#Civilian casualties

[kosmic-apothecary]

None of the civilian deaths have been accidental.

[alwaysbewoke]

"In approaching six months of genocidal horror in Gaza, the Israeli army has slaughtered more than 32,000 Palestinians, with thousands more bodies decomposing under the Gaza rubble. More than 70,000 are wounded, many maimed for life. Among the dead are at least 90 Palestinian journalists and media workers, and nearly 200 aid workers. Some 13,000 children and 9,000 women have been killed by Israel. The same attrition rate in the UK would have seen at least one million Britons dead, including approximately 400,000 children. Until yesterday, politicians of the two main British political parties, Conservative and Labour, along with the mainstream media, have been relaxed about all this. They supported the slaughter and protected the killers. The British media have demonised or dehumanised Palestinians, while throwing their weight behind Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Too often the media have believed lies and fabrications told to them by the Israeli army, while suppressing or ignoring mounting evidence of Israeli atrocities. Overnight, this appears to have changed."

[matan4il]

Israel Has Created a New Standard for Urban Warfare. Why Will No One Admit It? | by John Spencer

The Israel Defense Forces conducted an operation at al-Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip to root out Hamas terrorists recently, once again taking unique precautions as it entered the facility to protect the innocent; Israeli media reported that doctors accompanied the forces to help Palestinian patients if needed. They were also reported to be carrying food, water and medical supplies for the civilians inside.

None of this meant anything to Israel's critics, of course, who immediately pounced. The critics, as usual, didn't call out Hamas for using protected facilities like hospitals for its military activity. Nor did they mention the efforts of the IDF to minimize civilian casualties.

In their criticism, Israel's opponents are erasing a remarkable, historic new standard Israel has set. In my long career studying and advising on urban warfare for the U.S. military, I've never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy's civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings. In fact, by my analysis, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The predominant Western theory of executing wars, called maneuver warfare, seeks to shatter an enemy morally and physically with surprising, overwhelming force and speed, striking at the political and military centers of gravity so that the enemy is destroyed or surrenders quickly. This was the case in the invasions of Panama in 1989, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 and the failed illegal attempt by Russia to take Ukraine in 2022. In all these cases, no warning or time was given to evacuate cities.

In many ways, Israel has had to abandon this established playbook in order to prevent civilian harm. The IDF has telegraphed almost every move ahead of time so civilians can relocate, nearly always ceding the element of surprise. This has allowed Hamas to reposition its senior leaders (and the Israeli hostages) as needed through the dense urban terrain of Gaza and the miles of underground tunnels it's built.

Hamas fighters, who unlike the IDF don't wear uniforms, have also taken the opportunity to blend into civilian populations as they evacuate. The net effect is that Hamas succeeds in its strategy of creating Palestinian suffering and images of destruction to build international pressure on Israel to stop its operations, therefore ensuring Hamas' survival.

Israel gave warning, in some cases for weeks, for civilians to evacuate the major urban areas of northern Gaza before it launched its ground campaign in the fall. The IDF reported dropping over 7 million flyers, but it also deployed technologies never used anywhere in the world, as I witness firsthand on a recent trip to Gaza and southern Israel.

Israel has made over 70,000 direct phones calls, sent over 13 million text messages and left over 15 million pre-recorded voicemails to notify civilians that they should leave combat areas, where they should go, and what route they should take. They deployed drones with speakers and dropped giant speakers by parachute that began broadcasting for civilians to leave combat areas once they hit the ground. They announced and conducted daily pauses of all operations to allow any civilians left in combat areas to evacuate.

These measures were effective. Israel was able to evacuate upwards of 85 percent of the urban areas in northern Gaza before the heaviest fighting began. This is actually consistent with my research on urban warfare history that shows that no matter the effort, about 10 percent of populations stay.

