One-Third of Those Killed in Israeli Assault Since October 7 Are Children (truthout.org)
from solo@slrpnk.net to world@lemmy.world on 16 Sep 16:44
https://slrpnk.net/post/13389195

The current death toll in Gaza is close to 42,000, but experts believe that figure is likely a gross undercount.

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MediaBiasFactChecker@lemmy.world on 16 Sep 16:44 next collapse
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[deleted] on 16 Sep 17:06 next collapse
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solo@slrpnk.net on 16 Sep 17:11 next collapse

It’s the Zionists who are killing children, and what you say is totally antisemitic.

catloaf@lemm.ee on 16 Sep 17:13 collapse

Look man, I get what you’re doing, but it’s just getting old at this point.

ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works on 16 Sep 17:30 next collapse

About half the inhabitants of Gaza are under 18 years old, so 1/3 of the dead being children corresponds to a ratio of two civilians killed for every combatant. This is not out of the ordinary for urban warfare conducted in a manner intended to reduce civilian casualties.

solo@slrpnk.net on 16 Sep 18:02 next collapse

We must face the hard truth in Gaza: Israel has lost its moral authority - The Hill - 07/18/24

I reviewed thousands of incident reports and tens of thousands of individual data points from several dozen credible organizations, as well as the Israeli military itself, as a part of a nonpartisan task force analyzing Israel’s campaign in Gaza.

Our report, submitted to the Biden administration and briefed to Congress, establishes compelling and credible evidence of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law and U.S. military best practices, utilizing U.S.-provided munitions. It shows how the Israeli military has demonstrated a “systematic disregard for fundamental principles of international law, including recurrent attacks launched despite foreseeably disproportionate harm to civilians.”

theacharnian@lemmy.ca on 16 Sep 18:14 next collapse

Phew. So, like, this is OK, right? Nothing to to see here, move along? Nothing to worry about 15000 (fifteen fucking thousand, like fifteen times a thousand, something like a thousand times my kid’s classroom size) dead kids, because it’s not out of the ordinary for urban warfare conducted in a manner intended to reduce civilian casualties? Thanks man, that really will help me sleep at peace with my conscience tonight.

(If we were talking about 15000 dead Israeli kids, we’d be -rightfully- freaking the fuck out. But 15k of those other kids, that’s fair game. Super ethical too.)

geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml on 16 Sep 19:18 next collapse

It is out of the ordinary. Either the Israeli military is extremely incompetent or they are deliberately targeting children and it is the second.

ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works on 16 Sep 20:00 collapse

Many people seem to think so but the evidence doesn’t support their argument. A 2:1 ratio of civilians to combatants killed isn’t particularly low but it is far closer to the best that Western armies have been able to accomplish than it is to the ratio seen from armies that are not trying to reduce civilian casualties. For example, Russia’s ratio in Mariupol is approximately 8:1 and that was against Ukrainian soldiers in uniform who weren’t deliberately hiding among civilians. Urban warfare always involves heavy civilian casualties.

small44@lemmy.world on 16 Sep 21:19 next collapse

Torture, rape and civilians kill was always part of war of aggresion, so i don’t care about those stats. Not to mention all the genocidal statement of people in power in israel

GiveMemes@jlai.lu on 16 Sep 21:21 next collapse

This is assuming that the 2:1 ratio has come from anywhere other than original commenter’s asshole

filister@lemmy.world on 17 Sep 06:03 next collapse

Sometimes I wonder if people are really so unable for any critical thinking?

theacharnian@lemmy.ca on 17 Sep 12:23 collapse

Like @filister@lemmy.world said above, it’s 2:1 adults to children, not combatants to non-combattants.

ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works on 17 Sep 15:28 collapse

If we assume that (1) the civilian population is 50% children and (2) none of the combatants are children then:

(fraction of the dead that is children) = (fraction of the dead that is civilians) * (fraction of the civilians that is children)

(1/3) = (fraction of the dead that is civilians) * (1/2)

(fraction of the dead that is civilians) = (1/3) ÷ (1/2) = (2/3)

This is where my 2:1 civilians to combatants number comes from.

