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Talk:Gaza Genocide
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Another important publication

For review: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2024.2448061 BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:34, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's a more in depth account than the Speri article, I would say, based on "Despite all these, as the above examples suggests, the Israel-critical camp has grown considerably louder in the last year" and given that this is again concerned mainly with the US, we have the balance in our article more or less correct. Selfstudier (talk) 12:17, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Antisemitism has been quoted back at people so much I'm sure it has made many people antisemitic. It is like an engineer in charge of some building works who was told practically any time he said some work needed redoing that he was saying it because they were black. He couldn't have cared less what colour they were. It just led to his hating the job and the people saying that and leaving. NadVolum (talk) 12:58, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This seems entirely disconnected from the topic of this discussion. Please see WP:NOTFORUM. Simonm223 (talk) 13:47, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it covers similar ground to Speri but with much more depth and analytical rigour. I agree both largely confirm the balance of this article.
Speri mentions Uğur Ümit Üngör, Rav Segal, Abdelwahab El-Affendi, Marianne Hirsch, Omer Bartov and William Schabas and on one side, Norman Goda and Jeffrey Herf on the other. Of these, all but Hirsch, Goda and Herf figure prominently in our article, so this secondary source largely confirms our sense of who is DUE. On this basis, we should consider adding Hirsch, Goda and Herf to the article.
Speri also notes
Early in the war, this debate played out in op-eds and dueling open letters. In one, more than 150 academics framed the Hamas attacks as an echo of “the pogroms that paved the way to the Final Solution”. In another, more than 55 scholars warned of the “danger of genocide” by Israel in Gaza and invoked states’ duty to intervene.
I think we might consider citing these letters. The signatories are very notable (including Jan Grabowski, Jan T. Gross and Yehuda Bauer in the case of one letter;
Bartov, and Christopher Browning in the first NYRB letter; Goda, Herf, Gross, and Sander Gilman replying).
IKlein mentions Segal, Bartov, Dirk Moses, Samuel Moyn, the NYRB letter, Barry Trachtenberg, Omar Shahabudin McDoom, Amos Goldberg on one side. I think we mention all of those except Moyn and the NYRB letter. On the other side she mentions Bauer, Michael Berenbaum, Polly Zavadivker, Richard Libowitz, the Grabowski letter, Tuvia Friling, Herf & Goda's letter, and Yad Vashem. Of these, our coverage is weaker, I think only mentioning Berenbaum and Zavadivker. I would suggest we correct that slight imbalance.
The key thing that both Speri and Klein set out very well, which I don't think we reflect, is that the discipline of genocide studies has been fundamentally split by this question, which seems an important point to me. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:15, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I did add something after you posted the Speri article -> "In late 2024, The Guardian reported a continuing split in the field with "with many keeping to the sidelines·" It's just one field and only in the US so I don't think it's that critical but we could expand it a little, I guess. Selfstudier (talk) 16:29, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes that's a good sentence; I think worth expanding a little. Good point about US, and Klein also explicitly says she focuses on scholars in US and Israel and that she's leaving Europe to others. True it's only one field, but it's the field for analysing genocide. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:15, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Herf and Goda's article on the case has not been included directly due to it being posted via a GUNREL source. With this article from the Journal of Genocide Research, we can add in information on their position cited to this article. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 13:21, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh the JGR article doesn't reference Herf and Goda's main article, but instead interviews and a different collaborative piece they did. We can still cite this JGR article, but using any if the references it has for Herf and Goda are also fine duw to being from RS. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 13:31, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
By "main article" do you mean Quillette? Agree we shouldn't cite that. However, their NYT letter responding to Bartov and their NYRB letter are probably both noteworthy I think. There's a little bit of secondary coverage of them, as well as of Herf's controversial YIVO panel.[16][17][18][19] BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:23, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Bobfrombrockley yep. If someone else doesn't do it before me, I'll look at adding them to the article in the coming days. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 10:35, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've added their opinions from Klein's journal article. The other articles don't seem to workable, as they don't really give any depth to their opinions into the accusation of genocide in Gaza, and more so detail how Hamas is linked to the Nazis, how October 7 is linked to the Holocaust, and how October 7 was genocidal (would be good to add to the October 7 genocide article). If you can see them being linked more explicitly, please expand their section with the references. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 20:16, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
At some point we will have access to Can Genocide Studies Survive a Genocide in Gaza? "What's the point of this field?" said A.Dirk Moses.."Is it in fact enabling the mass killing of Palestinians in the name of self defense and genocide prevention. If that's the case, then the field is dead - not only incoherent but complicit in mass killing" echoing a similar point made The Futility of Genocide Studies After Gaza a year ago "What then remains for a field whose core mission is genocide prevention if major "democracies" see quasi-genocidal acts as valid policy options? Even more serious, where can the field stand if scholars from within and around it are unwilling to call the behaviour out?" Selfstudier (talk) 13:20, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Bobfrombrockley:, @Selfstudier: WE HAVE ACCESS! -- Cdjp1 (talk) 23:36, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Lancet estimate update

