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This is the number of dead that they're able to verify, which is extremely difficult for a variety of reasons. There's another 10000 that are missing and can safely be presumed dead as well, and I believe about 90000 with severe injuries. I don't think we're going to get true or accurate casualty numbers until after the war ends, and even then I have my doubts.
I have seen too many photos of dead Palestinian children to give the story that little credibility. On top of that, Israeli murder of children is common enough even outside the conflict that there are a lot of reports of it from the west bank as well. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/19/west-bank-children-killed-unprecedented-rate
If you've got a comprehensive debunking of the x-ray claims I'd like to see it, but I've seen enough direct video footage of these kinds of attacks that I can't just brush the claim off wholesale, especially not on the basis of vibes rather than citations (admittedly a bit hypocritical of me given that I'm not posting the evidence I'm talking about either, but I'm sure you can understand why I don't save and archive all the videos of children being graphically murdered that I see).
https://x.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1858304872963010840 Franceska Albanese makes the claim here.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-idf-palestinian-prisoner-alleged-rape-sde-teinman-abuse-protest/
There are countless claims from released Palestinian prisoners that rape and sexual abuse was endemic in Israeli prisons - and Israelis themselves (including high ranking government officials!) have protested any attempt to hold the perpetrators accountable.
It makes very little sense to accuse Israel of genocide/ethnic cleansing if you claim that you we don't have a reasonable sense of the numbers of civilians killed. What are you even basing the accusation on then?
The article doesn't give any evidence. I'm not saying none of this happened, but I think it's very likely the Guardian would simply reprint potentially made-up stories without any due-diligence, so long as they paint Israel in a negative light.
I'll have a look. I'm also interested in direct video evidence of Israelis shooting infants in the head.
Albanese's whole thing is being cartoonishly anti-Israeli. If she was at least providing evidence that might mean something, but her simply repeating the claim means very little.
I wouldn't remotely put it past Palestinian prisoners (who are mostly terrorists) to simply make things up to try and make Israel look bad. Such propaganda is a core pillar of their strategy. But sure, every accuser has a right to be heard. Perhaps Israel really does treat prisoners that badly. This really doesn't add much to the argument that Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing/genocide.
So that this debate doesn't get derailed into a series of speculations about the veracity of individual accusations against Israel, it's worth reflecting on the path of this discussion, which seems to be following the typical route with anti-Israel individuals, which is to accuse them of genocide, and when challenged to defend that position on the basis of the numbers, pivot to a mass of unsubstantiated claims of supposed Israeli atrocities. All those atrocities could have actually happened, and they still wouldn't support the ethnic-cleansing argument.
ETA: Some links RE the x-rays:
https://www.quora.com/Do-Israeli-soldiers-shoot-Gazan-children-in-the-head-as-has-been-recently-alleged/answer/S-Meltzer
https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2024/10/the-weaponization-of-medical-misinformation-and-the-war-in-gaza/
https://honestreporting.com/new-york-times-guest-essay-shredded-online-after-claiming-idf-targets-gazan-children/
Francesca Albanese's report to the UN. I know you said that she is "cartoonishly anti-Israeli" but if you can spot any lies in here that I missed feel free to point them out. There's actually no point relying on the number of civilians killed to identify genocide or ethnic cleansing, because by the time those figures tell you that a genocide is occurring it is already too late to do anything about it, and the point of identifying genocide/ethnic cleansing is to make sure it doesn't happen again.
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/genocide-as-colonial-erasure-report-francesca-albanese-01oct24/#_ftn37
I highly recommend giving it a read - there's a mountain of citations, and there are even a whole lot more photos of children with bullet wounds in those citations as well. That said the report is extremely long so I'll refrain from just posting the entire thing here, but it represents my position on the conflict very well. There are mountains of evidence with regards to the genocidal intent and actions of the Israeli government, even if you just go through the citations of that report. When I read a report about IDF soldiers killing themselves because they can't live with what they've done in Gaza, or how they can't eat meat anymore because they ran over so many people with a bulldozer and saw the "meat" come out I find it very hard to believe that nothing's happening. When Israelis chant "School's out in Gaza because all the children are dead" to try and intimidate people in Amsterdam, I find it very hard to feel sorry for them.
