Comment by keefle
1 year ago
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.