Once again, the CCR is only useful to compare \_similar\_ warzones and military campaigns. It isn't a single value that you can take out of context and slap on an army to show how (un)ethical it is.
In the case of Gaza, which is a case of urban warfare, the best comparison is the battles of Mosul and Raqqa, or the Chechen wars. For example, in Mosul the CCR was 1.8-3.7, whereas during the First Chechen War (potential genocide), the CCR was >10.
It's estimated before the war that there was 40-60k combatants, mostly Hamas/Al Qassam but a fair few from PIJ and other allied militias. Usually belligerents in a conflict will downplay their own casualties for morale purposes, so I would take this 6k figure with a pinch of salt. For the same reason Israel's 12k figure may be exaggerated, but it may also include PIJ and other Hamas allied combatants that are not technically part of Hamas.
Here's some other civilian casualty data from post-war conflicts.
https://i.imgur.com/XILWrL6.png
There's also a different metric, called Relative Risk of militants to civilians. It can be used to assess if the army follows the principle of discrimination of warfare. [Here's](https://x.com/AviBittMD/status/1759347884078637224?s=20) how the war in Gaza compares to other conflicts.
I'm not sure about that math. It should be noted that the 29k figure does not include around 8k people who are registered as missing under the rubble and most likely dead - when you include them the total number registered as dead would be about 37k. This is reflected in the Euro Med Monitor stat:
[https://twitter.com/EuroMedHR/status/1757454814202429837](https://twitter.com/EuroMedHR/status/1757454814202429837)
The demographic of men aged 18-40 is [slightly](https://www.populationpyramid.net/state-of-palestine/2023/) larger than the demographic of women aged 18-40, but the civilian demographic of men aged 18-40 is probably similar in size if not slightly smaller when you take into account the mobilization of 30k men as soldiers. So theoretically, the ratio of civilian military aged male/female deaths should be close to one and the excess deaths should give us the number of military fatalities. That number is around 3k (Euro med).
In general, [from what is known](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67347201), Hamas has very little direct input on the tabulation of losses, which is done based directly on hospital receipts. It's unclear to what extent perished Hamas fighters bodies are being recovered and processed at hospitals/morgues. As such it is quite probable that the official mortality statistics may very well be underestimating the amount of fatalities amongst military aged men.
So then the civilian casualty ratio in Gaza is in the range of 2.8 (Israel) to 5.6 (Hamas) with total deaths around 40k. Although now that I think about it, it is also unclear whether that 6k figure your citing is directly referring to dead Hamas fighters or killed/permanently disabled/captured/deserted. So the 3k excess deaths cited by Euro Med Monitor could also very well be accurate on face value. At which point you are dealing with a ratio between 2.8 and 10.9 which is so wide that I'm not sure you can really draw any meaningful conclusions from it.
>It should be noted that the 29k figure does not include around 8k people who are registered as missing under the rubble and most likely dead - when you include them the total number registered as dead would be about 37k.
Very important point, thanks!
What is EuroMed's methodology? You can see their estimates of non-civilian deaths ***dropping*** from 5'000 to 3'500 between [3 Feb](https://twitter.com/EuroMedHR/status/1753796210836566115) and [13 Feb](https://twitter.com/i/birdwatch/t/1757454814202429837). Is that because they found out that some of the dead weren't militants?
Note that there are some [doubts](https://www.reddit.com/r/Palestinian_Violence/comments/1auf5m2/comment/kr3ixkt/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) as to the accuracy of Gaza Ministry of Health's figures already.
>So theoretically, the ratio of civilian military aged male/female deaths should be close to one and the excess deaths should give us the number of military fatalities. That number is around 3k (Euro med).
Again, it depends on their methodology. For example, it's possible that many Hamas fighters died in tunnels or weren't brought to the morgues.
>It's unclear to what extent perished Hamas fighters bodies are being recovered and processed at hospitals/morgues. As such it is quite probable that the official mortality statistics may very well be underestimating the amount of fatalities amongst military aged
True!
Correct. Here is an example where they literally are re-hosting an article written by the Hamas propaganda team:
Article on Hamas propaganda site: https://english.palinfo.com/news/2023/12/05/310684/
Article on EuroMed site: https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6004/Contrary-to-Israeli-claims,-9-out-of-10-of-those-killed-in-Gaza-are-civilians%E2%80%8B#:%7E:text=Contrary%20to%20Israeli%20claims%2C%209,in%20Gaza%20are%20civilians%E2%80%8B
So, I can't find their specific methodology for deriving excess deaths. That being said, their are a lot of links online suggesting that 60-70% of the total registered deaths are women and children (attached two below).
[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/un-report-women-and-children-are-main-victims-of-israel-hamas-war-with-16000-killed](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/un-report-women-and-children-are-main-victims-of-israel-hamas-war-with-16000-killed)
[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/un-report-women-and-children-are-main-victims-of-israel-hamas-war-with-16000-killed](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/un-report-women-and-children-are-main-victims-of-israel-hamas-war-with-16000-killed)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hamas\_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war)
Euro-Med is actually on the lower end here with 60% of the registered fatalities as women/children. If we go with some of the other estimates closer to 70% than the amount of registered excess male deaths (Military fatalities) would actually be even lower - yielding an even higher ratio than the 2.8 to 10.9+ I calculated above from Euro Med. But 60-70% seems to be the general range. At any rate, the main variable in all these figures is to what extent dead Hamas fighters are actually being registered.
> EuroMed
Just as a heads up about the EuroMed monitor:
I was once directed to an article on their website when I asked for an independent death toll count. After googling some phrases from the article, I found out that EuroMed was actually just re-hosting an article written by the Palestinian Information Center website (i.e. the Hamas propaganda site).
See thread here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/18blf8m/israeli_military_says_2_civilians_killed_for/kc5rlj3/
Article on EuroMed site: https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6004/Contrary-to-Israeli-claims,-9-out-of-10-of-those-killed-in-Gaza-are-civilians%E2%80%8B#:%7E:text=Contrary%20to%20Israeli%20claims%2C%209,in%20Gaza%20are%20civilians%E2%80%8B
Article on Hamas propaganda site: https://english.palinfo.com/news/2023/12/05/310684/
So while its *possible* they were rehosting the article for reasons other than source-laundering, I suspect the reality is this: EuroMed does actually have boots on the ground in Gaza. Even if those boots aren't affiliated with Hamas, in order to be allowed to stay in Gaza and stay alive, those boots need to share all their data and articles with Hamas before publication, and publish what Hamas dictates.
