A total of 300 Palestinian civilians have been identified as among the dead from Israel's Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, documents show.The Israeli military's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration said its accounting of the conflict has found that 300 of a total of 1,200 Palestinians killed during the assault were "non-combatants," The Jerusalem Post reported Monday.
The report said 580 of those killed have been identified as fighters of the Hamas Palestinian militant group. Another 320 victims have yet to be classified but they have been described as all men, two-thirds of whom were deemed likely by Israel to be terror operatives.
The figure of 300 civilian deaths clashes wildly with Hamas estimates of 895 such deaths.
Monday, February 16, 2009
For the Record - How Many and Who Died In Gaza
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
17 comments:
First: It's a bit ridiculous, no? A party that was involved in the war now claims to have made less casualties during that war. Who on earth would think this is reliable information? They're not even trying to make this info sound objective or credible... Moreover this army was actually the only state-organised army involved in this 'war', and the main aggressor in the conflict. I repeat: who on earth would believe this information?
Second: it's this very army that denied all journalists access to Gaza during the 'war'. If no objective reporters are allowed to bear witness of what really happened, who would believe the army when it says it made less casualties? The only sources of information are the Palestinian people who live there and the Israeli army. As the Israeli army is the one responsible for all these killings, who will ever believe them?
Third: What are the army's criteria for 'civilian' or 'fighter'? In a society like Gaza, it's easy to understand that lots of people have ties to resistance groups or political/civil society organisations. There is no Palestinian army. If a Palestinian family is affiliated to Hamas because they receive emergency funding from them, are they all resistance fighters? If a father in Gaza is frustrated with the terrible living circumstances for his family and decides to participate in Hamas meetings and activities, is he a fighter that needs to be killed? What are the criteria of 'membership' and how credible is the Israeli army when it bases its bodycount numbers on these 'criteria'?
Fourth: Mr. Medad, imagine that 300 Israeli civilians would be killed by Palestinian violence in only 3 weeks, how would you react? How would you feel? Honestly?
Let alone 800 or more...
Fifth: How disgusting is this? What is the army trying to achieve by claiming this info? Do they think the world would go 'oooh, they only killed 300 innocents, now, they're not so bad after all'?
One life lost is one too many.
Martijn Lauwens,
You're surely aware of the Israeli military doctrine of fighting terror. But just in case you forgot the ethical thinking underlying it, here's a reminder:
http://www.pacem.no/2005/1/2terror/6kasher/
I would still like to hear Mr. Medad's reactions to my statements...
I do not think it worthy of me to comment on someone who, it appears to me, to be justifying Arab/Islamic violence, denying Israel the right of self-defense, and even, perhaps, supporting the claim that Israel shouldn't exist.
I have faith that my Army knows what it is talking about. They proved they have the capability of locating terrorists in the most extreme of conditions (in Shif'a Hospital basement) and the reports we received from our sons and sons of neighbors concerning the fighting lend credence to the IDF claim of casualties. As for innocents, I don't agree with your thinking.
And as for how'd I fell if...
well, since in 2001-2 I felt like that until we struck back, I've benn there-did that.
I don't justify any violence.
I don't deny any country's right to self-defense.
I don't support Israel's right of existence.
Let these things be clear.
I do however understand where some of the violence originates (decades of occupation, isolation and oppression). Furthermore, i feel that there is a big diffirence between self-defense and launching a large-scale attack on a people that is trapped like rats in a cage. It's clear that, as Zionist Frog pointed out, the Israeli army does not care about Just War-principles. The Israeli army is not the most moral army in the world, on the contrary, and i am sure history will prove this.
Obviously i mean 'I don't question Israel's right of existence' instead of 'I don't support Israel's right of existence'. My apologies for this painful mistake.
Correction noted as well as your other immoral statements. I mean your other statements that are immoral. My apologies for this painful error.
"They proved they have the capability of locating terrorists in the most extreme of conditions (in Shif'a Hospital basement)"
What is this supposed to mean? There were reports by the IDF that Hamas officials were hiding in the basement of Shifa hospital, true. IDF did not dare to bomb the hospital as it would've caused too negative image despite all hasbara efforts. What "most extreme of conditions" is supposed to mean in this context is unclear. At times, Yisrael, you write in such arcane or awkward English that one has to suspect you're just trying on purpose not to say anything meaningful.
"As for innocents, I don't agree with your thinking."
Beautiful counterargument. Yisrael, what you still don't get is that you are shooting yourself in the foot with stuff like that. You may feel like you had the last word, but in fact any fair, open-minded person reading such exchanges will see whose side has more credence and integrity. Same goes for your replies to me from today.
Maybe if I felt you would be convinced of anything I write I'd be more forthcoming but my feekling is that all you want to do is argue. For that, my patience wears thin. And thanks for your compliment on my English.
I don't think it's really about us arguing here. I find lots of your postings outrageous. This was one of them.
I would also like to hear you answer Martjin question
" What is the army trying to achieve by claiming this info? Do they think the world would go 'oooh, they only killed 300 innocents, now, they're not so bad after all'? "
320 and not 580? We are talking about people here. About children!
For the umpteenth time:
Israel, its army, police and irregulars (whoever they may be), do not, with malice aforethought and with intention, seek out little children, woman, old men and other identifiable so -called non-combatants to kill. In a major military operation it will happen.
