Monthly Archives: December 2024

The War in Gaza Is Far Worse Than You Thought

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Researchers went back to check Palestinian casualty reports from October 2023. They found a deadlier month for civilians—and children—than any other chapter of the “war on terror.”

Matthew Petti | 12.13.2024 11:57 AM

A civilian injured in an Israeli airstrike on Al-Jalaa Street is helped into an ambulance in Gaza. December 12, 2024. | Khasan Alzaanin/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom

How many people in Gaza have been killed by the Israel-Hamas war? For a long time, the only source of information was the Palestinian Ministry of Health. And the accuracy of their death rolls became the subject of a morbid political debate. Is it fair to call the ministry “Hamas-run“? Did they tell the truth about the Ahli Hospital bombing? What to make of the discrepancy between identified and unidentified corpses?

It’s an ethical question not just for Israelis carrying out the war, but also for Americans, who are providing both the funding and weapons that make the war effort possible.

Airwars, a team of conflict researchers affiliated with the University of London, went back and cross-checked the casualty lists from the first 25 days of the Israeli air campaign against news reporting, social media, and other local sources. And unlike the Palestinian ministry, they differentiated between civilians and fighters, using data such as social media funeral notices to determine Hamas affiliation.

The Airwars report, released on Thursday, shows a rate of civilian slaughter “incomparable with any 21st century air campaign. It is by far the most intense, destructive, and fatal conflict for civilians that Airwars has ever documented.” The Palestinian ministry reported 8,525 wartime deaths, including 3,542 children, from October 7, 2023, to October 31, 2023. Airwars was able to verify a minimum of 5,139 civilians killed by Israeli air raids in that timeframe, including at least 1,900 children.

Most of them were not the collateral damage of combat against Hamas. Out of 606 incidents of civilian casualties studied by Airwars, only 26 overlapped with the death of a militant. And in those 26 incidents, the killing was still incredibly lopsided, with 32 militants killed in total, at a cost of 522 civilian lives.

For example, the Israeli military killed Hamas commander Ibrahim Biari on October 31, 2023, by dropping American-made 2,000-lb bunker buster bombs on the Jabalia refugee camp. The attack also killed at least 126 civilians, including 69 children, according to Airwars. “Children were carrying other injured children and running, with grey dust filling the air. Bodies were hanging on the rubble, many of them unrecognized. Some were bleeding and others were burnt,” Palestinian eyewitness Mohammad Al Aswad told CNN at the time.

Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht called the deaths in Jabalia a “tragedy of war” in a CNN interview. “About the civilians there, we’re doing everything we can to minimize. Sadly they [Hamas] are hiding themselves within the civilian population,” Hecht told CNN. “We’re going to go after every one of these terrorists who was involved in the hideous [October 7, 2023] attack.”

Hamas raided Israeli towns and villages on October 7, 2023, killing 815 civilians, including 36 children, and 380 military personnel. Its fighters shot Israelis and foreigners in their houses, bomb shelters, and music festivals at close range, returning to Gaza with 251 captives, about 96 of whom are still being held hostage. The human rights organization Amnesty International said that Hamas “flagrantly violated international law and displayed a chilling disregard for human life by carrying out cruel and brutal crimes including mass summary killings, hostage-taking, and launching indiscriminate rocket attacks into Israel.”

Full Post by Matthew Petti @ Reason https://reason.com/2024/12/13/the-war-in-gaza-is-far-worse-than-you-thought/

CNN Report: Ikea says Trump’s tariffs could push up prices

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LondonCNN — 

The chief executive of the company behind Ikea furniture stores says tariffs make it more difficult to keep its prices low, joining a growing chorus of business leaders in warning of a potential hit to people’s wallets from Donald Trump’s planned import levies.

“In general, we don’t believe tariffs will support international companies and international trade. At the end of the day, that risks ending up on the bills of customers,” Jesper Brodin, Ingka Group CEO, told CNN Wednesday when asked about Trump’s tariffs. He was speaking ahead of the opening of Ikea’s pop-up store on London’s Oxford Street Thursday.

“Tariffs make it more difficult for us to maintain the low prices and be affordable for many people, which in the end is our goal,” he added. “We have never experienced a period of benefit when we had high tariffs,” he said, referring both to Ikea and the global economy. “But it’s beyond our control. We will need to understand and adapt.”

On Monday, President-elect Trump promised massive hikes in tariffs on goods coming from Mexico, Canada and China. In response, officials from those countries warned that the tariffs would harm the economies of all involved, including the United States.

“One tariff will be followed by another in response and so on until we put common enterprises at risk,” Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday during a regular press conference.

Business lobby groups for the US retail and consumer goods industries have also sounded the alarm. Tom Madrecki, vice-president of campaigns and special projects at the Consumer Brands Association, told CNN tariffs were a “clear and present danger” to its members. The group represents Coca-Cola, General Mills, Molson Coors and dozens of other packaged goods companies.

On Monday, Trump said he would impose an additional 10% tariff on goods from China until the country prevents the flow of illegal drugs into the US.

Ikea’s Brodin did not directly answer a question about whether Ingka Group, which runs most Ikea stores, plans to relocate any of its production in light of Trump’s tariffs but emphasized that it has longstanding relationships with suppliers of more than 10 years on average.

“(We) stick to long-term relationships, for better or worse,” he said.

Last year, Ikea cut prices on roughly 2,000 products — at a cost of more than €2 billion ($2.1 billion) — to give inflation-weary consumers a break. As a result, it posted a fall in annual revenue in value terms, even though it sold a higher volume of items.

Source:Cable News Network @ https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/27/business/ikea-prices-trump-tariffs-intl/index.html