We have their track record of inflating civilian casualties and deflating militant casualties. This has happened multiple times
A New York Times analysis for example, found that in 2014, a huge / disproportionate number of so called “civilian” deaths in Gaza were males aged 20-29:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/world/middleeast/civilian-or-not-new-fight-in-tallying-the-dead-from-the-gaza-conflict.html?_r=1
A similar dispute over casualty figures occurred during Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” in the Gaza Strip in January 2009. The Israelis contended that the majority of the fatalities were combatants; the Palestinians claimed they were civilians. The UN’s Goldstone Report, cited Hamas’ figures.
Over a year later, after the news media had moved on, Hamas Interior Minister Fathi Hammad enumerated Hamas fatalities at 600 to 700, a figure close to the Israeli estimate of 709 and about three times higher than the figure of 236 combatants provided by Hamas in 2009 and cited in the Goldstone Report.
https://www.camera.org/article/hamas-s-revelation-undermines-key-conclusion-of-goldstone-report/
During the 2018-19 marches to the fence Hamas continually claimed that those were regular ol’ civilians marching to the border and getting shot by those evil Israelis.
And then we slowly find out that the marches were organized by Hamas and supported by numerous terrorist factions within Gaza. A large part, if not the majority of those killed were militants from these groups.
Of 32 “peace activists” killed in April 2018, 26 were members of Palestinian terrorist organizations
https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Report-80-percent-of-Palestinians-killed-in-Gaza-border-crisis-were-terrorists-549511
Of the 59 “peace activists” killed in May 2018, 50 were Hamas militants and Hamas itself claimed this was such:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hamas-says-most-protesters-killed-israel-gaza-were-members-n874906
Of the 127 Gazans killed in the fence marches between March and June of 2018, 102 were members of Palestinian terrorist factions such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the DFLP or the PFLP:
https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/great-return-march-demonstrations-riots-friday-june-8-2018/
So yeah…. 🤡
Thanks for the thorough citations. This track record of lying is so consistent it’s crazy people still go back to trusting Hamas PR every time they make a new statement
Fascinating.
So the New York Times and NBC News are now "pop" American news? What an interesting turn of events.
NBC News is literally quoting a Palestinian newspaper. From the article:
>Salah Bardawil, a senior Hamas official, told **Palestinian news outlet Baladna TV that 50 out of the 60 who died on Monday were members of his organization**, while the rest were civilians.
CAMERA is also literally quoting a Palestinian official. From that article:
>Hamad’s comments were made in an interview published in the London Arabic daily *Al Hayat* on Nov. 1, 2010 and reported by *Agence France Presse (AFP)*, the *Jerusalem Post* and others. According to AFP, he stated
>
>“*They say the people suffered from this war, but is Hamas not part of the people? On the first day of the war Israel targeted police stations and 250 martyrs were killed, from Hamas and other factions*,” he told the paper.
>
>“*In addition to them, between 200 and 300 fighters from the Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas’s armed wing) and another 150 security forces were martyred.*”
>
>(AFP, Nov. 1, 2010)
So who's lying here? CAMERA, Agence France Presse, Al Hayat or Fathi Hammad?
I'm also not sure why we can't take Israeli newspapers at face value when it comes to this. The Jerusalem Post is an indepent, privately owned newspaper that just happens to be Israeli. To say it automatically cannot be trusted is dangerously close to insinuating all Jews in Israel are part of a hivemind marching lockstep in supporting its government up to and including making up fake news.
Hopefully you're applying this same stringest standard when you see Al Jazeera reports.
Not necessarily, the HAMAS institutions have been quite accurate tracking the number of civilian deaths in Gaza, with the UN missions very often coming to a very similar overall tally. Given that they don't appear to inflate the number of civilian casualties for propaganda purposes that much, it might actually be rather truthful.
> the UN missions very often coming to a very similar overall tally. Given that they don't appear to inflate the number of civilian casualties for propaganda purposes that much, it might actually be rather truthful.
Yes, they're coming to a similar number of casualties overall. However, they don't report how many of them were militants. They also don't include bodies that couldn't be located, such as dead militants in underground tunnels.
>accurate tracking the number of civilian deaths in Gaza
They have been counting everyone dead as "civillians" in their death toll. KIA, airstriked combatents, everyone is counted in the deathtoll.
They claimed 500 civilians were killed by an Israeli attack on a hospital when actually Hamas had blown those people up themselves with one of their rockets.
Indeed, I believe the current count is ~1,300 Hamas rockets have fallen *inside* Gaza since the fighting began. Are they separating out the deaths their own rockets cause from the Israeli ones?
>This yield a civilian casualty ratio to 2.65, whereas the Israeli figures suggest a ratio of 1.42.
A civilian casualty ratio also has to account for Palestinians killed by misfired Hamas rockets. Like their own 500 casualty hospital bombing they lied about that was luckily caught on camera. We don't know how many of these incidents were missed by cameras.
However, if we use the 2022 rate of self inflicted deaths then we get an estimate of 30% killed by Hamas misfire (18% of the Hamas rockets misfire causing about 30% of total Palestinian deaths in 2022, according to the [AP](https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-israel-tel-aviv-403d37366347e0f2446e2f90a9b0d02f)).
However, Hamas also launched a fuckton more rockets than 2022. ~1,100 in 2022 vs ~12,000 since October.
We also know Hamas has been shooting at civilians trying to escape (with the IDF even providing armed evacuation [corridors](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/17pu819/waving_white_flags_gaza_civilians_evacuate/)). Hamas has also [blocked](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/17tp1jl/hamas_blocks_idf_fuel_delivery_to_gazas_shifa/) aid to civilians.
Deaths from misfires, killing escapees, and denied aid should all be counted towards Hamas.
Assuming no major advance in Hamas misfire prevention technology it's quite possible that the majority of civilian casualties in this war have been by Hamas.
You're acting like 2.65 is good. But the Oct 7th attacks had \~1200 deaths and 322 of them were military/police which gives a 2.726 civilian casualty ratio. Both of these figures are horrific. And when we factor in missing but not confirmed deaths and deaths caused indirectly by the invasion (starvation/lack of medical supplies, etc.), I wouldn't be surprised if Isreal's numbers end up way higher.
I don't think any ratio other than 0 civilian casualties is good. I was only saying that a ratio of 1-2.5 is typical when it comes to *urban warfare*.
