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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8883 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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The NYT proposes an interesting metric to gauge Israeli misconduct in Gaza: the amount of one-shotted Palestinian children.

65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza

I worked as a trauma surgeon in Gaza from March 25 to April 8. I’ve volunteered in Ukraine and Haiti, and I grew up in Flint, Mich. I’ve seen violence and worked in conflict zones. But of the many things that stood out about working in a hospital in Gaza, one got to me: Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die. Thirteen in total. At the time, I assumed this had to be the work of a particularly sadistic soldier located nearby. But after returning home, I met an emergency medicine physician who had worked in a different hospital in Gaza two months before me. “I couldn’t believe the number of kids I saw shot in the head,” I told him. To my surprise, he responded: “Yeah, me, too. Every single day.”

Using questions based on my own observations and my conversations with fellow doctors and nurses, I worked with Times Opinion to poll 65 health care workers about what they had seen in Gaza. Fifty-seven, including myself, were willing to share their experiences on the record. The other eight participated anonymously, either because they have family in Gaza or the West Bank, or because they fear workplace retaliation.

44 health care workers saw multiple cases of preteen children who had been shot in the head or chest in Gaza. 9 did not. 12 did not regularly treat children in an emergency context.

Quotes from the doctors:

“One night in the emergency department, over the course of four hours, I saw six children between the ages of 5 and 12, all with single gunshot wounds to the skull.”

“I saw several children shot with high velocity bullet wounds, in both the head and chest.”

“Our team cared for about four or five children, ages 5 to 8 years old, that were all shot with single shots to the head. They all presented to the emergency room at the same time. They all died.”

“One day, while in the E.R., I saw a 3-year-old and 5-year-old, each with a single bullet hole to their head. When asked what happened, their father and brother said they had been told that Israel was backing out of Khan Younis. So they returned to see if anything was left of their house. There was, they said, a sniper waiting who shot both children.”

I think this is a brilliant bit of journalism. First, they specify preteen children who are killed, a hugely important qualifier for a conflict which may see 16-year-old boys plant IEDS. Second, they queried a range of doctors, some of whom have no association with Palestinians or even Arabs (or even Muslims for that matter). Third, the data uniquely sheds light on possible Israeli misconduct. Blankly informing us about the number of dead Palestinian children tells us very little: are these combatant-aged? Did they die because of a nearby explosion targeting a combatant? The metric they chose is as beautiful as Abraham Wald’s famous WWII survivorship bias statistical work.

Looking specifically at the number of one-shotted children relative to the number of total shot children is an amazing way to determine intent on behalf of the Israeli soldiers. We should expect that, if these children are shot because they have caught stray bullets aimed elsewhere, that most of the children would be shot in places other than their head and chest. We should similarly expect a higher number of cases of multiple bullet wounds, as in the case of their being shot due to crossfire fighting. In gang-related shootings in America, we don’t see a high number of one-shotted adolescents, but wounds on arms and legs, abdomens, and multiple punctures. (Think 50 cent). Note that any Palestinian child shot or grazed by a bullet is going to be sent to the hospital, so there is no survivorship bias in the presentation of children to the hospital. These doctors have been presented with all bullet-wounded preteen Palestinians, and they are shocked at the high rate of one-shot critical hits — including the author who “volunteered in Ukraine and Haiti and grew up in Flint, Michigan.”

So, why are Israeli soldiers one-shotting children in Gaza? IMO, the most likely answer is that they want to. Israeli culture is not Western culture, neither is Israeli military culture identical to Israeli culture at large. There is an undercurrent of supremacism and extremism in Israeli military culture. When Israeli soldiers were found to be sexually torturing Hamas prisoners, extremists gathered to protest the soldiers’ arrests. These extremists included an Israeli politician, and the current national security minister publicly condemned the arrest of the soldiers. A Rabbi who specifically teaches orthodox military recruits alongside Talmud studied has specifically advocated for the killing of women and children in Gaza.

There is also a religious component to the Jewish extremism of the Israeli military, which I think is difficult for a naive Westerner to wrap their head around. When a Christian or post-Christian Westerner thinks about Judaism in Israel, they assume they must be worshipping something that is approximately the moral equivalent of Christ. “Sure, they don’t have our Jesus dude, but they recognize the same attributes and moral conduct in other ways”. But this is really not the case. With the same attention that Christians allot to Christ, Judaism allots to the practice of ritual rule-following. When Christians look at their God being tortured by sinners like themselves, Jews look solipstically at their own torturous history by outside threats. The attentional focus of the religion is different, and the moral focus is different. These are qualitative differences. When you combine this phenomenon with the independence of Rabbinical academies, you are going to see some extremist branches rise up in some Jewish academies, especially among the conservative and non-ultra orthodox. These extremist branches are most likely to pour out students onto the Israeli military. In other words, the Israeli military selects for the extremists which are raised up within the de-centralized schools of Israel. Don’t forget that it’s Israel under attack, not “secular country I happen to be citizen of”. They pray to Israel daily, it is their Christ, so for a Zionist extremism it is as if their deepest value is being terrorized.

This whole thing, the NYT and your tongue bath of it, bespeaks nothing so much as two people who have never seen terminal ballistics talking ridiculous.

We should expect that, if these children are shot because they have caught stray bullets aimed elsewhere, that most of the children would be shot in places other than their head and chest.

Now why would that be? What percentage of surface area of the body is the head and torso, and how does the movement of the limbs affect their statistical chance of catching stray rounds? What's the effect of people poking their heads out to see what's happening? Is this calculation well established in the military literature? Because I've never heard of it.

And how exactly does one calculate that someone had been shot only once in the head? A rifle round through the skull will tend to pop the whole thing open like a smashed pumpkin. Could have been shot once, could have been shot fifty times. Could have not been a bullet at all, but a rock or chunk of shrapnel from an explosion. Good luck telling the difference.

This is the sort of thing that NYT journalists find impressive, the fact that you do as well speaks more to you than to anything going on in any war anywhere.

The cases in which the child’s head is fully destroyed are not even presented to medical examiners, according to the lead author’s tweet linked in my sub-commented update. This means that the doctors are presented with all gunshot wounds precluding those gunshot wounds which have so destroyed the head that medical intervention is obviously impossible.

Per the same update, the NYT presented the photographs and C-Scan images to a number of medical professionals. “multiple, independent experts in gunshot wounds, radiology and pediatric trauma, who attested to the images’ credibility”. I trust that more than you, or “random Twitter user with Ukrainian flag in username claiming to be ballistics expert”.

What percentage of surface area of the body is the head and torso, and how does the movement of the limbs affect their statistical chance of catching stray rounds

We know from shootings in America that stray bullets or inaccurate shots don’t magnetize especially to the head and chest. The lead author previously worked in Flint and Haiti, and he found the proportion of these wounds to be unusual. And, noting the above, the actual proportion of headshots is higher, as the doctors didn’t see the head implosion cases.

as the effect of people poking their heads out to see what's happening

Should the IDF be shooting children who peak out their head in a highly dense urban environment?

Is this calculation well established in the military literature?

Let’s assume it is not well-established in the military literature because it has not been researched. Does this mean we turn off all reasoning and thinking until the military studies it? No. We make the best extrapolation from the best available evidence. If the IDF is shooting a terrorist and a bullet inadvertently pierces a child, the likelihood that it lands as a headshot is low, both due to the surface area of the head and the fact that two humans can’t stand in the same spot at the same time.

tongue bath of it, bespeaks nothing

The Shakespearean language really helps your argument.

With all that said, we can indeed consult some available literature on the site of injury %s in military injuries and stray bullet injuries. 6% and 16.1% of stray bullets wound the head and chest respectively in the context of insurgent military activity (Libyan civil war).

We should similarly expect a higher number of cases of multiple bullet wounds, as in the case of their being shot due to crossfire fighting.

Why? Being hit by one stray bullet is pretty rotten luck. Two or more seems much less likely.

Note that any Palestinian child shot or grazed by a bullet is going to be sent to the hospital

With Gaza's limited resources, during a war? Maybe, but I don't think this is a safe assumption.

You also have to account for the possiblity that a) at least some of the doctors are lying, and b) the worst cases may have been sent to American doctors either for propaganda purposes or because of their better skills.

