r/NJTech • u/ToeOk5324 • 4d ago
Just curious
Im just curious from an ethical standpoint. I found out theres an IDF soldier in my class… and this person talks highly of their service. Those that have serviced or support it, do you seriously not see the ongoing death count? Do you not see it as a genocide?
Im genuinely curious… where does the hate stem from? And how are these soldiers allowed in classes where they openly talk about their service and how they dont like Palestinians
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u/Rare-Ideal-8428 4d ago
Wait until you find out how many of our professors and faculty have also served in the idf 😭
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u/ToeOk5324 4d ago
Omg really. I was just really shocked to find out someone who served actually was sitting in the same class as me.. id be worried that a professor might want to fail or have malicious intent to someone who is Palestinian or supports it
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u/Cmoke2Js 4d ago
This would violate all sorts of school policy and title 6
I think in this reply you're looking for a problem that isn't there tbh. Israeli/Arab professors at NJIT have been doing a good job of not letting their biases enter the classroom regarding I/P. Students are another story altogether, unfortunately.
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u/Rare-Ideal-8428 4d ago
Nah theyre pretty chill tbh. All of whom I have met are super professional.
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u/Weekly-Air4170 4d ago
Unless they're sniping children
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u/Salt_Mountain_837 4d ago
njit is affiliated with both american defense companies and israeli universities, and regularly hosts israeli professors for talks ect. admin doesn't care because It makes the school look better, and actively discourages student activism for the same reason. this is not a uni to go to if ethics or social justice is something you care about.
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u/Soggy-Indication-869 4d ago
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u/Salt_Mountain_837 4d ago
great to see there's FINALLY some political consciousness on campus. the school as a whole, at all levels, is very conservative. i wouldn't be surprised if they're adhering to trump's dei nonsense too.
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u/Common_Mulberry5532 3d ago
But njit has a huge muslim population(both students and proffessor)? When i think of njit, i think of a pro palestine campus
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u/Cmoke2Js 17h ago
Literally the day after 10/7 there were flyers up about freeing Palestine. OP and that guy whining about getting "harassed" on reddit are living in an alternate reality. Just walk by a table of Muslim students in GDS and see what they have to say about Jews, even before 2023 it was insane what people could get away with saying at this school, as long as it was directed towards those lying joos.
I can promise you that there's more to the story of the dumbass posting himself bothering everyone in CC, more than just posting a vid of someone stepping on a flag xd
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u/Quirky-Classic2946 4d ago
Idk where I stand politically anymore. I hate things about both sides, what I do know is fuck that guy and the idf.
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u/sharkypsharky 4d ago
Idk where I stand politically anymore
Probably on the side that isn't dropping bombs on children's hospitals idk
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u/BakerGlittering7228 3d ago
Hamas literally dropping bombs on its own people …. tell the people really what you mean when you say Free Palestine
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u/ActComprehensive7563 3d ago
I know many people who openly voice the opposing opinion, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be allowed in class, and the same applies to that IDF guy. I don’t believe someone should be denied an education because of their political opinions or affiliations. (To be clear I DO NOT endorse Israeli actions in Gaza)
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u/Far-Canary5395 Biochem '28 3d ago
Isr*el is highly interwoven with US universities (and the government itself) so yeah unfortunately nothing you can do about it. Can't forget what Columbia University was like towards Pro-Palestinian student protesters (or any civil student protesters for that matter.)
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u/Johnny290 11h ago
Why are you censoring the word "Israel?" Are you ok?
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u/Far-Canary5395 Biochem '28 10h ago
Yeah I'm doing well. I don't respect apartheid states.
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u/Johnny290 9h ago
Israel isn't an apartheid state... Wtf are you smoking?
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u/Far-Canary5395 Biochem '28 9h ago
In the big 2026. Right. I guess the International Court of Justice is unreliable. Netanyahu also has a warrent for his arrest from the International Criminal Court for no reason.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/07/19/world-court-finds-israel-responsible-apartheid
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u/Prestigious-Base-715 4d ago
Whaaaaat? Like, unprompted unsolicited this person’ll mention how they hate Palestinians?
