Arete @ Arete @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

At the extreme left of the video you can see a man in the middle of the road kneel down to light something on fire. The men contend that it was a pile of cardboard they wanted to burn for warmth. The Israeli's counter that it was a Molotov cocktail.

It doesn't look like a Molotov cocktail, but personally I don't buy the "warmth" story. Who lights cardboard on fire in the street for warmth? I think a far more likely scenario, given the men knew Israeli soldiers were nearby and didn't leave while others did, is that they were attempting to show some resistance by burning shit. This pissed off the Israeli's, who shot at them.

Seems like murder given the lack of an immediate threat.

Well shit this article says some of the freedom fighters were actually raped by the festival goers, so I take that back.

Ah yes, electronicintifada.net, well known for fact-based unbiased reporting. I think your tinfoil hat may be on a bit too tight, but again, you do you.

Hamas didn't shoot a single child

Ok mate you do you.

Ok can you understand how words like "slaughter" and "massacre" may more aptly apply to the October 7th attack than to the subsequent invasion?

On one side we have a mass terror attack involving 1000+ deaths. These were often done individually, with a single terrorist targeting and shooting a person in their home. Often these were accompanied by acts of torture, rape, mutilation, and desecration of corpses. In many cases children were shot in front of their parents. Oh and several hundred people were kidnapped. This invokes words like "slaughter", "massacre", "brutal", "inhuman", "sickening", etc.

On the other side we have a large scale counterattack with huge amounts of bombing, refugee camps, and urban warfare. This invokes words like "destruction", "uninhabitable", "aggressive", "excessive", etc.

It's completely unfair to call someone biased for using different diction to describe these events.

Consider how time works. Every article about bombings in Gaza also includes references back to October 7th in giving background information. Thousands of articles in the immediate aftermath of a 9/11 scale event didn't mention a Palestinian death toll because there weren't even numbers available.

Some of the "quantitative" techniques used in this article are downright stupid. Dividing word counts for "Israel" and "Palestine" by the number of deaths in each region? Expecting no drop off in reporting over a six week period? Expecting article counts to scale linearly with reported death counts?

They've measured interest, not bias.

Name two

... There are photos in the article

I haven't seen evidence for a lot of those points as you state them. I have seen evidence of single bombs dropped both along evacuation routes and in camps. These were always accompanied by statements that there were Hamas targets present, which obviously could be a lie. That being said, and taking all the reports together, I think if Israel was directly targeting civilians (as opposed to targeting Hamas and not caring about nearby civilians) they would have both killed hundreds of thousands and there would be evidence of repeated, sustained bombings of civilian targets.

As to your final point, statements by a few Israeli officials regarding "voluntary" resettlement is advocating genocide. These people should be arrested, and if such a resettlement happens I will reverse my stance of this.

If it was i'd be advocating a counter-invasion of Israel and trials at the Hague. Don't presume I support genocide just because I require evidence for it.

How so? I obviously assume the numbers on both sides are exaggerated, which is why I rounded everything in favor of there being more civilian deaths. How many hamas fighters do you think have been killed?

Yeah those are fair points. I've never defended the usage of 2000 pound bombs in urban areas.

I'm also certainly not calling Mosul a frozen conflict, merely noting that it is deceptive to present an average figure of child deaths over the 14 year long Iraq war against 30 days of intense urban fighting in Gaza.

I didn't follow the fighting at the time, but per wikipedia the operation took 9 months, with the majority of the fighting/bombing happening during the initial 3 months during which half the city was taken. The enemy force was approximately half as strong as Hamas, and an estimated 20k - 40k civilians were killed, with about 1 million displaced. Interestingly it seems like the population density is somewhat comparable today, although it is hard to estimate the population at the time.

Taken together, this might make Mosul a good benchmark against which to judge the Israeli assault. Doing so, Israel definitely seems more cavalier to civilian deaths, but not wildly so. I still don't see "genocide" here.

Appreciate the good faith response. While I'm certainly not going to excuse thousands of dead children, I don't find these other conflicts comparable for the following reasons:

• these are averaged over about a decade, most of which is in the form of a "frozen" conflict between entrenched armies outside of populated areas. We might (I don't have numbers on this) see a much higher rate if we focused in on the hottest/most urban part of each war. The "30 day" range for this conflict is widely out of step with the others. If we "froze" the conflict for a decade, we'd depress the number by 120x and it would suddenly match the others.
• most of these did not involve significant urban conflict in populated areas, especially with an entrenched defender making use of human shields.
• the average age in Gaza is only ~18, meaning all else being equal, child deaths will be outsized. Further, Hamas employs teenage soldiers and the provided numbers don't make a civilian/militant distinction. As horrific as it is, there is a difference between an armed 17 year old child soldier and a 3 year old bystander.

If I said something factually wrong please correct me. Otherwise let's leave the ad hominem attacks unsaid.

Is this 22,600 number accurate? It's more precise than I would expect. I've also seen estimates of 8000 hamas militants killed, which is presumably included here as the Gaza authorities have never previously made a distinction. That suggests about 2 civilian deaths per soldier killed which is honestly a lot less than I would expect given all the "genocide" rhetoric.

I think Afghanistan ended up being about 1 civilian per 2 soldiers? That's 4x lower, but was largely fought in low population density deserts. Is there even a modern equivalent to draw a comparison with to gauge what a "normal" civilian casualty rate is for urban warfare?

"if they want to enable regular flights between Earth and Mars"

Saved you a click.

Buying land in rural California to potentially incorporate a new town is not remotely comparable to seceding from the United States.

Some fun absurdities:

• The article repeatedly refers to the plan as "secretive" while also discussing "packed town hall meetings", official statements, lawsuits, etc
• there is a link to a supposed lawsuit, which actually links to an obituary.
• the term "network zone" is defined as some kind of physical dystopian neighborhood with a billionaire ruling as king, but the linked definition describes the term as having to do with online forums.
• the article defines secession as "paying people in gold or crypto" and attending private school.

It's a wild ride.

The nytimes reported on a woman found half naked, dead, and partially burned, near where multiple witnesses reported rapes, and during an event where 1000+ people were brutally murdered. They reported her as "likely raped". If anything they undersold the odds.

If your political worldview feels more coherent if this woman was merely murdered and burned and not also raped, then you do you.

Yes I'm sure. This isn't the dunk you think it is. If you'll reread your own bolded section, you'll see that the police provided video evidence (a dead, partially burned body with clothes to ripped off) to the nytimes, who verified its authenticity. That means geolocated, checked against past photos of the girl, etc. They didn't verify that she was raped, which is why the very next sentence says "believed raped".

Seriously this is basic reading comprehension.

Just went and checked the original nytimes article because this is a weird thing to assert now. This girl was found with her clothes torn off in an area where a bunch of rapes were reported, and the police said she was "likely raped". The nytimes at no point definitively says she was, they just quote the police.

It's also not true that the article "hinged on the story of Gal Abdush". Its a long article that goes through several really gruesome rape/mutilation reports. I don't recommend reading it.