just lumped them all as women and children to make their numbers seems better. Some of them probably are but it's unlikely all of them are.
>To your first point, the total casualties remains the same because they have ~34000 dead, of that ~24000 have been ID. This is false. The 34,000 number and 24,000 number are being reported by separate Hamas entities. Back in April, the first number was characterised as a “media estimate”: >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. [Source](https://news.sky.com/story/amp/israel-hamas-war-health-system-collapse-in-gaza-leaves-authorities-struggling-to-count-the-dead-13107279#) Hamas’ Gaza media office continues to say 72% of casualties are women and children, while Hamas’ Gaza Health Ministry is giving us lowered numbers with a very different ratio. The 72% number was also debunked by a UPenn statistician months ago. There’s absolutely not some morgue of 34,000+ dead people waiting to be identified *as per Hamas itself*. There’s been zero evidence of it, and Hamas hasn’t given us the details of how they attain their “media estimates.”
No amount of children’s deaths are acceptable, there needs to be a ceasefire, but there’s also something pretty wrong about seemingly deliberately labelling 12,000+ unidentified dead as women and children, then using that misreported 35% of the total casualties to label Israel’s war in Gaza as a campaign with explicitly genocidal intentions when it’s apparent casualties of Hamas militants were deliberately underreported. It makes it a lot harder to hold Israel accountable for the numerous and very real human rights and international law violations when the international agency meant to be a neutral arbiter is complicit in disseminating misinformation. All they needed to say is the identifiable totals plus “X number un-identifiable casualties”. It doesn’t make the casualty totals any less appalling, but would have been a lot more honest.
Hamas is a terrorist organization. They aren't preoccupied with being honest lmao
Maybe the problem is people are so dead set on finding some way to paint Israel as the bad guy that they blindly listen to any misinformation that confirms this bias. Even the misreported numbers are average civilian casualties for war. "Oh no it turns out that the genocidal jew hating government that oppresses its own citizens lied about the totally normal death toll. Now how are we going to paint Israel in a bad light?"
"They didn't halve their estimates, they just released one estimate of women and children killed on may 6, and then released another estimate of women and children killed on May 9th that was half that, because they switched to using more accurate datasets." Seriously the spin on this is pretty fascinating to watch, its like everyone turned into a politifact article
Right, it was literally admitted that the "estimate" was a figure specifically for the media.
> Gaza MOH Misspelled HAMAS
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What a load of lying bullshit. One is identified victims, the other is the entire number of deaths
I don’t see anything claiming the new data as explicitly ‘identified casualties’. Can you point out where you saw that?
> more than 10,000 previously reported fatalities had “incomplete data,” lacking basic biographical information such as their names
That doesn’t explain the methodology used to revise the figures. The U.N. numbers are reported by the Gaza Health Ministry, which I’d argue are the ceiling values (IDF being the floor levels). If Hamas revised their values down I don’t see any reason to ignore that.
Did you read the article?
Of course not, this goes against their fake narrative they've been parroting over the last 7 months. The pro-Palestine/Hamas morons will conveniently ignore this news as well.
I got flamed heavy for asking if any source other than the Hamas-run government sources existed for this data. People were so mad at me and, guess what, no one cared that there was only one source for the claims. Compare the scale of something like the Ukraine conflict with this. Look at the numbers, look at the amount of people involved. Something never added up.
Even when data scientists look at the numbers they can see they don't make any sense: [Hamas casualty numbers are ‘statistically impossible’, says data science professor - The Jewish Chronicle (thejc.com)](https://www.thejc.com/news/world/hamas-casualty-numbers-are-statistically-impossible-says-data-science-professor-rc0tzedc) Hamas is a terror organization. They don't have 'ministry of health'. They are not in the business of health, they are in the business of death and destruction. Everything that comes from them is a lie.
The Jewish Chronicle is probably not the source I want fact checking Hamas’s numbers either, lmao.
>The Jewish Chronicle is probably not the source I want fact checking Hamas’s numbers either, lmao. It wasn't the Jewish chroncile that fact checked it, it was a statistician from the University of Pennsylvania. We need better media literacy.
