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Comment by borolaj | Hacker News Reader

The under-18 population in the Gaza strip is roughly 47% (according to PCBS). So if deaths fell randomly across the population, children would be ~47% of the dead. They are ~30%. Also the numbers pipeline again runs through Hamas and there is the fact that the UN Council has passed more condemnatory resolutions on Israel than on any other single state (more than Syria, Myanmar, Yemen etc). I am surprised I don't see more nuance on HN.

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Deaths should not fall randomly across the population unless you’re committing war crimes.

Deaths in Gaza are very much not random.

Adult men have the highest casualties which is what would be expected since Hamas militants are most often adult men, it's well documented that Hamas also uses child soldiers to some degree as well.

> it's well documented that Hamas also uses child soldiers to some degree as well.

Cruel Israeli oppression motivates even children to resist them.

Israel then murders said children.

Obviously Hamas must be to blame for Israeli actions.

I mean yea... If youre a child soldier you should expect to be targeted, even if your cause is valiant.

> Cruel Israeli oppression motivates even children to resist them.

More like Hamas/UNRWA schools teach children to be terrorists.

Why is it that most of the world despises the Israelis, despite them not having gone to Hamas/UNRWA schools?

Successful anti-israel propaganda based on kgb-demoralization (west bad, "white privilige" etc.) https://bigthink.com/the-present/yuri-bezmenov/ sponsored by Iran’s oil money.

Mobbing against Israel by Arab and their socialist friend states in the UN.

> Adult men have the highest casualties

And 30% of casualties are children. The two are not mutually exclusive and this is the data point currently under scrutiny.

Adult men are also the ones first to head out to retrieve food from dangerous places.

> it's well documented

It's well documented that food distribution places were specifically made dangerous.

This is common sense. It's astonishing that this needs to be explicitly stated on a site like this.

That's not to say that 30% isn't a crime against humanity. About 1.5 million children were murdered during the Holocaust (1.5M of 6M+ deaths). Israel murders more children than adults when compared to the Nazis.

I agree, however the claim is not war crimes, its genocide. People think that using genocide to simply mean lots of killing and destruction and war makes them morally superior, but genocide entails "intent" and we need a vocabulary to differentiate between the two.

Overall, intent is quite hard to prove. You would need to access internal documents and communications that explicitly direct the military. That's probably not going to happen.

However, from what I have observed, Israeli government officials have often expresses that intent publicly, despite claiming otherwise at the UN.

In this case it is fundamentally impossible, since halakha prohibits deliberate targeting of civilians-- but not collateral damage.

So if you optimize for collateral damage and all civilian casualties are "accidental," then you are wholly operating within the constraints of your moral framework and can plausibly deny all claims of genocidal intent.

I am sorry but did you look at pictures of Gaza? Do you not see them actually CONCENTRATING the previously 2 million people there into a gigantic CAMP?

https://www.instagram.com/gazayoudontsee

you've had an account for four years, and _this_ is your comment?

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