Something to keep in mind when listening to "first hand accounts" like this is that even if they're honest statements, everybody is subject to the fog of war and skewed statistics.
An example that came up a few months ago was a surgeon in a Gaza hospital making the honest statement to BBC journalists that he had seen dozens of children coming into the hospital near death with a "single shot" to a vital organ. He claimed they were purposefully "sniped" by IDF soldiers because in his mind it was "impossible" that they were all so accurately shot precisely once.
What he didn't see coming into his O/R were the children with multiple gunshot wounds... because they died. Conversely, a grazing wound from shrapnel is too minor to go to his well equipped hospital, because the hospital is overloaded and taking only the severely wounded. So he saw just the filtered subset of injuries that were very severe but just barely survivable, giving him the false impression that the IDF was going out of its way to snipe children with a single well-placed shot. (This isn't some random anecdote either, there were long articles circulating around the international media!)
From the surgeon's point of view, he saw only a subset of what's going on, and he drew a conclusion that wasn't actually supported by the evidence. The problem is that his point of view supported a popular narrative, was amplified, and nobody bothered to verify statistics because.. sss... that's hard in a war zone.
I'm not advocating for either side and support neither. I'm just recommending reading all articles related to the war with a critical eye.
There's a group signed letter by 99 American volunteer medical professionals stating:
Specifically, every one of us who worked in an emergency, intensive care, or surgical setting treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head or chest on a regular or even a daily basis.
They’re not in the war zone taking an unbiased sample.
They’re in a hospital receiving critical but patients after triage
Inherently, their statistical sample of war injuries is biased. It’s a textbook example of the survivorship statical bias!
This is all I’m trying to say: not that their observations are false or that children aren’t being shot, but that they’re not in a position to draw accurate conclusions about what goes on outside the walls of their hospitals based on information they receive inside its walls. They certainly can’t draw conclusions about the motivations of IDF soldiers from the information available to them.
This logic applies to both sides, of course, and to all similar scenarios.
A random example are the Russian claims of having destroyed ‘X’ instances of ‘Y’ weapons system when Ukraine got less than ‘X’ delivered. The reason is simple — they’re not lying — they just counted the decoys they also blew up!
It’s war. It’s messy. Information is hard to interpret.
Regarding Russia there's also the phenomenon of inflating numbers at each step of the reporting chain, so suddenly a village reached by several soldiers, who subsequently died, turns into one that, on paper, was fully occupied.
This has caused issues on the Russian side, particularly in Ukraine's Kursk offensive, because troops moved in, assuming the territory is already taken, only to be ambushed.
"....A former Israeli prime minister has accused The New York Times of “blood libel” after the newspaper issued a clarification over the publication of a photograph of a child in Gaza whom the newspaper – and other media outlets – claimed was suffering “severe malnutrition”.
The New York Times admitted an error in publishing the image after it emerged the emaciated boy had been diagnosed with pre-existing health conditions. ...."
They're medical professionals. Not IDF soldiers. [1]
65 doctors, many of whom signed the letter previously mentioned, also signed an opinion essay on the NY Times. There are CT scans in the article. [2]
The NY Times Opinion editor even chimed in to state they saw corroborating said images, consulted independent experts to attest the credibility of said images, and ultimately decided the 40+ photos & videos of children with gunshots to the head and neck were too horrific for publication.[3]
Note that my original argument isn’t that children weren’t being shot — they clearly are — I’m saying that the doctors were making the claim that they were being “sniped” by “single shots”. The basis for the claim was that they saw few if any kids with multiple gunshot wounds.
Yes… because those kids died and hence there is no point taking them to a hospital. They go to a morgue.
They’re not lying about the facts, probably, I’m just saying that their facts don’t support their conclusions.
There’s still zero evidence to support their claims. Publishing an editorial saying “trust me bro” doesn’t enhance their veracity. It is physically impossible for a rifle round moving at high velocity to cause the minimal injuries shown in those x-rays. Such injuries are consistent only with indirect fire, such as a round fired into the air falling back down and striking some distant innocent on the head at low velocity.
What’s shocking is that the NYT won’t admit they fell for a hoax but instead are claiming they have ironclad evidence of genocide yet they are just… sitting on it because it’s gruesome for their readers to see? If that’s true then it is a staggering moral failure akin to being an accessory to the crime. Fortunately thats’s not the case because it’s a hoax.
> What he didn't see coming into his O/R were the children with multiple gunshot wounds... because they died. Conversely, a grazing wound from shrapnel is too minor to go to his well equipped hospital, because the hospital is overloaded and taking only the severely wounded. So he saw just the filtered subset of injuries that were very severe but just barely survivable, giving him the false impression that the IDF was going out of its way to snipe children with a single well-placed shot. (This isn't some random anecdote either, there were long articles circulating around the international media!)
The source for that is the “pretraining” we all share: children generally don’t survive multiple gunshot wounds from military battle rifles. One… maybe, but not two or three to the chest… or anywhere really.
I mean, you can debate that point if you choose, but you’d have to make a convincing argument that children are more likely to cling to life with more gunshot wounds.
An example that came up a few months ago was a surgeon in a Gaza hospital making the honest statement to BBC journalists that he had seen dozens of children coming into the hospital near death with a "single shot" to a vital organ. He claimed they were purposefully "sniped" by IDF soldiers because in his mind it was "impossible" that they were all so accurately shot precisely once.
What he didn't see coming into his O/R were the children with multiple gunshot wounds... because they died. Conversely, a grazing wound from shrapnel is too minor to go to his well equipped hospital, because the hospital is overloaded and taking only the severely wounded. So he saw just the filtered subset of injuries that were very severe but just barely survivable, giving him the false impression that the IDF was going out of its way to snipe children with a single well-placed shot. (This isn't some random anecdote either, there were long articles circulating around the international media!)
From the surgeon's point of view, he saw only a subset of what's going on, and he drew a conclusion that wasn't actually supported by the evidence. The problem is that his point of view supported a popular narrative, was amplified, and nobody bothered to verify statistics because.. sss... that's hard in a war zone.
I'm not advocating for either side and support neither. I'm just recommending reading all articles related to the war with a critical eye.