https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-officials-have-gro...
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.
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.
- 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.
This is a bold claim to make considering the evidence. We have satellite photos of Gaza and many estimates are that over 60% of the housing stock in the entire Gaza strip are damaged or destroyed[1] (some estimates up to 70% [2]; the lowest I could find was 45.3% [3]). Entire neighborhoods have been leveled in all parts of the Gaza strip. At least 29,000 bombs dropped on the strip have targeted residential areas. Over 65% of the population is displaced. More than 200 heritage and archaeological sites have been destroyed in the Israeli bombardment[2].
The bombings are not uniformly distributed, so if we focus on the most destroyed areas, which is norther Gaza and Gaza city, the numbers are much worse. Looking at this map[4] published by the BBC you can see that every part of Gaza city, Jabalia and Beit Hanoun have been targeted. Between 70% and 90% of all housing stock in these areas are damaged or destroyed[5]. Khan Younis south of the evacuation line has also had most of its areas targeted in Israeli bombardment and with an estimate 50% of all housing stock damaged or destroyed[5].
Here is what wikipedia has to say about carpet bombing[6]:
> Carpet bombing, also known as saturation bombing, is a large area bombardment done in a progressive manner to inflict damage in every part of a selected area of land.
You have to be extremely selective in you consideration of reports on the evidence to deny that Gaza has been—and is currently in to process of being—carpet bombed. So selective in fact, that you would not just be wrong, but obviously wrong.
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1: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gaza-is...
2: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/31/israeli-bombardmen...
3: https://menafn.com/1107703299/ICJ-Should-Consider-Damaged-Ho...
4: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/89CD/production/...
I'm not trying to say there has been little damage to Gaza. There's been lots. But that doesn't mean it's been carpet bombed. There's lots of damage because there was lots of military infrastructure.
In every explanation and definition of carpet bombing I find online the focus is on the destruction, not the method. Yes, historical examples of carpet bombing has used unguided bombs, and the targets have been indiscriminate. However what is important is the damage and the time period. That is, the damage has to be massive, involve every part of a large area, and it has to happen progressively (as opposed to all at once; this excludes the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima). The bombing of Gaza checks every one of this criteria.
What doesn’t matter is the bureaucratic process before a target is selected, whether the bomb is guided. If a military specifically targets over half of all residential building, many historic and cultural sites, civilian infrastructure, etc. runs this through lawyers, who approve the bombing, then uses precession guided bombs to destroy these targets, and does so over every area, than that is carpet bombing.
And just to hammer the point home. Hamas still to this day retains the ability to fire rockets over to Israel, despite this vast damage of civilian area. However Israel is picking their target, if they indeed intend on destroying military targets, than they are certainly doing a lousy job.
Maybe this is semantics to you, but to me carpet bombing implies indiscriminate bombing, which is the opposite of what Israel has done, despite its having dropped many bombs.
Bombings can still be indiscriminate even when you carefully select and hit each and every target. The indiscriminateness is just moved from an imprecise bomb to a non-discriminatory target selection method.
But fine, don’t call this carpet bombing. Call it something else. The level of destruction is on the maps, and has been documented to be extremely severe. More severe than in any other bombing campaigns since World War 2. Perhaps this amount of destruction warrants a new name that accurately depicts the horrors of something worse than carpet bombings.
Yes, there is lots of destruction. Yes, that's regrettable. No, that doesn't mean Israel is carpet bombing.
And then there is the IDF just going into civilian buildings, villages, rigging them up and blowing them up, singing about moving into Gaza and all that. The idea that it's only about military targets does not hold a drop of water.
Yes, there have been particular government officials who've said they want to make Gaza unlivable, just as there are crazies in the US congress and senate who say things like we should nuke the middle east.
In terms of the earth going around the sun, the point I was trying to make is that at first glance it does look like the sun goes around the earth, just as at first glance it looks like Israel is trying to reduce Gaza to rubble, but after careful observation and adherence to scientific thinking we learn that the earth goes around the sun -- and that Israel is not carpet bombing gaza.