As the war raged on, Israel began giving out its military maps to civilians so they could conduct localized evacuations. This, too, has never been done in war. During my recent visit to Khan Yunis, Gaza, and the IDF civilian harm mitigation unit in southern Israel, I observed as the army began using these maps to communicate each day where the IDF would be operating so civilians in other areas would stay out of harm's way.

I saw that the IDF even tracked the population in real time down to a few-block radius using drone and satellite imagery and cell phone presence and building damage assessments to avoid hitting civilians. The New York Times reported in January that the daily civilian death toll had more than halved in the previous month and was down almost two-thirds from its peak.

Of course, the true number of Gaza civilian deaths is unknown. The current Hamas-supplied estimate of over 31,000 does not acknowledge a single combatant death (nor any deaths due to the misfiring of its own rockets or other friendly fire). The IDF estimates it has killed about 13,000 Hamas operatives, a number I believe credible partly because I believe the armed forces of a democratic American ally over a terrorist regime, but also because of the size of Hamas fighters assigned to areas that were cleared and having observed the weapons used, the state of Hamas' tunnels and other aspects of the combat.

That would mean some 18,000 civilians have died in Gaza, a ratio of roughly 1 combatant to 1.5 civilians. Given Hamas' likely inflation of the death count, the real figure could be closer to 1 to 1. Either way, the number would be historically low for modern urban warfare.

The UN, EU and other sources estimate that civilians usually account for 80 percent to 90 percent of casualties, or a 1:9 ratio, in modern war (though this does mix all types of wars). In the 2016-2017 Battle of Mosul, a battle supervised by the U.S. that used the world's most powerful airpower resources, some 10,000 civilians were killed compared to roughly 4,000 ISIS terrorists.

And yet, analysts who should know better are still engaging in condemnation of the IDF based on the level of destruction that's still occurred—destruction that is unavoidable against an enemy that embeds in a vast tunnel system under civilian sites in dense urban terrain. This effects-based condemnation or criticism is not how the laws of war work, or violations determined. These and other analysts say the destruction and civilian causalities must either stop or be avoided in an alternative form of warfare.

Ironically, the careful approach Israel has taken may have actually led to more destruction; since the IDF giving warnings and conducting evacuations help Hamas survive, it ultimately prolongs the war and, with it, its devastation.

Israel has not created a gold standard in civilian harm mitigation in war. That implies there is a standard in civilian casualties in war that is acceptable or not acceptable; that zero civilian deaths in war is remotely possible and should be the goal; that there is a set civilian-to-combatant ratio in war no matter the context or tactics of the enemy. But all available evidence shows that Israel has followed the laws of war, legal obligations, best practices in civilian harm mitigation and still found a way to reduce civilian casualties to historically low levels.

Those calling for Israel to find an alternative to inflicting civilian casualties to lower amounts (like zero) should be honest that this alternative would leave the Israeli hostages in captivity and allow Hamas to survive the war. The alternative to a nation's survival cannot be a path to extinction.

John Spencer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point, codirector of MWI's Urban Warfare Project and host of the "Urban Warfare Project Podcast." He served for 25 years as an infantry soldier, which included two combat tours in Iraq. He is the author of the book "Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connection in Modern War" and co-author of "Understanding Urban Warfare."

[eretzyisrael]

by Hilary Krieger

CNN: You said you wanted to talk about Hamas using hospitals and schools?

Spencer: Yes. It is a great example of good intentions leading to bad outcomes. It is of course the right thing to do to tell warring parties that hospitals should not be used in war, that they need to be protected. But that has driven combatants who do not follow the laws of war into every protected facility. Hamas took every law of war and reverse-engineered it to build an environment in which Hamas has occupied facilities because of their legal protections. So fighting an enemy that’s an avowed terror organization puts a conventional military at a big disadvantage, especially if the world is watching.

