New articles coming thick and fast. Telegraph yesterday, Australian Spectator today. I genuinely think civilian casualties in Gaza are under 10,000. 1) Look at the displacement of millions, all over the three main conurbations. You may not like it, but it has undeniably saved their lives. Now throw in the millions of SMS messages, phone calls, “door knocks” and tactical pauses the IDF have given to persuade civilians to evacuate. Hamas forcing people to stay behind notwithstanding, that has to have had some effect and this is seen in the numbers of evacuations. IDF soldiers tell me they’re fighting in ghost towns. 2) If we start with the 38,000-odd claimed, we can take off the 10,000 from random media sources and online reporting forms. Add in the compensation incentive for having lost a relative and those numbers lack any credibility. Let’s be *very* generous and give them half of that for bodies under rubble. That’s 33,000. 3) Now take off expected natural deaths in a population of 2.4million over 9 months. Call it 4,500. That’s 28,500 deaths. 4) Now take off Hamas fighters killed. Nobody credibly disputes that it’s in the 15-20,000 range at this point. All of a sudden that’s 8,500-13,500 civilian deaths. Add some leeway for Hamas’ famous over-reporting, and their stated strategy of maximising deaths, and we’re around the 10,000 civilian deaths mark. And other than appeals to emotion and pictures of dead kids, I haven’t seen a credible counter to this argument yet. (And don’t even think about making me shred apart that joke of a Lancet article again.) https://t.co/Lf0EA3zLqL
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