Gah! Oh my God, when will I stop seeing this ridiculous red herring?? It's amazing to me how smart people suddenly become so completely intellectually incurious when it comes to this particular issue.
Why do you you think the United States use Hamas figures? Why do you think the UN uses them? Why do you think the Israeli Intelligence services use them??? Even Israeli spokespeople stopped using this "Hamas figures" obfuscation a month or two ago.
Hamas have been reporting figures for decades. They've been accurate every time. To the extent that human rights agencies have been able to verify Hamas' current figures, they also think they're accurate. And, as I mentioned, to the much greater extent that The US government and Israel have been able to verify Hamas' figures, they think they're accurate too.
That's why Israel have never actually contradicted Hamas' figures, even when reporting their civilian/soldier ratio. They just say "hAmAs fIgUrEs!!11!" so that credulous people will doubt them but they don't ever have to actually say that the figures are false. Because the have no reason to believe they are. In fact, with bodies under the rubble, they're very likely higher than the current reports suggest.
Also, I was referring to the first Iraq war, in which around 4000 civilians were killed in five months.
Yes, we can rationalise the blockade forever. We could say, for example, that the government that rose from the "civil war" only existed because Israel funded them in an attempt to destabilise the Palestinian Authority. We could say that the only reason a government with a charter that included a genocidal verse from the Quran (yes, I've read it, I've even quoted it in an article) was able to rise to power is because of the decades of brutality and violence that Israel has inflicted on Palestinians. Back and back through history we go.
But one thing we can say for sure is that you can't build a thriving nation with a few greenhouses (seriously, why do you guys always talk about these greenhouses as if they're the foundation of a thriving civilisation, and why don't you ever read up about the condition those greenhouses were in and why they were largely useless to the Palestinian people). Especially when your nation is under blockade and doesn't control its borders, airspace or international waters.
As for how I know the civilian/soldier ration is off kilter, just very simple maths.
~30000 killed, 70% of whom are women and children. Israel claims that ~13,000 of casualties are Hamas. But even if we assume that the 30% of Palestinians killed who aren't women and children are all Hamas fighters, we only get 9,000. And again, that assumes that everybody who isn't a woman or a child is a Hamas fighter.
The age-range of 14-90 comes from the fact that depending on whose reporting you take, the maximum age of a "child" in Gaza is either 14 or 16 (90 was just an upper limit I plucked from the air). Some say 14, of course, to facilitate claiming that the children being killed out there should be thought of as adults and probable Hamas fighters. Remember that line from the article about "asking whether “child” is an appropriate way to describe 14-year-olds in “this particular region”?"
Man, the most frustrating thing about all this is that I've been to Israel several times. I love it there. I love the people, I have good friends there and Jewish friends around the world. I desperately want to believe that people like Netanyahu don't reflect Israeli culture in general.
But then I speak to people online and I listen to the politicians lying and the journalists and the talk show hosts laughing about killing Palestinians. I read the apologetics for the crimes Netanyahu is committing even as the same people say they think he's a criminal. I see people admit that what the settlers are doing is horrific but at the same time just kind of shrug their shoulders about it. I see the polls saying that in November, when around 10,000 Palestinians had already been killed in less than a month, that 58% of Israelis thought the IDF wasn't using enough force and only 1.8% thought too much.
Fear and hate makes people into the worst versions of themselves. I understand why October 7th made Israelis fearful and hateful. But this has gone beyond any justifiable level.
Sorry for the very long response. I appreciate the kind words. I look forward to visiting Israel again some day. Hopefully when everybody there is free and safe and at peace.
