I think this is the third post I've done on Thursday on the alleged body count in Gaza. I've seen people claim as many as 6,000 Palestinians killed, and more than 2,000 of those were children. NBC News says 2,704 children have been killed since Israel began its bombardment on Gaza … according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, i.e., Hamas.
President Joe Biden and John Kirby have both cast doubts on the death toll coming out of Palestine. It's one of the rare occasions where Kirby was able to tell the truth to the press.
Now the Associated Press is weighing in, saying only that coming up with a precise number of casualties "isn't easy."
How many Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the war started?
— The Associated Press (@AP) October 26, 2023
With Israel besieging and bombing territory at a scale never seen before, arriving at a precise answer isn’t easy. https://t.co/ZRhuRbYjYH
It's easy enough for Hamas.
The AP reports:
Apartment buildings are crumpled. Neighborhoods lie in ruins. Terrain is transformed into moonscape.
The destruction of areas of northern Gaza is visible from space in satellite images taken before and after Israeli’s airstrikes, which followed the raids carried out by Hamas militants on Oct. 7.
"Militants."
Israel has carried out thousands of airstrikes since the war erupted on Oct. 7 following a cross-border raid that killed 1,400 people in Israel and took over 200 others hostage. Palestinian health officials say over 7,000 people in Gaza have been killed since the fighting erupted.
The number went up again. Now "Palestinian health officials" say more than 7,000 people in Gaza have been killed. And that's the AP's whole story. They just ran a bunch of satellite photos showing the before and after and then went back to the old reliable Palestinian health officials for a number.
I don't know about you, but I'm tired of headlines about death and destruction in Gaza. Hamas invaded Israel on a Saturday while journalists had the day off, so the horror of the initial terrorist attack got short shrift while Gaza gets weeks of coverage.
Don't start a war if you don't want casualties.
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