Note that one of the X-rays shows a bullet that seems to have entered at a path nearly perpendicular to the top of the skull, implying either that the child was shot while lying down, likely by a stray bullet while lying in bed, or perhaps even by a bullet fired up into the air and coming back down, a phenomenon associated with the Arabic tradition of celebratory gunfire. Another shows a bullet that seems to have entered through a downward path about 45 degrees below parallel, which is hard to explain with a sniper shooting at a distance, and again more consistent with a bullet shot into the air and coming back down.

The chorus of skeptics here should look at past events. The Israelis shoot children all the time. They even manage to get off in court after shooting a child in the back.

Can you even imagine what would happen if a white US police officer mag-dumps a 13-year old black girl for walking into a 'security area'? She was 70 m away when she was first shot. Heading away from the army camp and 'security area'. The soldier runs out to follow her and confirm the kill, as per procedure.

On the tape, the company commander then "clarifies" why he killed Iman: "This is commander. Anything that's mobile, that moves in the zone, even if it's a three-year-old, needs to be killed. Over."

The officer who shot the girl is then acquitted of any malpractice in court.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/24/israel

I think leftists would undergo some kind of super-saiyan transformation upon hearing such a case, especially when the transcript has these extremely villainous lines. This is what actual systemic racism looks like, when you blow people away with impunity and get off in court.

That was 2004. In 2018 they shot and killed another 35 children peacefully protesting in Gaza, amongst others. There are probably many more cases that I haven't heard of, these are the two that immediately come to mind.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/02/no-justification-israel-shoot-protesters-live-ammunition

The base assumption should be that of course the Israeli army is shooting children. They did that before October 7th. They did that 20 years ago. Of course they're doing it today. There is a great deal of hatred in this part of the world. There is a reason people join Hamas, taking on roles with a pretty poor life expectancy and few perks.

I don't believe in a global crusade against every bit of unfairness in the world but the whole 'Israel is so noble and innocent' angle needs to be shut down.

"This is commander. Anything that's mobile, that moves in the zone, even if it's a three-year-old, needs to be killed. Over."

It's certainly excessive but I'd expect that shoot on sight zones aren't that out of the ordinary especially during wartime. And instead of making grunts decide what's a threat or not, have them shoot anything that moves.

America currently has the luxury of letting pro-palestine protestors occupy a warship without hurting them, but I'm sure there are still some spicy places where you can get vaporized just for showing up.

Usually kill-on-sight zones are in military bases behind fences and extensive signage. They're not on the edge of refugee camps, places you'd expect civilians to be walking around.

I don't think the skeptics (hi) doubt that Israelis sometimes do awful things, including shooting children. Or that we believe Israel is noble and innocent.

I do tend to believe that their enemies are among the worst in a generally shitty part of the world. And that people who bring up cherry-picked and carefully described incidents taking anything critical of Israel at face value, and then extrapolate to generalizations about how this is just typical Jewish behavior, do not, in fact, actually care in the slightest about alleged dead Palestinian children, but are happy to invoke dead children if it presents another opportunity to talk about how Jews are lizard-people.

There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of Israel, but it's hard to take them seriously from someone known to hate Jews. I mean, if suddenly you're willing to call interviews by the NYT asking people in Gaza if the Israelis are committing war crimes "high quality evidence" you can surely see why this prompts some see skepticism.

I think this is a brilliant bit of journalism. First, they specify preteen children who are killed, a hugely important qualifier for a conflict which may see 16-year-old boys plant IEDS.

...because the spiritual purity of 15-and-younger boys disarms explosives?

You may feel this is brilliant journalism, but nothing in it really addresses child soldiers, which have a sordid history in islamic extremism even without touching on Hamas' deathcult tendencies. Child soldiers aren't merely 'are they big enough to carry a gun', which can be well below 10, but 'are they old enough to throw stone-heavy grenades,' which is even less. A preteen can easily be a child soldier, and even a cutoff of 6 is being arbitrary in terms of 'can they provide militarily-useful tasks.'

Nor does anything in the article address the nature of Hamas's influence in the information space, which is not only in the form of influence on intermediaries (by controlling access to Gaza) but also on the locals reporting to those intermediaries (by threats of retaliation).

Nor does the article- or you- make any effort to clear for selection bias on head/body shot children. For the article, there's only 8 cited speakers and the doctors who have the internal medicine specialty to be spending time on children shot in the head are, by the nature of their specialty, not going to be the medical experts handling walking-wounded children who got shot in the arm or non-critical parts of the leg but who don't rise to their need.

You say this...

Third, the data uniquely sheds light on possible Israeli misconduct.

...but the data doesn't uniquely shed light on possible Israeli misconduct. The data doesn't uniquely shed light on any misconduct. The data doesn't even demonstrate a pattern, because the data is depicted without time, context, or even attribution.

Heck, the data doesn't even provide an actual number of children shot.

Most of the article- the vast majority of the article- isn't even about gunshots. It's about malnutrition, psychological harm, baby mortality, and other things.

There are only 8 speakers cited with stories of children being shot. Given the relative range differentials between the Israeli small arms users and Palestinians, it would seem reasonable that a 'the Israelis are deliberately targeting children' to rely on snipers (shooting individual targets from range with precision), rather than closer-range options (pistol-executions) or mid-range-but-less-accurate fires.

On a very basic breakdown of -Attribution of who done it -Attribution of child-soldier era child -Characterized as single shot -Characterized as a sniper (single shot, single targets)

We have

Claim 1: 6 children, ages 6-12, single shots to skull

Attribution: None Child-soldier age: Yes Characterized as single shot: Yes Sniper characterized: No (no claim of a sniper context, or how a sniper would be responsible for a singular group)

Claim 2: Pediatric gunshot-wound patients

Attribution: None Child-solder Age: Unclear Characterized as single shot: No (gunshot-wound patients is plural patients, not claiming all patients had a single gunshot wound) Sniper characterized: No

Claim 3: Several children with high-velocity bullet wounds in head and chest

Attribution: None Child-soldier age: Unclear Characterized as single shot: No Sniper characterized: No ('high-velocity bullet' does not imply sniper, and no basis of what this means is provided)

Claim 4: 4-5 year old children, all shot in head with single shot, all delivered at once

Attribution: None Child-soldier age: No Characterized as single shot: Yes Sniper characterized: No (Additionally, group delivery implies no risk in taking the time to load all individuals, supporting a close-killing, not snipers)

Claim 5: Child shot in the jaw

Attribution: None Child-solder age: Unclear Characterized as single shot: Yes Sniper characterized: No (Not in nature of delivery or precision)

Claim 6 Father + Brother claiming children (3 and 5) were shot by snipers in house after rumored Israeli pullout

Attribution: None (Israeli attribution is of the rumor of an Israeli pullout from a neighborhood; the sniper is not attributed) Child-soldier Age: No Characterized as single shot: Yes Sniper characterized: Yes

Claim 7 18-month little girl with gunshot wound to the head

Attribution: none Child-soldier age: No Characterized as single shot: Yes Sniper characterized: No

Claim 8 (Dr. 'Many' children, on almost daily occurrence, with nonfatal gunshot wounds to head

Attribution: none Child-solder age: Unclear Characterization as single-shot: No Snipe characterized: No (Not in nature of delivery or precision)

So of our 8 claims- claims that are clearly selected for shock impact to print and thus are probably at the bounds of what even the NYT would consider worth reporting- we have...

8 Claims

Attributions to Israeli Shooters: 0

Characterization of Non-Child Soldier Age Victims: 3

Characterization of single shots: 5

Sniper characterized: 1

So when you say this...

So, why are Israeli soldiers one-shotting children in Gaza?

This is assuming a conclusion not supported by the data.

No evidence, or even claim, is made that it was Israelis in particular shooting the children. That may be the insinuation, but nothing in the article elevates the Israelis over other factors or actors, including...

-Revenge killings / crimes of passion targeting a family

-Armed criminals attempting to silence witnesses of a crime

-Suicide by traumatized children (see lower article on psychological trauma)

-Resource-shortage/'mercy' murders by caretakers unable to afford the children (see lower article on inability to care for children)

-Cross fire from other combatants

-Deliberate fire by other combatants*

*This is the due reminder that Hamas deliberately works to get Palestinians killed, uses human shields for military positions, and done the shooting themselves on occasion... and that the current conflict wouldn't be occuring if they weren't willingness to plan and execute theatrical murder of children for propaganda effects

And this is if the claims made are to be taken at face value, and not reflective of other data compromise issues such as selection bias (if Dr. Farah is the sort of doctor who can help children shot in the head, he's not going to be given the children who were shot less severely who other, less specialized, people can care for) or other issues of unintentional or intentional bias, or examples of outright deception.

