Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[DrZoidberg]

You say you’d love an answer but reject every proposal as “shit.” Maybe because any real solution requires giving up the comfort of domination.

View attachment 51287

To Lauren

View attachment 51289

That comic strip is applicable to anyone on this forum. Are you enjoying your exceptionally windy glass house?

Glass houses, huh? Yours is built on “Hamas is evil, so anything we do is justified.” Throw all the comics you want – it doesn’t make that any less hollow.

NHC

No it isn't. My stance is built on harm reduction. Whatever leads to the least amount of pain and misery for most people is what we should do.

There's nothing you can say that will convince me that the correct stance toward Hitler or Putin is to stay away and just let them get on with it. As if that would have made the world a safer place. Remember... Hamas is Iran. It's not a small defenceless country. It's a powerful and wealthy oil nation, putting it's full might behind Hamas. In your mind it seems like you picture Israel as Goliath, and the Palestinians as David. While in reality Iran is the Goliath and Israel is David. A Goliath that only cares about the destruction of Israel. They do not care about the wellbeing of Gazans. Hamas treats any lives as expendable.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Gaza has, since PA and then Hamas, took over been a dysfunctional shit show.

If the Gaza administration is a dysfunctional shit show during peace time, why would they now during a war, have any hope of accurately calculating who died.

Gaza is now overrun by the IDF. Making admin harder.

There's plenty of evidence that Hamas has been manipulating numbers.

There's been evidence that Hamas has been aquiring journalist accreditation for fighters just to manipulate the data of dead journalists.

Any Hamas official, is also a Hamas fighter.

The UNRWA aid administrators are Hamas fighters, some of which took part of the 7/10 attacks.

Any Hamas fighter, the moment they hit the ground, is made into a civilian casualty statistic.

And finally, independent reviews have suggested that Hamas has both low balled and overshot the numbers dead. The reason is that it's virtually impossible to know the true civilian casualty rate in Gaza. I don't think Hamas knows how many Palestinian civilians have died. I think their numbers are just made up.

I also don't think Israel knows either. It'll take years of peace, if ever, before we have the correct number.

Another factor is that Gaza has no legal entry or exit point. They haven't had that for many years. Any entry or exit will therefore be undocumented. Making it impossible to know who lives there.

I have a Palestinian friend who told me how their family did. This was in 2015. They'd go to Egypt, go overland in a smuggler car, bribe border guards, and enter. They had to do this every time. In or out. They said it was safe. But just incredibly annoying.

My point is that there was no way, before 7/10 for Hamas to ever know who is actually living in Gaza. All they ever could do was guesstimate.

The medical system is not working now. There's no medical infrastructure with this information

You say Gaza has always been a dysfunctional shit show, so why trust its casualty numbers now.

I don't. I don't trust any numbers.

But here’s the problem with that framing: you’re using Gaza’s poverty, isolation, and destroyed infrastructure – conditions imposed in large part by the blockade and repeated bombardments – as proof that its people can’t even count their dead.

Gaza is poor because Hamas cares more about maintaining control over it than the wellbeing of Gazans. They're willing to murder and terrorise any Gazan to maintain control. They're a truly vile, evil and psychopathic regime.

And have support by expat Palestinians. Which truly is mind blowing. Resistance to Hamas is low. Because Palestinians have a tribal thinking and do not criticise any organisation working for the destruction of Israel. Making it easy for an organisation like Hamas to control Gaza... no matter how much crazy, psychopathic shit they do to their fellow Palestinians. Palestinians seem to be too poisoned by hate of Israel to prioritise a sane government dedicated to their own welfare. That's the tragic reality of this conflict

That’s not an argument. That’s dehumanization masquerading as skepticism.

Adjective soup. You write as if you're a spoken word poet preparing to take to the stage.

You say “there’s plenty of evidence Hamas manipulates numbers,” but you don’t cite any. You mention fighters getting journalist accreditation to pad dead journalist counts. Where’s your evidence? Because every major strike killing journalists has been confirmed by their employers and international press organizations. Are Reuters, AP, Al Jazeera, and NBC all in on Hamas’ scheme?

Journalists write what information they can get. People are interested. There's very little verifiable information. So they're scraping the bottom of the barrel. Pay attention to who they are quoting when presenting numbers.

There's a relationship between the data the journalist is using and what narrative the article is spinning.

You claim “any Hamas official is also a fighter.” That’s not analysis. That’s propaganda designed to erase the category of civilian altogether.

You're a loony. Hamas is a military islamofascist regime. They do not separate civilian from fighter. They follow no ethical code. They respect no one. They don't care about any lives.

They're also clinging to power in Gaza using terror and violence.

Stop being a tool of fascism

Under international law, a civil administrator is not a combatant unless directly engaged in hostilities. Calling them fighters doesn’t make it true – it just justifies killing them in your mind.

Hamas doesn't give a fuck about international law.

In the 7/10 attack Hamas used systematic mass rape as a weapon of war.

Do you seriously think Hamas would give any power in Gaza to anyone who wasn't a 100% loyal fighter?

You say UNRWA staff are Hamas fighters, some of whom took part in October 7th. Israeli intelligence alleged some staff involvement, but you generalize that to the entire organization, whose aid convoys are coordinated with Israel daily.

No. Early on in the conflict IDF sent the UN intel on verified Hamas fighters who took part in the 7/10 attack, who then were the civilian Hamas officials in charge of distributing UN aid.

That's when the UN shut down aid deliveries to Gaza. They refused to continue until those officials were replaced. Hamas was then unable to find a civilian Hamas official who the IDF didn't have verifiable evidence was directly involved in the 7/10 attacks. They eventually managed to sort this out. No, the evidence IDF presented was not made public. But the UN response made headlines, back then. It must have been true.

IDF has since managed to find information on that UNRWA is infiltrated by Hamas, and in practice a wing of the Hamas government. They did not make the information publicly available. That's when Israel shut down all aid into Gaza and decided to become the sole aid agency delivering aid to Gaza. Because they judge that other aid organizations are unable to control who gets aid, ie Hamas are in control of the aid.

If you actually cared about civilian welfare, you wouldn’t cheer the destruction of the only institution providing food, shelter, and education to children in Gaza.

Who is cheering? Not me.

You argue that Hamas “both lowballs and overshoots” death counts. Which is it?

Its both

You’re claiming their numbers are too low and too high in the same breath to avoid acknowledging that mass death is happening. That’s not skepticism. That’s intellectual evasion.

No. Its acknowledging the reality. Hamas has no method with which to collect accurate information. They're just pulling numbers out of their ass

You say Gaza has no legal entry or exit, so no one knows who lives there. Yet the population is registered by UNRWA, Israel, and Egypt for aid, border permits, and family reunification tracking.

Yeah. Best efforts. Still not particularly accurate

Your anecdote about a friend smuggling through Rafah doesn’t erase the fact that population data is well established. It just shows how desperate people are under siege.

If you think the data is well established, that just means you don't care about reality. That makes it hard to have a serious conversation with you

Finally, you say the medical system has collapsed so casualty counts are meaningless. But you ignore that the numbers are compiled not just by hospitals but by civil defense crews recovering bodies from rubble, by international aid organizations, and by satellite evidence of mass graves. Israel itself has never denied mass casualties – it just blames Hamas.

I never said casualty counts are meaningless. There's just wide error margins

The reality is this: dismissing every death count as “just made up” is comforting if you don’t want to face the moral implications of what’s being done in Gaza. But bodies don’t vanish because you question paperwork. Parents burying their children aren’t statistics to them. They’re the final proof.

No, that's not why. Try having another guess

Because in the end, this isn’t about whether Hamas counts perfectly. It’s about the fact that there are too many bodies to count.

NHC

Which is a tragedy. One dead person is a horrific tragedy.

Let's just hope Israel wins this war ASAP. So more people won't die

You say you don’t trust any numbers. Fine. But understand what that really means: if you refuse to believe any data, you leave yourself with nothing except assumptions shaped by your own fears and loyalties. That’s not realism. It’s intellectual surrender dressed up as skepticism.