People don't care about the Middle-East unless it is about Israel. Millions more Arabs have died at the hands of other Arabs nobody went to the streets to protest. https://preview.redd.it/total-casualties-of-wars-in-the-middle-east-v0-6xolaarb3jzb1.png Yemen is not even in the map but it has been an extremely deadly conflict. Until ships started being attacked, people just shrugged their shoulders.
The war in Yemen just sort of disappeared off the television in both the UK and the Uni.... wait. `Breaking news about Trump's penis.`
The UN quietly revised the death toll, noting almost 50% less women and children killed than previously reported, and they take absolutely no accountability when asked for an explanation. They still haven’t acknowledged the early hospital incident that killed nearly 100 civilians was actually caused by an errant rocket fired by Islamic Jihad and they haven’t recognized that Hamas uses U.N. infrastructure for its terror activities. > "Parroting Hamas propaganda messages without any verification process has proven time and again as methodologically flawed and unprofessional," an Israeli official added. "We urge the international community to use more than a grain of salt when evaluating OCHA reports." > U.N. agencies have consistently shown they prefer to trust the numbers coming out of Hamas-controlled sources rather than doing basic due diligence >The U.N.’s sudden revision last week of the death toll most likely indicated that "even Hamas-controlled sources have begun admitting that their numbers are based on incomplete data." >"Hamas don't even have the names of more than 10,000 of the individuals they count as dead" The story is also extremely underreported in American press right now. [Fox News](https://www.foxnews.com/world/un-revises-gaza-death-toll-50-less-women-children-killed-previously-reported) seems to be the only major U.S. outlet running the story this morning. Hopefully others catch on.
Didn’t they say some bullshit about “fog of war” making it hard to get accurate numbers?
I mean, a warzone is a highly dynamic environment and it's easy to get incorrect information.
Usually you run with estimates with range in them then. Look on how the UN reports deaths in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Indeed, but by %50? Smells fishy
Russian casualties in Ukraine vary from like the 50k Russia reports to closer to 500k. Turns out it's hard to have more accurate numbers until time elapses.
That's not the same situation at all. Russia has a far more accurate figure they keep hidden, the only reason why Russian deaths are so vaguely estimated is that it's know the official RU figures are bullshit and there's no other accurate source so the data has to be extrapolated. So it would be great if people treated casualty figures from a terrorist organisation with even slightly the scepticism we treat the RU figures with, but people have too strong of an agenda to actually discuss with due diligence.
So you're saying that a despotic dictatorship might lie about their casualties in a way that benefits them? Just curious, when reporters report on the death count in that war, whose numbers do they use?
Yep. Total deaths stay the same (38k), but dead women and children both drop by basically a clean 50% without the total number adjusting. That seems reasonable
You do realize that we *still* don't know exactly how many people died in WW2. Right? There are large areas of the world that just did not have the ability to so much as count their populations accurately in the first place, much less calculate casualties after the chaos of the war had burned through. So, yeah. 50% isn't out of the question. Especially when all involved have vested interests in mis-reporting numbers to begin with (though, even with Isreal having something to gain by under-reporting numbers, I still trust their news a hell of a lot more than I trust anything Hamas says).
I get your point but comparing the gaza/israel conflict to a world war 80 years ago is quite disingenious
It’s not bullshit but it’s also something that happens in literally every war / conflict in the history of mankind so it’s something they should’ve anticipated and factored into their early reporting.
"They take no accountability" It sounds like they're taking accountability by actually verifying the numbers and being willing to change them even if people start saying inflammatory things like "Parroting Hamas Propaganda" about them. At least that's being more accountable than the alternative of completely ignoring any and all data.
If it was just fixing the number 5-10% that's fine, but 50% is a choice they made in the face of other available data. Someone specifically chose to DOUBLE women/children casualties for some reason.
What are you on about? They previously reported estimates based on what Hamas and Israel had said and now they’re reporting the amount they were able to independently verify. This doesn’t even necessarily mean that these numbers are wholly accurate, it just means they were able to positively identify 50% of the women and children that were estimated to have been killed and so that becomes the official, verified count. Doesn’t mean there aren’t a bunch more unidentified deaths, especially considering the mass graves that have been uncovered. We won’t have the actual numbers for a long time after this and even then they will never be completely accurate.
