Counting casualties of Gaza's war - Democratic Underground

oberliner

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Wed Jan-28-09 01:02 PM
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Counting casualties of Gaza's war

The Al Mazen Centre for Human Rights has been working to verify the number of fatalities.

Its numbers are much closer to those of published by the Ministry of Health.

The Al Mazen Centre says it only confirms a death after it has interviewed individual families, and methodically checked names, ages and addresses.

It has told the BBC that 1,268 people were killed, among them 288 children and 103 women.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7855070.stm

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Arctic Dave

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Wed Jan-28-09 01:06 PM
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1. They were all brown people, so they only equal a third of anyone else.

So really isreal only killed around 400 people. No biggie.

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LeftishBrit

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Wed Jan-28-09 01:15 PM
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2. Tragic. Real peace can't come too soon.

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Jefferson23

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Wed Jan-28-09 01:15 PM
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3. Sickening number.

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Idealism

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Wed Jan-28-09 01:42 PM
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4. So the IDF cited number claimed in that Italian newspaper was wrong?

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oberliner

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Wed Jan-28-09 02:06 PM
Response to Reply #4

5. The IDF disputed the number in the Italian newspaper

The IDF said that their casualty count was higher than what that newspaper reported.

Excerpt:

Despite the claims, the IDF stood behind its estimate that between 1,100 to 1,200 people were killed in the Strip during the fighting, more than two-thirds of them Hamas members.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3660423,00.html

(The Italian newspaper had cited a much lower number of Palestinians killed (500-600))

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Idealism

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Wed Jan-28-09 02:09 PM
Response to Reply #5

6. There was an article from a differant source

that said the Israeli government claimed a much lower number than the 1300 or so, I believe it was posted here somewhere.

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oberliner

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Wed Jan-28-09 03:11 PM
Response to Reply #6

8. Are you sure?

I posted an article where the IDF claimed a much lower civilian total than most other groups, but their overall casualty total has been consistently reported in the 1100-1200 range.

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Idealism

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Wed Jan-28-09 03:29 PM
Response to Reply #8

9. Got my headlines/propaganda confused a bit

Here is an IDF report that clearly understates casualties, but it is referring to civilians killed.
The IDF claims only 250 of the 1200-1300 were 'civilians', even though both sides agree that 1/4th of those killed are women and children. The IDF is still counting all men as Hamas militants and either inaccurately reporting the deaths of women and children due to faulty information or purposefully misleading the public. Probably a mix of the two, in my opinion.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3661940,00.html

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oberliner

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Wed Jan-28-09 03:39 PM
Response to Reply #9

10. The IDF counts some older teenage children as Hamas militants

That's where the discrepancy comes in regarding their count.

They count basically all the adult men as Hamas militants and some of the 16-17 year olds as well.

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Idealism

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Wed Jan-28-09 03:42 PM
Response to Reply #10

11. I just abhor the misrepresentation in the media

Trying to make it seem how this so-called war 'only' killed 250 civilians, or even worse, them toting a 3:1 militant-to-civilian death ratio :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

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MarcMus

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Wed Jan-28-09 02:14 PM
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7. A Subtle Second Tragedy

I think a subtler secondary tragedy here is that a body count has become our metric for the "badness" of the war. There are so many other factors, but we spend all this time talking about 1,100 vs 1,300 and at what point is it too many? There are always going to be too many casualties, but if we are distracted by the need to talk about "how man" as opposed to "why so many" then we will never figure out how to stop it next time, just how to count more accurately.

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