Since October 7, more than 3,257 children have been reported killed, including at least 3,195 in Gaza, 33 in the West Bank, and 29 in Israel, according to the Ministries of Health in Gaza and Israel respectively. The number of children reported killed in just three weeks in Gaza is more than the number killed in armed conflict globally – across more than 20 countries – over the course of a whole year, for the last three years.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/24/hamas-israel-death-toll-health-ministry-trustworthy-reuters/
“Hamas has now been in charge of Gaza for 16 years. It has squeezed the life out of honesty and probity. Any health official stepping out of line and not giving the death tolls that Hamas wants reported to journalists risks serious consequences. I’m not denying there are civilians being killed. At all, including many children. That’s verifiable. What is not verifiable are the numbers that emerge throughout the day from Gaza of new death tolls — 700 killed in the last 24 hours, 500 killed in the Ahli hospital car park blast, 5,000 killed since October 8. Hamas has a clear propaganda incentive to inflate civilian casualties as much as possible. There was a time when the figures from the ministry could be relied upon. The doctors and administrators knew what they were doing.”
I don’t see how Palestinians really benefit on the long run from inflating the number of deaths. So many have died and no countries have enough courage or decency to impose sanctions on Israel for it yet. If Palestinians want more deaths, they have a catalog of victims of Israeli crimes, torture cases in prison, etc.
Yes, it’s entirely possible they inflated the numbers, yet we don’t extend the same skepticism to Israel (which is known to play balls deep into the PR game). And honestly, the majority of whom I’ve seen argue against these numbers eventually lead to excusing Israeli war crimes about 3 comments into the discussion.
Hamas has always had an incentive to look like a bigger victim, but in all those times those numbers held up and the UN’s tally matched that provided by doctors. There is no reason to doubt these numbers now because they were correct before even when Hamas had an incentive, in completely identical situations (aka previous wars on Gaza). The trust of these numbers has not been eroded by logic or healthy skepticism, but rather by Israeli propaganda and White House officials bending to it.
Currently there is a massive information campaign that is being waged by Isral and the US vs Iran and Gaza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_in_the_2023_Israel–Hamas_war
There are attempts to push international support to one side or the other that cause direct impact to this war
Every little gain possible is to shift support to one side or the other
Yeah, I get that. I guess the point of my paragraph was that Palestinian lives never mattered. I thought it was clear after reading my second and third paragraphs that I’m not denying a PR war is happening… But as usual, gotta be ultra clear on the internet.