#hamas death figures

[eretzyisrael]

by Jake Wallis Simons

Therefore, the number of women and children killed was likely grossly exaggerated. If that is the case – if, as Prof Wyner suggests, “the casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters” – where does that leave western outrage? Has the West fallen victim to a monstrous con?

The true ratio of civilian casualties to combatants is likely to be exceptionally low, “at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1”. This, Prof Wyner says, is a “successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians”.

By rights, if the central pillar of the anti-Israel edifice has been discredited, the whole structure should come tumbling down. But don’t hold your breath. The reason why Hamas’s dodgy data is so easily believed is confirmation bias. The drip-drip of Israelophobic propaganda over the years has created a powerful tendency to view the Jewish state, Britain’s democratic ally, as a colonialist aggressor and the Palestinians – even as they butcher children – as the “freedom fighters”. Regardless of the evidence, to many people this has become second nature.

It speaks of millennia of inherited anti-Semitism. A 2012 study by economists Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth found that Germans from towns where Jews were blamed for the Black Death and burnt alive in the 14th century were significantly more likely to vote for the Nazis 600 years later. In his 1945 essay, Orwell recalls a “young intellectual, communist or near-communist” remarking: “No, I do not like Jews. I’ve never made any secret of that. I can’t stick them. Mind you, I’m not anti-Semitic, of course.” Depressingly little has changed.

That is the advantage enjoyed by the jihadis of Gaza. They didn’t even need to keep their strategy a secret. Everyone knows they try to get civilians killed for propaganda gains, aiming to curtail Israeli operations with international outrage. Everyone knows that their censors keep dead terrorists away from the cameras, giving the world the impression that Israel is only attacking civilians (look up former AP reporter Matti Friedman’s seminal 2014 essay, “What the media gets wrong about Israel”, for a sense of how long such games have been played). A gang that murdered and mutilated babies may also, on occasion, be tempted to lie. So much should be obvious. But all this is smoothly eclipsed when a greater narrative is at work.

[athymelyreply]

For those who can’t see it, the above is a Twitter thread by Bernie Sanders that goes as follows:

Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. He should not be invited to address a joint meeting of congress. I certainly will not attend. Israel, of course, has the right to defend itself haunts the horrific Hamas terrorist attack of October 7th, but it did not, and does not, have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people.

Israel does not have the right to kill more than 34,000 civilians. It does not have the right to orphan 19,000 children. It does not have the right to annihilate Gaza’s healthcare system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing more than 400 healthcare workers. It most certainly does not have the right to block humanitarian aid to the desperate people of Gaza, creating the conditions of starvation and famine. This is a clear violation of American and international law.

The ICC is seeking warrants for the arrest of Netanyahu and Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas. The ICC is right. Both of these people are engaged in clear and outrageous violations of international law.

[edwordsmyth]

"Instead of the wholescale massacre of civilians claimed by Israel, incomplete figures published by the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz show that almost half the Israelis killed that day were in fact combatants - soldiers or police. There are also so far no recorded deaths of children under the age of three, which throws into question the Israeli narrative that babies were targeted by Palestinian resistance fighters. Of the 683 total casualties reported thus far, seven were between the ages of 4 and 7, and nine between the ages of 10 and 17. The remaining 667 casualties appear to be adults. The numbers and proportion of Palestinian civilians and children among those killed by Israeli bombardment over the past two weeks – over 5,791 killed, including 2,360 children and 1,292 women, and more than 18,000 injured - are far higher than any of these Israeli figures from the events of 7 October. There is little to no credible evidence that Palestinian fighters had a plan to - or deliberately sought to - kill or harm unarmed Israeli civilians on 7 October. From the available footage, we witness them engaging primarily with armed Israeli forces, accounting for the deaths of hundreds of occupation soldiers.

It is essential to recognize that in many reports by western journalists on the ground, the majority of information regarding the actions of Hamas fighters comes from the Israeli army - an active participant in the conflict.

Emerging evidence now indicates that there is a high probability, especially due to the scale of the infrastructural damage, that Israeli military forces could have deliberately killed captives, fired on incorrect targets, or mistaken Israelis for Palestinians in their firefights. If the only source of information for a serious claim made is the Israeli army, then it has to be taken into account that they have reason to conceal cases of friendly fire."

[soon-palestine]

The House of Representatives has voted to effectively conceal the death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza.