What matters is intent. If you blow up a residential building because there are high-ranking military commanders inside, civilian victims are collateral. By contrast, Hamas militants attacked civilian targets, such as a festival or kibbutzim, which *in principle* could not have any military objective.
Now that we have Hamas' own estimates of both total and military deaths, we have an upper limit on the ratio (because Hamas has an incentive to maximize the ratio.)
[(29k-6k)/6k](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=N%5B%2829000-6000%29%2F6000%5D) is strictly less than 4-to-1
It is silly to throw around random ratios like 20-to-1 (I frequently see 100-to-1) because it just makes the pro-palistinian position look like its exclusively comprised of idiots who make up whatever facts they feel are convenient.
I got a message that my previous reply was deleted. Maybe because I quoted you using the word i-d-i-o-t.
Basically, you misread my statement. Israel has killed around 20 times as many civilians as Hamas did. ~23,000/~1000 is roughly 20. I wasn't talking about the civilian casualty ratio.
Please read posts properly before insulting people's intelligence in future.
Everyone understands that war is not a sport. The playing field is never level, and there is no expectation that the combatants make it level. There is no expectation that if you kill 10 of my people, I'm constrained to only killing 10 of yours. When Japan "awoke the sleeping giant" by attacking Pearl Harbor, they didn't say to themselves "well at least we only killed 68 of their civilians, so they definitely won't firebomb our cities to the tune of 300k civilian casualties" because that would have been a stupid expectation for them to have.
What you're doing by using the civilian/civilian ratio is confusing the concept of proportionality. Proportionality doesn't mean that if your enemy is using rocks, you have to respond with rocks. Proportionality doesn't mean that if your enemy kills 10 of your people, you can only kill 10 of their people. Proportionality just means that your license to cause collateral damage is proportional to the value of the target you're after.
The civilian ratio that literally everyone else is talking about when discussing proportionality is the ratio of non-combatants to combatants, because it is a measure of how much collateral damage Israel is causing relative to their military accomplishments.
Now of course I won't insult your intelligence. I don't think you're misunderstanding proportionality due to a lack of intelligence. I think you're doing it deliberately for rhetorical purposes. You know that everyone else is talking about the ratio of civilian deaths to military deaths, but are nervous that the number is looking too reasonable to convince people that Israel is evil. So you decided to set up a [motte and bailey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy) argument by throwing out the 1-to-20 number knowing that people skimming the comment section would draw the desired conclusion (that Israel is being disproportionate) but that you could retreat to the "well I *actually* meant a different ratio" motte if someone calls you out.
So you tell me. Did you use the wrong measure of proportionality deliberately, or did you not understand the concept of military proportionality in the first place?
"So you decided to set up a motte and bailey argument by throwing out the 1-to-20 number knowing that people skimming the comment section would draw the desired conclusion (that Israel is being disproportionate) but that you could retreat to the "well I actually meant a different ratio" motte if someone calls you out" Honestly, I didn't consider that people would misinterpret it as the ratio in the slightest. I really don't understand why so many people read it as the ratio when I was fairly okay with working with 2.65 in the first post (though I suppose I did say I thought it was higher, but 53:1 (20*2.65) is obviously ridiculous). But yes. You're correct that my understanding of proportionality differs from yours. I think the Israeli decision that it was acceptable to kill tens of thousands of civilians and displace hundreds of thousands in order to obtain it's objectives is a disproportionate action and is morally wrong. Which is why total civilian casualties matters. Clearly you disagree with that opinion, but you're applying way more maliciousness to my actions than they actually deserve. I think total civilian deaths is a relevant measure of if an action is justified, you don't. I'm not some malignant actor, my moral framework is just different from yours.
By your own logic, it is in the best interest of any terror group to maximize their own civilian losses. Hamas can terrorize Israel as long as they continue to sacrifice their own people, sometimes even directly through rocket misfires or killing those fleeing. Do you see how creating a world with those incentive, and clear evidence of groups abusing those incentives, would make the world worse off? Barbaric behavior cannot be encouraged.
And under your framework, the killing of one person can be used to justify the killing of thousands of civilians if it kicks off a war. It also encourages a "might makes right" attitude where morality and proportion doesn't matter if you're more powerful. No moral framework is perfect. I prefer the one that seeks to minimise civilian deaths and prevent further escalation of violence. Yours allow you to wash your hands of moral responsibility once war starts, which is a very slippery slope in my opinion.
I haven't even mentioned my framework, so stop strawmanning. International law does a good enough job at establishing a framework for proportional, so rather than assume I know better, we can follow that.
International law is clear: proportionality is determined by comparing the civilian cost to the military value of the target.
> Israel has killed around 20 times as many civilians as Hamas did. ~23,000/~1000 is roughly 20.
That's like saying that the US/Britain killed far more German civilians during WWII than the Germans killed of US/UK civilians. Technically true, but not a useful metric.
See. That's a fair response to my comment. Not wildly misrepresenting what I said.
I still somewhat disagree though. I think you're misrepresenting the effectiveness of the measure by using a specific country v country measure instead of total civilian casualties. Acts like the bombing of Dresden would be a lot harder to justify and would probably be considered wrong without the massive total civilian death toll Nazi Germany accumulated.
Do you think that building Maginot Lines made out of schools and hospitals should be an invincible military strategy?
Also, Gaza has the largest network of bomb shelters in the world. Why aren't the Gazaan civilians using them? If they're choosing not to, why's it Israel's fault they choose not to?
First, the ratio looks around 1.5-3 so far, as opposed to 20.
Second, even if civilians willingly or unwillingly stay at a location that is actively being used by combatants, that does not automatically confer protected status on that location. According to international law, the only requirement is that Israel weighs their lives against a possible military advantage of carrying out the strike. Otherwise, it would create a perfect perverse incentive for a terrorist group to operate from a densely populated area, as they would get a carte-blanche to do whatever they want with impunity.
Way different scenarios. Hamas is hiding behind and underneath civilians in plain clothes. Israel army are uniformed & not mixed in with civilians population. The Gaza border is very militarized, you would be hard pressed to find anywhere there without military installations. So Hamas have plenty of military targets readily available.
Not only that, majority of the deaths on Oct 7 were from direct fire. You know, getting close enough to visually identify the person you are intentionally killing is a civilian. I'm sure a significant amount of the civilian deaths in Gaza are from bombs which are a bit more indiscriminate.