You're doing the black and white fallacy.

Independent observers are doing the best they can = most reliable numbers. Still huge error margins

Israel = are low balling numbers. They sit on the only reliable numbers, because they control most of Gaza, and have an effective inteligence gathering organisation. Its been clear from the start that they had better data on Gaza than Hamas' own administrators. But because it's war and Israel reporting lower numbers than it is, is good for morale.

Hamas are not in a position to know any real numbers. Certainly not now. Right from the start they've been reporting casualties suspiciously fast. Clearly they're just making up numbers. Taking the biggest number that sounds believable and just running with it. To illustrate that is when Independent observers come up with a higher number than Hamas. Now why would they ever do that? Because they have no idea. They're just making shit up.

You blame Gaza’s dysfunction entirely on Hamas, ignoring the blockade, bombings, economic strangulation, and decades of occupation that created the vacuum Hamas exploited. Yes, Hamas is brutal and corrupt. But your narrative pretends they emerged in a void, not in a cage built by external powers and filled with despair.

Hamas has in their charter to destroy Israel. And its not just something they say. Why would Israel put up with a neighbour like that?

You didn't think of that, did you?

You brush off the accusation of dehumanization with “adjective soup.” It’s not poetry. It’s calling out the mindset that erases real people into collective blame. When you write off two million people as tribal, hate-poisoned sheep unworthy of sympathy, you’re not analyzing. You’re just justifying indifference to their deaths.

Its just your limited imagination preventing you from understanding other points of view than your own.

Your ideological position puts you in a place where you never need to take risks. You never need to take a stand for anything. Whoever takes any initiative, or succeeds with anything, I think, you will condemn.

This thinking is rampant in the progressive world today. Its just cowardice imho.

You say journalists are scraping the barrel for data, implying they’re complicit in falsehoods.

No, they're doing their actual job. This is what they do.

They're clearly quoting the source. Every time.

Pay attention.

But you provide no evidence that major newsrooms are inflating deaths. You dismiss their verification processes because acknowledging them would undercut your claim that no one knows anything.

You're a loony. I suggest you think about this demand for a bit

You call me loony for distinguishing fighters from civilians. Under international law, that distinction isn’t optional. Hamas ignoring it doesn’t mean Israel can. Otherwise, we abandon every principle of proportionality and non-combatant immunity. You call that naive. I call it the line between war and slaughter.

Yes, you're a loony. I have no idea how you managed to make the above make sense in your head.

You bring up 10/7 rapes to prove Hamas’s evil. No argument there. But war crimes by Hamas don’t erase legal obligations from Israel. That’s the foundation of humanitarian law: you are bound to it even when your enemy isn’t.

Sure. I just challenge that Israel is committing war crimes. I think they're doing a great job.

You cite unverified Israeli intelligence about UNRWA infiltration as proof the entire organization is a Hamas front. Meanwhile, Israel itself continues to coordinate with UNRWA for aid distribution even during this war. Your narrative overwrites reality to preserve a clean villain without complication.

No.

You say “who is cheering” the destruction of UNRWA. You are. Every time you call them a Hamas wing without evidence, you lay rhetorical groundwork to justify targeting the only institution feeding children under siege.

You're a loony

You claim Hamas both overcounts and undercounts deaths. That’s not logic. That’s an all-purpose excuse to deny any number they produce, no matter what it is. It’s not intellectual rigor. It’s an escape hatch from moral responsibility.

I think it is intellectual rigour

You argue Gaza’s population data is inaccurate because of smuggling and border chaos. Of course it’s imperfect. All warzone data is. But you treat imperfection as license to dismiss all quantification, because counting deaths risks confronting what you’ve chosen not to see.

I do?

You concede casualty counts have wide error margins, then use that uncertainty to imply there may be no mass death at all. But error margins don’t erase the baseline. They just acknowledge warzone reporting isn’t precise to the last digit.

No, I don't. Black and white fallacy again

Finally, you say “One dead person is a horrific tragedy. Let’s hope Israel wins ASAP so more people won’t die.” But if one death is too many, why cheer a strategy guaranteeing thousands more? That’s not hope. That’s just resignation wrapped in moral theater.

I'm cheering the side that will lead to less death overall. Right now, Israel is the only side to back in this.

Hamas is still chanting "from the river to the sea".

Because in the end, refusing to trust any number is comforting only if the alternative is facing what those numbers represent: an entire population ground between rockets and bombs, and the fact that no ideology justifies burying children under rubble.

Try thinking again

That’s not spoken word poetry. That’s reality. You don’t have to like how it sounds to admit it’s true.

NHC

For a person called No Holy Cows, you have a lot of holy cows. You talk like an evangelical preacher telling me about God and the Truth

You accuse me of black-and-white thinking while insisting Israel’s data is gospel and Hamas’s is fabricated fiction. That’s not nuance. That’s just flipping the switch entirely in one direction to avoid discomfort.

No, I didn't. I didn't say that. Not at all.

You say Hamas’s charter justifies blockade and bombing. Their charter is vile, yes. But a document isn’t an airstrike. Real people live under that rule. Pretending two million lives are just an extension of a paragraph on paper isn’t realism. It’s moral laziness.

When a womans ex partner calls her and makes death threats... the police usually takes it seriously. I wonder why? What do you think?

You claim my refusal to dehumanize Palestinians is cowardice. No – it’s refusing to surrender my humanity in the name of someone else’s vengeance. That’s not ideological. That’s basic decency.

You're the one dehumanizing Palestinians. Who think they don't deserve peace and prosperity. Who is dehumanizing them? Palestinians has as much right to peace and safety... and human rights as anyone. And that will never happen as long as Hamas are in charge.

You defend journalists as doing their job while dismissing their casualty verification as worthless. Pick one. Either their reporting means something, or it’s propaganda. You can’t hide behind both.

Again... black and white thinking. Journalists write stories. They take available data... often incomplete... and weave stories. Narratives. They do this while it is happening. In almost every story it takes weeks, years or months to have an accurate picture of what is going on. But we don't want to wait. We want the news ASAP. In order to do that, journalists need to pick one perspective and just run with it. That's just the reality of writing news. But I think you know this. I suspect you're just pretending to be retarded, in the above paragraph, so it fits your black and white model of the world, making it easier to write a punchy text.

You're essentially writing a propaganda text. Please don't.

You call me loony for distinguishing civilians from fighters. International law calls that the foundation of war ethics. Your dismissal says more about you than it does about me.

I'm calling you a loony because it's like you're demanding that the IDF have psychic powers. Hamas fighters are not fighting in uniforms. They fight in civilian clothing. The inevitable result is that loads of civilians get killed. It also means that the IDF has to treat all Gazan civilians as if they are potential fighters. Which is bad for the civilians.

Do you now understand why soldiers fight in uniforms? It's to protect civilians from being targetted.

All Hamas soldiers have uniforms. They put them on when not fighting and posing for cameras. Like during the hostage exchanges.

You say Israel commits no war crimes because they’re “doing a great job.” Doing a “great job” at war doesn’t erase obligations to civilians caught underneath. That’s the line between moral force and brutality.

I think they're doing the best job they can given the situation.

You shrug off UNRWA’s existence with “no,” ignoring that Israel itself coordinates with them for aid. That’s reality. Your refusal to engage with it is intellectual laziness wrapped in snark.

I was sharing the reason Israel gives for not cooperating with UNRWA. I have no way of judging whether its true or not. Neither can you.

You call it “intellectual rigour” to claim Hamas both overcounts and undercounts deaths. No. That’s just a failsafe to reject any number that challenges your comfort.

No, it isn't. It's intellectual honesty. You should try it some time.

You accuse me of black-and-white fallacies again while insisting your position is purely pragmatic. But cheering a strategy that buries thousands more children to “prevent deaths later” isn’t pragmatism. It’s moral surrender rationalized as strategy.

