[HN Gopher] 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall ...
___________________________________________________________________
'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest,
torture
Author : wahnfrieden
Score : 324 points
Date : 2023-12-12 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.aljazeera.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.aljazeera.com)
| dang wrote:
| All: if you're going to comment in this thread, please do not do
| so in the spirit of battle. The latter is off topic here, and the
| last thread HN had about this did not do well enough at keeping
| to the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| Instead, ask first whether you can find a place of compassion in
| yourself before commenting. If you can't, that's understandable,
| but then please don't post. By compassion I mean something more
| spacious than angry identification.
|
| I'm not saying that this is the purpose of HN (we're not aiming
| quite that high) but I do think it's the only way to touch a
| topic like this without destroying that purpose, which is
| thoughtful, curious conversation. It may be nearly impossible to
| relate to such a topic from such a place, but nearly != entirely,
| and it's part of HN's mandate to try. Consider this an
| experiment, or perhaps an advanced exercise, in community.
| srackey wrote:
| This is a highly politically charged conflict that's mainly
| relevant for being a sort of rhetorical proxy conflict (see all
| the other conflicts going on that receive a fraction of the
| attention). The _point_ of discussing this topic is to
| rhetorically battle.
|
| Unlike say, the current civil war in Burma or Sudan, or the
| Azeri-Armenian war, basically everyone who clicks on this will
| have an opinion that's not, well, academic let's say.
| dang wrote:
| That is not the only point of discussing this topic, and
| definitely not the point of discussing it here. This follows
| from HN's core principle* because curiosity and battle can't
| be active at the same time.
|
| I agree with you about this:
|
| > _everyone who clicks on this will have an opinion that's
| not, well, academic let's say_
|
| ... but as I 've explained elsewhere in this thread, I don't
| think suppressing the topic outright is a solution either (I
| mean a solution to the particular constraints of _this_ site,
| not in general).
|
| So what do we do? We each work in ourselves to find a larger
| space than just our own opinion. We make room for the other
| alongside ourselves. If we can do that, we'll be able to
| comment from a place of openness rather than battle. For
| those who feel too intensely to do so: that is human--let's
| just be aware enough to recognize that state in ourselves and
| refrain from posting as long as we're in that state.
|
| * https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&so
| r...
| mistermann wrote:
| > This follows from HN's core principle* because curiosity
| and battle can't be active at the same time.
|
| Does HN have a policy against epistemic soundness in
| claims? Because if there is a method that is maximally
| useful for these sorts of issues, it is disciplined
| epistemology. Yet, I know of no explicit policy on it, but
| I have been subjected to scolding for practicing it,
| suggesting there is an _implicit_ policy, at least to some
| degree (perhaps only on some topics, who knows). Or, an
| error has been made....which _once again_ is an
| epistemological matter.
|
| If people refuse to even try to utilize the tools that
| exist, and discussion of that phenomenon is disallowed, it
| may not be optimal game play....and sometimes, suboptimal
| gameplay results in large quantities of death. Is curiosity
| about that a good thing?
|
| (And yes, I do realize that the culture we've been raised
| in has taught us that statements like mine "are"
| necessarily "in bad faith", though mine is not actually.)
| dang wrote:
| I'm afraid I don't understand your comment, nor what you
| mean by epistemic soundness, but I'm pretty sure HN has
| no policy against it.
| mistermann wrote:
| > what you mean by epistemic soundness
|
| This, for starters:
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-epistemic/
|
| You know that word "is" you use _now and then_? That word
| is fundamentally based in epistemology.
|
| > and sometimes, suboptimal gameplay results in large
| quantities of death. Is curiosity about that a good
| thing?
|
| Do you understand that part?
|
| I will add some clarity: by "suboptimal gameplay", I am
| referring to the individual and collective behaviour of
| human beings, as it relates to causality (the
| consequences of our behaviour).
|
| I am basically asking what HN's stance is on being
| curious about "large" quantities of (at least plausibly)
| unnecessary human death.
| dang wrote:
| I'm sorry but I don't understand that.
|
| Are you asking about how one can possibly be "curious" in
| the face of a catastrophe like this, and what that even
| means? I think that's a legit question. If curiosity
| means a detached-technical attitude, that is not an
| appropriate response to this topic and could in some
| forms even be monstrous. But that's not what I mean here.
