TITLE: From Newborns to 17-Year-Olds, Al Jazeera Prints Names of 4,216 Children Killed in Gaza
https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/26/from-newborns-to-17-year-olds-al-jazeera-prints-names-of-4216-children-killed-in-gaza/
Al Jazeera noted that “the Gaza Strip is a graveyard for thousands of children, the United Nations has said. Since October 7, Israeli attacks have killed at least 10,000 children, according to Palestinian officials. That is one Palestinian child killed every 15 minutes, or about one out of every 100 children in the Gaza Strip.”
Officials in Gaza said later Thursday that at least 25,900 people—including 11,500 children—have been killed and another 64,110 injured in Israel’s bombardment and blockade, launched in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack. Israeli forces have devastated civilian infrastructure and displaced most of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents.
Accounting for the thousands of people missing and presumed dead under the rubble in Gaza, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor puts the child death toll at 13,022.
TITLE: Israeli Intelligence Has Deemed Hamas-Run Health Ministry's Death Toll Figures Generally Accurate
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3w4w7/israeli-intelligence-health-ministry-death-toll
EXCERPT: Israeli intelligence services have studied civilian casualty figures released by the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza and concluded the figures were generally accurate, despite earlier public claims by U.S. and Israeli officials that the ministry’s statistics are manipulated.
According to a story in Mekomit by Yuval Avraham, who last year broke news about the Israeli military’s use of AI for targeting purposes, the numbers were accepted for inclusion in briefings to senior Israeli officials after intelligence services conducted operations and analysis to monitor the health ministry’s information collection methods and its internal communications and determined the statistics were credible. An Israeli intelligence official confirmed the Israeli government's use of the Gaza ministry numbers to VICE News, while two officials from European intelligence services said they were widely used in official briefings internationally.
“The numbers are heavily relied up for official briefings on civilian casualties because with the exception of strikes on high-value targets, where senior officials are briefed on collateral damage, no civilian casualty figures or estimates are collected,” said the Israeli official, who cannot be identified in the media. “A lot of targets have been hit without prior analysis or estimates and there’s never any follow up collection.”
“You don't know exactly how many you killed, and who you killed," an IDF military targeter told Mekomit.
The Israeli official told VICE News that in the current military operation, which has destroyed most of Gaza’s infrastructure and displaced about two-thirds of its population, the rules of engagement for IDF’s artillery and airborne assets have been loosened, leading to thousands more strikes than typically conducted in past Gaza operations.
“The secret services looked at the health ministry’s collection methods and determined the numbers were generally credible, so instead of collecting their own information they decided to use the [Hamas] numbers.”
TITLE: Friendly fire and accidents have killed a lot of Israeli soldiers in Gaza. Here's why
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1226977365/israel-idf-gaza-middle-east-deaths
EXCERPT: "We see that when you treat an area like a free-fire zone, then you definitely might have civilian casualties. You definitely might have friendly fire cases. And as we saw, you definitely might have cases of shooting and killing hostages," [retired U.S. Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland] said.
The low quality of buildings in Gaza, which had been under an Israeli blockade for 16 years that made it difficult to import construction materials, have also created a 360-degree type of fight.
"It's very easy with modern weapons to shoot right through walls that you think are potentially going to stop a round. But it will travel through the building and beyond. And in an urban environment like that, it really lends itself to friendly casualties," MacFarland said.
And as Hamas militants jump out of the hundreds of miles of tunnel networks and fire at Israeli soldiers who are tense and ready to squeeze a trigger, it has all led to a highly kinetic environment that has tested Israel's military structure and the limits of its technological prowess.
"Urban combat really strips away a lot of the technological advantages that any force holds over any other force. Fighting inside of buildings is very, very difficult," MacFarland said. "It kind of comes back to training and less about technology."
Israel brought nearly 300,000 reservists back to active duty — many of whom went from their regular day jobs to urban combat in Gaza with very limited training — as Israeli officials rushed to respond to the October 7 attacks by Hamas.
And there's more to it than the environment of urban warfare or lack of training, according to Rafael Cohen, a senior political scientist with the Rand Corporation. It also has to do with the unique structure of the IDF, a draft military. Most of the soldiers fighting in Gaza are in their late teens to mid-20s, and because Israel tends to promote quickly, there are very young people in more senior positions.
"If you also look at who Israel is losing in Gaza, they've lost a lot of junior officers. So, lieutenants, captains, majors and senior non-commissioned officers. And if you begin losing senior leaders out of tactical units, that also increases the risk of friendly fire incidents," Cohen said.
These incidents, along with the shooting of three hostages by Israeli soldiers — and the more than 25,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza — have raised questions about how Israel is conducting its war tactically and strategically.