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Comment by differingopinio | Hacker News Reader

The Israelis have killed more children in two months in Gaza than the US killed in 20 years of war in Afghanistan.

That's also not true. It seems every single thing you write isn't true.

Afghanistan child deaths: 26,000 vs 5,500 in Gaza (according to Hamas).

There's a reason it's Afghanistan people cite here, and not Iraq. Even counts of dead children aren't neutral. There's no way around taking time to learn about things; you can't sum things up with a grisly picture or a grim scorecard. Or you can, I don't know, maybe it works great. It's what we've been trying to do up 'til now. How's it going?

The Israelis have also killed more kids in Gaza than the U.S. did in Iraq from 2008 to 2022 (according to UNICEF).

https://www.unicef.org/iraq/press-releases/more-9000-childre...

I'm really not interested in lining up and correcting the scorecards, so much as I am in the broader point that what people suppose to be simple, clarifying jolts of information --- body counts, horrible photos, whatever --- don't so much clarify as nudge people towards a preferred narrative.

That doesn't make them wrong. There is truth and there is falsity and for every important, complicated truth, there are people who "prefer" the narrative that conveys it. But it's not the body count that establishes the truth, it's the underlying work that went into revealing it.

The truth of the situation you're intent on nudging us about is intensely complicated.

I am sorry but stating the truth is beyond criticism. If someone is wrong you can state a different fact that illuminates their facts, or wait until they lie, which they must do if they are sticking with the wrong ideas.

You can't criticize someone for saying something that's true, and people only do so when they are losing the argument. If you're so beaten back that you're resorting to that, I will help you: Hamas killed more Israeli children than Saddam killed American children.

In addition to the problem that the parent commenter seems to be comprehensively wrong, just as a matter of fact, they're also obviously not just stating simple facts to contribute to the body of knowledge we draw from to make our own conclusions; there is a clear subtext to the "facts" they're providing (again, scare-quoting because that's not what they are --- though, give it another month, and check again).

But, more generally, you're just not responding to anything I actually wrote.

I mean, to me it seems that they are in fact just stating “facts”. What, in your eyes, is the “correct” way to state those purported facts that would “contribute to the body of knowledge we draw on the make our own conclusions“?

"Your facts are biased," is only a legitimate rejoinder if you offer the rest of the facts. Otherwise it is a tool that could be used against anything the speaker doesn't want to acknowledge.

"Reality is too complex to understand, therefore the understanding you are offering must be wrong," is also a way to argue against anything, unless it's accompanied by some part of that reality that the other person cannot explain with their theory.

I don't know who you're quoting here, but it isn't me.

"The truth of the situation you're intent on nudging us about is intensely complicated."

The act of stating facts is criticized as being "intent on nudging us," and rather than challenging those factual claims or contextualizing them, the line suggests epistemic disengagement in the face of a reality that is "intensely complicated."

In summarizing the thread to this point you might want to start by acknowledging that the things you're referring to as facts weren't, and that my critique was that the assumed facts weren't contextualized. I don't think "epistemic disengagement" is a rap you're going to be able to pin on me, sorry.

Except he was NOT stating the truth, not even remotely close to the truth, and I replied to his post.

I think your post is a good next post for the conversation, I am only complaining about vague methods of shifting the discussion away from facts and towards suspicions.

An Israeli father (and media in general) thought his own daughter died and turned out to be wrong when she was released (she was kept as a hostage which I don't think is right but she was not killed). https://twitter.com/moghilemear13/status/1728629391373029792

The same media that's wrong about this is giving other information based on similar assumptions (granted that they were corrected).

I would be overjoyed if a significant number of the assumed casualties turn out to be mistaken but I am not hopeful.

That's not even true. 5,500 children (according to Hamas) is less than 9,000 in Iraq (according to UNICEF).

And around 33% of that total is from failed rockets in Gaza (based on figures collected in previous wars).

Sadly the troops are only in the early stages of controlling the area and that number is going to rise a lot if the war is brought to a military completion the way politicians sound like they intend to.

If you check the figures most of the deaths were early in the war before people actually believed the IDF that they should move South. Once they did that civilian deaths dropped dramatically.

So I don't think it's in the early stages, although this ceasefire is going to restart some elements, which is unfortunate.

Hamas needs to surrender - everything they do makes life worse for Palestinians.

I don't think Hamas is structured in a way that is able surrender, especially now that its "political" wing has totally lost whatever diplomatic or local credibility it had. It only took one month for the coalition to destroy Saddam's regime but it took eight years in all to overcome the random violence and isolated terrorist resistance. Some really bad things happened during the latter part and that's what did the most damage to America.

Sir, you are posting fake news.

You may be right. I can't find exact statistics, but I saw a few sites giving numbers of 20,000 - 30,000 (for Afghanistan). The rate of children being killed in Gaza however is far more.

Both of your numbers, Iraq and Afghanistan are simply not true.

Also, as a percentage of civilian population Gaza deaths are very close to Iraq deaths, except way less dead children in Gaza vs Iraq.

All of these numbers come from Hamas, is that a source you trust?

They've been roughly reliable in the past. Past performance isn't guarantee of future results, of course. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/26/can-we-trust-c...

Good discussion at https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/82572/why-are-s... about the issue.

A quick Googling doesn't find me a counter-estimate from Israel. Given the very clear evidence of large scale bombardment of the Gaza Strip (Israel claims 6,000 bombs dropped, and Hamas is known for favoring populated areas; https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-gaza-strip...), counts in the thousands seem very plausible.

They've already botched major events, like the death toll from PIJ's accidental strike on Al-Ahli Hospital. There's also an ongoing concern about "Gaza Health's" practice of including Hamas fighters in civilian death tolls. They're the best numbers we have or are going to get, so they can't be ignore, but their reliability is probably not a good hill to die on.

Israel's had its own counting issues. It's a challenging enough task with a functioning government and control over the area, let alone an area with more than an a million evacuees going in various directions. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-gaza-strip...

I don't doubt they include Hamas fighters, but I do doubt that Israel's targeting has been so effective and precise the deaths are mostly Hamas. US intelligence estimates 20-25k Hamas members (https://www.dni.gov/nctc/ftos/hamas_fto.html); I don't think half of them are likely to have been already taken out.

I don't think you'll see me saying anything about the accuracy of Israel's numbers in this thread.

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