Thread by @AGHamilton29

Is Israel Committing “Genocide” or indiscriminately killing Palestinians in Gaza?

I’m tired of people going through this discussion without any accompanying facts or logic so I’m going to put some thoughts into one thread and people can decide for themselves.

To properly have this discussion, we first need to go through and understand Gaza casualty figures. Where they come from and what they show.

The current Gaza casualty figures are all provided by the Hamas-affiliated Gaza Health Ministry. In previous conflicts with Israel, the Gaza Health Ministry has used a system of collecting data from hospitals, ambulance services, and morgues (we can refer to this as the central collection system) to come up with casualty figures. Their numbers do not usually distinguish civilian vs. militant casualties, but they do typically provide a demographic breakdown. Those who defend using their numbers will point to the fact that the Gaza Health Ministry casualty numbers in previous conflicts, collected via the CCS mentioned above, have often been consistent with estimates from other sources.
However, there have been large errors in the demographic breakdowns and in claims on the portion of combatants killed when provided. Usually, some NGOs are also doing their own counts to confirm, which is not happening in this conflict.

In the current war, the Gaza Health Ministry started collecting casualties the same way via the CCS when the war began. They showed ~9K deaths before Israel launched their ground invasion at the end of October. Then, as the data below shows, the casualty rate dropped significantly in the CCS data after the initial period of fighting in November. What is also clear from the CCS data, as shown below, is the proportion of male casualties (the category most, but not all, Hamas militants would fit into) increased significantly over time.

Then the Gaza Health Ministry discretely changed its collection method in early November. They added a new source for data which they called “reliable media” reports that had not been used in the past. This is essentially reporting from local, mostly Hamas-controlled, media outlets regarding casualties and, as it turns out, also allows citizens to self-report casualties online. You can obviously see the challenge of getting accurate data with such a methodology. This new methodology gradually took over as the main source of casualty data for the GHM over time. You can see the shift below.

There is no way to check the reliability of the total casualty numbers being provided via this new methodology of reliable media reports, but there is clearly an issue with the data when you compare demographic breakdowns.

The portion of male casualties using the traditional CCS system has averaged around 51.7% of total casualties since November 3rd and trended above 70% in March. Meanwhile, the average portion of male casualties during that same period, according to the media report methodology, is only 8.4%.

That disconnect is impossible to explain and the latter number makes no sense in the context of an ongoing war. What’s even more revealing is that the percentage of female casualties is not that far apart in the 2 methodologies, but the data for Children vs Males is almost flipped. That’s really beyond red flag territory.

The reason this disconnect is important is that exactly who Israel is targeting is a central question in determining the appropriateness of their approach in the war effort.

So now on to the "genocide" question...

First, it is obviously inappropriate and absurd to compare what is happening to the systematic and purposeful eradication of Jews and other minorities during the Holocaust. As suggested by one podcast host recently, such a comparison requires complete ignorance about the numbers and method of killing during those events. More than a third of the world’s Jews were wiped out during the Holocaust to the point that the Jewish population has not fully recovered almost 9 decades later.

However, plenty of civilians were killed at the same time as the Holocaust during the war effort so what’s the difference between civilian deaths in a war and genocide?

The key element for genocide is not that a lot of people are killed, but the intent of those doing the killing. When civilians are killed in a war, that is not something to celebrate, but it is categorically different than the intended targeting and killing of a group of people for the explicit purpose of wiping out that group.

No reasonable person thinks allied forces bombing civilian areas in WWII were engaged in a genocide comparable to the Holocaust. Or that the U.S. army actions in Afghanistan or Iraq, despite tens (or hundreds) of thousands of civilians killed constitutes a genocide.

It is for that reason that South Africa was forced to include a bunch of out-of-context and misleading quotes from Israeli officials, often specifically targeted at Hamas, in their ICC complaint to argue the intent element of genocide in Gaza. Some examples of the quotes used: theatlantic.com/international/…

As @SpencerGuard has noted, Israel’s overall behavior during this war is inconsistent with an intent to wipe out Palestinians in Gaza. Especially given that they can actually wipe out most of Gaza in much less time than this war has gone on. An entity seeking to commit genocide would not usually provide advanced warning, evacuation routes, drop flyers, send text messages, provide aid etc. to the people they are trying to genocide..

newsweek.com/israel-has-cre…

More importantly, the data speaks for itself. The numbers show that the claim of an intentional genocide doesn’t stand up to any level of scrutiny.

There are ~2.1 million people in Gaza. There were about 30-40K Hamas fighters at the start of the war. Hamas publicly said several months ago they had lost 6K+ fighters. Israel says the number is closer to 13k. U.S. intelligence estimated a range of between 20-30% of Hamas fighters had been killed as of several months ago.

For this discussion let’s take a conservative estimate of 10K Hamas fighters, which accounts for about 30% of the total deaths, based on the total casualty numbers from the Hamas-affiliated Gaza Health Ministry.

That still means lots of Gaza civilians have died in the war (A 2.3 to 1 civilian-to-militant ratio), but it makes it almost impossible to conclude Israel has been indiscriminately killing Palestinians in Gaza. Especially since the typical ratio of civilians killed in other conflicts that included urban warfare has previously been around 80%-90% and Hamas has specifically developed their military infrastructure within the Gaza civilian infrastructure to ensure Palestinian civilian deaths any time they are targeted. In fact, Hamas leaders like Ismael Haniyeh openly admit that they view Palestinian civilian deaths as a victory for their cause.

(I am not going to even get into Palestinians killed directly by Hamas/militant attacks as part of this discussion)

Just consider the math here: If about 1.5% of the population has been killed in Gaza during the war, but conservatively around 30% of those have been militants, how would that be feasible if Israel was just bombing and killing people indiscriminately?

If it was just random bombing, you would proportionally need to kill about 30% of the total Gaza population (~630K) to coincidentally take out 30% of the subgroup of Hamas’ militants. You can argue that one or another particular military action/strategy was wrong or that you don’t believe Israel should be trying to take out Hamas at all if there is this much collateral damage, but the indiscriminate claim just doesn’t stand up to any logical scrutiny. Based on the numbers, the attacks are clearly targeted at Hamas and the evacuations are clearly meant to minimize outside deaths.

The outcome, while tragic, is indicative of a complicated war that Hamas chose to start on 10/7, not a genocide that Israel is intentionally pursuing.

Hope that helps future discussions. I will provide links to the cited information in this week’s newsletter.