44 health care workers saw children shot in the head or chest

October 9, 2024 6:52 PM

65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza (NYT). I thought I was numb to this sort of news, but apparently not.
posted by brendano (19 comments total)

Archive
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:03 PM on October 9 [1 favorite]

Never forget.
posted by Sphinx at 8:17 PM on October 9 [7 favorites]

I was recently pointed to this study on systematic dehumanization, which more or less points out that the Israeli messaging about Palestinians is maybe the most overtly and extremely a population has been dehumanized in the eyes of another in recent decades — the part that really stuck out was the question about how many Palestinians it would be acceptable to sacrifice in order to save one Israeli life. Of the respondents, 49.9% chose "1,000," and what makes this even more chilling to think about is that 1,000 was the maximum number allowed on the questionnaire, suggesting that surely at least some of them would gladly pick a larger number — any larger number — given the option to do so.
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:58 PM on October 9 [32 favorites]

The archive link doesn't work for me, I followed the instructions and it still says I have to subscribe to read the article.
I follow some very good sites on social media and it's absolutely horrific; children dead from targeted sniper fire, journalists targeted, aid workers targeted. It's sickening.
So much of this gets a free pass in the Western media; I'm Canadian and the CBC is so horribly slanted that I can't stomach their coverage anymore, so, it's good that things like this article exist even though I can't read it.
Thank you for posting all the same.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 12:11 AM on October 10 [11 favorites]

the part that really stuck out was the question about how many Palestinians it would be acceptable to sacrifice in order to save one Israeli life. Of the respondents, 49.9% chose "1,000,"

24.5 is currently the actual number.

As of 4 October 2024, over 43,000 people (41,802 Palestinian and 1,706 Israeli) have been reported as killed in the Israel–Hamas war
posted by fairmettle at 12:26 AM on October 10 [2 favorites]

Gift link.
posted by Synaptic at 2:09 AM on October 10 [4 favorites]

But say it accurately: كاذب.
posted by sammyo at 2:45 AM on October 10

24.5 is currently the actual number

The currently known figure, from an agency with no undamaged hospitals, unknown access to body recovery from bombing sites, and I have to assume major comms/data issues on account of all the bombings.

I think it was the Lancet that pegged the lower bound as probably being 160,000.
posted by Slackermagee at 4:01 AM on October 10 [13 favorites]

Here's the gift link I posted on my blog. If it doesn't work for you, Kottke has also posted one.
posted by dobbs at 5:32 AM on October 10 [3 favorites]

At this point, its safe to say that shooting children is Israeli state policy and what it exists to do.

As an asides, Israelis have this policy of shooting not to kill but to maim and turn healthy (Palestinian) people into disabled ones. They do that so that they can inflict Palestinians with disabled people that they have to care for. There's a book on this: The Right to Maim:
Debility, Capacity, Disability by Jasbir K Puar. But ... its just so obvious that it makes you raging mad. These IDF fucks are just going to get on with the rest of their lives, unscathed, after committing genocide.

It happens in Kashmir as well when the Indian army deliberately shoots Kashmiris in order to blind them.

And it happens in the US when cops give 'rough rides' with the intention of giving a healthy black person a nice case of paralysis.
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 6:14 AM on October 10 [15 favorites]

As an asides, I used to be on tumblr and in October/November 2023, some people I followed came out as Zionists. Mostly of the "Israelis are the indigenous people of Palestine-Israel" type. I just wonder, ten years from now, will they have amnesia about their stance on this, or just twist the history into a story about how these actions were somehow the actions of freedom fighters?
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 6:37 AM on October 10 [7 favorites]

To discuss Israel and Gaza in the U.S. becomes so convoluted and complicated - which things can or should you mention or consider? Which types of racism, which religious ideologies, which nationalist ideologies, which subcommunities, which terminologies, which intentions are presumed, which types of grief are acceptable to air, etc.

But, more simply, I just stared at the x-rays here. Do we want our government to arm the country that did this?
posted by brendano at 6:40 AM on October 10 [5 favorites]

Yes, the x-rays are enough. More powerful than any kind of argument. If Israelis say they are shooting terrorists. Well, they are not. They are shooting children.

When people say its complicated, or if someone tries to tell you its complicated ... its not really complicated.