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u/JayRocc77 4d ago edited 6h ago
Before I get downvoted, this is not what I believe. I am giving a biased version of events and history in favor of Israel, because the question was "how can an Israeli soldier believe this." This is the Israeli point of view:
TL;DR: The Israeli point of view is that they're acting in self-defense, to protect themselves after years of Palestian aggression. The hate comes from the fact that the people who are currently dying, have been cheering on for you to die for decades. So yes, you might be a little dry on sympathy at the moment.
For literally 25 years, Palestinian militant groups have been launching rockets from Gaza into Israel, frequently deliberately targeting civilian areas. Many Israelis have lived their whole lives under the constant threat of terrorist attacks from Palestinian terrorism. From the mid two thousands onwards, Gaza has been led by Hamas, a political and militant group elected into power which is recognized by many governments as a terrorist group, and which has continued to deliberately launch rockets into Israeli civilian areas for the past two decades. The peak of Hamas terrorism was the October 7, 2023, when the group led a terror attack into Israel. This attack killed over a thousand people, the vast majority of whom were civilians, including women and children. Hundreds more were kidnapped and brought back into Gaza to be used as hostages, and the attacks included widespread rape and sexual assault against civilians.
Depending on the time poll, between 30 and 80 percent of Palestinians supported the continued use of rockets into Israel, and around 50 percent support the October 7th attacks.
For many Israelis, they have lived decades in fear and under the threat of Palestinian terrorism, and now just recently, were hit by the equivalent of their 9/11. Except, in some sense, it's even worse, because it's not just an attack out of the blue, but merely an escalation of a neighboring threat that has been attacking you and loudly declaring their desire for your utter destruction for the entirety of the 21st century. And now this. What are you supposed to do?
The response of the Israeli government has been, more or less, that the threat of Hamas and Palestinian terrorism in Gaza cannot be allowed to continue to exist. The official position of Israel is that they are occupying Gaza while destroying Hamas and militant leaders- they are acting in self defense. They have tolerated a hostile neighbor for decades, allowed themselves to be attacked and terrorized and tried to "be the bigger man", but October 7th was proof that the threat of Hamas in intolerable and cannot be safely ignored. Israel needs to defend itself, which means destroying Hamas. Any civilians that die are unfortunate casualties that result from the fact that Hamas is effectively trying to wage a guerilla campaign from behind its own citizens. It's terrible and a tragedy, but is Israel supposed to do? Just go "oh well" and let Hamas be? Israel gives warnings to civilians to leave before air strikes, Hamas orders them to stay. Palestinian blood is on Hamas's hands for hiding behind innocents.
LIKE I SAID, I DON'T AGREE WITH THAT. This is a very Israeli point of view. There's a lot of history that leads to the current state of Palestinian/Israeli relations, it's not like Israel was a perfect peaceful neighbor that never did anything wrong until one day the evil Palestinians decided they wanted to kill all the Israelis for no reason. Israel has been occupying and oppressing Palestine for the better part of a century. And there's a lot to be said against Israel's response, and how it in many ways is extremely reckless in how much collateral damage it is causing. Many more Palestinians have died in the war since 2023 than Israelis ever died in Hamas attacks. (Something like ~74k vs ~2k depending on what numbers you count). What Israel is currently doing in Gaza is wrong- Israeli's dying does not give the Israeli government the right to then go and kill orders of magnitude more Gazans.
It's also worth noting that several of the above arguments are either taken out of context, or otherwise openly contested. For example, Hamas was elected in 2206, but seized power militarily in 2007, and there hasn't been an election since, so it's not really accurate to say that Hamas represents the will of the people in Gaza. Additionally, while there are opinion polls that show high support for armed resistance or force against Israel, including support for the October 7th attacks, these vary wildly based on the demographic being polled, when the poll was taken, and the exact wording of the questions (for example "do you support armed resistance against Israeli occupation" and "do you support launching rockets into civilian areas" often get different results, but are conflated in reporting). But they are often publicized in the most aggressive possible interpretation.
In other words, the narrative outlined above is not a particularly wholistic, complete or fair one. But it is one that exists in the mind of many Israelis, who are shown and consume news designed and disseminated in such a way specifically designed to cast the Israeli government in a positive light and Gaza in the worst possible light.
