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0 pointsrichardfeynman8mo ago0 comments

Excuse me, but my initial claim is that there is no genocide in gaza because there is no massive population collapse. During the holocaust, 66% of european jewry was murdered in a systematic effort -- all civilians, with no Jews attacking European cities. The figures during the rwandan and armenian genocide were similar: massive population collapses.

Whether you believe there have been 100 births a day or 140 or 150 or 180, I have demonstrated that there were tens of thousands of births during the war in gaza, using credible sources like the UNOCHA and WHO. But even if you assume ZERO births, the gazan population will have only collapsed by roughly 60k people. I may be wrong about this, but I think this is an OVERESTIMATE, not an underestimate. While you don't have to believe me, I at least can make this claim without appealing to nameless ghosts under the rubble and can provide credible sources.

- The hamas figures are not an independent registry. The numbers are produced by a Hamas-run Ministry of Health—i.e., a belligerent party—without external audit. The UN, etc. do not independently verify these numbers; they simply repeat them. Even sympathetic explainers acknowledge the ministry is governed by Hamas and its routine updates aren’t independently verified.

- The system accepts public self-reports (initially via Google Forms, later an MoH web portal). That alone invites duplicates, misclassification, and bad data. Washington Institute documents the Google Form; it also cites the current MoH “report a death/missing” portal.

- The public reporting portal explicitly allows “natural death” submissions. When the same pipeline feeds the headline tally, non-combat, non-IDF deaths can (and did) get swept in. The live MoH form literally offers “martyr,” “missing,” or “natural death.” Mainstream reporting later noted removals where entries turned out to be natural deaths.

- the gaza ministry of health uses opaque and unreliable methods to count deaths (“media reports” + family notifications) with weak validation. Beyond hospital records, the MoH has relied on poorly specified “media reports” and family submissions; AP also notes names often come via the Hamas government media office—not hospital documentation. That’s not a chain of custody you can audit. It included the known false figures from the al ahli hospital incident.

- Totals and demographics are unstable and there have big retroactive corrections. The UN/OCHA famously halved its women/children figures in May 2024, and months later the MoH removed thousands of previously listed “victims,” with officials conceding some were natural deaths or living detainees. That volatility is incompatible with “hard” totals.

- The overall figure doesn’t separate civilians from combatants or assign cause of death. By design it bundles Hamas fighters, civilians, misfire casualties, indirect war deaths, and (as above) even natural deaths—so it cannot answer the key question “how many Gazans were killed by Israel.”

Sources: Source: https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/untangli...

Source: https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/sites/default/files/pdf/...

Source: https://sehatty.ps/moh-registration/public/add-order

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/hundreds-of-names-removed-from-of...

Source: https://www.euronews.com/2025/04/03/hamas-run-health-ministr...

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-says-gaza-death...

Source: https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-health-mini...

0 comments

konmok8mo ago

Thank you for providing sources. I do find it interesting that the Washington Institute report concludes by saying that the Gaza Health Ministry's list of deaths is generally considered accurate, and that list currently includes more than 60,000 names.

But maybe you're right! Maybe the very sources you're relying on are wrong, and only 50,000 or so Gazans have died. That still doesn't mean this isn't a genocide.

The argument is that Gaza is currently undergoing a genocide, not that the genocide is already complete. If we were to have this argument about the Holocaust in 1942 or so, you could similarly say that only a small percentage of European Jews have died so far, therefore it can't be a genocide. In the case of Palestine, give Israel another decade of unchecked brutality and I'm sure they can attain your high standards for human extermination.

richardfeynmanOP8mo ago

The sources I provided show that there are severe problems with the Gaza Health Ministry list. You may find particular sentences that show the top-line number is correct, and indeed that may be true. I provided those sources not to show that 60k is the wrong number of dead--a figure I myself used in my initial comment--but rather to show that the list itself has issues and that arguments can be made that it's an overestimate rather than an underestimate. I agree the actual figure is difficult to pin down. There's no need for snarkiness ("Maybe you're right and your sources are wrong.") in a discussion like this, where the goal is to discover truth on a complex, emotional issue.

