The civilian death toll in Gaza has been tragically high but there hasn't been any independent verification. Regardless of what's on Wikipedia, we can't trust specific numbers.
- 766 / 1200 = 63.8%
Of course, the numbers claimed by other NGOs / UN make it worse. But Israel's numbers are sufficient to make that claim.
[1] - https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/05/middleeast/israel-hamas-m...
To some extent, you can't blame Hamas for these tactics. They would quickly lose a conventional war. At the same time, if you have zero chance of winning a military victory, perhaps you shouldn't use violence to pursue your political goals...
Civilian/combatant fatality ratios of 3/1 are not uncommon in urban warfare.
Even then, military necessity of killing combatants, not actively particpating in the war is not justified. Yes, you can kill those, who is shooting the rockets at Tel-Aviv, but bombing willy-nilly all of Gaza just because there might be tunnels, where potential combatants might be hiding,. is not acceptable, although not am not an international law lawer.
Here is a list of the 88 (and growing) journalists so far killed in Gaza [1]. I would be impressed if you could find any shred of evidence that any one of them was an active duty combatant when they were murdered.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...
> Mustafa Thuria, identified in a document found by IDF troops in Gaza, was a member of Hamas' Gaza City Brigade, serving as Squad Deputy Commander in the al-Qadisiyyah Battalion.
> Hamza Wael al-Dahdouh, is an Islamic Jihad terrorist, and was involved in the organization’s terrorist activities. Documents found by IDF troops in the Gaza Strip reveal his role in the Islamic Jihad's electronic engineering unit and his previous role as a deputy commander in the Zeitun Battalion's Rocket Array.
I think others have been shown wielding rifles or taking part in Oct 7, but I'll need to dig up the links when I have more time.
Edit: See e.g. https://www.instagram.com/p/C17sCXPMKqW/?img_index=3. I don't think it should come as a surprise that some journalists participate in combat on the side; there are many examples throughout history of desperate defenders handing out weapons to civilians. Kyiv was a recent example.
> According to Al Jazeera correspondent Hisham Zaqout, Hamza al-Dahdouh and a group of journalists were en route to the Moraj area north-east of Rafah - which was designated a "humanitarian zone" by the Israeli army - but which had reportedly experienced recent bombings.
They were fleeing an area in Khan Younis being bombed to a designated safe zone in Rafah when their car was hit by an Israeli missile.
Even if we take the IDF at their words—which we shouldn’t—this is still not a shred of evidence they were active combatants when they were killed.
But we shouldn’t take IDF at their words, they have been proven to lie consistently when they target journalist. A high profile case was when they murdered Shireen Abu Akleh, changing their story multiple times until, finally, when the evidence against their story was so overwhelming, they finally admitted to targeting her.
As for the instagram thread. We really need a name to go with this. Who is this person? Is he on the list of the 88 which the Israel has murdered so far? ~The second photo doesn’t even look like it is the same person, and the third photo even looks photoshopped (and fails to show other results in a reverse google image search)~ [wrong, see edit].
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67905566
EDIT: I found the origin of the photos in the instagram thread: https://nabd.com/s/121499899-f165c6/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D8%B3...
His name was Muhyiddin Muhammad Muhammad al-Sadoudi and was a 24 year old fighter for the al-Qassam brigade, who died during active training in July last year, not by the Israeli army, and not in the current war. Only claimed to be a fighter, and never claimed to be a photojournalist by Hamas’s armed wing. He is not on the list of the 88 journalists in Gaza murdered by the Israeli army.
Thanks for getting to the bottom of those photos which admittedly lacked context. I didn't meant to suggest that he was in the list of journalists killed by the IDF; I didn't even know he was deceased. I think the point stands that both freelance photojournalism and guerilla fighting can be done in a part-time and/or non-professional capacity.
> “Prior to the strike, the two operated drones, posing an imminent threat to IDF troops.”
If this is true then they were indeed legitimate targets. However if what Al Jazeera says is true, then they were not.
> When asked on Jan 10 by AFP about what kind of drones were used by the two men and the nature of the threat the drones posed to Israeli troops, the army said it was “checking”.
> It said Mr Thuria was identified in a document found by troops in Gaza to be a member of Hamas’ Gaza City Brigade, while Mr Dahdouh was identified as a terrorist belonging to Islamic Jihad.
> The army statement included a copy of a document it said was a list of “operatives from an electronic engineering unit of the Islamic Jihad, including Dahdouh and his military number”.
So we pretty much have Israel says so, which is not good evidence, or any evidence for that matter. However the Al Jazeera story has witnesses:
> He [Mr Thuria] and Mr Dahdouh had been tasked with filming the aftermath of a strike on a house in Rafah, and their car was hit while they were on their way back, AFP correspondents said at the time.
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/middle-east/israel-army-c...
Weird how only disputing the Hamas numbers as biased is a talking point.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/idf-mistakenly-hit-festival-...
it should raise some questions how the casualty count went to 500 in a few hours, where everywhere else in the world it takes days to get a body count after any disaster
It is beyond me how someone can believe that an organization capable of kidnapping babies to advance its political goals is beyond lying to do the same
[1] https://www.haaretz.com/2010-11-09/ty-article/hamas-admits-6...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel–Hamas... https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/gaza-death-toll-records-1.7010...
Simply dismissing a figure as skewed because of its source without a better one is a weak argument.
The UN is a political body composed of the political interests of its members, which are mostly authoritarian states, and it hasn’t shown much support for Israel due to the vast membership of Islamic countries. Parody case in point, Iran being Human Rights commission seat
UNRWA, the UN agency on the ground was shown again and again to be in the very least in the mercy of Hamas therefore cooperative, at most its infrastructure and staff was used by the organizations for attacks against Israel and to hold hostages.
The ICJ in this case heavily quoted UNRWA as a source while it is an extremely problematic one.
The hospital bombing I quoted above is an example case where many experts tried to estimate casualties based on evidence, they arrived to figures that range from tenth to fifth of what Hamas published.
This together with the fact they control the casualty figure and have a clear interest at inflating it in order to stop Israel from attacking, is pretty obvious to me what’s going on.
Leaving the fact that this figure also includes Hamas members, and therefore is useless at estimating if there is excessive collateral damage
Even if the true numbers are a quarter of the given figure that's still way too high.
This is going to be a major issue when the actual court case will have to rely upon it.
the numbers will always be ‘too high’ as they are the number of civilian deaths in a war.
However, if they are much lower relative to similar conflicts than that changes a lot. Currently we have no way of knowing that, yet still people attribute these numbers some magical properties
Why are you surprised that people trust Israel more than Hamas? Israel is a country that's ranked 29 of 167 on the Democracy Index[1], right _above_ the US. Hamas is literally a terrorist organization recognized in many countries, probably yours too.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index