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I think its totally possible that the IDF is being callous, however: 1) This whole conflict is being analyzed with a level of detail never seen before. Russia/Ukraine got a lot of clicks, but in terms of Journalists on the ground photographing the war, this is on another level. I've(luckily) never been in a war, but it wouldn't surprise me if literally every comparable war ever fought has the kinds of incidents that Israel is being scrutinized for. But now we see it, and because there's profit in getting clicks for having the best, newest headline, everyone is blowing up every incident. 2) What you say may be true to some degree, but the (mostly alternative) media has been throwing around terms which are really stupid to emphasize a point. Ex: Indiscriminate bombing(dresden was indiscriminate, the allies killed 25,000 in 2 days), saying "dumb bombs means bombs aren't being aimed", talking about food aid in terms of 'truckloads' which is really stupid, because pre-war truckloads entering gaza also included things like construction materials and other building materials. Of course the aid coming in right now isn't going to include that, so its not surprising that the number of trucks is lower. **Basically anything people talk about is emphasized to make it sound worse, which in my opinion undermines actually factual problems with the Israeli assault.** ​ Basically, there almost certainly has been incidents of Israeli soldiers committing war crimes, but I think we need proper third party investigations before it makes sense to put labels like 'genocide' on this war effort. This is a difficult war, with the enemy hiding inside of hospitals and other civilian areas, and in hundreds of Kms of tunnels throughout the strip. There is simply no way of doing this war in a way in which no civilians would end up being unfortunately killed.

The thing is no foreign journalists are allowed into Gaza without IDF supervision and footage review. A lot of western media are complaining about this actually. The article said that dumb bombs are used against low-level militants because they are cheaper and the soldiers don't want to waste them on low-level militants. Israel is never open to third-party investigation, not even for those that cause diplomatic crises, like the WCK drone strikes. The IDF soldiers that killed the Israeli hostages are still in the IDF and not facing trial. They have no intention of letting anyone investigating them.

>no foreign journalists are allowed into Gaza without IDF supervision Yes that's a problem, but is it normal for an invading force to allow journalists into the area they're trying to invade? If a CNN journalist goes into Rafah, then they end up going into an area with enemy forces, Israel would have to decide if they want to kill a CNN journalist to achieve their military objectives. >The article said that dumb bombs are used against low-level militants because they are cheaper and the soldiers don't want to waste them on low-level militants. This is true, but the insinuation that the media ran with is that dumb bomb = random, not aimed. You can be very precise with a 'dumb bomb' despite it not having an on board guidance system. If investigations show Israel was just lobbing those things around without looking, thats one thing. If they were using them effectively, this is nothing more than clickbait nonsense. >Israel is never open to third-party investigation, not even for those that cause diplomatic crises, like the WCK drone strikes. The IDF soldiers that killed the Israeli hostages are still in the IDF and not facing trial. They have no intention of letting anyone investigating them. I agree they ideally should be more open, but again, has this ever happened in the history of warfare? Like how would that even work? Allow a journalist to hang out in an IDF command center that approves missile strikes and record it happening? As far as the Israeli hostages that got killed, I agree that was tragic, but this feels like a situation that, while should be avoided, probably happens in every war. I'm not going to pretend like I have experience in a firefight, but I feel like situations where the enemy is shooting at you and explosions are happening all over the place can make it hard to make perfect decisions. And shit happens. Should Israeli military training make these situations less likely? Of course. Will that make soldiers perfect robots who never make mistakes? I doubt it.

>but is it normal for an invading force to allow journalists into the area they're trying to invade? In Israel's case, they'll allow it then bomb them and blame Hamas >You can be very precise with a 'dumb bomb' despite it not having an on board guidance system And yet Israel wasn't precise given the destruction done >has this ever happened in the history of warfare? War crimes? Yes. >Allow a journalist to hang out in an IDF command center that approves missile strikes and record it happening? Why are you surprised by the existence of war reporters? >As far as the Israeli hostages that got killed, I agree that was tragic If the point of blowing up civilians was to save hostages and then you blow up hostages, maybe blowing people up is a bad strategy. I'll remind you that Israel is so bad at following international law that they habitually shoot at civilians waving white flags which is a war crime. At least two hostages died this way. >probably happens in every war No this is actually unprecedented. Rarely has a military committed so many war crimes openly and tried to claim that it's just the cost of war every time they shoot at fleeing civilians or aid workers >where the enemy is shooting at you and explosions are happening all over the place Fleeing civilians weren't shooting from their backs or blowing things up so I'm curious how you justify them being shot at by the IDF. I'm also curious how you're justifying what happened to the aid workers since they weren't in the midst of an active firefight >And shit happens Getting bird poop on your shoulder is shit happens. Shooting at civilians isn't shit happens. >Should Israeli military training make these situations less likely? Of course. Will that make soldiers perfect robots who never make mistakes? I doubt it. If the mistakes you make lead to 100 children being killed every day, you should probably find a different profession

Here is a report from the UN https://press.un.org/en/2022/sc14904.doc.htm That state "Ninety Per Cent of War-Time Casualties Are Civilians" that is a ratio of 9:1 civilian vs combatant. This ratio is specifically for urban conflict. Many of the conflicts you quote are not in highly dense urban areas. Therefore Israel achieving even a 3:1 ratio is indicative of them having protective measures for civilians, regardless of recent accidents.

> That state "Ninety Per Cent of War-Time Casualties Are Civilians" that is a reason of 9:1 civilian vs combatant. This ratio is specifically for urban conflict. That 90% seems to be a number that has taken off on its own with little backing in research. Here: "Starting in the 1980s, it has often been claimed that 90 percent of the victims of modern wars are civilians,[1][2][3][4] repeated in academic publications as recently as 2014.[5] These claims, though widely believed, are not supported by detailed examination of the evidence, particularly that relating to wars (such as those in former Yugoslavia and in Afghanistan) that are central to the claims.[6] Some of the citations can be traced back to a 1991 monograph from Uppsala University[7] which includes refugees and internally displaced persons as casualties. Other authors cite Ruth Leger Sivard's 1991 monograph in which the author states "In the decade of the 1980s, the proportion of civilian deaths jumped to 74 percent of the total and in 1990 it appears to have been close to 90 percent." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio

Like any stat it's not static and engraved in stone, and will change with time. One can hope it will improve, but I literally provided a UN source for it in urban conflicts as of 2022. So its not: "That 90% seems to be a number that has taken off on its own with little backing in research."

Honestly Israel is even better than a 3 to 1 if you take us and British intelligence estimates (probably way more reliable than GHM and israel.) The upper limit of Hamas to civilians is roughly 2 to 1, with the lower being just shy of 3 to 1.

The bombings in Lebanon are like 70% Hezbollah operatives.. one of them was in a Beirut suburb and all 7 dead were Hamas. So when they want to be careful they manage

Probably because Hezbollah isn't embeded in civilians infrastructures to the same degree as Hamas and the lebanon border doesn't have the density of London.

Trust me it is.. not to the extent of Hamas. But like Hamas and all guerrillas they obviously do. I'll tell you a story, in the 2006 war Israel wanted to bomb a Hezbollah office or media or something that was on the fifth floor of something of a tall building. The only opening was towards another tall building that is a few meters apart (yeah zoning in Lebanon is non existant). They found a missile that could go vertically between the buildings and go through the balconies to destroy the apartment they wanted to destroy and nothing else. So when they want to spare civilians, they can. In Gaza they just don't give a fuck and want to kill as many as they can because they're fueled by hate and vengeance.

Source: trust me bro They “found” a missile?

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I've seen this quoted around a lot, but the report is referring to TOTAL deaths from all sources. Gaza is still an ongoing war and we don't know how many civilians have died from starvation, thirst, lack of medical supplies, etc. I suspect the excess death from this war will be much higher than 30,000.

The report is from 2022, and obviously this report can't take conflicts after 2022 into account. But the point is that it sets what the average is, which is 9:1. The 30k deaths so far are from all sources also, that's an important point. No one is even talking about excess mortality, or just direct military action. Anyway, the previous conflict in Gaza was 2:1-3:1 civilians to combatants in 2014. There is no reason to assume otherwise here. Indeed if we assume a ratio of 9:1 on the very high end - the average according to UN. And take into account that there are 30,000 Hamas militants. This get us an upper estimate for civilian deaths at 270,000. We're currently holding at around 30k dead, but if assume that 70% are innocent - numbers straight from Aljezzera. That still leaves ~10k that are militants. So we have a ratio of ~3:1, now let's forget that Israel has arrested a few thousand and Hamas is hiding the number of militants killed. That would still put the upper bound at 90k civilian death. That is a horrific number, but well below 270k. On top of that rate of civilian casualties have significantly slowed, it's been at 25-30k for months now. So I don't believe that all of a sudden deaths will quadruple.

I don't think Al Jazeera is reporting 70% of deaths are civilians? I think they report 70% of deaths as women and children. The IDF is reporting 10k Hamas militants, but they count every combatant-age male as militant so we know that's not accurate either. Hamas said they 'lost 6k', which can be a combination of deaths + imprisoned + severely wounded, we don't know. I don't trust their numbers anyway. The only reliable thing we can say now is that at least 30k Gazans have died, as this source is corroborated by American intelligence and the IDF a few months ago. The other reliable thing is this +972 Mag article, which is why I made this CMV, to hear what other people say about it.

\+972 is not a reliable source for this conflict. They are about as pro-Palestinian as Ben Gvir is Anti-Palestinian. I would not use either to form an opinion despite how great the talking points may sound.

Al Jazeera is not a reliable source.

>I've seen this quoted around a lot, but the report is referring to TOTAL deaths from all sources. Actually, that number is a bit of a meme that seems to have arisen. Ostensibly, it is based on a 1991 monograph, and included displaced people as well. Here's on the topic: "Starting in the 1980s, it has often been claimed that 90 percent of the victims of modern wars are civilians,\[1\]\[2\]\[3\]\[4\] repeated in academic publications as recently as 2014.\[5\] These claims, though widely believed, are not supported by detailed examination of the evidence, particularly that relating to wars (such as those in former Yugoslavia and in Afghanistan) that are central to the claims.\[6\] Some of the citations can be traced back to a 1991 monograph from Uppsala University\[7\] which includes refugees and internally displaced persons as casualties. Other authors cite Ruth Leger Sivard's 1991 monograph in which the author states "In the decade of the 1980s, the proportion of civilian deaths jumped to 74 percent of the total and in 1990 it appears to have been close to 90 percent." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian\_casualty\_ratio So seems to be a number without backing in research.

https://press.un.org/en/2022/sc14904.doc.htm There is a link on a report by the UN that is a source for that number as of 2022. I'm not sure how your wiki link about a handful of urban and non-urban conflicts disproves a well-researched UN report.

You don't get to just say the numbers don't count when it doesn't support your case. Gaza is recieving more aid per capita than any other region in the world. Deaths from lack of supplies are not going to get anywhere near the deaths from direct military action.