On Thursday, lawmakers voted 269-144 on an amendment to prohibit the State Department from citing statistics from the Gaza Health Ministry. The measure is part of the annual State Department appropriations bill. It was led by Democratic Reps. Jared Moskowitz, Fla., and Josh Gottheimer, N.J., and Republican Reps. Joe Wilson, S.C.; Mike Lawler, N.Y.; and Carol Miller, W.V.

In total, 62 Democrats joined 207 Republicans in supporting the amendment.Here are the 62 Democrats who joined 207 Republicans to ban giving funds to the State Department to cite the Gaza Health Ministry, undermining the organization’s death & injury figures. https://t.co/n7DveMQaPQ pic.twitter.com/Nas0Fgm4Ag

— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) June 27, 2024

While party leaders often push their members to vote “yes” or “no” on any range of proposals, Democratic leadership gave “no recommendation” to its members on how to vote on the amendment. After the House passes the full bill, it will head to the Senate for consideration.

Mohammed Khader, policy manager at the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action, told The Intercept that the amendment is part of a trend of anti-Palestinian sentiment in Congress since the start of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. “By preventing any recognition of the number of Palestinians killed since October, this amendment is a clear example of genocide denial and is no different from what was done towards victims of genocides in Rwanda and Armenia.”

On Wednesday, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., the only Palestinian member of Congress, took to the floor to make a similar argument. “This is genocide denial,” she said.

After reciting the death toll and other statistics about casualties, Tlaib said she intended to introduce the list of Palestinians killed in Gaza to the congressional record. “It is important to note this to everyone here: The list is too long that I can’t even submit it because of the text limit,” she said. “That’s how many have been killed.”

The Ministry of Health is the only official entity tracking the death toll in Gaza; its figures have been cited broadly, including by the U.S. and Israeli governments. Over the last eight months, Israel has killed at least 37,765 people and injured another 86,429, according to the ministry’s latest figures. These numbers are likely an undercount due to the decimated medical infrastructure, killed medical workers, and thousands feared trapped under the rubble in Gaza.

“It’s despicable but not shocking that 62 Democrats joined Republicans to refute the Gaza death toll,” one Democratic staffer told The Intercept. “Democratic leadership should be ashamed for refusing to take a stand and call out the blatant anti-Palestinian racism and genocide denial in our party.”

Moskowitz and Gottheimer are among several Democrats who have repeatedly worked to undermine the movement for Palestinian rights and pro-Palestinian speech.

In April, the pair joined Republicans to lead a resolution condemning the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as antisemitic. In December, the duo joined Republican Reps. Elise Stefanik and Steve Scalise to lead a resolution condemning university presidents and calling for their resignations for allegedly tolerating antisemitism on campus. In November, the two Democrats joined 20 others in censuring Tlaib, for reasons that included posting a video calling for a ceasefire that contained the phrase “from the river to the sea.”

Gottheimer has gone even further, calling Democrats who don’t support Israel a “cancer” and suggesting that Muslims in America are “guilty” of Hamas’s attack on October 7. Along with Lawler, he headlined a call hosted by No Labels, in which he spoke with university trustees about how to push the FBI to take a bigger role in investigating campus protests. During that call, Lawler suggested that student protests for Palestine were the type of activity that inspired the TikTok ban.

The pair also joined 60 other Democrats in expressing their “disgust” at South Africa’s 84-page suit accusing Israel of genocide and praising White House spokesperson John Kirby for calling it “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basic in fact whatsoever.” Not long after, the International Court of Justice concluded that Israel is plausibly committing genocide.

[zvaigzdelasas]

President Joe Biden on Wednesday cast doubt on the casualty figures reported from Gaza as Israel continues its U.S.-backed military operation there, telling reporters: “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.” But within Biden’s own administration, officials have consistently cited the death toll and other data provided by authorities inside Gaza, according to a HuffPost review of internal State Department documents.

