4 ms·

Do these numbers distinguish between journalists killed while doing journalism vs journalists killed as collateral damage not in the capacity of a journalist vs

Do these numbers distinguish between journalists killed while doing journalism vs journalists killed as collateral damage not in the capacity of a journalist vs combatants who were journalists prior to picking up a gun and joining the war? I feel like its very hard to draw any conclusions from these numbers without distinguishing between those cases (other than of course that war is a tragedy and innocents generally pay the price of war).

loceng 3y ago
Isn't it any less worse that 170+ journalists were killed among the 30,000+ civilians? And no, it's unlikely these are journalists who picked up a gun - the IDF is dropping up to 2,000 Lbs bombs, and that's possibly how many are killed; however there have been many reports of journalists homes being targeted in direct strikes, at least one journalist I heard who's wife and children/whole family were killed but he wasn't. It's not surprising in reality if it's 170+ journalists amongst 30,000+ killed. There are videos of IDF soldiers harassing and brutally assaulting journalists, if that's any indication of the rules of engagement they subscribe to; I'm obviously not linking to any here on HN - this topic is already a minefield. What HN is missing is going one layer up, where all of the various points brought up are catalogued-organized - and then allow a second round of discussion, perhaps with a more sophisticated UI/UX for people (from "both"/all sides) to contribute things like citations to evidence/data support the claim/statements, etc; and then those cited sources and data could also then be another layer deeper to constrain or contain further contextualized-narrowed conversation to the analysis of those sources.
- bawolff 3y ago
  > Isn't it any less worse that 170+ journalists were killed among the 30,000+ civilians? Yes. One is a clear cut war crime, the other is not. (Or at least not in and of itself. There are of course factors that could make those civilian deaths be a war crime, but it depends on the circumstances.) (To be clear, what i am saying is that intentionally targeting journalists (who have not picked up a gun and joined the fight) is an unambigious war crime. Killing journalists incidentally while targeting something else may or may not be a war crime depending on all sorts of factors) I consider things that are war crimes to be much worse than things that are not. So i do think there is a big difference between the two scenarios. I think its also important to recognize that this sort of thing has huge propaganda value for the Palestinian side, so its important to be careful when evaluating circumstantial evidence (and to be clear i would say that about any side in any war when it comes to information that makes their oponent look bad). As the saying goes, truth is the first casualty of war. It can be very difficult to know what is going on in the middle of a conflict.
  - DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
    Israel has a history of intentionally targeting journalists (such as the American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed by Israeli snipers, despite being very clearly identified as a journalist). It's also the case that more generally, Israel's practice of dropping 2000-pound bombs on civilian areas is a war crime. Any targeting of civilian areas has to weigh the military gain against the damage to civilians, and Israel is not doing that. It has emerged that Israel is knowingly targeting buildings where it knows hundreds of civilians will die, just to kill one individual who is suspected of being associated in some way with Hamas. Israel specifically targets suspected Hamas associates when they're at home. These people are identified based on a pattern of behavior and things like cell-phone data, without Israel even knowing whether they really are combatants.[0] In this conflict, Israel has completely taken the gloves off and quite obviously does not care about civilian casualties. 0. https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/ https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-cal...
xdennis 3y ago
[flagged]
- jquery 3y ago
  I did not read the whole thing, I read far enough to realize the methodology was garbage. The article basically says anyone ever associated with Hamas or resisting the IDF is a legitimate military target. Let's try switching that around. Anyone who served in the IDF or spoke positively of a successful attack of Israel against Palestine is a legitimate military target and not a journalist? No, this is obviously nonsense. I'm pretty sure at this point, there's almost nobody left in Gaza that hasn't said a few epithets towards Israel... that doesn't make them military targets. Al Jazeera getting banned tracks with the current Israel government not being a huge fan of journalism.
  - vdsk 3y ago
    > Anyone who served in the IDF or spoke positively of a successful attack of Israel against Palestine is a legitimate military target and not a journalist? This very specific point is made almost always by Hamas and co to justify indiscriminate firing of rockets into populated areas. "No civilians because everyone has done military time or is a reservist, even women" is a very, very common point.
    - jquery 3y ago
      In both cases, it's post-hoc reasoning to justify something they would have done regardless.
  - indigo945 3y ago
    You conflate average Gazans who "said a few epithets towards Israel" with those who "promoted and celebrated terrorism and the death of innocent civilians".

