Neither of which are around 600 thousand as the previous commenter posted. The French News Channel called France24 did a quick video explaining the current fake news that certain NGOs are spreading with misleading death counts -- https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/truth-or-fake/20250624-...
Saying it's false is a valid argument against something completely ludicrous like 680,000 dead. If you expect everyone to come up with "valid arguments" for blindingly obvious things then it is you who is not carrying out polite conversation (as per your other comments)
It would be a valid argument if you provide evidence for it, such as other commenters here have done. Whereas you just rejected my claim without any argumentation.
I have provided a source for the numbers cited in the original comment. Where those numbers are explained.
Well, these numbers are from July, and from that very first article:
"Official Palestinian tallies of direct deaths in the Gaza war likely undercounted the number of casualties by around 40% in the first nine months of the war as Gaza's healthcare infrastructure unravelled, according to a peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet journal in January."
Still, from those numbers, it seems difficult to stretch from 60k to 600k.
That said, even if you take the absolute tail number, 60k, how anyone can defend a genocide of 60k people in a land area smaller than Portland, in less than a year, is reprehensible. Especially when many of those are children. Almost one child murdered every 10 minutes, at the low end, for an entire year?
Are you surprised I'm being downvoted? I'm working towards my 500 karma so I can also start downvoting obvious nonsense like that comment but publicly correcting nonsense craters your karma.
Small thought exercise: What if the numbers were real? Would that change any of your stances/views? Would you self-reflect and consider that you had been tricked into spreading lies at the expense of thousands of lives?
Maybe it helps to start smaller. Many (Israeli's) have told me that the IDF is the world's most 'honest' military - one that even warns buildings before they're bombed!
Then, you can imagine how difficult it was for me to reconcile that with many facts from the ground. Here's one. Only one. The Rafah paramedic massacre:
"Israel at first claimed that the medics' vehicles did not have emergency signals on when troops opened fire but later backtracked. Cellphone video recovered from one of the medics contradicted Israel's initial account."[0]
Let me turn the mirror around a bit. If numbers or incidents turn out to be false, exaggerated, or stripped of context, would you also self-reflect and consider that you might have been tricked into spreading lies - at the expense of Israelis whose lives are also on the line?
Of course, militaries make mistakes and sometimes issue wrong statements, just as governments everywhere do in the fog of war. The Rafah paramedic case you cite is tragic, and investigations matter. But a single flawed or retracted statement doesn’t prove a systematic policy of “lying” or “massacre” just as one instance of misconduct in any country’s army doesn’t automatically invalidate its overall values or procedures.
if we’re going to judge Israel by its errors, we should also weigh the context in which those errors happen (urban warfare, Hamas embedding itself in civilian areas, use of ambulances to smuggle fighters or weapons, etc.). And we should also judge Hamas by its admitted policies - deliberately targeting civilians, embedding in hospitals, rejecting coexistence.
If we’re honest, both of us need to be open to the possibility that our sources and interpretations can be incomplete or biased. Real reflection means asking hard questions in both directions - not only of Israelis, not only of Palestinians.
You're right that there are two sides to every story, things aren't black-and-white.
To your first point, I've already agreed that the numbers seem faulty. Beyond that, I'm not sure what you're asking me to consider, beyond suspending belief. 60k people did die on the low end, many of them children.
From an outsider's perspective, the killing of 60k people in a small, corralled environment, many of which are children, says everything that can be said about the actor in question. This is without the additional context of years of West Bank occupations, experiencing the crazy two-tiered apartheid like system that is Israel (I've visited and was personally quite shocked), and other things.
Is Hamas terrible? Certainly. Would they do the same to Israel if they had the capabilities? Probably. But that doesn't change the facts on the ground.
There's a gigantic difference between "mistakes" and bombing clearly marked ambulances. They have a GIGA TON of money for HYPER AWESOME weapons, but can't tell ambulances apart? They very clearly lied and intended to murder aid workers. Otherwise, why would this HIGHLY MODERN military not IMMEDIATELY admit the fault when called out? There is no way they did not know.
The idea of "both sides could be lieing" is especially laughable, considering that it's Israel that's killed or jailed journalists over and over again. It's Israel that kidnaps international helpers constantly. It's Israel that bombs hospitals.
Most importantly, it's Israel that VERY CLEARLY demonstrates it's true goal in the West Bank: Total removal of the palestinian people and colonisation of their lands for jewish Lebensraum.
Completely absurd projection not supported by any serious sources. That would mean 1 in 3 Gazans dead, and 10 deaths per reported death, which would be completely out of line with other conflicts.
I read the article. It piled about 5 different assumptions on top of each other.
It takes the upper bound for the deaths in the first 9 months. Then extrapolates it linearly to the last 2.5 years. Then multiplies it by 4, because it estimates that starvation deaths must be 4x.
680.000 and 380.000.
The total number of Palestinians murdered, and the number of those who were kids under 5 years old.
source: https://arena.org.au/politics-of-counting-gazas-dead/