This article reminds me of one from Al Jazeera few months ago
Analysis: As Israel escalates Gaza war, its ‘kill-rate’ claims don’t add up
The claims, aimed at fending off criticism over civilian casualties paint a picture of the war that makes no sense.
By ,orange Kusovac | 9 Dec 2023
Israel is trying to fend off accusations of indiscriminately killing civilians, but its claims make little sense. Earlier this week at a briefing in Israel, an official said that a Hamas fighter was killed for every two civilians, suggesting that this was a better combatant-to-civilian kill ratio than most armies in recent wars.
{snip}
But for almost any military a constant loss ratio of greater than 30:1 in operations that last more than a month on at least two distinct, if connected, battlefields — in north and south Gaza — would be a sure sign of an imminent total collapse.
Even allowing for the high motivation of ideologically recruited Hamas fighters, it would still be hard to imagine that they would continue fighting after such losses.
“I see the signs that indicate [Hamas] is beginning to break in Gaza,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told troops he was visiting on Friday.
Gallant’s claim was either an exaggeration or an optimistic attempt to boost his soldiers’ morale. In reality, it is obvious that Hamas fights on — in a way that would not be possible if it were losing as many fighters as Israel claims to be killing.
I would suggest that making an argument that one is, ya know, not really killing all
that many people when one is obviously killing a whole lot of innocent people is not a good look. It's the sort of thing that if you quibble about it, it comes off almost as cold as, say, an urban bombing campaign.
I would also suggest that the US State Department is not accepting the Gaza government's Health Ministry's numbers for frivolous reasons. If they had reservations about the accuracy of the numbers, I think we would have heard it by now. If the Israeli's had concrete rather than speculative evidence about Gaza significantly inflating the numbers, I feel like they would have presented it by now.
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