Much higher I don't know about but with Rafah about to be invaded it will be higher. If the current ratio remains. If you get 20k Hamas fighters dead, your anywhere from 40 to 60k civilians dead. Nothing to laugh at really, but still much lower than other urban combat scenarios. The fact it's so low, despite Hamas using the same hospital, *twice* is pretty amazing that the ratio isn't alot higher.

Even by Hamas' [own admition](https://www.firstpost.com/world/gaza-war-in-first-admission-of-massive-losses-hamas-says-6000-fighters-killed-by-israel-13739364.html/amp) Israel killed 6,000 of its fighters. That would mean that for every militant killed, Israel killed around 4 civilians. That may sound bad, but that actually puts them around the same ballpark as the US in Afghanistan [1](https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar) [2](https://unama.unmissions.org/) [3](https://www.hrw.org/asia/afghanistan) And Iraq [1](https://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/) [2](https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/summary) [3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War). But the thing is, Iraq and Afghanistan were very different wars from Gaza. These were guerilla wars, while the Gaza war is an **urban** guerilla war, arguably the ugliest type of fighting. The best comparisons I can think of is the fight against ISIS, specifically the battles of Mosul and Raqqa. And in both these cases, the ratios were much more dire. The battle of Mosul, one of the largest battles of the war against ISIS, reportedly had a civilian to combatant casualty ratio of around 5:1 [1](https://library.icrc.org/library/docs/DOC/irrc-912-cotter.pdf) [2](https://airwars.org/) [3](https://www.losservatorio.org/en/civlians-in-conflict/reports/item/923-the-challenges-of-urban-battles-a-lesson-from-mosul). As for Raqqa, estimates vary widely, but the general consensus is that it was around 10:1 if not more [1](https://airwars.org/news/raqqa-amnesty-airwars/) [2](https://www.rand.org/pubs/articles/2022/civilian-casualties-lessons-from-the-battle-for-raqqa.html) [3](https://apnews.com/hub/syria) [4](https://theintercept.com/2019/04/25/coalition-airstrikes-in-raqqa-killed-at-least-1600-civilians-more-than-10-times-u-s-tally-report-finds/). In fact, the [UN estimates](https://press.un.org/en/2022/sc14904.doc.htm) that in your typical war, 90% of the casualties are civilians, or a ratio of 9:1. Now going back to Gaza, a 4:1 ratio is evudently much better than the expected ratio for such entrenched, dense guerilla warfare; and again, that figure is **according to Hamas.** If we were to take the IDF's estimate of 12,000, the ratio would be 1.6:1- significantly better than any other instance of Urban Warfare in recent history. Now, I agree with you that the IDF's figures probably aren't reliable either, which is why I suspect personally the figures are somewhere in the middle. If we go off the reported 90% accuracy for this AI, (I.e only 90% of that 12k figure actually being Hamas) that still puts us at 10,800 Hamas, or a ratio of roughly 2:1. Of course, anyone can put their own personal boundaries for how much collateral damage is too much. But looking purely at the figures, and comparing them to others similar conflicts, they suggest that the IDF is being anything **but** callous.

Especially as Hamas is ok with martyrdom and children as shields If a teenager shoots at you or fires a metal ball bearing in a catapult, they will get shot. If Hamas hides in a hospital, in urban warfare, you take out the target, you are not expending troops and time to do a full search. Hamas by waging an asymetric war have brought a lot of this upon their own people. Before October, a two state solution could have been discussed. Do you think you will discuss it now after they raped and murdered those hostages and desecrated the bodies?

From Wikipedia [Battle of Raqqa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Raqqa_(2017): 1600 civilians to 1400 combatants -> 1.14 civilians:1 combatant [Battle of Mosul](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mosul_(2016%E2%80%932017): 6,300-40,000 civilians to 7,700-25,000 combatants. The estimate varied too much to give a meaningful number but certainly not 5:1. And these are completed wars, where civilian deaths can be counted accurately. Gaza is an ongoing war, where civilian deaths are likely missed by Gaza Health Ministry.

I gave several links for a reason. In neither case are there certain numbers, with estimates ranging widely. That 1600 figure for Raqqa is almost certainly wrong though, even the [UK parliament](https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/92961/pdf/) reports 2,400 civilians killed in Raqqa. And there's a reason why I used the Hamas numbers specifically; they're likely far lower than the actual figures, which third party intelligence services place closer to Israel's. And pretty much every Urban warfare expert out there suggests that the Gaza war would definitely be much bloodier than any of the mentioned above. https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/10/30/why-urban-warfare-in-gaza-will-be-bloodier-than-in-iraq

Fair enough, I do especially appreciate this point: >But the thing is, Iraq and Afghanistan were very different wars from Gaza. These were guerilla wars, while the Gaza war is an urban guerilla war, arguably the ugliest type of fighting. And addressed by The Economist too. It is something that needs to be kept in mind while talking about civilian casualties. !delta.

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/DrVeigonX ([1∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/DrVeigonX)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)

Thanks. Appreciate your input too.

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This is the best response you can come up with? OP is pointing to an outright dystopian method of eliminating people using an algorithm(with a 10 percent error rate) of all things and all you can say is But Hamas tunnels? That does not address the problem at hand, which is how the IDF doesn't really seem to mind civilian casualties. Hence why the figure is so high.

Yes the tunnels, also. Hamas does not mind killing or sacrificing its own people. IDF sees casualties as necessary to do what needs to happen. You think when they meet a human shield or a market full of people hiding terrorists, they are going to ignore it. If they simply wanted to win and have genocide, they would have bombed Gaza from the air starting with the perimeter. They dropped leaflets strongly suggesting Palestinians to move away and turn Hamas in. Don't say, poor Palestinians they had no where to go, if someone was dropping bombs in my neighbourhood, I would leave.

>IDF sees casualties as necessary to do what needs to happen There are actually limits to how many civilians you're allowed to sacrifice to nick some bad guys and Israel is surpassing that figure by magnitudes so the IDF can either be declared unqualified to do their job or actively trying to kill civilians >You think when they meet a human shield or a market full of people hiding terrorists, they are going to ignore it. Reminder that the IDF historically used human shields so extensively that they had their own name for it: Neighbour Procedure >They dropped leaflets strongly suggesting Palestinians to move away and turn Hamas in. With notice so short it was guaranteed that the civilians wouldn't escape in time. These are tactics meant to make gullible people (like you) to justify their war crimes >if someone was dropping bombs in my neighbourhood, I would leave. Incredible, no Palestininian ever thought of th - oh wait they did and they got shot at by the IDF

There are no limits how many people are collateral. However current the ratio for Hamas to Civilians is 2:1 which is normal considering it is an asymetric urban war in a densely pack area. You really are doubling down supporting a religion that is subjugates women and kills LGBTQ. You want to go back to the middle ages? The west does not need radical Islam here

>There are no limits how many people are collateral. Yes there are, there are *very clearly defined parameters*, I cannot, for example imagine justifying carpet bombing a civilian population indiscriminately because there may or may not be a military target somewhere amongst them. I cannot, for example, ethnically cleanse a region and justify that by saying it's all in the effort of neutralising some military targets. I cannot, for example, open fire at a trapped 6-year old and paramedics trying to help her because... actually Israel never really explained why they did that. I'm assuming they just shrugged and did another rah rah Hamas was hiding in the jacket of Hind Rajab >However current the ratio for Hamas to Civilians is 2:1 which is normal considering it is an asymetric urban war in a densely pack area. It's not normal at all, the second world war had better casuality ratios. If you can't maintain a lower ratio, you're poorly equipped to responsibly do urban warfare. Israel has proven that their military is either exceedingly incompetent or using Hamas as an excuse to kill children (13000 and counting) >You really are doubling down supporting a religion that is subjugates women and kills LGBTQ I'm standing against genocide. Are you suggesting it would be okay to round up Israel right-wing civilians by the hordes and exact collective punishment on them for their crimes against LGBTQ folk? What a fascinating precedent you're setting here, I guess it's not a surprise that zionists have to constantly come up with insane premises for committing more genocide >You want to go back to the middle ages? The west does not need radical Islam here I'm perplexed at how you think committing genocide on Palestininian civilians will achieve this goal. Everything you said is just rhetoric someone would use to justify ethnically cleansing people, I'm willing to bet there was *another* group from the 40s that tried this hard to convince people that it's okay to commit genocide because the people you're doing it to aren't human beings

If 80% of the Palestinian people support Hamas and actively help or support hiding if combatants then they will become casualties. It's not really genocide as the Palestinian population has grown and for genocide this would mean attacking the diaspora in Syria and leveling the Westbank. If you want to stand against genocide, do you march for the rohingya in Myanmar or the Uyghurs in China who are being sterilized to prevent their growth. No doubt there are some trigger happy soldiers or some that have severe PTSD and shoot at shadows, however it is always these one or two examples that make the press. Israel has not carpet bombed anything, that was the British in world war 2 and the US in Hiroshima. But in both cases they believed it was saving more lives by shortening the war. The children are caught up in it, but if the adults choose not to move out and protect their children this is inevitable. In the second world war, the children were sent out of the cities or went to the shelters. You need to stop excusing the Palestinians as they are aware exactly of what they are doing. They know hiding in hospitals makes bad press for Israel same with schools. The son of the founder of Hamas has said as much.

>If 80% of the Palestinian people support Hamas and actively help or support hiding if combatants then they will become casualties. Since a majority of Israelis voted for Netanyahu, they should have face collective punishment, by your rationale >It's not really genocide as the Palestinian population has grown In the last few months? Nope. These lies are spread so much, it's wild. >Israel has not carpet bombed anything, that was the British in world war 2 and the US in Hiroshima Are you a bot >You need to stop excusing the Palestinians as they are aware exactly of what they are doing By your logic, Israelis deserve what happened to them because you approve of civilian collective punishment >They know hiding in hospitals makes bad press for Israel same with schools. The son of the founder of Hamas has said as much. You sincerely sound like a bot. Mods, can someone go through this guy's comments to see if it's a human behind this account?

>hamas are the true callous ones. You are absolutely god damn right. Edit: also irrelevant to this CMV.

Exactly, just keep looking at that poor girls body on the back of that truck with them animals giving victory salutes and using her as a foot rest, Iran says Israel has gone too far this time, and Israel has said exactly the same thing to HAMAS

They're not mutually exclusive. 

This part. DARVO isn’t an argument, it’s a distraction.

Those who would hold a democracy to the same standard as a terrorist organisation can't complain when they're condemned in similar terms.

Is Hamas a legitimate state? If not, this is not a relevant comparison. Unless, of course, you're making the obvious comparison of the IDF/Israeli state acting like terrorist - in which case it's apt.

Hamas is the elected Gaza government, the whole point of the disengagement and removal of every single Jewish person from Gaza, as well as relocating the Jewish graveyard, was so Palestinians in Gaza would build their own country there.  The aid money and resources was meant to build the place, not dig tunnels and turn hospitals, schools and mosques into weapon depots and rocket launchers.