For what it's worth, I don't find the argument about whether or not Israel is actually a committing a genocide to be that interesting - the answer is just so clearly and blatantly yes. Attempting to make the claim that israeli protests against enforcement of rules against raping prisoners are just made up by evil terrorist prisoners when I've seen the video footage just makes me feel like you're trying to insult my intelligence. Even one of the debunking links you gave me is so nakedly partisan that is has two giant DONATE TO ISRAEL NOW buttons on it - I may as well link to the Daily Stormer as proof that Israel is bad.
I like these conversations a lot more when the Israeli side is willing to admit that they're a blood-drenched, bronze-age state intent on ethnic purity and conquest via force of arms to reclaim the territory their god said was theirs - when you're willing to admit that there are actual conversations that can be had. Will Israel's plans actually work? What are the long-term consequences going to be? Does ethnic cleansing actually work without any downsides? Does international law exist at all? Those are all much more interesting topics, and as an added bonus I don't have to look at gore of dead children or picture hundreds of people getting crushed with a bulldozer in such a gruesome way that it made one of the drivers kill themselves later.
I too like conversations a lot more when my opponents are willing to accept my most uncharitable and cartoonish representation of their point of view as accurate. It's so bizarre you would suggest the Israeli side should just admit that they are evil and monstrous and start the conversation from there that I am genuinely not sure whether I missed the subtle irony you're conveying.
I'm basing my view of the Israeli side on direct quotes from high-ranking government officials and widely respected international legal bodies. The United Nations and the ICC are both making this claim, and so is the Israeli government. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-29/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-people-of-israel-will-settle-gaza-netanyahu-ministers-urge-palestinians-expulsion/0000018d-5495-d1b6-aded-5fdd570c0000
One of the sources that I linked in my post was a report by the UN stating that what Israel is doing is genocide. This morning the ICC issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes/crimes against humanity. IDF soldiers are killing themselves because they're unable to live with the memories of what they've done. Blood-drenched may sound hyperbolic, but how else can you describe reports of somebody bulldozing hundreds of people alive to the point that they're unable to eat meat anymore because it reminds them too much of what's inside people?
Just to clarify, I didn't say they were evil. I'm not interested in moral discussions like that, which is why I posited those alternative questions in my post. None of them revolved around the morality of what's happening, but you can't even begin to talk reasonably about the topic without being honest and admitting that Israel is trying to ethnically cleanse Gaza (as their government has repeatedly admitted, and as the UN has repeatedly accused them of).
I'm pretty sure the UN and the ICC did not say "the Israeli side is a blood-drenched, bronze-age state intent on ethnic purity and conquest via force of arms to reclaim the territory their god said was theirs." Though it is probably what a lot of people in those organizations think, given the hostility they have traditionally shown towards Israel.
As I have said before, I don't particularly have affection for Israel, but to say the Israelis are the bloodthirsty medieval ones, living next to who they do, seems disingenuous.
Well, you might not have used the word "evil," but you all but called them worshippers of Khorne, so come on.
While this is debatable (kind of like "genocide" - if you are going to invoke the UN and international bodies, then the precise and legalistic definition of words matters), sure, I will provisionally agree that that's what they are doing. And even say that I think what they are doing right now is pretty bad.
My point here is not that I think Israelis are the good guys and how dare you criticize them, but that the history there is a lot more complicated than your simplistic, straight-from-the-mouths-of-Hamas version of Israeli history. I find conversations more productive when people are actually able to steelman their opponents as rational human beings acting out of motives other than pure malice or blind fanaticism, and if that's all you can imagine as what motivates your enemies, then either your enemies really are monsters, or you are probably failing to understand them (or you are doing so deliberately because you hate them and it is more pleasurable to believe they are monsters).
