Palestinian health officials released a 212-page list identifying 6,747 people killed by Israeli attacks.
In a pointed riposte to U.S. President Joe Biden — who said he has “no confidence” in Gaza casualty figures provided by Hamas, Palestinian health officials on Thursday released a 212-page list identifying 6,747 people killed by Israeli air and artillery attacks on the besieged enclave since October 7.
The Gaza Health Ministry published the names, ages, genders, and civil identification numbers of 6,747 Palestinian victims of Israeli attacks, including 2,665 children. The list is in Arabic, with an English version said to be forthcoming.
Another 281 people, 248 of them children, could not be identified. In order to improve chances of identification should their children be dismembered by Israeli bombardment, some Gaza parents and guardians have taken to writing children’s names on their hands and legs.
All told, 7,028 Palestinians — including 2,913 children — have been killed in Gaza since Israel declared war in the wake of the Hamas-led infiltration attacks that left more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers dead on and after October 7.
More than 17,000 Palestinians have been injured in Israeli attacks, nearly half the homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, and over 1.4 million people have been displaced.
Israeli soldiers and settlers have also killed more than 100 Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7, while nearly 2,000 others have been wounded there. The Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement that it was releasing the list “so that the world knows that behind every number is the story of a person whose name and identity are known.”
“Our people are not nobodies who can be ignored,” the agency stressed.
“At a time when our people are waiting for urgent international intervention to stop the genocidal war being carried out by the Israeli occupier against all civilian components including health and media personnel… more than 2 million people living in the Gaza Strip are exposed to the ugliest types of systematic killing and brutal massacres,” the statement continued.
The ministry accused the Biden administration of accepting all of the Israeli government’s claims “without any verification or scrutiny” and “devoid of all… morals and basic human rights values that it sings about.”
On Wednesday, Biden — who earlier this month declared his “rock-solid and unwavering” commitment to Israel — said during a White House press conference that he was “sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.” “But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using,” the president added.
Some critics condemned Biden’s stance as “genocide denial.” However, the administration doubled down on its claim as White House Spokesperson John Kirby said during a Thursday press briefing that “the Gaza Ministry of Health is just a front for Hamas.” “We can’t take anything coming out of Hamas, including the so-called Ministry of Health, at face value,” Kirby added.
Some observers noted that the Biden administration cited Gaza Ministry of Health casualty figures as recently as last year in a State Department human rights report.
IfNotNow, a Jewish-led U.S. peace group, called the Gaza victims list “catastrophic” and “devastating.”
“President Biden publicly undermining the Gaza death toll is dangerous and wrong,” the group said. “Questioning death tolls directly dehumanizes Palestinians. It’s a key part of genocide denial. Israel is murdering Palestinians. By minimizing this, the U.S. is laying the groundwork for more death.”
Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, told The New York Times that the arguing over the number of dead in Gaza is akin to not seeing the forest for the trees. “As the debate focuses on death tolls, the bodies continue to pile up,” Shakir said. “Our focus should be on how to prevent further mass atrocities, instead of debating whether or not the number is exactly accurate or not.”
“We know that Palestinians are being killed in unprecedentedly high numbers,” he said, “and that needs to end.”
archive link: https://archive.ph/8pvFS
Genocide Joe. How could I possibly support him or really most any American politician after this? They are so vile.
“Price of waging war…”
Indiscriminate bombardment of civilians is not “war” Joe, it’s fucking terrorism and genocide.
"But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using,”
Of course! Indiscriminately shelling a densely populated civilian population for weeks surely couldn’t add up to such numbers! Let’s just split the difference and call it two or three.
Yes, Hamas is a terrorist organization, but Israel is a terrorist state. Civilians are caught in the middle because we allow the terror to continue.
Do NOT apologize for mass murder and coordinated, deliberate terror.
“Price of waging war…”
Indiscriminate bombardment of civilians is not “war” Joe, it’s fucking > terrorism and genocide.
Also the fact that Palestine didn’t wage war on Israel, Hamas did.
It’s like if America indiscriminately bombed and waged war on Afghanistan and Iraq instead of just the Taliban… Oh wait…
Stupid is as stupid does.
And ISIS was created out of that mess.
Lol@ ‘any American politician’. ‘Any American politician’ is a candidate to rule literally on top of the graves of the Native Americans’ their ancestors genocided…
Truly the US is Israel in it’s final form. Which explains all the excusing you see
I will not vote for genocide denial.
Well, unfortunately it seems your choices will be genocide denial or genocide enthusiastic endorsement. Anything else is a statistically almost impossible.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
Nope: Refusing to play makes the result you like least more likely.
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Voting for genocide makes me complicit.
I’d rather literally kill myself. In fact, I’d do more good if I doused myself in kerosene and lit myself on fire outside of the polling place. At least that way I get to vote for something besides genocide regular and genocide deluxe. My vote might actually matter if I do that.
Not voting is mathematically equivalent to a half vote for genocide deluxe.
So, yes, your (refusal to) vote does matter, in that it makes the situation a bit worse.
You’re right, I should actually just kill myself in front of a polling place. Self immolation as a form of protest has actually worked to topple evil governments, so if I actually wanted to do something about this I should buy a few gallons of kerosene. That’s a vote that matters.
Democracy is about compromise. Only dictators get their way every time. Vote for the best realistic option and if you’re not satisfied with that then find additional ways to push for change. Protest, organize, make a podcast…
The rich get their way all the time.
What democracy?
It costs nothing to play and you might be able to avert the worst outcome.
I voted for Biden to stop fascism and now a genocide is happening. What was the fucking point?
As I said below, the only vote I could cast that would possibly matter is public suicide.