A full Lancet review of the casualty statistics and modelling based on the drop-off in hospital reporting now estimates that at least 70,000 people (64,000 as of June) have died as a direct result of traumatic injury in Gaza. So fundamentally an update on the growing official undercount. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:07, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think we've got to stick with the current headline figures from the GHM. However the methodology looks sound and I've no particular problem accepting the numbers and believe it should be included as reliable. They also said they don't include those missing which would include those that are unidentified under the rubble. On the other hand some may have died from other causes besides trauma which they touch upon but say they don't have enough data to approach the problem nor the figures for overall non-trauma deaths. All the indications from other sources are that those of the same order or higher than the trauma deaths. NadVolum (talk) 21:44, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Interestingly the methodology looks like it has identified and corrected for the gross underreporting of childrens deaths compared to that of adults. This is evident in where it remarks on the near uniform death rate of women of all ages from children to the elderly. I'm very impressed. NadVolum (talk) 22:29, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Grim confirmation of what we know: A lack of discrimination in killings by age and sex would manifest itself numerically as a relatively flat age–sex risk—eg, as described by the UN Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Our estimates for deaths among women and girls broadly exhibit such a pattern. Iskandar323 (talk) 04:37, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is one thing I'm a bit surprised about. The percentage of adult male deaths they have is a bit higher than that from the GHM. The extra childrens deaths means the percentage of possible combatants given by adult males minus females remains about the same but I really expected male deaths to be a bit overreported by the GHM. NadVolum (talk) 11:58, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The issue with the study is that capture-recapture produces biased estimates when the datasets are nonindependent, and clearly participation in the survey is correlated with whether a casualty was already recorded in a hospital. The authors try to mitigate this by adding a third dataset, obituaries, but the quality there seems questionable - it's all from social media or chats, not all public, unclear authorship, some names were transliterated twice (Arabic to English to Arabic), etc. It also implies some surprising if not implausible things, like that a tiny fraction of obituary authors also reported the victim's death on the survey.
It might be a bit early to expect much expert analysis, but this was Michael Spagat's high-level take on it: This is a good piece of evidence that the real number is higher, probably substantially higher, than the Ministry of Health’s official numbers, higher than I had been thinking over the last few months. [...] Quantitatively, it’s a lot more uncertain than I think comes out in the paper. (This is a somewhat different concern, based on the very different numbers they got for different datasets, which they then took the mean of.) — xDanielx /C\ 21:44, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why is it rounded to 70,000 when this estimate is reported as 64,260? Wouldn't be more accurate to round to 64 or 65,000? JPHC2003 (talk) 01:00, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
64,000 is the estimate at the mid-year point (the end of the data set) and 70,000 is the projection up to the present. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:45, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
From the "Research in context" section, We estimate a total mortality from traumatic injury of 64 260 (95% CI 55 298–78 525), implying that the MoH reports underestimated deaths by 41%. As of October, 2024, the official MoH estimate stood at 41 909, which would suggest that the true mortality figures probably exceeded 70 000.. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 08:40, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Correlation between the sources should have brought the estimate down rather than exaggerate it. Given that Spagat is a bit surprised at the size of the figure I wouldn't be too worried about any correlation. - we may actually find even this is an underestimate though I very much hope not. NadVolum (talk) 09:08, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, if participation in the survey is positively correlated with whether a casualty was already recorded in a hospital, that would presumably result in an underestimation. I guess there will be more sources over the coming months and years. Sean.hoyland (talk) 10:09, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I meant negatively correlated, as in people are less likely to fill out the form for a death that was already recorded by a hospital. Agree we should get more clarity in the coming months. — xDanielx /C\ 15:24, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like they've tried to account for interactions but I could easily see that decreasing the number. However have a look at the Venn diagram of overlap between the social media list and the hospital list, 1370 (1173+197) shared 1820 (1469+351) social media only. There's more not shared than shared! That indicates the numbers may be quite a bit worse. I think we would be better waiting for experts to analyse the figures than trying to draw our own conclusions. NadVolum (talk) 21:04, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but how meaningful is the social media data? It's coming from posts such as this (minimal info, not clear who reported or posted it, transliterated names which might not match other documents...), as well as some private WhatsApp groups and what not. Most issues with the data would result in artificially low overlap, and thus an overestimate, not the opposite.
Wyner wasn't making any estimates, and if he had, I would never have supported putting them in wikivoice or in an infobox. Similarly here, it's fine to mention the work, but the infobox shouldn't be presenting this novel estimate. Neither scores well enough on WP:SCHOLARSHIP for that kind of treatment. — xDanielx /C\ 21:43, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is a peer reviewed study, the basic method dates back to 1896 and has been widely applied in other areas. There is no similarity to Wyner who produced to quote another professor "one of the worst abuses of statistics I've ever seen". NadVolum (talk) 00:02, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think this may be toeing the line for original research to be directly critiquing the handling of data. I also don't see how this methodology is novel, it cross-references deaths between multiple different lists including by social media reports that are generally less detailed. Scraping data of social media is something that is done by researchers across different fields and whilst this data can often be more unreliable such an approach isn't really novel. Originalcola (talk) 21:37, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just at a quick glance, the 70,000 number is a rough estimate based on extrapolation. It also doesn't represent a minimum, as the extrapolation isn't done with the lower bound of the confidence interval for deaths. I've seen the study covered by major news networks(notability) and it seems like it warrants inclusion, but it is still a rough estimate and not an actual count, so inclusion in the info box seems debatable. That's not really an attack on the methodology (it seems fine) but there still is a decent range in the confidence interval and I'd prefer using GHM numbers for the infobox. Originalcola (talk) 21:26, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Edit request from WP:RFED