(This is the due reminder that any Gazan medical center data that relies on the Gazan ministries is using Hamas-approved and provided data. This includes conflating gazan civilian and gazan combatant casualties, and exagerating claimed losses.)

And this doesn't even approach whether incidents which would be Israel were results of laws-of-war-acceptable action, which the article doesn't even try to address from any perspective. Naturally the Hamas-institutional data would not exactly be publicizing how many children who have been shot were shot in the context of being belligerents in the current conflict.

And this doesn't go into data collection issues, such as how the relevant medical authorities were picked, the lack of cross-reference to any sort of objective data sets (or even unobjective data sets), and the rather blunt use of emotive language and framings for what ends with a rather direct policy advocacy stance which itself would imply the selection of data was driven to justify the policy rather than the other way around.

So, as far as brilliant research goes, nah. Not really.

A preteen can easily be a child soldier

That Hamas is utilizing 8 year old child soldiers to lob grenades is a level of propaganda that the IDF hasn’t even reached yet. There has been no information coming out of Israel that Hamas is using preteen child soldiers in their operations, neither is there drone or other footage which would immediately shift public opinion in favor of Israel. This isn’t happening.

the doctors who have the internal medicine specialty to be spending time on children shot in the head are, by the nature of their specialty, not going to be the medical experts handling walking-wounded children who got shot in the arm or non-critical parts of the leg but who don't rise to their need

This is not true. Emergency nurses will deal with children shot in all places. As would surgeons, parademics, and critical care doctors. Any child shot is going to see these professionals. There’s not some “child shot in the head super-specialist” at these clinics. I mean, maybe neurosurgeon, but that’s not even a listed specialty in the article. Who do you believe is the lower specialty on whom they drop off the children only merely shot in the abdomen or thigh?

That Hamas is utilizing 8 year old child soldiers to lob grenades is a level of propaganda that the IDF hasn’t even reached yet.

You seem to have misunderstood the point of the opening, which was to contest your characterization of the limit of child soldiers, which itself wasn't limited to Hamas. A child soldier is not a 16 year old. A child soldier is a child who is used in the function of war, regardless of their age, and as such age alone does not disprove someone someone from being a combatant unless the age is so low that they physically cannot.

There has been no information coming out of Israel that Hamas is using preteen child soldiers in their operations, neither is there drone or other footage which would immediately shift public opinion in favor of Israel. This isn’t happening.

Sure it is. It's denied and disparaged as Israeli propaganda or otherwise that it shouldn't matter because children, but it is in no way hard to find information of Hamas using pre-teen children as human shields to military operations, of using preteens as messengers or conveyers of military goods, of Hamas opening fire into crowds of civilians which would involve pre-teens, of stealing and depriving the Gazan population of resources which lead to murder over or due to a lack of resources, of Hamas deliberately murdering families of dissidents for the purpose of intimidating the populace, and otherwise setting conditions in a warzone in which people are regularly shot for less-than-maximally-nefarious-reasons by maximally-nefarious jews.

This is not true. Emergency nurses will deal with children shot in all places.

There are two problems with this contestation, both demonstrating separate logical errors leading to data issues.

First is a dynamic which can be summarized as 'tell me you didn't think about triage without telling me you didn't think about triage.' Triage itself is screening function when medical issues over overwhelming and resources- included the doctors themselves- are limited. Not all injuries are emergencies to a triage, and in turn not all injuries will go to emergency treatment in the first place. If you then cite numbers of medical emergency cases, you are starting to count after triage has already filtered relevant contextual numbers.

Second, the NYT isn't citing a representative sample of emergency nurses- or even exclusively emergency nurses- in the first place. It was specifically citing people who were willing to claim observation of children being shot, which is itself a selection bias. '100% of the people I cited claimed cases of X' means nothing on a statistical when you are not citing people who do not support X, and that's if you had a representative survey basis in the first place, which the NYT opinion presenter does not.

As would surgeons, parademics, and critical care doctors. Any child shot is going to see these professionals. There’s not some “child shot in the head super-specialist” at these clinics. I mean, maybe neurosurgeon, but that’s not even a listed specialty in the article.

Thank you for admitting another issue in the article's data base, I was hoping to lead you to that point.

Yes, the lack of professional characterization is a separate issue for the brilliance of the research, as it conflates the medical supporters who might have a more representative understanding of general child injuries as part of the triage process (who, in the article, aren't even claiming Israeli snipers or the such in the first place) from more specialized medical experts whose expertise in specific things- like, say, chest surgeries- who would only be under a significant selective survivorship bias of what they are exposed to (both the nature of the injury, but also operating on people who survive long enough to get to them).

This conflation of category of medical experts, in turn, can be and is used to conflate the different viewpoints to distorting effect. As the viewpoints of people with wider-but-less-serious issues are presented in equal ground with more narrow perspective that are narrower-but-more-severe (because the person in question is primarily dealing with the most severe cases). This is a technique to shape audience perception by insinuating that the equivalence of the reports suggests that the conflated categories are a single category that is both more common and more severe on average than the spread actually is.

But since relevant medical and surgical specialties do exist, and the volunteers of any previous or accumulated experience will be allocated those cases as a matter of course, we can infer from organizational practicalities (and some parts of the article itself) that there is a relevant degree of case selection filtering going on.

Who do you believe is the lower specialty on whom they drop off the children only merely shot in the abdomen or thigh?

Or the hand or the foot or the arm?

The person with clearly vestigial wounds is clearly the lower priority and will receive more limited care by less trained or specialized people. A surgeon who specializes in opening up chest cavities to remove things that can kill people is not going to spend their time resetting dislocated joints or applying splints, when that level of care can be provided by a more-numerous non-surgeon whose use in that role can free up the surgeon to do surgeries.

Now, if you wish to make the argument that the Gazan medical situation is not so dire such that there is no need to triage and thus more specialized medical professionals see a representative selection of wounded children...

One of my bullshit detector modes is applying the "Cui bono?" rule: If true, who benefits from it?

I don't see a tactical or political advantage for Israel to be doing this as a matter of policy: Committing high-value troops to take out low-value targets? And certain carry a highly negative publicity penalty? What's Israel's ROI on assassinating pre-teens?

On the other hand, we know that Israel's enemies love to play the Victim PR game, exaggerating and even inventing tragedies that cast a shadow on Israel's claim of moral legitimacy. What's the Hamas ROI on shooting a few of their kids in the head if it means widespread outrage aimed at Israel? While it's hard for me to imagine such a craven tactic*, Hamas has more to gain from this than Israel does. If they're faking the shootings, the ROI for them goes up even more.

  • I also can't imagine the craven tactic of positioning military assets in schools and hospitals, but we know Hamas does this and that Israel appears to take greater care to avoid civilian casualties. So these priors also lean me further toward: "If it's happening, Hamas is doing it." Alternatively, it could be a rogue Israeli soldier who has snapped, but seems unlikely to be a sanctioned military effort.

There is not much PR value in publicly declaring your support for inserting sticks into prisoner's rectums, but Israeli politicians do it anyway. One can only imagine what this fellow says in private.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-idf-palestinian-prisoner-alleged-rape-sde-teinman-abuse-protest/

Why is it so hard to believe that many Israelis really hate Palestinians, that your natural thought is not 'Oh the Israeli soldier shot the enemy civilian' but 'Hamas is shooting their own children in the head to make Israel look bad'?

Hatred is a thing. In Israel, hatred clearly has a constituency, votes and gets elected. It follows that they are also in the military.

It is very unlikely to be a sanctioned tactic. I hope no one read my post as implying such. What’s more likely, IMO, is that an extremist element of Israeli society has entered the military and is committing atrocities unpunished. This already occurred with the craven sexual torture of Hamas prisoners of war, tacitly approved by leading “far right” Israeli politicians who lobbied for the perpetrators to go unpunished. And the calls for these extremist actions have been made by a Rabbi who specifically trains up orthodox Jewish soldiers.

I have a hard time buying that IDF leadership is directly instructing its soldiers to shoot young children on sight, but, per your clarification, I absolutely believe that if a minority of IDF soldiers were doing this in a fit of rage and frustration, IDF leadership would probably look the other way unless it became really egregious.

preteen children

Every adult I know consistently underestimates age by 2-3 years when asked to guess, even those that deal with children on a daily basis. With a little effort, that can easily become 4-5, and you don’t even need journalist math to get there if you’re starving because your parents fed you to gave all your food to the soldiers.

