“Israel MUST open the borders and allow the United Nations to deliver supplies in sufficient quantities.”
“The United States, which has helped fund the Israeli military for years, cannot sit back and allow hundreds of thousands of innocent children to starve to death,” Sanders (Vt.) said in a statement. “As a result of Israeli bombing and restrictions on humanitarian aid, the people of Gaza are facing an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.”
Israeli forces have killed more than 30,200 Palestinians in Gaza—most of them women and children—while wounding over 71,300 others and displacing around 90% of the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million people. Children are now starving to death, and experts say adults, especially elders and other vulnerable people, will soon follow absent urgent intervention.
It’s a factual and neutral statement. Hamas has been governing Gaza since they were elected in 2006. Any governmental officials in Gaza hold power because Hamas gave it to them. They are not, and could never be a neutral party.
Statements about Israeli officials, intelligence, and the IDF are the same.
In the US these same news outlets do refer to officials as Democratic or Republican frequently. Hell, they even talk about which judges were appointed by which president. Similar reporting happens with different government officials throughout Europe as well.
That man consciously chose to put the phrase “hamas-run” in there. What do you propose is the reasoning for doing so, if not to call into question the accuracy of the numbers through that association? It is absolutely not a neutral statement; context exists.
I have never once seen the phrase “Likud-run” next to any of the statements, tallies, or intelligence from Israel that the media reprints without any fact-checking or investigation.
The author likely made the choice to include “Hamas-run” for factual accuracy and neutrality. Merely writing “Gaza health ministry”, would imply a neutral 3rd party. Any official in Gaza is appointed by Hamas and cannot be neutral. As such, it is fair to question the accuracy of the numbers provided.
That said, while their numbers are not something I would take at face value, their death count is still the best one we have.
The Gaza Health ministry existed before 2006. It’s continuity is contingent upon the same personelle doing the grueling work day in and day out. The rank and file are first and foremost medical professionals.
From the Wikipedia entry:
So if more than vague conjectures, share it.
2 points.
I don’t see any issues with the information presented in the Wikipedia section you linked.
Leadership in the Gaza Health Ministry has definitely changed since Hamas took control, I doubt all the workers are the same either. That isn’t super important though, except in understanding that they aren’t a neutral party.
You don’t have any evidence that their numbers are a misrepresentation. You said:
Thier non-neutrality is a non-issue if they are providing accurate numbers. The only reason to include Hamas-run, then, is to cast a vague sense that something ain’t right.
How does their non-neutrality effect their numbers? Give me something concrete.
Pulling from this NPR Article
The Hamas-run Gaza heath ministry has used “reliable media sources” for 13,000 of the 30,000 reported deaths. According to the “reliable media sources” 86% of those killed are women and children. However, hospital staff report that 58% of the 17,000 deaths they have recorded are women and children. That’s a pretty significant deviation.
You continue to be vague. Can you provide anything more than speculation and suspicion? And some how you ignore this from the article:
The numbers have been historically accurate. And even the organization isn’t as cut and dry as you see it. I’m not saying there’s a chance they are making up numbers, but you have to provide evidence. And you can’t and you won’t.
Firstly, the evidence is not vague. Unless Israel started deliberately targeting women and children, while ignoring men, there is something wrong in their data. I wouldn’t personally ascribe a specific reason without more information.
Secondly, the scale of this conflict has far surpassed any other since the founding of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in 1993 (which split to become the Gaza Ministry of Heath in 2008). Accurately recording ~30,000 deaths vs 1,440, 2,310, or 260 is exceedingly challenging.
I see, so providing context is conjuring up the image of a boogeyman and using it to call into question the exact death toll of a genocide, but not looking into the accuracy of those numbers or the record of those who provided them and how they held up over time. It’s not really fair to question accuracy when they have no history of fabrication or misreporting in the entire time they’ve been “hamas-run”.
You seem very insistent that neutral facts are just de-facto unassailable but there are so many ways to present “neutral facts” in a way that is absolutely biased. The most simple of which is simply curating which “neutral facts” you choose to present. What important context is provided here other than a flimsy bullshit reason to question the legitimacy of something which has no reasonable justification for being questioned? Why isn’t the context that they have been providing accurate reporting for literal decades also being mentioned when the very thing being questioned is the accuracy of the numbers and not their political association?
Providing context is accurately identifying your source of information. When the IDF gives a statement, that is cited as well, often mentioning the Netanyahu government in-tandem.
