The death toll in Gaza has climbed to at least 20,000 Palestinians. At least 1 in 200 people living in Gaza are now dead. 1 in 4 remaining Palestinians in Gaza are starving to death. I just can not comprehend this amount of violence and death in such a small area in such a short time. This is at a scale unheard of in any other modern conflict. So many entire families have been murdered due to indiscriminate bombings, all funded, supported, and enabled by Biden and the US.

I can not fathom how there is still any support for the actions of the IDF and the Israeli government. It shocks me that anyone can believe a single word from Israeli officials when they keep claiming that they are taking all precautions to avoid killing civilians when the evidence that they are lying through their teeth is so obvious.

In just over two months, the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group.

This all just blows my mind and makes me so goddamn angry to think about. If this were a just world, then Netanyahu and the Israeli leadership would be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

  • dubteedub@beehaw.orgOP
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    1 year ago

    Ethiopian Civil War (ongoing): Up to 600,000 dead, up to 100,000 last year alone.

    Russo-Ukrainian war: Around 200,000 dead, up to 95,000 this year.

    Insurgency in the Maghreb: Up to 400,000 dead, around 14,000 this year.

    Myanmar civil war: Up to 210,000 dead, at least 15,000 this year.

    Yemeni civil war: More than 380,000 dead and 85,000 of those were just kids starving to death from 2015 to 2018.

    Those conflicts all took place over years. The Israel war on Gaza is blowing through the roof the rate of civilian deaths, the level of indiscriminate targeting of civilians and infrastructure, and the amount of bombings of a small populated area. The conflicts you mention are largely Civil Wars and I am assuming total deaths of the conflict (as you do not share any sources). The War on Ukraine by Russia also has over the entire course of the conflict only had 10,000 civilian deaths according to the United Nations.

    On average, nearly 300 people have been killed each day since the start of the conflict, excluding the seven-day ceasefire, data from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry indicates. The World Health Organization’s regional emergency director Richard Brennan says he considers these casualty figures trustworthy.

    The pace of killing in this war has been “exceptionally high”, says Prof Michael Spagat, who specialises in examining death tolls in conflicts around the world, such as the 2003 Iraq war, Colombia’s civil conflict, wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as previous wars between Israel and Gaza. Within the series of Gaza wars stretching back to 2008, the current one is unprecedented both for the number of people killed and for the indiscriminateness of the killing," he adds.

    Each conflict is unique in the way it is fought, but the experts the BBC has spoken to agree that the rate of killing in Gaza is significantly bigger than in others fought recently. "What we’re seeing in terms of civilian deaths has already far outpaced rates of harm from any given conflict we have documented," said Emily Tripp, director of Airwars, an organisation which has monitored civilian deaths in wars and conflicts since 2014.

    The former Pentagon intelligence analyst Marc Garlasco said: “To find a similar density of high explosives used in a small populated area, we might have to go back to the Vietnam war for a comparable example - like the 1972 Christmas bombing, when some 20,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Hanoi during Operation Linebacker II.” An estimated 1,600 Vietnamese civilians were killed in the Christmas bombings.

    By contrast, US-led coalition air and artillery strikes killed fewer than 20 civilians per day, on average, during the four-month offensive to drive IS out of the Syrian city of Raqqa in 2017, according to Amnesty International.

    And an Associated Press investigation suggested that between 9,000 and 11,000 civilians were killed in the nine-month battle between US-backed Iraqi forces and IS for the Iraqi city of Mosul which ended in 2017. This amounts to an estimated fewer-than-40 civilian deaths per day, on average. Mosul had an estimated population of less than two million people when IS captured the city in 2014.

    During the almost two years of the Ukraine war, the United Nations estimates that at least 10,000 civilians have been killed.

    • DdCno1@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Those conflicts all took place over years. The Israel war on Gaza is blowing through the roof the rate of civilian deaths

      Yes, because this is a high-intensity conflict. Small area, lots of fighting and, unlike in most other conflicts, one side is doing everything to get the civilian death toll on “their side” as high as possible by hiding their military infrastructure behind civilians, stealing supplies and preventing people from leaving. Hamas didn’t even build any bomb shelters for ordinary people even though they knew Israel would answer their massacres with bombings.

      the level of indiscriminate targeting of civilians and infrastructure

      If they are targeting civilians, then why are they warning them?

