Saturday, February 14, 2009

Who Was Killed in Gaza?

Haaretz cites an IDF report listing 1,134 Palestinian fatalities in the recent Gaza operation, 673 of whom were from Hamas or other fighting formations, 288 were non-combatants, and the rest have not yet been identified. Apparently the IDF is making lists by name, so as to know in each case who the dead person was.

My understanding is that the investigation is not yet complete.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hopefully the IDF statistic will show the age of the fatalities and not lump all the up to 18s under children and consequently non-combatants like the UN apparently does ... (and why women are automatically supposed to be non-combatants is by the standards of 2009 also rather mysterious to me)
http://www.slate.com/id/2207637/
But in Gaza City, UNRWA counted only female victims and those under the age of 18.
Silke

Anonymous said...

Camera has a good piece on this:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1603

Anonymous said...

Silke, I looked at your Slate link; the thing is this: counting women and children means e.g. that the 4 wives and several of the children of Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan would be counted, even though the family was warned before his house was bombed, and chose to stay there, or was forced by him -- he was a great believer in martyrdom, and already had sent one of his sons on a suicide bombing mission.
See also:
http://www.islamonline.net/English/In_Depth/GazaHolocaustMuseum/topic_01/34.shtml

Anonymous said...

Complete link for above:

http://www.islamonline.net/English/In_Depth/GazaHolocaustMuseum/topic_01/34.shtml