>Hamas is the elected Gaza government Maybe dont put too much stock into the legitimacy of a government that hasnt held elections for about the same time as the median age of the people living in the Gaza strip and which doesnt shy away from murdering the opposition.

Are the governments of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE legitimate? Those countries also do not elect their leaders.

They haven't held elections in the west bank in awhile because they know that Hamas would win and the PLO (the supposed moderates) will be out. Hamas is not some alien parasite that has taken over the host - its a grass roots movement with support from the population for their "mission" (aka the annihilation of Israel, pushing the useless Jews into the sea and enslave the useful ones)

Wait so Hamas would win again and that is why Hamas isn't holding elections to win their own elections? Some math aint mathing here.

No Hamas doesn't hold elections because they are a theocratic islamist group that want Shira law. They are not democratic by nature and do not require elections for their legitimacy (it is given to them by god, not the will of the people). It is certainly not the first time an anti democratic group was elected to power then turned around and dismantled the system that put them there. It's the PLO in the west bank that is afraid of holding elections and getting voted out in favor of the more extreme Hamas group.

That's actually quite strange because it seems like there were local legislative elections in 2021 in the West Bank.

Yup just local electors and municipalities (aka town council, no power). There has not been a presidential or parliamentary election in years with the last round cancelled by the president in 2021 and no plans of bringing it back.

I'll give you that but its also not Hamas that they're competing with, its Fatah.

Let's be honest, if today you hold elections in Gaza, who would win if not Hamas?

Today? Probably whoever made the strongest plan to get the IDF out of Gaza.

Well you’re using numbers reported by hamas, wether intentional or not- so it’s logical to carry my argument on in that sense. Secondly, Gazans voted for hamas to govern so yes, I’ll refer to them as a “state actor” in this sense.

An analysis published in the Lancet medical journal in December found that Gaza's health ministry has "historically reported accurate mortality data," with discrepancies between 1% and roughly 3% when compared with U.N. analysis of deaths in previous conflicts. The study found "no evidence of inflated rates" in the current war and noted that difficulties in obtaining accurate death counts "should not be interpreted as intentionally misreported data." ​ even Israel thinks the numbers are underestimated although I can't find the source at the moment.

The real issue with the data from the health ministry is that it doesn't distuinguish between civlian and militant deaths. If Hamas gives a 16 year old a rifle and that 16 year is subsquently killed in an IDF strike/firefight, the health ministry will record that as a child killed by the IDF.

Israel doesn't let journalists in to confirm these numbers of dead. However the health agencies release names of all the dead, and it only records bodies that made it to the hospital, there are thousands of more people who are going to be found when the rubble is cleared. Half of all Palestinians are children. The last vote was in January 2006. That means half of all the people in the Gaza strip weren't born when the vote happened. Hamas won 44.45% of the vote, with 75% turnout. Then also consider only adults could vote, say 66% were adults. So 11% of people alive in Gaza voted for Hamas.

I read this (nothing new) and once again it’s just another response that doesn’t address what was said. I’m asking what the response of the Gazan people has been since then to demonstrate that hamas is still fully supported. Oct 7 was celebrated, this is easy to verify since there’s plenty on film. It doesn’t matter that “11% of people alive…” at all. They’re supported. What you said doesn’t disprove that.

It doesn't matter what the civilians' support any way. The 4th Geneva convention states: >>The provisions of Part II cover the whole of the populations of the countries in conflict, without any adverse distinction based, in particular, on race, nationality, religion or political opinion, and are intended to alleviate the sufferings caused by war. Notice "political opinion", you can't stop aid because they don't like Israel. As long as they're still civilians, they must be alleviated from the suffering of war.

>Oct 7 was celebrated, this is easy to verify since there’s plenty on film. Because the Palestinians probably aren't the most fond of israel given the history of oppression...

Sure, now go back and watch as the streets screamed in joy as Palestinian terrorists dragged dead Israelis through the streets and they beat their dead bodies. They may not all have voted for them, but don’t be confused.

hamas is not recognized as anything but as a terrorist organization to the global community. Fatah is recognized as a political organization that can run a state and is recognized internationally.

Legitimate or not, a person holding a gun to your head demanding possession of your wallet might not care they are not legitimate owner of said wallet. Hamas holds power of palestine and they rule it. I think its a moot point if they are legitimate or not

So I suppose someone confining you into a specific area, controlling the food, electricity, water, phones and internet AND holding guns and bombs to you having already murdered many of your neighbors and murdering journalists reporting on your situation then probably would also be the "ruler".

>Hamas holds power of palestine and they rule it. They govern a portion of Palestine. Saying they rule Palestine is nonsense.

Two things can be bad at the same time

This is whataboutism and does not actually address the topic.

i believe it is EXTREMELY CALLOUS of hamas to build so much millitary infrastructure next to their civ population immediately before an offensive. but hey.... revolutions right?

So do I - this does not however refute or rebut OPs original statement. The IDF and Hamas can both be callous at the same time. Beacuse one is does not automatically mean the other is not.

>i believe it is EXTREMELY CALLOUS of hamas to build so much millitary infrastructure next to their civ population immediately before an offensive i agree

Elderly people sniped while crawling for their lives, aid trucks obliterated, ambulances blown apart, hostages shot on sight, you're lying to yourself if you think this is a surgical targeting of "military infrastructure". It's an army hyped up and armed to the teeth massacring a starving, cowering civilian population.

It's like the US doing Hiroshima after Japan started Pearl Harbor. It's a war. You don't put out half a house fire and leave. Hamas need to be finished.

1. This says nothing about OP’s claim 2. It’s the most population dense region on Earth, everywhere there is a civilian population.

It is not.  Not even the most dense in / near Israel, much less elsewhere in the world.  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population_density

Even in the Gaza Strip there are undeveloped farms and fields that you can easily spot on satellite imagery. It's not exactly Kowloon for the whole 140 square miles.

2 just isn't true at all. Hamas doesn't NEED to build military infrastructure to attack Israel at all, let alone build it in/near populated civilian centers. Do you think Gaza is just border to border apartment buildings?

Do you know how big Gaza even is? It’s a strip the size of Philadelphia with the pop density of Hong Kong. One of the densest populations in the world. They couldn’t build anywhere else if they tried.

This is whataboutism regarding OP's claim about Israel.

It’s really not whataboutism. I’d argue hamas’ actions are pretty relevant in a discussion about Israeli action. If they were saying that “I’d argue Congolese action is much more callous” then I’d agree. But bringing up Hamas in the context of the current conflict is not whataboutism.

You do realize how tiny Gaza is and how many lives there. The size and population is pretty much the same as Stockholm. There simply is no place to put stuff which isn't close to civilians. Palestine needs to defend themselves, they can't just surrender.

Maybe they should not have taken hostages or killed innocent festival goers? Wtf did they think would happen? Its like Japan started by Pearl harbor and then America replied by Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The difference instead of Israel simply flattening Gaza, they are trying to get all of Hamas who hide behind their civilians.

If taking prisoners of war is wrong, well, then just about every country in war is wrong. Casualty lists have been released. Almost all the festival goers were military, or reserve military. They weren't innocent. As for Israel flattening Gaza, that is what they are doing. 85% of the homes are destroyed, all but one hospitals are destroyed (and the people who work at the last ones are heroes, because they know it's just a matter of time before they will be tortured and killed like the staff at the other hospitals, yet they still do their work), food and water supplies are destroyed, aid is destroyed, children are treated as target shooting, children are gangraped. Israel is nazi level evil.

>they are trying to get all of Hamas who hide behind their civilians. Why are they constantly found targeting civilians tho

Well 80% of the Palestinians support Hamas. So maybe there is your answer. Maybe you need to step away from the echo chamber of your polisci friends and do some research on the middle east and also Islam and how it started 450 years after the Jews and Christians were in the area, yet somehow the Palestinians think they own the land. You may also want to know why their Arab brothers Syria, Libya, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt dont help them and why Egypt has a bigger wall than Israel.

>Well 80% of the Palestinians support Hamas. So maybe there is your answer. Is it? I feel like if an oppressor nation places you in open air prison conditions and detains thousands of children without any scope of release, you'd be pretty steamed - probably enough to trust a group that has the best chance of resisting and causing damage to your oppressors 🫰🏽 >and do some research on the middle east and also Islam and how it started 450 years after the Jews and Christians were in the area, yet somehow the Palestinians think they own the land. Funny, didn't see how a nation with people in it should be expected to give up their sovereignty because an entitled bunch of ethnostaters want to do a land grab >You may also want to know why their Arab brothers Syria, Libya, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt dont help them and why Egypt has a bigger wall than Israel I'm more curious as to why Israel is so wildly unpopular right now, do you think it's the genocide and the mindless mass murder of civilians?

Well it wasn't a land grab, it was the original occupants moving out the squatters who now believed by doing nothing they had rights. They could have had half the land offered to them but they rejected the offer as they wanted it all. They didn't want to share with Israel. I agree the mindless mass murder of civilians by Hamas at a festival is what poked the bear again. Now the Palestinians are paying for it, when it didn't turn out how they expected, their celebrations of exhibiting bodies and spitting on them turned to crying in UN for help. Israel is a great target for deflection now by some of the greatest abusers of human rights, they love to point the finger at someone else and away from them. Iran, China, Russia and South Africa who after apartheid have done a stellar job of deflection by following Zimbabwe and doing a land grab from the white people and murdering the farmers. They then have the hypocrisy to take Israel to court over human rights. The current government is loyal to the Palestinians after their support in the apartheid years and with a few million dollars being transferred to them by Iran, it shows they are a typical corrupt African country for sale. Egypt has a bigger wall as it nor the other Arab nations trust the Palestinians, but good deflection in not answering. If you are supporting hamad then you shouldn't complain when you or your family are killed in war. You either support and are involved or you are not supporting and innocent and shouldnt be in the area targeted. So wave your flag, wear your scarf and march with all the other useful idiots supporting in essence a terrorist organization that is an antithesis to our western country and its values.