26 Oct 23

[the-rainbow-lesbian]

gaza has no freedom of press, it's a fascist state ruled by a terrorist organization funded by the IRGC with the intent of killing jewish people and wiping out israel off the map and they kill and torture anyone who they suspect opposes them or is pro peace with israel. meaning any information coming out of gaza is directly coming out of hamas, because as fucked up as it is, this terrorist organization is also their government so when you share their figures and the "news" from their "journalists" you are aiding terrorists who are nazi-like in their hatred of jewish people to more quickly and easily spread their propaganda and fulfill their goal, they are actually quiet pleased when they see you make your jewish neighbors feel unsafe around you, they are an antisemitic islamofascist death cult and this is obvious to anyone who pays a little bit of attention, you don't get the excuse of "not knowing any better"

[opencommunion]

"A December investigation by Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth revealed that Israel implemented against its own civilians captured on 7 October a version of its Hannibal directive: Israel used overwhelming lethal force even at the risk of killing Israelis along with their Palestinian captors, in order to avoid leaving them alive to be held captive in Gaza, and to avoid having to pay a steep political price for their return. Although Israel’s application of the Hannibal directive was widespread on 7 October, its implementation at the Cohen home stands out because more captives were killed there than in any other single structure on that day. One high-ranking Israeli officer called the army’s actions there an 'exponential Hannibal.' ... In late December the ranking officer who led Israel’s reconquest of the kibbutz – 99th Infantry Division commander and then commander-in-waiting of the Gaza Division, Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram – admitted to The New York Times that he ordered an Israeli tank to fire shells at the house, though he knew there were still-living Israeli captives inside. 'Break in, even at the cost of civilian casualties,' Hiram recalled ordering the tank commander. ... It is unlikely that the Israeli army will either fully endorse his explanations of the 'mass Hannibal' incident at Pessi Cohen’s house, or reveal all it knows about what really happened there on 7 October, because to do so would force it to undercut a pillar of Israeli propaganda about the events of that day: that Hamas heartlessly executed Israeli babies – a lie promoted by Hiram, but first invented by the commander of the Israeli army’s home front national rescue unit, Colonel Golan Vach.

... The day after Vach invented the lie of eight burned babies at the Pessi Cohen house, Yasmin Porat retold her survival story to the Israeli press, this time to Kan radio. Again she explained how she and a group of Israelis that included no small children were violently captured by Hamas and held hostage at Pessi Cohen’s home, but thereafter treated humanely and neither executed nor harmed in any other way. ... Colonel Golan Vach’s new allegations of 19 and even 23 Israeli civilians murdered by Hamas at the Cohen home created a serious problem for General Hiram, who had ordered the tank shelling. Vach’s tallies of the number of Israeli civilians killed there were up to 50 percent higher than the correct figures repeatedly reported by Yasmin Porat, who survived the bloodbath. Worse yet, Vach had introduced eight infants into the death toll – babies who had never existed. Hiram then had no choice but to alter his rendition of events, inflating the figures he had divulged to the Israeli news outlet Walla two weeks earlier. ... Hiram’s numerous lies about the battle at the Be’eri home of Pessi Cohen were apparently attempts to shield himself from the consequences of his command decisions. ... It is likely that Hiram’s main motive for lying about the events at Be’eri was to avoid repercussions for ending the lives of Israeli civilians in one of the most ghastly ways imaginable, burning them to death. ... Army rescue chief Colonel Golan Vach, however, who only arrived at Be’eri hours after those decisive tank shells were shot, did not lie about the battle out of loyalty to Hiram. Rather, he had his own motive for spinning Israel’s military failures into anti-Semitic atrocity tales: to manufacture consent for Israel’s utter annihilation of the Gaza Strip.

... Because of his stature and reputation, Israel’s national rescue chief Golan Vach was believed by reporters and editors all over the world, who published his bald-faced lies about Palestinians decapitating and burning to death Israeli babies on 7 October, even without any evidence. ... If they had only dismissed his gaslighting and done their due diligence, those same media outlets would have found plenty of evidence in the public domain of Vach’s desire 'to clear this region' of Palestinians without regard for 'human rights' from well before that date."

[xclowniex]

I genuinely find it disgusting that people go "people don't care about Palestine because they're brown, if it was happening to Ukraine people would care"

And this is vile for many reasons

1) Ukraine is still being invaded, Russia has not left yet. Why the fuck are you dragging the people of a country trying to survive into your little PR war.

2) Whilst Ukraine is considered a white country as the majority population is white, Russia doesn't view Ukrainians as white! To the Russian government it is literally a partly racially motivated war. I say partly as there are multiple motivations surrounding their invasion. But, surprise surprise race doesn't work in Russia like it does in the west. Who would've thunk. And what classification Ukrainians truly are doesn't really matter in this specific conversation because Russia doesn't view them as white!

