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Comment by paulvnickerson | Hacker News Reader

> Nearly all of the over 7k people killed in Gaza in the past few days are civilians.

This number comes from Hamas, so I would take it with a grain of salt. Hamas intentionally uses its civilians as shields for their military equipment. Here is a quote from Hamas's 1988 charter:

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." [1]

[1] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp

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It's the Health Ministry in Gaza and they've released the exact names of all 6,747 people they could account for.

The UN said just 5 days ago that the figure was 5k. Given the increase in intensity 7k does not at all seem unreasonable to me

https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1142687

"Health Ministry in Gaza" literally the health ministry of Hamas. Why would such organization lie? /s

The UN estimated 5k 5 days ago.

1. Hamas says over 7,300 killed in war; UN backs toll [1]

2. Despite Biden's doubts, humanitarian agencies consider Gaza toll reliable [2]

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/hamas-says-over...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/despite-bidens-dou...

Danidin wrote:

> "Health Ministry in Gaza" literally the health ministry of Hamas. Why would such organization lie?

This is language that justifies death, by minimizing it. There are likely not perfect, but in the past numbers from the Gaza health ministry haven't been wildly wrong: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/despite-bidens-dou...

As I understand it, historically it's been fairly accurate and reliable. Does this guarantee they're accurate today? No. Do I blindly trust anything that's being said? No. But merely "it's Hamas, therefore the figures are false" also doesn't really cut it.

See e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/26/can-we-trust-c...

A week ago, when Hamas dropped a rocket on THEIR OWN hospital, the "Health Ministry" said Israel killed 500 people. Despite it not being Israel, and it not killing 500 people.

They are just straight up lying

Hamas did not drop a rocket on a Gazan hospital. Not even Israel said that. And the case is still under investigation. No honest person could claim there's without a doubt enough evidence to accuse a specific party

What nonsense. You could sit 500 people directly on top of one of those Hamas rockets, detonate it, and it wouldn't kill 500 people. Those people are not dealing with state of the art military equipment.

No one claims that's what happened; there are claims that a misfire from Palestinian Islamic Jihad caused the explosion. This seems entirely plausible, perhaps even likely, but as of yet it's not 100% clear. Absolutely no one suggest that it was somehow an intentional attack on their own people.

Could just have been some yahoos firing a rocket from the bushes and getting it wrong, and that Hamas has just as much information as the rest of us do. That is, basically this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESOhN-SaH-s

Here's the MoH channel https://t.me/s/MOHMediaGaza

I don't see why you put the "Health Ministry" in quotes. If you scroll prior to 7th oct you'd see content any normal health ministry in any country would produce.

Just so much demonization going on, these days.

Historically, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has provided accurate numbers of civilian deaths. Third-party estimates by the UN and NGOs have always matched their numbers within a 10% margin of error.

They did lie about 500 people dying due to a parking lot being blown up, though. It's a stain on their credibility. But how much of a stain? Do we disregard their previous track record because of it?

I mean, it's possible that they see this current moment as judgement day, so they have decided to use up all of their historically built-up goodwill and start lying for info ops purposes, which would be an understandable strategy. On the other hand, the numbers they're giving don't appear unrealistic, and John Kirby has said that the US does not dispute that it's "in the thousands". So some number between 1000 and 7000 appears correct, and I would err more towards 4000-7000.

That document is outdated. And you may read some books about Hamas to get some context about that document, if you like.

Here's a more uptodate charter: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full

paulvnickerson wrote:

> This number comes from Hamas, so I would take it with a grain of salt. Hamas intentionally uses its civilians as shields for their military equipment.

Both of these statements are spreading FUD around death numbers that most people in the know believe are accurate: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/despite-bidens-dou.... It isn't a great look for you.

How can there be "most people in the know" when the Gaza strip is under the tight grip of Hamas? Israel has always published all the details of all causalities in all the conflicts, civilian and military. Hamas never did until this new list and has never broken the numbers by combatant vs. civilian. Who and how exactly verifies those numbers?

Your link even says: "International groups, even some operating in Gaza, and global media including Reuters are not able to verify the figures but reporters have seen large numbers of bodies.".

Hamas is motivated to inflate this number to make Israel look bad. You have to be incredibly naive to think they're above that. Maybe they do it a little, maybe they do it a lot.

Why are we even playing this numbers game in the first place?

YZF wrote:

> How can there be "most people in the know" when the Gaza strip is under the tight grip of Hamas?

If you read the article is says that in past conflicts Gaza Health Ministry numbers were within 10% of Israel reported numbers. In the past there haven't been issues with the numbers being wrong.

> Why are we even playing this numbers game in the first place?

I am unsure. It is quite likely that there is a massive amount of death in Gaza, more after this evening. I think those spreading FUD about the numbers are trying to minimize what is going on, sort of a way of deflecting guilt about it.

Some people say that the numbers are not real, others say that Hamas brought it upon the civilians, or others say that all civilians are responsible since they didn't over throw Hamas, etc. All I know is that it will probably get worse.

I agree it will get worse. The playbook is to use the number of casualties to create international pressure on Israel to stop. Then once Israel stops the Hamas is going to emerge from its tunnels and celebrate its win over Israel.

Let's agree that no innocent civilian on any side deserves to die. I think the best hope for that is that Israel has some magical success in getting to the Hamas leadership and hostages in the tunnels under Gaza. Very unlikely that Israel will yield to international pressure at this point.

EDIT: It's also theoretically possible that Hamas would surrender and/or free all the hostages. I think that's pretty unlikely but we'll see.

> EDIT: It's also theoretically possible that Hamas would surrender and/or free all the hostages. I think that's pretty unlikely but we'll see.

My best case would be that Hamas exchanges their hostages as they have many times before. Preferrable Hamas releases all the hostages, and in exchange the Hamas leadership (the top leadership, 100s maybe) gets safe passage to somewhere else - go to a Qatar or somewhere not directly adjacent. And then the PA takes over Gaza with international peacekeepers and we drive towards a 2-state solution aggressively.

We would need Netanyahu sidelined for that as well - that guy has long boosted Hamas just to weaken Palestinian moderates and has aggressively expanded the settlements as well as opposed multiple US presidents when the pushed for a solution.

Personally, I am a big fan of the Geneva Initiative as the outline of a 2-state solution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Initiative

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