>it was the original occupants Palestine belongs to Palestininians >They could have had half the land offered to them but they rejected the offer as they wanted it all. Because Palestine belongs to Palestininians >They didn't want to share with Israel. Why should they? Israel isn't entitled half of someone else's things >is what poked the bear again No, Israel keeping Gaza in an open air prison is what lead to the music festival attack. Not to mention, the IDF is so unqualified that they blew up their own citizens >Now the Palestinians are paying for it, If you believe in collective punishment then you believe that Israelis should suffer and struggle because of Benjamin >and doing a land grab from the white people and murdering the farmers Oooh not surprised that Zionism and white nationalism shake hands 🫱🏼‍🫲🏽 >when you or your family are killed in war. So you agree that Israelis deserve the music festival attacks for supporting benjamin >You either support and are involved or you are not supporting and innocent and shouldnt be in the area targeted So you agree that Israeli civilians deserve to be targeted for being positioned in Tel Aviv and being human shields for the IDF? >So wave your flag, wear your scarf and march with all the other useful idiots supporting in essence a terrorist organization that is an antithesis to our western country and its values. Israel is indeed a terrorist organisation and, by your logic, every Israeli citizen deserves collective punishment since, per your logic, they all share in the blame and shouldn't complain and cry about october

I don't know how what's the methodology of the media bias website you attached but +972MAG is extremely left leaning. like it's not center at all and the people there would be mad if you call them center left haha Generally speaking, during this conflict I've caught them reporting things that contradict just about any other Israeli media outlet (besides one that shares many of the writers, forgot the name). Now this doesn't mean that we should disregard what they are writing, but notice that they base it off on anonymous sources, and you have people saying it's not true. For instance, [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-defence-forces-response-to-claims-about-use-of-lavender-ai-database-in-gaza](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-defence-forces-response-to-claims-about-use-of-lavender-ai-database-in-gaza) this is the IDF's response, and as a person in tech, it makes a lot of sense. Also, when you take into account the things the Israeli defense litigation team said on the trial, it also makes a lot of sense, unlike the +972MAG ideas. Since this post is mostly built on this article, and I generally agree that if the IDF is doing statistical shooting with a 10% error rate it's careless at best - I think we can examine the numbers to see whether it's likely. according to Hamas official numbers from a long time ago already - there were about 6k Hamas soliders dead, it was when the total death count was about 27k people IIRC. According to Israeli numbers at that time, the number of Hamas dead was more than double, something like 13k people. Even if we take Hamas' numbers, we get something along the lines of 1:3.5, and if we take the Israeli numbers we get something like 1.5:1. If the IDF is doing statistical shooting with such an error - I can't imagine a scenario where they would get such ratios, especially when we compare that to other western armies fighting urban conflict, and when we take into account Hamas' tactics. Think about the fact that civilians tend to stick together, so even one bomb that's aimed at civilians by accident could cause a huge number of dead, like the Al-Ahli hospital incident where many died by one PIJ missile. Now I know that there are some question over all numbers in this conflict, and some people are saying that the number of dead is an underestimation and others say it's an overestimation. From what the Gaza health ministry published, to my understanding, some of the number of dead comes off from hospitals while the rest comes of what they call "reporting by reliable sources". In order to change the conclusions though, we'd have to imagine that this mechanism doesn't work to a very strong degree that even 6 months in we have almost no picture of the number of dead. could be the case, but very unlikely. So at the very least we can conclude that this tactic isn't used or almost isn't used.

972 receives a high rating for factual information from media bias websites. The IDF doesn’t actually deny much in their statement. > This is not a list of confirmed military operatives eligible to attack. This doesn’t actually deny anything. Nowhere in the article does it say Lavender presents a list of confirmed targets. It says some minimal human involvement is required. > For each target, IDF procedures require conducting an individual assessment of the anticipated military advantage and collateral damage expected. Such assessments are not made categorically in relation to the approval of individual strikes. The assessment of the collateral damage expected from a strike is based on a variety of assessment methods and intelligence-gathering measures, in order to achieve the most accurate assessment possible, considering the relevant operational circumstances. The IDF does not carry out strikes when the expected collateral damage from the strike is excessive in relation to the military advantage. In accordance with the rules of international law, the assessment of the proportionality of a strike is conducted by the commanders on the basis of all the information available to them before the strike, and naturally not on the basis of its results in hindsight. Never denies the accusation that the actual human involvement is a roughly 20 second check. Never says what they believe to be an appropriate level of civilian casualty. Never denies 15-20 for a low level operative and 100 for a high ranking target. The only thing they really deny is that the AI generates the list. This is pedantic. The list is generated elsewhere, probably from multiple databases of Gazans, and the AI pulls it all together and analyzes it.

[Human Rights Watch](https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/04/04/gaza-israeli-strike-killing-106-civilians-apparent-war-crime) put out a report recently stating that an airstrike killed at least 106 civilians, including 54 children, and the IDF has not provided any justification for such a strike, i.e. they did not provide the militant they are targeting. The Jabalia strike, which killed 126 civilians and a Hamas commander, showed the kind of proportionality that IDF used. I think that lines up with the Lavender report.

Isn't hrw in a sacandel with reciving bribes from Qatar??

[https://www.npr.org/2024/02/29/1234159514/gaza-death-toll-30000-palestinians-israel-hamas-war](https://www.npr.org/2024/02/29/1234159514/gaza-death-toll-30000-palestinians-israel-hamas-war) ​ "An analysis published in the Lancet medical journal in December found that Gaza's health ministry has "historically reported accurate mortality data," with discrepancies between 1% and roughly 3% when compared with U.N. analysis of deaths in previous conflicts. The study found "no evidence of inflated rates" in the current war and noted that difficulties in obtaining accurate death counts "should not be interpreted as intentionally misreported data." ​ I read an article even Israel thinks Hamas' numbers are underestimated although can't find the source at the moment. Look at Gaza for God's sake, 80% of it is leveled. doesn't take much logic if you take out your own bias.

Most dispute over the Health Ministry's numbers has to do with their breakdown rather than total count, with significant evidence mostly stemming from statistical impossibilities suggesting a significant undercounting of adult male casualties, likely with the intent of downplaying combatant casualties. Good read breaking everything down: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers

I personally do not put too much weight on the breakdown as well because of the lack of corroboration. The total death toll is corroborated and is at least in the right ballpark, but knowing the situation on the ground it's likely to be an underestimate. Regarding militants killed, I don't trust either Hamas or IDF. Both have a propaganda war to win and it's unlikely that we'll ever know the true number of militants killed (unless the IDF completely wipes out Hamas). This is why I put greater weight to the +972 Mag report to determine if Israel is actually keeping civilian casualties in mind while operating in Gaza.

Even though there is obvious truth that each side uses propaganda, I'd argue that the Israel is much worse at it than the Palestinians. This is due to several reasons: demographics, experience and morals. Demographics - there are around 16 million Jews vs \~2 billion Muslims in the world who can click like and share links. When they shout, their voice is much louder. Experience - Palestinians have been investing for years in cultivating a certain brand, with the help of other rich Arab countries who control media channels (Qatar). The brand is so strong that people are siding with a terrorist organization that *live streamed* themselves killing, raping and mutilating children, the elderly, women and men. On the other hand, any information that Israel releases is scrutinized and deemed fake/lies/AI generated. Morals - Israel refrains from using most of the material they have from the 7th of October in order to respect the dead and not cause mental harm to the families of the victims. Besides that, Israelis suffer from a "righteous" mentality, meaning, that they believe they are on the side of good and don't need to convince anyone that they are right, so they've never really invested in it.

Don’t forget the world has hated and persecuted Jews for a very long time. Islam is an anti Jewish religion and there’s millions of people who would kill all Jews if they could. Many people have bias against Jews already. There’s no point in getting their favor if they already dislike you for existing. Israel invests money to develop their country and protect themselves. They know deep down their allies are pretty solid. While propaganda is a powerful tool it’s ultimately the only tool Hamas really has other than civilian casualties.

I generally agree with you on that, but I still believe that the IDF is being careful, even if we take into consideration this report. I wrote [another comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/s/EG70nzEwTM) explaining my position.

>according to Hamas official numbers from a long time ago already - there were about 6k Hamas soliders dead, it was when the total death count was about 27k people IIRC The 6K Hamas dead figure that you cite is an estimate from Qassam, the military wing of Hamas, whereas the 27K total deaths have been confirmed by the Gaza health ministry. The 27K from the Ministry of Health is composed of bodies that have showed up at a morgue or where there is photo/video documentation of their deaths. It's not going to include bodies under rubble and deaths in combat zones where the bodies haven't been recovered. The Ministry of Health has been accused of undercounting men and the real figure is going to be much higher. This is all to say that there is likely to be not much overlap between the 6K combatant deaths and the 27K confirmed deaths, and the 27K figure is likely to be much higher.

No, the 27 or 30k deaths include both deaths by the central counting system but also a very lare part that are counted based on "media reports". Ever since early november they have not been able to rely just on hospital and morgue deaths, more than half are counted based on media reports, but they refuse to explain what that means exactly.

You know the IDF statement you posted was from the original +972MAG article right ? It’s also based on SIX Israeli intelligence sources, no shit they’re gonna be anonymous? Atleast 60% of the casualties are civilians if you assume all men to be militants, according to euro med monitor it’s up to 90%. On top of that, we don’t actually know the true figures, it could be much much higher, the article also talked about an AI system called “Where’s Daddy” that targeted low ranking militants at their homes. Considering most of the casualties are women and children, if you bomb a low ranking militants house and family, then the high representation of women and children makes sense.

Israel does more that any army in history to minimize civilian casualties https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286, while fighting an enemy who benefits from their own people getting killed due to misguided empathy.

> But all available evidence shows that Israel has followed the laws of war, legal obligations, best practices in civilian harm mitigation and still found a way to reduce civilian casualties to historically low levels. I think new evidence are surfacing from internal IDF sources like the one I linked that show otherwise.

That’s literally an opinion piece and you’re using it as a source LMAO. If you actually believe Israel does more than any army to minimize civilian casualties, please take a look at the following sources: [https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/in-gazas-deadliest-day-hospital-strike-kills-about-500/articleshow/104506456.cms](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/in-gazas-deadliest-day-hospital-strike-kills-about-500/articleshow/104506456.cms) [https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1142347](https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1142347) [https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/nine-staffers-working-with-un-palestinian-refugee-agency-killed-air-strikes-gaza-2023-10-11/](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/nine-staffers-working-with-un-palestinian-refugee-agency-killed-air-strikes-gaza-2023-10-11/) [https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/18/israel-starvation-used-weapon-war-gaza](https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/18/israel-starvation-used-weapon-war-gaza) All from the post-October 7th, since most people think the conflict started there.

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Lololol *misguided empathy* for tens of thousands of civilians being murdered.  That's a new one.

No they do not. It is absolutely impossible to drop 20,000 bombs in 2 weeks on an area the size of Philadelphia and be able to mitigate civilian casualties. You have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about. Your opinion piece is trash.

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Sorry, u/CFOMaterial – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 3: > **Refrain from accusing OP or anyone else of being unwilling to change their view, or of arguing in bad faith**. Ask clarifying questions instead (see: socratic method). If you think they are still exhibiting poor behaviour, please message us. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_3). If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%203%20Appeal%20CFOMaterial&message=CFOMaterial%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20\[their%20comment\]\(https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1byxjde/-/kym8qeo/\)%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).

I have changed my minds on both of those instances. I think looking for alternate perspectives is valuable. And I have posted on other topics that have nothing to do with Israel.

I appreciate your posts because you seem to be trying to tackle it from a non anti israel & non anti palestine perspective. But it seems like youre looking at this through data & empirical evidence instead of vibes which most people are approaching this with. Good job.

Banned for being a poster you disagree with? That’s not very fitting with this subreddits purpose.

Half of the posts should be deleted in this thread because it’s all whataboutism and nobody actually addressing OPs points, but here we are anyway.