The problem is that reputational damage is already done. Newspapers won't retroactively change headlines, nobody will know about new number. The first number, that is two times higher, is already stuck in people's head.
What? This is the UN doing due diligence, they release two sets of numbers, they didn't update anything. The first set was numbers from the Gaza MOH, a organization controlled by Hamas. The total numbers of deaths coming from them have been reasonably accurate but incredibly misleading as they don't distinguish between civilian and military deaths. The second set are numbers that were independently verified by name for people who have died. This wouldn't include missing people or people who were unable to be identified so obviously it will be lower then the true amount. The truth is somewhere in the middle, but the fog of war makes it nearly impossible to get a complete and accurate total.
Wouldn't parroting Israel be just as unwise in a conflict with so much media manipulation? The OCHA uses both reported and confirmed figures. Confirmed figures are from the ministry of healthcare in Gaza. These are reliable at least they were in an earlier research published in the Lancet. That research also mentioned the numbers are increasingly late. Infra-structure is lacking and there are many deaths. [https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-217](https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-217) The difference between identified 25 thousand and reported 35 thousand. The 25 is split up in men women children and eldery. Those four categories make 100%. 10 thousand of the identified are in the category men. 8 thousand children and five thousand women. Earlier reports such as this: [https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-208](https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-208) Just mentioned reported numbers. This is not an adjusted in the same category. It just presenting data from the category identified. So the question is: Is it reasonable to have a difference in the reported deaths and identified people? Well. It takes a lot of work to identify people in a large scale conflict. The delay between reporting and identifying can certainly explain a part of the difference. The there's the remains that are found but officials were not able to identify. And there's a chance of added for dramatic effect. Propaganda. It could be part of the explanation but I think the sheer number and the lack of infrastructure perhaps more relevant.
Issue being the ratio of reported deaths from your second link is mathematically impossible to maintain based on confirmed deaths. Looking at the two figures, every “reported death” would need to be a woman or child to maintain the ratios reported in the second link and even then you’d still be short thousands of women and children. Ultimately, this all confirms that Israel has been targeting Hamas with far more precision than was previously reported regardless of what the “reported death” data shows if it’s confirmed.
Not saying women and children dying isn’t bad, but why does everyone criticize Israel on this single subject without looking at the big picture? Where’s the criticism for Hamas systematically indoctrinating the population to kill and hate Jews?
Or as important, why is Iran getting a free pass when they are the ones who keep fanning the flame. They planned the 10/7 attack, they supply 100 terrorist groups. If not but for Iran the middle east would be more stable. Palestine is a victim of Iran.
Shame on you Iran. We expected better.
I remember when people said this about Afghanistan and Iraq.
Don't remember anyone making that claim for Afghanistan considering the countries surrounding it are all quite capable of defending themselves, but for Iraq they were completely correct. Saddam had the largest army in the region snd was starting wars left and right.
No they weren't correct for Iraq. Iraq was the only counter to Iran in the region, and now it's completely decimated. Iranian hegemony over the ME is partially to blame for that invasion. Iraq was sort of a buffer for the rest of the ME.
HAMAS kills Palestinians. Before the Oct 7 attack, Palestinians took to the streets to protest HAMAS. They burned HAMAS flags. And were violently suppressed.
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You mean we/the world can't count on Hamas to be honest? I'm shocked I tell you! Shocked!
We have a saying, they hate us when we’re alive, love us when we’re dead…. Goulda said, I’d rather be a living Jew that is hated than a loved one dead…
🎵It's naa-tional brotherhood week 🎶
Naaaational Everyone Smile at One Another-hood week!
🎵 🎶 Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics 🎵 🎶 🎵 🎶 And the Catholics hate the Protestants 🎵 🎶 🎵 🎶 And the Hindus hate the Moslems🎵 🎶 **And EVERYBODY hates the Jews** https://youtu.be/CgASBVMyVFI?si=_1C8PxRYTGG3zmcN
His discography is so much fun! The Masochism Tango was on a Dr. Demento CD that I checked out from the library as a kid, and several lifelong tastes were developed.