loceng 3y ago

Isn't it any less worse that 170+ journalists were killed among the 30,000+ civilians? And no, it's unlikely these are journalists who picked up a gun - the IDF is dropping up to 2,000 Lbs bombs, and that's possibly how many are killed; however there have been many reports of journalists homes being targeted in direct strikes, at least one journalist I heard who's wife and children/whole family were killed but he wasn't. It's not surprising in reality if it's 170+ journalists amongst 30,000+ killed. There are videos of IDF soldiers harassing and brutally assaulting journalists, if that's any indication of the rules of engagement they subscribe to; I'm obviously not linking to any here on HN - this topic is already a minefield. What HN is missing is going one layer up, where all of the various points brought up are catalogued-organized - and then allow a second round of discussion, perhaps with a more sophisticated UI/UX for people (from "both"/all sides) to contribute things like citations to evidence/data support the claim/statements, etc; and then those cited sources and data could also then be another layer deeper to constrain or contain further contextualized-narrowed conversation to the analysis of those sources.

bawolff 3y ago
> Isn't it any less worse that 170+ journalists were killed among the 30,000+ civilians? Yes. One is a clear cut war crime, the other is not. (Or at least not in and of itself. There are of course factors that could make those civilian deaths be a war crime, but it depends on the circumstances.) (To be clear, what i am saying is that intentionally targeting journalists (who have not picked up a gun and joined the fight) is an unambigious war crime. Killing journalists incidentally while targeting something else may or may not be a war crime depending on all sorts of factors) I consider things that are war crimes to be much worse than things that are not. So i do think there is a big difference between the two scenarios. I think its also important to recognize that this sort of thing has huge propaganda value for the Palestinian side, so its important to be careful when evaluating circumstantial evidence (and to be clear i would say that about any side in any war when it comes to information that makes their oponent look bad). As the saying goes, truth is the first casualty of war. It can be very difficult to know what is going on in the middle of a conflict.
- DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
  Israel has a history of intentionally targeting journalists (such as the American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed by Israeli snipers, despite being very clearly identified as a journalist). It's also the case that more generally, Israel's practice of dropping 2000-pound bombs on civilian areas is a war crime. Any targeting of civilian areas has to weigh the military gain against the damage to civilians, and Israel is not doing that. It has emerged that Israel is knowingly targeting buildings where it knows hundreds of civilians will die, just to kill one individual who is suspected of being associated in some way with Hamas. Israel specifically targets suspected Hamas associates when they're at home. These people are identified based on a pattern of behavior and things like cell-phone data, without Israel even knowing whether they really are combatants.[0] In this conflict, Israel has completely taken the gloves off and quite obviously does not care about civilian casualties. 0. https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/ https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-cal...

xdennis 3y ago

[flagged]

jquery 3y ago
I did not read the whole thing, I read far enough to realize the methodology was garbage. The article basically says anyone ever associated with Hamas or resisting the IDF is a legitimate military target. Let's try switching that around. Anyone who served in the IDF or spoke positively of a successful attack of Israel against Palestine is a legitimate military target and not a journalist? No, this is obviously nonsense. I'm pretty sure at this point, there's almost nobody left in Gaza that hasn't said a few epithets towards Israel... that doesn't make them military targets. Al Jazeera getting banned tracks with the current Israel government not being a huge fan of journalism.
- vdsk 3y ago
  > Anyone who served in the IDF or spoke positively of a successful attack of Israel against Palestine is a legitimate military target and not a journalist? This very specific point is made almost always by Hamas and co to justify indiscriminate firing of rockets into populated areas. "No civilians because everyone has done military time or is a reservist, even women" is a very, very common point.
  - jquery 3y ago
    In both cases, it's post-hoc reasoning to justify something they would have done regardless.
- indigo945 3y ago
  You conflate average Gazans who "said a few epithets towards Israel" with those who "promoted and celebrated terrorism and the death of innocent civilians".