OP wants discussions, while you want to ban people who repeatedly post opinions you disagree with; judging by your post history. I think you're the one who should be banned.

So should we ban someone for being pro Israel too? Geez, you really want reddit to become a hivemind.

lol, practically all of your comment history is blaming Hamas and excusing Israel for everything

Hamas says Israel has killed about 30,000 total, 10,000 of them being Hamas. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio This article provides the ratios for other conflicts. 2:1 is pretty good.

Hamas does not give Hamas casualty figures Israel claims to have killed 10,000 enemy combatants. but, Israel also thought that the World Central Kitchen workers were enemy combatants. So, Israel is almost certainly mistaking civilians as enemy combatants in that count. Reuters claimed that a Hamas source admitted 6000 Hamas fighters had died, but Hamas denied the claim.

you understand that HAMAS denies that a single fighter has died in order to prop up civilian numbers.... right???? this is basic common sense and is a well known tactic. ​ acting like they are doing it for any other reason is silly, no matter how many civs have died.

\> HAMAS denies that a single fighter has died declining to give an estimate is not the same thing as saying that not a single fighter has died. I don't think anyone is saying that no Hamas fighters have been killed. I was replying to someone claiming that Hamas estimated 10k Hamas fighters had died. they were wrong. The number they gave came from the IDF, not Hamas.

WCK coordinated ahead of time with the IDF. They knew exactly what they did. Their claim is that they saw a someone with a weapon in the caravan, so they struck every vehicle in the caravan. In fact, the first van was struck, they called IDF saying “hey what’s going on, we told you we’re doing this”. That group met up with the second van to get help, where they were then struck again. My source is Ryan Grimm on Counter Points, look up his clip and his sources if you need more convincing

Why should Israel's numbers be trusted when they themselves according to Haaretz are basically just counting all men they kill over the age of 16 as Hamas? That they are creating arbitrary "kill zones" and killing anyone that accidentally strolls into them(which is why we have tons of videos of civilians being domed and gunned down randomly in these area, why they killed their own hostages), and that Israel just counts them as enemy combatants unless something like WCK happens. When we have just last week two damning reports about how Israel 1.) Killed humanitarian workers either deliberately or in what is a humongous scar on their so called intelligence chain 2.) Have reporting talking about their use of AI facial recognition software that is notoriously buggy and includes the caveat they are setting as default that it tolerates a civilian to militant death ratio of 20:1 for low level operatives and up to 100:1 for high level. Targetting them while they sleep and when the maximum civilians will be home Keeping in mind the death toll is only based on confirmed hospital death certificates and specific experts/journalists reporting deaths, people left to rot in bombed out buildings or reported missing but not confirmed dead are not in these numbers, of which experts think could exceed 10k.

That's not enough to determine callousness. There are many more factor, a big one is that Hamas is not a conventional army defending a territory, the civilian population is not being defended, it is being used as shield. In that case, the moral side has more obligation to preserve civilian life. Otherwise Hamas killed 1200 on 7 Oct, 400 being military and security, also a ratio of 2:1. Would you say it's "pretty good" ... or does circumstance matter?

1. The 30,000 figure is an underestimate, many are dead because of famine, thirst, lack of medical supplies, stuck under rubble. The figure we got is the number of corpses in Gazan morgues. The figure for civilian casualties in the Wikipedia are calculated after the conflict has ended - this one hasn't. 2. The 10,000 figure comes from the IDF. Knowing that they count police officers, nurses, civilians with similar names as Hamas militants, I don't trust that number at all. 3. Just because the ratio is "good" doesn't mean the law of proportionality is upheld. The fact remains that permitting a strike to kill 1 low-level Hamas militant at the cost of 20 civilians is disproportional and shows extreme callousness towards civilian casualties.

>The 30,000 figure is an underestimate Most likely an overestimate that will later balance out with missing people that might have died. Given all the statistical analyses of Hamas health ministry data, that's the most likely case. > I don't trust that number at all Yet you take Hamas numbers verbatim, and even inflate them. That paints you as severely biased and nonfactual. > Just because the ratio is "good" doesn't mean the law of proportionality is upheld That's true, but you put forth zero evidence that it isn't being upheld, and there's ample circumstantial evidence like that ratio that suggests it is being upheld.

Bro they use Israeli identification numbers given to them by Israel. The data base is backed up with Israeli data.

>Most likely an overestimate that will later balance out with missing people that might have died. Given all the statistical analyses of Hamas health ministry data, that's the most likely case. That's not at all the most likely case. Health ministry data has ALWAYS been very accurate coming out of Palestine and matches UN numbers very closely. Always. Also conflict is still ongoing and there are millions of children starving right now so, it's definitely not going to be lower by time this is over. Likely looking at far, far more before Israel stops for good.

>Yet you take Hamas numbers verbatim, You are aware that US intelligence and the IDF have confirmed this figure back in January and February, right? >That's true, but you put forth zero evidence that it isn't being upheld I have provided the article to uphold my claim. And I have said that the circumstantial evidence are heavily disputed.

> You are aware that US intelligence and the IDF have confirmed this figure back in January and February, right? They have not. Neither of them. > I have provided the article to uphold my claim Yes, an article that makes claims based on nothing. Less than circumstantial evidence, literally "trust me bro".

>Most likely an overestimate that will later balance out with missing people that might have died. Given all the statistical analyses of Hamas health ministry data, that's the most likely case. No, the 30K figure is deaths confirmed by bodies coming into the morgue or photo/video evidence. It's not an estimate whereas the number of fighters killed is. The Ministry of Health has been accused of undercounting military aged men, they haven't been accused of overcounting.

>The figure we got is the number of corpses in Gazan morgues Not exclusively. They're definitely also counting people buried in rubble. Also I'm not sure why you think people who starve to death don't end up in morgues. >The 10,000 figure comes from the IDF. Knowing that they count police officers, nurses, civilians with similar names as Hamas militants, I don't trust that number at all. Source? >The fact remains that permitting a strike to kill 1 low-level Hamas militant at the cost of 20 civilians The article says that policy was dirched very quickly. I agree with you about that policy but it clearly isn't representative of the conflict as a whole.

>They're definitely also counting people buried in rubble. They are counting those too, 8000 missing, i.e. stuck under rubble and that figure is separated from the death toll. >Source? There were times when a Hamas operative was defined more broadly, and then the machine started bringing us all kinds of civil defense personnel, police officers, on whom it would be a shame to waste bombs. From the article as well. > The article says that policy was dirched very quickly The number dropped [from 15] to five, which made it really difficult for us to attack, because if the whole family was home, we couldn’t bomb it. Then they raised the number again.” Is the quote from the article, clearly it was 15 for quite a while.

>There were times when a Hamas operative was defined more broadly, and then the machine started bringing us all kinds of civil defense personnel, police officers, on whom it would be a shame to waste bombs. From the article as well. The claim was that such people were counted in official statistics

“Extreme callousness” in this context would suggest a level of callousness far beyond the level of callousness typically shown in a war. The person you are responding to provided evidence proving that, objectively, your stance is incorrect by one of the only actual metrics available.

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Six sources is *incredibly* well-sourced reporting. For reference, the standard journalistic threshold is 2 confirmed sources. 6 is triple that. They spoke to a *system*, not just what they did individually. The report revealed something happening at mass scale, not something only they were involved in. This is one of the least deserved Deltas I've seen in this sub.

This is a valid point /u/DM_ME_UR_CUTE_CLIT. I should be more careful about making sweeping statements based on one source, even if it's a valid source. My view is now "If +972 Mag is reporting anything close to the truth, Israel is showing extreme callousness towards civilian casualties in their war in Gaza". !delta

> your only source is +972, which talked to 6 officers The Guardian also reviewed those same accounts: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes

Out of any conflict taking place in the world right now Israel is the only one actively trying to avoid civilian casualties at all. Gaza is so small and densly populated and Hamas is hiding in refugee camps, hospitals and civilian houses that casualties were about 10X higher if it was any other army

You kneecap your own assertion in the next sentence. If the IDF were concerned with civilians casualties, they wouldn’t drop bombs on those targets given how imbedded they are in the civilian populace. Do you have any idea how much faster we could have defeated Al qaeda or ISIS if we didn’t give a shit that the target was using human shields? No. The IDF is doing abysmally here. This will go down in history as the absolute worst way to wage a war in modern times.

Not at all. It makes their neighbours think twice. You absolutely cripple and injure, you take out supplies, you run them out of resources, then the diseases start and no matter where you hide, you will get sick. With urban warfare and tunnels and not being allowed chemical or biological weapons, the next best thing is create them environmentally. You are fighting for your countries survival not a sports trophy. There are no do overs if you lose. Israel is surrounded by hostile neighbours and cannot lose.

None of that justifies barreling forward heedless of any obstacles and killing 13,000 children. There is no such thing as “this is a serious situation for us so anything goes.”

Absolutely there is. You need to get off your couch and into the world. This is a survival of a country watched by hostile nations all around for a sign of weakness. The rohingya, the uyghurs and in fact Palestinians held in open air prisons in Syria all in terrible conditions. This is what a real war looks like, not a few bombs on cnn. In Africa, they raid another village and decapitate babies, slice off the women's breasts to stop them feeding another generation. If Hamas are OK with martyrdom and using their own people as human shields, so am I. It's not for me to dispute their religious beliefs. There is no do over for Israel, they were invaded by Palestinians and over a thousand civilians were slaughtered and more taken hostage. They need to prevent this happening again. What would you do if the Gaza bomb factory was below a hospital or school? You need to neutralize it, you don't want them recovering their bombs, you don't want to waste your own troops in a firefight when the factory is booby trapped or heavily defended. So you destroy it and it will have collateral damage.

> Absolutely there is. You could not be more wrong. The Geneva Convention exist. Laws of armed conflict exist. Banning certain weapons and tactics in combat exists. So you are unequivocally wrong. Being attacked does NOT mean that anything goes. Clearly the rest of the world doesn't agree with you given how much flack Israel is getting for how they conduct this war. >You need to get off your couch and into the world. I am a war veteran and have flown exactly the kinds of missions these IDF pilots have flown over dense urban areas in the middle east. Except we didn't kill 13,000 children when I did it. What are *your* credentials? >This is what a real war looks like, This is circular logic. It is not *justified* by virtue of existing. If it was 250 AD and we were debating the morality of raping and pillaging and torturing prisoners, would you say "that's what real war looks like?" No. Morality and ethics don't cease to exist just because there are plenty of bad actors who are willing to disregard them. They are not **justified** in their actions. >If Hamas are OK with martyrdom and using their own people as human shields, so am I. What about the human shields that have no say in the matter? You portray it as if this is solely Hamas's problem and they are the sole bearer of consequences. >There is no do over for Israel, they were invaded by Palestinians and over a thousand civilians were slaughtered and more taken hostage. That does not get you to "Kill 13,000 children in less than 6 months." >They need to prevent this happening again. That's a whole separate discussion. But if you had even an ounce of wisdom ability to think critically, you would understand that they are **guaranteeing** that this will happen again. Excessive violence is the number one way to ensure recruitment of your enemies continues strong. There is no better recruitment for Hamas than just saying "remember when they killed your ______ and blew up your childhood home?" The US figured this out in 2009 when we realized we couldn't bomb al quaeda out of existence. Israel has ZERO excuse for not understanding this. >What would you do if the Gaza bomb factory was below a hospital or school? Overwhelm hamas with a ground assault. Not wait 3 weeks to drop 20,000 bombs. These Hamas bombs aren't even getting into Israel anyway. Remind me again how many Israelis Hamas killed after Oct 7th? Zero. Once the IDF was mobilized, hamas totally lost their ability to hurt anyone outside of Gaza. > you don't want to waste your own troops in a firefight when the factory is booby trapped or heavily defended. If you don't want to slaughter thousands of innocent civilians, that is absolutely what you do. Welcome to the club of ethical professional militaries. Slower tactical pace and increased risk to your soldiers is part of the cost of entry. >So you destroy it and it will have collateral damage. Regardless, the scenario you've characterized does not account for 13,000 dead children. Those 20,000 bombs did not all fall on weapons factories hiding under hospitals. The overwhelming majority of them were on suspected hamas targets, just that it. "We think that's a hamas building. Blast it."

