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Cake day: March 4th, 2025

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  • The Knesset also contains people opposed to the war. I don’t see how such an attack would bring a military advantage.

    https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule8

    In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose partial or total destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.

    Killing Hamas civilian leaders in charge of internal security, meaning they also hunt Israeli spies, would bring an obvious military advantage.

    Attacking the Israeli defense ministry or border police, the prime minister, or the cabinet could be justified as giving a military advantage.

    Now, I’m not sure if civilian leadership of the armed forces count as combatants or not. However an attack should be covered by the above. IANAL of course.

    Don’t get me wrong. Israel certainly commits war crimes, I’m not sure this was one.



  • Yes, their numbers are the best available. The health ministry has adjusted and corrected their numbers at times though. They increase the total number reported quickly just from media reports. Over time they document individual deaths, identify bodies, and so on. So there’s a constant mismatch of reported deaths snd documented the deaths. Over time this gap closes though.

    Deaths from starvation are included. They amounted to two dozen or so, last time I checked.

    Bad health care conditions of course increase the likelihood of deaths from preexisting chronic diseases, treatable diseases or injury, and so on. So the elderly and the very young are more susceptible to dying than during peacetime. AFAIK this excess mortality isn’t typically counted towards civilian casualties in wars.

    So far there have been no epidemics documented, that resulted in high numbers of deaths. The Polio epidemic has one documented case and resulted in a ceasefire with a big vaccination drive.

    So these estimates of 180,000 are not backed up by hard data as of now.

    The health ministry does not distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths. Additionally people shot by Hamas for espionage/treason or other crimes are not listed separately.






  • That estimate has turned out to be wrong. Even the author of the lancet piece distanced themselves from it.

    Hamas has every reason to present a high death toll. There have been several adjustments of the numbers as well over time.

    They estimate another 10k buried under the rubble.

    The number of deaths has only been increasing slowly for months.

    Also notable is that Hamas and the other militants have not released a number of dead combatants.

    There’s enough proven death and destruction. Clinging on to false number from the Lancet is just spreading misinformation and doesn’t help Palestinians.

    Why was that BBC article even linked? It’s from November last year and the numbers have changed since.