Yes, I am. No it isn't.

And finally, you call me a preacher with holy cows because I refuse to treat children under rubble as abstractions. That’s fine. Call it preaching. I’d rather preach decency than sermonize indifference.

NHC

I think that's what you are doing. I think you ignore reality. Instead you insert some leftist fantasy. Well... when people are dying engaging with reality is what stops the violence. Not the crap you are doing.

 

[NoHolyCows]

You say you’d love an answer but reject every proposal as “shit.” Maybe because any real solution requires giving up the comfort of domination.

View attachment 51287

To Lauren

View attachment 51289

That comic strip is applicable to anyone on this forum. Are you enjoying your exceptionally windy glass house?

Glass houses, huh? Yours is built on “Hamas is evil, so anything we do is justified.” Throw all the comics you want – it doesn’t make that any less hollow.

NHC

No it isn't. My stance is built on harm reduction. Whatever leads to the least amount of pain and misery for most people is what we should do.

There's nothing you can say that will convince me that the correct stance toward Hitler or Putin is to stay away and just let them get on with it. As if that would have made the world a safer place. Remember... Hamas is Iran. It's not a small defenceless country. It's a powerful and wealthy oil nation, putting it's full might behind Hamas. In your mind it seems like you picture Israel as Goliath, and the Palestinians as David. While in reality Iran is the Goliath and Israel is David. A Goliath that only cares about the destruction of Israel. They do not care about the wellbeing of Gazans. Hamas treats any lives as expendable.

You call it harm reduction, but there’s nothing humane about shifting all harm onto people trapped with no way out. That isn’t reducing pain – it’s deciding whose pain you’re willing to ignore.

I get it. Hamas is vile. Iran is dangerous. But bombing children in Gaza isn’t stopping Hitler or Putin. It’s not stopping Iran’s power either. It’s just burying kids to send a message to Tehran, and calling that strategy doesn’t make it any less brutal.

Yes, Iran props up Hamas. But Gaza isn’t Iran. It’s two million ordinary people, half of them kids, stuck under a regime they didn’t choose and a blockade they can’t escape. Pretending they’re enemy soldiers is just a way to make this all easier to stomach.

And your David and Goliath analogy? Come on. Israel is a nuclear power with one of the strongest militaries on earth. Iran is a threat, sure. But the people in Gaza aren’t Goliath just because Iran wires money to Hamas. They’re just the ones crushed between giants.

You’re right about one thing though: Hamas treats their lives as expendable. But if your solution treats them the same way, how are you any different?

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

Gaza has, since PA and then Hamas, took over been a dysfunctional shit show.

If the Gaza administration is a dysfunctional shit show during peace time, why would they now during a war, have any hope of accurately calculating who died.

Gaza is now overrun by the IDF. Making admin harder.

There's plenty of evidence that Hamas has been manipulating numbers.

There's been evidence that Hamas has been aquiring journalist accreditation for fighters just to manipulate the data of dead journalists.

Any Hamas official, is also a Hamas fighter.

The UNRWA aid administrators are Hamas fighters, some of which took part of the 7/10 attacks.

Any Hamas fighter, the moment they hit the ground, is made into a civilian casualty statistic.

And finally, independent reviews have suggested that Hamas has both low balled and overshot the numbers dead. The reason is that it's virtually impossible to know the true civilian casualty rate in Gaza. I don't think Hamas knows how many Palestinian civilians have died. I think their numbers are just made up.

I also don't think Israel knows either. It'll take years of peace, if ever, before we have the correct number.

Another factor is that Gaza has no legal entry or exit point. They haven't had that for many years. Any entry or exit will therefore be undocumented. Making it impossible to know who lives there.

I have a Palestinian friend who told me how their family did. This was in 2015. They'd go to Egypt, go overland in a smuggler car, bribe border guards, and enter. They had to do this every time. In or out. They said it was safe. But just incredibly annoying.

My point is that there was no way, before 7/10 for Hamas to ever know who is actually living in Gaza. All they ever could do was guesstimate.

The medical system is not working now. There's no medical infrastructure with this information

You say Gaza has always been a dysfunctional shit show, so why trust its casualty numbers now.

I don't. I don't trust any numbers.

But here’s the problem with that framing: you’re using Gaza’s poverty, isolation, and destroyed infrastructure – conditions imposed in large part by the blockade and repeated bombardments – as proof that its people can’t even count their dead.

Gaza is poor because Hamas cares more about maintaining control over it than the wellbeing of Gazans. They're willing to murder and terrorise any Gazan to maintain control. They're a truly vile, evil and psychopathic regime.

And have support by expat Palestinians. Which truly is mind blowing. Resistance to Hamas is low. Because Palestinians have a tribal thinking and do not criticise any organisation working for the destruction of Israel. Making it easy for an organisation like Hamas to control Gaza... no matter how much crazy, psychopathic shit they do to their fellow Palestinians. Palestinians seem to be too poisoned by hate of Israel to prioritise a sane government dedicated to their own welfare. That's the tragic reality of this conflict

That’s not an argument. That’s dehumanization masquerading as skepticism.

Adjective soup. You write as if you're a spoken word poet preparing to take to the stage.

You say “there’s plenty of evidence Hamas manipulates numbers,” but you don’t cite any. You mention fighters getting journalist accreditation to pad dead journalist counts. Where’s your evidence? Because every major strike killing journalists has been confirmed by their employers and international press organizations. Are Reuters, AP, Al Jazeera, and NBC all in on Hamas’ scheme?

Journalists write what information they can get. People are interested. There's very little verifiable information. So they're scraping the bottom of the barrel. Pay attention to who they are quoting when presenting numbers.

There's a relationship between the data the journalist is using and what narrative the article is spinning.

You claim “any Hamas official is also a fighter.” That’s not analysis. That’s propaganda designed to erase the category of civilian altogether.

You're a loony. Hamas is a military islamofascist regime. They do not separate civilian from fighter. They follow no ethical code. They respect no one. They don't care about any lives.

They're also clinging to power in Gaza using terror and violence.

Stop being a tool of fascism

Under international law, a civil administrator is not a combatant unless directly engaged in hostilities. Calling them fighters doesn’t make it true – it just justifies killing them in your mind.

Hamas doesn't give a fuck about international law.

In the 7/10 attack Hamas used systematic mass rape as a weapon of war.

Do you seriously think Hamas would give any power in Gaza to anyone who wasn't a 100% loyal fighter?

You say UNRWA staff are Hamas fighters, some of whom took part in October 7th. Israeli intelligence alleged some staff involvement, but you generalize that to the entire organization, whose aid convoys are coordinated with Israel daily.

No. Early on in the conflict IDF sent the UN intel on verified Hamas fighters who took part in the 7/10 attack, who then were the civilian Hamas officials in charge of distributing UN aid.

That's when the UN shut down aid deliveries to Gaza. They refused to continue until those officials were replaced. Hamas was then unable to find a civilian Hamas official who the IDF didn't have verifiable evidence was directly involved in the 7/10 attacks. They eventually managed to sort this out. No, the evidence IDF presented was not made public. But the UN response made headlines, back then. It must have been true.

IDF has since managed to find information on that UNRWA is infiltrated by Hamas, and in practice a wing of the Hamas government. They did not make the information publicly available. That's when Israel shut down all aid into Gaza and decided to become the sole aid agency delivering aid to Gaza. Because they judge that other aid organizations are unable to control who gets aid, ie Hamas are in control of the aid.

If you actually cared about civilian welfare, you wouldn’t cheer the destruction of the only institution providing food, shelter, and education to children in Gaza.

Who is cheering? Not me.

You argue that Hamas “both lowballs and overshoots” death counts. Which is it?

Its both

You’re claiming their numbers are too low and too high in the same breath to avoid acknowledging that mass death is happening. That’s not skepticism. That’s intellectual evasion.

