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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   1264 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 28, 2023

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.

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I'm sure Hamas lies and they obviously lied about the hospital explosion, and its a shame that media uncritically re-reports Hamas numbers but even the Jerusalem post puts palestinan deaths in Gaza at >13k.

If you have a credible argument for the real number being less than 6th of that then I would like to hear it.

I'm not sure what "even Jerusalem Post" adds here. JP does not have any sources besides Hamas' reports. Nobody does. They discount it in certain way, but it's just baseless and unverifiable assumptions, I don't see why it should be given more weight that anybody else's. Are you able to find any substantiation to these figures that ultimately doesn't converge on believing Hamas' word?

I don't have any independent sources either, I just do a rough estimate based on what I learned about how much they are willing to lie. Like, if Israel attacks a building and they say 10000 people died, nobody is going to believe that - too much. But if 5 people died and they say 50 - there's a chance that goes through. Saying something like 7 would be pointless - too little added, saying something like 500 would strain the credibility too much, probably - the real multiplier is somewhere within those bounds. Of course, I have no means to accurately estimate it either beyond that.

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