| What I do mean, I tried to describe at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616823 and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616662. It has to
| do with being open to others.
| mistermann wrote:
| > Are you asking about how one can possibly be "curious"
| in the face of a catastrophe like this, and what that
| even means?
|
| I am asking: can you be curious about whether it may have
| be possible for these (and future) deaths to be avoided,
| had some humans acted differently than they had?
|
| I suspect this may seem like a very strange question, and
| I propose that that is an artifact of the problem.
|
| > If curiosity means a detached-technical attitude, that
| is not an appropriate response to this topic...
|
| Here you are representing a subjective belief as
| knowledge, on a matter where people's lives are at stake.
| Can you be curious about whether this approach as a
| moderator on a website frequented by some of the most
| powerful minds on the planet may be preventing lives from
| being saved, or whether it is part of the underlying
| causality of why these powerful minds can't keep it
| together when discussing topics like this (which may also
| contribute to the causality underlying deaths)?
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| As a random bystander I find your comments extremely hard
| to comprehend. It's not really the vocabulary, although
| it could do to be less lofty. I think part of it is
| sentences like this:
|
| > Can you be curious about whether this approach as a
| moderator on a website frequented by some of the most
| powerful minds on the planet may be preventing lives from
| being saved?
|
| This sounds to me, and maybe I'm wrong, like you have
| some sort of pre-formed opinion about what Dang et al are
| doing, but are choosing to cast it in the lens of "can
| you be curious" as a way of avoiding just directly saying
| what you think.
| vladgur wrote:
| It is clearly a charged topic and while you did a good job
| setting the tone, it clear that moderating this discussion
| will be a daunting task for anyone.
|
| I am already seeing the antisemitic comments calling Jews
| colonizers, stealing land from indigenous people for 75
| years. The one-liners or single-sentence zingers lack
| context or, often, truth.
|
| I do appreciate comments from people living in that area --
| what their lives were and are before and during this
| conflict.
|
| I do wish that instead of this charged subject on HN,
| instead an article discussing the history of this land and
| people living on it. History of empires, conquests,
| displacements, wars, attacks.
|
| Etymology of the names and Meaning of terms that are being
| used by both sides.
|
| * What did Zionism mean in 19th and 20th centuries? What
| does it mean in 21st century?
|
| * What does Anti-Zionism mean?
|
| * Where does the word Palestine come from?
|
| * What really happened in 1948?
|
| * What happened to Gaza Strip under Egyptian rule from 1948
| to 1967?
|
| * What happened to West Bank under Jordanian rule from 1948
| to 1967?
|
| Discussing history of what happened and what did not would
| be less explosive and more productive use of great minds on
| HN, in my opinion.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Hey Dang, I think I've had a rate limit applied to my account
| from over a year ago. Do these rate limits expire? It's made it
| difficult to continue in some technical back & forths.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Please email mods directly at hn@ycombinator.com as mentioned
| here:
|
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>
| ido wrote:
| Thank you, Dang.
|
| As someone on the Israeli left I feel like I'm between a rock
| and a hard place- I do not condone Netanyahu and his government
| and am indeed very critical of Israeli governments of the past
| decades. But on the other side, my 78 year old mother is
| fleeing to shelter every couple hours as my hometown (not
| anywhere near the west bank or the Gaza strip) gets hit by
| rockets, as do my young nieces and nephews, some of which
| developed psychological issues from the stress. And the stories
| from what people experienced on the October 7th attacks wrench
| my gut.
|
| At the same time I'm also sorry for the Palestinians suffering
| during this war, the vast majority of them civilians. I wish
| instead of people treating it like a football match where you
| to support "your side", they could process the nuance of
| opposing any violence towards civilians and support peace (with
| the goal of a two state solution with Israel and Palestine co-
| existing according to the 1967 borders and UN resolution 242).
|
| IMO this would require that both Netanyahu and Hamas do not
| stay in power.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| In your opinion what are the chances of having an early
| election to replace Netanyahu? AFAICT it requires a non-
| confidence vote in the Knesset, but how likely do you think
| this could happen?
| reissbaker wrote:
| Not the OP but Netanyahu is living on borrowed time -- he
| won't be replaced in the middle of the war, but even Likud
| is having private talks about who replaces him once it's
| over. I would give very high probability that he is
| replaced well before his term is up.