No. Its acknowledging the reality. Hamas has no method with which to collect accurate information. They're just pulling numbers out of their ass

You say Gaza has no legal entry or exit, so no one knows who lives there. Yet the population is registered by UNRWA, Israel, and Egypt for aid, border permits, and family reunification tracking.

Yeah. Best efforts. Still not particularly accurate

Your anecdote about a friend smuggling through Rafah doesn’t erase the fact that population data is well established. It just shows how desperate people are under siege.

If you think the data is well established, that just means you don't care about reality. That makes it hard to have a serious conversation with you

Finally, you say the medical system has collapsed so casualty counts are meaningless. But you ignore that the numbers are compiled not just by hospitals but by civil defense crews recovering bodies from rubble, by international aid organizations, and by satellite evidence of mass graves. Israel itself has never denied mass casualties – it just blames Hamas.

I never said casualty counts are meaningless. There's just wide error margins

The reality is this: dismissing every death count as “just made up” is comforting if you don’t want to face the moral implications of what’s being done in Gaza. But bodies don’t vanish because you question paperwork. Parents burying their children aren’t statistics to them. They’re the final proof.

No, that's not why. Try having another guess

Because in the end, this isn’t about whether Hamas counts perfectly. It’s about the fact that there are too many bodies to count.

NHC

Which is a tragedy. One dead person is a horrific tragedy.

Let's just hope Israel wins this war ASAP. So more people won't die

You say you don’t trust any numbers. Fine. But understand what that really means: if you refuse to believe any data, you leave yourself with nothing except assumptions shaped by your own fears and loyalties. That’s not realism. It’s intellectual surrender dressed up as skepticism.

You're doing the black and white fallacy.

Independent observers are doing the best they can = most reliable numbers. Still huge error margins

Israel = are low balling numbers. They sit on the only reliable numbers, because they control most of Gaza, and have an effective inteligence gathering organisation. Its been clear from the start that they had better data on Gaza than Hamas' own administrators. But because it's war and Israel reporting lower numbers than it is, is good for morale.

Hamas are not in a position to know any real numbers. Certainly not now. Right from the start they've been reporting casualties suspiciously fast. Clearly they're just making up numbers. Taking the biggest number that sounds believable and just running with it. To illustrate that is when Independent observers come up with a higher number than Hamas. Now why would they ever do that? Because they have no idea. They're just making shit up.

You blame Gaza’s dysfunction entirely on Hamas, ignoring the blockade, bombings, economic strangulation, and decades of occupation that created the vacuum Hamas exploited. Yes, Hamas is brutal and corrupt. But your narrative pretends they emerged in a void, not in a cage built by external powers and filled with despair.

Hamas has in their charter to destroy Israel. And its not just something they say. Why would Israel put up with a neighbour like that?

You didn't think of that, did you?

You brush off the accusation of dehumanization with “adjective soup.” It’s not poetry. It’s calling out the mindset that erases real people into collective blame. When you write off two million people as tribal, hate-poisoned sheep unworthy of sympathy, you’re not analyzing. You’re just justifying indifference to their deaths.

Its just your limited imagination preventing you from understanding other points of view than your own.

Your ideological position puts you in a place where you never need to take risks. You never need to take a stand for anything. Whoever takes any initiative, or succeeds with anything, I think, you will condemn.

This thinking is rampant in the progressive world today. Its just cowardice imho.

You say journalists are scraping the barrel for data, implying they’re complicit in falsehoods.

No, they're doing their actual job. This is what they do.

They're clearly quoting the source. Every time.

Pay attention.

But you provide no evidence that major newsrooms are inflating deaths. You dismiss their verification processes because acknowledging them would undercut your claim that no one knows anything.

You're a loony. I suggest you think about this demand for a bit

You call me loony for distinguishing fighters from civilians. Under international law, that distinction isn’t optional. Hamas ignoring it doesn’t mean Israel can. Otherwise, we abandon every principle of proportionality and non-combatant immunity. You call that naive. I call it the line between war and slaughter.

Yes, you're a loony. I have no idea how you managed to make the above make sense in your head.

You bring up 10/7 rapes to prove Hamas’s evil. No argument there. But war crimes by Hamas don’t erase legal obligations from Israel. That’s the foundation of humanitarian law: you are bound to it even when your enemy isn’t.

Sure. I just challenge that Israel is committing war crimes. I think they're doing a great job.

You cite unverified Israeli intelligence about UNRWA infiltration as proof the entire organization is a Hamas front. Meanwhile, Israel itself continues to coordinate with UNRWA for aid distribution even during this war. Your narrative overwrites reality to preserve a clean villain without complication.

No.

You say “who is cheering” the destruction of UNRWA. You are. Every time you call them a Hamas wing without evidence, you lay rhetorical groundwork to justify targeting the only institution feeding children under siege.

You're a loony

You claim Hamas both overcounts and undercounts deaths. That’s not logic. That’s an all-purpose excuse to deny any number they produce, no matter what it is. It’s not intellectual rigor. It’s an escape hatch from moral responsibility.

I think it is intellectual rigour

You argue Gaza’s population data is inaccurate because of smuggling and border chaos. Of course it’s imperfect. All warzone data is. But you treat imperfection as license to dismiss all quantification, because counting deaths risks confronting what you’ve chosen not to see.

I do?

You concede casualty counts have wide error margins, then use that uncertainty to imply there may be no mass death at all. But error margins don’t erase the baseline. They just acknowledge warzone reporting isn’t precise to the last digit.

No, I don't. Black and white fallacy again

Finally, you say “One dead person is a horrific tragedy. Let’s hope Israel wins ASAP so more people won’t die.” But if one death is too many, why cheer a strategy guaranteeing thousands more? That’s not hope. That’s just resignation wrapped in moral theater.

I'm cheering the side that will lead to less death overall. Right now, Israel is the only side to back in this.

Hamas is still chanting "from the river to the sea".

Because in the end, refusing to trust any number is comforting only if the alternative is facing what those numbers represent: an entire population ground between rockets and bombs, and the fact that no ideology justifies burying children under rubble.

Try thinking again

That’s not spoken word poetry. That’s reality. You don’t have to like how it sounds to admit it’s true.

NHC

For a person called No Holy Cows, you have a lot of holy cows. You talk like an evangelical preacher telling me about God and the Truth

You accuse me of black-and-white thinking while insisting Israel’s data is gospel and Hamas’s is fabricated fiction. That’s not nuance. That’s just flipping the switch entirely in one direction to avoid discomfort.

No, I didn't. I didn't say that. Not at all.

You say Hamas’s charter justifies blockade and bombing. Their charter is vile, yes. But a document isn’t an airstrike. Real people live under that rule. Pretending two million lives are just an extension of a paragraph on paper isn’t realism. It’s moral laziness.

When a womans ex partner calls her and makes death threats... the police usually takes it seriously. I wonder why? What do you think?

You claim my refusal to dehumanize Palestinians is cowardice. No – it’s refusing to surrender my humanity in the name of someone else’s vengeance. That’s not ideological. That’s basic decency.

You're the one dehumanizing Palestinians. Who think they don't deserve peace and prosperity. Who is dehumanizing them? Palestinians has as much right to peace and safety... and human rights as anyone. And that will never happen as long as Hamas are in charge.

You defend journalists as doing their job while dismissing their casualty verification as worthless. Pick one. Either their reporting means something, or it’s propaganda. You can’t hide behind both.

Again... black and white thinking. Journalists write stories. They take available data... often incomplete... and weave stories. Narratives. They do this while it is happening. In almost every story it takes weeks, years or months to have an accurate picture of what is going on. But we don't want to wait. We want the news ASAP. In order to do that, journalists need to pick one perspective and just run with it. That's just the reality of writing news. But I think you know this. I suspect you're just pretending to be retarded, in the above paragraph, so it fits your black and white model of the world, making it easier to write a punchy text.

You're essentially writing a propaganda text. Please don't.

You call me loony for distinguishing civilians from fighters. International law calls that the foundation of war ethics. Your dismissal says more about you than it does about me.