Hamas is the first combatant I’ve seen do this at an industrial level. The US military bombed complete hospitals to the ground because of battles against ISIS in hospitals. But what Hamas has done is engineered every protected site as a military facility because they knew not only would Israel have to restrict its use of force against those sites, but the world would condemn Israel for even thinking about going to those places. Of course, Israel doesn’t want to be considered on a par with Hamas by the international community, so predictably Hamas is trying to take advantage of that.

I used to say that Hamas built their tunnels underneath every school, UN facility and hospital, but what we’re finding out is that no, they also built their tunnels and then built the schools on top of them. It is literally a byproduct of our pursuit to protect that has put more people at risk. 

CNN: How do you know that about Hamas’ construction under hospitals and the schools? There have been a lot of questions about the information the IDF has put out there and the numbers they use. So how can you be confidant about this information?

Spencer: I go into this trusting the IDF’s information more than I do Hamas’, but I have also been on the ground in Gaza during this war near mosques and schools with tunnels. I was with the IDF as they uncovered a tunnel running out of a mosque, for instance, and it’s been documented that Hamas uses mosques for storing weapons and other military purposes. So I’m relying on personal research as well as a belief in a law-abiding and very moral society and military.

CNN: You mentioned your participation in the Iraq war. How would you compare Israel’s conduct — whether it’s been upholding international law or committing war crimes — to the US fighting, say, al-Qaida in Afghanistan or ISIS in Mosul, Iraq?

Spencer: If you want to talk about the tactics to prevent civilian harm in war, the US military uses speed, force and overwhelming power. That’s what we did in Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, you name the war where we want to take out the power and destroy its military; we do it quickly so it doesn’t prolong the war. The problem is that the international community pushed Israel into this framework of going slower, going methodically, evacuating every area beforehand.

I can say with very strong confidence that Israel has done everything the US military has ever done in the history of urban combat and things that we’ve never done, implementing every civilian harm mitigation technique that has been developed in the last 30 years despite Hamas’ tactics.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

The ratio of terrorists to Palestinian noncombatants killed during Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip is approximately one to one, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed this week.

“What Israel has done is take the effort to minimize civilian casualties as no other army has done,” the Israeli leader said in an interview with U.S. author and political adviser Dan Senor on Monday.

“We use leaflets, we use millions of text messages, phone calls. We actually call the people, give up the benefit of surprise, tell them: ‘Get out of the way. Get out of the war zone so that we can accomplish our military objectives while you’re in a safe place,'” said Netanyahu.

“We’re facing 35,000 Hamas terrorists. We’ve killed already about 14,000, wounded many others, and we’re progressing towards that goal” of destroying the terror group, he added.

Israeli government spokesman Avi Hyman on Monday reinforced Netanyahu’s message, saying that the Israel Defense Forces had killed more than 14,000 terrorists and approximately 16,000 civilians since the outbreak of the war on Oct. 7.

“Israel is setting the new gold standard for urban warfare with what appears to be the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio in history,” stated Hyman.

Last week, the United Nations admitted it overcounted the number of Gazan children who have been confirmed killed in the war by a staggering 42%.

In March, the U.N. Children’s Fund stated that 13,450 children had been killed, citing figures from the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry. Last Wednesday, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released updated casualty figures according to which 7,797 Gazan children have died in the war as of April 30.

“The revisions are taken…you know, of course, in the fog of war, it’s difficult to come up with numbers,” Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, told JNS on Friday.

The 13,450 statistic was cited frequently in the international press, leading to accusations that the Jewish state had committed war crimes, including intentionally targeting children.

[dontforgetukraine]

At least 184 civilians were killed and 856 injured in Ukraine in August, - UN This is the second-highest number of civilian casualties in 2024, after July. Almost all the victims of the war died from missile, bomb and artillery strikes by the Russians.

