Having said that:
65% killed being women and children is because of the demographics of Gaza, not because of any specific behaviour by Israel other than just "being at war" with their neighbours.
It's a talking point used by a people supporting one of the two sides, blithely ignoring the realities of a complex situation.
The reality is that 50% of Gaza's adult population if female, and nearly 50% of their population is below the age of 18! In other words, their population is 75% "women and children".
In any other war, that 65% statistic would be a sign of deliberate and malicious targetting of innocent non-combatants. In the Gaza war it is the sad but usual level of collateral damage that one might expect in urban fighting. Not to mention that this number would be even lower, but is as high as it is because of human-shield tactics used by HAMAS.
The people that use this 65% statistic often do so with the knowledge that people listening to it don't know the demographics of Gaza or the vile actions of HAMAS. They're trying to convince those listening through deception. Their cause may be just in their eyes, but does that justify this kind of false debate? It's in the same category as claiming 500 people died when "Isreal bombed a hospital" mere minutes after the incident, which turned out to be a failed HAMAS rocket that landed in the parking lot and killed maybe half a dozen people.
Yes, what Isreal is doing is bad, but not "murdering women and babies on purpose" bad!
I'd argue that it is very alarming when military casualties converge on the general populations demographics and not the demographics of actual combatants.
Note that I don't condone Israel's actions in Gaza. I'm just saying that those actions are no worse than one would expect, but this statistic is purposefully deceptive and is being trumpeted across the Internet specifically to make Israel look worse than they are actually acting.
You support one of the two sides above the other. That's your right. But please don't support them through chosen talking points intended to deceive the audience.
PS: One of the two sides in this war targeted civilians on purpose and failed at doing so. The other site targeted combatants and failed at doing so. Which would you say is the more superior position?
It's a positive claim that requires empirical support, which you aren't providing.
A quick squiz would suggest this women+children death toll is the greatest in some time by some margin, despite some quite bloody and urbanised conflicts in recent years [1]. Perhaps you have justified knowledge that this case is different than any other or just better-documented, and the deaths are unavoidable insofar as urban warfare is to be conducted.
But even if it is the case that urban warfare should be expected to be conducted quite inefficiently (to the point that combatants are successfully targeted at a rate barely greater than random members of the population), you are also taking it as a given that conducting it at all is justified and shouldn't be alarming.
That doesn't appear to be a given by military standards of developed countries:
> Destroying an urban area to save it is not an option for commanders. The density of civilian populations in urban areas and the multidimensional nature of the environment make it more likely that even accurate attacks with precision weapons will injure noncombatants.…If collateral damage is likely to be of sufficient magnitude, it may justify avoiding urban operations, which though tactically successful, would run counter to national and strategic objectives.
United States Army and Marine Corps 2017 Manual on Urban Operations, quoted in [2]
[1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/more-women-and-child... [2] https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2021/04/27/urban-warfa...
Urban conflict in general produces civilian casualties with women, men, and children dying in proportions matching the demographics.
In the Russia-vs-Ukraine war there are relatively few dead children because the demographics of both counties skews towards adults — not because of the military doctrine of either side. Children make up less than 20% of the population and hence less than 20% of the civilian deaths.
Gaza has ridiculously skewed demographics with fully half of the population below the age of 18. (Don’t take my word for it, just Google it.)
Hence the civilian deaths in Gaza reflect this skewed demographics. Fifty percent of civilian deaths are children not because Israel is targeting children (as if they were cartoon villains!) but because fifty percent of the civilians are children!
I don’t disagree with the facts. It’s just that facts are being presented without the background detail to make Israel look insanely evil. Which they are not… they just a normal amount of evil.
You are begging the question still. Citation needed.
> In the Russia-vs-Ukraine war there are relatively few dead children because the demographics of both counties skews towards adults — not because of the military doctrine of either side. Children make up less than 20% of the population and hence less than 20% of the civilian deaths.
That dog won't hunt. ~58k Ukranian soldiers killed + 12k civilians = 70k total [1]. 633 Ukrainian children killed [2]. 20% of the population is children but they make up < 1% or those directly killed in the conflict. You will probably take issue with the degree of urbanisation etc., but it was your example.
> Fifty percent of civilian deaths are children not because Israel is targeting children (as if they were cartoon villains!)