3) Ukrainians are going through the same shit! Whilst I generally am opposed to comparing wars if we are going to play that game, more Ukrainians died than Palestinians in the first 100 days of war. Did yall know that? And with that data, it was more Ukrainian civilians killed vs. total Palestinian deaths, which include hamas militants. Literally 21k civilians from one singular city in Ukraine were killed, one city! Not all of Ukraine, one city. I will include a source for the Ukrainian death toll figure at the end to back this up.

4) At least in New Zealand, there has been more protests for Palestine than protests for Ukraine. There was one protest movement where on the same day there was a protest in every major city, and one or two smaller protests in the capital here outside of parliment. For palestine, there has been more protests than I can count. There has even been people who tried to have encampments at universities to follow the US's footsteps, but they all were stopped by the universities. There was even a protest with fake blood in the lobby of the New Zealand Defence Force building! Ukraine got none of that energy!

And I just want to say, that whilst it sucks that Ukraine didn't get the same level of support, I do understand that difference issues matter to different people at different levels. The issue I have is when people lie about support for an issue for woke points.

You do not need to put down Ukrainian struggles and suffering for Palestinian struggles and suffering to matter.

(Source)

[matan4il]

This is probably the most important stuff you won't see on social media, or even mainstream news.

First, the UN (without making any declarations, so it would fly under everyone's radar) has cut the estimated number of killed women and children in the war in Gaza by half. Israelis, Jews and our allies, we've been saying for months that Hamas' reports are unreliable, now the UN implicitly admits to the same, even though it's currently only applying it to the women and kids, while still repeating Hamas' reported number of total deaths (begs the question why is the UN doing that, if it has been admitting all along that Hamas' figures can't be verified independently, and now, after 7 months, something has made them admit they can't continue to blindly repeated Hamas' number of killed women and children).

Wanna see it for yourself?

On May 6, the UN published the following figures on the Hamas reported number of total fatalities in the war, as well as the number of killed women and kids:

Just two days later, on May 8, the UN published revised numbers... While they still quoted the Hamas figure on the total number of fatalities, which has increased over those 2 days, the numbers of kids and women were about half the previous ones:

On top of that, this is Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas (who lives in a luxury hotel in Qatar and is not paying for the crimes of its organization) calling upon Palestinians in Gaza NOT to evacuate to safe zones, as Israel is asking them to do, because Hamas' terrorists "need this blood," the blood of the women, kids and elderly. Every time someone brings up the number of dead, with an emphasis on the women and children, and uncritically blames everything on Israel, remember this speech!

This is how I saw it being summarized:

(for more of my posts regarding Israel, click here)

[comicaurora]

Sorry to drop a hella irl-political question on your mostly webcomic blog, but have you/any of the OSP gang heard of/been participating in the week-long strike for palestine that's been (presumably) all over tumblr/the internet?

For some background info: Following the attack on Oct. 7th by the hamas militant group (a terrorist org. Or resistance group, depending who you ask), the state of israel (which is practically a mass colonial settlement on Palestinian land since '48) has taken the attack as an excuse to indiscriminately bomb the homes of thousands if not millions of homes while forcebly displacing almost all of the ~2.3 million people crammed in the gaza strip with no escape.

'Israel' has also tightened it's blockade on the strip of land such that a growing majority of people there are experiencing catastrophic starvation, disease from sewage-infested drinking water (as water aid is too scarce). Soon even deaths by preventable causes such as diabetes will occur since insulin pens for children have been blocked from entering by israel, who controls gaza's borders, water, power, food supplies, and shoreline. Civilians in Gaza are very frequently and indiscriminately killed often in places they were told were safe zones to evacuate to. It's agreed upon by both experts and laymen worldwide that what is happening (and has BEEN happening before Oct.7th) is nothing short of genocide.

In the occupied Palestinian west bank, where there is no hamas whatsoever to use as an excuse, Palestinians are still arrested without a fair trial for years, abused, prevented from using certain roads, shot, and often straight-up have their houses stolen by armed or military-backed israeli settlers (many of whom have no ancestral connection to the land at all) in a system often compared to or outright stated to be apartheid.

Very recently, a journalist in Gaza by the name of Bisan Owda called for a strike from January 21st to January 28th. The conditions of the strike can be paraphrased as:

Cease all unnecessary purchases or payments, avoid generating ad revenue when possible

Do not go to work or school if you can possibly avoid it

Pay for things only in cash if you must

Use social media exclusively to flood the internet with palestinian voices and resources about the ongoing genocide against the palestinian people

Attend protests if you can

Be visible.