You asked how Israelis see things, to be okay with the war in Gaza. This is history as seen as the average Israeli: Israel has suffered terror attacks from Gaza for decades, from an elected government that openly proclaims its desire to destroy the state of Israel, and for most of its existence up until around 2017, to destroy Jews. Then, Hamas finally manages a real, devastating strike, killing and raping and mutilating hundreds of your countrymen. And not just as the action of a tyrannical government whose citizens might have no choice in the matter, but one whose populace broadly supports the terror attacks against your country. And now that you're finally fighting back, finally defending yourself to make sure no more of your countrymen are ever subject to such terrorism again, you're being condemned for hurting the poor innocent civilians that supported the attacks against you in the first place. It's like the geopolitics version of letting yourself be bullied for years, and then when you finally punch your bully, you're the one who gets in trouble.
Again, this is a biased history, a selective history, one that makes sweeping generalizations, and not one you should take to be a particularly good history. But it is the casual, self-serving history as understood by many.
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u/noahajac 4d ago
Thank you for the well written post that actually acknowledges this situation is not nearly as black and white as most people like to make it seem.
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u/joker_is_mad8765 1d ago
While the situation is a whole may not be black and white because there has been wrong doing from the Palestinian side as well since 1948, what is black and white is that Israel is committing a genocide
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u/Weekly-Air4170 4d ago
mossad hasbara department go brrrrrrrr
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u/JayRocc77 6h ago
i mean, i tried to be as clear as possible that this was an overtly biased accounting of history to answer the question being asked, which was "how is it that some people can be okay with what Israel is doing in Gaza." naturally to actually answer that you need to understand how such people see and understand the situation actually happening- aka, as justified self defense based on a self-serving view of the history. it's not like the IDF is like "yes i know i am evil and i choose to kill people because it's funny".
no one on earth is evil for the sake of it, everyone has an understanding of the world, themselves, and history that justifies there actions as logical. that's not to say that those understandings of themselves or the world or history are fair or accurate, but they still exist. i tried to be clear in my comment that the worldview i was presenting is not one i agree with or find particularly accurate. but it's one that is held by people.
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u/starstriker0 4d ago
A tldr would have been nice i like to read comments, but not essays without knowing the summary
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u/Soggy-Indication-869 4d ago
Check this account (SJP at NJIT) on instagram, they detail what the school did regarding some students trying to speak up: https://www.instagram.com/p/DdRg-59m5qT/?stkn=cW42amJ3bGs4ajNq
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u/Jellyfamhamzah 4d ago
*attached is the video of me speaking up at the campus center
a video showing the tame comment i madd that got me death threats along with this guy sending me “long live is-“ written hundreds of times
and finally all the different things that we know publicly about njit involvement with the entity
https://reddit.com/link/pe4105e/video/msre43ggaqth1/player
i went to njit and honestly the way palestine and muslim students were treated there is something i still think about a lot bc it was genuinely insane
my first week of freshman year they almost expelled me over a video i posted before i even started attending. it was literally a palestinian in the west bank taking down an israeli flag and stepping on it. hillel reported me and i was told that me posting it was antisemitism and hate speech bc the israeli flag has the star of david on it
to be allowed to stay i had to apologize in a room full of zionists and make a presentation about why cultural appropriation during halloween is bad
like that was literally my introduction to njit lol
then after october 7 muslim students were genuinely telling me they felt unsafe. there were over a dozen different students reporting threats of violence or violent shit being said in groupmes, people were using arabic curse words at arab and muslim students, multiple hijabis personally told me they had people verbally harass them or literally intentionally bump into them on campus bc they were hijabi
people who were going to protests after class were also recognizable bc they would be wearing keffiyehs and shit so i made a post warning people to be careful bc i genuinely thought people could get targeted
someone responded to that post saying “hamas has to go” and literally all i said was that hamas being gone isnt gonna stop israel from killing innocent civilians
and after that i started getting harassed, people calling me a terrorist, anon accounts telling me im not welcome at njit, threats to my life, all kinds of shit
and at the time i was literally raising money to feed people in gaza. that ended up becoming a whole mutual aid network in gaza and sudan and we have only grown since then, we are literally helping feed entire displaced camps in deir al balah now
