chasfh

In other words, IDF does not report numbers regularly and they don’t make it easy to find, as you previously claimed (or is it more like exclaimed? 😉), because even you yourself can’t find it. I like to think that I’m a savvier news consumer than the average bear, but I am not going to jump through endless hoops looking for whatever number IDF wants to world to know about. If they’re not making it easy to find, and not regularly reporting it to the world’s media so it can appear alongside the Hamas number, then maybe there’s a reason Israel doesn’t want to make it easy to find.

That being your opinion, then I’m not sure exactly what it is we are debating here. I’m neither pro-Israel nor pro-Hamas. If I’m pro anything here, it’s pro the everyday Israeli and Palestinian people and pro their ability to live normal, mundane, everyday lives if they choose, as we in America have the luxury of choosing. But the main thing I am pro all the time is the truth. All I want is the truth. Just give me some truth. And I resent people and organizations that obfuscate and ignore the truth in the service of obvious agendas, and that’s obviously what’s going on here. And yes, I will say it: on both sides. There’s a very obvious example country missing here. If what we both believe is true—that the Israel and Palestinian numbers match up really closely—then I would say that, yes, I find Israel’s approach to reporting casualties to be more offensive, because their numbers are pretending the civilian deaths didn’t even happen. Palestinian numbers may not break out operative deaths from civilian deaths, and that’s bad, but at least they appear to be including all deaths, instead of pretending some of them are not even worth reporting on.

We’re probably both right: Tlaib has the seat sewn up as long as the district lines hold and she wants to run; and Democrats like Frankel are scheming ways to try to make her lose the election.

I’m asking where the 14,000 you provided is, the one you said gets posted and is easy to find, and that you still haven’t provided the link to where I can easily find it. That’s all. Nothing more than that. If you would please provide that easy link to the IDF numbers, that would be swell. Then we can be on the same page for purposes of the discussion. FWIW, since the Gaza health people do not break out their numbers between civilians and operatives, and IDF is not even including civilians in their numbers at all, suggesting there are additional deaths to the numbers we’ve seen today, I would bet that the total number of deaths on IDF’s radar is pretty close to the number the Gaza health people are reporting.

🤣

This is, practically by definition, not an apoltiical statement. Here's a follow-on statement: The situation at the southern border is no more an "invasion" than the Freedom Riders going to Mississippi in 1961 were an invasion. And yet ...

Trump attracts weak minds, and weak minds have votes.

The reason it was logical to assume, or at least wonder about, racist intent is because of all the politicized kerfuffle involving statues during the last ten or so years. It's not as though it all came out of ... ahem ... left field.

Yeah, I really liked Josh Lewin as a PxP guy and the pairing of Gibson with him. I was sad to see him go. I have no idea what was behind that.

Sorry to hammer you on the 14,000, but you did say IDF said the number was 14,000, that they put out reports on a daily basis, and that the reports are easy to find. I want to be able to take you at your word for these things, but since this was in direct conflict with the Gaza-reported number, I was asking so I could examine how the IDF came up with that number, because I couldn’t find anything on it. The only thing I can find with the number 14,000 is from November, when Gaza health officials reported that the death toll had exceeded 14,000. You don’t have to keep looking for the number, because I did find a report from two days ago by IDF saying they’d killed over 10,000 ”operatives”, plus 1,000 “terrorists”, inside Gaza, with no mention of additional deaths of civilians. So, to your earlier point, it looks as though IDF has, at the very least, the same kind of blind spot on reporting total deaths that you claim the Gaza health ministry has in not separating civilian deaths from those of operatives or terrorists.

Or at the very least provide some concrete direction for our efforts in the Middle East, whatever that might be. Since the resolution came from Lois Frankel D-FL, basically a sworn enemy who quit the progressive caucus more or less to get away from Rashida, it feels to me like she brought this virtue-signal vote specifically intending to checkmate Rashida by forcing her to vote against it, excite the media about it, and cost her the election this November, which I think nearly all Democrats in Congress would like to see. I would think the next move would be to undertake efforts box her into a corner and subdue her so her constituents would see she’s feckless and kick her out. She didn’t actually vote against it, but she might as well have as since voting merely present is basically the same thing. We’ll see if it all works. Grab some popcorn …

I appreciate your effort at supplying some links, but I am really mostly interested in exactly where the 14,000 number comes from. That’s the one you hung your hat on and I want to understand where you got that. Mostly, I want to know how IDF came up with that specific number.