It's the 26th now, but joining late would be far better than to not join at all and stay silent.

I figured I'd ask since since OSP has covered various topics about history and/or politics and we're kinda watching some awful history unfolding, the kind of history where neutrality doesn't really work and a side needs to be taken.

Opinions? (Sorry if I'm coming across as condescending! I just really want my favorite blogs to be aware and take a stance rather than being silent hhhghf)

Okay, here's my answer.

OSP has been supporting calls for a ceasefire for months, and we were fundraising in direct support of it via Doctors Without Borders all through November and December. Total, we raised over $30,000. If we include the UNICEF fundraiser we ran on the Spider-Man streams, the total is over $40,000.

During our charity livestreams, we have made our positions clear – we support a ceasefire, Israel is perpetuating settler-colonialist violence and has been for decades, Hamas is a terrorist organization that endangers Israelis and Palestinians alike, the innocent people of both Palestine and Israel deserve safety and peace. We concluded that the best thing we could do under the circumstances was empower those who are in a real position to actually help by providing funding for their work. We believe this is significantly more beneficial than adding Another Angry Internet Post to the pile of insular outrage on Internet Land. Fundraising for the organizations with boots on the ground feels like it does a lot more good than being loud online for the benefit of other online people.

This is not the first time I've heard reference to the strike, but it is the first time I've seen the parameters of the strike laid out, which to me indicates that it wasn't spread as widely or effectively as it could've been.

I understand and appreciate why you sent this ask, but your premise worries me. I know this may surprise and startle us denizens of the internet, but being extremely loud on the internet is not the only or the most effective form of activism, and people not being extremely loud on the internet with every account they have is not the same thing as silent complicity in war crimes, and people acting like those two things are the same thing has been unbelievably frustrating to watch.

If we act like everything is a binary moral choice between "scream your loudest, most angry opinions online every time you feel angry about them" and "not doing that is literally the same thing as participating in genocide", we are creating a very strong pressure to flood the internet with our angriest, most unformed thoughts, lest we be branded as complicit in war crimes. Social media sites live and die on engagement, hence why twitter has rapidly trended towards doomscrolling and encouraging inflammatory clickbait - angry shouty people are traffic and traffic is money. The cynical part of me is utterly unsurprised that social media encourages the idea that the only true form of activism is being loud on social media.

It sounds like you had the feeling that sending me this ask was weird and a boundary overstep, and you were correct. My platform is not world-changing or in any way politically powerful beyond our ability to create charity fundraisers for causes we believe in, and we are doing what we can to help in the tiny ways that we can from halfway across the world, from a position of absolutely zero political weight beyond emailing our representatives. You are just asking me to also shout about it online loudly enough that I measure up to an artificial loudness metric, because my existing shouting was not already loud or omnipresent enough.

You are not entitled to know every thought in my head or every action I take in my life. I am not online to perform outrage and live up to an arbitrary moral standard of Shouting Enough. I am especially not online on my fantasy webcomic blog to do those things. Please understand that what you see of me is what I choose to share, and I am under no obligation, moral or otherwise, to share more.

[eretzyisrael]

BY NOMI KALTMANN

Josh Moshe, the 33-year-old grandson of Holocaust survivors, was born in South Africa, grew up in New Zealand, and moved to Australia in 2010. He is currently an acclaimed Jewish saxophonist living in Melbourne. Alongside his wife, Maggie, he operated a well-known gift shop in Thornbury, a trendy enclave in the city’s northern suburbs.

“For most of the time I’ve lived here, I’ve felt like [Australia] is peaceful, quiet, and relaxed,” he said. “As for being a Jew, its fine. No one cares if you’re Jewish or not.”

However, all of this rapidly changed for Moshe after Oct. 7, after he was added to the WhatsApp group that was doxed. The backlash against him and his family was swift. “We were sworn at, the shop was graffitied with ‘Glory to Hamas,’ and we were told to ‘F off—we don’t want Zionists in Thornbury,’” he said.

Thornbury doesn’t have a large population of observant Jews, so Moshe, bewildered by the hostility directed at him and his family, believes that his family was unwittingly thrust onto the front lines of the conflict. “We were the only more or less observant Jews in the northern suburbs with a public profile,” he said. “Those factors meant we were heavily exposed and vulnerable to this sort of attack. It’s a very anti-Zionist area. I always knew that, and I always felt that. I was more or less happy living there for a while. But I also think that’s why we were the most exposed.”

