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Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

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Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#21

Post by ciconia »

McNutty wrote: post #13
blurbleblurble wrote: post #6

I appreciate that this is on here and I hope we can collectively handle it. Tech isn't isolated from this situation, as difficult as it is to admit and talk about with civility and care. A US military software engineer even self immolated recently in protest of what's happening. I don't see what's happening in Gaza as being culturally particular to the specific identity groups involved here. It's a very human situati…

Strongly disagree. This platform for tech news should not become a place for political posts, nor even for posting regular news headlines. Yes we know that reddit sucks but stop trying to make hn into reddit. Also the community can't handle it, just look at the handful of comments we already have here.

> This platform for tech news should not become a place for political posts, nor even for posting regular news headlines.

What's a political post? What's "regular news"? And where do you draw the line? If not interested, you can just move on and ignore. There's plenty of AI articles all over the front page.

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#22

Post by g-b-r »

leereeves wrote: post #15
Qem wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be some level of occupational hazard, but surely not 3x as high when compared to people actually engaged in combat (Journalist:~75:1; Hamas militant:~25:1), and high enough to greatly deplete their numbers.

In those figures, "Hamas militant" actually means adult man. Nobody is identifying every person killed and checking against a list of Hamas members, they're just claiming every man killed belonged to Hamas.

[flagged]

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#23

Post by boppo1 »

leereeves wrote: post #15
Qem wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be some level of occupational hazard, but surely not 3x as high when compared to people actually engaged in combat (Journalist:~75:1; Hamas militant:~25:1), and high enough to greatly deplete their numbers.

In those figures, "Hamas militant" actually means adult man. Nobody is identifying every person killed and checking against a list of Hamas members, they're just claiming every man killed belonged to Hamas.

Is there a way to verify this? I tend to agree, but I have no way to be rigorously convinced.

For example, iirc Palestine health authority reports the names of all the civilians[0] that have been killed. I think the number is something like 30k. I frequently wonder if that number is simply exaggerated, as it would be in Palestine's interest to do so. However, if the number is supported by a corresponding list of the names of individuals, I would think the Israeli intelligence services would be incentivised and capable of refuting a significant enough number of false claims[1] to cast serious doubt upon the claimed number of civilian deaths.

To my knowledge, Israel has not done so, and so I don't doubt the number too much.

[0] As noted, it is extremely challenging to pin down whether or not someone is 'Hamas'. I assume Palestine is reporting all deaths as civilian, in the same way Israel seems to report them all as combatant.

[1] whether it is an individual that does not exist, perished prior to Oct 7. '23, or is still alive.

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#24

Post by dang »

leereeves wrote: post #16
dang wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN's standard about this question has been stable for many years: some stories with political overlap are both inevitable and in keeping with the mandate of the site. The question, when it comes to the biggest political topics, is which stories clear that bar. I've posted about this many times, including quite a few explanations specific to the current topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324 (Feb 2024) h…

If this topic merits discussion on HN, can you do something about the flagging? It seems like someone is flagging every comment to prevent discussion.

Edit: oh, you were asking about comments. In my haste I missed that and thought you were asking about submissions.

There are lots of comments in this thread that aren't flagged, so discussion isn't being prevented. It's true that a lot of the earlier comments were flagged, but that was (or should be) because they were flamebait. It's one of the downsides of internet commenting that the flameiest and most reflexive comments appear first in a thread—because those reactions are the quickest to flare up. Better, more reflective comments always take longer [1]. This goes 1000x for a topic like this one, unfortunately.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

-- original reply --

I've answered that several times in the links I listed; can you take a look and, if there's something specific I haven't addressed, let me know?

(I don't mean to be dismissive—it just takes a surprising amount of time to write those things and I can't do it at the moment.)

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#26

Post by g-b-r »

Besides the statistics I advise anyone to also look at the reports of how the individual deaths happened, I've seen them very little discussed in western media.

There's often enough evidence to show an extremely likely deliberate killing (usually with weapons that Hamas doesn't have).

Journalists have been killed outside of the Gaza strip as well.

Just make your own informed opinion.

Furthermore, there have been so few western journalists on the ground because Israel (and Egypt) prevented them from entering, I think this prohibition alone should be considered unacceptable in the 21 century

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#27

Post by g-b-r »

boppo1 wrote: post #23
leereeves wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In those figures, "Hamas militant" actually means adult man. Nobody is identifying every person killed and checking against a list of Hamas members, they're just claiming every man killed belonged to Hamas.

Is there a way to verify this? I tend to agree, but I have no way to be rigorously convinced. For example, iirc Palestine health authority reports the names of all the civilians[0] that have been killed. I think the number is something like 30k. I frequently wonder if that number is simply exaggerated, as it would be in Palestine's interest to do so. However, if the number is supported by a corresponding list of the…

Yes unfortunately those are the identified and confirmed deaths, there are for sure many still buried under the rubble which are not accounted for.

Unfortunately it seems to be in Palestine's (and even Hamas) best interest to be truthful, in this case

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#28

Post by g-b-r »

ciconia wrote: post #25

> Around 10% of Gaza's journalists have been killed versus 2.5% of healthcare workers. One possible explanation is that journalists have a much higher probability of being close to where the fighting is, than healthcare workers.

That healthcare workers comparison does indeed not make much sense, it should be healthcare workers involved in retrieving the injured, which are indeed at very high risk (even though theoretically they shouldn't be targeted)

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#29

Post by simpletone »

ciconia wrote: post #25

> Around 10% of Gaza's journalists have been killed versus 2.5% of healthcare workers. One possible explanation is that journalists have a much higher probability of being close to where the fighting is, than healthcare workers.

10% would be considered an extremely high death rate for soldiers involved in the fighting. Even 2.5% for healthcare workers is ridiculously high.

Would be interesting to see what the death rates for journalists, medics, soldiers, etc was in afghan war, iraq war, vietnam war, etc. I highly doubt any reaches 10%.

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#30

Post by JumpCrisscross »

g-b-r wrote: post #26

Besides the statistics I advise anyone to also look at the reports of how the individual deaths happened, I've seen them very little discussed in western media. There's often enough evidence to show an extremely likely deliberate killing (usually with weapons that Hamas doesn't have). Journalists have been killed outside of the Gaza strip as well. Just make your own informed opinion. Furthermore, there have been so f…

> evidence to show an extremely likely deliberate killing

Do you have examples?

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