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Comment by GrumpySloth | Hacker News Reader

> I noticed if we plot the journalist killings against general population killings in Gaza, the graph deviates from an approximately straight line that might be expected if journalists were merely being killed as a result of "collateral damage" amidst indiscriminated bombings

I think this assumption is wrong. Journalists are known to try to get the most shocking photos and reports. I would expect their rates of injury compared to random Joes in similar situations to be similar to that of people doing extreme sports compared to people doing recreational sports.

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There should be some level of occupational hazard, but surely not 3x as high when compared to people actually engaged in combat (Journalist:~75:1; Hamas militant:~25:1), and high enough to greatly deplete their numbers.

In those figures, "Hamas militant" actually means adult man. Nobody is identifying every person killed and checking against a list of Hamas members, they're just claiming every man killed belonged to Hamas.

Is there a way to verify this? I tend to agree, but I have no way to be rigorously convinced.

For example, iirc Palestine health authority reports the names of all the civilians[0] that have been killed. I think the number is something like 30k. I frequently wonder if that number is simply exaggerated, as it would be in Palestine's interest to do so. However, if the number is supported by a corresponding list of the names of individuals, I would think the Israeli intelligence services would be incentivised and capable of refuting a significant enough number of false claims[1] to cast serious doubt upon the claimed number of civilian deaths.

To my knowledge, Israel has not done so, and so I don't doubt the number too much.

[0] As noted, it is extremely challenging to pin down whether or not someone is 'Hamas'. I assume Palestine is reporting all deaths as civilian, in the same way Israel seems to report them all as combatant.

[1] whether it is an individual that does not exist, perished prior to Oct 7. '23, or is still alive.

Yes unfortunately those are the identified and confirmed deaths, there are for sure many still buried under the rubble which are not accounted for.

Unfortunately it seems to be in Palestine's (and even Hamas) best interest to be truthful, in this case

AFAIK, and I've seen news articles saying the same, Israel has not provided any evidence for its claim to have killed 12,000 Hamas fighters.

But the latest reported death toll is over 30k, 22k of whom are women and children. Another 10k or more are missing and presumed dead. If about one-third of the missing are adult men, matching the ratio of deaths, then about 12k adult men are dead or missing.

Is it plausible that Israel is so precise that all the adult men they've killed were Hamas fighters?

> Is it plausible that Israel is so precise that all the adult men they've killed were Hamas fighters?

We know from some of their previous actions in the region that they could be, if they wanted to - we've seen them take out individual aparment units with missiles, for example.

But given how many unguided munitions Israel are using in Gaza... I mean, almost the whole of Gaza has been reduced to rubble - the idea that every military-age male is Hamas is just not credible.

There is an article published in The Lanced where they investigated this. They found no evidence of inflated numbers. But if later they are found inflated anyway, this makes the high number of journalists killed more of an anomaly, not less.

[1]. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

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