And you really don’t need to be that big to hold a gun. This also tends to shock people who intentionally ignore what someone of age X can or cannot do (typically because their culture encourages that) but I’m not at all shocked if a population that radicalized its citizens from birth has a non-zero number of unacceptably cute (by Western standards) enemy combatants, which even so much as “be a distraction, go set off some firecrackers” qualifies as, realistically.

So while the number of blatant-war-crime deaths (even if these kids are actually receiving fire directly) is almost certainly not 0, I question the default assumption of “they weren’t combatants”, just like and for the same reasons I question their practice of putting their HQ in a school.

I have actually been following news from Gaza, not just the bits you might catch now and then on CNN, but by watching Western, Israeli, and Arab news channels ( including in Arabic). So I have a pretty good sense for how it's covered, including the biases most frequently exhibited by each side.

Bluntly, I do not trust anything reported directly from Gaza, especially from the people on the ground there. This is not to say I think Israelis or the IDF are always trustworthy (they are not), but no journalist is in Gaza without explicit permission from Hamas. That is just how things work there. There are literally Hamas soldiers in Gaza hospitals, but you will never see them shown by the journalists walking the halls to show you how terrible conditions are there. You will never see them criticizing Hamas, interviewing someone who criticizes Hamas, or presenting anything other than a Palestinian-sympathetic point of view. There are two reasons for this: (1) Most of them are sympathetic to Hamas, if not actually affiliated with them. (2) Even the ones who aren't know they will be expelled (at best) or disappeared (at worst) if they don't observe the ground rules. The ground rules are "Hamas is in charge here and Hamas controls the narrative."

High quality evidence would look like what the NYT did. They polled an assortment of doctors working in Gaza and asked them how often they saw children killed in such a way that would indicate intent. 80% said yes. Some said that it was a daily occurrence. This is high quality evidence. Perhaps 80% of the doctors are liars and the NYT team is lying. Or perhaps extremists who promote and condone war crimes are doing war crimes. Which is more likely?

This is a level of credulousness, and confidence, that I know for a certainty you would not display - especially from the NYT - on any other subject. This is not "high quality evidence." This is evidence that pleasures your priors. You took a sketchy story and from it wrote a carefully written polemic that argues, essentially, that Jews are taught by their religion that shooting children for fun is fine. You have already ignored a pile of contradictions to even your most specious claims (e.g., that the Israeli military is mostly made up of religious extremists), and ignored any sort of logical analysis. So let's take a few points in order:

Why would the doctors lie? Most aid workers in Gaza, unsurprisingly, are sympathetic to Palestinians and believe the "genocide" narrative. Some, like the journalists, are actually Hamas supporters. That doesn't mean they would all be willing to make up stories about children regularly being shot by Israeli snipers, but many of them would. Many others, if told this was happening, would be willing to believe it and/or at least not publicly display any skepticism. And if Hamas says "The narrative is now that the IDF is sniping children," doctors still working in Gaza are certainly not going to say "No, that isn't happening." Especially since they probably have seen a lot of children killed, a few might have actually been targeted, and so they're going to be willing to go along with "The IDF is now doing this regularly" – even if they know it's not really true, maybe the outrage will result in fewer children dying.

You have made it clear often enough in the past that you despise Jews and consider them a kind of invidious predatory species, so a story that portrays them as moral mutants clearly appeals to you and is easy for you to believe, but let's try starting from an assumption that Jews aren't monsters. Contrary to your careful argument above that Judaism is an alien and inhumane ethical system completely divorced from Western thought, Israeli cultural norms are mostly Western ones, especially considering how many of them came from the West. The IDF mostly behaves like Western armies, which is to say: they have rules and they follow the Geneva Convention. There are definitely breaches, as happens in all wars, but they aren't monsters who are given a doctrine of "preteen children are legitimate targets." Most people would not do that. It's only plausible that Israelis think sniping children is fine if one accepts your premise that Jews (all Jews!) literally Other gentiles into a "not human" category. You might believe this, but it's not actually accurate.

Do I believe that here and there, some fucked up soldiers have done fucked up things, like sniping children? Yes. Shit happens in war. Do I believe this is either explicitly or implicitly endorsed by the IDF? No. They might not spend a lot of time investigating claims by Al-Jazeera or looking too deeply into an accusation that Sergeant Steiner shot a kid, but they haven't been given the go-ahead to individually target civilians.

People have already talked a lot about the unlikelihood of military rounds (whether 7.62 or 5.56) entering a child's head and staying there, rather than turning it into an exploding pumpkin as it exits. Ballistics can be weird and unlikely things can happen, so one or two X-rays of kids with 7.62 shells in them? Maybe. Happening on a daily basis? A rash of children with 7.62 rounds in their skulls who are still alive? Come on now.

Basically, this story does not pass the sniff test on any level, and the NYT writing outrage porn with heavily biased sources is something you would normally readily pick apart.

There’s a reason why I trust the NYT on this specific topic. If the NYT tells me that Assad used poison gas against civilians, I doubt it pending further evidence because it is aligned with American geopolitical interests and the interests of the NYT’s Democrat + wealthy bent. Same with the hilariously biased title reporting on Kamala’s plagiarism today. This is par for the course of NYT. But NYT has no compelling reason to post anti-Israel falsehoods. It doesn’t help Democrats, it doesn’t help their financial status, and it goes against the values of some of the execs who have ties to the Jewish community (CEO and chief editor). Why would the NYT be particularly critical of Israel? I think because the truth actually compels them here. There’s no financial, status, or political reason for them to criticize Israel. Now in this particular article, there is also an element of objective reporting, not pure subjective storymaking. No, it’s not perfectly objective, but polling a good sample of doctors is better than your usual Israel-Gaza coverage.

Re: your point that the doctors are forced to testify like this, they can simply abstain from answering if that were so, or they could answer anonymously. Is Hamas forcing them to answer with a gun to their head? I don’t recall reading this from previous medical workers. One of them is bound to spill the beans.

already ignored a pile of contradictions to even your most specious claims (e.g., that the Israeli military is mostly made up of religious extremists)

See: “Israel’s army, for much of its seven decades the country’s pre-eminent secular institution, is increasingly coming under the sway of a national religious movement that has made bold moves across Israeli society in recent years. About 40% of those graduating from the army’s infantry officer schools now come from a national religious community that accounts for 12 to 14% of Jewish Israeli society and is politically more aligned with Israel’s right and far-right political parties and the settler movement. Critics charge that its growing influence – including from the more orthodox portion known as Hardalim – is pursuing its own agenda within the army. Two-fifths of infantry graduate officer cadets now come from section of Israeli society aligned with far-right parties and settler movement” […] “In 1990, 2.5% of the graduate officer cadets of the infantry came form the national religious,” Shaul said. “By 2014 it is 40%. That is three times the representation of the national religious in Jewish Israeli society.” […] “Already we have seen discipline issues [related to national religious ideology] become almost unenforceable, and that has consequences elsewhere, including on issues like the rules of engagement.”

It's only plausible that Israelis think sniping children is fine if one accepts your premise that Jews (all Jews!) literally Other gentiles into a "not human" category

No, it is sufficient to show that there is an extremist section of Jewish Israeli society which is so radical that it would kill enemy children. And that such a section serves in the military at a higher rate. I think I proved this. I also made a general point about how this is a unique vulnerability of the Jewish religion.

But NYT has no compelling reason to post anti-Israel falsehoods.

Strong disagree. The NYT is emblematic of where the Democrats will be in the future, and the future of the Democrats is a consistently expanding Hamas caucus.

This is why Hamas and Hezbollah felt emboldened to do 10/7 and the expanded rocket attacks, and also why Israel feels pressure to deal with both problems NOW in a significant matter. The Democrats are signaling that within a few cycles sanctions on Israel akin to South Africa or Rhodesia are on the table.

I know you have not missed the last year of media coverage, therefore I do not believe your conviction that the NYT would not criticize Israel unless they really had the goods and were compelled by a sense of commitment to accuracy to report it.

The NYT does have a wealthy Jewish constituency. It also has a very large and very woke constituency that has been criticizing Israel and signal-boosting the Palestinian narrative since October 8. (Well before that, actually.)