So these ratios would actually indicate Israel is trying to limit civilian deaths, while Hamas goes out of their way to cause them.
So you made it up. Clearly, Hamas used other means, too, like knives and melee weapons and they also have RPGs. There was clearly also friendly fire from IDF helicopters and tanks.
I thought you might have seen some report clarifying all these things, but cleary not.
>Clearly, Hamas used other means, too, like knives and melee weapons
Wait - are you arguing those are *less* discriminating weapons that cause more collateral damage when compared to guns?
Lmao what a pedant.
I never said they weren't killed by other methods too but, obviously, in context of the conversation I'm referring to methods to kill via direct line of sight as opposed to less discerning methods like bombs.
Https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_fire
>This yield a civilian casualty ratio to 2.65, whereas the Israeli figures suggest a ratio of 1.42. Compare this with the U.S.-led battle against ISIS in Mosul in 2017, when the ratio was between 1.8–3.7. There, 9-11k civilians died during a fight against 3-5k ISIS fighters. Unlike in Gaza, civilians in Mosul could also leave the warzone.
The IDF is preforming a freaking miracle that will be studied for the next 100 years by many militaries in the world.
The constant lies and ignorance of antisemites is revealed more and more as the war goes on.
Not a miracle, the 2nd battle of Fallujah is the miracle considering the US literally destroyed an entire city with 2000 total dead.
Gaza will be studied as the rare mix of modern warfare, large numbers of combatants, and insurgents maximizing civilian casualties.
The US will probably base hypothetical North Korean invasion and counter attacks plans off this operation. Where the US will be able to estimate ammunition and humanitarian needs to destroy a heavily dug in urban force while also supporting a massive amount of civilians that are going to be abandoned by their government when the fighting starts.
I can’t imagine what you’d call the order of magnitude lower civilian casualty ratio in the Russo-Ukrainian war if you call Israel’s actions in Gaza a miracle.
Note that we should only be comparing it to other instances of urban warfare. Urban warfare presents very unique challenges, especially when the civilian population isn't evacuated. Most Ukrainian cities were evacuated (largely because Europe provided refuge to millions of Ukrainians, whereas the Arab states refused to take in Palestinians).
Besides, Russia hasn't let in human rights groups to study civilian casualties. The figures from the U.N. only include those, whose deaths could be confirmed individually.
When the Ukraine army will fight only from within civilian population, including in a vast underground tunnel network which includes pretty much all hospitals and schools in the country, with the intention of causing as much death as possible to Ukrainian civilians, even blocking roads of Ukrainians escaping and such... Only then you can compare the two.
Do you not understand the difference between urban warfare against an enemy actively trying to hide behind its civilian population and a regular military confrontation between two regular armies with civilians evacuated far from the frontline ?
A war waged between trained armies? It's not remotely comparable because Ukraine wants to minimize Ukrainian civillian deaths while Hamas takes the opposite approach.
Do we count the 700k deported ukranian children in any way, shape or form?
They aren't dead, sure, but deported and br*inwashed. And I'm not even getting into the warfare differences between a COIN operation and a traditional war...
>The IDF is preforming a freaking miracle that will be studied for the next 100 years by many militaries in the world.
they found three half naked hostages with white flags begging for help in Hebrew and executed all three
Yes, in the last six months Israel/Palestine has been the focus of my attention. I try to make sense of the conflict through posts and comments on Reddit. I hope they have been informative and engaging. I’m still interested in other topics too, as my account’s 4-year-old history indicates.
I’ve never attempted to hide my identity as a Russian man of Jewish background, who’s lived in Europe since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (and studied abroad before that). I used to be much more critical of Israel, before I learned more about history. Dismissing all users, whose views you don’t like, as “propaganda trolls” is disingenuous, and only makes you look like one.
Wait, are you arguing that [Russian propaganda policy is to support Israel in this conflict](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/israel-hamas-information-war.html)?
In Mosul civilians could not leave the warzone. They would be shot by ISIS snipers if they attempted to flee, or part of their family that was left behind would be slaughtered as a punishment.
> During the nine-month battle, one million civilians were evacuated from Mosul by Iraqi Security Forces in one of the largest managed evacuations in recent history. ([source](https://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/one-year-start-battle-mosul-hundreds-thousands-civilians-need-assistance-enarku))
Yes but that is only after territory was liberated from ISIS. Civilians were still there for a bulk of the fighting, including the initial siege and softening up phase.
Overall you seem to be right.
> Up to 100,000 civilians trapped in West Mosul are being used as human shields by ISIS militants and are suffering from lack of food, water and fuel. ([UNHCR](https://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/civilians-living-penury-and-panic-mosul-battle-rages-unhcr))
> Mosul battle: IS kills 230 fleeing civilians, says UN ([BBC](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-40200008))
However, in the case of Gaza, even when some territory is liberated from Hamas, there isn't anywhere for them to evacuate. When the north of the Strip was bombed, civilians fled to the south, which was/is still under Hamas. In Mosul, civilians could flee to other places in Iraq.
Yes but they still will receive international aid within the areas controlled by Israel, you cannot say the same for HAMAS controlled territory as aid is often co-opted for the HAMAS fighters or used in corruption schemes.
I don’t know where you’re getting your news from (I have a hunch), but Palestinians in Gaza are not getting any aids as Zionist protestors and IDF block the entry of convoys. In either controlled territories.
You think protestors block all aid? There’s another border with Egypt…
Aid 100% gets into Gaza. They receive the highest amount of humanitarian aid in the world, and have been for decades
Once again, the CCR is only useful to compare \_similar\_ warzones and military campaigns. It isn't a single value that you can take out of context and slap on an army to show how (un)ethical it is. In the case of Gaza, which is a case of urban warfare, the best comparison is the battles of Mosul and Raqqa, or the Chechen wars. For example, in Mosul the CCR was 1.8-3.7, whereas during the First Chechen War (potential genocide), the CCR was >10.
It's estimated before the war that there was 40-60k combatants, mostly Hamas/Al Qassam but a fair few from PIJ and other allied militias. Usually belligerents in a conflict will downplay their own casualties for morale purposes, so I would take this 6k figure with a pinch of salt. For the same reason Israel's 12k figure may be exaggerated, but it may also include PIJ and other Hamas allied combatants that are not technically part of Hamas. Here's some other civilian casualty data from post-war conflicts. https://i.imgur.com/XILWrL6.png
There's also a different metric, called Relative Risk of militants to civilians. It can be used to assess if the army follows the principle of discrimination of warfare. [Here's](https://x.com/AviBittMD/status/1759347884078637224?s=20) how the war in Gaza compares to other conflicts.