Civilian casualties August 2024

Total civillian casualties: 1, 040

184 killed (174 in Ukraine controlled territory; 10 in occupied territory // 107 men ; 69 women ; 4 boys ; 4 girls // 182 died due to explosive weapons with wide area effects ; 2 died due to mines and UXO remnants)

856 Injured (772 in Ukraine controlled territory; 84 in occupied // 434 men ; 371 women ; 32 boys ; 19 girls // 842 injured due to explosive weapons with wide are effects ; 14 injured due to mines and UXO remnants)

Source: The Ukrainian Review

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

I'll give you some more numbers:

2,200 servicemen killed at Pearl Harbor. We go on to kill 3.5 million Japanese, including 100,000 in one night.

2,800 Americans on 9/11. We go on to kill 400,000 people in Afghanistan and Iraq. We weren't accused of genocide.

You had-- if Mexico had elected a Jihadist cartel to run their country, and then they incurred into Texas and on a per capita basis, killed 35,000 people, or the population of the University of Texas, and on the way back took the freshman class at SMU hostage and hid them under tunnels, what would we do? It'd be the great Sonora radioactive parking lot.

But Jews are not allowed, and Israel is not allowed to prosecute a war. And they are prosecuting a war more humanely than we have done. The ratio of combatants to civilians is... of civilian death to combatant mortality is lower than it was in Mosul, lower than it was in Japan, lower than it was in Germany.

So, there's just a different standard for Jews in Israel when it comes to prosecuting a war. They're allowed to fight back to a truce, but unlike America or any other western nation that is attacked this viciously, they're not allowed to win a war.

It's a double standard.

==

Israel has absolutely nothing to apologise for.

Hamas killed 1200 and kidnapped 200 in one day. But pro-Hamas supporters don't consider 1200 per day a "genocide."

So, let's do some math.

If we take the current numbers of ~35,200 throughout the current 224 days of the war (since Oct 7), that's 157 per day, which is somehow a "genocide." A number which includes Hamas combatants, who are fair game. Estimates are about 13-14,000 combatants killed, which makes it ~21-22,000 civilian deaths.

In 224 days, that's roughly ~100 civilians per day, versus Hamas racking up 1200 civilians per day. And you're delusional if you think Hamas wouldn't salivate at killing 1200 or more every day... by hand. They've explicitly said they intend to repeat October 7 "again and again."

Let's go further.

In the sixty years between 1960 and 2020, the "Palestine" population rose 4.0m. 60 years = ~21,900 days. That's a net gain - i.e. births minus deaths - of 182 per day. And that's an average across all sixty years. As the graph shows, the slope of the green line rises noticeably indicating a greater change over time, so it would be higher more recently.

But, even taking only this average of 182, the change of "Palestinian" population isn't even in the negative.

There's no definition of "genocide" that sees the population continuing to grow faster than it declines, where births exceed deaths.

genocide | ˈjenəˌsīd |  noun the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group: a campaign of genocide | [count noun] :  news of genocides went unreported.

If Israel wanted to "genocide" the "Palestinians," they're doing an extremely piss-poor job of it. Especially when they drop evacuation warnings and set up safe areas that will be free from military operations.

Civilian deaths are unfortunate, but they're a fact of war. Nobody was wringing their hands over whether the bombing of Dresden was justified.

[ A pile of bodies before cremation after a bombing raid on Dresden, 1945 ]

It's only been Israel going obsessively over and above what international law requires that's kept the civilian deaths so low compared to every other urban warfare campaigns. Because it sure as shit hasn't been Hamas.

[fullsaw]

Jon alone in his office in Mag 125 doing a realistic sheep baahh what the fuck

[historyfixation]

[notacomputerorasinger]

Me, searching for a podcast to fall asleep to: Oh, The Magnus Archives. I remember really liking season 4!

Melanie King, two hours later [at full volume]: Get off me! Get off me! Don't touch me! I will kill you! I can't feel my leg!

[agentfascinateur]

"Biden is a war criminal" 👈🏼

God bless Cornel West. 💜

[alwaysbewoke]

[matan4il]

Memo to the 'Experts': Stop Comparing Israel's War in Gaza to Anything. It Has No Precedent | by John Spencer

Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza has inevitably drawn comparisons to other battles or wars, both modern and from the past. These comparisons are mostly used to make the case that Israel's operations in Gaza are the most destructive in history, or the deadliest in history.