As the doxing campaign against him gained traction, Moshe found out that the worst was yet to come.

“People were attacking my [online] music profile. Then attacking my business and then Maggie’s personal profile, even though she wasn’t in the [WhatsApp] group,” he said. As part of this harassment, their 5-year-old son received death threats. “Then people started tagging the band I was in [on social media]. Instead of coming to speak to me, [the band] publicly fired me via an Instagram post.” Moshe is now suing his former bandmates for defamation related to that post.

After months of sustained abuse, Moshe and his wife decided to close their shop and move it to a suburb close to Melbourne’s Jewish heartland.

“A few of our suppliers have been supportive, but, yeah, the vast majority of our customers, and other shops in the strip [in Thornbury] were very quiet and some of them even joined in on the pile-on,” Moshe said. “It was shocking to see how quickly; … seven years of being neighbors and being business associates counts for nothing.”

The antisemitism faced by the family has garnered significant attention in Australia, featuring prominently in the media. It was even highlighted in a documentary aired on Australian television, hosted by former Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who is one of the country’s highest-profile Jewish figures. The documentary explored the growing issue of antisemitism in Australia.

“I know [participating in the documentary] it has every chance of further damaging my music career, but on the other side, I have to speak about what’s going on,” said Moshe. “We wouldn’t tolerate this with any other ethnicity. In honoring the memory of my grandparents and their families, I am compelled to speak about this rising hatred despite the further backlash I will receive.”

[documenting-apartheid]

JULY 5 2024- The Lancet, one of the oldest and most credible scientific journals in the world regarding medicine, releases a letter estimating the death toll in the Gaza genocide could be 186,000 people (8% of the population) or more.

Update July 9 2024- US Spokesman Matt Miller recently acknowledged this figure by the Lancet in a press conference, and responded that whatever the number of casualties is, it is "far too man," "a tragedy," and "unacceptable". Yet Miller has said nothing when it comes to ending their commitment to arming Israel despite the staggering civilian death toll and investigation by the highest international criminal courts for war crimes and genocide.

[notaplaceofhonour]

What Does “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” Mean?

Gentile Americans keep telling me it’s a call for a single state for both peoples, where neither are subjugated or displaced and both have equal protection & representation in government (aka the One State Solution for Two Peoples) but Jews keep telling me it’s a call for the entire region to be ruled by a specifically Palestinian state, i.e. a one state solution for one people, not two (aka the One Palestinian State Solution). So which is it?

Since it’s a Palestinian slogan, I figured I’d ask actual Palestinians what it means: does Palestine, from the River to the Sea refer to One State for Two Peoples or One Palestinian State? Fortunately I don’t have to do the hard work myself, because AWRAD (a Palestinian research group based in the West Bank) already polled Palestinians living in Palestine on their opinions about the war, and what their preferred solution would be:

Table from AWRAD’s Wartime Survey: “WB” is West Bank, “GS” is Gaza Strip

When presented with the One State for Two Peoples solution that Americans keep saying Palestinians want, Palestinians overwhelmingly say they do not want that, and demonstrate that “From the River to the Sea” is most closely associated with one option for them: a Palestinian State, explicitly differentiated from a state for both peoples.

This is a phrase that is also widely used by militants, rooted in the assumption that every inch belongs to Palestinian Arabs, the refusal to recognize Israel, or Israeli’s right to live anywhere between the river and the sea. Most often when militant groups say they want to liberate Palestine from the river to the sea, this is what they mean:

October 7th—a massacre of more than a thousand Jews—is what Hamas means by liberating Palestine from the River to the Sea.

Not all Palestinians want that. Although a minority in Palestine, 25.3% of them say they support other solutions, most notably a Two State Solution. Outside of Palestine, there are Palestinian citizens of Israel who are active members of Jewish-Arab groups advocating for peace, freedom, and democracy for all, who advocate for ending the occupation (#FreePalestine) but understand that pairing that sentiment with the phrase “From the River to the Sea” necessarily implies the claim that the entire land from the river to the sea (including all of Israel) is Palestine, and thus “freeing Palestine” would mean removing Israel entirely.

Elsewhere in the Palestinian diaspora, there are Palestinians who also recognize this:

Far from stemming from anti-Palestinian sentiment or an assumption that Muslims and Arabs are inherently violent, the recognition of what this phrase implies and how it is being used as a dogwhistle to call for the subjugation, removal, or death of Jews stems from the context and how it is being used in practice—and this is an implication most Jews and Palestinians, especially those in Israel and Palestine, recognize.