I'm calling you a loony because it's like you're demanding that the IDF have psychic powers. Hamas fighters are not fighting in uniforms. They fight in civilian clothing. The inevitable result is that loads of civilians get killed. It also means that the IDF has to treat all Gazan civilians as if they are potential fighters. Which is bad for the civilians.

Do you now understand why soldiers fight in uniforms? It's to protect civilians from being targetted.

All Hamas soldiers have uniforms. They put them on when not fighting and posing for cameras. Like during the hostage exchanges.

You say Israel commits no war crimes because they’re “doing a great job.” Doing a “great job” at war doesn’t erase obligations to civilians caught underneath. That’s the line between moral force and brutality.

I think they're doing the best job they can given the situation.

You shrug off UNRWA’s existence with “no,” ignoring that Israel itself coordinates with them for aid. That’s reality. Your refusal to engage with it is intellectual laziness wrapped in snark.

I was sharing the reason Israel gives for not cooperating with UNRWA. I have no way of judging whether its true or not. Neither can you.

You call it “intellectual rigour” to claim Hamas both overcounts and undercounts deaths. No. That’s just a failsafe to reject any number that challenges your comfort.

No, it isn't. It's intellectual honesty. You should try it some time.

You accuse me of black-and-white fallacies again while insisting your position is purely pragmatic. But cheering a strategy that buries thousands more children to “prevent deaths later” isn’t pragmatism. It’s moral surrender rationalized as strategy.

Yes, I am. No it isn't.

And finally, you call me a preacher with holy cows because I refuse to treat children under rubble as abstractions. That’s fine. Call it preaching. I’d rather preach decency than sermonize indifference.

NHC

I think that's what you are doing. I think you ignore reality. Instead you insert some leftist fantasy. Well... when people are dying engaging with reality is what stops the violence. Not the crap you are doing.

You say you didn’t claim Israel’s data is gospel and Hamas’s is fiction. But every reply you give treats it that way. If both sides’ data is worthless, where exactly are your “harm reduction” calculations coming from? Vibes aren’t analysis.

You compare Hamas’s charter to a violent ex making threats. Sure, threats matter. But if your solution to a threat is to burn down the entire neighborhood the ex lives in, don’t pretend that’s protective logic. That’s collective punishment with a moral fig leaf.

You accuse me of dehumanizing Palestinians by criticizing Hamas. That’s projection. I believe Palestinians deserve peace, dignity, and freedom. You’re the one endorsing policies that bury them under rubble in the name of “liberation.”

You lecture me about journalism’s imperfections while calling me retarded in the same breath. Their reporting isn’t perfect – no war reporting is – but dismissing all verification as “just stories” while selectively quoting what fits your narrative isn’t nuance. It’s rhetorical convenience.

You call me loony for demanding distinction between fighters and civilians. Geneva doesn’t demand psychic powers. It demands due diligence and proportionate targeting. Hamas fighting in civilian clothes is a war crime, yes. But that doesn’t magically turn every civilian into a target. That’s the difference between moral force and moral collapse.

You say Israel’s doing the best job possible. Maybe. But “best possible” and “legal and moral” aren’t synonyms. Your bar is set at operational efficiency, not ethical legitimacy.

You claim you don’t know if UNRWA is infiltrated. Exactly. You don’t know. But you still parrot the line that justifies starving people who rely on their aid.

You call claiming both overcount and undercount “intellectual honesty.” No. It’s a failsafe rejection button. Heads you win, tails they lose. That’s not rigorous. It’s evasive.

You shrug off burying thousands of children to “prevent deaths later” as pragmatic. That isn’t realism. That’s moral cowardice rebranded as tough-minded strategy.

Finally, you say my arguments are leftist fantasy. Reality is civilians dying by the thousands. You call it necessary. I call it a catastrophe we’re morally obligated to stop. If that sounds like preaching to you, fine. I’d rather preach decency than excuse indifference.

NHC

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You say Gaza has always been a dysfunctional shit show, so why trust its casualty numbers now. But here’s the problem with that framing: you’re using Gaza’s poverty, isolation, and destroyed infrastructure – conditions imposed in large part by the blockade and repeated bombardments – as proof that its people can’t even count their dead. That’s not an argument. That’s dehumanization masquerading as skepticism.

Doesn't matter if it's destroyed infrastructure causes bad data, it's still bad data. And it's been bad data back before the war, also.

You say “there’s plenty of evidence Hamas manipulates numbers,” but you don’t cite any. You mention fighters getting journalist accreditation to pad dead journalist counts. Where’s your evidence? Because every major strike killing journalists has been confirmed by their employers and international press organizations. Are Reuters, AP, Al Jazeera, and NBC all in on Hamas’ scheme?

Al Jazeera is under the same hat. They're not merely in on it, they're part of it. Things like showing video of the "500 dead" hospital "strike"--that actually cut off a few seconds before it happened and thus was inherently incapable of showing it. You remember the one? The next day we see a little mark on the pavement, lots of minor damage. Rocket mishap, not bomb. But hospital--because they were firing the rockets from the hospital parking lot. And they tried to pretend that it was an Iron Dome intercept--except Iron Dome is purely a terminal phase system that would never be fired at a rocket taking off, and even if it was it would take time for the interceptor to get there. Nobody has any system that could have killed the rocket while it was still by the parking lot. Not even Sprint could have done it (not that there would be any left by now) and some hypothetical that could would have plowed into something. It's not a video game where stuff goes boom and vanishes.

And the rest--you want to report from Gaza, you say what Hamas tells you to say.

You claim “any Hamas official is also a fighter.” That’s not analysis. That’s propaganda designed to erase the category of civilian altogether. Under international law, a civil administrator is not a combatant unless directly engaged in hostilities. Calling them fighters doesn’t make it true – it just justifies killing them in your mind.

That's how it works. All members of a military organization are considered fighters even if their job doesn't involve a gun.

You say UNRWA staff are Hamas fighters, some of whom took part in October 7th. Israeli intelligence alleged some staff involvement, but you generalize that to the entire organization, whose aid convoys are coordinated with Israel daily. If you actually cared about civilian welfare, you wouldn’t cheer the destruction of the only institution providing food, shelter, and education to children in Gaza.

The thing is they were basically under Hamas control.

You argue that Hamas “both lowballs and overshoots” death counts. Which is it? You’re claiming their numbers are too low and too high in the same breath to avoid acknowledging that mass death is happening. That’s not skepticism. That’s intellectual evasion.

We know lots of people are dying. That doesn't make Israel's actions wrong.

Finally, you say the medical system has collapsed so casualty counts are meaningless. But you ignore that the numbers are compiled not just by hospitals but by civil defense crews recovering bodies from rubble, by international aid organizations, and by satellite evidence of mass graves. Israel itself has never denied mass casualties – it just blames Hamas.

Satellites count how many bodies are in a mass grave? How about nope. They simply do not have the resolution. The best data you can get from commercial satellites is 20cm. With just the right angle you might be able to count traditional coffin shapes. Bodies, no way. Note that Google Earth integrates a lot of stuff from airplanes, it is not an indication of what satellite imagery can do.

The reality is this: dismissing every death count as “just made up” is comforting if you don’t want to face the moral implications of what’s being done in Gaza. But bodies don’t vanish because you question paperwork. Parents burying their children aren’t statistics to them. They’re the final proof.

Because in the end, this isn’t about whether Hamas counts perfectly. It’s about the fact that there are too many bodies to count.

NHC

And you fail to recognize that a lot of bodies is not proof of wrong.

 

[NoHolyCows]

You say Gaza has always been a dysfunctional shit show, so why trust its casualty numbers now. But here’s the problem with that framing: you’re using Gaza’s poverty, isolation, and destroyed infrastructure – conditions imposed in large part by the blockade and repeated bombardments – as proof that its people can’t even count their dead. That’s not an argument. That’s dehumanization masquerading as skepticism.