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67327079

      Doesn’t make any sense. If they were actually out to murder civilians, they’d certainly not be doing this and they’d also not need more than one bomb to kill a single Palestinian.

      And yeah, of course infrastructure gets targeted in a war, because how else would you cripple the enemy’s ability to sustain a fight, but that’s not indiscriminate, because you can’t indiscriminately target things. Either you target things, then it’s not indiscriminate, or you are just lobbing bombs indiscriminately, but then you are not targeting things. Sorry to be all pedantic, but please at least try to use the most generic buzz words in this conflict in a reasonably logically consistent manner.

      The conflicts you mention are largely Civil Wars

      This isn’t? If you support the whole “From the River to the Sea” nonsense, and it looks like you do, then this is one divided country in the midst of a civil war.

      total deaths of the conflict (as you do not share any sources).

      Mostly just this list from Wikipedia:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts

      only had 10,000 civilian deaths according to the United Nations.

      That’s only verified deaths. There were 10,000 fresh graves discovered in Mariupol alone:

      https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-erasing-mariupol-499dceae43ed77f2ebfe750ea99b9ad9

      The highest estimate for just that one city is 100,000 dead:

      https://tsn.ua/en/ato/how-many-civilians-died-in-mariupol-a-city-council-deputy-revealed-a-terrible-figure-2390089.html

      Probably/hopefully too high, but the truth is that nobody knows, except that the number of verified deaths are only a small fraction of the total in Ukraine. There are so many places in Ukraine that were simply wiped out - with no warnings for civilians, nor escape routes, unlike in Gaza.

      Speaking of nobody knows, the fog of war in the Israeli-Hamas war is just as thick. The only numbers people are repeating all over, including most self-proclaimed experts and politicians, are those released by Hamas, who have every interest in the world to paint a picture as horrific as possible in order to put international pressure on Israel to end a war Hamas started so that Hamas can regroup and do the same thing all over again, as they have repeatedly announced.

      https://www.memri.org/reports/hamas-official-ghazi-hamad-we-will-repeat-october-7-attack-time-and-again-until-israel

      Knowingly or unknowingly, you and so many other people are carrying water for this terror organization. What we should do is support Israel in the eradication of Hamas while also getting as much help to the civilians caught in the crossfire as possible and put pressure on Hamas to release the hostages and surrender. The shorter this war is, the fewer people on both sides will suffer. For as flawed as Israel is, especially with the current government in charge, they are still the least flawed nation/group in the entire Middle East. Very low bar, I know, but that’s as good as it gets. Have you ever thought how your country, no matter where you are from, would have reacted to an event like October 7? Even some bastion of democracy and freedom like Denmark would have probably done the same if not worse as Israel in response. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep a watchful eye on this (hard not to, given the number of journalists per square meter over there) and influence Israel into fighting this war as humanely as possible, but again, let’s not get hysterical.

      • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgM
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        If they are targeting civilians, then why are they warning them?

        aren’t we like, three days removed from the IDF killing obviously surrendering Israeli civilians including a civilian they basically hunted down? the argument that Israel can’t possibly be targeting Palestinian civilians because they “warn” those civilians seems to stand clearly at odds with even the simplest things such as “how they treat their own, surrendering citizens–much less the citizens of a state they don’t want to exist”

        What we should do is support Israel in the eradication of Hamas while also getting as much help to the civilians caught in the crossfire as possible and put pressure on Hamas to release the hostages and surrender.

        …or we could actually solve the issue here by demanding Israel stop indiscriminately murdering civilians (the actual root of the problem and a thing that even Joe Biden kind of thinks they’re doing now) in a misguided attempt to eradicate a terrorist group when the “shock and awe” strategy has never worked in contemporary warfare and has only guaranteed further resentment and conflict against the state doing the shock and awe!

        • DdCno1@beehaw.org
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          aren’t we like, three days removed from the IDF killing obviously surrendering Israeli civilians

          We are a week removed from the IDF going forward and openly admitting to their soldiers having made a mistake and acting against both standard protocol and direct orders. As inexcusable as the conduct of the soldiers responsible for this is, the transparent and honest manner in which this incident was communicated to the public is exemplary. You are right that this does raise uncomfortable questions over how normal this kind of conduct of IDF soldiers is though.

          the actual root of the problem

          The actual root of the problem is that the UN came up with a flawed two-state plan for Palestine in 1947, one that Israel agreed with and the Arab nations didn’t, prompting them to fight a war over it. Which they lost, against a tiny isolated nation under a weapons embargo that literally had to salvage tanks from scrap yards as the attacking Arabs were using the latest gear. Then they tried a few times more, losing again every time and in between, various Palestinian groups have tried again and again to do their worst. Each time, they lose, each time, Palestinians lose territory and power as Israel gets stronger with each military victory, because that’s how wars have always worked. Arab nations also occupied Palestinian territory for decades, oppressing Palestinians there worse than Israel ever did, but that tends to get glossed over these days.

