Israel’s official and unofficial spokespeople are in damage control mode after a senior military official admitted last week that Israel accepts the death toll published by Gaza’s health ministry, which currently stands at more than 70,000. This comes after two years in which Israel and its supporters took every opportunity to disparage and dismiss the health ministry’s figures, arguing that they were overblown or fabricated by Hamas.
In truth, the reliability of the official death toll should never have been in doubt. For one thing, the UN has independently verified the accuracy of the health ministry’s figures after each of Israel’s previous bombardments of Gaza going back to 2008. For another, the data published by the health ministry since 7 October is extremely detailed...
So are we about to see a wave of mea culpas, or at least a modicum of self-reflection, from all those who peddled the line that the death toll was not to be trusted? Don’t bank on it. In fact, some of them already appear to be shifting the goalposts, arguing that while the overall death toll of 70,000 may be accurate, what actually matters is the ratio of civilians to militants among them, which they claim is comparatively low for urban warfare. Throughout the war, Israeli leaders have cited a civilian casualty ratio as low as 1:1, or, more recently, 1.5:1, and now they allege that militants account for as many as 25,000 of Gaza’s dead. But these claims, too, fall apart under basic scrutiny.
And the army’s own data proves it... through a combination of mass surveillance and AI algorithms, Israel suspects to be a militant belonging to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. According to data we obtained from this database in May last year, Israel had killed fewer than 9,000 militants at a time when the health ministry’s overall death toll stood at 53,000.
The database, therefore, indicated that 83% of Gaza’s dead were civilians, pointing to a civilian casualty ratio with few parallels in modern warfare that adds further weight to accusations of genocide levelled at Israel by the UN, human rights groups and leading genocide scholars.
Ben Reiff @ the Guardian
In truth, the reliability of the official death toll should never have been in doubt. For one thing, the UN has independently verified the accuracy of the health ministry’s figures after each of Israel’s previous bombardments of Gaza going back to 2008. For another, the data published by the health ministry since 7 October is extremely detailed...
So are we about to see a wave of mea culpas, or at least a modicum of self-reflection, from all those who peddled the line that the death toll was not to be trusted? Don’t bank on it. In fact, some of them already appear to be shifting the goalposts, arguing that while the overall death toll of 70,000 may be accurate, what actually matters is the ratio of civilians to militants among them, which they claim is comparatively low for urban warfare. Throughout the war, Israeli leaders have cited a civilian casualty ratio as low as 1:1, or, more recently, 1.5:1, and now they allege that militants account for as many as 25,000 of Gaza’s dead. But these claims, too, fall apart under basic scrutiny.
And the army’s own data proves it... through a combination of mass surveillance and AI algorithms, Israel suspects to be a militant belonging to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. According to data we obtained from this database in May last year, Israel had killed fewer than 9,000 militants at a time when the health ministry’s overall death toll stood at 53,000.
The database, therefore, indicated that 83% of Gaza’s dead were civilians, pointing to a civilian casualty ratio with few parallels in modern warfare that adds further weight to accusations of genocide levelled at Israel by the UN, human rights groups and leading genocide scholars.
Ben Reiff @ the Guardian
