konmok (u/konmok) - Readit News

konmok commented on Deep Zionism scottaaronson.blog/?p=908... · Posted by u/solarist

anatoly · a day ago

The time-wise imbalance of deaths is a very basic fact about the ongoing war, I didn't realize you were ignorant of it and needed a verification. The Hamas-provided statistics are timestamped, you can look e.g. at https://data.techforpalestine.org/docs/casualties-daily/, download the CSV file, look in the cumulative deaths column, see that it's just over 60k for the entire period, and note that 30k occurs around 2024-03-01. So I was slightly off and it's a little less than 5 months (oct 07 to mar 01) out of a little less than 23 months (oct 07 to 2025-08-31) that account for 50% of the deaths.

There isn't any report that actually counts Gaza's population, the UN provided an "estimate" with no methodology, births are not mentioned, and it's built on figures including number of people who exited Gaza (irrelevant to the claimed decrease due to violent deaths). That's not serious.

There's no coherent notion of genocide that fails to reduce the population significantly. Yes, you can argue (and people have) that the legal definition, by using the "part of" wording, can conceivably apply to virtually any number of deaths, but again, that's not serious.

konmok · 5 hours ago

Thanks, but we still need better data on births for this argument to hold any water. Additionally, if you want to include the segment of the population that has fled, you will also need data on the birth/death rates for that segment.

I would also like to note that you found a study looking at birth/death rates, but after realizing it suggested a shrinking population, decided to combine information from that study with information from a separate dataset so that the population could be argued to be growing.

And none of this actually takes nonviolent deaths into account, however small you believe that number may be.

This... is not good science.

konmok commented on Deep Zionism scottaaronson.blog/?p=908... · Posted by u/solarist

richardfeynman · 11 hours ago

So in other words you said I didn't acknowledge the correction, but I did acknowledge it, twice. I then modified it to point out that there were 500k exits from gaza out of a population of 2 million, something I'm glad you now don't dispute, because it gives lie to the whole "open-air prison" narrative.

konmok · 10 hours ago

No, that's not what I said. Once again, you are not being careful with your words, and as a result what you say has only a tenuous relationship to the truth. Yes, you acknowledged your mistake, yet you still insisted upon that incorrect figure later, to a different person in a different subthread.

As for the 500k figure, I'm not interested in disputing it since it's just as irrelevant as your 6.6% figure, for reasons I've already mentioned. But since you insist, I'll list them out again:

1. That figure is listing total exits, not distinct exiting individuals. Since most of those exits were made by workers and traders (who might cross very frequently, maybe daily), there is good reason to believe that the number of distinct exiting individuals is vastly lower. For example, if everyone crossing was a daily trader, the true number of exiting individuals would be smaller by a factor of 365. Of course, not everyone making the crossing is a worker or trader, only most of them, and we don't know how often they cross.

2. That figure does not distinguish exits by Palestinians, Israelis, or other citizens, so it has no bearing on whether Palestinians are trapped in Gaza or not. Many Israeli workers also cross into and out of Gaza constantly.

3. This figure is from before October 7, and movement is more restricted now. But, since you are focusing on the use of the term "open-air prison" before the massacre, I won't count that against you.

By the way, I certainly don't insist on calling Gaza an "open-air prison", that's far too imprecise for me. I simply object to the way that you misinterpret facts to support your argument.

konmok commented on Deep Zionism scottaaronson.blog/?p=908... · Posted by u/solarist

richardfeynman · 12 hours ago

"You keep insisting on that 6.6% figure" This is simply false. I have acknowledged your correction twice. It's more accurate to say that there have been more than 500,000 exits from Gaza in 2022, which as a percent of the population is approximately 25%, though this surely includes people who exited multiple times. In the same year, India recorded 22.6 million exits from a population of 1.4 billion, which is less than 2%. Given that there were 500k recorded exits, it wasn't an open-air prison. QED.

