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Is the premise behind that estimate that we are supposed to believe that approximately everyone they killed was a "Hamas operative", or that there is an unknown number of dead even Israel does not consider "Hamas operatives" that they didn't bother to count or report?
Please explain which word in the description "Hamas operatives" that I used is giving you the trouble?
The poster you were responding to was talking about 40k dead Gazans. You suggested that this number is untrustworthy, and countered by citing Israeli statements that it killed 17k Hamas operatives. The assumption that Hamas operatives are more or less a subset of Gazans seems fairly safe, but on the face of it this is not a refutation of the 40k figure. Since you seem to have structured your post as if it were one, this suggests one of two options: either you (and the Israelis?) are thinking it is in fact one (i.e. think that Hamas operatives ~= the set of Gazans they killed), or this represents the best effort at a refutation that can be made with Israeli numbers (because they don't keep count of anyone other than Hamas operatives).
In the latter case, a total figure of 40k seems very plausible - I tried to look for casualty figures for a random Israeli attack I saw on the news (Jabalya market) and found a UN one saying that "OHCHR verified that at least 42 people were killed, including 14 children and one woman". We don't have any stats on the adults, but I'd figure that the children are probably not what the modal Westerner would count as Hamas operatives (I assume they were not 17 year old children-on-paper but phenotypically obvious younger children?) and there probably would have been at least a similar number of uninvolved adults around unless one is positing Hamas was holding bring-your-kids-to-work day. (Low number of women doesn't have to be as indicative of anything in an Islamic setting as it would at first seem.) This suggests at least a something like 2:1 uninvolved:Hamas casualty ratio, which intuitively seems about right given the pictures and the apparent "if one of the floors is occupied by Hamas, blow up the whole thing" targeting approach in an area with lots of buildings of around 4 floors or so.
It is. Its only source is a terrorist organization known for lying about casualties many, many times.
I didn't "counter" anything, I just provided a source of information. Whether or not you believe these numbers (about 10k of which are validated with names and identification, but the rest is an estimate) does not change the fact that presenting unverifiable numbers from extremely untrustworthy source as a fact is misleading and wrong.
It was not intended as "refutation" of anything. I do not have the exact numbers, but there is a lot of research - including one that I quoted - that indicates Hamas numbers are bullshit. I do not have better numbers, and I think nobody does, but it is not the reason to treat numbers which are bullshit as if they were factual.
It is neither "refutation" nor "best effort" - again, for best effort see the actual research (some of which I quoted, but more available) on the actual numbers. Simply parroting Hamas is not research. Even with this research, probably nobody has any figures that aren't an extremely rough estimate - and people who could improve it are very, very invested in keeping the numbers as dirty as possible, because it serves them much better to inflate the numbers.
"UN" here likely means Hamas again - the only UN organization on the ground is UNRWA, and UNRWA is a) using data provided by Hamas sources (the report quotes "Gaza ministry of Health", which is Hamas structure) and b) is thoroughly structurally infiltrated by Hamas by itself - by which I mean, very many UNRWA workers are themselves, personally, Hamas operatives, and enough of them directly participated in October 7 atrocities that UN requested US courts to provide immunity to them for those crimes. That is going beyond the obvious fact that UN and especially "human rights" branches of UN vehemently hate Israel and regularly single it out for false accusations of atrocities, while ignoring much worse events happening anywhere else.
And why exactly do you assume that? UN traditionally counts everybody under the age of majority, even if killed on the battlefield with weapons in hand, as "children". And Hamas gets them very young - by 17, they can operate a Kalashnikov, an RPG and an IED quite well. There's no indication in the paper that "children" means anything but "anybody under 18". I do not make any specific claim on the age distribution of those you are mentioning, but just "assuming" out of the blue that it means what you want to mean is completely unfounded.
Which is exactly that they are doing, only it's not only a "day", it's everywhere and all the time. We're talking about irregular military, with no identification, using blending into the population and hiding in (and under) high-resonance civilian structures (schools, hospitals, mosques) as the primary military tactics. This is not just "bring your kids to work", this is "being surrounded by your - and others - kids at work is your work, because they are the reason you're still alive". Given the relative power balance, Hamas quickly loses any direct soldier-to-soldier engagement with the IDF. They can only do two things - hide and ambush - which becomes harder and harder as IDF controls more territory, since you have to get out periodically to eat and bring supplies, and territorial control means you get caught eventually, just ask Sinwar - or blend into the civilian population and attack from the midst of "bring-your-kids-to-work". That's the only way they can fight, so no wonder this is exactly the way they are fighting.
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