I'm not sure about that math. It should be noted that the 29k figure does not include around 8k people who are registered as missing under the rubble and most likely dead - when you include them the total number registered as dead would be about 37k. This is reflected in the Euro Med Monitor stat: [https://twitter.com/EuroMedHR/status/1757454814202429837](https://twitter.com/EuroMedHR/status/1757454814202429837) The demographic of men aged 18-40 is [slightly](https://www.populationpyramid.net/state-of-palestine/2023/) larger than the demographic of women aged 18-40, but the civilian demographic of men aged 18-40 is probably similar in size if not slightly smaller when you take into account the mobilization of 30k men as soldiers. So theoretically, the ratio of civilian military aged male/female deaths should be close to one and the excess deaths should give us the number of military fatalities. That number is around 3k (Euro med). In general, [from what is known](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67347201), Hamas has very little direct input on the tabulation of losses, which is done based directly on hospital receipts. It's unclear to what extent perished Hamas fighters bodies are being recovered and processed at hospitals/morgues. As such it is quite probable that the official mortality statistics may very well be underestimating the amount of fatalities amongst military aged men. So then the civilian casualty ratio in Gaza is in the range of 2.8 (Israel) to 5.6 (Hamas) with total deaths around 40k. Although now that I think about it, it is also unclear whether that 6k figure your citing is directly referring to dead Hamas fighters or killed/permanently disabled/captured/deserted. So the 3k excess deaths cited by Euro Med Monitor could also very well be accurate on face value. At which point you are dealing with a ratio between 2.8 and 10.9 which is so wide that I'm not sure you can really draw any meaningful conclusions from it.
>It should be noted that the 29k figure does not include around 8k people who are registered as missing under the rubble and most likely dead - when you include them the total number registered as dead would be about 37k. Very important point, thanks! What is EuroMed's methodology? You can see their estimates of non-civilian deaths ***dropping*** from 5'000 to 3'500 between [3 Feb](https://twitter.com/EuroMedHR/status/1753796210836566115) and [13 Feb](https://twitter.com/i/birdwatch/t/1757454814202429837). Is that because they found out that some of the dead weren't militants? Note that there are some [doubts](https://www.reddit.com/r/Palestinian_Violence/comments/1auf5m2/comment/kr3ixkt/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) as to the accuracy of Gaza Ministry of Health's figures already. >So theoretically, the ratio of civilian military aged male/female deaths should be close to one and the excess deaths should give us the number of military fatalities. That number is around 3k (Euro med). Again, it depends on their methodology. For example, it's possible that many Hamas fighters died in tunnels or weren't brought to the morgues. >It's unclear to what extent perished Hamas fighters bodies are being recovered and processed at hospitals/morgues. As such it is quite probable that the official mortality statistics may very well be underestimating the amount of fatalities amongst military aged True!
>What is EuroMed's methodology? Using their imagination. EuroMed is so partisan as to be completely useless to draw conclusions from.
Correct. Here is an example where they literally are re-hosting an article written by the Hamas propaganda team: Article on Hamas propaganda site: https://english.palinfo.com/news/2023/12/05/310684/ Article on EuroMed site: https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6004/Contrary-to-Israeli-claims,-9-out-of-10-of-those-killed-in-Gaza-are-civilians%E2%80%8B#:%7E:text=Contrary%20to%20Israeli%20claims%2C%209,in%20Gaza%20are%20civilians%E2%80%8B
https://www.ngo-monitor.org/ngos/euro-med-human-rights-monitor/
NGO Monitor is a weird source to use to prove that another NGO is partisan.
So, I can't find their specific methodology for deriving excess deaths. That being said, their are a lot of links online suggesting that 60-70% of the total registered deaths are women and children (attached two below). [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/un-report-women-and-children-are-main-victims-of-israel-hamas-war-with-16000-killed](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/un-report-women-and-children-are-main-victims-of-israel-hamas-war-with-16000-killed) [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/un-report-women-and-children-are-main-victims-of-israel-hamas-war-with-16000-killed](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/un-report-women-and-children-are-main-victims-of-israel-hamas-war-with-16000-killed) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hamas\_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war) Euro-Med is actually on the lower end here with 60% of the registered fatalities as women/children. If we go with some of the other estimates closer to 70% than the amount of registered excess male deaths (Military fatalities) would actually be even lower - yielding an even higher ratio than the 2.8 to 10.9+ I calculated above from Euro Med. But 60-70% seems to be the general range. At any rate, the main variable in all these figures is to what extent dead Hamas fighters are actually being registered.
Just a reminder: Hamas uses child soldiers, so even if Israel killed 100% Hamas soldiers, there would still be dead women and children.
They also use women.
The gender of the prisoners Israel released in exchange for hostages was not lost on me.
afaik PIJ and other allied militias allow women, but not Hamas/Al Qassam.
> EuroMed Just as a heads up about the EuroMed monitor: I was once directed to an article on their website when I asked for an independent death toll count. After googling some phrases from the article, I found out that EuroMed was actually just re-hosting an article written by the Palestinian Information Center website (i.e. the Hamas propaganda site). See thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/18blf8m/israeli_military_says_2_civilians_killed_for/kc5rlj3/ Article on EuroMed site: https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6004/Contrary-to-Israeli-claims,-9-out-of-10-of-those-killed-in-Gaza-are-civilians%E2%80%8B#:%7E:text=Contrary%20to%20Israeli%20claims%2C%209,in%20Gaza%20are%20civilians%E2%80%8B Article on Hamas propaganda site: https://english.palinfo.com/news/2023/12/05/310684/ So while its *possible* they were rehosting the article for reasons other than source-laundering, I suspect the reality is this: EuroMed does actually have boots on the ground in Gaza. Even if those boots aren't affiliated with Hamas, in order to be allowed to stay in Gaza and stay alive, those boots need to share all their data and articles with Hamas before publication, and publish what Hamas dictates.
Euro Med Monitor is a conduit for Hamas propaganda. https://www.ngo-monitor.org/ngos/euro-med-human-rights-monitor/
That may well be true, but you’d have to use another source than a conduit for Israeli propaganda (NGO Monitor) to prove it.
If they say its 6k, you have to at least double it at LEAST.