The acknowledgments. "Thanks for this comment. I'd like to acknowledge that as you point out the 6.6% figure refers to exits from Gaza via Egypt using documented means, and may include people who exited multiple times, so the actual people exiting would be slightly lower. Similarly, it'd be nice for you to acknowledge that this figure doesn't include undocumented exits via tunnels in Rafah, or the 424,000 documented exits from Gaza via Israel." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45084323

"My claim is that it wasn't because people could get in and out. I have already acknowledged that the 6.6% figure refers to documented exits via the official Rafah crossing rather than indivudual people, and that this includes people who cross multiple times."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45091288

Also, this is data you appear to have been totally unaware of (as evidenced by your skepticism and repeated demand for sources), so it is you who should acknowledge you were wrong and stop spreading misinformation.

konmok · 12 hours ago

Yes, you acknowledged the correction elsewhere. However, when questioned about the 6.6% figure by another user, you literally just replied "I was quoting a fact". Perhaps you meant the fact about the number of exits to Egypt, but to me, that appears highly misleading, perhaps intentionally so.

I think oscaracso makes a very good point as well. In a country as vast as India, you can find almost anything you need without leaving its borders. Less so with Gaza.

konmok commented on Deep Zionism scottaaronson.blog/?p=908... · Posted by u/solarist

richardfeynman · 12 hours ago

Indeed, I wrote "prior to 10/7" in my completely accurate statement that prior to 10/7 Gaza was not an open-air prison. I pointed out that there were roughly 500,000 exits per year from Gaza to Egypt and Israel in this period. The reason I mentioned this is because people justify the 10/7 massacre as some sort of freedom fighting operation where people were breaking out of a prison.

Thanks for defining the word "mention," brother, knowing this definition really addresses the central issue and refutes my central point.

konmok · 12 hours ago

I think @chaps was quite justified in defining "mention", given that you just talked about 10/7 and then immediately insisted you never mentioned 10/7. That suggests that you either don't know what "mention" means, or you don't take any care with your words. And if you aren't being careful with your words, why should we trust them?

konmok commented on Deep Zionism scottaaronson.blog/?p=908... · Posted by u/solarist

iainmerrick · 17 hours ago

I was just reading through the discussion here because I was curious how people would respond to that post.

Thanks for all your thoughtful, level-headed and incredibly patient replies!

konmok · 15 hours ago

Thank you for reading! If nothing else, it's been a very interesting lesson in the state of online media literacy.

konmok commented on Deep Zionism scottaaronson.blog/?p=908... · Posted by u/solarist

richardfeynman · 15 hours ago

That's an editorial sentence; I was quoting a fact. The same fact appears in numerous other sources and gives lie to the open-air prison idea. Sorry you don't like that fact.

konmok · 15 hours ago

You keep insisting on that 6.6% figure, but you have yet to provide a single source that supports it. You made that calculation yourself, based on a statistic that you already admitted doesn't mean what you thought it meant, and doesn't correspond to the relevant statistic for India. Given how many times I've raised this issue to your attention, I would say you are now intentionally misleading people.

konmok commented on Deep Zionism scottaaronson.blog/?p=908... · Posted by u/solarist

richardfeynman · 2 days ago

Excuse me, but my initial claim is that there is no genocide in gaza because there is no massive population collapse. During the holocaust, 66% of european jewry was murdered in a systematic effort -- all civilians, with no Jews attacking European cities. The figures during the rwandan and armenian genocide were similar: massive population collapses.

Whether you believe there have been 100 births a day or 140 or 150 or 180, I have demonstrated that there were tens of thousands of births during the war in gaza, using credible sources like the UNOCHA and WHO. But even if you assume ZERO births, the gazan population will have only collapsed by roughly 60k people. I may be wrong about this, but I think this is an OVERESTIMATE, not an underestimate. While you don't have to believe me, I at least can make this claim without appealing to nameless ghosts under the rubble and can provide credible sources.

- The hamas figures are not an independent registry. The numbers are produced by a Hamas-run Ministry of Health—i.e., a belligerent party—without external audit. The UN, etc. do not independently verify these numbers; they simply repeat them. Even sympathetic explainers acknowledge the ministry is governed by Hamas and its routine updates aren’t independently verified.

- The system accepts public self-reports (initially via Google Forms, later an MoH web portal). That alone invites duplicates, misclassification, and bad data. Washington Institute documents the Google Form; it also cites the current MoH “report a death/missing” portal.