| drc500free wrote:
| Unfortunately, given Bibi's single-minded focus on
| staying in power, "he won't be replaced in the middle of
| the war" guarantees that he will try to make this a
| forever war.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| I'm curious if pressure from the US ever mounts enough to
| end this war. Currently we're supporting Israel just like
| we always have and are just making some empty statements
| to signal to the more left-leaning segment of the
| Democrat voter base. I think it's most likely this
| reality continues, but it does seem possible, albeit
| unlikely, that Democrat voter discontent gets high enough
| that we force an end to the war in the next two months.
|
| Of course, even if that somewhat far-fetched scenario
| comes true we'll probably be up to at least 40,000 Gazans
| killed :/
| ido wrote:
| I think it's close to 100% that we will have an early
| election, as he can't placate his right-extremist coalition
| partners on which his government depends. I would guess
| we'd be up to a 2024 elections.
| edanm wrote:
| I'll be a bit more pessimistic than others here. Netanyahu
| knows that elections won't go favorably for him, but he's
| very smart and has survived this long - and he's still in
| charge; he'll be putting a lot of effort towards fending
| off early elections, certainly until he can show some win
| for Israel here (not that I think it's possible at this
| point).
|
| We're also in a situation where he knows that dragging out
| the war might be the best strategy for him personally,
| which worries me greatly.
| dang wrote:
| I've been in touch with several Israeli HNers in much the
| same position as you describe, and I admire their, and your,
| capacity to stay open despite being under orders of magnitude
| more pressure than most of us here. This is the spirit I'm
| asking for commenters to find in themselves before posting.
|
| (Edit: Lest this seem like an expression of bias: I've been
| in touch with HNers on the other side of the conflict as well
| and can say similar things about them.)
| stoorafa wrote:
| You've been in touch with Palestinians use HN? Not to seem
| one-sided, I didn't realize Gazans had sufficient internet
| access, let alone food or water, to browse HN.
| ido wrote:
| I've been in contact with Palestinians, you may be aware
| of millions of them living abroad (same as Israelis, like
| myself) and millions more living in the west bank (the
| total Palestinian population world-wide numbers 14.3
| million, Gaza only houses 2.3M). You don't have to be on
| ground zero in Gaza to be a Palestinian.
| dang wrote:
| When I said "HNers on the other side of the conflict" I
| had in mind users who aren't necessarily Palestinians but
| have strong identification with their plight. However,
| it's worth saying that HN has some valued members in Gaza
| (as well as in the West Bank, of course, and Palestinians
| in other places). Here's one memorable example:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=daliaawad, _My
| experience as a Gazan girl getting into Silicon Valley
| companies_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26251143 - Feb 2021
| (460 comments).
|
| Someone who knows Dalia has been in touch with us, but at
| least at that time, they unfortunately had lost contact
| with her and don't know if she's still alive.
|
| Also this YC startup:
|
| _Launch HN: Manara (YC W21) - Connect Middle East
| engineers with global companies_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849054 - Jan 2021
| (104 comments)
|
| ---
|
| Some other threads over the years (I just looked up Gaza,
| of course there are also many Palestinians on HN from the
| West Bank and other places):
|
| _Lifehacker: Tarek Loubani on 3D-Printing in Gaza_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20623545 - Aug 2019
| (68 comments)
|
| _Gaza: Coding in a conflict zone_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18128432 - Oct 2018
| (88 comments)
|
| _Marc Benioff joins Valley notables backing Gaza's first
| coding academy_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13374027 - Jan 2017
| (137 comments)
|
| _How to Get More Women in Tech: Lessons from a Hackathon
| in Gaza_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13240777
| - Dec 2016 (12 comments)
|
| _Mentoring in Gaza 's first hackathon_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11858963 - June 2016
| (152 comments)
|
| _Mentor startups in Gaza_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9267716 - March 2015
| (63 comments)
|
| _Wireless in Gaza: the young entrepreneurs beating the
| blockades_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715085
| - Dec 2014 (54 comments)
|
| _What It 's Like to Build a Startup in Gaza_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8404414 - Oct 2014
| (80 comments)
| edanm wrote:
| Are you aware of any Gazans that are normally active on
| HN, and if so, if they are ok?