For some up-to-date reporting on this subject, I’d like to share this recent NPR piece.
The Gaza health ministry has relied entirely on “reliable media sources” for ~13,000 of the ~30,000 reported deaths so far. ~17,000 of the deaths were input electronically from a hospital.
In addition, “Gaza’s health ministry says 70% of those killed in the territory are women and children. Its most recent breakdown of casualties recorded in hospitals shows women and children make up 58% of those deaths. Al-Qudra could not explain the discrepancy.”
So according to the Hamas-run Gaza heath ministry, “reliable media sources” report that 86% of those killed are women and children, but hospital staff report that only 58% are women and children. This discrepancy is significant and it’s clear that the non-hospital sources skew the data overall.
In addition, they intentionally assign all deaths to “Israeli aggression,” and do not differentiate between combatants and non-combatants.
All that to say, I think it is a perfect valid approach to specify that Hamas runs the health ministry when their numbers cannot be independently confirmed and appear to have significant distortions.
Their numbers have repeatedly been independently confirmed and shown to be largely accurate in the past. They have never given any cause to doubt them and calling into question their methodology now is disingenuous at best, and malicious at worst.
I’m glad, at least, that we seem to have agreed that the addition of “hamas-run” is purely meant to cast doubt on the numbers but you seem to think this is justified despite all evidence to the contrary. Even the article you linked seems to reach the conclusion that the numbers are likely mostly accurate, if not under counted. It’s far more likely that any discrepancies that may exist are due to the difficulties of maintaining a health system while a hostile nation bombs your health infrastructure into rubble rather than a literally unprecedented manipulation of the data by Hamas.
Here’s some context for you, from your article:
I guess you didn’t need this lesson on how to lie by omission with “neutral facts”; you already knew what you were doing.
Or maybe there are significant deviations from their previous methodology, that skews their numbers to make it look like Israel is intentionally targeting women and children? It may or may not be malicious, but the bias in their counting is clear as day.
Cast doubt? No. Provide context and showcase potential bias? Yes. I suspect the overall numbers are roughly correct (potentially even undercounted), but their updated methodology shows significant deviation from the past in terms of who they say is being killed. All that to say, I would not blindly trust their data.
Yes. I did read that and I suspect there is a translation issue. Clearly when people die in incidents like February 29th, their deaths are added to the count. It’s not merely "occupation bombardment.”
I’m not lying or omitting facts. You keep repeating the term “neutral facts,” but I have never once expressed that is what I want. I’m ok with bias as long as it is factual. Reading multiple perspectives is helpful in understanding complex topics.
The only complexity is caused by the specters of doubt you’ve invented to justify your own biases. You’ve given one example of a single potentially misreported demographic statistic that is tangentially related at best to the death toll number we’re discussing and that somehow represents a shift from decades of established methodology that has consistently reported accurately literally every single time this exact same shit has happened. Israel themselves trust the numbers out of Gaza!
If you thought it was a translation issue why did you cite it as evidence for your argument rather than discarding the whole thing as an unreliable source? You seem have no issue doing that when it comes to the information from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.
I keep repeating neutral facts to try and drive home how fucking absurd that phrase is. It’s tautological; facts are all neutral: they are descriptions of reality. How you present facts and frame them determines bias, not the facts themselves. Do you think people are manipulated and propagandized with only lies?
You keep insisting that it’s mere the addition of context but it’s not because it’s only the subset of context that presents the situation in a certain perspective rather than providing the whole picture. If you’re so concerned about gathering different perspectives I think you’d be more eager to insist on the additional context of Gazas historical integrity in these matters alongside the political affiliation of its government and the state of its healthcare infrastructure. Instead you’re keen to just let the incomplete picture painted by “Hamas-run” slide because you agree with the intent behind adding it. Which is to cast doubt, not illuminate context.
K.
Look, the specific numbers have been off since they started relying on media sources. It’s not just “a single potentially misreported demographic statistic,” it’s a series of misreported incidents causing a dramatic demographic skew. That doesn’t mean the overall number of deaths is that far off. It could potentially be a case of the media ignoring the deaths of adult men.
To a point, maybe. Israeli officials constantly disputes the numbers in public.
You keep jumping to extremes and putting words in my mouth. I’ve never said we should “disregard the whole thing as an unreliable source” when it comes to the Gaza health ministry. Their data is a valuable resource, even if they are not a neutral third party.
Ah, so you were just being redundant by saying “neutral facts,” got it.
In response to the rest of that, I would say that the best lies are blended together with truth.