My guess is that whether or not there are third parties currently verifying the number, there will be eventually. Israel knows they're loosing their PR war at this point and a story breaking that they knew the number was lower and they kept touting the higher number is the only situation in which the count being off by 200 would matter. Adjusting the number prevents that news cycle.
If the number was way inflated from the beginning, the PR calculus would be different.
My speculation is the number is far, far lower. And a great number of the dead were killed by Israeli tanks and helicopters panic firing into civilians.
Let's just do a little math here. There's a 10k death toll in Gaza from a month's worth of indiscriminate bombing by one of the better funded, better trained militaries in the world. The government in Israel is claiming Hamas, on paragliders, while kidnapping 240 hostages (meaning they were not just firing wildly, they had motivations not to kill people), in one evening was able to achieve 15% of the causalities the IOF took a month to do? Add that to the utter cesspool of propaganda coming out of Israel, that number smells very badly.
When it comes out that there were 200 dead and 115 of them were shot with cannons from Apaches, if they claimed it was 1400 dead it'll be an uproar. If they walk the number down, it will be palatable.
Well see, but I just think that if the 1400 number was patently absurd we would have heard pushback from Hamas and even some Israelis questioning it.
I don't think looking at it from a pure numbers of lives perspective like that makes sense. Hamas and Israel's actions have been completely different tactically.
My guess is that whether or not there are third parties currently verifying the number, there will be eventually. Israel knows they're loosing their PR war at this point and a story breaking that they knew the number was lower and they kept touting the higher number is the only situation in which the count being off by 200 would matter. Adjusting the number prevents that news cycle.
If the number was way inflated from the beginning, the PR calculus would be different.
My speculation is the number is far, far lower. And a great number of the dead were killed by Israeli tanks and helicopters panic firing into civilians.
Let's just do a little math here. There's a 10k death toll in Gaza from a month's worth of indiscriminate bombing by one of the better funded, better trained militaries in the world. The government in Israel is claiming Hamas, on paragliders, while kidnapping 240 hostages (meaning they were not just firing wildly, they had motivations not to kill people), in one evening was able to achieve 15% of the causalities the IOF took a month to do? Add that to the utter cesspool of propaganda coming out of Israel, that number smells very badly.
When it comes out that there were 200 dead and 115 of them were shot with cannons from Apaches, if they claimed it was 1400 dead it'll be an uproar. If they walk the number down, it will be palatable.
Well see, but I just think that if the 1400 number was patently absurd we would have heard pushback from Hamas and even some Israelis questioning it.
I don't think looking at it from a pure numbers of lives perspective like that makes sense. Hamas and Israel's actions have been completely different tactically.