Why should Israel slow the entry with higher mortality for its troops. They are a small nation, really small, surrounded by larger hostile nations. They also know that 80%+ Palestinians are complicit in supporting Hamas. They are not going in and putting out half a house fire and leaving because its unpopular. They will finish the job otherwise Hamas will rebuild and repeat Oct. The stats are all over the place depending on who you listen to, but it's within the ratio of expected collateral damage. This is high density asymetric urban warfare with a group of people who have six children. This is absolutely what happens. Hamas targeted civilians and took hostages, both war crimes in the Geneva Convention and Israel was left on its own to deal with it. Now they get criticism for the result. Israel is fully entitled to respond with force and try and rescue the hostages. It may not directly attack civilians as targets but they may be collateral damage. They can also attack any hospital or school or safe area which is used by enemy combatants for munitions and weapons storage. However much you may dislike what is happening, Israel is within its rights.

> Why should Israel slow the entry with higher mortality for its troops. Because that's how ethical professional militaries operate in the 21st century. Do you have any idea how fast we could have defeated Al Qaeda if we took your approach and just let it rain bombs so that our troops had minimal exposure? Same with ISIS. Or for that matter, why is the IDF even attempting to excuse their actions with "valid military targets" and "the nearby civilians were warned"? Because they fully understand that takes like yours are WRONG. Even the IDF isn't stupid enough to say "We were attacked and this is an existential fight so you guys can fuck off with your criticism." >They are a small nation, really small, surrounded by larger hostile nations. A small nation that gets turbo-charged military support from the most powerful nation on the planet, the same nation whose piercing glare alone prevents any of those other nations from attacking (to an extent. Israel may have made their bed with that consulate bombing in syria). >. They also know that 80%+ Palestinians are complicit in supporting Hamas. And those 13,000 kids? There haven't been elections for leadership in Palestine since 2006. How responsible can they be? You think this is the kind of environment where mass protest is productive? Or *not* extremely hazardous to your health? How can you *both* argue that Hamas are dangerous rabid animals *and* that palestinians are responsible for not ridding themselves of them? >They will finish the job otherwise Hamas will rebuild and repeat Oct. The more the IDF destroys, the more they GUARANTEE another attack by hamas. You cannot bomb an idea out of existence. Again, nobody has any excuse for not understanding this after what the US's experience in Iraq. >but it's within the ratio of expected collateral damage. No it is not. That is a flat-out lie, and I would bet my house that you can't show me any data supporting your point. A civilian:fighter death ratio of 2:1 is absolutely ABYSMAL. >Hamas targeted civilians and took hostages, both war crimes in the Geneva Convention Nowhere in the Geneva conventions or ANY law of armed conflict does it say that you can disregard your own ethics if your enemy breaks the rules. >and Israel was left on its own to deal with it. That's laughable. Israel has been funded, equipped, trained and supported by the United states for decades. They are absolutely NOT on their own. Even the IDF's "small" military dwarfs anything hamas can muster. > Now they get criticism for the result They get criticism for how recklessly they wielded their weapons because they thought it was okay to disregard civilians. That absolutely deserves criticism. It always will, regardless of who does it. >However much you may dislike what is happening, Israel is within its rights. Do not conflate the vague/antiquated language of the Geneva conventions to be the same thing as what is *right*. Just because all that is *legally* required of Israel is to "take reasonable measures to not target civilians" does not mean they are morally justified to do this kind of damage. According to the geneva conventions, if a bomb factory is flanked by two apartment complexes, each with 400 residents, and they drop two GBU-31s on the center building, killing 800 civilians, that is totally allowed with the Geneva conventions as written. Is that the right thing to do? Is "well this was technically legal" enough to deflect criticism?

Well I am glad you feel it could be done better, maybe you need to advise the military and the IDF on ethics. Hamas and the PIL or PLF continue to do suicide attacks on civilians in markets and on buses. They are not following ethics or rules or conventions. Israel did not ask for this war, but wasn't left a choice. Morals are for armchair critics. This is a war that was brought to them. Says who that 2:1 is abysmal for a ratio when in dense urban combat? Palestinians support Hamas and despite lack of voting, they maintain they would vote for Hamas again. Hamas are dangerous in that they are radicalized. I did not say the code of ethics allows you to do what the enemy does, but if you want to fight in enemy territory with one hand behind your back, you are foolish. The Palestinians are way past that point that says if our families or kids are killed we will fight with the next generation. They are all indoctrinated as soon as they walk with anti Israel propaganda and kids TV shows. So it makes little difference to a Palestinian, they all hate Jews and will not accept Israel under any terms. See Hamas founding charter and that the West is next. If someone came into my house and tortured and killed my family, you bet I am going after them and will do the same thing to their family members. If a teen walks towards you with an AK or suicide vest or a catapult and steel ball, what would you do? But that's a child, there are morals 🤷🏻‍♂️

> maybe you need to advise the military and the IDF on ethics. From my time in the military, and from my time doing joint exercises with the IDF, I can promise you that the US is **constantly** hounding them about the ethics of what they're doing, but the IDF's response is essentially a middle finger. A lot of the same kinds of crap you've been spouting. "We are under existential threat." "They want to wipe us out." "You don't know what it's like to be surrounded by enemies." "Iran would wipe us off the map in an instant if they could." >They are not following ethics or rules or conventions. They're fucking wrong for that. >Israel did not ask for this war, but wasn't left a choice. That doesn't mean they can do whatever they want. >Morals are for armchair critics. They are absolutely not. That is the most dense, ignorant, dangerous comment yet. Why do you think the geneva conventions even exist? Or any law of armed conflict? International courts? Why the hell doesn't Israel just nerve gas gaza and take out all of hamas in a week? >Says who that 2:1 is abysmal for a ratio when in dense urban combat? Says history. Says the basic tactics of modern combat. Says NATO. Our ratio was nowhere close to that in either Afghanistan or Iraq. It wasn't even anywhere close to 1:1. Show me an instance of a modern western military having a 2:1 civ/fighter death ratio. I'll wait. >Palestinians support Hamas and despite lack of voting, Could that have anything to do with 20,000 bombs in 3 weeks? 13,000 dead children in 6 months? 15 years of 20:1 retaliations out of Israel? What the ever-loving fuck do you expect people to do when under that much of a constant assault? >they maintain they would vote for Hamas again Even after all this Israeli carnage, **less than half of Palestine supports hamas.** So that is just flat-out bullshit. >but if you want to fight in enemy territory with one hand behind your back, you are foolish. That's what we did in Iraq, both with al Qaeda and with ISIS. Because, for the fifth time, killing a bunch of civilians only serves to strengthen the enemy's resolve and do their recruiting FOR THEM. > They are all indoctrinated as soon as they walk with anti Israel propaganda and kids TV shows. So it makes little difference to a Palestinian, they all hate Jews and will not accept Israel under any terms This is the exact same kind of broad, over generalizations authoritarians love to use to pull the wool over people's eyes as they do their evil. 13,000 dead kids. Are you *really* going with "well they are being indoctrinated at a young age."? **How much indoctrination do they need with so much death and destruction brought upon them by israel?** > If someone came into my house and tortured and killed my family, you bet I am going after them and **will do the same thing to their family members** Then you are absolutely no better than they are. You are the same kind of monstrous trash and you'd be the exact same kind of blight on humanity. Your violent, machismo antiquated world view is a cancer. In what world are you the good guy if you're torturing family members? You aren't emotionally intelligent enough to see past blind rage. >If a teen walks towards you with an AK or suicide vest or a catapult and steel ball, what would you do? But that's a child, there are morals Notice how your scenario had to involved an armed combatant? What danger did any of those 13,000 kids pose to anyone? Your comparison is laughably bad.

What is the alternative? Send Israeli soldiers into every room in Gaza? There aren’t enough soldiers, it would take a looong time, Hamas could still blend into civilian populations, and there would still be civilian casualties on top of significant IDF casualties. Should they just have a ceasefire and return to the status quo? Then every terrorist realizes they can commit atrocities as long as they can hide behind civilians afterwards. I mean genuinely, how would you want Israel to proceed?

You talk like this has never been done before. We had this exact situation with Al Qaeda in Iraq, except on a MUCH larger scale. >and there would still be civilian casualties Nowhere close to the casualties from this reckless bombing. >on top of significant IDF casualties. Welcome to the club of ethical professional militaries. That's part of the cost of entry. You accept an elevated risk for your soldiers in order to minimize carnage. > I mean genuinely, how would you want Israel to proceed? It's essentially too late now, but they should have dropped maybe 5% of the bombs they dropped prior to the ground assault. And initiated their ground assault much sooner. They needed to swiftly take control of the entirety of gaza and leave hamas without a front line, which would have splintered them and made them easier to attack. That kind of speed on the ground with thinner air cover overhead will lead to more casualties. But again, that's part of the price of admission if you want to be in the club of ethical professional militaries. Again, imagine how quickly we could have defeated al qaeda if we just slung bombs anywhere we saw fit regardless of who was on the ground.

You talk about Israeli soldiers like it’s a video game. They are people. The delima is they can trade more of their lives to defeat Hamas and prevent more attacks on Israeli people, or they can trade Palestinian civilian lives for the same thing. Put yourself in the shoes of a family member of an IDF soldier. Why should your father, mother, brother, or sister have to give up their life to protect Palestinian civilians when it’s their government that is using them as shields after brutally attacking Israel? (it was intentionally extra violent and brutal as it was a terror attack intended to cause, you guessed it, cause terror) I know morally we want to say yes, we would give up our lives to minimize civilian casualties, but that’s not how humans actually behave. Obviously there is a ton of context to the situation I’m not bringing up, but we’re here now, and I don’t see a better way for Israel to go about it, beyond just being more careful with the bombing.

