I wonder when we see how many of the 1200 were shot from helicopters?
Because 1400 was the original estimate and now that they’ve had time to actually count everyone they’ve lowered it. Its not like anyone on the Palestinian side was claiming the number was inflated. If you replace every instance of Israeli propaganda citing the 1400 with 1200 nothing changes so there’s no reason to lie about it. If the new estimate was something like 700 there’s no chance they’d be admitting it.
I don’t want to speak for the person you’re replying to, and idk if you have the answer to this kind of basic human motivation puzzle, but my continuing question would be - why adjust the number at all?
My guess is that whether or not there are third parties currently verifying the number, there will be eventually. Israel knows they’re loosing their PR war at this point and a story breaking that they knew the number was lower and they kept touting the higher number is the only situation in which the count being off by 200 would matter. Adjusting the number prevents that news cycle.
If the number was way inflated from the beginning, the PR calculus would be different.
My speculation is the number is far, far lower. And a great number of the dead were killed by Israeli tanks and helicopters panic firing into civilians.
Let’s just do a little math here. There’s a 10k death toll in Gaza from a month’s worth of indiscriminate bombing by one of the better funded, better trained militaries in the world. The government in Israel is claiming Hamas, on paragliders, while kidnapping 240 hostages (meaning they were not just firing wildly, they had motivations not to kill people), in one evening was able to achieve 15% of the causalities the IOF took a month to do? Add that to the utter cesspool of propaganda coming out of Israel, that number smells very badly.
When it comes out that there were 200 dead and 115 of them were shot with cannons from Apaches, if they claimed it was 1400 dead it’ll be an uproar. If they walk the number down, it will be palatable.
Because the most convincing lie and the most effective form of propaganda is one that even you yourself believe in.
The process is almost never “we’re the evil psychopaths, we lie through our teeth”, it’s more like “we’re being criticized of inflating the numbers, is it true? ok let’s run a formal investigation and see if that’s the case, oh, look, they’re right, instead of 1400, it’s actually only 1200.”
It’s believable, it’s convincing, and it perpetuates the propaganda against the Palestinians.