          When Israel does actually make concessions, like when they pulled all settlers out of Gaza, invited tens of thousands of Palestinians to work for several times the wages they would get in Palestinian territories, they get thanked with more violence in return, showing the Israeli public that extending the hand does nothing to calm this conflict down, so with each terrorist attack, they shift further to the right politically, electing politicians who promise strength and keeping Palestinians at bay instead of compromising. That’s how you get injustices like indefinite detention of Palestinians. Cause and effect.

          Do you even know that Israel was working on finalizing a deal for the Palestinians to get access to gas fields on the coast of Gaza, which would have given them energy independence and a huge influx in cash? Talks were ongoing until literally the day of the terrorist attack, but now it’ll never happen.

          • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgM
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            1 year ago

            When Israel does actually make concessions, like when they pulled all settlers out of Gaza, invited tens of thousands of Palestinians to work for several times the wages they would get in Palestinian territories, they get thanked with more violence in return, showing the Israeli public that extending the hand does nothing to calm this conflict down, so with each terrorist attack, they shift further to the right politically, electing politicians who promise strength and keeping Palestinians at bay instead of compromising. That’s how you get injustices like indefinite detention of Palestinians. Cause and effect.

            i mean this is just cringe apologia for Israel, respectfully. “benevolently” stopping your settler colonialism in one part of the Palestinian state you don’t want to exist and almost immediately transitioning into an ongoing permanent blockade of said part of that state after you do is not actual benevolence or a “concession” in any meaningful sense of the word–that should be the baseline expected of Israel. you’re also completely ignoring, in saying this, the much more impactful apartheid under which Palestinians live and the encroachment of settlers in the West Bank that Israel aids, abets, and funds, and has for decades. in pretty much any other circumstance what Israel is doing to Palestine would be widely accepted as a casus belli for war. the implication underlying everything you’re saying here is that the root of the conflict is all Palestinian, but that’s demonstrably incorrect and actively revisionist to a point where i don’t think you’d get most Zionists to agree to it.

            • DdCno1@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              almost immediately transitioning into an ongoing permanent blockade of said part of that state

              I wonder what happened in between those two things. Have you ever looked up what the blockade was actually blocking?

              what Israel is doing to Palestine would be widely accepted as a casus belli for war

              If that’s a casus belli, then so is October 7. Now what?

              • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgM
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                I wonder what happened in between those two things. Have you ever looked up what the blockade was actually blocking?

                i think it is a moral imperative (or at least, unambiguously morally justifiable in all cases) to wage armed struggle against a country doing apartheid like Israel, so it’s basically irrelevant for my purposes that Israel’s justification for the blockade is “these people waged armed struggle against me”–the oxygen of that armed struggle as it currently exists is the apartheid. if anything it just demonstrates that Israel’s government so devalues Palestinian life (as is also being demonstrated by their cavalier attitude toward murdering civilians) that it’d rather continue the oppression that’s led many Palestinians to jihadism in the first place than ever reconsider whether that approach will lead to stability in the region and long-term peace

                • DdCno1@beehaw.org
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                  So unguided rockets vaguely aimed at cities, suicide bombers (including the use of children and mentally impaired people as suicide bombers), random stabbings, random shootings are “armed struggle” now? The mere fact that they are using children, old and handicapped people as suicide bombers, including in this current conflict, shows that if there’s one side not valuing Palestinian life at all, it’s Palestinian leadership.