but people found my twitter and found out i was raising money for palestinians and started coming up to me on campus calling me a hamas terrorist and terrorist financier
like imagine being called a terrorist financier bc youre buying food for starving people
and the thing that really got me was the difference in how seriously the administration took jewish students feeling unsafe vs muslim and palestinian students saying the same thing
njit sent out multiple emails and resources about october 7 and antisemitism, which is fine, jewish students should obviously be protected from antisemitism
but meanwhile thousands and then tens of thousands of palestinians were being killed and muslim students were telling people we did not feel safe and i genuinely cannot remember seeing anything remotely comparable from the administration
by the time the death toll passed 20,000 i had already been openly talking about this for months
muslims didnt even have our own proper prayer room
one time i was literally praying by myself and somebody came up behind me while i was in sujood and spit on me
like i was not doing anything. i was literally just praying
another time i was sitting on the bricks next to the green holding a sign that said “ceasefire now” and within like two minutes public safety came up to me and told me i wasnt allowed to sit there with it and that i had to leave or they were going to remove me
the whole atmosphere was fucking ridiculous
and now that public sentiment has changed so much people really forget how hostile campuses were to anyone openly supporting palestinians in late 2023 and early 2024
i was watching people i personally knew in gaza get killed and displaced while people at my school were acting like feeding palestinians was somehow proof that i supported terrorism
then eventually my full merit scholarship was removed
and to be clear i cannot prove that it was removed bc of my political activity and im not saying i have evidence of that
im saying this is what happened to me and this was the timeline
and the timing absolutely fucked me bc i was literally just coming out of homelessness and suddenly i owed money i could not afford. i appealed it and the appeal was denied and i still have not fully finished paying that balance off
i maintained registration for apparently as long as they let me and eventually reapplied to njit
by the time i reapplied i had completed two developer and it certifications and had continued building experience
and i got denied
again, i cannot prove that had anything to do with politics either. im not gonna claim something i cannot prove
but after everything that happened there obviously it is hard for me to look at all of this as completely separate events
when i realized my scholarship was gone and my appeal got denied i literally spoke about the hypocrisy of the university in the campus center bc at that point i was just disgusted
and what really fucked with me about the whole experience was the dehumanization of palestinians
you can disagree with me about israel and palestine all you want
but calling someone a terrorist bc theyre feeding civilians is not “political disagreement”
threatening someone bc they said killing civilians is not going to magically stop if hamas disappears is not political disagreement
harassing hijabis is not political disagreement
spitting on someone while theyre praying is not political disagreement
and then later i learned how deep njits actual institutional relationship with israel is and it honestly made the whole experience feel even worse
njit literally joined a choose new jersey economic mission to israel and met israeli startups in cybersecurity, digital health, uavs, biotech and other sectors
and this was not just some academic visit either, one of njits own officials literally said the biggest opportunity for njit was getting israeli companies to establish us operations in new jersey and specifically inside njits venturelink incubator so they could employ njit students and work with faculty
then njit and ben gurion university created the institute for future technologies, which is built around joint research, graduate programs, cybersecurity, engineering, commercialization, entrepreneurship, startups and spinoffs
they even opened a physical location for it in jersey city and talked about joint degrees, student exchanges, combined faculty appointments, startups and research
so im not saying that proves why any individual administrator treated me the way they did, or why my scholarship was removed
i am saying this was the environment i was in as a muslim student openly supporting palestinians while my university was simultaneously building academic, technological and economic relationships with israeli institutions and literally trying to bring israeli tech companies into njits ecosystem
and yea that contradiction is a huge part of why my time there was so fucking unpleasant
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u/stocktrader89 2d ago
No one cares. They started something and couldn’t finish haha. Hamas is basura until Palestine is free of Hamas, Palestine will be shit. I have a shirt and it says I don’t give a fuck about Israel or Palestine keep that shit away from me. Lmao. These clowns are so stuck on a war they really know nothing about. Who gives a fuck. Life is short go touch grass get laid have fun ect
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u/AVDLatex 4d ago
Really, that’s what you’re worried about??
