Community Notes Comes for Cenk Uygur After He Beclowns Himself While Criticizing Israel

The Israel-Hamas war has been the source of controversy ever since it started on October 7. But it has also brought out weapons-grade-level ignorance from members of the chattering class.

Enter Cenk Uygur, of The Young Turks.

On Friday, the commentator, who has been outspoken in his opposition to Israel’s actions against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, wrote a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, in which he attempted to exaggerate the number of Palestinian civilians killed during the fighting.

Bashar Al-Assad in four years of brutalizing Aleppo didn't kill as many civilians as Israel has in two months. Russians killed fewer Ukranian civilians in Maruipol. Israel has killed 20 times the civilians Hamas did. Netanyahu is one of the biggest terrorists of our lifetimes.

Bashar Al-Assad in four years of brutalizing Aleppo didn't kill as many civilians as Israel has in two months. Russians killed fewer Ukranian civilians in Maruipol. Israel has killed 20 times the civilians Hamas did. Netanyahu is one of the biggest terrorists of our lifetimes.
— Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) December 23, 2023

This is one of those times when you wonder why anyone would post such an easily debunked claim on social media. It did not take long before Community Notes corrected Uygur’s false numbers, pointing out that far more people died in Aleppo and Mariupol.

FALSE:
About 20,000 people were killed in Gaza¹, with around 60% of them estimated to be civilians², meaning that civilian death toll is about 12,000.
For comparison, the number of civilian deaths in Aleppo is over 50,000³, and in Mariupol - about 75,000⁴.

Mediaite also checked Uygur’s numbers.

Notably, according to the UN the death toll in Aleppo was well over 50,000 in a conflict that left some 350,000 people dead (many estimates put the total death toll over 500,000) and left Assad in power to continue to brutalize his people. The war also created a mass refugee crisis with over 7 million Syrians being forced to flee their country. “The greatest number of documented killings was recorded in the Governorate of Aleppo, with 51,731 named individuals killed,” read a statement from the Office of the High Commissioner For Human Rights at the UN in September of 2021.
Assad’s crimes against humanity have long been documented by foreign governments, the UN, and other watchdog groups. On October 5th, CNN’s Clarissa Ward highlighted a harrowing report on how Assad’s regime today continues to use hospitals to torture and punish its critics at home. “Devastating report by @RohitKachrooITV as Assad continues his rehabilitation,” Ward wrote on Twitter, sharing a clip captioned, “A Damascus hospital has become a secret ‘slaughterhouse’ for Syrians who oppose President Bashar al-Assad, where doctors and nurses use medical equipment to taunt, torture and kill activists during check-ups.”

The community note included an article from Politico showing that over 20,000 civilians were killed in Mariupol, which exceeds the numbers coming from Hamas related to Palestinian civilians.

As the fighting dragged on, the human cost of the war continued to mount. In many of Mariupol’s buildings, workers are finding 50 to 100 bodies each, according to a mayoral aide in the Russian-held port city in the south.
Petro Andryushchenko said on the Telegram app that the bodies are being taken in an “endless caravan of death” to a morgue, landfills and other places. At least 21,000 Mariupol civilians were killed during the weeks-long Russian siege, Ukrainian authorities have estimated.

This is one of those situations where it is appropriate to ask: Is Uygur stupid or does he just think his audience is stupid?

It might be easy to chalk this up to ignorance or a misconstruing of the numbers. But Uygur has been in this game long enough to know better. He either knew his claims were not true, or he posted them not caring whether they were true or not. Unfortunately, this is the modus operandi for progressives these days.

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