                  Oh, and it’s also statements like these:

                  https://www.memri.org/reports/hamas-leader-ismail-haniyeh-we-need-blood-women-children-and-elderly-gaza-–-so-it-awakens

                  How on Earth do you deal with this kind of political leadership? It’s not just Hamas, that’s how all sorts of groups and Palestinian governments have fought for many decades. How do you achieve “long-term piece” in this kind of situation? Like I said, any kind of concession gets answered with violence and any past peace deal, including the last one that would have resulted in 95% of the West Bank in Palestinian hands, gets rejected by one side and one side only. The current settler problem wouldn’t even exist had Arafat not walked away from the Camp David summit after saying no to every proposal. He lived out his days as a billionaire though, so I guess we know why he did it. I guess he feared for this power and wealth, just like Hamas’ leadership with their billions. Gotta keep that conflict going so that aid comes in that they can then steal from the people right out in the open while delusional idealists - no offense - meander on about high-level concepts like apartheid and oppression, blind to the actual reality.

                  • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgM
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                    So unguided rockets vaguely aimed at cities, suicide bombers (including the use of children and mentally impaired people as suicide bombers), random stabbings, random shootings are “armed struggle” now?

                    well yes, definitionally, that’s how armed struggle is manifesting in Palestine currently. there’s nothing you or i can do about that.

                    but that’s a little besides the point, which is that i think you at most selectively take issue with morally depraved military actions. almost everything you’re charging Hamas with has an established and equally immoral analogue in Israel’s strategy toward Palestine to this point. it’s conspicuous to me, for example, that you do not seem to comparably weigh Israel damaging or destroying 70% of Gaza City with Hamas’s unguided rocket attacks–especially given that both have led to large numbers of civilian deaths? like, do you think that 70% of Gaza City harbored Hamas militants, or, alternatively that it was militarily necessary to do that sort of damage even though it was inevitable large numbers of civilians would be caught in the crossfire? that seems like the only way for this to not boil down to vibes of who’s “good” and “bad”

                    and mind you, i have no issue with saying that Hamas is a depraved terrorist group who should never be in power and that it’s very, very bad for the region that they are now the primary credible opposition to Israel in Palestine. if i had my way, they would be unilaterally eradicated in favor of Fatah who at least seem willing to work toward a peaceful resolution. but i don’t have a magic wand, and Hamas does not exist in a vacuum. the Israeli state is directly complicit in making them that primary credible opposition, both through its military strategy and through selectively looking the other way when money and weapons are funneled through back-channels to the group. even Israeli outlets admit to this sort of arrangement under Netanyahu.

      • dubteedub@beehaw.orgOP
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        1 year ago

        Do you not think that Israel has any responsibility for their targeting of civilians?

        Israel is purposefully using dumb bombs (nearly half of all the thousands and thousands and thousands of explosives used on civilian population). They may be claiming to target some valid Hamas target, but the use of dumb munitions that can go hundreds of meters off course shows that is just not true. They are bombing indiscriminately with the explicit goal of the greatest destruction possible, impact on civilians, and genocide.


        If they are targeting civilians, then why are they warning them?

        Warning them of what exactly? And to go where exactly?

        Israel has admitted to regular bombing of safe zones. The UN is investigating over 50 instances of such tactics. They are certainly not giving civilians time enough to pack up their lives with their supposed warnings.

        Using on-the-ground footage, satellite imagery and mapping software, a Sky News visual investigation found that Israel’s evacuation orders have instead been chaotic and contradictory and that a neighbourhood in Deir al Balah was hit one day after the IDF said evacuees could flee there.

        Our investigation comes after a separate strike in Gaza was caught on camera by a Sky News team. It too came in an area that was supposed to be safe.

        In response to our investigation, the United Nations told Sky News that it is already investigating 52 similar incidents in areas where the Israeli army told civilians it was safe to evacuate to.

        This is just pure evil.


        This isn’t? If you support the whole “From the River to the Sea” nonsense, and it looks like you do, then this is one divided country in the midst of a civil war.

        This is the most unserious statement. Get real.


        Speaking of nobody knows, the fog of war in the Israeli-Hamas war is just as thick. The only numbers people are repeating all over, including most self-proclaimed experts and politicians, are those released by Hamas, who have every interest in the world to paint a picture as horrific as possible in order to put international pressure on Israel to end a war Hamas started so that Hamas can regroup and do the same thing all over again, as they have repeatedly announced.

        Even the Biden administration believes the Hamas figures are accurate. So does the UN, Amnesty International, WHO, and every other international aid organization. If anything, the count is low since Israel wiped out every hospital in the region and Palestinians are now just doing mass graves wherever they can.

        __

        Knowingly or unknowingly, you and so many other people are carrying water for this terror organization.

        Knowingly or unknowingly, you are supported a genocide.