|
| (It is heartbreaking that you have to add "we don't know
| if Dalia is alive" when talking about her.)
| baz00 wrote:
| Worth noting this isn't an absolute position. There are
| many Gazans posting on Telegram. They have food, water
| and internet access. But they seem to be the ones
| shooting at Israel and other Gazans...
|
| Edit: suspiciously this is downvoted suddenly as well as
| lots of other unrelated posts of mine. Looks like you
| can't have a responsible discussion on the internet these
| days...
| emmelaich wrote:
| I would have upvoted you but for your last para. Don't
| react to downvotes immediately. Let it simmer for a
| while.
| emmelaich wrote:
| I thought you were joking for moment; it's easy to find
| the truth. https://volunteerinpalestine.org/purchasing-a-
| sim-card/
|
| _" Internet Access High-speed Wi-Fi is available
| throughout the country in homes and in cafes and
| restaurants throughout the city. Additionally, local
| banks have publicly available WIFI that can be accessed
| 24/7 from outside the building. The Wi-Fi is stable and
| reliable and 3G is also available in the West Bank,
| Palestine."_
| midasuni wrote:
| Power and Internet are not readily available in Gaza and
| haven't been for 2 months. Sure solar and usb charging
| and satellite communications. I haven't had a ping from
| our office since early October though.
|
| I took a few suitcases of clothes to Egypt last week to
| try to get to the kids of our employees in Gaza, the ones
| whose existing coats and stuff are in rubble with any
| toys memories and belongings they had. Getting them
| through Raffa is not easy.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Also, regarding food and water .. it's not hard to find
| pictures and reports of thriving markets, cafes, clubs.
| Materially, I'm pretty sure Gazans are better off than
| Egyptians.
|
| Of course that doesn't much diminish their grievances
| which is based on lost land and and lack of freedom of
| movement.
| RationalDino wrote:
| According to GDP per capita, before the war Gaza was at
| $3500/year, while Egypt was at $3700/year. Which says
| that Egyptians are probably better off than Gazans. Even
| before the problems of the blockade, lack of electricity,
| and the current disruptions of war conditions.
|
| So no, people in Gaza are not better off than people in
| Egypt. Though they are closer than I would have guessed.
| ido wrote:
| I have not lived in Israel for most of the last 20 years,
| but I do have family and friends there. I also know plenty
| of both Israelis and Palestinians moderates, but they are
| unfortunately the small minority on both sides.
| edanm wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to say that Israeli moderates are
| the minority - though that entirely depends on what you
| mean by "Israeli moderates".
|
| I think the majority do not have any "territorial
| ambition" and would usually happily agree to a two state
| solution peace agreement, including giving up the WB, as
| long as security to Israel was guaranteed.
|
| We are very far from this being realistic because of a
| lack of leaders on both sides, and because the security
| guarantees are incredibly hard.
| whycome wrote:
| > I've been in touch with HNers on the other side of the
| conflict as well
|
| This thinking kind of reinforces what you're trying to stay
| away from. There are not just 'two sides' to this. And I'm
| not sure what you would envision as an HNer from the "other
| side": someone in support of Hamas? In support of the
| Palestinian people?
|
| I'm only commenting here because I think the bias you fear
| expressing can still kind of appear in different ways.
|
| I really do appreciate the approach you're taking here with
| attempting to allow for curious and thoughtful discussion
| about contemporary topics while being cognizant of the
| dangers.
| ido wrote:
| Plenty of Palestinians oppose Hamas and want peace and a
| free Palestinian state according to the '67 borders.
| These would be the equivalents on the other side.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I posted this perspective previously (
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38071749 ) but it
| was immediately flagged out:
| https://libcom.org/article/voices-front-line-against-
| occupat...
|
| >I want you to know something else, which is that the
| Palestinian Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas do not
| represent us, the Palestinian people, at all. We reject
| authority and we reject Abbas and all his ministers. I do
| not know whether you have heard of the security
| coordination agreement between the Zionist occupation and
| the Palestinian Authority. Years ago, the Palestinian
| Authority concluded an agreement under which it would
| serve the occupying entity in terms of security. That is,
| all the young Palestinian activists who fight the Zionist
| occupation in one way or another and the occupation
| cannot arrest them, the Palestinian Authority pursues
| them, arrests them, and hands them over to the
| occupation, and then no one knows the fate of that young
| man or that girl. These do not represent us, nor any
| other Palestinian. These are completely rejected in the
| Palestinian street, but unfortunately they are officially
| and internationally recognized by the United Nations and
| supported by the United States of America.
| ZunarJ5 wrote:
| Additional friendly reminder that Bush Jr is responsible
| for Hamas.
|
| https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/was-hamas-
| electe...
| hersko wrote:
| Don't treat the Palestinians like they have no agency...