That genocide (it’s really more of an ethnic cleansing) has been going on for decades and Joe’s been pressuring Israel to tone it down. It’s not enough but there’s too much public support in the US for Israel. There would be serious political consequences for him and his party if he pushed for much more than that. Hell most of his party wouldn’t even support him if he went much further.
Also not having fascism is a pretty big deal in my book.
The public support for Israel comes from political leaders like Biden giving them unconditional support. He isn’t “pressuring” them because there’s absolutely no limit to his support for Israel. Pressure requires some threat of action against them and the US would never do anything like that.
Though you’re right that his Party would revolt if he actually tried applying real pressure on Israel (as opposed to pure rhetoric) but that’s just proof his Party also supports genocide.
And yes, it’s genocide. Look at the definition. “Ethnic cleansing” is just a euphemism that implies Palestinians are filth that need to be cleaned. Call genocide, genocide.
Israelis to Palestinians “move south out of the combat zone”. This serves two functions… 1) it allows for Israel to slaughter the displaced people easier and 2) doesn’t scatter unexploded ordinance all over the land the Israelis want to steal from the Palestinians.
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Yes you can blame people for being skeptical. Have you seen the pictures of the scale of destruction in Gaza? I’m frankly surprised the number isn’t higher.
The Palestinian health authority has also consistently put out reliable numbers. The UN seems to think so and even the Biden administration seems to try on them internally. I imagine they’re trying to cast doubt on the figures because war crimes like this are frankly a PR nightmare. Biden’s already lost a significant degree of support amongst democrats.
As for the hospital, there’s been no conclusive evidence that it was a failed rocket. You’re showing your bias if you think that we’ll know what happened without an independent investigation. That said, why is it surprising to you that people would jump to conclusions about it being an Israeli air strike? The IDF is dropping an absurd amount of bombs on Gaza. They told people to leave that hospital, implying they were going to bomb it. They had already bombed it once. Even wilder, Israeli officials admitted to bombing the hospital before retracting their claims. It’s wild of you to imply that thinking the IDF bombed that hospital is a ludicrous accusation.
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Oh so health authority numbers are accurate now but they include combatants as well? I guess that means there aren’t any war crimes being committed. The thousands of children that died are just combatants. I’m sure their families weren’t with them. But hey if they were, they were probably combatants too. The IDF I guess is just totally justified in their ethnic cleansing… excuse me “combatant” cleansing campaign.
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That’s fair. It’s hard to get the number right when you can’t clear the rubble. Maybe Israel could help by ending their bombing campaign and blockade. Then people in Gaza could get an accurate picture of just how many civilians and children were murdered by the IDF.
Actually Israel has a shit ton of bulldozers and combat engineers clearing rubble over the weekend. There’s a lot of video.
It’s also fixed the pipes and cell network and is flooding more aid than the rest of the world combined into the war zone including fuel. Under guard.
Are you implying that Israeli forces are clearing rubble to help find dead civilians they they murdered in cold blood? That’s so laughably absurd. Of course they have to clears the roads to the bombed out cities they are now attempting to invade with force.
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Yes, truthout is more trustworthy than most for-profit media. Have you read their other articles? Very high quality journalism.
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Would those numbers you’re citing be coming from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry? Are you literally taking the word of terrorists to try to make your point?
UN says Gaza Health Ministry death tolls in previous wars ‘credible’:
The Health Ministry, which utilises data from morgues and hospitals to reach its figures, released a 212-page document on Thursday with names and identity numbers of those killed.
Israel says they dropped 6000 bombs in the first 6 days (that was two weeks ago) on one of the most densely populated areas in the world, on people that are not allowed to leave. They said the “emphasis is on damage, not accuracy”.
Here’s the latest update from the UN human rights commissioner were they again allege Israel bombing civilian buildings.
Pretty much everything that’s coming out of there from civilians themselves, from journalists, the UN and even Israel paints a pretty clear picture of the IDF dropping thousands of bombs on civilians. But I guess you’d rather pretend that there’s some uncertainty and doubt about this.
Thank you. This is an important and well-done comment and I appreciate you for it.
I’m starting to be believe most of these “if anyone in Gaza says this, it can’t be true” naysayers only count deaths if there are at least 3 news about every singe dead or maybe 5 Facebook posts as well. It is still not reasonable if the said news or posts don’t have blonde hair blue eyes or lined-up upper/lower torso combinations.
Matching the amount of dropped bombs to civilian density, amount of liquidifed buildings, hospital and morgue lists, lied-about shootings and airstrikes? What Hamas propaganda is this? This line of thinking is what causes governments to put chips in our brains. But not Israel government, because they are the leaders of genocide victims of 80 years ago and since they are the pet bulldog of the U.S. in the Middle East, they are definitely the good guys.
Anyway, waiting for some Israeli news agency to call the whole list of the dead BS because they found one guy in that list becoming a new resident in their 10.000 inmate prisons and some random bot calling me to eat this comment in the next 3 days.
Nice news site, looks like half of what they publish are insane conspiracy theories
Truthout?
cant imagine they’ll stay employed for much longer by publicly disagreeing with the President…
Not condoning, but no different from Russia, Syria, Turkey and probably 20 terrorist governments I can’t name in Africa. (Except the Brits apartheid in So. Africa.) It’s time for a universal revolution where locals take back their own land and get rid of all big governments eveywhere. Go back to a tribal system.
We live in an unprecedented time of compromising pluralistic societies and international cooperation.
This guy: “lets go back to tribalism”
Where’s your list of compromising, clean hand nations?
Lmaooo. Yeah okay.
Palestinian health officials are Hamas. Just several days ago they lied about hundreds of victims of the hospital bombing, which turned out to be their own broken rocket.
They are still shooting rockets at Israel every day.
which turned out to be their own broken rocket.
No, it didn’t.
And yes, hundreds of people died.
Sounds like to haven’t read the article