On the other hand, 97.5% of all Arab military beahvior by Pal. Arabs engaged in "resistance", what I call terror, is exclusively directed at civilians, that is, children in schools, teenagers on buses, people in restaurants, women in supermarkets, old people at home watching TV in Sderot, well - you get the picture. I need not go on.
This terror had begun in 1920 when 7 Jews were killed during a "demonstration" protesting the Balfour Declaration, continued, just to pick highlights, in Jaffa in 1921, Hebron, etc. in 1929, all of the country in 1936-1939, and most recently, on January 1, 1965 when Fatah began a new wave of terror against Israel in the pre-1967 lines without any excuse of "occupation", "settlements" or whatever.
To clarify, I do not skip over Jewish reactions from the Hagana, Irgun and Lechi. I do not claim excesses were done. I do claim that in their armed, violent terror reaction to Jews returning home, the Arabs can not assert any right to protest the results of war as they brought it on themselves, especially as several times they rejected political compromise that offered them territory and a state.
It was their extremism that has led to the conflict.
That's it, folks.
You didn't answer the question that was asked. Instead, for the "umpteenth time" you give excuses for Israel army killing many many children.
In your logic, the Jews of Gush Etzion also have no right to protest being ethnically cleansed from their homes in 1948 as a result of the war they brought on themselves. Because you paint all people with the same brush, support collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and other crimes against humanity in your self-serving quest.
For a less one-sided description of events than the one resented by Yisrael, there is plenty of literature, for anybody willing to check. What doesn't change, though, is that people like Yisrael will always find justifications "for doing unto others as they would hate to to be done unto them".
Helloooo.
Gush Etzion was twice forced to be abandoned by Arab violence before being reestablished in 1943. First set up by purchase in 1927 and chased away in 1929 and then in 1932 and chased away in 1936. So how are you for one-sided presentations?
IDF releases names of UN school deaths
Feb. 19, 2009
Yaakov Katz , THE JERUSALEM POST
The IDF's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), which earlier this week told The Jerusalem Post that 12 Palestinians were killed in the shelling near a UN school in Jabalya, north of Gaza City - and not 42 as claimed by Palestinian officials at the time - has now given the Post the names of seven of those fatalities.
The seven names - two females and five males - bring the number of those named by the IDF as having been killed in the incident to nine. Within hours of the incident on January 6, the IDF named two Hamas operatives, Immad Abu Askar and Hassan Abu Askar, as being among the dead. The IDF said at the time the area next to the school had been used by terrorists to fire mortar shells at troops stationed nearby, and that the IDF had fired back.
The CLA, which is completing a register of Palestinian fatalities throughout Operation Cast Lead, and has identified more than 1,200, told the Post on Monday that the civilian death toll from the 22-day conflict was no higher than a third of the total fatalities, and that the international community had been duped by Hamas "fabrications" that pointed to twice as many civilian deaths.
The incident at the UN school was a key case in point, said the CLA's head, Col. Moshe Levi, since initial reports erroneously stating that the IDF had fired at the school, and putting the death toll at 42, were widely adopted at first by the UN and various NGOs. Earlier this month, the UN corrected its position and confirmed that the shelling and all of the fatalities had taken place outside the school compound.
The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has been working to compile its own data on the number and nature of all the Gaza casualties, "to gain clarity" on the controversial issue, a UN official said earlier this week.
Levi said nine Hamas operatives and three noncombatants died in the incident near the school. The seven names newly released by the CLA were: Ranin Abdullah Sameh, 12, Hadifa Jihad Kahloud, 17, Faris Mahmoud Faraj Allah, 21, Nafed Abu Abid, 22, Abed Muhammad Kadas, 25, Ayman Ahmad el-Khourd, 35, and Basem Abdel Gabin, 40.
You see, Yisrael, you fail to mention that original settlements in Gush Etzion were abandoned both due to hardship and to tensions with Arabs and that in 1929 "the inhabitants of Migdal Eder were saved by the villagers of the neighboring Palestinian village of Beit Umar but were not able to return to the land they left behind" (that would be too inconvenient to presenting the Arabs as uniformly bad, bloodthirsty and Judeophobic). That more or less the same happened during the Arab revolt - people forced to flee and not able to return, just as it happened to Arabs in 1948 (but when it happens to them, it's OK in Medad's world.)
Regarding the number of the dead from the shelling of the UN school, it is largely inconsequential. People tend to inflate casualties all the time. We Jews are as good at it as anybody. For example, you could find references to 500,000 Jews killed during Bogdan Khmelnytsky Uprising in the Ukraine, while today historians agree that the number was at least ten times lower than that. The number of Jewish victims of Auschwitz, for example, also underwent a downward evaluation etc. In Deir Yassin both sides inflated the number of casualties - the Arabs to demonize the Jews and the Jews to scare the crap out of Arabs. In Jenin it was IDF that first spoke about hundreds of killed, picked up by the Palestinian and human rights groups, but that figure was quickly (few weeks time) revised down (though most of civilians casualties were apparently still a result of war-crimes, such as Kurdi-Bear's D-9 leveling the houses on their residents, as he himself boasted of in the Ynet interview.)
And if you want to talk about propaganda being exposed as lies, then in that respect the Palestinians and not worse and actually could learn from the valiant IDF.
Post a Comment