[bArray]

I mostly agree with Jimmy's statement [1] which is far more neutral than this article. I have concerns, though. It is difficult to find good sources without a large political bent.

If we look at the following article "Casualties of the Gaza war" [2]. If you read link (108) you see a Guardian article "Revealed: Israeli military’s own data indicates civilian death rate of 83% in Gaza war" [3], which says:

> Fighters named in the Israeli military intelligence database accounted for just 17% of the total, which indicates that 83% of the dead were civilians.

See how the language in the article itself walks back the strong claim. The argument made is that all persons not in the Israeli military intelligence database are automatically civilians. If there was a similar Israeli database of confirmed non-combatants, and this only contained 17% of the people who have died, would this mean that the remaining 83% were military? Of course not. And this all assumes that these databases are actually accurate.

Then we must ask ourselves, how are the number of deaths in total calculated? How do we know that each death is attributed to Israeli actions? How many deaths are due to direct action and secondary action (i.e. illness, dehydration, starvation)?

When we look back at any conflict in history, we see the inflated deaths of civilians, the deflated number of military persons killed - it's propaganda. How much of what we currently see is propaganda?

I think we need to think extremely carefully and consider all possibilities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gaza_genocide#Statement_f...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20250821135825/https://www.thegu...

[mmooss]

Often when people talk about bias, they assume it must be bias against their interests. They don't realize that, if there is room for bias, it's just as easily bias in their favor. The article could overstate either side - or both at different times.

> When we look back at any conflict in history, we see the inflated deaths of civilians, the deflated number of military persons killed - it's propaganda.

That's false. In each event, one side tends to inflate claims like civilian deaths and the other tends to minimize them.

[bArray]

> Often when people talk about bias, they assume it must be bias against their interests. They don't realize that, if there is room for bias, it's just as easily bias in their favor. The article could overstate either side - or both at different times.

I think that my comment left room for this. But I felt it important to offer an opposition to what is the "leading narrative" in the West.

> That's false. In each event, one side tends to inflate claims like civilian deaths and the other tends to minimize them.

I should have been clearer that one side would make such claims, and the opposing side would also make such claims to their benefit. Propaganda has, and always will be, a significant part of war. It reminds me of the 2020-2021 China-India mountain battles [1] where both sides minimised their losses and claimed victory with large losses on the other side.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%...