Finally NYT Does Some Journalism And Agrees With Israellycool

From today’s New York Times (and of course this is the LAST paragraph of the piece):

NYT Civilian or Not Screen shot with obligatory dead babyThe Times analysis, looking at 1,431 names, shows that the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, is also the most overrepresented in the death toll: They are 9 percent of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents, but 34 percent of those killed whose ages were provided. At the same time, women and children under 15, the least likely to be legitimate targets, were the most underrepresented, making up 71 percent of the population and 33 percent of the known-age casualties.

So basically, ignoring minor details like the fact that they’re starting their age bracket at 20 (we have a Hamas terrorist in hospital in Israel who is 16 who crawled through a tunnel to kill kids), they’ve come to the same conclusion Dave and our dedicated reader came to weeks ago.

The talk of 80% civilian casualties is complete rubbish and was easily verifiable as rubbish just from looking at Al Jazeera weeks ago. And the NYT actually had people in Gaza!

And as Israeli sources are talking about 900+ dead terrorists, something is going to collapse, just like it always does after months of the lying press repeating Hamas’s PR machine propaganda.

Well done Jodi Rudoren and the New York Times, pity you didn’t start doing your job back when the fighting started.

But of course, even a piece about under-reporting of dead terrorists wouldn’t be complete without a dead Palestinian baby picture. Oh well, I guess you had to go with that picture, you didn’t have any real photo journalists in the Gaza strip capable of photographing a terrorist or a rocket launch..

22 thoughts on “Finally NYT Does Some Journalism And Agrees With Israellycool”

  1. In the Western (and civilized) world it’s generally accepted that “fighting age) is 18-39 (maybe 35) but I think if you ask anyone who has fought in the Middle East in the past they would say the fighting age starts at around 14 (sad as that might seem). It is not surprising to hear that they IDF captured a 16 year old in one of the tunnels. And to my larger point, I’d bet that when you look at the final numbers you’d see upwards of 70% or more of the dead are male, aged 14-39. That does not mean all males that age are militants but the vast majority probably are militants. Finally, as I mentioned earlier, a 50/50 militant to civilian casualty ratio is on par w/ what the US estimated in Iraq, so even if the final totals are 1800 killed w/ 900 militants/900 civilians, Israel still did a pretty good job of sparing civilians.

    1. On Anderson Cooper just now, Aaron David Miller said that regardless of what each side says, we’ll never know the true numbers of combatants vs civilians, but it doesn’t matter because the pictures tell the story. So there you have it.

  2. YESSS! Someone really needs to add a reference to this on the wikipedia article. No liberal can argue with the NYT!

  3. All the western media report consistently that over half of the deaths in Gaza are civilians as if this was authoritatively verified by some reliable source. I’m not sure why the IDF can determine the number of militants killed but not the number of civilians. Facts matter, but images of dead children do affect world opinion more than cold hard numbers.

    1. Because they have information on enemy fighters, not on enemy civilians. Makes sense, they’re an army, not a relief organization, no? I told you, Jim, I told you. All you had to do was to look at the figures from Cast Lead to see the probable truth. Or the crazy figures being reported from the first Lebanese war. (IIRC, there were claims that there were more casualties reported than actual residents.)
      How the heck is the media in Gaza going to find out information, anyway? Even if it were a free country, it would be beyond their expertise and ability, but given that it is a totalitarian state?

    2. And that is why the media is complicit. They decide what to show. Frankly, if they could not report freely from Gaza, they had no right to report at all. (Even more complicit are their bosses, who could not care less if the reporters live or die, as I once heard a reporter complain on radio.)

  4. Hi Brian,

    Thanks for the nod! I will be getting the final data out in the next few days. However, it seems that Al-Jazeera has completely redone the list… I don’t know how many names are originally, so basically I have start from scratch (well not exactly, but it is a lot of work organizing this all).

    It’s just going to take a few more days. But I’m glad that this analysis and critical view of the deaths is being taken, unfortunately it is a dollar short, and a day late.

    Cheers,
    The Reader

  5. And finally the BBC gets around that too! Here is their report from a short time ago (August 8, 2014, at 00:52 GM): “Caution needed with Gaza casualty figures”

    By Anthony Reuben:

    http://bbc.in/1sp20hR

    This affair resembles the misleading reports regarding the casualties in the Cast Lead operation (Dec 2008-Jan 2009). As usual, also then most of the reported casualties were regarded as civilians, but much later (November 2010) Hamas admitted that around 600-700 of the dead people were terrorists, almost as the number reported by the IDF (709 armed militants, 162 undetermined, 1166 killed Palestinians in total). This proves again that patience and persistence prove themselves in the long term. Thank you very much Israellycool and the dedicated reader for all of your efforts and reports regarding this issue!

        1. And even for those that DON’T credit them–do we honestly believe they’d be reporting this if not for Israellycool and EoZ?

  6. In a related aspect to the shameful NYT “coverage,” the 8/5/14 online edition ran a feature trying to whitewash the one-sided photos from Gaza. You know, no pix of rocket launchers or herding people onto rooftops as sacrificial lambs. Pulitzer Prize winner photo Tyler Hicks, who says he covered Cast Lead, is quoted as saying “This is a war fought behind the scenes. Hamas fighters are not able to expose themselves. ….You don’t see any signs of authority on the streets….If we had access to them, we would be photographing them. I never saw a single device for launching the rockets to Israel.” And so on. Unlike the reporter from Spain who, after leaving Gaza, said he was not allowed to report on what Hamas was doing, the NYT guy claims he could “see no evil”. Here is the link:http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/looking-for-the-enduring-photo-in-gaza/?_php=true&_type=blogs&comments&_r=0#permid=12477848

  7. Regarding the pictures having the influence –

    “He answered me frankly: ‘It’s very simple, we did see Hamas people there launching rockets, they were close to our hotel, but if ever we dared pointing our camera on them they would simply shoot at us and kill us.’”

    “Wooh, impressive. Then I asked him ‘Would you mind saying that on camera? I can film you explaining this…’”

    “For some reason I cannot really understand, he refused and almost ran away. I guess my camera is as dangerous as Hamas threats…”

    “So just for you to know, the truth will never appear on the images you see on television.”

    They go on to quote our own Elder of Ziyyon on Lebanon, who BTW mentions that Anderson Copper was the only one brave enough then to tell the truth.

    http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/31/spanish-journalist-on-why-hamas-never-photographed-in-action-if-ever-we-dared-point-our-camera-on-them-they-would-simply-shoot-at-us-and-kill-us/
    (h/t Stand With Us)

    Remember the LATMA flotilla song? “The Truth Will Never Get to Your TV”.

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