Add “by June 30, 2024” to the sentence: The Lancet has estimated 70,000 deaths due to traumatic injuries.[8] Seahumidity (talk) 23:09, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Done LizardJr8 (talk) 23:12, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not done - "Assuming that the level of under-reporting of 41% continued from July to October, 2024, it is plausible that the true figure now exceeds 70 000.", "We estimated around 64 000 deaths due to traumatic injuries from Oct 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024," Originalcola (talk) 23:39, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Understood, good catch, thanks. LizardJr8 (talk) 23:42, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Cuban ministry

@Smallangryplanet: as was detailed in the edit summary, the reference was removed from the "Works cited" as there was no longer any reference in the article that called it. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 13:47, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I guess my question would be why the Cuban position was removed from the article. Simonm223 (talk) 14:02, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Cuban position hasn't been removed, a footnote listing the countries that supported the South African filing at the ICJ was removed, which was the only place this reference was featured. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 15:24, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well it looks like there were some improvements that made sure Cuba's position was included so all's well that ends well. Simonm223 (talk) 19:59, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Cdjp1 sorry, just seeing this now. The edit summary just said no longer in use, but there was content in the article referencing Cuba's position so I figured it was a mis-delete, didn't realise it had been ref'd in a removed footnote, sorry. I've included Cuba's position w/r/t the ICJ case and restored the reference. Smallangryplanet (talk) 19:59, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Checking whether the reference name appears in the article is an action that can be completed in seconds, for future use. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 21:12, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

RFC about due weight for expert and activist views

Generally speaking, when can views (by experts and "expert activists", such as human rights orgs) be included in the article, and not just in the list? Please vote for the minimal standard you consider due.