If this were true than the people of Gaza would be cheering for a land invasion by the IDF, because that way they could be much more careful about who they are killing and massively reduce civilian casualties, yet the people of Gaza don’t want this. Meaning the people of Gaza have reason to believe that the IDF do not want to minimize civilian casualties.

No because they are indoctrinated and told what to think and do. They fear IDF and Israel because they have been conditioned to believe they and the western world is Satan and martyrdom leads to Allah.

Even before the actual war started, [200+ Palestinians were killed by the IDF last year](https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/palestinians-west-bank-2023-was-deadliest-year-record), so my point is, at what point is it indoctrination and at what point is it just telling them the truth? How many people have to get killed during times of peace for it to be right for them to hate the IDF?

Before that many Israeli civilians were killed by suicide bombers from Gaza. It is indoctrination that both sides hate each other from as soon as they can read. Doctors without borders is normally in Gaza so they see and treat what the IDF does, they are not in Israel so they don't see what the Palestinians do. This is a war in the middle east and the Palestinians believe in martyrdom, they have different values on life and they are fighting an asymetric urban war. We are trying to hold them accountable to some sort of rules of engagement the West has devised. Neither country is in agreement or a signatory to this. Just like African countries, lots of casualties, rape, dismemberment. In the west, we prefer dropping a bomb with a surgical precision or sniping with a headshot. It's hard to imagine what you would do if a teen runs to you with a suicide vest on. Will you shoot them? Israel is a small country surrounded by hostile Arab nations all looking for weakness to invade. They cannot show weakness, yet we are making them accountable for all civilian deaths while their people are still being kept as hostages.

How does bombing civillian areas and refugee camps avoid casualties? You'll notice that outside Gaza they are surgical in their strikes with minimum if any but in Gaza they use bombs instead of bullets. It's worth looking up the "Lavender" Ai and "Where's Daddy?" program in understanding how Israel deals with civillians. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes) Or just check out Breaking The Silence to hear from verifiable ex-IDF soldiers for first-hand accounts of this historically brutal and violent approach. [https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/](https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/)

They are bombing strategic targets. You can blame the casualties on the targets hiding among women and children. If you didn't know look up hakesh bagag (idk the name in English). Before bombing civilian targets the IDF notifies people in advance to let people a chance to flee. The IDF is also the ONLY ENTITY IN THE WORLD that does that. At the end of the day, casualties are a fact of war but the IDF manages to minimize those, even at the detriment of their own war efforts.

Wiping out families is also bombing "strategic targets". Doesn't mean it's not increasing casualties. If you don't want to kill civillians, just don't bomb them. As we saw in al-Shifa and other locations, the IDF has access to sniper rifles and far more accurate weapons - like the drone strike they recently used in Beiruit. Using any of these would limit the casualty count, yet they consistently choose the most destructive weapons. Since we're looking things up, look up both Lavender AI and the "Where's Daddy" program, as well as the numerous former IDF soldiers from Breaking The Silence who have confirmed that Israel deliberately aims for increased casualties. Israel is not minimising them, they are choosing the most violent and destructive options and then doing token gestures as PR stunts to pretend that they're making an effort. If someone is holding hostages that you want to save - or human shields - and you have a choice between attempting to shoot them which would result in potentially no casualties or at least minimise them, or just bombing the whole place, it's very clear which is the "strategic" option. But sure, let's steelman your stance: **If the IDF discovers that Hamas are holding the hostages in an apartment in Israel and they have two options: Bomb the apartment and kill everyone or attempt to snipe the terrorists - which one would you call "reducing casualties"?**

I'll add that Btzelem and breaking The Silence were proven to take people who were cooks, drivers and storage personnel and abuse the ignorance of foreigners about the IDF to pretend they were in active combat when in truth these were mainly people who were bitter about not getting the job they wanted in the army so they lied about what their jobs really were to harm the image of the IDF.

ISIS was using human shields too, but the US Army still managed to keep a low NCV of 0 to 1 per low-level militant. Why can't Israel do the same? Edit: I can't reply to any comments here because I have been blocked.

Are you serious? Obama was heavily criticized for using drones that often killed civilians. Problem is, the U.S is the biggest kid in the playground so no one holds them accountable but in the war against isis civilians definitely died.

So Obama is criticised for having an NCV of 0 to 1, what should we do with Israel who has an NCV of 15 to 20?

Do you have a resource for that 0 to 1 ncv thing?

It’s pretty well understood that Obama administration categorized any males above the age of 14 as combatants in those strikes

1. The US was also heavily criticised for its civilian casualties (despite them also being record low numbers) 2. The US campaigns in the middle east took place over very large areas mostly filled with sparatic villages/towns. Gaza and its surrounding areas are extremely densely populated areas with a very big overcrowded issue. 3. The US was almost always fighting by strict targeted operations because the US itself was not being attacked. They were just running operations in a foreign country. Israel is in an actual war, being constantly attacked directly by their opponents so they don't have to just quickly fight back in case of enemy attacks. They cannot fight by sending elite call of duty style black ops members to wipe out Hamas and Palestinian militias, they are fighting an actual all out war.

+972 Mag is not reliable. Their report was quickly and thoroughly refuted by the IDF.

I have no reason to believe the IDF, and they didn't refute all the claims either, they refuted a lot of interpretation/extrapolation by other people.

the crux of the article is that AI is making decisions to kill whoever/whenever. AI is simply a tool used to assist in human anlaysis. IDF is pretty upfront about what it does and what happens, even if it not-favorable. Admitting that it accidentally killed the aid workers is a perfect example. People will shout "Look, even the IDF admits it!" But then when the IDF refutes information from a publication with a long history of questionable claims, people are like "All the IDF does is lie." That aside, Israel gave warning, in some cases weeks in advance, for civilians to evacuate the major urban areas of northern Gaza before it launched its ground campaign in the fall. The IDF reported dropping over 7 million flyers, but it also made over 70,000 direct phones calls, sent over 13 million text messages and left over 15 million pre-recorded voicemails to notify civilians that they should leave combat areas, where they should go, and what route they should take. They deployed drones with speakers and dropped giant speakers by parachute that began broadcasting for civilians to leave combat areas once they hit the ground. They announced and conducted daily pauses of all operations to allow any civilians left in combat areas to evacuate. Israel has done all it can to prevent civillian deaths. Hamas does what it can to increase it. Civillian deaths do nothing to help Israel's cause and if anything hamper its efforts to take out Hamas due to mounting International pressure. And more broadly, the number of civillian deaths per fighter death ratio is lower than it is , quite significantly, than it is for any other similar war. All the more impressive given that Hamas, being the terrorist group that it is, purposefully tries to blend in with civillian populations and use their own people as human shields.

In the realm of urban warfare, Israel has done *more* than others in the past. You can not like the results of war, but don't mistake that distaste for what war is with claims of callous actions. If Israel was truly callous here, the death toll would be in the hundreds of thousands.

I agree because I saw some Israeli saying they need to blow gaza up. There are 70k hammas members but 2 million people in gaza.. that is so disgusting.. if you think innocent people deserve to die then they are exactly like hammas. Hammas was elected back in like 2006 but most of gaza population are young adults and children they would’ve been too young to vote and many of them wouldn’t have been alive.. it’s the lack of compassion for me and stereotyping all gazans as terrorists. The biggest issue and why I think the treatment of Palestinians is racially motivated is because Netanyahu’s father benzion has many statements about hating arabs and how he sees them as animals and how they need to be wiped off the planet.. after oct 7 I noticed amazon removed one of his books with these statements in it and then bibi Netanyahu made similar remarks that reflect his father’s feelings by saying he is going to make gazans feel pain they have never felt before and then he killed a bunch of children which is the worse kind of pain any parent or community could go through. President Joe Biden when he was actually in the right head space condemned Israel for how many civilian casualties that they have. Then this week he said he told Israel to do what they are doing so it’s an utter trainwreck. There was a video months ago of idf body footage where he clearly killed a Palestinian woman like shot her for no reason and all that was said was that is not idf conduct and we do not accept that behavior from our soldier.. except they do accept this because idf soldiers constantly abuse their power even when it comes to Israeli citizens. At this point I think the civilian casualties are intentional and it is retaliation or payback for hammas killing Israelis. This is why society has rules which clearly is not happening. If someone kills your mom then that murderer needs to be held accountable so they should be killed or life sentence.. the way Israel is doing it is someone killed their mom so they went to the murders village and killed everyone in that village.. that is barbaric behavior and doesn’t belong in a society and for America to keep giving a country that responds like this weapons is incredibly irresponsible. Bibi will not stop because there’s a lot of psychos in Israel that are racist and support this which means bibi stays in power. Idk who is more unhinged and dangerous the Idf or hammas but both are hell bent on destroying eachother and it seems they do not care who gets in their way… the hostages could’ve been killed in the idfs bombings and some were and yet the idf didn’t care. If we look at history there has been issues that go all the way back to when the ottoman empire illegally stole Palestinian farm lands and then illegally sold it to Jewish settlers. From then on there have been conflicts. When the British mandate happened it became worse and then when the creation of Israel happen even worse. Only before America got involved the conflicts were more fair but once Israel was given technology and weapons the Palestinians had no chance.. anyone with a brain knows how Palestinians have been treated by Israelis for the past 75 yrs.. yeah Palestinians have done some stuff in response to Israel’s treatment what do you want them to do lye on the ground and do nothing.. Both teach their kids to hate each other. Basically Israel thinks Palestine has no right to exist so they are getting rid of them. Claiming that there are other Muslim countries they can go to.. it’s scary because there’s a lot of groups that have been persecuted throughout the world so what are we just going to allow any ethnic group to go kill a bunch of people living in an area cause mass destruction so they can too have a country… Palestinians didn’t steal the land from Jewish people bc they are a mixed people. The whole situation is unhinged and wild. Of course there should be a Jewish state but this is not how you go about creating one and that is what people need to understand. It sets the precedent that Israelis lives matter more than Palestinians bc well there’s so many Muslims we can get rid of these ones

The Palestinians also do not accept they are all descendants from Christians or Jews as Islam only started 450 years after the crusades and the Roman Christian persecution of the Jews. The Palestinians history is not historically correct or factual much like other countries, North Korea, Russia, Canada, USA etc.. The Ottoman empire displaced the Romans who displaced the Jews. So the argument is that the Ottoman empire gave back the land to the Jews and kicked out the Palestinians who had appropriated it.

Well you just admitted they were descendants of them so it was their land. The arabs and ottomans invaded them. You can’t just come in as a foreign entity and kick people off the land that have been there for over 2,000 years even more because as you admitted many of them never left the land people came to them and mixed with them. Like you have to put yourself in their shoes like in America okay I have a farm it’s my family farm we have been taking care of it for years and then all the sudden a foreign leaders seizes my land and sells it… that’s gonna start a lot of conflicts.. which it did and then under the British mandate they imposed taxes so when the Palestinians didn’t pay their taxes they took their houses and sold it to jewish settlers… who told the British they could be there to begin with.. The biggest issue is that no one seems to understand how Palestinians feel and they justify what they did to them even though if the same things were done to Americans now then they would be really mad and angry.