You know this. The NYT is not some bastion of Jewiness that was suddenly forced to admit to Israeli atrocities because they had no choice. Now to be clear, I doubt any NYT reporters are deliberately reporting falsehoods. They might or might not really believe that Israeli soldiers are now routinely and intentionally shooting 5-year-olds. Maybe they think the doctors in Gaza who are claiming this believe it and deserve to be reported, because it's "close enough" to the truth. But they are certainly being as willingly credulous as you in accepting a narrative at face value that tells a story they want to tell.

Re: your point that the doctors are forced to testify like this, they can simply abstain from answering if that were so, or they could answer anonymously. Is Hamas forcing them to answer with a gun to their head? I don’t recall reading this from previous medical workers. One of them is bound to spill the beans.

This isn't what I said, and you know this isn't what I said.

I don't suggest Hamas is holding guns to doctors' heads to force them to make up stories. The NYT clearly did not interview every doctor in Gaza. Do you think any doctor in Gaza would say "No, that definitely isn't happening"? At most, they might say "I haven't seen this."

I do expect at some point we'll hear stories from people who were in Gaza who will be more honest about the Hamas militants in hospitals (I mean, these stories have already gotten out), but (a) they will have to have left Gaza, as will their families; (b) they will have to be people who don't want to cover for Hamas. Which is not a lot of people.

Most medical workers in Gaza, asked "Have you heard of the IDF shooting children?" will probably say "Yes, I've heard that's happening." Some will also have seen children brought to the hospital who've been shot.Were they shot deliberately? The family might say so. Is the medical worker going to disbelieve them?

Take a handful of actual incidents, a large proportion of sympathetic and biased medical workers, and a heavily censored reporting environment, and unsurprisingly it's easy to get a story like "Yes, everyone agrees the IDF is sniping children." Every war produces these kinds of atrocity stories; many turn out to be untrue. We already have a lot of conflicting narratives about October 7, and about what has happened in Gaza so far.

I cannot resist pointing out the obvious: the evidence for the Holocaust is far more voluminous and convincing, and yet strangely your skepticism comes out in full force on that subject. Why, one wonders, are stories of atrocities committed by Jews so believable, and stories of atrocities committed against Jews so hard to believe? Could you possibly suffer from bias?

See: “Israel’s army, for much of its seven decades the country’s pre-eminent secular institution, is increasingly coming under the sway of a national religious movement that has made bold moves across Israeli society in recent years. About 40% of those graduating from the army’s infantry officer schools now come from a national religious community that accounts for 12 to 14% of Jewish Israeli society and is politically more aligned with Israel’s right and far-right political parties and the settler movement.

That's still 40% and it's their infantry officer schools - a subset of a subset. So you tried to quietly move the goalposts from "Most Israeli soldiers are religious extremists" to "40% of infantry officers are from right-leaning religious communities." While this might be cause for concern within Israel, it still does not follow that even these 40% believe the things you claim, that murdering children is totally moral.

No, it is sufficient to show that there is an extremist section of Jewish Israeli society which is so radical that it would kill enemy children.

This is not sufficient when your claim is that the IDF is now routinely sniping children and Israelis are okay with it. There is an extremist section of every society radical enough to say "Kill the enemy, including their children." We have no shortage of them here in the US, and they come in right, left, secular and religious, woke and Dissident Right.

And that such a section serves in the military at a higher rate. I think I proved this.

The number of people in the Israeli military who believe it's fine to shoot children is greater than the number of people in the general Israeli population? Yes, I am confident you could say the same thing about the US military (or nearly any military) as well.

I also made a general point about how this is a unique vulnerability of the Jewish religion.

Yes, and your point was weak and poorly argued; it amounted to "Jews are awful and they are different from Christians, therefore it's easy to believe awful things about what they believe." There are plenty of Christian extremists with awful views and some of them join the military. A while ago there was a spate of stories about white nationalists infiltrating the Special Forces. I suspect you would be both more skeptical about the threat and protest about the unfair characterization of so-called white nationalists.

I think a lot of this is down to history. Jewish history is full of “we thought we were safe, then the gentiles started forming mobs — again,” and recent Israeli history has been one filled with terror attacks, suicide bombings, shootings, etc. with a history like that, paranoia, and thus extreme reaction to threats is just part of the deal. From the point of view of Israel, if the country fails, it’s only a matter of time before they’re back in Nazi camps. And the only thing standing between Jews and Nazi camps is the Israeli security apparatus. So, unlike the USA where military forces are generally only used abroad and we haven’t had a mainland invasion since 1812, Israel has a history of exile and being victimized all the time, finally getting a state, having the surrounding countries try to kill them, nearly daily terror strikes. There’s no sense that letting up will do any good here. The US military can follow international law because it’s not at risk nor are its civilians. If we decided to fight a war with silly string instead of guns, the state still isn’t at risk. If Israel doesn’t go full bore, they risk being destroyed. So while the US military wouldn’t shoot preteens, it’s never been in the same position. They never had to think about whether the kid will grow up to try to kill them.

Found more information. Posting it as a reply instead of editing the already-long OP. The NYT issued a reply to critics today:

Times Opinion rigorously edited this guest essay before publication, verifying the accounts and imagery through supporting photographic and video evidence and file metadata. We also vetted the doctors and nurses’ credentials, including that they had traveled to and worked in Gaza as claimed. When questions arose about the veracity of images included in the essay, we did additional work to review our previous findings. We presented the scans to a new round of multiple, independent experts in gunshot wounds, radiology and pediatric trauma, who attested to the images’ credibility. In addition, we again examined the images’ digital metadata and compared the images to video footage of their corresponding CT scans as well as photographs of the wounds of the three young children.

While our editors have photographs to corroborate the CT scan images, because of their graphic nature, we decided these photos — of children with gunshot wounds to the head or neck — were too horrific for publication. We made a similar decision for the additional 40-plus photographs and videos supplied by the doctors and nurses surveyed that depicted young children with similar gunshot wounds.

This is related to some of the issues brought up ITT as well. Eg, regarding the quality and legitimacy of the photos (@netstack , @jeroboam , @The_Nybbler, @NelsonRushton).

Regarding the point by @sarker that the doctors were brought to Israel by PAMA, the author of the piece writes on Twitter that

I learned of the existence of PAMA when the Society for Critical Care Medicine sent out a call for volunteers to work with the World Health Organization in Gaza, which went through PAMA. I've literally never spoken to anyone at PAMA about the public advocacy work I do, they're not involved in it in any way whatsoever

This also answers the criticism by @Quantumfreakonomics that anyone who would help Gazans medically must be a Hamas supporter. The Society of Critical Care Medicine and the World Health Organization are top authorities who disagree with that.

No, I still don't believe them. What was the question asked of the experts? "Is this plausibly a child wounded by a bullet", or "Is this plausibly a child shot at close range with an assault rifle"? I have already said that I thought the photo I linked was a child hit with a nearly-spent bullet; that does not fit the narrative of this opinion piece.

Point taken. I’m willing to believe that the images are real per Media Rarely Lying.

My arguments about selection bias and lack of statistical evidence stand.

The Society of Critical Care Medicine and the World Health Organization are top authorities who disagree with that.

They do? Good to know! Next time I go volunteering to Gaza, I'll make sure to trust those top authorities and not the Hamas militants next to me.

The large scale deliberate killing of civilians (including children) during wartime was a feature of practically every major conflict until quite recently. If it’s a question of (western) Christianity versus Judaism, why did countless Christian armies behave in the same way until the second half of the 20th century? Overall, civilian casualties in Gaza remain within reasonable bounds for an intense war against an entrenched guerrilla force that doesn’t wear uniforms in an extremely dense urban environment. If there are Israelis who wish they could genocide the Palestinians (and there surely are), they’re nowhere near starting to do so.

Most importantly, the Palestinians have an extra option that most of our tribal ancestors (whether Jewish or gentile, Muslim or Christian, European or Arab) did not have: they can surrender and live a comfortable second-world developing country lifestyle and have four kids and enjoy much of what life has to offer. Sure, they’ll be second class citizens in a state they don’t really control and have little say in the politics of, but so have countless people throughout history.

For most of the past thousand years, in most of the Muslim world, Jews had a much worse deal than the worst reasonable outcome of a Total Palestinian Surrender. The life Arabs in Israeli-controlled territory are essentially being offered is, after all, not substantially worse than the life Arabs in most non-petrostate Middle Eastern countries already live. No Jew should feel guilt about this when in truth the Palestinians have already been treated far more generously and with far greater concern for their wellbeing than it would be if (and was when) the situation was reversed.