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| > These are completely rejected in the Palestinian
| street, but unfortunately they are officially and
| internationally recognized by the United Nations and
| supported by the United States of America.
|
| To me a smoking gun here is that Biden's administration
| wants the Palestinian Authority to rule Gaza "after
| Hamas" (as an aside, I sincerely doubt Israel will be
| successful in destroying Hamas, but ofc even if they do
| there will just be a more radical group taking its place
| anyway); history shows pretty well that the US only
| installs a power when they know they will be a
| vassal/puppet of US interests. There's many examples but
| the most recent one is when we (I'm American) propped up
| the bogus Afghanistan "Government" only for it to
| instantly collapse and be replaced again by the Taliban
| the moment we withdrew.
|
| Really hope there's a path forward that gives the
| Palestinians real autonomy and an end to the bloodshed.
| In reality, I expect this conflict to continue
| indefinitely and us to just continue supporting the
| occupation, which I find heartbreaking but my rational
| mind is convinced is the most likely outcome.
| qwytw wrote:
| > history shows pretty well that the US only installs a
| power when they
|
| Instead of coming up with conspiracy theories we could
| consider what other options there are. There are
| effectively only three powers which could control Gaza
| if/when Hamas is defeat: Egypt, Israel and the PA.
|
| Egypt certainly doesen't want anything to do with the
| region or Palestinians anymore. So US can only chose
| between supporting a direct Israeli occupation or a semi-
| indirect one (through the Palestinian Authority). I don't
| think the US government wants to install a puppet regime
| in Gaza, they'd rather have absolutely nothing to do with
| at all.
|
| Tangential but when it comes to Afghanistan I'm almost
| certain that stupidity and incompetence (and one might
| guess a good dose of corruption) rather than outright
| malice or imperialism were to blame for that entire
| disaster.
|
| > Palestinians real autonomy
|
| Well to some extent Hamas was the closest they got to
| that for decades.
| whycome wrote:
| And some support the war Hamas rages despite the effect
| on the Palestinian people/civilians. Is that an _other_
| other side? This is complex, and we really can 't
| describe this conflict as just having two sides.
| ido wrote:
| Just like some Israelis support expelling all
| Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan and settling these
| territories with Israelis. The only "side" that's not
| wrong (IMO) is the one that condemns violence against
| civilians and is for peace and the two state solution,
| this "side" exists among both Israelis and Palestinians
| (but is the minority for both).
| xg15 wrote:
| Then how would you refer to the different groups/entities
| and/or populations involved in this conflict?
|
| I'd say there is of course a range of opinions and
| different narratives on both sides (from from actively
| seeking coexistence to humanitarian to pragmatic to
| nationalist to religious fundamentalist to having a deep
| personal hate for the other side).
|
| Then you have all kinds of different groups, factions and
| third parties with their own allegiances and motivation.
|
| However all of those pieces arrange themselves around a
| central conflict which does have exactly two sides in my
| opinion, which are the Israeli and Palestine people,
| respectively their claims to live on the land. You can
| see this rather easily by observing which groups view
| each other as mortal enemies and which merely as a
| nuisance.
|
| There are - thankfully - lots of people trying to bridge
| the divide and not aligning themselves only with one
| side. This is where we all should be headed, but it
| doesn't change the fact that currently there _are_ sides.
| dang wrote:
| You're of course right that there are many more than two
| sides to the topic, but there's a strong tendency for
| users (being human) to identify with one or the other
| side in this war, and that's what I was referring to. I
| take your point that my wording was unclear there, and
| even a grain of unclarity is pretty dangerous in this
| context.
