Ruchama, the numbers have been independently checked and found to be credible, thats the point that I'm making. I'm sorry you stopped reading there, because even if only 1000 children died this thought experiment is still valuable. The Gazan Health Ministry doesn't use people as human sheilds, they are the health ministry. They are not equivalent to the military wing of Hamas, saying so is like saying you can't trust the Canadian health ministry because the Canadian government sells weapons to Saudi Arabia which are uses to bomb children in Yemen (which it does). My personal sense s that 5-6,000 dead children is a minimum; you can't bomb an area the size of Gaza for over a month without catastrophic casualties. As for my knowledge base, I am a Jewish Studies teacher and journalist who grew up a Zionist and has written on Israel/Palestine for ten years as well as studying and writing about various other human rights catastrophes (a special interest of mine as a descendant of Holocaust survivors). I know this situation well and deeply. If you would like a suggested reading list so you can follow up on my claims and sources, let me know, I often send them to people and can post one here for you.