Edit: Having read the other comments, especially the discussion of military rounds that fail to penetrate a kid's skull and are thus conveniently visible on x-ray, my money is on the NYT falling for fakes created by motivated people. The doctors would not even have to be die-hard Hamas supporters bent on the destruction of Israel. If I had had the misfortune of spending months working in a wartime hospital, I might also consider telling a 'little white lie' about the fraction of dead kids who were shot to the head, if I thought that this is the best way to stop the killing.

Shame on me for believing that the NYT would consult with experts to check the plausibility of their reporting and thereby ruin a great story.

End of edit.

Overall, civilian casualties in Gaza remain within reasonable bounds for an intense war against an entrenched guerrilla force that doesn’t wear uniforms in an extremely dense urban environment.

The claim by the NYT is not that deliberately targeted kids amount to a large fraction of war victims, the claim is that such targeting happens and is tolerated to some degree.

I have previously defended the IDF against people comparing the civilian death tolls of their war against Hamas to the death toll of Oct 7. My argument was that the Hamas attacks were worse not in their death tolls, but in their malicious intent. Everyone fighting a war accepts some civilian casualties. Israel went further than most belligerents regarding the amount of collateral deaths they would stomach, especially when targeting senior commanders, but I would still argue that blowing up 50 Palestinians in a refugee camp to get one bad guy is different from Hamas executing civilians one by one.

People, states and causes are in part not judged by their median action, but by their worst action. As the joke goes, "But just one little sheep!". A doctor who saves the life a thousand patients and murders and eats three others would not be judged by his average or median impact, but by his worst deeds. Likewise, anyone arguing that the Nazis were not as evil as generally depicted because only 0.9% of the German population was Jewish would totally fail to convince any audience. The reason that Abu Ghraib turned into a scandal was because it was the median case.

Headshot six-year-olds are both unmistakably non-combatants and also unmistakably the results of deliberate targeting. I would expect dead six-year-olds, and perhaps headshot 15-yo (unless Hamas happens to abide by the conventions against child soldiers, which seems unlikely). Perhaps a hand full of headshot 6-yo could be attributed to bad luck but any more than that would suggest deliberate targeting of kids.

While I did not much care for the IDF's tactics before, I was willing to cut them some slack as their goal to wipe Hamas from the face of the Earth seemed worthy. If further evidence confirms that parts of the IDF were able to conspire to shoot small kids, then I would become indifferent between them and Hamas, as in 'they are both evil and I hope they both succeed in destroying the other, too bad about the decent people caught in their fight'.

At the moment, I am noticing that I am confused. Even if the IDF was full of people who thought that killing Palestinian kids was virtuous, neither the rank and file nor especially the command would be oblivious about the fact that the rest of the world does not share that value judgement. An IDF sniper killing a small child would bring the destruction if Israel closer in a second than a hundred Hamas fighters could do in their lifetime. Nor do I find it plausible that the command would remain unaware of unauthorized past-times of their sniper teams, we are talking about a digital age state known for its intelligence services here. On the other hand, if large parts of the IDF had a collective fetish for child murder, why would they not pick a more deniable way to accomplish that? They could just bomb a school (or wherever kids gather in wars) and claim that it was used as a base to shoot missiles into Israel, the NYT would be very unlikely to prove them wrong.

Another explanation would be that it is some kind of Hamas op. While Hamas path to victory is paved with the murders of Palestinian kids (because Israel can not be defeated while it is backed by the US, and the best way to turn the US from Israel are dead kids for which IDF can be blamed), it very much does not sound like their usual MO. "Climb on some rooftop and shoot some random kids in Gazan streets" does not seem like an order the median Hamas member would follow.

Slightly more plausible would be that they shot kids who had just of whatever 'natural causes' will kill you in a warzone post mortem, and then carried them to the hospital. Still does not seem very likely.

If IDF is targeting small kids, the obvious move on Hamas part would be to smuggle out their corpses and pass them to governments for forensic analysis. If ten different countries go 'yup, they died because of wounds inflicted with calibers used by IDF' that would likely be the beginning of the end of Israel as Harris and Trump race to the microphones to promise and end of all weapon shipments.

Headshots Georg, who lives in Gaza & sees over 10,000 children each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

How many of those doctors saw the same kids? How many heard each others’ stories, or were interviewed based specifically on their involvement?

There are also some credibility issues—the number of kids who made it to the ER with fatal wounds, the quality of the x-rays—but overall, I don’t think this is a statistical argument. It’s a vibes-based argument dressed up with a survey. That’s fertile ground for all the usual confirmation biases, group consensus, etc. I’m not buying it.

And look. I know that you’ve got this weird conviction that Jews are rule-obeying golems, but it’s not realistic. It doesn’t make useful predictions, and it’s less defensible than just accusing them of religious fanaticism. Making your criticism strangely specific doesn’t always make it stronger.

Also, I was under the impression the most fanatically religious Jews were exempt from conscription, or at least try very hard to avoid military service.

These are two different groups of fanatically religious Jews. The Haredim rely on divine providence and prefer to pray the problems away, while the Srugim don't expect G-d to do all the work. They are the ones that would start building the Third Temple as soon as they knew they had enough nukes to glass all resistance in the Muslim word. For now, they want everything from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the desert to the Euphrates River.

You are proposing an interesting metric, and I would like to see comparisons to other conflict zones before spinning explanations about how Israelis are uniquely predisposed to targeting children.

This opinion poll is a reasonable source of anecdotes based on a snowball sample:

Through personal contacts in the medical community and a good deal of searching online, I was able to get in touch with American health care workers who have served in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023. Many have familial or religious ties to the Middle East. Others, like me, do not, but felt compelled to volunteer in Gaza for a variety of reasons.

This is not a representative sample--even of "American health care workers who have served in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023"--nor does the author pretend it to be such. As for the rest of the methodology, I have found none in the article, except:

Using questions based on my own observations and my conversations with fellow doctors and nurses, I worked with Times Opinion to poll 65 health care workers about what they had seen in Gaza.

What were these questions? What was the structure of the interview? Times Opinion isn't exactly known for conducting unbiased research, qualitative or quantitative. In particular, this gives me pause:

Fifty-seven, including myself, were willing to share their experiences on the record. The other eight participated anonymously, either because they have family in Gaza or the West Bank, or because they fear workplace retaliation.

Confidentiality is a keystone feature in social science research; without it, a participant must consider how their response will reflect on them from the broader audience. Here, however, the vast majority agreed to have their full name, age, and city of residence displayed next to their responses in the New York Times, in an Opinion piece decrying the Israeli violence in Gaza. So not only are these responders not representative, they are advocates.

Now, it's still possible that a healthcare professional who is passionate for the cause still report the truth. I am not discounting out of hand their specific anecdotes, though I do question their veracity or interpretation more than I would a more neutral observer. Because these anecdotes are coming from advocates for a cause, I give more weight to objections like the kind raised by @The_Nybbler when analyzing the X-ray photographs.

So to summarize my point: This particular Opinion piece's evidence does not extend beyond the anecdotes the specific medical professionals who chose to go to Gaza during wartime and have demonstrated willingness for advocacy on behalf of Gazans. However, I agree that the metric (# pre-teens shot in the head with single bullet) / (# pre-teens shot overall) could be a valuable indicator, so long as there is a reasonable attempt at meaningful comparison.

P.S. As an intuition pump, if we take one year in US and looked at, say, teenage boys, I would expect that metric to be high (more than 50%) due to suicides.

P.P.S. The metric (# healthcare professionals who saw preteens with a bullet wound to the head) / (# healthcare professionals), on the other hand, is not as useful, except maybe for those who consider healthcare profession in that region as an occupation.

In other words, the Israeli military selects for the extremists which are raised up within the de-centralized schools of Israel. Don’t forget that it’s Israel under attack, not “secular country I happen to be citizen of”. They pray to Israel daily, it is their Christ, so for a Zionist extremism it is as if their deepest value is being terrorized.

The Israeli military is a universal institution with recruitment based on conscription. My understanding is that secular Jewish Israelis are actually over represented in the high status combat units and they lean a bit more liberal than the country as a whole. This is not the US where the combats are 100% on the right.