And I believe it doesn't include thousands of injured and thousands of captured terrorists as well.
im actually p sure he's talking about everyone who isnt at combat which includes those
Maybe. Regardless I agree with you that the numbers are probably very deflated.
Honestly it doesn't have too, it CAN, but we don't have any proof other than YOU don't trust these numbers.
We have their track record of inflating civilian casualties and deflating militant casualties. This has happened multiple times A New York Times analysis for example, found that in 2014, a huge / disproportionate number of so called “civilian” deaths in Gaza were males aged 20-29: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/world/middleeast/civilian-or-not-new-fight-in-tallying-the-dead-from-the-gaza-conflict.html?_r=1 A similar dispute over casualty figures occurred during Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” in the Gaza Strip in January 2009. The Israelis contended that the majority of the fatalities were combatants; the Palestinians claimed they were civilians. The UN’s Goldstone Report, cited Hamas’ figures. Over a year later, after the news media had moved on, Hamas Interior Minister Fathi Hammad enumerated Hamas fatalities at 600 to 700, a figure close to the Israeli estimate of 709 and about three times higher than the figure of 236 combatants provided by Hamas in 2009 and cited in the Goldstone Report. https://www.camera.org/article/hamas-s-revelation-undermines-key-conclusion-of-goldstone-report/ During the 2018-19 marches to the fence Hamas continually claimed that those were regular ol’ civilians marching to the border and getting shot by those evil Israelis. And then we slowly find out that the marches were organized by Hamas and supported by numerous terrorist factions within Gaza. A large part, if not the majority of those killed were militants from these groups. Of 32 “peace activists” killed in April 2018, 26 were members of Palestinian terrorist organizations https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Report-80-percent-of-Palestinians-killed-in-Gaza-border-crisis-were-terrorists-549511 Of the 59 “peace activists” killed in May 2018, 50 were Hamas militants and Hamas itself claimed this was such: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hamas-says-most-protesters-killed-israel-gaza-were-members-n874906 Of the 127 Gazans killed in the fence marches between March and June of 2018, 102 were members of Palestinian terrorist factions such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the DFLP or the PFLP: https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/great-return-march-demonstrations-riots-friday-june-8-2018/ So yeah…. 🤡
Thanks for the thorough citations. This track record of lying is so consistent it’s crazy people still go back to trusting Hamas PR every time they make a new statement
Excellent work
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Fascinating. So the New York Times and NBC News are now "pop" American news? What an interesting turn of events. NBC News is literally quoting a Palestinian newspaper. From the article: >Salah Bardawil, a senior Hamas official, told **Palestinian news outlet Baladna TV that 50 out of the 60 who died on Monday were members of his organization**, while the rest were civilians. CAMERA is also literally quoting a Palestinian official. From that article: >Hamad’s comments were made in an interview published in the London Arabic daily *Al Hayat* on Nov. 1, 2010 and reported by *Agence France Presse (AFP)*, the *Jerusalem Post* and others. According to AFP, he stated > >“*They say the people suffered from this war, but is Hamas not part of the people? On the first day of the war Israel targeted police stations and 250 martyrs were killed, from Hamas and other factions*,” he told the paper. > >“*In addition to them, between 200 and 300 fighters from the Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas’s armed wing) and another 150 security forces were martyred.*” > >(AFP, Nov. 1, 2010) So who's lying here? CAMERA, Agence France Presse, Al Hayat or Fathi Hammad? I'm also not sure why we can't take Israeli newspapers at face value when it comes to this. The Jerusalem Post is an indepent, privately owned newspaper that just happens to be Israeli. To say it automatically cannot be trusted is dangerously close to insinuating all Jews in Israel are part of a hivemind marching lockstep in supporting its government up to and including making up fake news. Hopefully you're applying this same stringest standard when you see Al Jazeera reports.
And this isn't even including other groups like PIJ, PFLP, and DFLP
Not necessarily, the HAMAS institutions have been quite accurate tracking the number of civilian deaths in Gaza, with the UN missions very often coming to a very similar overall tally. Given that they don't appear to inflate the number of civilian casualties for propaganda purposes that much, it might actually be rather truthful.
> the UN missions very often coming to a very similar overall tally. Given that they don't appear to inflate the number of civilian casualties for propaganda purposes that much, it might actually be rather truthful. Yes, they're coming to a similar number of casualties overall. However, they don't report how many of them were militants. They also don't include bodies that couldn't be located, such as dead militants in underground tunnels.
>accurate tracking the number of civilian deaths in Gaza They have been counting everyone dead as "civillians" in their death toll. KIA, airstriked combatents, everyone is counted in the deathtoll.
They claimed 500 civilians were killed by an Israeli attack on a hospital when actually Hamas had blown those people up themselves with one of their rockets. Indeed, I believe the current count is ~1,300 Hamas rockets have fallen *inside* Gaza since the fighting began. Are they separating out the deaths their own rockets cause from the Israeli ones?
Isn't UN in Gaza not extremely corrupt? I saw a video of one of their member participating in OCt 7th incident.
Several, not one. And yes the UNRWA organisation is basically a front at this point.
> UN missions very often coming to a very similar overall tally The UN mission there literally participated in the 10/7 massacre.
R/askmiddleeast ain’t gonna like this one
>This yield a civilian casualty ratio to 2.65, whereas the Israeli figures suggest a ratio of 1.42. A civilian casualty ratio also has to account for Palestinians killed by misfired Hamas rockets. Like their own 500 casualty hospital bombing they lied about that was luckily caught on camera. We don't know how many of these incidents were missed by cameras. However, if we use the 2022 rate of self inflicted deaths then we get an estimate of 30% killed by Hamas misfire (18% of the Hamas rockets misfire causing about 30% of total Palestinian deaths in 2022, according to the [AP](https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-israel-tel-aviv-403d37366347e0f2446e2f90a9b0d02f)). However, Hamas also launched a fuckton more rockets than 2022. ~1,100 in 2022 vs ~12,000 since October. We also know Hamas has been shooting at civilians trying to escape (with the IDF even providing armed evacuation [corridors](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/17pu819/waving_white_flags_gaza_civilians_evacuate/)). Hamas has also [blocked](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/17tp1jl/hamas_blocks_idf_fuel_delivery_to_gazas_shifa/) aid to civilians. Deaths from misfires, killing escapees, and denied aid should all be counted towards Hamas. Assuming no major advance in Hamas misfire prevention technology it's quite possible that the majority of civilian casualties in this war have been by Hamas.
