this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
203 points (89.5% liked)

World News

39110 readers
2396 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

GAZA/JERUSALEM, Oct 24 (Reuters) - More than 700 Palestinians were killed in overnight Israeli air strikes, Gaza's health ministry said on Tuesday, the highest 24-hour death toll since Israel began a bombing campaign to crush Hamas militants who stunned the country with a deadly Oct. 7 attack.

Israel said it had killed dozens of Hamas fighters in the overnight strikes on the besieged enclave but said its war to destroy the Islamist group would take time.

As aid agencies warned that a humanitarian catastrophe was unfolding in Gaza, French President Emmanuel Macron flew to Israel to offer it support.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How many times in the past 20 years has a Palestinian Health Ministry reported numbers that have gone up?

This number has already dropped to 400: https://lemmy.world/post/7270667

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Let's assume the Ministry of Health is lying, what number of dead civilians is enough to condemn Israel of ethnic cleansing? People are dying at the hands of Israeli strikes in the most horrid ways, and everybody is denouncing it publicly as a war crime, and here we are calling them "liars" even though it's a bunch of overworked medical staff and are running out of body bags. How many dead bodies do we need to see on TV for it to be a tragedy?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I strongly suspect they are providing an upper bound - based on the number of people who live in a particular residence and declaring them "dead" before actually finding a body or confirming they don't have a pulse. So their numbers always look really high at first and get revised downwards as they move people from the "dead" count to "injured" or "found alive and well". In many cases, you can observe that they will announce a large number of fatalities within minutes of a blast - faster than it's feasible to even count the bodies much less confirm they are fully dead and not merely injured.

How many dead bodies do we need to see on TV for it to be a tragedy?

Context matters. Dead soldiers from an organization that recently committed terrorism and atrocities are not a tragedy. This is the expected outcome of war. There will be civilian fatalities who were in the wrong place or worse being held as human shields. Those civilian deaths are a tragedy, and the best way to prevent them is to strongly denounce Hamas.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Israel has been strongly denouncing Hamas for a while now and yet the number of bodies increase. Why do you think that's the case?

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The best way for us to prevent them is to strongly denounce Hamas. Take away their support and sympathy. Maybe they'll release the hostages.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Gee don't look too hard into how hamas got their funding

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Yeah but it hasn't been working, has it?

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's a reason that article notes that they "could not independently verify the ministry figures." They aren't independent or apolitical. The Ministry of Health aren't frontline doctors and nurses, they are the Hamas-controlled bureaucracy that oversees them. Hamas long ago purged anyone from the ministry that wasn't specifically loyal to them.

Why do you think Hamas would work so hard to purge the Palestinians in the Ministry who were neutral or Fatah-aligned? Is there a compelling reason to think an institution designed to serve a party or faction to the exclusion of everyone else would (or could) serve anyone else?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The reason is that they are neutral and no one is allowed to Gaza (thanks to Israel) to verify this.

Anyway again it's Frontline doctors and nurses who report these numbers.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The reason is that they're a problematic source. Everyone's also being much more cautious since the al-Ahli Arab Hospital blast because several major news organizations had to apologize for uncritically reporting Hamas/MoH claims that turned out to be false.

I'm sure first responders report numbers to the ministry but you're wrong to think that they're reporting to you. The voice that speaks through the ministry is Hamas. You're taking it purely on faith that it's otherwise, but it ain't true just because you'd like it to be. I'm not sure Hamas has really earned your faith. They're being widely reported because, as you said, there's no one else in a position to report. But best-we-have doesn't really mean good, does it? And it shouldn't mean that we stop evaluating them critically as a source.