8 ms·
Maybe it's because the overwhelming majority of the people being killed are actually just regular people?
by notsafetocomm 3y ago
Maybe it's because the overwhelming majority of the people being killed are actually just regular people?
- zmgsabst 3y agoThat’s always the case. At 2:1 civilians to combatants, this is an unusually low civilian death count.
- lukan 3y agoWell, depends how exactly you classify people as "combatant". https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-31/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israel-created-kill-zones-in-gaza-anyone-who-crosses-into-them-is-shot/0000018e-946c-d4de-afee-f46da9ee0000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-31/ty-article-ma...
- Gabriel54 3y agoTrying my best to assume this comment in good faith... Low compared to what? For reference, in the recent war in Ukraine (post 2022), there have been approximately 11,000 Ukrainian civilians killed and approximately 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...
- bawolff 3y agoUsually you would compare it to other instances of urban combat. E.g. you might compare it to ukrainian battles that took place in cities, but you wouldn't compare it to ukrainian battles that took place in the middle of nowhere where no civilians were. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio has some things to compare against. Part of the problem is it is often hard to identify who is a civilian, and often different battles will categorize them differently. For example, in the iraq war us was accused of significantly undercounting civilian casualties. All this makes it hard to do direct comparisons.
- zmgsabst 3y agoA similar anti-terrorist war featuring large amounts of urban conflict, eg Iraq (3:1) or Afghanistan (4:1.1) — since much of Ukraine is designated armies across open fields. Numbers from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio
- throwaway6734 3y agoUkraine's troops are uniformed and fighting along a front, not trying to blend in with civilians in an urban area
- NomDePlum 3y ago[flagged]
- skinkestek 3y ago> What indication is there that there is any significant "blending in" of Hamas fighters? I think it is rather well documented. Go to r/combatfootage on reddit to see for yourself.
- NomDePlum 3y agoSorry, that is garbage. Reddit/YouTube/Twitter/TikTok are social media, not accurate reference points. Can you point me to something credible please?
- dnate 3y agoWikipedia has a good article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_human_shields_by_Hamas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_human_shields_by_Hamas
- NomDePlum 3y agoThat article appears to state that the use of human shields by Hamas is not true and fabricated by Israel. It's not a term I've seen any real evidence for. If anything the opposite is true according to the linked and Guardian article. Israel is pursuing a policy of killing suspected members of Hamas in their family home/building when they are not engaged in warfare, using dumb bombs that guarantee there will be significant civilian casualties, likely in the low to high 10's and possibly higher.
- 3y ago
- _djo_ 3y agoNot to get into the debate about that other war, but there have almost certainly been many more Ukrainian civilians killed than the 11 000 formally confirmed deaths. That's just the number that can be properly verified, mostly in Ukrainian-held territory, and nobody is entirely certain how many have died in the Russian-occupied regions. Ukraine claims a much larger number have died, including more than 25 000 in Mariupol alone, for instance, but that can't be independently verified because it's still Russian-held.
- sir0010010 3y agoAlso Ukraine is a large country, civilians who were not drafted have mostly evacuated westward, and Poland and other countries have taken in other countless Ukrainian refugees. Meanwhile, Egypt has built barbed wire fences to prevent Palestinians from crossing the border and taking refuge there. And no other countries are presently accepting large numbers of Palestinian refugees at all.
- NomDePlum 3y agoThe barbed wire fences were equally built by Israel, are they not? Israel definitely controls that border. The current geopolitical outcome of Egypt accepting large numbers of Palestinian is that Israel does what it is doing now to Palestine, to Egypt at some point in the future.
- ineedaj0b 3y agoSadly, whoever takes the fleeing will likely have tremendous headaches in the future -to their own government- because of the people. Jordan took a large number in the past and they were terrible guests -attempting to overthrow the sovereign government- and got expelled. Black September left a very bad taste in nearly everyone’s mouth. Governments friendly towards Palestine are very much against physically taking them after those events
- NomDePlum 3y agoLikely didn't state it clearly enough in my original response, but that's my take too. Also, why would Egypt let in those that might provoke conflict and war with Israel? It's a fools mission, and one which Egypt was quite clear on in November/December it didn't want to embark on.
- tmnvix 3y agoThis could only be possible if you are assuming all males killed are Hamas militants. In other words, absurd.
- oa335 3y agoHamas’s Oct 7th attack also had a 2:1 civilian to soldier death ratio. “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-dead-in-israel-at-1-163-78182279 https://www.barrons.com/news/new-tally-puts-october-7-attack...
- wahnfrieden 3y agoMuch of that was Israeli friendly fire
- oa335 3y agoIndeed, both at kibbutz’s and the music festival https://youtu.be/3cPeRSVgUpQ https://youtu.be/3cPeRSVgUpQ
- weweersdfsd 3y ago"The Electronic Intifada" doesn't sound like a very balanced and unbiased source.
- cess11 3y agoYou can find interviews with commanders and soldiers about it on israeli television as well. If you watch footage from Nova you'll see large patches of obvious damage from Hellfire missiles, and footage from kibbutzes commonly show damage way beyond what you'd expect from handgrenades or RPG:s.
- oa335 3y agoOk, here’s a an Israeli news outlet referencing the same event, but from the IDF perspective. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-officer-recounts-ordering-tank-fire-on-beeri-home-during-hostage-standoff-on-oct-7/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-officer-rec.... The “biased” video I posted is simply a recording of an interview of a survivor of the kibbutz on an Israeli talk show. Do you have any substantive critique of the video, besides just lazily dismissing it as biased?
- sillystuff 3y ago[flagged]
- tptacek 3y agoI don't know about the "Israeli Zionist European settler Jews", but a plurality of all Israeli Jewish people are indigenous to MENA, so summing the population up that way is a little bit racist. I may be misreading you, though.
- tsimionescu 3y agoI believe the poster above was referring to the biggest representatives of the extremist minority of Israel who are cheering this conflict on in those terms. Not all of Israel is pro-genocide, but those that are are more likely than not to be in that group.
- tptacek 3y agoIronically: the extremist minority in Israel is probably more likely to be of MENA origin, not less. Ben Gvir is from Iraq, for instance. The Mizrahim are generally more conservative, and the Ashkenazim are generally more liberal.
- sillystuff 3y ago[flagged]
- tptacek 3y agoYou keep referring to "indigenous" Palestinians and implying that Israelis are themselves interlopers. That simply isn't true. The fact that Netanyahu is Ashkenazi doesn't erase the ethnic identity of the plurality of Israeli Jewish people who are from the region, and for whom Israel is --- like the Palestinians --- their only real home. A lot of ugly stuff is certainly said by right-wing Israelis (who are, generally speaking, more likely to be indigenous than the left-leaning Ashkenazim). But there's also a great deal of erasure of hostile Palestinian advocacy in your summary as well. These discussions would be simpler if we could keep focus on the actual misdeeds of the Netanyahu administration, and stop trying to generalize problems out to Israel as a whole. It's not that it's impossible to make such an argument, but as you can see from your comment, those arguments are treacherously difficult to construct reliably without leaving gross, obvious, and sometimes even overtly racist generalizations in them. If you want to condemn the entirety of Israeli society, you aren't putting enough effort into your comments to do so here. At the end of the day, I don't think it's worth it to try to litigate that kind of question. We're not going to resolve Israel vs. Palestine in an HN thread. But if you must try, the guidelines ask you to try harder than that. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html