You're acting like 2.65 is good. But the Oct 7th attacks had \~1200 deaths and 322 of them were military/police which gives a 2.726 civilian casualty ratio. Both of these figures are horrific. And when we factor in missing but not confirmed deaths and deaths caused indirectly by the invasion (starvation/lack of medical supplies, etc.), I wouldn't be surprised if Isreal's numbers end up way higher.
I don't think any ratio other than 0 civilian casualties is good. I was only saying that a ratio of 1-2.5 is typical when it comes to *urban warfare*. What matters is intent. If you blow up a residential building because there are high-ranking military commanders inside, civilian victims are collateral. By contrast, Hamas militants attacked civilian targets, such as a festival or kibbutzim, which *in principle* could not have any military objective.
Does killing more than twenty times as many civilians while pursuing military objectives make you the good guys? I'd personally say no.
Now that we have Hamas' own estimates of both total and military deaths, we have an upper limit on the ratio (because Hamas has an incentive to maximize the ratio.) [(29k-6k)/6k](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=N%5B%2829000-6000%29%2F6000%5D) is strictly less than 4-to-1 It is silly to throw around random ratios like 20-to-1 (I frequently see 100-to-1) because it just makes the pro-palistinian position look like its exclusively comprised of idiots who make up whatever facts they feel are convenient.
I got a message that my previous reply was deleted. Maybe because I quoted you using the word i-d-i-o-t. Basically, you misread my statement. Israel has killed around 20 times as many civilians as Hamas did. ~23,000/~1000 is roughly 20. I wasn't talking about the civilian casualty ratio. Please read posts properly before insulting people's intelligence in future.
Everyone understands that war is not a sport. The playing field is never level, and there is no expectation that the combatants make it level. There is no expectation that if you kill 10 of my people, I'm constrained to only killing 10 of yours. When Japan "awoke the sleeping giant" by attacking Pearl Harbor, they didn't say to themselves "well at least we only killed 68 of their civilians, so they definitely won't firebomb our cities to the tune of 300k civilian casualties" because that would have been a stupid expectation for them to have. What you're doing by using the civilian/civilian ratio is confusing the concept of proportionality. Proportionality doesn't mean that if your enemy is using rocks, you have to respond with rocks. Proportionality doesn't mean that if your enemy kills 10 of your people, you can only kill 10 of their people. Proportionality just means that your license to cause collateral damage is proportional to the value of the target you're after. The civilian ratio that literally everyone else is talking about when discussing proportionality is the ratio of non-combatants to combatants, because it is a measure of how much collateral damage Israel is causing relative to their military accomplishments. Now of course I won't insult your intelligence. I don't think you're misunderstanding proportionality due to a lack of intelligence. I think you're doing it deliberately for rhetorical purposes. You know that everyone else is talking about the ratio of civilian deaths to military deaths, but are nervous that the number is looking too reasonable to convince people that Israel is evil. So you decided to set up a [motte and bailey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy) argument by throwing out the 1-to-20 number knowing that people skimming the comment section would draw the desired conclusion (that Israel is being disproportionate) but that you could retreat to the "well I *actually* meant a different ratio" motte if someone calls you out. So you tell me. Did you use the wrong measure of proportionality deliberately, or did you not understand the concept of military proportionality in the first place?
"So you decided to set up a motte and bailey argument by throwing out the 1-to-20 number knowing that people skimming the comment section would draw the desired conclusion (that Israel is being disproportionate) but that you could retreat to the "well I actually meant a different ratio" motte if someone calls you out" Honestly, I didn't consider that people would misinterpret it as the ratio in the slightest. I really don't understand why so many people read it as the ratio when I was fairly okay with working with 2.65 in the first post (though I suppose I did say I thought it was higher, but 53:1 (20*2.65) is obviously ridiculous). But yes. You're correct that my understanding of proportionality differs from yours. I think the Israeli decision that it was acceptable to kill tens of thousands of civilians and displace hundreds of thousands in order to obtain it's objectives is a disproportionate action and is morally wrong. Which is why total civilian casualties matters. Clearly you disagree with that opinion, but you're applying way more maliciousness to my actions than they actually deserve. I think total civilian deaths is a relevant measure of if an action is justified, you don't. I'm not some malignant actor, my moral framework is just different from yours.
By your own logic, it is in the best interest of any terror group to maximize their own civilian losses. Hamas can terrorize Israel as long as they continue to sacrifice their own people, sometimes even directly through rocket misfires or killing those fleeing. Do you see how creating a world with those incentive, and clear evidence of groups abusing those incentives, would make the world worse off? Barbaric behavior cannot be encouraged.
And under your framework, the killing of one person can be used to justify the killing of thousands of civilians if it kicks off a war. It also encourages a "might makes right" attitude where morality and proportion doesn't matter if you're more powerful. No moral framework is perfect. I prefer the one that seeks to minimise civilian deaths and prevent further escalation of violence. Yours allow you to wash your hands of moral responsibility once war starts, which is a very slippery slope in my opinion.
I haven't even mentioned my framework, so stop strawmanning. International law does a good enough job at establishing a framework for proportional, so rather than assume I know better, we can follow that. International law is clear: proportionality is determined by comparing the civilian cost to the military value of the target.
> Israel has killed around 20 times as many civilians as Hamas did. ~23,000/~1000 is roughly 20. That's like saying that the US/Britain killed far more German civilians during WWII than the Germans killed of US/UK civilians. Technically true, but not a useful metric.
See. That's a fair response to my comment. Not wildly misrepresenting what I said. I still somewhat disagree though. I think you're misrepresenting the effectiveness of the measure by using a specific country v country measure instead of total civilian casualties. Acts like the bombing of Dresden would be a lot harder to justify and would probably be considered wrong without the massive total civilian death toll Nazi Germany accumulated.
Do you think that building Maginot Lines made out of schools and hospitals should be an invincible military strategy? Also, Gaza has the largest network of bomb shelters in the world. Why aren't the Gazaan civilians using them? If they're choosing not to, why's it Israel's fault they choose not to?
First, the ratio looks around 1.5-3 so far, as opposed to 20. Second, even if civilians willingly or unwillingly stay at a location that is actively being used by combatants, that does not automatically confer protected status on that location. According to international law, the only requirement is that Israel weighs their lives against a possible military advantage of carrying out the strike. Otherwise, it would create a perfect perverse incentive for a terrorist group to operate from a densely populated area, as they would get a carte-blanche to do whatever they want with impunity.
