this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
674 points (90.8% liked)

World News

39184 readers
2679 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Since October 7, more than 3,257 children have been reported killed, including at least 3,195 in Gaza, 33 in the West Bank, and 29 in Israel, according to the Ministries of Health in Gaza and Israel respectively. The number of children reported killed in just three weeks in Gaza is more than the number killed in armed conflict globally – across more than 20 countries – over the course of a whole year, for the last three years.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From literally 8 comments down, don't want you to have to break your scroll wheel.

“The numbers may not be perfectly accurate on a minute-to-minute basis,” said Michael Ryan, of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Program. “But they largely reflect the level of death and injury.”
In previous wars, the ministry's counts have held up to U.N. scrutiny, independent investigations and even Israel's tallies.

[–] Kashbus -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/24/hamas-israel-death-toll-health-ministry-trustworthy-reuters/

"Hamas has now been in charge of Gaza for 16 years. It has squeezed the life out of honesty and probity. Any health official stepping out of line and not giving the death tolls that Hamas wants reported to journalists risks serious consequences. I'm not denying there are civilians being killed. At all, including many children. That's verifiable. What is not verifiable are the numbers that emerge throughout the day from Gaza of new death tolls — 700 killed in the last 24 hours, 500 killed in the Ahli hospital car park blast, 5,000 killed since October 8. Hamas has a clear propaganda incentive to inflate civilian casualties as much as possible. There was a time when the figures from the ministry could be relied upon. The doctors and administrators knew what they were doing."

[–] snek 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't see how Palestinians really benefit on the long run from inflating the number of deaths. So many have died and no countries have enough courage or decency to impose sanctions on Israel for it yet. If Palestinians want more deaths, they have a catalog of victims of Israeli crimes, torture cases in prison, etc.

Yes, it's entirely possible they inflated the numbers, yet we don't extend the same skepticism to Israel (which is known to play balls deep into the PR game). And honestly, the majority of whom I've seen argue against these numbers eventually lead to excusing Israeli war crimes about 3 comments into the discussion.

Hamas has always had an incentive to look like a bigger victim, but in all those times those numbers held up and the UN's tally matched that provided by doctors. There is no reason to doubt these numbers now because they were correct before even when Hamas had an incentive, in completely identical situations (aka previous wars on Gaza). The trust of these numbers has not been eroded by logic or healthy skepticism, but rather by Israeli propaganda and White House officials bending to it.