- The public reporting portal explicitly allows “natural death” submissions. When the same pipeline feeds the headline tally, non-combat, non-IDF deaths can (and did) get swept in. The live MoH form literally offers “martyr,” “missing,” or “natural death.” Mainstream reporting later noted removals where entries turned out to be natural deaths.

- the gaza ministry of health uses opaque and unreliable methods to count deaths (“media reports” + family notifications) with weak validation. Beyond hospital records, the MoH has relied on poorly specified “media reports” and family submissions; AP also notes names often come via the Hamas government media office—not hospital documentation. That’s not a chain of custody you can audit. It included the known false figures from the al ahli hospital incident.

- Totals and demographics are unstable and there have big retroactive corrections. The UN/OCHA famously halved its women/children figures in May 2024, and months later the MoH removed thousands of previously listed “victims,” with officials conceding some were natural deaths or living detainees. That volatility is incompatible with “hard” totals.

- The overall figure doesn’t separate civilians from combatants or assign cause of death. By design it bundles Hamas fighters, civilians, misfire casualties, indirect war deaths, and (as above) even natural deaths—so it cannot answer the key question “how many Gazans were killed by Israel.”

Sources: Source: https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/untangli...

Source: https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/sites/default/files/pdf/...

Source: https://sehatty.ps/moh-registration/public/add-order

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/hundreds-of-names-removed-from-of...

Source: https://www.euronews.com/2025/04/03/hamas-run-health-ministr...

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-says-gaza-death...

Source: https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-health-mini...

konmok · a day ago

Thank you for providing sources. I do find it interesting that the Washington Institute report concludes by saying that the Gaza Health Ministry's list of deaths is generally considered accurate, and that list currently includes more than 60,000 names.

But maybe you're right! Maybe the very sources you're relying on are wrong, and only 50,000 or so Gazans have died. That still doesn't mean this isn't a genocide.

The argument is that Gaza is currently undergoing a genocide, not that the genocide is already complete. If we were to have this argument about the Holocaust in 1942 or so, you could similarly say that only a small percentage of European Jews have died so far, therefore it can't be a genocide. In the case of Palestine, give Israel another decade of unchecked brutality and I'm sure they can attain your high standards for human extermination.

konmok commented on Deep Zionism scottaaronson.blog/?p=908... · Posted by u/solarist

anatoly · a day ago

No, this data in fact suggests growing population, for the following three reasons:

- the survey recorded a surprisingly small excess of nonviolent deaths (in excess of what's demographically expected), this is discussed in the preprint. The much larger number of violent deaths is almost matched by births, so the total balance is somewhat towards shrinking, in that cohort

- however, it is well known that the violent deaths occurred overwhelmingly early in the war (so far) - according to the official Hamas statistics, something like 50% of all casualties are in the first 4 months of the war, out of 22 so far. Whether these statistics are over- or under-counted is not likely to make a dent in this huge imbalance. So as the war is ongoing - and it's already been another 8 months since the 14 covered by the survey - the death rate is still "collapsing" compared to average rate so far.

- at the same time, the birth rate has evidently not seen such a huge collapse since the first 4 months of the war; this can't be gleaned from the survey, but enough plausible reports (e.g. what @richardfeynman quoted) exist that point in that direction.

So if we consider the survey relatively representative of the entire population, the imbalance towards shrinking population after 14 months is already almost certainly repaired towards growing after another 8 months, because so few civilians are violently killed (again, compared to the first 4 months of the war) in 2025.

konmok · a day ago

Once again: do you have sources for any of this? Yes, there were more violent deaths at the start of the war, but how much more? @richardfeynman did provide quotes for his birth rate claims, but as I already mentioned, those quotes appear to be estimates of birth rates for a single month. Extrapolating that data across all 22 months is nonsense.

Additionally, your argument hinges on a single preprint paper that has yet to be peer-reviewed.

