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Comment by amscanne | Hacker News Reader

It’s literally the same numbers as the posted ones, and exactly aligned with what I’m saying.

> The current official toll is 64,718 Palestinians killed in Gaza and 163,859 injured, since the start of the war on 7 October 2023

You may have been misled by the headline “X killed or injured”.. those are two different things, and we’re talking about the number killed.

I don’t know if those numbers are accurate (the article about the IDF solider claims it is), but I’m not even questioning that. The GP is claiming that an order of magnitude more people have been killed than even GMH claims.

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Nice cherry-picking

> Halevi stepped down as chief of staff in March after leading the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for the first 17 months of the war, which is now approaching its second anniversary.

> The retired general told a community meeting in southern Israel earlier this week that more than 10% of Gaza’s 2.2 million population had been killed or injured – “more than 200,000 people”.

The point is that we know 64,000 is almost certainly an undercount. Notably it hasn't changed much in the last year since the Hamas ministry of health collapsed.

The commenter above is correct in saying the bound of deaths is very likely between 45,000 and 600,000. We have good reason to suspect it was over 100,000 late last year. We won't know the actual number until an independent assessment can occur.

You are using the "more than 200,000 people" quote to imply that the GHM estimate of 64,718 is wrong, but it is completely in line with it. There is nothing about this revelation that suggests the existing estimates are too low. I don't know what I'm supposedly cherry-picking.

More explicitly: 64,718 killed + 163,859 injured =~ "more than 200,000 people"

I don't understand what basis you (and other commenters) have to suggest that these estimates are all wrong, you merely say "we have good reason". What reason?

GP here. The GMH number doesn’t include indirect deaths, i.e. all the deaths that happen because of war that aren’t bullets and bombs. Disease, famine, not getting cancer screenings or antibiotics because all the hospitals have been blown up… that stuff.

So while 680k (the current highest estimate) is probably higher than reality, god i hope it is, it’s also true that reality is probably much higher than the current GMH numbers.

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