Comment by keefle
1 year ago
From my understanding their numbers have been fairly accurate throughout the years, do you have any specific examples of prior extreme discrepancies? (Because from what I followed, even the US believes those numbers to be accurate, but I would be happy to be corrected)
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-officials-have-gro...
I'll answer your question, but first I'll ask you a question: Do you know how the Gaza Health Ministry generates their death toll? What do you think of their methods? My guess is you don't know but you trust it because you see these numbers repeated in the media (just like China's COVID death toll).
If you ask me how Israel calculates its death toll the answer is pretty simple: they use archaeologists, forensic medical teams, and more
One of the most obvious examples of a prior discrepancy was the Health Ministry claiming that ~500 innocent civilians died when Israel bombed al Ahli hospital. Of course, we later discovered the hospital wasn't bombed, the parking lot was, the bomb wasn't dropped by Israel but was rather an errant rocket from Hamas, and that far fewer people died. In other words, a series of lies. The Health Ministry never corrected the death toll and kept adding from that.
Beyond this, here's one of many analyses casting shade on the Health Ministry's statistics: https://twitter.com/Aizenberg55/status/1744381711993946209
You can google around for dozens more. As I said to the prior commenter, I'd rather not have a debate here about whether the numbers are accurate (not because I'm not confident but rather because of the famous XKCD) and I simply mean to point out that Paul Graham has one standard for China's COVID death toll and a completely different standard for Hamas's Health ministry figures.
I still this still ignores important points, and ill make some comments and questions, some of which might be pedantic so feel free to ignore them
1. Regardless of the method, it was fairly accurate for years, and matched closely to Israeli estimates of casualties in prior conflicts.
2. The US, Israeli's largest ally, is not doubting those numbers. This alone says alot given that the US from a strategic perspective would want to present Israel in the best possible light they can given the majority of the globe is heading towards leaving Israel in isolation.
3. The Israeli claim against Almamadani hospital incident is placing the blame on Islamic Jihad (not Hamas) (pedantic point)
4. The issue of Almamadani hospital incident is still not settled, especially as the Israeli claimes have been debunked by multiple entities most notably the New York times. [1]
5. Ignoring the questionable numbers of this specific incident, because you might be right, but its interesting that the US's admission that the death toll coming from Gaza is accurate came at a date way after the Al mamadani hospital incident (my claim would be that this incident has been taken into consideration by the US officials when they admitted the accuracy of the death toll coming from Gaza). This paired with the US's strategic support of Israel makes their admission that the death toll is accurate is way more trust worthy than possibly exaggerated COVID death tolls, as in one case its an admission playing against the admitter, whereas the other case the admission is in favor of the admitter.
But thank you for sharing the Twitter thread, I'll investigate it and look into other sources as well
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/world/middleeast/gaza-hos...
Hi keefle, thanks for taking the time to write this in such a reasonable, friendly way. I appreciate that. I notice you still didn't answer the question of how the Gaza Health Ministry gets their data. Do you have confidence in their methods? Are they going into North Gaza (now controlled by Israel) and looking at dead bodies?
1. No it wasn't, despite the link PG shared. See: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28688179 . This won't surprise you but the Gaza Health Ministry also put out false data during COVID.
2. The American government's position has shifted over time from outright denial of the Health Ministry numbers to "we don't know, but we do know there are too many deaths." Let's see how it continues to shift as the conflict evolves.
4. Remember the context. You asked for an instance of the Gaza Health Ministry lying and I provided one. Are you now saying the 500 dead figure was accurate? Because if so, you're wrong that the matter is unsettled. While the exact estimates vary from as few as a dozen KIA to ~300 KIA, the entire open source intelligence community, all western intelligence agencies, and most publications agree the initial death toll was wrong. Also--not to be pedantic--but the NYT retracted their early coverage of the al Ahli hospital incident; the piece you link to was widely panned by open source intelligence experts; and it doesn't actually question the incident -- it just calls into question one particular piece of evidence.