And finally, we don't even need to play these games counting up death tolls in different, increasingly creative ways. There are already reports from the UN and others directly confirming that Gaza's population has decreased: <https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/dec/06/instagram-...>

konmok commented on Deep Zionism scottaaronson.blog/?p=908... · Posted by u/solarist

richardfeynman · 2 days ago

Thanks for this comment. I'd like to acknowledge that as you point out the 6.6% figure refers to exits from Gaza via Egypt using documented means, and may include people who exited multiple times, so the actual people exiting would be slightly lower. Similarly, it'd be nice for you to acknowledge that this figure doesn't include undocumented exits via tunnels in Rafah, or the 424,000 documented exits from Gaza via Israel.

In those conditions, it's hard to pinpoint an exact figure, but whatever the precise figure is--5%, 6.6%, 10%--it's clearly higher than zero, which is what one would expect in an "open air prison," the central point I was arguing against.

Aside from the exit rate, the "open air prison" claim is a lie for many other reasons, not least of which is that the guards patrolling the so-called prison (Hamas) are also the people who were claimed to be inmates, something one doesn't see in prisons.

The claim for Israeli persecution is not false (or "trivially false" as you put it). The odds of a gazan dying from an israeli weapon in 2022 was essentially zero: hamas claims 49 were killed that year, of which 22 are verifiable. The odds of a gazan dying from Hamas on the other hand was appreciable, in the thousands. After hamas's genocidal massacre on october 7, obviously this changed.

konmok · a day ago

Yes, it's hard to pinpoint an exact figure, but you have provided no evidence with which to obtain even a ballpark estimate. I don't think the real figure would be "slightly lower" than 6.6%, I think it would be much lower, since many of those exiting Gaza would be e.g. truck drivers who make the trip constantly. As for the "secret Gazan escape tunnels", while some Hamas tunnels may exist connecting Rafah and Egypt, I can find no evidence that these are trafficked by civilians. Of course, I don't know how much lower than 6.6% the real figure is, and neither do you, that's the point. The real problem here is that you presented that figure as an absolute certainty, without any evidence to back it up.

Secondly, when people refer to Gaza as an "open air prison" they are employing metaphor. I have never understood it to mean that literally no one leaves, and I don't think any reasonable person understands it that way.

Finally, you have provided more figures about Gazan deaths. Would you care to provide a source for those figures? Even if they are accurate (and so far, none of your figures have been accurate) they still contradict your previous post, that the "only men with guns in Gaza are Hamas". The point of my questioning was to arrive upon a common definition for the word "persecution". Your offered definition was indeed trivially false, since you just admitted that the IDF shot innocent civilians in that time frame. Perhaps you would like to amend your statement and pick a definition more suitable for your arguments, such as Amnesty International's definition. In that case, I offer this report detailing the many ways Palestinians were persecuted under Israel's rule prior to October 7: <https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/>

konmok commented on Deep Zionism scottaaronson.blog/?p=908... · Posted by u/solarist

richardfeynman · 2 days ago

Source: https://www.who.int/news/item/03-11-2023-women-and-newborns-... "There are an estimated 50 000 pregnant women in Gaza, with more than 180 giving birth every day. " - WHO

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_humanitarian_crisis_%2820...

"On 18 January 2024, Natalia Kanem, the executive director of the UN Population Fund, spoke at the World Economic Forum at Davos, stating the situation was the "worst nightmare" the UNPF representative had ever witnessed, as there were 180 women giving birth daily, sometimes on the streets of Gaza, as the territory's health system collapsed"

Source: https://www.savethechildren.net/news/about-130-children-born... "About 130 babies will be born in Gaza every day over a month into a healthcare system driven to the verge of collapse, where some may not survive complications at birth. "

The 60k death count is likely an overcount, not an undercount, but this one I won't google for you. However you cut the numbers, and even if you believe in nameless ghosts under the rubble, there's been no population collapse.

konmok · 2 days ago

Thanks for providing sources! They estimate 180 giving birth every day, but over what time frame? Without a time frame, it's not really possible to estimate the total born.

As for the 60k count, every single source I have found suggests that 60k is a massive underestimate. You'll need to provide some very strong evidence to back up your claim to the contrary.

Regardless of the balance of birth and death rates, multiple sources have reported a significant decline in Gaza's population this year. So far, all evidence you have provided contradicts your own initial claim.