You’re skirting what I’m saying. I’m not surprised. Also, this nonsense about believing terrorists instead of Israel? A statement which assumes Israel’s hat is immaculately white? Everybody's hands are super dirty in that region, so there are no white hats there. “Israel right or wrong” is not a good look.

You said “Chas would literally believe terrorists over Israel”, despite that I had posted exactly why I thought the 30,000+ number passes the smell test, listing sources far beyond just the Gaza ministry, because those sources do the necessary legwork to vet the information that none of us have the resources to do, and I trust those sources to do that. That’s why I think the number seems reasonable So not only did you make an intellectually-dishonest sweeping generalization that’s demonstrably untrue, you made a lazy intellectually-dishonest sweeping generalization that’s demonstrably untrue. You need to do better than that.

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That’s fine, because the Gaza ministry isn’t saying there were ZERO militant deaths. They are saying 30,000+ people died. I would guess there are a decent number of militant deaths among them, but then, that’s just a guess. In terms of where IDF numbers are published, honestly, if I’m not seeing it in the news stories I see about this campaign, which admittedly is not as many as you read, then I’m not seeing it. I don’t read everything there is about this topic and I don’t seek out deep stories about it, so if you want me to believe the 14,000 number, you’re gonna have to give me the link to the data. Because when I google “14,000 militant deaths IDF reports”, I’m coming up dry.

Glad you’re not making this personal! 😝

No, you do not appear to have that correct. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatant and civilian casualties in its reports. You're free to reject the Gaza ministry's number, and I am free to be skeptical of the IDF number, and we can go on being friends.

I think the 30,000+ number passes the smell test.

Maybe D. I don't know. But Benetti is a very ambitious person, and C is squarely within the realm of possibilities. I don't blame Reinsdorf for not being happy with his increasing absences. I think that might wear a little on Tigers fans after a couple years of it, too, and there will be griping about that. At least they have Dan Dickerson in reserve for those instances. I do like Benetti's work a lot, though, and I think he is a smart and engaging guy on air, and I'm also open to the idea that he can make Petry, Monroe, and Gibson better—although none of them appear to have the same arch, snarky sense of humor he has, and which Steve Stone could work well off of.

"The United Nations and other international institutions and experts, as well as Palestinian authorities in the West Bank — rivals of Hamas — say the Gaza ministry has long made a good-faith effort to account for the dead under the most difficult conditions ..." This is good enough for me at the moment.

They are a party with an interest, so there’s no reason to believe they are giving us the truth, any more than when American cops say they shot a guy because the guy lunged/shot at him. It’s fair to say you hope it’s true, and you believe it’s true, but you can’t say it’s objectively true and be taken seriously. FWIW, the mainstream American media is reporting the 30,000+ number and citing it as coming from the Gaza Ministry of Health, and I haven’t seen them routinely report a counter number from IDF. While I understand how fashionable it is say one completely distrusts the media, and that people believe it makes them look cool and smart to say they are one big vast worldwide conspiracy and they should never ever ever ever EVER be trusted, I don’t believe that’s true, and I also believe that they must be properly vetting the information enough to report it consistently and across practically all channels. Since “the United Nations and other international institutions and experts, as well as Palestinian authorities in the West Bank — rivals of Hamas — say the Gaza ministry has long made a good-faith effort to account for the dead under the most difficult conditions”, and I have found no similar description of how IDF calculates the number, I believe the 30,000+ number passes the smell test more than the IDF number.

Known, habitual liars as politicians is a feature, not a bug. My point is that it's a bad look to disparage information coming from one side of a conflict, and make a bid to correct it with information from the other side, as though they do not both have equal incentive to doctor the numbers, which they do.

Israel Defense Forces. Thank you. Also a party with interest.

I'm not sure how I feel about keeping the same old analysts on board to work with Benetti on TV. Clearly none of them are anything like outstanding at the job, and some of them are actually quite inadequate for it. I wonder whether Benetti wanted to bring a new guy in with him but couldn't convince the front office, whether he actually wants to work with these analysts, or whether he doesn't care one way or the other since this might well be a pit stop on his way to a 100% national career.