I suggest you are strawmanning the argument here — I don't think Israel is actively targeting children is an accurate representation of the concerned 'side' overall (I'm sure you can find a tweet making it). But it is plain their actions are pretty indiscriminate wrt the combatant:civilian kill ratio.
> they just a normal amount of evil.
You haven't supported this claim, and its a considerable leap from 'Gaza has a pyramid-shaped age structure'. Yet, there is data available on recent urbanised conflicts and what the 'normal amount' is.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...
[2] https://www.savethechildren.org.au/media/media-releases/chil...
Because the arguments being made here are the former: that somehow the Israeli military is going out of its way to target not just civilians, but specifically an excess of women and children... or something to that effect.
Certainly, the bare statement that 65% of the victims of the war are women and children is intended to make people think that.
Being made where though? I google '65% of women children gaza' and among the front page of results, all but one reporting that figure do not indicate that women and children were selected for. Civilian infrastructure yes (e.g., "Israeli military has relentlessly targeted infrastructure indispensable to civilian survival." which is true, considering 14 hospitals were hit directly). The exception is the State of Palestine ("The Israeli aggression continues to target civilians in Gaza Strip" [1]), and I don't believe the wording is even incorrect — when you bomb a hospital knowing there are civilians inside (whether or not there were militants), you have targeted civilians.
> Certainly, the bare statement that 65% of the victims of the war are women and children is intended to make people think that.
Consider that is a subjective interpretation, others might find it indicates a strikingly indiscriminatory approach such that targeting is moot. That was my impression reading that figure. Let that be an answer to your initial question in the parent comment
I suspect that this is about to begin going in circles since no new arguments or evidence are being presented for your claims. So to conclude: I will reiterate that this is a matter that can be informed by empirical data, and the only data that has been provided in this thread with which we can interrogate the norms and outcomes of warfare (numbers from the example you invoked of Ukraine and other recent bloody and heavily urbanised conflicts in the Oxfam link) weighs heavily against assuming that mortalities should reflect the civilian population's demographics in a military action It strikes me as an undercooked, and insofar as it reflects reality, an appalling assumption.
Even assuming every adult male is a militant, they are killing two women/children per 1 militant. Killing that indiscriminately and ineffectively is, indeed, alarming: it does not matter if the goal of the dropped bombs is to preferentially kill women and children.
[1] https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/post.aspx?lang=en&ItemID=4614#_edn1
Oh, I agree! The problem Israel faces is that HAMAS fighters don't wear uniforms, are often under 18 years old, and uses civilian buildings for protection.
The dilemma I see as an outsider is that I honestly don't know what else could have happened after October 7th. A bunch of dominos were set up, someone knocked over one, and things unfolded along a nigh-inevitable path from there.[1]
IMHO the fault is with allowing things to "get this bad" in the first place, which is mostly Israel's fault. It's like kicking a dog repeatedly. Eventually, it will bite you, but once a dog has its teeth sunk into your calf, you're not going to treat it nicely.
Let me ask you a simple question. Pretend you're Netanyahu on October 8th. What would you have done? What alternative choices do you think would have been available to you, that the people would accept? What decisions could you have made that would "stick", that wouldn't result in you being kicked out of your position of power on the 9th and replaced by someone else willing to do something horrible that is certain to result in civilian deaths? Keep in mind that to this day there are many abducted civilian Israelis being held in Gaza as hostages.
I've been thinking about this for months and I honestly can't come up with anything.
[1] Look at what the US did after 9/11! Same setup, same story, same depressing outcome.
Steering well clear of the greater picture and focusing just on the man himself there are a number of people, including a block of Israeli Jews, that would strongly suspect he quietly, behind closed doors, fist pumped in delight and had a moment with a few in his circle.
They'd charge he had knowingly and with forethought been inching up the pressure on Palestine for some time in order to provoke an extreme reaction that served to justify righteous overkill.
This goes to your:
> IMHO the fault is with allowing things to "get this bad" in the first place, which is mostly Israel's fault.
which I'd mostly agree with save I'd lay the blame as mostly the fault of a ruling extreme faction in Israel.
Palestine itself has also had to broadly deal with the consequences of the actions of smaller core extreme.