They are the government of Gaza. Calling their civil service workers terrorists is just ridiculous. Are Ambulance drivers in the US responsible for the CIA’s doings?
And if they don’t have ability to count the dead anymore, (40k is a months old number at this point), could that have anything to do with Israel repeatedly targeting the healthcare infrastructure in Gaza?
Think yourself: Could Hamas really have the capability of producing reliable statistics about the gaza population after month of being bombarded?
Was in OIF. Got mortared, ied’d, and/or shot at nearly every day. Finance nerds still went to work. MI still disseminated no intelligence at all. Marines wrote offensive things and about my mother in very visible places I could not access. In 2003, our csh still kept digital records - on computers and laptops. Everyone did their jobs without any hesitation or meaningful difficulty at all. We all used to be civilians. Everyone has a threshold for the limits of adaptation, but most of us are capable of adapting to war, unfortunately though it may be. I realize that the impression our culture cultivates about war is a guy clutching his knees, weeping, and rocking back and forth while the planet fragments around him - and occasionally that does happen - but esprit de corps tends to motivate people into adaptation. It was my experience that the children in Iraq could follow my leadership and guidance better than their parents. They could also tolerate the terror better. They also had better senses of humor. They could also speak better English. I was an army guy but I still have a hunch that this had something to do with it. So be careful of the narrow perspective that organizational behaviors could only function effectively or reliably when sequestered within utopian sanctuary. People can do amazing things.
There’s also the fun fact that despite similar bombings, the death toll seems to have stopped going up after Israel did their best to destroy every major hospital and health infrastructure in the country. It’s entirely possible they’ve lost the ability to effectively count the dead and this isn’t the current number, it’s the last known good number. A country not being able to count it’s dead in a war should only happen because the other side is controlling the hospitals and thus responsible for those reports. So yeah, the next time someone questions if they can even count the dead remind them of Israel repeatedly targeting their healthcare system.
Yeah, that’s the part that keeps me up at night - the knowing or not of the unknown dead. I know that not everyone that dies from war dies neatly and at the war. And I know that we were only able to account for a body if it was present and discernable. So I don’t know if the estimates are correct or not. But I’m in therapy either way. Mental health is stupid.
“of course there are dead babies” as if 1 is not 1 too many. Also, don’t underestimate the power of bureaucracy even during a genocide.
I hate to defend Israel here because they’ve gone off the deep end. But there was always going to be a response and unfortunately there was always going to civilian deaths, including children. Keeping those to a minimum is a big deal to any military trying to operate in good faith, but zero won’t happen until we turn the moon into an arena and have all of our wars up there.
Keeping civilian deaths to a minimum is not something israel is interested in, their actions make it clear that they want to completely destroy life in gaza. This is 11 months of bombardment and torture and gangrape of detainees (on video) this is much more than a standard military response this is genocide
You have a great point. Let’s let a large number of objective humanitarian workers with aid in who can gather statistics.
Is that possible?
If I were an epidemiologist and statistician and wanted to gather data and provide aid, could I just go there and do that?
I didn’t see the TikTok videos, but were those faked?
I don’t trust Hamas and think they are bad. But is everyone in Gaza some hardcore Hamas person? I think a lot of them just want water food and to not die. Im not that knowledgable on any of this.