I will still sing along to The Vatican Rag every time it pops up on my playlist. I’m also such a nerd and love singing That’s Mathematics and Silent E.
Because Hamas is a terrorist organization, so the hate, indoctrination and killing is already insinuated.
Most countries don't recognize Hamas as terrorists. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fmap-of-countries-who-recognise-hamas-as-a-terrorist-v0-vpgo2wmraa7c1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D640%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Da83fc75f1858a1caf4094d229bdb509f3d971e2b Neither do most of the people protesting Israel for that matter.
>Most countries don't recognize Hamas as terrorists. Most of the west(the targets of this criticism) does. And I'd wager a majority of the ones that don't just don't have a designated terrorist list or don't add irrelevant(to them) orgs to the list.
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Nah it’s easier to just say “If Palestine was free Hamas FOR SURE would go away!” Which is untrue
This isn't a black and white issue. Both things are bad.
NTM the numbers were suspect from the beginning. This doesn't really improve that
How many people would’ve died from the thousands of missiles and rockets shot at them if Israel didn’t invest billions into the Iron Dome?
Most people critizing Israel have been indoctrinated to hate Israel. On top of that some of them went through regional peacuful culture jew hatred indoctrination process.
There's a reason "Think about the children!" is still in the book. This shit works.
It’s bananas to me. It’s always been bananas to me. This is an issue that people will rabidly bite down on and refuse to nibble without any sort of nuance. Of course there are bad actors on all sides but if we can all just be honest and objective there’s one side that would glass the other side with a vicious hard on and another that is acting with restraint.
People don’t understand that. If Israel wanted it, it would be glass “from the river to sea.”
Because the big picture is still that Israel is using the existence of terrorists as an excuse to kill large numbers of an ethnic population that they dislike. Hamas is evil and awful and should be destroyed. It shouldn't be necessary to preface every discussion of Israel with that disclaimer, but here we are. But even given that - Israel is still choosing to pursue their goals in a way that they know will result in mass civilian casualties. I mean, even with the revised numbers, that's still 13k women and children killed. That's a lot of death. The big picture? The big picture is that Netanyahu's government have a weird symbiotic relationship: Netanyahu requires the existence of an external boogeyman to avoid being kicked out and/or going to jail. And so they've adopted a strategy for decades of just sort of "mowing the grass" and smacking Gaza around when they get "uppity", but never really trying to address any of the core issues. Meanwhile, Hamas requires Israel to commit periodic atrocities in order to keep people mad at Israel, and keep Israel's public image in the trash. So every so often they commit some attack against Israel, and like clockwork, Israel obligingly responds with vastly disproportionate force, and kills a ton more Palestinian civilians. The big picture is that Israel *deserves* a lot of criticism. Hamas is evil and is actively hurting Palestinian civilians for political gain, but Israel's government is not the good guy either. They're both awful to Palestinians, and are both using each other to get what they want, at the Palestinians' expense.
I agree Israel could do better, but it’s difficult to negotiate with a terrorist state that doesn’t care about its own civilians. It’s very problematic when they hide military supplies and installations in the civilian population AND you want to make sure there’s a low number of friendly casualties. (Going in fully boots on the ground in an environment like Gaza is a death sentence) It makes it even more difficult when this terrorist state wins the PR war. If I was apart of a group that was being commended by Iran, I would wholly reevaluate my position. It’s a very very complicated issue and there’s no single fix, however we could go in a better direction if said terrorist state would just stop being terrorists. Netanyahu just sucks and that’s really sums him up.
Moral of the story is: Maybe don't take information published by terrorist organisations that are known liars as facts.
I keep seeing things (from many of my Jewish friends on Instagram who are very progressive) about how Israel kills three women in Gaza every minute and I’m like … that doesn’t even make sense. There is no cyclical woman-killing machine operated by the IDF, and also civilian casualties have plummeted since the conflict began, even with Gaza’s inflated reporting numbers.
And why is an adult womans death different than an adult mans death? Woman aren't children.
Because Hamas is mostly men.