Yet while the use of historical analogy may be tempting for armchair pundits, in the case of Israel's current war, the comparisons are often poorly cited, the data used inaccurate, and crucial context left out. Given the scale and context of an enemy purposely entrenched in densely populated urban areas, as well as the presence of tunnels, hostages, rockets, attackers that follow the laws of war while defenders purposely do not, and proximity between the frontlines and the home front, there is basically no historical comparison for this war.

Let's start with the context: After Hamas crossed into Israel on Oct. 7, murdering over 1,200 Israelis in brutal ways that included mutilation and sexual assaults as well as taking over 200 hostages back into Gaza, Israel formally declared a defensive war against Hamas in Gaza in accordance with international law and the United Nations charter. Since, the IDF estimates it has killed 10,000 Hamas operatives, while Hamas claims that the total number of casualties is 24,000 (Hamas does not distinguish civilian deaths from militant deaths).

Hamas' strategy is to use Palestinian civilians as human shields, because their goal is not to defeat Israel's military or to hold terrain; it is far more sinister and medieval—to use the death and suffering of Palestinian civilians to rally international support to their cause and demand that Israel halt their war.

Meanwhile, Israel's war aims were more traditional: returning Israeli hostages, dismantling Hamas military capability, and securing their border to prevent another October 7 attack.

These goals required not one major urban battle but multiple. While Gaza is not the densest populated urban region on earth as many claim, it features over 20 densely-populated cities. And while the Israeli Defense Forces are engaged in fighting, Hamas has continued to launch over 12,000 rockets on nearly every day of the war from the combat area toward civilian-populated areas in Israel, literally over the heads of the attacking IDF, who it bears mentioning are fighting just a few miles from their homeland and the homes of their soldiers.

Put all of this together, this war is simply without precedent. Certainly, it cannot be compared to the host of other wars that have been used for comparison sake to paint Israel in an unflattering light.

Some have compared Israel to Russia, yet there is simply no comparison. In the 2022 Battle of Mariupol, estimates of the number of civilians killed range up to 25,000, including 600 civilians killed in a single bombing of a theater with the word "children" written in giant letters around it. This is the same Russia that killed over 50,000 civilians (5 percent) of a 1.1 million pre-war population of Chechnya in 20 months of combat in the late 1990s in multiple major urban battles such as Grozny.

Or take Syria. Over 300,00 civilians have been killed in the Syrian war; an average of 84 civilians were killed every day from 2013 to 2023.

Others have compared the battles in Gaza to World War II air campaigns like the UK bombing of the German city of Dresden in 1945 that killed an estimated 25,000 civilians. But here, too, memory is selective: These same people discount air campaign cases such as the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo the same year that killed over 300,000 civilians, to include 80,000 to 100,000 civilians in a single night, causing more death and destruction than Dresden, Hiroshima, or Nagaski.

A battle that does bear a resemblance to Israel's war against Hamas is the 1945 Battle of Manila—the largest urban struggle of World War II, with more civilian casualties incurred than even the Battle of Stalingrad. The city had a population of 1.1 million residents as well as over 1,000 American prisoners of war being held in the city. It took the U.S. military 35,000 forces and a whole month to defeat 17,000 Japanese Navy defenders in and around the city.

Like in Gaza, the defenders used the city's sewer and tunnel systems for offensive and defensive purposes. And there were over 100,000 civilian deaths from the battle—one of the major factors of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which stipulated the laws of armed conflict to further protect civilians and prevent civilian deaths.