Speaking of the US, the combats have done things to ragheads that are a violation of the laws of war during the GWOT, and prosecuting them for it was, uh, at least opposed by some even if it was generally done. More than likely the Israeli command structure just doesn’t care enough to seriously clamp down on this stuff.

Is this the same nytimes that blew out of proportion the story about the kids buried in Canada schoolyards?

With the same attention that Christians allot to Christ, Judaism allots to the practice of ritual rule-following.

I have always found certain aspects of Judaism to be rather appealing, including the rule-following. It tickles my autism.

"And when, baffled by the inadequacy of his human standards, your philosopher refers justice to the "categoric imperative," he betrays the triviality of your world . What is that "categoric imperative," that helpless compromise and confession? What man recognizes it, will bow to it? That phrase itself is its own denial, for he that refers mankind to a "categoric imperative" is himself neither categoric nor imperative . But even the deaf will hear and tremble when the Prophet thunders: "Thus saith the Lord." There is the categoric imperative!

(- Maurice Samuel, You Gentiles)

In some ways, Judaism is the Kant to Christianity's Hegel. God and his Law as absolute Other, the thing-in-itself imposed from the outside, an inscrutable and uncognizable limit to pure reason, vs. contradiction introduced into the heart of the logos, the thing-in-itself shattered: a God who can be mortal, a God who can die.

That is only meaningful if (a) (as jeroboam said) they are telling the truth, and (b) you compare to a control group consisting of the number of children shot in the head or chest in other war zones.

A priori, it is = easier to believe that you could find several doctors to make up this story, than it is to believe that Israeli soldiers are doing it intentionally on a regular basis. So the evidence needs to be pretty solid in my book.

Do you believe that Times Opinion only interviewed pro-Hamas doctors? The Times Opinion team oversaw the whole questionnaire and polling process. Are Nina Ng and Dr. Mark Perlmutter die-hard anti-Israel extremists? Even if we ignore the bias that would lead one to conclude that every Arab and Muslim working as a doctor is a sympathizer to Hamas (of course, we would never say this about Jews who have associations to Israel), this conclusion doesn’t make sense in light of the testimony from the Vietnamese American and the white midwesterner. Due to language barriers, most doctors working or volunteering in Gaza are going to Arabic speakers.

According to this random article, the interviewed doctors were sent there by the Palestinian American Medical Association. I haven't done the legwork to fact check this myself.

However I do find the arguments against the x-rays to be convincing. Are there any counterarguments for those?

Do you believe that Times Opinion only interviewed pro-Hamas doctors?

If they interviewed doctors in Gaza, they interviewed pro-Hamas doctors. No one would voluntarily put themselves under the jurisdiction of Hamas unless they were okay with what that implied. If someone from a foreign country volunteered to work in German hospitals during WWII, one would assume that they were a Nazi sympathizer.

Do you believe that Times Opinion only interviewed pro-Hamas doctors? The Times Opinion team oversaw the whole questionnaire and polling process.

It's very easy for me to believe that some Americans are to some extent pro-Hamas. It's even easier for me to believe that the Americans who ended up volunteering in Gaza are pro-Hamas.

I'll be honest about my biases here.

I don't believe the doctors. I think they value the cause higher than their word. And it's been my understanding that some of the viral X-ray images were obviously faked.

Based on your post history, you are obviously a strident opponent of Israel, or maybe Jews in general.

I guess I just wonder what high quality evidence would even look like. What would make me trust you? What would make me trust the doctors? I honestly don't know how to answer that question. But I think the shortest distance to peace is through Israeli victory so that's where I am. War is hell.

And I do believe the damage inflicted on Lebanon and Gaza is nothing compared to what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot. When your ideology explicitly calls for genocide (Hamas/Hezbollah), then you've vacated the moral high ground.

I do feel for the people in Lebanon who are caught up in this. It's awful. But the truth still means something.

Wasn't one of these types of doctors killed recently because he was holding one of the hostages and was killed in the retrieval? Could be misremembering, but I suspect that's what we are working with. And I say that as an ardent doctor defender.

That was a Palestinian doctor, not a foreign volunteer doctor like most interviewed here.

It sounds familiar but even apart from that the level of supposed sanctity that we're supposed to treat doctors' testimonies with is kind of dumb. The idea that being a doctor automatically confers on someone the kind of supreme ethical status that means they would never lie, be biased, or really hate Jews, has the sort of intuitive logic that I probably accepted as a child but shouldn't be convincing to any adult who tries to think critically.

I don't know about doctors, but I believe there was an Al Jazeera journalist that met that fate.

High quality evidence would look like what the NYT did. They polled an assortment of doctors working in Gaza and asked them how often they saw children killed in such a way that would indicate intent. 80% said yes. Some said that it was a daily occurrence. This is high quality evidence. Perhaps 80% of the doctors are liars and the NYT team is lying. Or perhaps extremists who promote and condone war crimes are doing war crimes. Which is more likely?

They polled an assortment of doctors working in Gaza

Oh. You find this a credible source of information? People who volunteer to be governed by terrorists?

A hilarious way to phrase it, but of course. Normal, mainstream, reputable medical organizations issued calls for doctors to volunteer in Gaza. Some accepted. That’s because they care about innocent human lives. Innocent life is not devalued because of the hegemonic political force in power.

Sure it is, if you define value innocence. If you value innocence, then coercing non-innocent actions devalues it by decreasing the degree of innocence.

This includes, for example, compromising information integrity as a condition for access. If you want to assist people in gaza under the administrative control of Hamas, your access to Gaza depends on your public statements aligning with their interests. If they do not like your position, then depending on who you are you may lose access, or people may lose their lives. Therefore, there is a systemic bias at play, and all participants who play to it (speaking only within the bounds Hamas presents) are complicit, and thus less innocent, and thus less valued.

This is why arguments to the value of humanity rarely want to focus on innocence per see. Innocence is too easily compromised.

If you want to assist people in gaza under the administrative control of Hamas, your access to Gaza depends on your public statements aligning with their interests

Here are the problems with that: I don’t see evidence of that happening in the past; Hamas would like to maintain access to top medical care, which would be jeopardized if they began to threaten medical providers; Most of the volunteer doctors are not making a career in the Gaza Strip, so there is no reason for them to cowtow to the ideology of Hamas; the very same survey we are talking about has 20% of the doctors say they didn’t see shot children — so why did this 20% say that? Where’s the evidence that 20% were harassed or asked to leave?

What you presented is a story but the story has nothing evidencing it. The rest of your comment is just trying to obfuscate the fact that innocent Palestinian children ought to obtain medical care.

Here are the problems with that: I don’t see evidence of that happening in the past;

Then you ignored past evidence. As such, no reason to link it again when you can easily see for yourself if you search.

Hamas would like to maintain access to top medical care, which would be jeopardized if they began to threaten medical providers;

Hamas is not prioritizing civilian access to top medical care over things that jeopardize access to top medical care.

This is demonstrated when it regularly does things such as turn medical centers into military bases and steals aid from the public and co-opts local palestinian medical organizations into logistics and propaganda associates, all of which decreases the quality and availability of medical care. Hamas does them anyway.

Hence, there is no reason to believe maintaining access to top medical care prioritizes goals (such as control of the Gazan territory) that could be advanced by threatening medical providers (who could complicate narratives if allowed to be outspoken, but whose shortage serves as a useful propaganda tool for soliciting international sympathy).

Note that this is paralleled with Hamas's use of interior ministry regulations and enforcement of journalism coverage from within the strip, which itself has had observable not-back effects as while these rules nominally don't apply to organizations like the Assoicated Press, the reliance of these organizations on people within the strip, and thus subject to Hamas retaliation, shapes which relationships with the outside world can form in the first place.

Most of the volunteer doctors are not making a career in the Gaza Strip, so there is no reason for them to cowtow to the ideology of Hamas;

Sure there is- access to Gaza in the first place.

In order for external actors to operate within Gaza, they must be permitted by whichever authority controls access to the ground the organization wishes to work on and from. Organizations which do not cowtow, do not gain or retain access. This is basic access-control policy.

the very same survey we are talking about has 20% of the doctors say they didn’t see shot children — so why did this 20% say that? Where’s the evidence that 20% were harassed or asked to leave?

You are reversing the cause and effect of a filtering process, and in turn running into the issue of the nature of small-scale surveys which you are conflating with the filtering effect.

