Last month, The Wall Street Journal published an article on the disparities between estimates by the Israeli military of the number of Palestinian militants killed in Gaza and estimates by US intelligence agencies of the same. Although the article focuses on the Israeli military’s over-estimations, it also shares two revealing figures: 1. According to the Health Ministry of Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants, at least 8,000 Palestinian men were killed by the Israeli military in Gaza; 2. According to the Israeli military, its forces killed 9,000 militants in Gaza. The only possible way to square those two numbers is for the Israeli military to count every single Palestinian man it has killed in Gaza as a militant, and then add some. As absurd as that sounds, that appears to be precisely what the Israeli military has been doing for months — and the United States and United Kingdom have done the same in their wars in the Middle East too.

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