“Israel MUST open the borders and allow the United Nations to deliver supplies in sufficient quantities.”
“The United States, which has helped fund the Israeli military for years, cannot sit back and allow hundreds of thousands of innocent children to starve to death,” Sanders (Vt.) said in a statement. “As a result of Israeli bombing and restrictions on humanitarian aid, the people of Gaza are facing an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.”
Israeli forces have killed more than 30,200 Palestinians in Gaza—most of them women and children—while wounding over 71,300 others and displacing around 90% of the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million people. Children are now starving to death, and experts say adults, especially elders and other vulnerable people, will soon follow absent urgent intervention.
That man consciously chose to put the phrase “hamas-run” in there. What do you propose is the reasoning for doing so, if not to call into question the accuracy of the numbers through that association? It is absolutely not a neutral statement; context exists.
I have never once seen the phrase “Likud-run” next to any of the statements, tallies, or intelligence from Israel that the media reprints without any fact-checking or investigation.
The author likely made the choice to include “Hamas-run” for factual accuracy and neutrality. Merely writing “Gaza health ministry”, would imply a neutral 3rd party. Any official in Gaza is appointed by Hamas and cannot be neutral. As such, it is fair to question the accuracy of the numbers provided.
That said, while their numbers are not something I would take at face value, their death count is still the best one we have.
The Gaza Health ministry existed before 2006. It’s continuity is contingent upon the same personelle doing the grueling work day in and day out. The rank and file are first and foremost medical professionals.
From the Wikipedia entry:
So if more than vague conjectures, share it.
2 points.
I don’t see any issues with the information presented in the Wikipedia section you linked.
Leadership in the Gaza Health Ministry has definitely changed since Hamas took control, I doubt all the workers are the same either. That isn’t super important though, except in understanding that they aren’t a neutral party.
You don’t have any evidence that their numbers are a misrepresentation. You said:
Thier non-neutrality is a non-issue if they are providing accurate numbers. The only reason to include Hamas-run, then, is to cast a vague sense that something ain’t right.
How does their non-neutrality effect their numbers? Give me something concrete.
Pulling from this NPR Article
The Hamas-run Gaza heath ministry has used “reliable media sources” for 13,000 of the 30,000 reported deaths. According to the “reliable media sources” 86% of those killed are women and children. However, hospital staff report that 58% of the 17,000 deaths they have recorded are women and children. That’s a pretty significant deviation.
You continue to be vague. Can you provide anything more than speculation and suspicion? And some how you ignore this from the article:
The numbers have been historically accurate. And even the organization isn’t as cut and dry as you see it. I’m not saying there’s a chance they are making up numbers, but you have to provide evidence. And you can’t and you won’t.
Firstly, the evidence is not vague. Unless Israel started deliberately targeting women and children, while ignoring men, there is something wrong in their data. I wouldn’t personally ascribe a specific reason without more information.
Secondly, the scale of this conflict has far surpassed any other since the founding of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in 1993 (which split to become the Gaza Ministry of Heath in 2008). Accurately recording ~30,000 deaths vs 1,440, 2,310, or 260 is exceedingly challenging.
The vagueness isn’t in the numbers being inaccurate or not, but rather ascribing intentional distortion of those numbers. Again, provide evidence of them making up those numbers above and beyond expected clerical errors.