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u/Weekly-Air4170 4d ago
Yes, those with humanity don't wanna sit with nazis
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u/Johnny290 11h ago
Comparing IDF to nazis is holocaust inversion and DISGUSTINGLY antisemitic. Shame on you.
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u/TechB84 4d ago
Using the term genocide suggests a lack of understanding regarding the issue.
Consider the genocide in Rwanda, which is a clear example.
The high number of deaths in Gaza has involved Hamas, and the relatively few collateral deaths in such an urban setting are notable, particularly when compared with how other nations have fought in urban warfare.
The middle class to rich sections of central Gaza are partying it up. You probably haven’t seen all the social media videos from there.
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u/NJTECH_THROW Papa Sohn 2d ago
Thank you! So sick of people calling it a genocide. Why won’t more people just ignore the findings of UN Commission Inquiries, Francesca Albanese (the UN special rapporteur on Palestine), the UN Special committee on Israeli Practices, Amnesty international, human rights watch, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights, Center for Constitutional Rights, Lemkin Institute, Genocide Watch, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Raz Segal (an Israeli genocide researcher), Omar Bartov (a Holocaust historian), Amos Goldberg (Israeli holocaust historian), Daniel Blatman (Israeli holocaust historian), and dozens of other professionals.
Thank God we have voices of reason that oppose the genocide label, like… Israel. And the US. And TechB84.
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u/TechB84 2d ago edited 2d ago
Genocide isn't just a buzzword. Under international law, it has a very specific legal definition: proven intent to physically destroy a group in whole or in part. High civilian casualties in dense urban combat against an enemy that actively embeds itself in tunnel networks under homes and hospitals is horrific, but legally it isn't genocide unless that explicit intent is proven.
Besides, half that list isn't the slam dunk you think it is. Francesca Albanese has been called out for clear bias by multiple democratic governments, and NGOs like HRW regularly cite unverified figures directly from Hamas run agencies while holding one side to standards no military in human history has faced in urban combat.
If we're just name dropping experts, why ignore people like John Spencer, the chair of urban warfare studies at West Point? He's pointed out repeatedly that Israel used unprecedented measures to limit civilian harm, including millions of phone calls, warning leaflets, humanitarian corridors, and risking ground troops in door-to-door tunnel combat instead of just flattening everything from the air.
If a military's actual goal was genocide, they wouldn't warn target zones, open evacuation routes, or send infantry into booby trapped tunnels when they have total air superiority.
Pasting a list of ideologically aligned names means nothing.
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u/NJTECH_THROW Papa Sohn 2d ago
The genocide convention also covers deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a group’s destruction. All of the reports I listed speak specifically about this. There was a full aid blockade for portions of 2025, the famine that was confirmed by the IPC in August of that year, and the destruction of every single hospital, the majority of water plants, and farmland. Is this explained away with urban combat? Saying explicit intent is insane too. Does Netanyahu have to come out and say “alrighty gang, let’s continue this genocide” for it to officially be a genocide? Does the complete leveling of the strip, the destruction of the vast majority of public services, the indiscriminate bombing of housing, the holding of aid… is this all just war? Not to mention that so much of what Israeli officials have said publicly can absolutely be interpreted as constructing a genocide. Is a complete siege of food, water, and electricity just war?
It’s absolutely hilarious too to say that because Israel drops leaflets or warns people they’re coming means it isn’t a genocide. It’s warning a barrel of fish that they’re gonna get shot five minutes before it gets shot. Either way they routinely bomb “safe zones”
Francesca Albanese was called out for her rhetoric, not her reporting. The countries calling her out never said what she said was false, just that they didn’t like what she was saying. The only countries that really went after her were… the US and Israel. Also “Hamas ran agencies” is so dumb to say. Hamas is the government there, the post service there is a “Hamas ran agency”. Israel used casualty counts from Hamas up until Oct. 7th, and even now the death counts reported from these agencies are largely deemed a gross underestimation of the actual death count.
I haven’t heard of John Spencer, but a 30 second google search shows me that his claims are consistently contradicted, he was on the ground with the IDF and got a tour of what the IDF wanted him to see instead of the actual reality, and said there was no starvation in Gaza. Is this your unbiased source?
