Israel-Hamas War 2023

[Valmy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ciV2nU04oo

Duke students walk out on commencement speaker Jerry Seinfeld.

Well that could have gone worse all things considered.

Are we drawing the success line at "the Jew didn't get lynched" now?

Well it was just a few people. A small number of hotheads.

[Valmy]

To be fair, the Soviet constitution guaranteed you freedom of speech, but it didn't guarantee you freedom from consequences of speech.

Well other people's freedom of speech might be to say nasty things about you because you said something they didn't like. Are we talking about consequences beyond that?

I guess I didn't think anybody's freedom of speech meant nobody else had freedom of speech to express opinions about something you said.

[grumbler]

The Hamas charter talks about Jews living peacefully in an Islamic Palestine, so the genocide talk is overblown.

The Soviet constitution talked about guarantees of full civil liberties and rights, so talk about Stalinist oppression is overblown.

The US constitution talked about guarantees of full civil liberties and rights, so talk about US Racial oppression is overblown.

[grumbler]

From the original Hamas Covenant

(snip)

Much of the antisemitic language of the Covenant was not included in a much later Declaration of Principles; however, to my knowledge the original Covenant has never been revoked or repudiated.  That requires judgment as to whether the later declaration represents a sincere change in belief, or was merely political rhetoric intended to secure more mainstream Arab financial support.  I never believed there was much doubt on that point, but if any doubt existed, October 7 firmly resolved it.

Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism - to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam. Past and present history are the best witness to that.

Avalon Project

[Valmy]

Which would be a point in Islam's favor I guess if there were only three religions and people were free to move between them depending on their own conscience. But unfortunately that is not the case, at least not historically.

[Razgovory]

So did Grumbler convert or something?

[Tamas]

Apparently, the UN's OCHA (Humanitarian coordination something) has without explanation halved the number of estimated women and children casualties in Gaza in their latest report, while leaving the total number unchanged. They used to constitute two-thirds of the number, now they are a little more than half.

[Jacob]

I see it reported that it's been halved "without explanation", but I've also seen an explanation reported:

The first (and larger) quoted number has been the official numbers provided by various Palestinian authorities. Numbers which - apparently - do not distinguish between civilians and military casualties. Those numbers also, of course, have whatever question marks you'd like to put next to numbers provided by Gazan authorities. I'm pretty sure that when OCHA has reported those numbers, they've mentioned the source.

The second number is a list of specific deaths, verified with name and with sources that aren't the Gazan authorities' casualty reports, and (possibly, I'm not sure) limited to civilians only. This means, if a death isn't individually verified by whoever collected the data, it's not included in the number.

In short, the discrepancy is about data collection and reporting methodology. I'm pretty sure it has been explained, but there are way too many clicks and rhetorical points to be made from ignoring that, so that's what we're seeing instead.

That's my understanding anyhow. I haven't dug super deep to verify, however.