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Conflict in the Middle East
Original poster

Does IDF consider every man in Gaza to be Hamas?

111 replies

ConnieCounter · 16/01/2024 20:06

I'm trying to understand how many Hamas members have been killed.

Israel's stated aim in bombarding Gaza is to destroy Hamas, presumably by killing all their members. Surely, at over 100 days in, they need to justify this offensive, which has caused extremely high levels of civilian deaths and child deaths, by showing how successful they are being in their stated objective.

Hamas gives death tolls of total deaths, making it impossible to know how many are Hamas.

But looking at figures reported from the Israeli side yesterday, they say 9000 Hamas have been killed. They also cite a total death toll (using Hamas's figure) of over 23000.

That's almost 40% of the deaths.

Is Israel just counting every Palestinian man as a Hamas fighter? I don't see any other explanation.

And if they are doing this and nobody has a clue how many Hamas fighters they've actually killed, how on earth can this bombardment be justified, if its aim is to destroy Hamas?

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.timesofisrael.com/the-war-in-numbers-9000-hamas-members-killed-11000-rockets-fired-into-israel/amp/

OP posts:
FreshStart90 · 16/01/2024 22:27

They are liars, please don’t believe everything the Israeli govt puts out there. They lie so much and get caught out months down the line when independent people are actually allowed to go in and verify things. No independent journalists have been allowed in so they want us to trust their figures and their motives. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what their real goal is, plenty of them have let it out either in a bizarre Freudian slip or deliberately and with a complete lack of remorse.

Yes they absolutely want us to think every male in Gaza is a hamas fighter which is obviously ridiculous, (and they know this isn’t true because the surveillance of Palestinians is relentless and intense). Also if you have been following journalists on the ground in Gaza like I have, who are merely going about their day and posting non-stop, its clear there are a huge majority of men who have nothing to do with that group. Just last week eylon levy accused journalists of not being true journalists and being hamas militants.

Families have said their fathers, sons, brothers etc were rounded up and stripped down, treated like Hamas members and the video of this went viral, it turns out they were doctors, academics, journalists etc and held real jobs. Israel later admitted none of them were hamas and they made a mistake. I’m more inclined to believe palestinian families than the israeli military who are killing indiscriminately and not providing any evidence to justify what they’re doing (not that anything can justify it).

All this rubbish about hamas figures as well, the death toll is clearly much much higher than quoted due to the huge numbers of dead under the rubble. They have only managed to get a small fraction of people out. No war in history has ever killed over 30,000 in such a short space of time. Only depraved individuals could endorse this.

They’ve expressed genocidal intent many times, their highest officials have on live tv: one of the reasons they were dragged to The Hague last week. We will have to see how that pans out but I know there is one side here that cannot be trusted to tell the truth.

queenofarles · 16/01/2024 21:57

Just Compare it To Saleh Al arouri asssination, the building was expertly targeted , no other innocent casualties , what the IDF is doing is the complete opposite in Gaza.

FOJN · 16/01/2024 21:40

I was keeping an eye on the figures a few weeks ago and it seemed to me that if you subtract the number of women and children killed from the total number of deaths you ended up with roughly the same figure the IDF were quoting for number of Hamas fighters killed so I concluded that they did indeed seem to count every man in Gaza as a Hamas fighter.

It's also worth remembering that Hamas are the "political party" and the Al Qassam Brigades are the armed wing of the organisation so not every Hamas member is engaged in armed combat.

Original poster
ConnieCounter · 16/01/2024 21:30

I found more information and posted it?

What's your problem exactly?

If you don't like my thread and if you don't have anything substantive to add you can just scroll on. Cheers. @stomachameleon

OP posts:
PeasfullPerson · 16/01/2024 21:28

As far as I’m aware they haven’t shared any definition regarding membership of Hamas or given any information on how they verify their targets were members of Hamas.

IDF soldiers were filmed chanting about there being no innocent civilians and an ex leader of Shin Bet says most Israelis believe that all Palestines are/or support Hamas.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/14/shin-bet-ami-ayalon-calls-on-israel-release-intifada-leader-marwan-barghouti

IDF have also shown themselves to be trigger happy, resulting in the death of three Israeli hostages by themselves.

Ex-Shin Bet head says Israel should negotiate with jailed intifada leader

Israel will not have security until Palestinians have their own state, Ami Ayalon says in Guardian interview

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/14/shin-bet-ami-ayalon-calls-on-israel-release-intifada-leader-marwan-barghouti

stomachameleon · 16/01/2024 21:24

Four posts in?

No probs.

Original poster
ConnieCounter · 16/01/2024 21:06

stomachameleon · 16/01/2024 20:42

@ConnieCounter I am bewildered as to why you would ask a question if you apparently already know the answer?

I laid out the situation and asked the question. It seemed too horrendous to be true so I'm putting it out there for other opinions.

But thanks for your wonderful contribution to the thread.

OP posts:
stomachameleon · 16/01/2024 20:42

@ConnieCounter I am bewildered as to why you would ask a question if you apparently already know the answer?

Original poster
ConnieCounter · 16/01/2024 20:21

Israel don't seem to have a clue either.

From the BBC last month:
Israel has stated its goal is to destroy Hamas but has not been clear how many of its members it has killed. Officials have previously pointed to "thousands" and elsewhere "7,000".
Hamas is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the Israeli and UK governments and others.
But when asked directly, the IDF said it "does not have an exact number on the number of Hamas terrorists killed".
News agency AFP reported that senior Israeli officials had suggested Israel had killed two Palestinian civilians for every one Hamas fighter. That ratio was described by the IDF's spokesman Jonathan Conricus as "tremendously positive", to CNN.
The BBC has not been able to establish a clear method of verifying the number of fighters killed.
Prof Michael Spagat, said he would "not be at all surprised" if around 80% of those killed were civilians.
The IDF's numbers for combatants killed "have been all over the place, devoid of details and without explanations", he added.
There are "no reliable figures" for the ratio of civilians to combatants killed in Gaza, say Hamit Dardagan and John Sloboda of Iraq Body Count, an organisation that examines the number of deaths in the Iraq war.

www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67764664

OP posts:
AllIsWellish · 16/01/2024 20:20

I don't think they have a clue

Humdingerydoo · 16/01/2024 20:16

Hamas isn't only made up of men. There are elderly, women and teenagers actively involved in Hamas too. As in teenagers who went in to Israel to take hostages etc, so not just assumed to be part of Hamas because their parents are.

How Israel knows the number of dead who were Hamas, I have no idea. I'm assuming it's based on intelligence but I personally have no clue how accurate it is. I just wanted to point out that they will be including others than just men in their figures too.

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