[yourlocallostboy]

i've been trying to figure out how to word this since the news broke.

it's unbearably cruel that those six hostages were murdered so close to being freed. it's cruel that their captors might've heard their families calling out to them and murdered them anyway. it's cruel that they were kept, killed, and found in an area full of displaced civilians. it's cruel that hamas is using innocent gazan civilians as human shields, and then blaming the israeli forces for the incredibly high death toll when they have done nothing to protect the civilians under their government.

more so, it's terrible that people have been happy that the hostages didn't get to go home to their families. it's terrible that i haven't seen any anti-zionists who have claimed over and over and over that they want to limit the death toll, and yet the hostages receive no sympathy. they're angry that noa argamani was freed and managed to be happy despite the tragedy that happened to her.

i remember october 7th. i remember being so confused about why so many people were celebrating death. i remember thinking i must have been misunderstanding because these were good people and if they were happy about something that seemed so terrible then clearly i missed something? i remember when they convinced me that israeli citizens were all inherently complicit in the deaths of palestinian civilians.

i remember being vaguely aware of how inconsistent the western anti-zionist movement was, but being told that jews israelis were more inconsistent and therefore everything in the movement was fine. i remember feeling anxious every time i opened social media but continuing to do because i was guilt-tripped into thinking that to be a good person, i needed to look at and share graphic pictures of dead and injured people in gaza.

they don't care about people or lives. they will quite happily encourage people to destroy their mental health in the name of activism because this is how you help palestine!!!

i hope that the hostages' families and friends find peace. i hope the rest of the hostages are able to return home safely. i hope that gazan civilians are able to build a democracy and thrive. i hope the conflict ends soon and everyone affected receives the food, water, shelter, medicine, and whatever else they need.

may their memories be a blessing.

[zvaigzdelasas]

The final death toll from the attack is now thought to be 695 Israeli civilians, including 36 children, as well as 373 security forces and 71 foreigners, giving a total of 1,139. This excludes five people, among them four Israelis, still listed as missing by the prime minister's office.[...]

On October 14, Israeli authorities announced a preliminary toll of more than 1,400 people killed by "Hamas terrorists". On November 10, the foreign ministry published an "updated estimate", saying the number "murdered in cold blood" was around 1,200 people, without further details.[...]

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the attack. Its air and ground offensive has killed more than 18,700 people, mostly women and children, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, and left much of the territory in ruins.[...]

[the data] invalidates some statements by Israeli authorities in the days following the attack.[...]

15 Dec 23

In particular, a claim made on October 10 on the government's official [Twitter] account spoke of "40 babies murdered" at Kfar Aza kibbutz, based on a report by i24NEWS channel.[...]

According to Bituah Leumi, 46 civilians were killed in Kfar Aza, the youngest 14 years old.

Another testimony called into question was that on October 27 by Colonel Golan Vach, head of the army's search and rescue unit, who told a group of journalists, including one from AFP, that he "personally" transported "a decapitated baby" found in the arms of his mother in the Beeri kibbutz. According to Bituah Leumi, only one baby was killed in Beeri: the 10-month-old Mila Cohen, whose mother survived. Army spokespersons did not respond to queries by AFP.[...]

"Our volunteers were confronted with traumatic scenes and sometimes misinterpreted what they saw," said [a leader of an emergency response NGO that helped collect victims' bodies][...]

The Bituah Leumi data does not distinguish between those killed by Hamas and civilians killed by Israeli forces in the fighting to retake control of southern Israel, an operation in which the army used shells and rockets on inhabited areas, according to testimonies collected by AFP and Israeli media.

[certified-pinkwasher]

after seeing one too many people cheering on the houthis for their "brave protection of gaza" (i.e cutting off shipping routes from asia to europe causing massive losses for just about everyone) i decided to make a couple google searches to show who theyre cheering for

houthis:

israel:

so i guess death toll doesnt actually have anything to do with who people are rooting for huh. not to mention the gaza death toll is reported by hamas (who benefit from a high death toll cuz it gets them money and dont differentiate between civilian and militant casualties) and the yemeni civil war figure is over a year out of date when its an ongoing crisis.

its almost like it has nothing to do with humanitarian crises and is just about hating israel.

huh i wonder why israel is getting singled out... cant possibly be antisemitism tho right??? (/s)