this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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The UN says more than 1 in 4 people in Gaza are starving because of war (apnews.com)
submitted 10 months ago by dubteedub@beehaw.org to c/news@beehaw.org
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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.

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[–] dubteedub@beehaw.org 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] dubteedub@beehaw.org 4 points 10 months 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.