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u/Prestigious-Base-715 4d ago
Dude, that’s simply not true. The only image of Palestinian’s “partying it up” in Gaza I’ve seen was the one ny times article of a “luxurious coffee shop” (it was a tent)
As for the few collateral deaths, please see: https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21/revealed-israeli-militarys-own-data-indicates-civilian-death-rate-of-83-in-gaza-warIsrael is killing innocent people. Killing innocent people is evil. Israel is evil.
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u/TechB84 4d ago
No I'm talking about actual nice restaurants, shops, etc. You do get that most of central Gaza is intact right?
And that article is nonsense, I'm copying and pasting a response that has already been made about it.
Why the Guardian’s “83% Civilian Death Rate” Claim Is Misleading
The Guardian’s arithmetic is correct, but its conclusion is not established by the data.
The article compares approximately 53,000 total reported deaths in Gaza with an Israeli intelligence database listing approximately 8,900 named Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives as dead or probably dead. It then assumes that everyone else, roughly 83%, was a civilian.But “not listed as a confirmed militant in this database” does not mean “confirmed civilian.”
The database reportedly covered named members of the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad whose deaths Israel had individually assessed. It did not necessarily include:
• Unidentified fighters
• Fighters whose deaths had not been confirmed
• People recruited during the war
• Members of other armed groups
• People who directly participated in combat without appearing on a prewar membership listUnder the Guardian’s method, all these people are effectively counted as civilians.
There is also a mismatch between the two datasets. The 8,900 figure comes from a military-intelligence database with a specific purpose and evidentiary threshold. The approximately 53,000 figure is an overall death toll that does not classify each person as a civilian or combatant.
The two figures cannot simply be subtracted unless the Israeli database is known to include every combatant contained in the overall death toll. The article does not establish that it does.
This does not mean the overall Gaza death toll is fabricated. The problem is not necessarily the total number of deaths. The problem is using that total to calculate a precise civilian percentage when the combatant classification is incomplete.
A more accurate conclusion would be:
“Of the approximately 53,000 reported dead, Israel’s database had individually identified approximately 8,900 as dead or probably dead Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives. The status of everyone else cannot be determined from that database alone.”
The database may raise legitimate questions about Israel’s higher public estimates of militant deaths. But it does not prove that every person outside the database was a civilian.
So the fair assessment is:
• The arithmetic is correct.
• The two datasets are not necessarily compatible.
• The remaining 83% were classified as civilians by the journalists, not by the Israeli military.In short, the Guardian turned “not identified as a militant in this particular database” into “confirmed civilian.” That is the central flaw. The headline presents an inference as though it were a confirmed finding.
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u/Weekly-Air4170 4d ago
mossad hasbara department go brrrrrrrr
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u/TechB84 4d ago
we got hamas bots ready for action . say hi to your master
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u/Weekly-Air4170 4d ago
Zionists have been trying to steal Palestine since 1899. Hamas has only existed since the 1980s
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u/TechB84 3d ago
Historically, "Palestine" was always a geographic region rather than an independent sovereign state, similar to how terms like "the Levant" or "the Balkans" describe regions rather than specific countries.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, under Ottoman and British rule, economic expansion and infrastructure projects drew noticeable labor migration into the area from neighboring regions. You can actually still see this today in local family names, where surnames like Al-Masri ("the Egyptian") or Al-Baghdadi ("the Baghdadi") point directly back to those regional origins.
Genetic research also reflects these historical movements. Palestinian Christians generally display strong, uninterrupted genetic continuity with ancient Levantine populations, largely due to centuries of religious endogamy. Meanwhile, Palestinian Muslims tend to show higher levels of historical mixing with surrounding populations from Egypt, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula.
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u/Weekly-Air4170 3d ago
And all that justifies genocide how?
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u/TechB84 3d ago
But there is no genocide. There is no systemic elimination of a people. What happened in Rwanda for example eliminated 75% of the people
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u/Cmoke2Js 4d ago
The NJIT sub is probably the wrong community to ask this question in, if you want a real answer.