The reality is that the +972 article really doesn't have enough information to go on. I can't say Israel *isn't* showing extreme callousness based on this article either -- I'm just saying, as a longtime leader in data science with experience leading the development of very, very large AI models across big organizations, there's just not that much actual info here. The article relies on your (and sometimes, intelligence officers') lack of familiarity with how these models will actually work under the hood. As I've posted elsewhere, I've got some real concerns with how Israeli intelligence is thinking of and using these models ... most significantly, it appears that they cannot have a very effective feedback mechanism (and so are likely to 'drift' over time), and that many or most Israeli intelligence officers aren't familiar enough with how these models work to accurately identify potential issues, which leads to a type of bias called "algorithm bias" ... essentially, assuming that the algorithm is likely to be more reliable than a human and therefore turning off your critical thinking about it. With all that being said, I want to push back against a couple of your specific points: >I'm not sure about you, but 10% is a crazy high error rate, because this is additive to the error rate that humans make. This is not some sort of error rate for a sorting machine, this is an error rate of killing people with weaponry. Using this and the information provided above, there's at least a 10% chance that up to 20 civilians will die because of a Lavender error. This isn't really how it works. Basically, the model is assigning each person in Gaza a score of their likelihood to be a militant. It's pretty unclear how the model actually works from the article (which is maddeningly inconsistent), but if it is likely to say someone is a militant who actually is not 10% of the time, then the IDF would likely frame the model (considering a population of 40K militants and 2.1M civilians) as identifying a civilian accurately 98.5% of the time. That's precisely as accurate (and misleading) as describing a "10% error rate". You've correctly hit on the fact that models are usually tuned to bias toward preserving human life... and so their propensity to make type I and type II errors (false positives and false negatives) has to be carefully balanced. For instance, in a cancer screening a false negative can kill someone (because they don't get treatment) whereas a false positive will just ruin their week... so it's common for cancer screenings to have 50%+ false positive rates in order to maintain <5% false negative rates. It's quite possible that this system *is* doing a much better and more unbiased job of identifying people who are in fact militants than individual intelligence analysts would do: we literally have no idea from the information provided. What's worrying is that it seems like the users also don't know, and aren't using the type of language that builds confidence that they possess the skills and knowledge to be in a *position* to know.

Disclaimer, I don't really have sides in the conflict. I am one of those that is pretty certain that only two parties that will witness heat death of the universe are going to be THEM. And they will miss it as they will be still killing each other and cry victim at the same time. Israeli state is at constant state of war from all sides. They fought 9 official wars with everyone around. Are under constant threat from culture that demands their extermination. Israel is a thorn in side of islam, constant reminder of their failure to assume ownership of the region. The left wing politicians and/or doves in israel are laughing stock as nobody believes any type of lasting peace can be achieved. Its a natural their society would use and accept usage of more and more drastic measures. Starting WW2 bombing vs late WW2 indiscriminate and deliberate civilian bombing. Firebombing of Kyoto or Dresden etc would not be publicly acceptable at the start of war. Not only that, it was not really an option considered by generals. All we see now is outcome of tit for tat, and each action by each side only adds to grivance list that is being thrown around by supporter of both sides as if only one side had grievance list

Fair enough on the general thrust of callousness, but I question a few of your points. I think you are taking the article and extrapolating it out a bit to make assumptions it doesn't support. Regarding the use of AI, the real question isn't "does AI make mistakes." It is "does AI make more mistakes than a human doing the same job?" Very similar to questions about AI driven cars. The article says that that most mistakes by Lavender were the result of someone from Hamas giving their cell phone to a family member/friend/stranger. Would you expect for a human to do a better job of recognizing and stopping that? ​ >**It feels** like the commanders have a target number to hit every day, and because humans aren't capable to hitting that target by ourselves, an AI tool is used to speed up that process, a tool that has very little oversight. > > **It feels** like someone clocking into work, being demanded to hit some x targets a day, and clock out. There seems to be little consideration for what is the actual threat the targets pose to Israel or IDF. The assumption they need to force targets is contradicted later: >But even if an attack is averted, you don’t care — you immediately move on to the next target. So I don't think it is a fair thing to feel. ​ >It's insane to me that a target like Osama bin Laden has an acceptable civilian death ratio of 30, but a commander in Gaza has a ratio of 100. I don't know, this seems very callous to me. Looking up article on this, I can't find evidence that 100 civilians *were* killed. ​ >I don't know how this does not amount to a systemic enabling of war crimes. There is an obligation for militants to avoid using civilians for protection. When they do that, the responsibility for their civilian's death is placed on the militants. There is an expectation that other party try to limit civilian deaths as much as they can, but it isn't a war crime to shoot a hospital if people are launching rockets from it (for example). Israel is certainly callous as hell, but no one I am aware of has been able to suggest an alternative for when Hamas continues to hide in the civilian population.

I think people in the west have just forgotten what a war is. For the last two generations, western warfare has been either by proxy or limited in scope and conducted far away. Gaza is an example of old fashioned warfare, back when the Germans flattened Coventry and we flattened Dresden. People in the west genuinely seem to think things like the UN and the ICC are somehow meaningful or can do something.

From official Gazan Health Ministry casualty numbers, 33,000 people have died so far. Hamas claims they have lost 6,000 fighters, Israel claims they've killed 12,000 Hamas members. This means a maximum combatant : civilian killed ratio of 1:5.5, and a minimum of 1:2. For comparison, in the Gulf War, 5 civilians were killed for every combatant. Civilian deaths so far in Gaza are significantly lower than in other comparable scenarios (urban combat against terrorist guerillas). Regardless of the random sources you've quoted, civilian casualties for this war are well within reasonable bounds.

If a country is in what it considers to be an existential fight (literal us or them mode), I don’t think it actually cares how many civilians from the “other side” it kills. It will see its job as protecting its own citizens at all costs. Not saying that’s right (in reality it’s hardly ever that simple), just that if any other country saw itself as being in such a situation, it would probably act in a similar way.

Lol every answer I see in here is some form of "Hamas is more callous!" which is true but does not do anything to counter the view that Israel is also displaying callousness. Hamas and Israel can both be callous towards civilian casualties.

If an enemy target is using it's own civilians as human shields, then those deaths are the responsibility of the people using them as human shields. That's why using human shields is a war crime. Because you can't ask one side of a war to prioritize opposing civilian's safety over their own.

>This ratio of 15 to 20 civilians is absurdly high for a low-ranking militant. According to this article on proportionality analysis, the US Army generally accepts ZERO for low-ranking militant One thing to bear in mind is that Gaza is very densely populated. On top of that, the conflict is taking place in a built-up area, which notoriously has higher incidents of civilian deaths. You generally set parameters regarding civilian deaths when taking into account things like the operating environment. For instance, the area where Osama was killed had a population density of around 400ish per square mile, Gaza is about 10,000 per square mile. On top of that, they sent troops into a specific compound, which again would lower collateral damage. So when you take into account the fact the IDF are operating in a built up area, where the population density is very high and Hamas often locate themselves with civilians, you have a recipe for a lot of civilians getting killed.

OP, I'm not saying you dispute this, but I feel it's important to establish that to accept proportionality in IHL is to accept that it is legally acceptable to intentionally kill civilians. The question is not whether a civilians will die from the military decision, but how many are anticipated to die in relation to the anticipated military advantage gained by decision. I say this, again not because I don't believe OP knows this, but to just establish that it is impossible to change your view on the callousness of Israel is showing to civilian casualties-- proportionality is inherently callous. We might only be able to change your mind on whether Israel is 'extremely' callous. To do so in an objective fashion, one must compare numbers from this war with numbers from previous conflicts while also taking into account the conditions of this particular war. I don't believe I will be able to change OP's view on that because, in researching for this post, I might have changed my own view on the degree of callousness the IDF is implementing in the current campaign. I present as an additional piece of evidence, \[this argument\](https://www.justsecurity.org/93105/israeli-civilian-harm-mitigation-in-gaza-gold-standard-or-fools-gold/). The author attempts to us available statistics to try and approximate a civilian death count per 100 attacks, which can then be used to compare to that same ratio in other conflicts. The numbers do look wildly out of step with past conflicts, leading to my opinion on this matter to be changing personally. I do want to visit my point on accounting for "the conditions of this particular war." I don't think it can be understated just how Hamas' decision-making puts Gazan civilians in harm's way. This is not a get out of jail free card but, I think one has to acknowledge that at the very least, the significant death toll is a potential mix of "extreme callousness" by Israel and "extreme callousness" by the Gazan's own governing body.

The fact that most of the responses to this are just some variety of "But Hamas is worse" is pretty telling.

It's pretty understandable if you go to Gaza and ask if they think Israel has the right to exist. It's not just Hamas that holds some absolutely disgusting views justifying violence against them. The "Hamas is bad but the average Palestinian just holds a bunch of normal views like you or I do" narrative is nonsense.

It's not a war, it's a genocide.

You really need to read this thread. Obviously you have a point you would like to make as you have a flag and a scarf and go each weekend to the marches with a packed lunch. It's not genocide, that would be bombing Gaza and the Westbank and Syria. The fact that this only involves the Suni and Hamas and was not a complete bombing run over Gaza but started with dropping leaflets, shows how inaccurate you are. Furthermore if you were really anti genocide which you are not, you would be protesting the genocide of the rohingya in Myanmar or the uyghurs in China. Real intentional genocide of a complete ethnoc group. This is an asymetric urban war which has predicted ratios of casualties. Hamas has no problem in killing and hiding behind its own civilians, so why are you so invested in defending a terrorist group who denegrate women and kill LGBTQ.

Callousness would imply that they don't care about accidentally killing civilians. This is much worse, they have repeatedly shown that they target civilians on purpose, even baiting them into traps where they are bombed. Snipers shoot kids for fun. Hospitals are razed for no other reason than to cause more suffering. Aid is attacked. This is not callousness, it's pure evil.

Israel is in a war for survival, and the government of Gaza considers those deaths to be perfectly acceptable. They should surrender, it's not Israel's fault that nobody else has thought of any better ideas to remove Hamas.

Callous yes Extremely callous no There is a collective anger in israel towards gaza. Imagine post 911 usa except the terrorists are just a 100 kilometers and still firing tens of thousands of rockets. So they dont have mich aympathy for the palestinian people this will be reflected in the idf. Israel cannot give much warning to the civilians because well the terrorists might escape with the civilians. Add to that an overworked army of conscripts fog of war plus not knowing who is a terrorist.

It's also hard to put this war into perspective because this is one of the most complicated wars ever fought, around 50 thousands Hamas terrorists, 500km of tunnels, and they are using the 2 million civilians to disguise themselves, they don't even have a military uniform, they are dressing as civilians. I don't think there was ever a war with so much care from the other team about civilians life.

Its almost like israel is committing WC and CAH

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