The bottom line is that whether you believe 60k people died or 100k people died, and whether you believe 60k people were born or 100k people were born, there has been nothing close to a population collapse in Gaza. Indeed, the population appears to have risen. Therefore, if you're going to make the argument that there is an ongoing genocide, you're going to have to also admit (as it appears you now do) that Gaza's population has either risen during this alleged genocide, or decreased by a small amount.

There are additional hurdles for those claming a genocide: (1) why has Israel dropped millions of leaflets to warn of impending attacks?; (2) why has israel sent millions of text messages warning of impending attacks?; (3) why has israel ordered evacuations of combat zones prior to attacking; (4) why has israel set up refugee camps/ safe zones; (5) why has Israel supplied so much aid to a civilian population you claim it's trying to kill; (6) why has its genocide been so incompetent and long-lasting if it could accomplish its alleged genocidal goal in a week; (7) what % of those killed are terrorists?; (8) why is the civilian:combatant death ratio so low; and I can go on forever. You may have respones to some of these questions, and we can debate these, but perhaps it's not necessary. The argument for genocide is one of those "emperor has no clothes" issues. People say it with such confidence, as though it's common knowledge (and indeed it is widely believed), but that doesn't mean it's true, or that the emperor has clothing.

Finally, by the end of 1942, the Nazis had killed 30% of european jewry, 3 million innocent civilians. There was already a clear genocide, which the world ignored. The inverse is true today: there is no clear genocide, but most of the world maintains it is.

user9828mo ago

> (1) why has Israel dropped millions of leaflets to warn of impending attacks?; (2) why has israel sent millions of text messages warning of impending attacks?;

These are the kinds of leaflets dropped by Israel: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250220-israel-drops-leaf... https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/israel-opt-is...

"The world map will not change if all the people of Gaza cease to exist. No one will feel for you, and no one will ask about you. You have been left alone to face your inevitable fate. Iran cannot even protect itself, let alone protect you, and you have seen with your own eyes what has happened. Neither America nor Europe care about Gaza in any way. Even your Arab countries, which are now our allies, provide us with money and weapons while sending you only shrouds.

"There is little time left — the game is almost over."

So, to your question, the primary purpose of these leaflets is to terrorize and threaten the population. The secondary purpose is to have hasbarists like yourself pretend that they are evidence of humanitarian magnanimity.

> (3) why has israel ordered evacuations of combat zones prior to attacking; (4) why has israel set up refugee camps/ safe zones;

"[Forensic Architecture] has documented a pattern in which civilians have been directed to move to certain areas by official evacuation orders, only for the Israeli military to attack those same areas shortly afterwards, either on the same day as the evacuation order, or the day after.

"The incidents documented here are representative, not exhaustive." - https://frames.forensic-architecture.org/gaza/updates/attack...

> (5) why has Israel supplied so much aid to a civilian population you claim it's trying to kill;

Even rhetorically this question makes no sense, considering that it is very well-documented that Israel has been and is actively preventing real humanitarian aid. The Israeli-sanctioned "aid" via the GHF is a "killing field" of desperate Palestinians: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-27/ty-article-ma...

> (6) why has its genocide been so incompetent and long-lasting if it could accomplish its alleged genocidal goal in a week;

Because then there would be even fewer of those alongside you willing to defend the indefensible.

> (7) what % of those killed are terrorists?; (8) why is the civilian:combatant death ratio so low;

The postulate required for this pair of questions to not be self-defeating is to expand the meaning of "terrorist" to encompass, at the least, every male in Gaza. In other words, "Gaza deserves death. The 2.6 million terrorists in Gaza deserve death! … Men, women, and children – in every way possible, we must simply carry out a Holocaust on them – yes, read that again – H-O-L-O-C-A-U-S-T! For me, gas chambers. Train cars. And other cruel forms of death for these Nazis. Without fear, without hesitation – simply crush, eradicate, slaughter, flatten, dismantle, smash, shatter …. Gaza deserves death. Let there be a Holocaust in Gaza." - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/27/israel...

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