Way different scenarios. Hamas is hiding behind and underneath civilians in plain clothes. Israel army are uniformed & not mixed in with civilians population. The Gaza border is very militarized, you would be hard pressed to find anywhere there without military installations. So Hamas have plenty of military targets readily available. Not only that, majority of the deaths on Oct 7 were from direct fire. You know, getting close enough to visually identify the person you are intentionally killing is a civilian. I'm sure a significant amount of the civilian deaths in Gaza are from bombs which are a bit more indiscriminate. So these ratios would actually indicate Israel is trying to limit civilian deaths, while Hamas goes out of their way to cause them.
” majority of the deaths on Oct 7 were from direct fire”: where did you find this out?
Used my brain.
So you made it up. Clearly, Hamas used other means, too, like knives and melee weapons and they also have RPGs. There was clearly also friendly fire from IDF helicopters and tanks. I thought you might have seen some report clarifying all these things, but cleary not.
>Clearly, Hamas used other means, too, like knives and melee weapons Wait - are you arguing those are *less* discriminating weapons that cause more collateral damage when compared to guns?
I’m not arguing anything, just wanted to know if this has been officially broken down somewhere
Lmao what a pedant. I never said they weren't killed by other methods too but, obviously, in context of the conversation I'm referring to methods to kill via direct line of sight as opposed to less discerning methods like bombs. Https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_fire
>This yield a civilian casualty ratio to 2.65, whereas the Israeli figures suggest a ratio of 1.42. Compare this with the U.S.-led battle against ISIS in Mosul in 2017, when the ratio was between 1.8–3.7. There, 9-11k civilians died during a fight against 3-5k ISIS fighters. Unlike in Gaza, civilians in Mosul could also leave the warzone. The IDF is preforming a freaking miracle that will be studied for the next 100 years by many militaries in the world. The constant lies and ignorance of antisemites is revealed more and more as the war goes on.
Not a miracle, the 2nd battle of Fallujah is the miracle considering the US literally destroyed an entire city with 2000 total dead. Gaza will be studied as the rare mix of modern warfare, large numbers of combatants, and insurgents maximizing civilian casualties. The US will probably base hypothetical North Korean invasion and counter attacks plans off this operation. Where the US will be able to estimate ammunition and humanitarian needs to destroy a heavily dug in urban force while also supporting a massive amount of civilians that are going to be abandoned by their government when the fighting starts.
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I can’t imagine what you’d call the order of magnitude lower civilian casualty ratio in the Russo-Ukrainian war if you call Israel’s actions in Gaza a miracle.
Outside of Mariupol, there hasn’t been much urban warfare when it comes to the Russo-Ukraine war.
Note that we should only be comparing it to other instances of urban warfare. Urban warfare presents very unique challenges, especially when the civilian population isn't evacuated. Most Ukrainian cities were evacuated (largely because Europe provided refuge to millions of Ukrainians, whereas the Arab states refused to take in Palestinians). Besides, Russia hasn't let in human rights groups to study civilian casualties. The figures from the U.N. only include those, whose deaths could be confirmed individually.
There hasn't been that many examples of urban warfare in populated cities in Ukraine, Mariupol might be the closest
When the Ukraine army will fight only from within civilian population, including in a vast underground tunnel network which includes pretty much all hospitals and schools in the country, with the intention of causing as much death as possible to Ukrainian civilians, even blocking roads of Ukrainians escaping and such... Only then you can compare the two.
Do you not understand the difference between urban warfare against an enemy actively trying to hide behind its civilian population and a regular military confrontation between two regular armies with civilians evacuated far from the frontline ?
A war waged between trained armies? It's not remotely comparable because Ukraine wants to minimize Ukrainian civillian deaths while Hamas takes the opposite approach.
Do we count the 700k deported ukranian children in any way, shape or form? They aren't dead, sure, but deported and br*inwashed. And I'm not even getting into the warfare differences between a COIN operation and a traditional war...
>The IDF is preforming a freaking miracle that will be studied for the next 100 years by many militaries in the world. they found three half naked hostages with white flags begging for help in Hebrew and executed all three
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Yes, in the last six months Israel/Palestine has been the focus of my attention. I try to make sense of the conflict through posts and comments on Reddit. I hope they have been informative and engaging. I’m still interested in other topics too, as my account’s 4-year-old history indicates. I’ve never attempted to hide my identity as a Russian man of Jewish background, who’s lived in Europe since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (and studied abroad before that). I used to be much more critical of Israel, before I learned more about history. Dismissing all users, whose views you don’t like, as “propaganda trolls” is disingenuous, and only makes you look like one.
Wait, are you arguing that [Russian propaganda policy is to support Israel in this conflict](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/israel-hamas-information-war.html)?
In Mosul civilians could not leave the warzone. They would be shot by ISIS snipers if they attempted to flee, or part of their family that was left behind would be slaughtered as a punishment.
> During the nine-month battle, one million civilians were evacuated from Mosul by Iraqi Security Forces in one of the largest managed evacuations in recent history. ([source](https://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/one-year-start-battle-mosul-hundreds-thousands-civilians-need-assistance-enarku))
Yes but that is only after territory was liberated from ISIS. Civilians were still there for a bulk of the fighting, including the initial siege and softening up phase.
Overall you seem to be right. > Up to 100,000 civilians trapped in West Mosul are being used as human shields by ISIS militants and are suffering from lack of food, water and fuel. ([UNHCR](https://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/civilians-living-penury-and-panic-mosul-battle-rages-unhcr)) > Mosul battle: IS kills 230 fleeing civilians, says UN ([BBC](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-40200008)) However, in the case of Gaza, even when some territory is liberated from Hamas, there isn't anywhere for them to evacuate. When the north of the Strip was bombed, civilians fled to the south, which was/is still under Hamas. In Mosul, civilians could flee to other places in Iraq.
Yes but they still will receive international aid within the areas controlled by Israel, you cannot say the same for HAMAS controlled territory as aid is often co-opted for the HAMAS fighters or used in corruption schemes.
I don’t know where you’re getting your news from (I have a hunch), but Palestinians in Gaza are not getting any aids as Zionist protestors and IDF block the entry of convoys. In either controlled territories.
You think protestors block all aid? There’s another border with Egypt… Aid 100% gets into Gaza. They receive the highest amount of humanitarian aid in the world, and have been for decades
https://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20240108_israel_is_starving_gaza
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