Hamas says two Israeli hostages have been killed by Israeli airstrikes

Linkerbaan@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 131 points – Hamas says two Israeli hostages have been killed by Israeli airstrikes
theguardian.com

Hamas has released a video announcing the death of two Israeli hostages and claimed that they were killed by Israeli airstrikes.

The video showed a female hostage named in Israeli media as Noa Argamani, 26, speaking under duress, revealing that two men she was held captive with had been killed in captivity. It was not clear when or where the video was filmed and there was no independent confirmation of Hamas’s claims.

The three hostages were shown in a 37-second Hamas video released on Sunday in which the group urged the Israeli government to halt its aerial and ground offensive and bring about their release. The undated clip ended with the caption: “Tomorrow [Monday] we will inform you of their fate.”

In a statement released with the new video, Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam brigades, said the two men, believed to be Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itay Svirsky, 38, had been killed in “the Zionist army’s bombing”.

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The Guardian - Can we trust casualty figures from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry?

In the past, the US state department’s annual human rights report indirectly relied on the same ministry’s casualty figures in quoting UN statistics drawn from Palestinian data.

Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said he saw no evidence that the numbers were being manipulated.

“We have been monitoring human rights abuses in the Gaza Strip for three decades, including several rounds of hostilities. We’ve generally found the data that comes out of the ministry of health to be reliable,” he said.

That's interesting, as there is no way to verify that data. We know that Hamas adds its own losses to the numbers by their own admission. In addition, in that part of the world the dead are buried quickly so there is no way to verify. Still, the numbers are there and they should be taken with a grain of salt. But, it seems strange to swear by them.

It seems strange for someone who refuses to answer the question:

Do you think a government intentionally withholding food, potable water, and medicine from a population they consider undesirable is genocide.

To people who aren't trying to make a bad faith propaganda argument that unrestrained bombing in a area the size of Manhattan with a population of 2.2 million wouldn't cause at a minimum 23,000 deaths it seems pretty obvious.

I would believe Hamas if they said the sky was blue on a sunny day, too.