The fact that among the dead, the ratio of civilians to combatants equals the ratio of adults to children is a coincidence.

theacharnian@lemmy.ca on 17 Sep 16:06 next collapse

The amount “civilians” in your calculations is tricky. The first time it appears it refers to dead civilians, the second time it appears to the overall civilian population (hence the 1/2 using the rule of thumb that half of Gazans are under 18).

I.e you can’t say

#deadKids/#allDead = #deadCivilians/#allDead * #deadKids/#allCivilians

Because #deadCivilians << #allCivilians

ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works on 17 Sep 16:47 collapse

That’s not what I’m saying - I don’t have a term that represents “#deadKids/#allCivilians”.

If I were to use your notation, I would write:

#deadKids/#allDead = #deadCivilians/#allDead * #allKids/#allCivilians

I recognize that it’s macabre to treat this as a word problem, but the math works out if you do. If out of 100 dead people, 33 are combatants and 67 are civilians (the 2:1 civilian to combatant ratio I have calculated) and half of the dead civilians are children, then there are 33 dead children, which is the “one third” in the headline.

theacharnian@lemmy.ca on 17 Sep 17:20 collapse

I thought originally that you were suggesting a simple syntactic manipulation of the fraction but you’re not. I don’t understand why the equation you propose is reasonable.

ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works on 17 Sep 18:08 collapse

Let me try to explain it another way.

We know that 1/3 of the dead are children, according to the headline. We also know that children make up about half the population of Gaza. We assume that none of the combatants are children.

If a person is killed, that person is either an adult combatant, an adult civilian, or a child civilian. Since child civilians make up 1/3 of the dead and there are as many adult civilians as child civilians in Gaza, adult civilians therefore make up another 1/3 of the dead. That adds up to 2/3 of the dead being civilians. 2/3 civilian dead and 1/3 combatant dead is a 2:1 ratio of civilians to combatants killed.

GiveMemes@jlai.lu on 17 Sep 19:20 collapse

That fails to take into account any effort by the idf to minimize child casualties, which is absolutely happening. It assumes an equal amount of adult and children civilian deaths when there is no marker whatsoever that shows that to be the case, other than the overall ratio of children to adults in Gaza. You have made a huge leap in your logic.

ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works on 17 Sep 19:50 collapse

That’s true; I am assuming that the age distribution of dead civilians matches the overall age distribution of civilians. Maybe efforts to minimize child casualties skew the actual distribution one way, or maybe children’s greater frailty skews it the other way. I don’t know but I think that my assumption is reasonable as a rough estimate.

SilentStorms@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 19 Sep 22:34 collapse

Doing a bunch of math to justify thousands of dead kids is pretty fucked up.

ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works on 19 Sep 23:58 collapse

Children are killed even in a just war, so morality on the scale of nations is necessarily different than morality on the scale of individuals.

SilentStorms@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 20 Sep 00:10 collapse

And this is an immoral, unjust war. You’re so insanely disconnected from this that these kids just become numbers, pretty fucked up.

Your username is strangely apt.

filister@lemmy.world on 17 Sep 05:59 collapse

Isn’t it kind of naïve to think that all non kids victims are even terrorists? Where is the proof for that. Because according to your logic even the hostages that Israel killed, and the WFK personnel should also be labelled terrorists, which apparently is wrong.

theacharnian@lemmy.ca on 17 Sep 11:51 next collapse

Something something they voted 20 years ago. /s

It’s actually genocidal language…

ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works on 17 Sep 15:31 collapse

That’s not what I am assuming. My assumptions are only that none of the dead combatants are children and that the age distribution of dead civilians matches the age distribution of the civilian population.

abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us on 19 Sep 22:27 collapse

This is just outrageous and unacceptable. While I don't think any reasonable person would deny that Israel has the right to defend itself, I find it next to impossible to see how "national defense" can be used to justify killing children. wtf?