Comment by stevenhuang
2 years ago
The ratio of civilian deaths to military combatants seem to indicate a different picture: https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urb...
2 years ago
The ratio of civilian deaths to military combatants seem to indicate a different picture: https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urb...
Hamas’s Oct 7th attack also had a 2:1 civilian to soldier death ratio. Yet the author of that article credits the IDF for setting a new, humane standard.
“The latest death toll from the attack is now 767 civilians, 20 hostages and 376 members of the security forces, giving a total of 1,163. One person remains missing.” https://www.barrons.com/news/new-tally-puts-october-7-attack...
Irrelevant. The horrors of October 7th have no bearing on whether Israel's slaughter of Palestinian civilians should continue.
It’s directly relevant to the linked article in the comment I was responding to, which uses the IDFs reported Palestinian civilian to soldier death ratio to claim that Israel’s military actions are uniquely humane. That conclusion is challenged by a showing that Hamas’s achieved Israeli civilian:soldier death ratio.
The question I’m implicitly raising is why would one be worse than the other?
In fact, Israel is counting every adult male as Hamas in their death counts. If we were to use “IDF rules” and count every adult male victim of the Oct 7th attack as a “soldier” (a claim made by Hamas, bolstered by the fact that almost military service is required of most Jews in Israel), then the ratio would be less than 2:1.