5. I don't think you're following the narrative. Israel has said that the total death toll may be roughly 30% lower than what the Gaza Health Ministry asserts, but they also argue the list is NOT accurate. The list says almost everyone dead are women and kids, whereas Israel claims that roughly 8,000 militants have been killed and 1,000 captured.
First, Israel has been carpet bombing Gaza for weeks on end. They have destroyed everything & bombed housing, schools, mosques, churches, universities, kids schools, restaurants, bakeries & every aspect of civilization there.
How many Palestinian journalists have been murdered or had their families targeted and extended family bombed by the IOF?
The IDF have targeted & murdered more journalists in 2 months than in any other conflict.
The IDF is the only military on the planet that has a military court for juveniles and imprisons them by the thousands. You can search this all out on YouTube & see footage of it. They were holding boys in open air cages in the winter. Their parents not even knowing which military prison their kids were in.
We see the US bombs falling 24/7 on all of Gaza. We see what is going on every single day.
We know the Israeli policy of “mowing the lawn” every few months.
We SEE it. You should own it and be revulsed by it, just as you should by the Israeli Apache gunships emptying their machine guns at Israelis at the concert or the tank rounds. Or shooting unarmed Israeli civilians hostages waving a white flag.
What policy is that called by the IDF again? Oh yeah, The Hannibal Directive. Only now they target their own.
So confident yet so wrong.
- Israel has not carpet bombed gaza. They've used a higher portion of smart bombs than any other military in history and use F16s to guide their dumb bombs. Israel has dropped more than 25,000 bombs, and according to the high estimates fewer than 25,000 palestinians have been killed, meaning each bomb kills less than one person. Israel also establishes humanitarian corridors, drops leaflets, sends evacuation warnings, allows in aid, establishes safe zones, and much more.
- Nobody knows how many Palestinian journalists have been murdered. Gaza does not have a free press. What we do know is that many militants posing as journalists have been killed. See: https://www.camera.org/article/using-journalists-lives-as-cu...
- You're upset that Israel imprisons minors like these guys? https://www.wionews.com/world/are-hamas-resorted-to-training... Save some of your outrage for Hamas using child soldiers. Also, plenty of other countries, including the United States, imprison minors.
- I can see you've been listening to lots of Norman Finkelstein? Israel does not just wake up one day and say "let's mow the lawn" - each time they bomb gaza it's been in response to something like a suicide bomb or stabbing, which has happened for decades in Israel.
- I see you think you're familiar with the Hannibal directive. Can you link me to the text of this directive? The principles are tactical rather than strategic and followed by many other militaries, including the US.
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Aizenberg55 seems like a disinfo propagandist shill. No different than any other shill, Gazan or Russian or German.
For instance, Aizenberg55 discounts the fact that over 10,000 bombs were dropped in the first 10 days, which resulted in higher casualties than in the later stages of the war, with fragile lives that of infants and young kids dying of shock and fear. It is also easier to count the fatalities when an entire building is reduced to rubble and everyone in it is either buried or dead. You don't need archaeologists and nuclear scientists to count.
> What do you think of their methods?
Their methods have been known to be robust. IDF, in the past wars, have arrived at similar numbers to those presented by the Gazans.
> One of the most obvious examples of a prior discrepancy.
Just like the discrepancy of 40 beheaded babies? Or the murder of a fictional Holocaust survivor? https://twitter.com/yairbrill/status/1748836323908346359 Applying your own logic, why do you even trust IDF or Zaka, then?
> Paul Graham has one standard...
- First, people are allowed to be wrong and change their minds when presented with facts. There is no need to hold them to prior beliefs and beat them for it forever.
- Second, if you don't personally know Paul Graham, I doubt you're in a position to judge whether he's willfully accepting ordinary claims just because he's a closet anti-semite, when the fact is, a wide number of independent institutions also accept those claims.