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Reflections on Palantir

(nabeelqu.substack.com)
479 points freditup | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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botanical[dead post] ◴[] No.41866170[source]
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jiggawatts ◴[] No.41866431[source]
It's interesting to watch these "talking points" bouncing around when there's a politically charged topic like the war in Gaza. (For reference: I have no skin in the game and support neither side.)

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!

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rudnevr[dead post] ◴[] No.41873403[source]
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1. jiggawatts ◴[] No.41873945[source]
I’m just trying to stay as close to the facts as possible… which is that yeah, about 50 kids died daily on average during this war. Even the low estimates divided by the number of days since the start result in about 50 daily deaths.

I would expect that number to vary a lot day to day, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were at least a few days near the beginning where over 100 kids died in a 24 hour period.