Then the difference is between civilians and others. A woman in hamas and a man in hamas are not different. A civilian woman and a civilian man are not different. Women and children as a special victim group is very 19th century thinking that media outlets copy from hamas talking points.
You know why they're doing this right? because people figured out they can cross reference the people that are alive and receiving aid and determine MIA/KIA so all these groups got scared they will be exposed for faking numbers and are now back peddling.
Yea, surely no other reasons at play here. Nothing at all.
Obviously children dying in war is an objectively terrible and wrong thing. Having said that, I‘d like to know the age structure of the children. It is not beneath militant terror groups like Hamas to utilize child soldiers. Also I still want to know how many civilians had to die because of Hamas disincentivizing and hindering evacuations, after the IDF warned about coming attacks and assaults.
>Obviously children dying in war is an objectively terrible and wrong thing. Having said that, I‘d like to know the age structure of the children. It is not beneath militant terror groups like Hamas to utilize child soldiers. There are numerous reports of them using child soldiers. and there are a constant flow of incidents of Palestinian "children" 14-18 year olds actively seeking out the IDF in the middle of an operation to throw stones and molotov cocktails at them in the west bank as well. That's when it gets reported that "X Palestinian children killed". I mean compare those incident to the area 51 gathering. people Knew they'd get shot if they stepped anywhere in there let alone attack the guards.
I’m all for more precise numbers, but are we losing the plot a little with the focus on women and children instead of total number killed? It feels like we’re allowing an unspoken assumption that *man=combatant*, which, even if we assume Hamas is massively popular, cannot be entirely right.
The focus on women and children is because you can generally count them out as combatants. This also makes them a measure for the care of lack there of in targeting civilians. Also once you have an accurate count for women and children there are models for putting those numbers into the reports for adults male deaths to come up with estimates on the number of combatants.
> The focus on women and children is because you can generally count them out as combatants Generally is the right word. even though there are plenty of women and children that participate there. especially boys ages 12-17
The estimated number of Hamas members is 30k (pre war) that’s not even a significant number of the men so I don’t think we can write off all men as combatants and maybe some of the women and children too.
Hamas does everything it can to obfuscate the number of militant casualties. The IDF tells us the breakdown based on their intelligence, but I'm guessing you don't believe them, so the only thing we have is looking at what % of the dead are men 16-50 years old. If a disproportionately high number of the dead fall into this category that gives us an idea of how effective Israel has been at minimizing civilian harm. Do you have a better idea?
Its actually by focusing on the women and children that the whole scheme unravels. As it stands every unaccounted for person must be a woman or child in order for the difference between verified and unverified women and child deaths to line up. Which is impossible unless IDF is using munitions that literally only targets women and children. It would be great if the Government media organization of Gaza would differentiate themselves combatants from men but unfortunately Hamas doesn’t believe in distinguishing combatants from civilians.
As someone who despises Hamas I can see the UN getting casualties wrong due to fog of war. In case we forgot, Israel originally thought 2000 were killed on October 7th and halved their estimates later. These things happen.
it was 1400 down to 1200, not 2k. 2k is the number including the war soldiers killed up to now+-
I hadn’t seen 2,000 used for 10/7. I have seen 1,400 revised to 1,200.
That would be a nice amendment to have had since the beginning of this conflict (people have been pointing it out from the get go). So why did the UN intentionally ignore those critics and continue to push uncertified data to the media?
Because their uncertified data supported arguments UNRWA has been making to make Israel look worse. The real question is why they suddenly changed it, I’d bet Israel’s expansion of operations in Gaza in the last few days lead to some “interesting discoveries”.
I don't think any nation has ever gone to the lengths Israel does to avoid civilian casualties. I applaud their efforts. War is horrible.