Most experts compare the Gaza war to the recent urban battles against ISIS involving United States forces, including the 2016-17 Battle of Mosul. In that battle, over 100,000 Iraqi Security Forces, backed by American advisors and U.S. and coalition air power, took nine months to clear a city of 3,000 to 5,000 lightly armed ISIS fighters. The battle resulted in over 10,000 civilian deaths, 138,000 houses destroyed or damaged and 58,000 damaged with 40,000 homes destroyed outright in just Western Mosul. Iraqi Security Forces suffered 10,000 casualties. There were very limited, shallow, house-to-house tunnels, but no tunnel networks, no hostages, no rockets.

In April of 2004, the U.S. military was directed to arrest the perpetrators of an attack that caused the death of four American civilians and deny insurgents sanctuary in the densely populated city of Fallujah, Iraq, a city of 300,000 residents. The battle that ensued was later dubbed the First Battle of Fallujah. Because of international condemnation and political instability fueled by international media over a perceived indiscriminate use of force and civilian casualties, the U.S. forces were ordered by the U.S. Central Command Commander to stop the battle six days into it.

Estimates of the total civilian deaths from the battle range from 220 to 600. Six months later, in November 2004, the U.S. military initiated the Second Battle of Fallujah. It took 13,000-15,000 U.S., UK, and Iraqi forces six weeks to clear the city of 3,000 insurgents. There were some 800 civilian deaths even though the city's residents had largely evacuated before the battle. Over sixty percent the city's buildings were damaged or destroyed. But there, too, the enemy defenders did not have access to tunnels.

Ultimately, comparisons with both past and modern cases highlight the fact that there is almost no way to defeat an entrenched enemy defender without destruction, even while implementing all feasible precautions and limits on the use of force required by the laws of war.

Let's put away our military history books. There is no comparison to what Israel has faced in Gaza—certainly none by which Israel comes out looking the worse.

John Spencer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point, codirector of MWI's Urban Warfare Project and host of the "Urban Warfare Project Podcast." He served for 25 years as an infantry soldier, which included two combat tours in Iraq. He is the author of the book Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connection in Modern War and co-author of Understanding Urban Warfare.

[eretzyisrael]

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Jake Wallis Simons

The Gray Lady even contrasted the two incidents in a way that painted the American atrocity favourably while casting Israeli intentions in doubt. The Kabul attack, it said, ‘came after a suicide bombing killed at least 182 people, including 13 American troops, during the frantic American withdrawal from the country. Under acute pressure to avert another attack, the US military believed it was tracking a terrorist who might imminently detonate another bomb. Instead, it killed an Afghan aid worker and nine members of his family.’

The Gaza strike, however, ‘adds fuel to accusations that Israel has bombed indiscriminately’, the New York Times said, pre-empting the results of the independent investigation with breathless speculation and a healthy dose of ‘confirmation bias’ of its own. The assumption could not be clearer: whereas the Americans were acting out of panic and confusion, the Israelis were either acting out of disregard for human life or straightforward bloodlust.

Civilian deaths, including those of aid workers, are a tragic reality of modern warfare. Sixty-two humanitarian workers lost their lives in combat zones last year. Although they were mostly killed at the hands of autocratic regimes and militias, during wartime they are also the casualties of democracies, including Britain.

During the Libyan civil war in 2011, when David Cameron had his hands on the joystick, 13 people were killed by a NATO airstrike, including an ambulance driver, three nurses and some friendly troops. (He did not, surprisingly, subject his own government to the type of rhetoric that he has recently been levelling at the Israelis over the mistaken Gaza strike.) That same week, NATO wiped out a family near Ajdabiya in the north of the country. This year, even the Danish military was forced to admit that its aerial assault had claimed the lives of 14 Libyan civilians.

The difference between attitudes towards most Western armed forces and the Israelis could not be sharper. According to the UN, the average combatant-to-civilian death ratio in war around the world is one to nine. When Britain, America and our allies battled Islamic State in Mosul in 2016-17, we achieved a much more respectable rate of about one to 2.5. In Gaza, Israel has done better still, reaching about one to 1.5, and possibly even less.