Obviously no number is really acceptable. But it undermines the moral argument when one side deliberately exaggerates the numbers.Josh wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2024 11:51 amOnly 12 756 women and children killed. I guess that number is more acceptable?GaryK wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2024 10:12 amhttps://www.foxnews.com/world/un-revise ... y-reportedUN revises Gaza death toll, almost 50% less women and children killed than previously reported
Before anyone jumps in to say that this can't be trusted because it's Fox News, I did confirm this drop in numbers on the UN website.
I think 0 is the only acceptable calling. For reference, Israel’s casualties were 250 killed, 1200 hostages (presumed dead by now).
Also I would point out that the baseline number is not going to be zero. In a typical population the average natural death rate is going to be about 8 deaths per thousand in a given year. So if we run the numbers for Gaza they would look like this:
2 million population x 8/1000 = 16,000 deaths per year. Given that the war has gone for about 8 months, that gives us a rough estimate of about 10,666 Gazans who would have died on average in the past 8 months absent any war, or about 45 per day. So that is the actual baseline, not zero.
Now obviously a lot of people are dying from bombings. But people are also dying of natural causes every single day as well. And it is probably hard to parse out exactly how much is due to each cause. If the war means that people can no longer get their diabetics medicine and they die of diabetes, was that death due to natural causes, or is it a war casualty? Either way it is a dead body in a hospital morgue in the middle of a war.
How many additional people have died in Gaza over the past 8 months either directly or indirectly due to the actions of Israel? That is the real question. And the answer is probably not knowable. It is a whole lot more than zero but apparently far less than the 30,000+ number commonly cited.
Nothing about the article!