Doesn't matter if it's destroyed infrastructure causes bad data, it's still bad data. And it's been bad data back before the war, also.

You say “there’s plenty of evidence Hamas manipulates numbers,” but you don’t cite any. You mention fighters getting journalist accreditation to pad dead journalist counts. Where’s your evidence? Because every major strike killing journalists has been confirmed by their employers and international press organizations. Are Reuters, AP, Al Jazeera, and NBC all in on Hamas’ scheme?

Al Jazeera is under the same hat. They're not merely in on it, they're part of it. Things like showing video of the "500 dead" hospital "strike"--that actually cut off a few seconds before it happened and thus was inherently incapable of showing it. You remember the one? The next day we see a little mark on the pavement, lots of minor damage. Rocket mishap, not bomb. But hospital--because they were firing the rockets from the hospital parking lot. And they tried to pretend that it was an Iron Dome intercept--except Iron Dome is purely a terminal phase system that would never be fired at a rocket taking off, and even if it was it would take time for the interceptor to get there. Nobody has any system that could have killed the rocket while it was still by the parking lot. Not even Sprint could have done it (not that there would be any left by now) and some hypothetical that could would have plowed into something. It's not a video game where stuff goes boom and vanishes.

And the rest--you want to report from Gaza, you say what Hamas tells you to say.

You claim “any Hamas official is also a fighter.” That’s not analysis. That’s propaganda designed to erase the category of civilian altogether. Under international law, a civil administrator is not a combatant unless directly engaged in hostilities. Calling them fighters doesn’t make it true – it just justifies killing them in your mind.

That's how it works. All members of a military organization are considered fighters even if their job doesn't involve a gun.

You say UNRWA staff are Hamas fighters, some of whom took part in October 7th. Israeli intelligence alleged some staff involvement, but you generalize that to the entire organization, whose aid convoys are coordinated with Israel daily. If you actually cared about civilian welfare, you wouldn’t cheer the destruction of the only institution providing food, shelter, and education to children in Gaza.

The thing is they were basically under Hamas control.

You argue that Hamas “both lowballs and overshoots” death counts. Which is it? You’re claiming their numbers are too low and too high in the same breath to avoid acknowledging that mass death is happening. That’s not skepticism. That’s intellectual evasion.

We know lots of people are dying. That doesn't make Israel's actions wrong.

Finally, you say the medical system has collapsed so casualty counts are meaningless. But you ignore that the numbers are compiled not just by hospitals but by civil defense crews recovering bodies from rubble, by international aid organizations, and by satellite evidence of mass graves. Israel itself has never denied mass casualties – it just blames Hamas.

Satellites count how many bodies are in a mass grave? How about nope. They simply do not have the resolution. The best data you can get from commercial satellites is 20cm. With just the right angle you might be able to count traditional coffin shapes. Bodies, no way. Note that Google Earth integrates a lot of stuff from airplanes, it is not an indication of what satellite imagery can do.

The reality is this: dismissing every death count as “just made up” is comforting if you don’t want to face the moral implications of what’s being done in Gaza. But bodies don’t vanish because you question paperwork. Parents burying their children aren’t statistics to them. They’re the final proof.

Because in the end, this isn’t about whether Hamas counts perfectly. It’s about the fact that there are too many bodies to count.

NHC

And you fail to recognize that a lot of bodies is not proof of wrong.

You say bad data is still bad, no matter the cause. True – but dismissing it outright without acknowledging why it’s incomplete isn’t skepticism, it’s moral abdication. Gaza’s infrastructure was shattered by blockade and bombs. Acting like bad data emerges from cultural incompetence rather than imposed destruction is dehumanizing, whether you admit it or not.

You call Al Jazeera part of Hamas because they showed the hospital strike clip. That’s not evidence of complicity; it’s evidence that war reporting is messy, immediate, and flawed. The footage didn’t “cut off to hide anything” – it just didn’t catch the explosion. You’re dissecting timeline frames while ignoring 500 corpses claimed. Whether the count was wrong doesn’t erase the crux: civilians died in a war that has no moral brakes left.

You say journalists “report what Hamas tells them to.” Yet every major newsroom corroborates deaths through independent local staff, NGOs, morgue workers, and family interviews. Are all of them Hamas puppets in your mind? Or does dismissing them keep your narrative simpler?

You claim every Hamas administrator is a fighter. That’s false under international law. The guy issuing birth certificates isn’t a combatant. The teacher running a Hamas-funded school isn’t a target. You reduce an entire civilian bureaucracy to “valid kills” to avoid grappling with moral complexity.

You shrug off UNRWA’s destruction because they were “basically under Hamas control.” That’s convenient. Israel still coordinates with UNRWA because without them, children starve. If you cared about civilians, you’d acknowledge that cutting off their only lifeline punishes the powerless, not Hamas leaders.

You say “lots of people are dying” but it doesn’t make Israel’s actions wrong. Numbers alone don’t define war crimes, yes. But you refuse to examine proportionality, intent, or alternatives. You wave away mass death because admitting its weight might crack your moral certainty.

You scoff at satellite evidence of mass graves because of resolution limits. Sure, satellites can’t count corpses by the inch, but imagery analysis can identify new burial zones, disturbed earth, grave expansions, and correlates that align with field reports. You know this. Dismissing it wholesale isn’t rigor, it’s selective skepticism to protect your comfort zone.

And finally, you say “a lot of bodies is not proof of wrong.” True. But a lot of bodies is proof that something catastrophic is happening. The difference between us is that I see that as a call to accountability. You see it as an acceptable cost.

NHC

 

[DrZoidberg]

You say you’d love an answer but reject every proposal as “shit.” Maybe because any real solution requires giving up the comfort of domination.

View attachment 51287

To Lauren

View attachment 51289

That comic strip is applicable to anyone on this forum. Are you enjoying your exceptionally windy glass house?

Glass houses, huh? Yours is built on “Hamas is evil, so anything we do is justified.” Throw all the comics you want – it doesn’t make that any less hollow.

NHC

No it isn't. My stance is built on harm reduction. Whatever leads to the least amount of pain and misery for most people is what we should do.

There's nothing you can say that will convince me that the correct stance toward Hitler or Putin is to stay away and just let them get on with it. As if that would have made the world a safer place. Remember... Hamas is Iran. It's not a small defenceless country. It's a powerful and wealthy oil nation, putting it's full might behind Hamas. In your mind it seems like you picture Israel as Goliath, and the Palestinians as David. While in reality Iran is the Goliath and Israel is David. A Goliath that only cares about the destruction of Israel. They do not care about the wellbeing of Gazans. Hamas treats any lives as expendable.

You call it harm reduction, but there’s nothing humane about shifting all harm onto people trapped with no way out. That isn’t reducing pain – it’s deciding whose pain you’re willing to ignore.

I get it. Hamas is vile. Iran is dangerous. But bombing children in Gaza isn’t stopping Hitler or Putin. It’s not stopping Iran’s power either. It’s just burying kids to send a message to Tehran, and calling that strategy doesn’t make it any less brutal.

Yes, Iran props up Hamas. But Gaza isn’t Iran. It’s two million ordinary people, half of them kids, stuck under a regime they didn’t choose and a blockade they can’t escape. Pretending they’re enemy soldiers is just a way to make this all easier to stomach.

And your David and Goliath analogy? Come on. Israel is a nuclear power with one of the strongest militaries on earth. Iran is a threat, sure. But the people in Gaza aren’t Goliath just because Iran wires money to Hamas. They’re just the ones crushed between giants.

You’re right about one thing though: Hamas treats their lives as expendable. But if your solution treats them the same way, how are you any different?

NHC

Israel doesn't. That idea is just media spin imho

I've been very impressed by how Israel have been handling themselves throughout this whole conflict

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You say you don’t trust any numbers. Fine. But understand what that really means: if you refuse to believe any data, you leave yourself with nothing except assumptions shaped by your own fears and loyalties. That’s not realism. It’s intellectual surrender dressed up as skepticism.

