Casualty Counts in Gaza

trackfan, you asked the question:

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The 70-80% figure is the number the U.N. has been going with. Do you have a source that breaks down the casualties?

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According to a recent article by a non-Zionist source:

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Al-Kidra uses a very broad definition of civilians, saying the term applies to anyone who has not been claimed by one of the armed groups as a member.

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Al-Kidra works for the Hamas Ministry of Health.

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U.N. researchers start out with figures from the ministry, the media and other sources, but then cross-check them with the help of Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups.

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The highest toll has been provided by the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which said 1,976 Palestinians were killed over the past month, almost 83 percent of them civilians.

The group's higher count of civilians is due, in part, to a broader definition. The PCHR says anyone who is not effectively participating in a military operation is a civilian, including a Hamas fighter who is killed at home while taking a break.

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LINK

The prior article does not bother to address the issue of Palestinians killed by rockets launched from within Gaza that land in Gaza. According to another author:

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Finally, there’s the minor detail that some civilian casualties were caused by Hamas’s own misfired rockets. We know for certain about some such cases; for instance, an Italian journalist confirmed (after leaving Gaza) that one Palestinian rocket killed 10 Palestinians, including eight children, in a park in al-Shati. But there are undoubtedly many more that we don’t yet know about, because according to IDF data, almost a sixth of all Palestinian rockets launched–475 out of 3,137–landed in Gaza rather than Israel. That statistic is highly credible, because the Iron Dome system tracks every rocket’s trajectory to determine whether it needs intercepting, and couldn’t have achieved the success it did if its trajectory tracking system weren’t extremely accurate. And since Gaza has neither Iron Dome nor bomb shelters, Hamas rockets would be far more lethal there than they were in Israel.

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LINK

If these reports are the least bit credible, then the casualty figures being released by the U.N. are very suspect, and one has to question the motives of the U.N. organizations and personnel releasing the figures. But one conclusion is certain, the 70-80% civilians that the U.N. has been reporting is regurgitated Hamas propaganda.