• Cockmaster6000@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Transparency in the face of accusations that the death toll is inflated. I’m interested to hear what comes of this

    • ???@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      The list has people’s full names of four sections (for those who don’t know how it works in Arab naming systems): your first name, your father’s name, his fathers name, and the family name (read more here). Married women keep their own full name and don’t inherent their husband’s, so people’s wife’s would have a different last name.

      Arabic goes from right to left, so the names furthest to the left are the family name. The first two pages of the spreadsheet all have people from the same family.

      • jet@hackertalks.com
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        1 year ago

        And their ID card numbers, which can be indexed to the existing systems that The Israeli government controls… and I imagine also that the US has access to.

        So now to prove that Hamas is lying about the death toll, they just have to find one person on this list who is still alive and put them on television. Seems easy enough, considering that all the cell phones in Gaza strip are easily monitored.

        Sorry I don’t mean to imply they have to prove the Hamas is lying, it’s just a great PR opportunity, so they won’t pass it up if they have that capability

        • ???@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          I was wondering what it is that the health ministry would have to do to be seen as credible. What would be good enough?

          • jet@hackertalks.com
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            1 year ago

            Nothing would be seen as good enough. We are in a war, and that includes information war, that means constantly attacking the credibility of your enemy, even if what they’re saying is true.

            Releasing IDs, and photos of each body, to create a somewhat morbid wiki death would probably go a long way to establishing credibility.

            But again they would be attacked, because we are in the information war phase.

            Getting third parties in there to certify the deaths would help, but the UNRWA is deliberately not doing that, because they don’t want to be political.

            So whatever the ultimate death toll will be, it’ll be contested hotly for decades to come. All will be able to agree on is a lot of people died, but not exactly how many…

            • ???@lemmy.worldOP
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              1 year ago

              We are in a war

              As much as I agree, I don’t think the main factor now is the fog of war. Seems like it’s the White House deliberately removing credibility from a governing entity, which didn’t echo well at all, and diplomatically could be seen as giving the middle finger to Gazan civilians are already invisible in their suffering. Biden made them even more invisible. He didn’t say that the numbers were inflated (as far as I recall), but that they cannot be trusted at all. This is very different from saying, “take these numbers with a grain of salt”.

              • jet@hackertalks.com
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                1 year ago

                War is war. Even if the information is 100% accurate and true and undeniable, the war playbook says you deny it, say the enemy is lying, and undermine their credibility at every turn.

                War is not about accuracy, it’s not about fairness, it’s not about law, it’s about winning.

                Deny, deny, deny, until you believe.

            • scrape@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I agree with your overall point but take issue with referring to the hostilities in Palestine as a “war”. We do not say that Nazi Germany was at war with Jewish People. We call it genocide. This is extermination of a civilian population.

              Palestine does not have a standing army. Calling it a war normalizes the actions of Israel.

    • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Nothing. Biden will do anything to aid and abet the bloodbath because it’s in the US military and economic interests to do so. Palestine is approaching final solution levels of genocide but this time there won’t be anyone coming to stop it.

    • CommanderCloon
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      1 year ago

      It’s accused of being inflated by two sources that have decisively proven to be definitively untrustworthy, the US and Israel

      Edit: and obviously their allies and supports

  • zerfuffle
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    1 year ago

    The UN trusts the casualty reports given by the Gaza Health Ministry… They’ve been reliable in the past, so there’s no reason to suspect that they would be unreliable now.

    • jet@hackertalks.com
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      1 year ago

      Literally the first word in the article.

      Hamas on Thursday released a list of almost 7,000 names of Gazans it said had been killed in Israeli strikes after the US president cast doubt on its toll figures

      I think the implication of your comment is these are fictitious deaths, but clearly people are dying there

      Because people won’t trust them, they releasing the names and the ID card numbers, which the Israelis control (The ID card system) so that the names of the dead can be verified as actual real human beings.

    • ???@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Just a reminder, Hamas is the name of the government in Gaza. What you are (maybe) trying to say is, “The government of Gaza is one part of Hamas and the Qassam brigades are the other militant part, altogether they are called Hamas after the winning party”.

      Journalists have confirmed and shown a large number of these deaths. People are being buried in mass graves whether these numbers are from “Gaza officials that represent Hamas” or not.

      When Israel says it wants to “eradicate Hamas”, that would include the civil bodies that run the government and serve people, anything from the ministers to the government clerks. I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel just thinks of doctors as Hamas actors too.

      Yes, we should not blanket-trust numbers from an organization that has committed atrocities, but like @jet@jet@hackertalks.com said:

      I think the implication of your comment is these are fictitious deaths, but clearly people are dying there

      • steventhedev@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        When Israel says it wants to “eradicate Hamas”, that would include the civil bodies that run the government and serve people, anything from the ministers to the government clerks.

        If Hamas wanted to distance themselves from the intentional targeting civilians, they have had every chance to do so. But their stated goal is not to “eradicate the government of Israel”, it’s to “eradicate all Jews living in Palestine”. The goals of the Qassam Brigades explicitly call out using violence to do achieve that goal.

        • ???@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          I don’t think anyone is debating that Hamas’ Qassam brigades suck. Rather it’s whether or not Palestinian lives have value.

          • steventhedev@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I don’t think that was ever in question - Hamas have made it abundantly clear that they have no regard for human life, Israeli or Palestinian. That’s why they’re holding hostages and using innocent Gazans as human shields.

            • ???@lemmy.worldOP
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              1 year ago

              I mean whether or not they have value to Israel, which is the one now causing all their misery and collectively punishing them.

              • steventhedev@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I think Israel does value Palestinian lives. Less than their own citizens, but not so much as to intentionally target them. They aren’t indiscriminately bombing civilians - they’re bombing building that have Hamas infrastructure inside, or that Hamas dug tunnels under. It’s the same reason they won’t allow fuel in as aid - Hamas’ tunnel network need ventilation and there is a deliberate attempt to “starve” them out. This is not collective punishment. It’s a siege. War is hell, and this is a war.

                Israel announced they believe that Hamas has their headquarters underneath Shifa Hospital in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Correct or not, this is signalling that they intend to target that hospital. If they believe the hostages are being held there, I doubt they’ll just drop bombs on it. They’re more likely to throw bodies at it in an attempt to rescue the hostages. If they manage to do that while only killing a few hundred civilians out of the 40,000 taking shelter there, that would be an amazing achievement.

                • ???@lemmy.worldOP
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                  1 year ago

                  So many reports have shown that Israel is intentionally targeting civilians, medical staff, and journalists.

    • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yes and who gives a fuck? Israel is turning every man, woman, and child in the strip into dust over a single attack they not only instigated but also ALLOWED to happen. I’m no longer playing this “but hamas” bullshit - you all never cared and just want to see innocents suffer.