Israelis have been shooting kids long before October 2023, for example, Ahed Tamimi's cousin in 2018. One can go back in time for decades and find the same articles. The fact that NYTimes and big media start talking about it now ... when Israel has stolen more land, killed more people, erased more historical sites .... its all so deliberate. Its just reputation-laundering so that when the Israelis have what they want, all the publications can go around piously acting like they weren't the ones who enabled it in the first place.

It's kind of funny when you're watching the destruction happen in real time and see the veil pulled back. Everyone at the NYTimes is a foaming-at-the-mouth liar who laughs when they see genocide happening. They're just trying to trick us into thinking they are not evil.
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 7:09 AM on October 10 [12 favorites]

And still it’s where this story was published. Finally.
posted by zenzenobia at 7:23 AM on October 10 [1 favorite]

> When people say its complicated, or if someone tries to tell you its complicated ... its not really complicated.

I suspect that this is the kind of moral clarity that many are afraid of and therefore not willing to entertain by themselves. We're humans and we are good at thinking in the way of "yes, but", for good reasons.

The thing is, moral clarity is not all. From the same morally-clear starting point, it is totally possible (likely even) and valid to arrive at different conclusions. We're going to preclude that universe of possible actions and solutions, if we only allow ourselves to think "yes, but". That "yes, but" is a trap, which superficially resembles open-mindedness but actually clamps our vision.

I'm reminded of Daniel Boyarin in an interview relating to his reaction when Yitzhak Rabin (while defense minister during the First Intifada) said they "should" break the arms and legs of Palestinian boys because they threw rocks at IDF troops.

I asked at the time, what is this cruel idea of breaking the arms and legs of little boys? And somebody explained to me that this was necessary in order to maintain the state. And I said, if that’s necessary to maintain the state, then the state is clearly a wrong thing.

What we* need is that "if..., then" that negates any "yes, but". We should be able to say that in no universe is it okay to break the limbs of young boys (and shoot bullets into the heads of boys and girls -- I'm dying inside as I even write these words). And if something had to be built on that kind of atrocity, the only conclusion we can find, under such logic, is that the "something" is not worth having. Some things are not yesbuttable.

In the instance of Boyarin, he became a (Jewish) anti-Zionist. That's his life's choice. One doesn't have to become an anti-Zionist in order to hold onto that basic truth in that "if..., then". Most of us will not end up defining ourselves in terms of Zionism/anti-Zionism. We have different lives, and based on the same kernel of truth we can and will do different things. But we should be able to let ourselves be changed by that "if..., then", each in our own way.

I'm writing this only because I know how susceptible to the fake safety of "yes, but".
posted by runcifex at 8:51 AM on October 10 [12 favorites]

I have conflicted feelings about the moral complexity of this, but I'm pretty sure that killing civilians is always wrong, always. That's why war crime and genocide treaties exist. The Netanyahu govt, the IDF and esp. the settlers are evil. Maybe we wont look at them as nazis, but we will look at them as truly evil.

DoctorFedora: IMO the answer for those 50% is all, all the Palestinians should just have the decency to die, after all the Germans did the holocaust. So Palestinians should obv. die. And NO I'm not excusing Hamas. Fuck them. I hope they die too. Not just for their campaigns against Israelis, but also for participating in deliberately getting the innocents killed in Gaza.
posted by WatTylerJr at 9:36 AM on October 10

"Side with the child over the gun every single time,
no matter whose gun
and no matter whose child." - Naomi Klein
posted by lalochezia at 10:34 AM on October 10 [22 favorites]

Surely this...
posted by allthinky at 5:05 PM on October 10 [3 favorites]

And still it’s where this story was published. Finally.

Finally? (Actual) RIP to the journalists who've been covering this before the NYT deigned to lend its imprimatur I guess.

I do think it's necessary even if I also think it's reputation-laundering - because the cohort who reads NYT isn't likely to read Al-Jazeera and maybe sometimes ProPublica or Democracy Now. But let's not lay some laurels here - this is the least they can start to do, especially considering what manner of editorial politics that was going hand in hand to allow this to be up.

As mentioned in the current Palestine (and now Lebanon) thread, the most recent but only one of many reports on how western media has been carrying water for this occupation and now siege and invasion from Al-Jazeera. (ETA: In the news broadcast version of this story, scroll to min 16:30 to watch former NYT Jerusalem Bureau Chief, in her own words. And she's not earnestly explaining, you see.)

There is also the New York War Crimes. Their Palestine Coverage section.
posted by cendawanita at 10:38 AM on October 11 [2 favorites]