  1. Any reliable source
  2. expert or well-known expert activists, such as major rights organizations
  3. 2., but only if cited by RS, peer-reviewed, or comparable
  4. 2., but only if cited by major RS, peer-reviewed in a major journal that does not primarily publish about the I/P conflict, or comparable
  5. Experts cited by experts within an academic publication

I believe to have mentioned all significant views, but !voters can and should elaborate on destinctions I may have missed. FortunateSons (talk) 08:51, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Polling

  • Malformed RfC: What is this meant to change? Do you have any examples? This is hopelessly vague. RfCs should be for specific changes. Parabolist (talk) 09:43, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The issue is shown in the discussion linked below: there is no standard for inclusion, leading to repeated issues/discussions about due weight and an outcome where - for example - small activist organisations are included, but well-known professors are excluded. I believe that creating consistent minimal requirements (such as cutting off reliable but minor organisations and/or requiring experts to be cited or published by a news source/peer reviewed would cut down much of that noise without having to have a discussion on the merits of ~ 15 sources. Specific disputed cases are - for example - the German law professors, EMHRM, L4P etc. I would manually remove them, but this will inevitably be partially reverted, so a centralised discussion is probably preferable from the perspective of preserving editor time. FortunateSons (talk) 09:52, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • 3 for experts, 4 for expert activists at this point in time, we probably have hundreds (if not thousands) of statements that meet the general requirements for reliable sources, but only limited meta-analyis without (at best) strong bias, requiring editorial discretion. Nevertheless, the article is light on (particularly non-anglophone) scholarship, despite being at or over the desired total length. We should focus on improving the quality of arguments, by restricting ourselves to experts only as recognised by some external authority, and activists only as recognised by a very significant authority. While there was a place for press releases and 'any statement by any experts', this simply is no longer the case. With activists always receiving more attention by media, they are only due if they receive a lot more attention than comparable organisations, or if they are very major (such as Amnesty or HRW). FortunateSons (talk) 10:13, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • 4 - There are lots of places and contexts in which people want to lines like "The ADL says....." or "Amnesty International issued a report saying....". In general, I think the opinions or positions of organizations of that nature are only really notable and worth mentioning if they have been noted in reliable sources. NickCT (talk) 14:09, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussions

I believe that there is some inconsistency regarding when and why views by experts and activists are included in this article, and believe that a consistent standard might be beneficial here. The last discussion can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/key/Talk:Gaza_genocide/Archive_7#German_law_professor_opinions. FortunateSons (talk) 08:57, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Pings (exluding one tbanned editor and one person who engaged for procedure only): @Cdjp1, @Bogazicili, @3Kingdoms, @David A FortunateSons (talk) 09:31, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Now, if my bias isn't already evident, I place weight on assessments, analyses, and opinions published in academic journals, and tend to lean more to the sociological and historical schools. So I believe we should be using such pieces in the article (see the articles from the Journal of Genocide Research). Beyond that, those individuals who are recognised as prominent individuals (who we can consider in this category we can hash out, but the example I have in mind is Omer Bartov, who I'd like to think we can all agree is someone worthy of mention) who publish their opinions etc. in non-academic reliable sources should be included due to their requisite expertise, even if not published in what I consider the ideal publications.
Since this RFC comes off of the discussion of the German legal scholars, I do want to see the opinions of those outside of the anglophone world to be included more than they currently are in the article, so we have a more global perspective on the matter.
One thing we now have that we didn't previously, is articles in popular RS and academic RS that are summarising, highlighting, and contrasting the different opinions etc. of individuals who should be listened to on the matter, this helps us in being able to select who should be included, with the caveat of biases being present in these pieces such as anglophonism (I am unaware at this point of any articles of this kind in other languages).
On an official "vote", I will hold off for now to see other opinions and arguments, but I see no "bad" options suggested. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 09:57, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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