The filtering effect is a pre-survey effect. The effect of filtering is not claiming that 20% of the survey respondents would be asked to leave after saying 20% say that they didn't see shot children. The filtering effect can be something like that 80% of doctors surveyed are willing to say they saw shot children because they are recruited from the sort of (permitted) organizations that include a higher number of doctors who would be willing to say they saw shot children on a survey if it benefited the palestinian cause, but also would not opine on who shot the victims, especially if doing so might work against the cause.

Which goes into the data on who was doing the shooting, rather than who was shot, which not even the NYT respondents cited claim were Israeli shooters.

Except even in this case there is a far more mundane explanation for radical scores, which is survey structure of small samples.

The author is writing on the basis of surveys that includes themselves and people/organizations they know. Groups of people who know eachother are also groups of people who have a stronger tendency to have heard about the same things, often from eachother. This is how you get cultural / information silos where people can get influenced by group thought dynamics that do not have to reflect reality, and why establishing the representativeness of a sample population is critical.

What you presented is a story but the story has nothing evidencing it. The rest of your comment is just trying to obfuscate the fact that innocent Palestinian children ought to obtain medical care.

Medical care for being victimized by whom?

Again, I return to the data points that not only do the shooting-cases not claim that the shooters were Israelis, but that the majority of the article is focused on medical consequences of things like malnutrition and psychological damage that are the responsibility of Hamas, who have been stealing aid, compromising medical organizations, and perpetrating the conflict.

Which, while you certainly had a... take on the evilness of da joos, seemed rather light on equivalent religious analysis on the rulers of gaza.

Then you ignored past evidence. As such, no reason to link it again when you can easily see for yourself if you search.

This isn’t how it works. You’re asserting that there’s a normalized phenomenon of Hamas threatening or pressuring the testimony of temporary Western medical workers. There have been hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand Western medic workers who have volunteered in Gaza over the years.

In order for external actors to operate within Gaza, they must be permitted by whichever authority controls access to the ground the organization wishes to work on and from. Organizations which do not cowtow, do not gain or retain access. This is basic access-control policy.

As per a previous comment, it was the WHO and a major American medical association which called for doctors willing to go to Gaza. Now you are alleging that the WHO is controlled by Hamas? Or are you alleging that Hamas is interviewing every doctor who passes into the territory? This also needs evidence. If this occurred, we would know about it, per above.

they are recruited from the sort of (permitted) organizations that include a higher number of doctors who would be willing to say they saw shot children on a survey if it benefited the palestinian cause

Again, you are making a claim that is empirical. Are you saying Hamas has a hand in selecting doctors? We need a source on that. Are you saying that doctors would only work in Gaza because they are pro-Hamas? This is disputed by major medical organizations wishing to send doctors into Gaza. You are also conflating sympathy to the Palestinian people with the wilingness to publicly lie about the health of children to benefit Hamas. You have to imagine all of the doctors who are not radical pro-Israel supporters, but instead focused on mitigating the harm affecting children. That’s going to be a lot of doctors. Doctors willing to volunteer are predisposed to care about the plight of children, rather than the ideology of political organizations in obscure parts of the world.

Perhaps 80% of the doctors are liars

Yes, they are probably either lying or have no idea what the hell they're talking about. Motivated reasoning is a hell of a drug.

and the NYT team is lying

Probably not

IMO if even part of the IDF evidence of Hamas operating semi-openly out of hospitals is accurate, it seems likely to me that doctors willing to continue working in that environment might be heavily selected to have an axe to grind against the IDF. For example, I know what I'd expect if I started polling Catholic doctors at Catholic hospitals about the ethics of abortion.

Ah, yes, the children shot in the head point-blank range with assault rifles, where the bullet remained IN the skull, yet whose head was pretty much intact. Obvious Hamas propaganda. These children (if indeed they are children) were either hit by nearly-spent bullets (e.g. at long range, or fired in the air) or the bullet was simply placed under them when the X-ray was taken.

If you shoot someone in the head at close range with an assault rifle, the bullet goes through and leaves an enormous exit wound, plus a wide path of damage through the brain due to hydrostatic shock.

If they use some underpowered subsonic assassin setup, then it's possible it could be slow enough to just make a hole an embed in the skull at close range. Most of the bullets in the images look like 5.56 (?), and it's really not the tool for the job. It'd likely not work reliably in the IDF issued rifles (are they mostly using Tavor's still?) as this kind of ammo usually requires a special setup or tinkering beyond what infantryman has in the field.

If there's death squads going around giving Moscow neckties to Palestinian children, then they would probably choose something else. Mossad used to like those nifty .22's. They also probably wouldn't let the kids they just shot in the head get carted off to the hospital. On the other hand, if a child catches a strays, ricochet, or misidentification there's less reason to prevent them from going to the hospital.

Soldiers blasting kid's skulls for fun with their issued rifles on a regular basis seems unlikely given the details in the article if only for the fact there are so many kids going to the hospital after getting blasted in the skull with a rifle cartridge. "44 doctors, nurses and paramedics saw multiple cases of preteen children who had been shot in the head or chest in Gaza" with a couple X-ray's doesn't sell me on death squad or even misconduct. It shows me kids have been shot in the head according to some doctors.

The lethal combination of what Human Rights Watch describes as indiscriminate military violence, what Oxfam calls the deliberate restriction of food and humanitarian aid, near-universal displacement of the population, and destruction of the health care system is having the calamitous effect that many Holocaust and genocide scholars warned of nearly a year ago.

I think this paragraph tells me enough about the journalist's sympathies and where her biases lay. Doesn't mean the IDF hasn't had misconduct or committed war crimes. I suspect they have just based on what I've seen make it online. Especially in the early months of the war. But, probably not to the degree, frequency, or relevancy (genocide) that this writer believes.

are they mostly using Tavor's still?

No, most units moved back to M4’s, or an m-16 variant for rear units. You may see an Arad at places, and IIRC the border guard is trying out M7s. I haven’t seen a full-size Tavor in a while. Some reserve units still used micro-Tavors (X95) which is my personal favorite.

If you shoot someone in the head at close r

Amen. No damn way a 7.62x51 rifle round (what the Israeli's use, comparable to a .308 Winchester) fails to exit a human skull.

The Israelis use 5.56 NATO, mostly. Hamas uses 7.62. There's not enough information in the X-rays to distinguish (because they don't tell you the size of the head), though I think some (including the one I linked) probably are bigger than 5.56 -- I suspect that one was a round from an AK-47 or similar either at long range or (more likely) fired not quite straight up.

The 7.62x39 round used in an AK is different than the 7.62x51 NATO. Or the Mosin’s 7.62x54R, for that matter. They’ve all got the same bullet diameter, but different bullet lengths/weights and cases.

Maybe @NelsonRushton was thinking of the IMI Galil, which had a 7.62x51 version. But as you noted, Israel used and uses 5.56x45 for its infantrymen.

He also could have been referring to rifles like the SR-25 or M24. Those would fit the “sniper” narrative. But news outlets can’t decide if the Israelis are shooting children crossing the street, or executing them point blank, so who knows?

Doesn't really matter, though. Any of those rounds fired from point blank range or really any range at which you can see the target without optics, or indeed any reasonable sniper range even with optics, is going to do a lot more damage to the head than shown in those X-rays. Nobody's sniping children from a mile away.

I concur. I think that photo, at least, is obviously fake.

Ed: or the bullet only killed a child after expending its energy in four or five Hamas bodies. That could also explain how they were so close to a hospital!

they use 7.62 NATO for snipers and machine guns, IIRC, and .50 for HMGs. that bullet looks like a .50.

A 7.62x51 or .50 BMG at close range doing that little damage is even LESS likely than a 7.62x39 or 5.56 NATO doing it, of course. But if I'm doing my measuring correctly, if that bullet is a .50BMG with 13mm diameter, the head has a front-to-back size of 266mm, which is too big (99th percentile for men is is 217mm) If it's 7.8mm (7.62mm nominal), it's 159mm; too small for an adult, and we don't know the age of the victim. But of course this is an X-ray and sizes can be distorted.

your measurement definitely beats my eyeballing. and yeah, I'd be mystified at how either one could end up in that position in a kid's head, on purpose. Like, you need the bullet to have lost 80-90% of its velocity before it's going to stop like that, so we're probably talking high-angle fire at long ranges.

Could be an old CT scan from a casualty of one of those Arab weddings where they fire guns in the air indiscriminately.

You're assuming that's a 7.62x51 projectile. It looks like a .50 BMG to me, given the relative scale to the head, unless that's a newborn.

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