1y ago

Gaza health ministry issues list of names of thousands killed in Israeli bombing

english.alarabiya.net /News/middle-east/2023/10/26/Gaza-health-ministry-issues-list-of-names-of-7-000-people-killed-in-Israeli-bombing

Access the list in Arabic: https://www.aljazeera.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/%D8%AA%D9%82%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%B1-%D9%86%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%8A-%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B3%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D9%87%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%A1-2.pdf

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I don't think that was ever in question - Hamas have made it abundantly clear that they have no regard for human life, Israeli or Palestinian. That's why they're holding hostages and using innocent Gazans as human shields.
- I mean whether or not they have value to Israel, which is the one now causing all their misery and collectively punishing them.
  
  I think Israel does value Palestinian lives. Less than their own citizens, but not so much as to intentionally target them. They aren't indiscriminately bombing civilians - they're bombing building that have Hamas infrastructure inside, or that Hamas dug tunnels under. It's the same reason they won't allow fuel in as aid - Hamas' tunnel network need ventilation and there is a deliberate attempt to "starve" them out. This is not collective punishment. It's a siege. War is hell, and this is a war.
  Israel announced they believe that Hamas has their headquarters underneath Shifa Hospital in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Correct or not, this is signalling that they intend to target that hospital. If they believe the hostages are being held there, I doubt they'll just drop bombs on it. They're more likely to throw bodies at it in an attempt to rescue the hostages. If they manage to do that while only killing a few hundred civilians out of the 40,000 taking shelter there, that would be an amazing achievement.
  
  So many reports have shown that Israel is intentionally targeting civilians, medical staff, and journalists.
  
  Are you referring to recent events? Or are you referring to the historical incidents where civilians have been killed?
  Historically, Israel has court martialed soldiers who killed civilians. They are typically acquitted, or given a rather light punishment for murder. Which is horrible, but it's not an official policy to target them. The simplest proof of that is how rare the incidents are. If it were official policy, you'd hear about Palestinian civilians being killed almost every day. Paging through some historical news (Google news is actually decent for this if you use the "tools" to limit the date range), I see a lot of "X Palestinians killed today", along with a note that "they were killed exchanging fire with Israeli forces, and were confirmed members of Hamas/PIJ".
  In terms of recent events, there have clearly been civilians killed in bombings - if Israel is intentionally targeting medical staff or journalists, you'd expect them to be over-represented by a large margin in the mortality statistics. It's really difficult to find any recent statistics, but the PCBS reported in 2014 that 0.22% of the population are doctors, and 0.34% are nurses. I can't find any reports on the number of medics, so we'll just infer that from the ratio in the US - 0.08% according to this. That means that we should expect 0.64% of civilian casualties to be medical personnel. I'm basing this on old data and might be missing some medical role (e.g. ambulance drivers) so let's put an order of magnitude error bars on what I'm writing: 0.3%-1.2%. That means given 7000 dead, assuming uniform distribution of civilian casualties we should expect to see between 21 and 84 medical personnel killed. The latest report I can find says the current total is 73. That's on the upper end of what we should expect to see, but the hospital blast probably contributed a lot to it.
  Bottom line, there's for sure some problems and it's a tragedy, but there's no attempt to target medical staff more than anyone else. The fact that fewer people have died than bombs have been dropped already speaks volumes to the effort Israel has taken to minimize civilian casualties. Hopefully, once this war is over, Gaza will get the aid it needs to build an actual economy whose basis isn't building weapons to kill Israelis.
  
  Let's take one example where Israel told Gazans to move south then bombed several areas in the south of Gaza. That's one of thousands of examples of Israel using proximity shielding or some other pathetic excuse to butcher civilians.
  Civilians and journalists and medical staff are over represented. Especially the ones Israel shot point blank in the head.
  Thanks for the details but they are diverging from the core issue. Maybe someone with more time could tackle them but I won't. I think your math isn't based on much, just numbers slammed together. Let's focus instead on every single time Israel lied to civilians and then neutralized them.
  
  It sounds like you won't be convinced by anything I write, so do it yourself. Pull the numbers yourself. Do the math yourself.
  A good place to start would be comparing the number of bombs dropped on northern Gaza vs. the south.
  
  Yeah, I guess I find it hard to use math to justify murder. The number of expected dead civilians should be very close to zero if Israel wasn't committing war crimes like having military operations that directly harm civilians.
  So is asking people to go south then bombing the south, is that Israel trying to avoid human casualties? Yes/no would be good.
  
  I understand the hesitation. It's treating humans as numbers. But civilian casualties will always be nonzero in war. Especially when one side is using human shields.
  Asking people to move south is actually proof they want to avoid human casualties. There never was a chance 100% will leave, and sure as shit not in 24 hours. But if 50% leave after 3 days and 80% after a week, then when the eventual ground invasion comes there will be far fewer civilians left who can be killed in the crossfire.
  
  But Israel deliberately bombed the South of Gaza knowing too well how many people are there. I find it hard to justify this or wiggle out of it to be honest.
  What about withholding water? Humans could die of dehydration. How were they avoiding human casualties then??
  
  If you want to take an absolutist position like declaring the south of Gaza a completely safe zone, then you're going to be disappointed by reality. Military campaigns never say "this is an absolute safe zone". It's always shades of gray.
  Withholding water is absolutely contemptible, which is probably why they walked that back after a day. The bigger issue is the existing infrastructure wasn't designed for the current population, much less the population doubling overnight, which is why the water distribution is failing. That is 100% on Hamas as they have had full control of the Gaza Strip since 2007. Perhaps if they used pipes to build water and sewage infrastructure instead of building rockets but the past can't be changed.
  It's a dangerous situation, and more aid needs to go in than has until now. Thankfully, it seems that will happen soon.

36 comments