I wonder when we see how many of the 1200 were shot from helicopters?
There are still no videos of that rave next to the military base that is right next to the concentration camp. Hamas people had their own GoPros and Israel has lots of cameras everywhere. My guess is they aren’t releasing anything because Israel killed the vast majority of the civilians there. But Israel’s strategy works, each new lie (like 40 beheaded babies, we didn’t bomb that hospital that one time etc.) spreads through the Western political system and the media, is used to justify war crimes and then gets quietly retracted weeks later.
There were a couple videos early on from that trance festival. I never saved any and haven’t looked hard enough to find them again - I suspect most are still on telegram. The one that was longest and stood out to me was security or IOF in black uniforms surrounded by dozens of festival goers laying on the ground, all using scrub brush bushes to hide, there is no gunfire, then the 2-3 black clad security or IOF guys get up and start shooting handguns in one direction. So they’re drawing fire from guys with rifles while surrounded by unarmed hidden festival goers, with no actual cover just concealment.
are there third party neutral observers counting? I’m just stumped as to why they would admit that, why not lie, why not adjust it up, it’s not like that would be beyond the pale.
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?
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.
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.
So that’s (1,200 / 1,400) * 15 9/11s, which comes out to 12.8571428571 9/11s.
It’s the only actual “example” the NYT gave in this article for why we should be doubting “Hamas-controlled health ministry” numbers:
Some uncertainty has been sowed by the varying figures that Gazan health officials initially gave to reporters for the number of people killed in the Oct. 17 explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, which ranged from 500 to 833 before they announced a final count of 471.
beheaded babies count: 0 (-40 since last update)
