Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
- 23
- 2
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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.
More options
Context Copy link