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Comment by CommanderData | Hacker News Reader

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An exercise with war casualty stats you can do is look at previous wars and look at the variation in estimates in body counts for each side. Then factor that into the news you are reading it.

End game is there has never been a credible body count from even a small scale war. So to claim anyone is right here on either side is probably selective bias on your part. At best when the dust has figuratively and literally settled, it'll be a decade before anyone has an even remotely credible count.

Manipulation of the body counts is easy material for propaganda. It has been since the dawn of war.

Factor child soldiers into these arguments and it gets very grey. The number itself without compounding facts has little meaning.

And for the sake of credibility, the figures were later revised so you're not even quoting their current estimates and compromising your own credibility!

https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/...

"Two officials from the Palestinian Ministry of Health have told CNN that although the ministry keeps a separate death toll for identified and unidentified individuals, the total number of people killed remains unchanged.

The total number of dead also does not include the approximately 10,000 people who are still missing and trapped under the rubble, the officials added.

CNN has seen a daily report from the Palestinian health ministry which matches the number OCHA published in the revised version. A total of 15,103 children and 9,961 women have been killed in Gaza since October 7, the Gaza ministry of health said in its latest report."

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/13/middleeast/death-toll-gaza-fa... - Updated 2:12 AM EDT, Tue May 14, 2024

For the record I didn't verify the deaths, I looked at information release in past conflicts for the last 10 or so years *.

"MoH statistics have also been verified by Human Rights Watch and used by the United States Department of State in past conflicts and as recently as March 2023, despite US President Joe Biden questioning those numbers without evidence."

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/14/has-the-un-really-s...

Palestinian authorities were found to be releasing counts in good faith and never inflated numbers for the sake of an information war. This is a key point, why doubt an organisation that hasn't lied about it's death count before.

Deny, Discredit, Disinform, Diffuse and Defray are things you'll see time and time again in threads like these.

Now, it's a sobering thought 15,000+ children have been murdered, in 2023/2024. With full support of the US, 'ironclad' apparently.

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