The thing is it doesn't matter. The Hamas numbers are only 3x the Israel combatant numbers. We get a good enough impression without worrying about the details. Yes, civilians are dying. But even the Hamas data shows Israel is doing a very good job of protecting civilians. Why do we need any more than that?

You blame Gaza’s dysfunction entirely on Hamas, ignoring the blockade, bombings, economic strangulation, and decades of occupation that created the vacuum Hamas exploited. Yes, Hamas is brutal and corrupt. But your narrative pretends they emerged in a void, not in a cage built by external powers and filled with despair.

We look at history. Gaza's economy cratered with the second intifada. That says an awful lot about who caused it.

You say journalists are scraping the barrel for data, implying they’re complicit in falsehoods. But you provide no evidence that major newsrooms are inflating deaths. You dismiss their verification processes because acknowledging them would undercut your claim that no one knows anything.

Are you a farmer? Because once again you're attacking a strawman.

The journalists have no good information, they're publishing what they have because nothing is worse to a news organization than not having "answers", truth is very much secondary to having something. We are not saying they newsrooms are inflating deaths, we are saying they are repeating the inflated counts from Hamas.

And you had just recognized my point about the verification clearly not being present--yet you turn around and talk about their "verification" process as if it exists. Nobody who was actually verifying would have missed the bad data, but none of them caught it. Therefore they were not verifying and anyone who says they did is lying. (Israel wasn't verifying, they were just looking for demonstrably wrong stuff.)

You cite unverified Israeli intelligence about UNRWA infiltration as proof the entire organization is a Hamas front. Meanwhile, Israel itself continues to coordinate with UNRWA for aid distribution even during this war. Your narrative overwrites reality to preserve a clean villain without complication.

It's not a Hamas front, it's just been heavily subverted by Hamas.

You say “who is cheering” the destruction of UNRWA. You are. Every time you call them a Hamas wing without evidence, you lay rhetorical groundwork to justify targeting the only institution feeding children under siege.

Providing enough to pretend to be doing their job.

You claim Hamas both overcounts and undercounts deaths. That’s not logic. That’s an all-purpose excuse to deny any number they produce, no matter what it is. It’s not intellectual rigor. It’s an escape hatch from moral responsibility.

What's impossible about it? Hamas doesn't know the real numbers, they pull inflated numbers from their ass. The data is made to conform to the desired result.

You argue Gaza’s population data is inaccurate because of smuggling and border chaos. Of course it’s imperfect. All warzone data is. But you treat imperfection as license to dismiss all quantification, because counting deaths risks confronting what you’ve chosen not to see.

We are not objecting to counting. We are objecting to pretending to count.

Finally, you say “One dead person is a horrific tragedy. Let’s hope Israel wins ASAP so more people won’t die.” But if one death is too many, why cheer a strategy guaranteeing thousands more? That’s not hope. That’s just resignation wrapped in moral theater.

You're cheering a strategy that guarantees more 10/7s.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You’re not actually addressing the argument, just reframing it to avoid accountability. Saying I’m “using dead bodies as a metric” ignores the main issue: we’re talking about human lives, not propaganda tools. You’re so focused on how Hamas might exploit civilian deaths that you’ve dehumanized those civilians entirely. By your bullshit, the mere fact that a bad actor benefits from outrage means we should shut our eyes to the outrage itself. That’s moral cowardice, not clarity. It's the same excuse white supremacists use to dismiss police brutality 'Oh, they’re just stoking outrage to manipulate the system.' You’re not standing for principle; you're rationalizing indifference. When the moral cost of war becomes inconvenient, your response is to blame the people pointing it out. That’s not analysis. That’s just white supremacy garbage dressed up as strategy.

And you're still falling for Goodhart's Law. You see dead bodies, you blame Israel. Hamas wants you to blame Israel, they create more dead bodies. I'm not dehumanizing them, I'm recognizing why they came to die. I'm looking at how do we avoid the next one rather than in putting blame for the last one.

 

[TomC]

You're cheering a strategy that guarantees more 10/7s.

Worse.
It's supporting a strategy that will keep Palestinians in a position of being most useful as human shields.
That's what will guarantee more civilian casualties and infrastructure destruction.
Tom

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

No it isn't. My stance is built on harm reduction. Whatever leads to the least amount of pain and misery for most people is what we should do.

You supported siege tactics for the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. That is not remotely compatible with your "whatever leads to the least amount of pain and misery for most people" claim.

 

[NoHolyCows]

You say you’d love an answer but reject every proposal as “shit.” Maybe because any real solution requires giving up the comfort of domination.

View attachment 51287

To Lauren

View attachment 51289

That comic strip is applicable to anyone on this forum. Are you enjoying your exceptionally windy glass house?

Glass houses, huh? Yours is built on “Hamas is evil, so anything we do is justified.” Throw all the comics you want – it doesn’t make that any less hollow.

NHC

No it isn't. My stance is built on harm reduction. Whatever leads to the least amount of pain and misery for most people is what we should do.

There's nothing you can say that will convince me that the correct stance toward Hitler or Putin is to stay away and just let them get on with it. As if that would have made the world a safer place. Remember... Hamas is Iran. It's not a small defenceless country. It's a powerful and wealthy oil nation, putting it's full might behind Hamas. In your mind it seems like you picture Israel as Goliath, and the Palestinians as David. While in reality Iran is the Goliath and Israel is David. A Goliath that only cares about the destruction of Israel. They do not care about the wellbeing of Gazans. Hamas treats any lives as expendable.

You call it harm reduction, but there’s nothing humane about shifting all harm onto people trapped with no way out. That isn’t reducing pain – it’s deciding whose pain you’re willing to ignore.

I get it. Hamas is vile. Iran is dangerous. But bombing children in Gaza isn’t stopping Hitler or Putin. It’s not stopping Iran’s power either. It’s just burying kids to send a message to Tehran, and calling that strategy doesn’t make it any less brutal.

Yes, Iran props up Hamas. But Gaza isn’t Iran. It’s two million ordinary people, half of them kids, stuck under a regime they didn’t choose and a blockade they can’t escape. Pretending they’re enemy soldiers is just a way to make this all easier to stomach.

And your David and Goliath analogy? Come on. Israel is a nuclear power with one of the strongest militaries on earth. Iran is a threat, sure. But the people in Gaza aren’t Goliath just because Iran wires money to Hamas. They’re just the ones crushed between giants.

You’re right about one thing though: Hamas treats their lives as expendable. But if your solution treats them the same way, how are you any different?

NHC

Israel doesn't. That idea is just media spin imho

I've been very impressed by how Israel have been handling themselves throughout this whole conflict

You say Israel doesn’t treat Palestinian lives as expendable, that it’s just media spin. But thousands of civilians buried under rubble aren’t a narrative. They’re reality. You can admire Israeli restraint relative to what’s possible in total war, sure – but don’t pretend mass civilian death is just PR distortion. Those bodies exist, whether you choose to see them or not.

You’re “impressed by how Israel has handled itself.” That’s telling. You measure morality by operational discipline rather than human cost. You see proportional destruction and call it impressive; I see children dying under airstrikes and call it a moral catastrophe. That’s the difference between strategy worship and human decency.

Because at the end of the day, if your standard for “doing well” in war leaves entire neighborhoods flattened and half a population displaced or starving, you might want to rethink what exactly you’re applauding.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

You say you don’t trust any numbers. Fine. But understand what that really means: if you refuse to believe any data, you leave yourself with nothing except assumptions shaped by your own fears and loyalties. That’s not realism. It’s intellectual surrender dressed up as skepticism.

The thing is it doesn't matter. The Hamas numbers are only 3x the Israel combatant numbers. We get a good enough impression without worrying about the details. Yes, civilians are dying. But even the Hamas data shows Israel is doing a very good job of protecting civilians. Why do we need any more than that?