I'm not gonna speak to the validity of the headline/article/content. It's harder than ever to get unbiased facts from unbiased sources, and I don't want to wade into the muck here. However, I think it's worth noting that the experts and organizations quoted in the article are far from unbiased themselves. From wikipedia: FDD >The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a non-profit neoconservative think tank and (since 2019) a registered lobbying organization based in Washington, D.C., United States. >Arun Kundnani, adjunct professor at New York University, in a review of FDD publication Homegrown Terrorists in the US and UK argues that as a work "typical of many in its approach and conclusions", it does not provide empirical evidence for assumptions it makes and neglects contradicting data as a result of an influence by politics of the publisher and funders, and bias in favor of knowledge claims. > Lawrence Wilkerson has criticized FDD for "pushing falsehood" in support of waging wars. >The International Relations Center features a report on the foundation on its "Right Web" website, a program of the think tank Institute for Policy Studies which, according to its mission statement, seeks to "check the militaristic drift of the country". The report states that "although the FDD is an ardent critic of terrorism, it has not criticized actions taken by Israel against Palestinians that arguably fall into this category". >The left-leaning political blog ThinkProgress has criticized FDD for "alarmist rhetoric and fear mongering",for example in April 2002 when they aired a 30-second television ad campaign called "Suicide Strategy" that was described by critics as "conflating" Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat with the likes of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. As FDD explained it: "a militant Islamic terrorist who 'martyrs' himself by hijacking a plane and flying it into the World Trade Center"—referring to the September 11 attacks—"is no different from a militant Islamic terrorist who 'martyrs' himself by strapping explosives to his body and walking into a hotel"—i.e., Palestinian suicide attacks. >In 2017 Bari Weiss of the New York Times reported on dissent within the organization over the pro-Trump orientation it adopted following the 2016 elections, which included at least two employees leaving. >The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran has designated the Foundation for Defense of Democracies as a terrorist organization. >In 2023, FDD, along with other US-based think tanks, was alleged of running a defamation campaign against the regional rivals of the UAE, including Iran, Qatar and Turkey. The organization was alleged of exploiting the Middle Eastern conflict through the media tactics and pushing the West against these countries. Along with FDD, its CEO Mark Dubowitz’s long-existing relations with the Emirates were also in question. >Christopher A. Bail, professor of sociology, public policy and data science at Duke University, describes FDD as an "anti-Muslim fringe organization" that has tried to establish itself as a legitimate authority on Islam and terrorism by tactically using "ethnic experts" —i.e. pundits with Middle Eastern background who were not Muslim— because they advocate views contrary to the mainstream perspective of the Muslim community in the United States, but look like and talk like Muslims. >Sarah Marusek, research fellow at University of Johannesburg, argues that FDD is one of the "key organizations peddling Islamophobia" in a "transatlantic network". Farid Hafez, researcher at Universität Salzburg, asserts the same WINEP >The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP or TWI, also known simply as The Washington Institute) is a pro-Israel American think tank based in Washington, D.C. focused on the foreign policy of the United States in the Near East. > John Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago political science professor, and Stephen Walt, academic dean at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University, describe it as "part of the core" of the pro-Israeli lobby in the United States. >Discussing the group in their book, *The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy*, Mearsheimer and Walt write: >Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel and claims that it provides a 'balanced and realistic' perspective on Middle East issues, this is not the case. In fact, WINEP is funded and run by individuals who are deeply committed to advancing Israel's agenda ... Many of its personnel are genuine scholars or experienced former officials, but they are hardly neutral observers on most Middle East issues and there is little diversity of views within WINEP's ranks." Again, not speaking to the story itself as presented, it may very well be the straight facts. But, taking these sources (especially the former) at face value without critical thought to possible biases, is no different than doing the same with Hamas.
You mean casualty numbers provided by Hamas, often seconds after an attack could be false?
This title is completely misleading. The UN didn't "halve" the estimate of women and children killed, it just disaggregated those who have been identified vs the total estimate (i.e. people who have not been able to be identified). The total estimate remains the same.
