[theoldlove]

The article under discussion says that even by internal Israeli calculations in the early days of the war on a typical day “another thousand Gazans have died, most of them civilians.” Given the population demographics of Gaza, I do not think it’s a stretch you might get to 20,000 minors killed.

The article also questions your claim that the IDF was careful to protect civilians by eg destroying empty building. On the contrary, the IDF accepted extremely high civilian deaths to kill even one suspected minor militant.

[nsguy]

I didn't claim that the "the IDF was careful to protect civilians by eg destroying empty building". I made no particular observation about the IDFs efforts or lack thereof to protect civilians.

I'm claiming many of the destroyed buildings have been empty. This really has nothing to do with the article. I'm addressing the parent's logic/argument. There have been many examples of buildings destroyed while empty, for example to make up the new boundary area Israel has created from the border. The attempt to calculate casualties via the number of destroyed buildings is a very poor methodology. Your statement and mine are not mutually exclusive- it's possible the IDF targeted buildings that had many civilians in them to get at one target. I don't know the demographics of those civilians. I don't know whether what happened in the early days of the war continued throughout the war. I would agree that early in the war Israel very likely accepted a larger number of civilian casualties to get at Hamas targets. I think the new thing potentially in this article is questioning the degree to which the targets were valid military targets.