When a building with 30 people gets hit with a 2,000lb bomb, and family & friends try to get a hold of the people that used to live there you can have situations like this one.
Hamas would report 30 as “dead” assuming the people that used to live in the building could not be contacted because of a lack of communications.
These numbers tells me that there are some survivors of these situations, and assuming they are not killed later (either by weapons or famine), their are then verified as alive over dead by the NGOs once they reach a safer area.
I don’t see any real issue with these numbers. If Hamas was amplifying the dead for political gain (which is always a possibility) the differences between identified dead vs reported dead would be much larger (not 30% as it is now, but easily > 50%).
Double-checked the source (Jerusalem Post) and its a news source on par with the NY Post in terms of credibility.
So their “conclusions” are not at all surprising.
Just to add:
What I think is happening is that Hamas is reporting the 30 dead but then not updating the numbers later on.
I would say they are very likely doing this for political gain to some degree.
UN results however are solid. You can’t kill these many women and children and call them collateral damage. It simply won’t wash with the wider world.
The following link explores the whole reported deaths vs actual deaths in military conflicts.
Its a pretty niche area as not that many large scale conflicts in the modern era, so they look at Russia vs Ukraine.
Won’t answer the question about the problems with the Gaza conflict directly, but it does provide background on why each side is incentivised to lie about things.
I just cannot condone sending in the police to disperse the protests. The 1st amendment is too important. Freedom of assembly and freedom of speech are vital liberties. More than guns, imo. The whole point is to forbid the government from jailing dissidents. It’s a good line to draw.
So having the State pressure universities to “break up the protests” feels a lot like they are outsourcing this (arguably ) un constitutional action to the universities. That’s sneaky, but I believe it to be over the line.
People can shout all sorts of heinous and disgusting things. It’s allowed.so many of. The examples given are simply offensive comments, and those are protected.speech. For any actual assaults, just find the perpetrators and arrest them. But don’t arrest those not committing crimes. (And resisting arrest is a bullshit charge.
The ACLU was the big defender of 1st amendment rights for decades. I recall when the ACLU actually defended the right of the Nazis to march thru Skokie, IL in the 60s. They were stalwart. A lot of their base funding was aghast.but we must defend the right regardless of the message.
Think about the anti abortion protests at PP a while back. Viscous, mean taunting. Disgusting accusations. Even violence - more than one doctor was shot. Yet, we still cannot jail folks for expressing their opinion. Even if they are harboring others with violent intent.
Israel is finding itself increasingly isolated in global terms.
This is not sustainable for them as a country that is dependent on others for their strategic survival. They are going to end up like South Africa did after the Apartheid.
Egypt is now reconsidering its peace treaty with Israel, and is moving to add its name to the SA case against Israel at the ICJ.
I agree that the 1st Amendment needs to be protected, but it’s not without limits. Protests can’t legally block off streets unless they have a permit to do so. They can’t incite violence.
The encampments at universities go against the guidelines that the schools have for protests. If they’d follow the rules, they’d be fine. They choose not to follow them. They’ve been warned numerous times to follow the rules, or face consequences. When the police went into Columbia, it was because the protestors had occupied a full building, and weren’t letting people into it.
That’s not ok.
Let’s be mindful of the difference between breaking rules and breaking laws. If the universities have rules, then they presumably have a way to enforce them. If the only means to do that is to call in the municipal police, that’s a bad plan. Do they just pick up the phone and dial 911 and then announce it’s out of their control? That just doesn’t make sense. It’s their rules, not the City of NY laws. Using police to enforce rules is crazy. How many weekend golfers could be arrested if that were the case?
I don’t know if the UN estimates are fake reporting, but it’s easy to be deceitful with statistics involving “children” who are not a monolithic block.
It’s pretty radically different when a baby dies vs a 17 year old who is pointing a gun at you who already gunned down several others.
MPC has pointed out how dishonestly child deaths in the United States are reported depending on the agenda of the person doing the reporting.
Without seeing how they are classifying “children”, I wouldn’t put any stock in the numbers at all. Plenty of Hamas combatants are under 18, and we don’t even know if the UN figures are cutting off the definition of children at 17.
I’m guessing that female militants are included in the “women” number as well.
So “women & children” could very easily include a LOT of armed militants.
I’m sure that some of them are civilian… we know that Palestinian civilians have died. But there’s this implication that all of the women & children are innocent victims and that’s almost certainly false.
So a student is trespassing if he assembles to make a political protest. Fascinating. Do you see how that is contrary to both the purpose of a university as well indifferent to the whole purpose of the 1st amendment? And trespass requires more than just a “git outta here,boy”. Do you know for a fact that was done? Not a single univ president talked about trespassing. How many of those arrested are facing arraignment for trespass?
Huh? I thought that’s exactly what the universities cracking down were doing.
A Google search for “protesters arrested trespassing” shows similar stories at Ohio State, University of Virginia, Indiana University, Virginia Tech, and probably lots more, but I stopped at those stories.
As I said before, students can gather for protests, but they need to follow the rules that the college sets for where to assemble. If they break the rules, they can be punished for it.
Well it’s happening at a lot of other colleges already. I doubt every one of those presidents is in trouble… I’m not convinced any of them are in fact.
The police arresting law-breakers is hardly going to get a university president fired absent very unusual circumstances.
I will add that some of the protesters arraigned for trespassing are seeing the charges dropped. I haven’t followed too closely. It could be that they just wanted to disband the protest … not exactly sure.
But protesters getting arraigned for trespassing is definitely happening.