Comment by kennywinker
1 month ago
Perhaps the actual moral choice isn’t attacking blindly or mass surveillance of an occupied nation - it’s peace?
Regardless, the death toll in gaza (somewhere between 45,000 and 600,000) suggests that this mass surveillance isn’t being used effectively to reduce the death toll. It also doesn’t take mass surveillance to know that bombing hospitals and schools is going to kill innocent people.
You're assuming the objective is to lower the civilian casualties. From the statements of prominent Israeli ministers and the actual behavior of the bombardment it's pretty clear that, for the Israeli government, killing civilians is a feature, not a bug
> Regardless, the death toll in gaza (somewhere between 45,000 and 600,000) suggests that this mass surveillance isn’t being used effectively to reduce the death toll.
Keep in mind deaths published by the Gaza(Hamas) ministry of health do not differentiate civilian vs combatant deaths at all.
That’s true, but of the 65,063 deaths reported by the GHM, at least 18,500 of them are children, 217 journalists, 120 academics, and 224 humanitarian aid workers.
And that 65k number does not include indirect deaths - i.e. deaths by starvation, or death from something that could have been easily survived if there were still hospitals instead of rubble. Which is where the 680,000 number comes from - the largest estimate of how many may have been killed directly and indirectly by this genocidal war.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war
> at least 18,500 of them are children, 217 journalists, 120 academics, and 224 humanitarian aid workers
From my understanding GHM numbers don't break these figures for those that are combatants either, the population overall is quite young and Hamas is known to use child soldiers as well. Journalists(along with doctors) in Gaza have even been themselves involved in holding hostages for Hamas[0]. There are many issues like this which significantly complicate separating combatant deaths from non-combatant deaths.
> And that 65k number does not include indirect deaths - i.e. deaths by starvation, or death from something that could have been easily survived if there were still hospitals instead of rubble.
The 65k is AFAIU not even advertised by the GHM as confirmed deaths(i.e. deaths with confirmed identities), it's an estimate from an organization(Hamas) which is highly incentivized to report the highest figures that are believable internationally. There are not any incentives for them to underestimate casualties since they use casualties figures for propaganda purposes and will use the highest figures they can come up with while maintaining some level of credibility.
It's also unlikely there are many deaths that can be attributed directly to starvation, while there may be food insecurity issues there is still sufficient aid reaching Gaza to largely prevent deaths from starvation. There are countries in the world where there is actual famine and pictures/videos from those places(i.e. those taken out in the open on the streets) look nothing like those from Gaza. Even organizations like the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs have been known to put out(and subsequently walk back) blatantly false information[1] to make it appear the situation is worse than it actually is.
> Which is where the 680,000 number comes from - the largest estimate of how many may have been killed directly and indirectly by this genocidal war.
Numbers 10x those put out by the GHM(which is already highly incentivized to inflate casualty figures) are not remotely credible.
IMO the figures put out by the GHM are likely within the correct order of magnitude, keeping in mind that those figures include combatant deaths. For a conflict like this which involves urban warfare(where similar conflicts historically have had very high casualties) such casualty figures certainly don't appear to be unusually high.
Claims of genocide made against Israel simply do not stand up to scrutiny. Civilian deaths are largely in line with what would expect for a war like this, especially one where enemy combatants are not in uniform and intentionally hide amongst the civilian population and fight from civilian areas(which is of course a war crime). There are strong incentives both internationally and domestically for Israel to minimize civilian casualties as much as feasible.
If intelligence from surveillance increases combatant deaths then it could be expected that the death figures like those from the GHM(which include combatant deaths) may rise even if the actual civilian casualty rate decreases.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/19/middleeast/gaza-neighborhood-...
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-one-un-leaders-mistak...
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Even the Gaza Health Ministry claims only 68,000, so I presume that your 600,000 is a typo.
Gaza Health Ministry only counts those that show up at hospitals. The first big Lancet study a year ago estimated 200k. I've seen more recent studies estimate higher, with an additional year of killings.
Also, Israel has attacked or destroyed most hospitals in Gaza. So the Health Ministry's counting is obviously hindered.
I don't believe that what you're saying is correct at all.
Only 34,344 of the GHM estimate are confirmed identities. The rest of either missing but presumed dead or gross adjustments. They are open about using "media reports to assess deaths in the north of Gaza".
The Lancet study published in January 2025 estimated 70,000 as of October, 2024. This is higher than the GHM estimate, but I can't find anything close to your 200k estimate.
So you may believe in your estimates, but they are many multiples larger than any other credible source that I can find... so it's odd to wave these figures around without any sources, links, etc.
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Unfortunately not a typo:
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/press-briefing-francesca...
“65,000 is the number of Palestinians are certain killed, including over, of which 75% are women and children.
In fact, we shall start the thinking of 680,000, because this is the number that some scholars and scientists claim being the real death toll in Gaza.
And it would be hard to be able to prove or disprove this number, especially if investigators and others remained banned from entering the occupied Palestinian territory, and particularly the Gaza Strip.”
The death toll could be that high. I hope to hell it isn’t. But we don’t know and won’t know until the killing stops. We do know that tens of thousands of innocent people have been killed, and at least 150,000 people injured.
I don’t think her statements aren’t even factual: the current estimates aren’t the confirmed identities, they include estimates for missing and presumed dead. You don’t think the GHM would publish larger estimates if 1/3 of every living person in Gaza was missing or dead? It’s hard to have an objective conversation when numbers are just made up.
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While I agree the "who is more morally right" is owned to a higher degree by the Palestinians than the Israelis at the moment, I think people are missing a key shift in global politics.
Virtually all of the discourse on Israel-Palestine concerns moral righteousness or moral shame. I think the era of moral arguments in geopolitics is coming to an end, because the unipolar or Communist-Capitalist bipolar world combined with the Holocaust that enabled geopolitical moral arguments is basically dead.
It might just be my interest in global affairs spiking to avoid the constant bad news from the Trump administration, but I think we are entering a much more turbulent (and historically normal) period of realist/self-interest directed foreign policy. The US isn't around to be "good cop" (I can't emphasize the quotes around "good" enough).
I think this is why we are surrounded by the sense that authoritarianism is on the rise. The US won't care if you are democratic or authoritarian. The US won't care if you invade your neighbor if it doesn't disrupt them too much. Or the US just plain doesn't care at all.
So it's my general opinion that even if the Palestinians are more morally righteous in the great moral book-pounding, history-pointing, casualty-counting endless debate ... the era where that mattered has come to an end. Alas, I think we are entering a might-makes-right era of world politics, especially in the Middle East, and especially since the US has its own oil now from the Dakota shale fracking.