And the rhetoric matches the actions of the IDF. It's not "just" the bombing, it's also just blowing up whole villages demolition style, before/after making selfies and TikToks making fun of it. Just turning off water, plowing up the asphalts of streets, etc. etc.
Also, not sure how much of an expert you are in the Genocide convention, but Israel allows free speech and like the United States it does not prosecute legislators for saying wild things.
There is a massive gulf between your confidence and knowledge.
(2) The USA consistently vetoes UN resolutions which would bring back the hostages. So (3) is obviously valued higher then the lives of the hostages.
(3) Do you honestly believe this is achievable via militaristic means?
Israels stated goals—if we ignore those who say the goal is genocide—seem rather vague and/or unachievable. And in the case of (2) Israel (or rather the USA) is self sabotaging.
No, I choose to believe the officials who claim ethnic cleansing is the goal. The reality from the ground seems to support their narrative.
2. Israel will not accept a future in which Hamas, which has vowed to repeat October 7, remains in power. So any resolution that calls for a ceasefire (meaning Israel puts down its weapons but Hamas doesn't) without a return of hostages will not pass muster.
3. Yes, I do believe it is possible to achieve with military means, and moreover I believe it's impossible to achieve without military means. And I believe it already has been achieved in Northern Gaza. I'm not saying Hamas will go away completely, just as Nazism didn't go away completely, but just as the allies crushed the Nazis, Israel can crush Hamas. I think it's unlikely for Israel to get many more hostages back, but I'm glad it's trying.
Interesting to me that you believe the officials who claim ethnic cleansing is the goal rather than the 100x more numerous officials, including the head of the IDF and Netanyahu, who say the three goals are what I stated. Also, there is no ethnic cleansing of Palestinians on the ground. The net reduction in the Palestinian population since the start of the war has been roughly 6k people if you believe Hamas's death toll claims (22k deaths, 16k births).
That you invoke the historical example of the Nazis seems interesting to me. World War 2 is the most devastating war in human history. About 3% of the global population died in that war. You may think Hamas is that frightening but I think this level of destruction is not proportionate to the actual threat imposed by Hamas.
Instead I would like to invoke the historic example of the IRA. Another resistance group that did horrible acts of terrorism, causing countless civilian civilian casualties. IRA was not defeated militarily, instead the Catholic population of Northern Ireland were granted equal rights, and the system of oppression was dismantled.
Israel seem very reluctant to even consider a peaceful solution as an option. So far in the current conflict peaceful solutions has save over a 100 hostages, military options has saved a single hostage (and killed at least 3).
The point with these three goals you—and Israeli officials—claim, is that they are vague or unachievable. Genocide is hardly ever stated as a goal, instead it is hidden by a rhetoric such as these. Particularly the promise of security.
I started off this thread by disputing the claim you made that Gaza is not being carped bombed. To circle back to that point here is an interesting article by the Washington Post Israel has waged one of this century’s most destructive wars in Gaza[1]. Of particular interest is the comparison to the bombing campaign of Aleppo and Raqqa.
ISIS is without a doubt one of the worse terrorist organizations we have ever seen. What makes ISIS particularly bad is that—unlike Hamas, IRA, Mau Mau or the Viet Cong—they are not resisting oppression of an occupying state but for their fight—like the Nazis—are for their own fascistic ideology and dominance. Their strength and brutality was also far worse then Hamas has ever been. And yet, they were defeated in Syria with far less damage and destruction then what the IDF has already imposed (without success) in Gaza.
I want to be absolutely clear though that the people suffering both the ISIS rule and then later the bombing campaigns which successfully deposed them, were indeed horrendous.
Another point of argument here is that there was no peaceful solution to ISIS. There is one for Hamas. ISIS wasn’t resisting oppression, Hamas is—just like IRA, FLN, etc. before them.
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...