You blame Gaza’s dysfunction entirely on Hamas, ignoring the blockade, bombings, economic strangulation, and decades of occupation that created the vacuum Hamas exploited. Yes, Hamas is brutal and corrupt. But your narrative pretends they emerged in a void, not in a cage built by external powers and filled with despair.

We look at history. Gaza's economy cratered with the second intifada. That says an awful lot about who caused it.

You say journalists are scraping the barrel for data, implying they’re complicit in falsehoods. But you provide no evidence that major newsrooms are inflating deaths. You dismiss their verification processes because acknowledging them would undercut your claim that no one knows anything.

Are you a farmer? Because once again you're attacking a strawman.

The journalists have no good information, they're publishing what they have because nothing is worse to a news organization than not having "answers", truth is very much secondary to having something. We are not saying they newsrooms are inflating deaths, we are saying they are repeating the inflated counts from Hamas.

And you had just recognized my point about the verification clearly not being present--yet you turn around and talk about their "verification" process as if it exists. Nobody who was actually verifying would have missed the bad data, but none of them caught it. Therefore they were not verifying and anyone who says they did is lying. (Israel wasn't verifying, they were just looking for demonstrably wrong stuff.)

You cite unverified Israeli intelligence about UNRWA infiltration as proof the entire organization is a Hamas front. Meanwhile, Israel itself continues to coordinate with UNRWA for aid distribution even during this war. Your narrative overwrites reality to preserve a clean villain without complication.

It's not a Hamas front, it's just been heavily subverted by Hamas.

You say “who is cheering” the destruction of UNRWA. You are. Every time you call them a Hamas wing without evidence, you lay rhetorical groundwork to justify targeting the only institution feeding children under siege.

Providing enough to pretend to be doing their job.

You claim Hamas both overcounts and undercounts deaths. That’s not logic. That’s an all-purpose excuse to deny any number they produce, no matter what it is. It’s not intellectual rigor. It’s an escape hatch from moral responsibility.

What's impossible about it? Hamas doesn't know the real numbers, they pull inflated numbers from their ass. The data is made to conform to the desired result.

You argue Gaza’s population data is inaccurate because of smuggling and border chaos. Of course it’s imperfect. All warzone data is. But you treat imperfection as license to dismiss all quantification, because counting deaths risks confronting what you’ve chosen not to see.

We are not objecting to counting. We are objecting to pretending to count.

Finally, you say “One dead person is a horrific tragedy. Let’s hope Israel wins ASAP so more people won’t die.” But if one death is too many, why cheer a strategy guaranteeing thousands more? That’s not hope. That’s just resignation wrapped in moral theater.

You're cheering a strategy that guarantees more 10/7s.

You say Hamas’s numbers are only 3x Israel’s claimed combatant deaths, so it proves Israel is doing a good job. You’re praising an outcome where thousands of civilians are still dead, as if proportional carnage is moral success. That’s not harm reduction. That’s moral arithmetic that erases human lives under acceptable ratios.

You say Gaza’s economy cratered with the Second Intifada, implying Palestinians deserved the consequences. You ignore what preceded it: decades of occupation, land seizure, economic dependency engineered under Oslo, and collective punishment policies that left them desperate enough to revolt. You read history backwards to absolve the powerful.

You call my journalism point a strawman while dismissing all verification because it didn’t catch every error. That’s not skepticism. That’s a standard designed to ensure nothing is ever credible. Wartime reporting is imperfect, yes, but refusing to engage with any number because it’s not perfect just insulates your worldview from inconvenient truths.

You admit UNRWA isn’t a Hamas front but say it’s subverted. Fine – but you still generalize that subversion to justify dismantling an organization that feeds and educates children. That’s not nuance. That’s rhetorical cover for collective punishment.

You call their aid “just enough to pretend.” You think starving children care if their rice was handed out by a subverted UN agency or a pure one? You’re punishing the vulnerable to make a political point.

You say Hamas both overcounts and undercounts because “they don’t know the real numbers and pull inflated ones from their ass.” That’s convenient. It means you can dismiss any figure no matter what it shows. It’s not analysis. It’s preemptive rejection of accountability.

You object to “pretending to count” rather than actual counting. But rejecting every attempt to quantify death because it’s incomplete is a dodge. You don’t want honest counting. You want plausible deniability.

Finally, you say my stance guarantees more 10/7s. But flattening Gaza guarantees endless cycles of rage, recruitment, and revenge. You’re not preventing future attacks. You’re planting them – in the rubble, in mass graves, in children growing up knowing their lives were weighed and found expendable.

NHC

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Finally, you say “One dead person is a horrific tragedy. Let’s hope Israel wins ASAP so more people won’t die.” But if one death is too many, why cheer a strategy guaranteeing thousands more? That’s not hope. That’s just resignation wrapped in moral theater.

You're cheering a strategy that guarantees more 10/7s.

You are smart enough to know a false-dichotomy when you see it.

To make matters worse, you've already said that you think more 10/7s are inevitable as is, so this is about pushing it back. So how can you tell NoHolyCows that he is a cheering a strategy for more 10/7s, when you have conceded what Netanyahu's response is, isn't going to stop more 10/7s?

I think, in hindsight, Netanyahu's response to 10/7 has been a lot more cerebral than first understood, regarding Iran. Israel put into place a plan that took out Hezbollah and generally weakened the Houthis to a point where they were capable of then going on the offensive directly in Iran, with much less risk at home. That said, it has been over 18 months of attacks on Gaza, which doesn't appear to have been remotely as guided by intricate planning as the staged responses by the IDF on the other targets.

 

[DrZoidberg]

No it isn't. My stance is built on harm reduction. Whatever leads to the least amount of pain and misery for most people is what we should do.

You supported siege tactics for the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. That is not remotely compatible with your "whatever leads to the least amount of pain and misery for most people" claim.

If we have zero tolerance for hostage taking we remove the incentives for taking hostages.

Israel is now in the process of making Palestinians think that its not worth it. And supporting Hamas is not worth it

 

[laughing dog]

I've been very impressed by how Israel have been handling themselves throughout this whole conflict

That is a reflection on you not Israel.

 

[NoHolyCows]

No it isn't. My stance is built on harm reduction. Whatever leads to the least amount of pain and misery for most people is what we should do.

You supported siege tactics for the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. That is not remotely compatible with your "whatever leads to the least amount of pain and misery for most people" claim.

If we have zero tolerance for hostage taking we remove the incentives for taking hostages.

Israel is now in the process of making Palestinians think that its not worth it. And supporting Hamas is not worth it

Zero tolerance for hostage-taking isn’t what’s happening here. You’re confusing punishing hostage-takers with punishing the entire population they hide among. Blowing up apartment blocks doesn’t deter hostage-taking. It teaches people that their lives are disposable, whether they supported Hamas or not.

If your strategy for stopping hostage-taking is to make two million people suffer until they break, that’s not deterrence. That’s collective punishment repackaged as moral clarity. And history shows it backfires every time. You don’t erase incentives for resistance by inflicting mass despair. You guarantee it.

NHC

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

No it isn't. My stance is built on harm reduction. Whatever leads to the least amount of pain and misery for most people is what we should do.

You supported siege tactics for the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. That is not remotely compatible with your "whatever leads to the least amount of pain and misery for most people" claim.

If we have zero tolerance for hostage taking we remove the incentives for taking hostages.

Israel is now in the process of making Palestinians think that its not worth it. And supporting Hamas is not worth it

I can understand that being an argument.

However, it is still incompatible with your claim that you support "whatever leads to the least amount of pain and misery for most people." It is compatible with a "whatever leads to the least amount of pain and misery for most people, except when....".

 

[laughing dog]

You're cheering a strategy that guarantees more 10/7s.

So are you.

 

[TomC]

You're cheering a strategy that guarantees more 10/7s.

So are you.

Why would you say that?

Destroying the military strike capabilities of a violent Muslim supremacy organization probably won't result in more violent Muslim supremacy terrorism.

Continuing the indoctrination of Muslims into the violent Islamic supremacy probably will, but that's not the same thing.
Tom