Yes, I said that my view was based on those things, not that I was just directly quoting them, and I don't think any individual element of that description is inapplicable. Even pro-Israeli partisans admit they've killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, including women and children - “There are no schools in Gaza, as there are no children left.” was proudly chanted by them in public. I think that more than justifies the charge of "blood-drenched", and it puts in some work when it comes to justifying "bronze-age" as well. Netanyahu himself has referenced Amalek and what their god tells them to do to Amalek with regards to the current conflict, and I believe the Amalek-Israel dispute does actually date back to the bronze age. As for ethnic purity, Israel proudly advertises itself as a state for Jewish people and has laws which back that up - I can't think of any other nation that allows for DNA testing to determine whether or not you can immigrate. And as for conquest via force of arms to reclaim the territory their god said was theirs... I've been watching that happen on the news and social media for months now. I've already provided quotes from Israeli settlers planning on settling in the now-cleansed north of Gaza.
I've based my views on quotes straight from the mouths of Likud officials, not Hamas. As I said, I'm not condemning the Israelis as evil (I don't think calling a state evil really has much meaning) - I'm just taking them at their word. I think that they're motivated by ethnonationalist impulses, and multiple Israelis have simply told me this to my face in other discussions. Until you face the reality of what Israel has done and is doing, you're not going to be able to have a meaningful conversation about it - that's what I meant by preferring conversations where the Israeli partisans just admit that Israel is actually doing what it proudly advertises itself as doing.
The moral valence only comes into play because in the modern era most nations saw an attempt at wiping out an inconvenient population and collectively decided that it must never be allowed to happen again, and that efforts at genocide are a collective stain upon humanity. I'm very partial to that belief and I'm not going to deny that I'm opposed to the genocide of the Palestinians, but at the same time...
That's precisely what I'm doing. I can understand the logic behind their actions - I disagree with their reasoning, but I can understand why they believe the things they believe and do the things they do. An accurate depiction of what they're doing sounds like evil to the majority of humanity, but that's not a reason to mince words.
Edit: Just to clarify, I think that calling a state evil is indeed meaningless. But having a widespread and justified belief among the rest of humanity that what you're doing is evil is very different and much more consequential.
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Can you link the x-ray pictures you considered credible, so the debunking would be more direct?
Minus specific pictures, a comprehensive debunking is not complicated. The Israelis generally use 5.56mm NATO rifles for their regular troops, and 7.62mm NATO sniper rifles and machine guns as support weapons. The physics of these rounds are well-known, and you can, right now, go to youtube and watch a functionally unlimited number of examples of what happens when a roughly skull-like object is struck by one of these rounds because "shooting skull-like things with a rifle" is an entire genre of video entertainment at this point. The short version is that when skull-like things are struck by an assault- or battle-rifle projectile, they explode from the transferred kinetic energy, and the bullet continues on its merry way.
In order for the bullet to stop dead inside the skull, it needs to be moving very, very slowly. It's possible to get a bullet moving that slowly if it was fired into the air and comes down a great distance away, but this would make deliberate aim impossible. It's also possible for a bullet to expend almost all its energy penetrating some obstacle, and then hit someone on the other side with a marginal penetration, but again, this would no longer be aimed fire.
It is almost certainly not possible for a sniper to be shooting kids in the head in a way that the bullet stops in their skull, positioned properly for a photogenic x-ray. It would be trivial to fake such a photo, though.
For what it's worth, if you've got video evidence of the attacks, I'd certainly be interested in seeing it.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/09/opinion/gaza-doctor-interviews.html
I'm just going directly with the story posted by the NYT. I tried looking for a debunking of the story, but the only ones I could find were on websites with huge DONATE TO ISRAEL NOW buttons which made me a bit skeptical of their motivations. I believed the story because there's a huge number of people talking about what they saw treating casualties in Gaza, and it is consistent with all the other reporting I've seen come out of the region. There have been multiple reports of Israeli soldiers killing Palestinian children for several years, and I don't see why the current circumstances would make them stop doing that.
I do not. I honestly have no desire to go looking for footage of children being gruesomely murdered, no matter how much it might strengthen my argument on an online forum. I'm aware that this is a dodge, but I'm sure you can appreciate that not only is graphic footage of child murder extremely hard to stomach, it is also banned by almost all major platforms and is frequently removed after it gets too "popular". I regret seeing the clips that I have seen and have no desire to repeat the experience.
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