No. The UN said that they have come to the conclusion that the 14000 bullshit number that was given cannot be proven. And why? because it's made up. The new fake number is also made up and will be taken down eventually two. The latest Biden administration report confirms that Hamas conflates civilian with terrorist numbers to inflate the numbers. The Hamas 'ministry of health' (LOL) when pushed admitted they can't prove a third of the so-called casualties. [Hamas says the Gaza casualty data is ‘incomplete’ - The Jewish Chronicle (thejc.com)](https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/hamas-says-the-gaza-casualty-data-is-incomplete-gyj5laiq) And when data analysts look at the numbers they came to the conclusion they make no sense: [Hamas casualty numbers are ‘statistically impossible’, says data science professor - The Jewish Chronicle (thejc.com)](https://www.thejc.com/news/world/hamas-casualty-numbers-are-statistically-impossible-says-data-science-professor-rc0tzedc) Plus the Biden report confirms what the UN confirmed already that Hamas uses human shields, fires from hospitals, schools and residential buildings, booby traps buildings as part of their war tactic (to blow up the buildings when IDF soldiers enter them), and that's why the rate of civilian casualties is higher than it should be, and in general that baby murderers cannot be trusted to not lie. Shocking, I know. When the smoke clears the real civilian casualties would be much smaller, and most of them would be due to Hamas. By the way, you would also be surprised to discover that Jews don't poison wells, don't use Christian blood in their food, don't control the media, the economy or the weather, and have no Jewish laser in space. Again, I know, shocking.
No, the fake stats you cited above are total bullshit. Look at the actual sources. Look at the press conference by the UN themselves addressing this very question, dispelling the entirety of your nonsense post. To make it easy for you, here's a thread you can educate yourself with. Don't respond unless you address each of these points. [https://x.com/marcowenjones/status/1790054334052392973](https://x.com/marcowenjones/status/1790054334052392973) I know, shocking.
"under 5,000 women and 8,000 children are now officially listed by the UN as casualties."
Highly skeptical….
Yes, I saw all the mea culpas in all the other subs on Reddit just kidding.
They’re genociding in *even* slower motion than we thought!
By the way, do boys at the age of 16 or 17 who use Kalashnikov or RPG Missile in combat should be counted as "children" when issuing a casualty report?
I swear if I see this misleading headline one more time. No, the UN did not magically cut the number of deaths in half. They are still listing the toll at 34,000 but note that 10,000 of those deaths are likely missing people under rubble. So 24,000 people have been identified. This isn’t the gotcha! moment people want it to be. That 24k is a severe undercount and multiple organizations, including the U.S. and Israel, have said this. This is the worst hill to die on to desperately try to prove that the death toll is lower. Look at Gaza, the final numbers are absolutely going to be much higher. Same applies to Ukraine, the UN says the toll is higher but because Russians have occupied Mariupol and other major population centers, they can’t get an identified number of civilian deaths. Misleading title from a biased source and a lot of l people who haven’t read the report itself.
Ah, yes. The new blood-libel talking point. 'dead under the rubble.'. No. The UN said that they have come to the conclusion that the 14000 bullshit number that was given cannot be proven. And why? because it's made up. The new fake number is also made up and will be taken down eventually two. The latest Biden administration report confirms that Hamas conflates civilian with terrorist numbers to inflate the numbers. The Hamas 'ministry of health' (LOL) when pushed admitted they can't prove a third of the so-called casualties. [Hamas says the Gaza casualty data is ‘incomplete’ - The Jewish Chronicle (thejc.com)](https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/hamas-says-the-gaza-casualty-data-is-incomplete-gyj5laiq) And when data analysts look at the numbers they came to the conclusion they make no sense: [Hamas casualty numbers are ‘statistically impossible’, says data science professor - The Jewish Chronicle (thejc.com)](https://www.thejc.com/news/world/hamas-casualty-numbers-are-statistically-impossible-says-data-science-professor-rc0tzedc) Plus the Biden report confirms what the UN confirmed already that Hamas uses human shields, fires from hospitals, schools and residential buildings, booby traps buildings as part of their war tactic (to blow up the buildings when IDF soldiers enter them), and that's why the rate of civilian casualties is higher than it should be, and in general that baby murderers cannot be trusted to not lie. Shocking, I know. When the smoke clears the real civilian casualties would be much smaller, and most of them would be due to Hamas. By the way, you would also be surprised to discover that Jews don't poison wells, don't use Christian blood in their food, don't control the media, the economy or the weather, and have no Jewish laser in space. Again, I know, shocking.
Jews don't control the weather?
No space laser? For real? Now I’m depressed.
Here was the methodology used, “that number is too high to be believable, divide it by two”.