| scythe wrote:
| My interpretation of "other side" was "other side of the
| border", i.e. someone living in Gaza or possibly the West
| Bank. In that case there are literally two sides (I could
| cite the Jordan curve theorem?). But that may not have
| been what dang meant.
| bjourne wrote:
| Let's also not forget the unbearable plight of all Russian
| HNers, who due to circumstances beyond their control are
| now isolated from the rest of the world. Many of them
| suffer greatly and fear for their own lives as Ukrainian
| drone attacks hit deep into Russian territory. We shouldn't
| treat this situation as a football match, where people only
| support "their" side. Instead, peaceful coexistence with
| both sides fulfilling their obligations according to the
| Minsk agreements is required.
|
| IMO this would require that both Putin and Zelensky do not
| stay in power.
| galdosdi wrote:
| You are drawing some sort of analogy between two
| dissimilar conflicts. Yet what the analogy precisely
| entails is totally unstated.
|
| I am willing to entertain the idea that there is some
| relationship between them but it is very hard to do this
| when you cannot be bothered to explain in plain English
| why you think these two conflicts are related and in what
| manner? What aspects are you referring to?
|
| It can be frustrating when someone tries to make a strong
| point, but focuses mainly on the flourish and does not
| actually explain any reasoning -- this doesn't contribute
| to intellectual exploration since without explaining your
| reasoning, there is zero chance you can convince any
| thoughtful person to change their mind.
| RationalDino wrote:
| Funny, my mother-in-law lives in Russia and describes
| nothing of this sort of fear.
|
| Young men there do have trouble working internationally.
| And they do have legitimate fears. But the fears are more
| along the line of being conscripted and sent to the front
| lines, and not the rather insignificant risk of drones.
| psipisi wrote:
| I was reading a feminist perspective on war recently, and one
| thing the author said that really struck out to me,
| paraphrased, was:
|
| _When you 're on the side of women and children, who lose in
| every conflict, everyone else gets confused because they
| expect you to pick one of the men's teams._
|
| I know it's not quite as clear-cut in terms of age and sex
| who fights and who suffers, but I thought she made an
| excellent broader point about not picking any side other than
| those who are being harmed.
| baz00 wrote:
| I think the feminist in question wants attribution for
| herself rather than to make a point.
|
| _Both_ sides have been harmed. The war is about reducing
| continuing harm from an organisation that literally said
| that this was just the start of things...
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| By harming civilians? Like GGP, I am disgusted by
| everyone carrying a weapon in this conflict. These people
| were driven out of their homes and walled off in poverty
| a few decades ago by an unelected government, which
| legitimized itself with elections only after they were
| gone. Some of the displaced are violent. That doesn't
| justify inflicting further pain on the rest.
| baz00 wrote:
| Please don't make excuses for either side.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| This is silly, and it reduces women to beings without
| agency. It is a cultural thing, and sex has nothing to do
| with it. One could even argue that it is women who raise
| those boys like that (which is of course not correct).
|
| It is the dominator culture, which feminism until the third
| wave was trying to abolish. Fourth wave feminism is a
| product of it.
| Levitz wrote:
| >When you're on the side of women and children, who lose in
| every conflict, everyone else gets confused because they
| expect you to pick one of the men's teams.
|
| So men don't lose in every conflict? Countries are "men's
| teams"?
|
| I'm sorry but this is infantilizing as well as brutally
| sexist.
| midasuni wrote:
| 95% plus of the time the war is decided and progressed by
| men. Very few women in the Israeli government, and none
| making decisions in Hamas. Same in Venezuela and Guyana,
| Russia and Ukraine, Sudan etc etc
| nerdponx wrote:
| A close friend of mine lived in Israel for a long time, and I
| got the sense that your feelings are echoed by many.
|
| It's too easy for people in America and Europe to sit at
| their desks and repost propaganda on social media in favor of
| "their side".
| edanm wrote:
| There are plenty of Israelis on all sides of this issue.
|
| There are also plenty of Israelis who frequent HN, btw
| (like me).
| xdennis wrote:
| > with the goal of a two state solution with Israel and
| Palestine co-existing according to the 1967 borders
|
| Why are the 1948-1967 borders considered so important? They
| lasted for 19 years.
|
| Also, in 1967 Gaza was occupied by Egypt. Do people want that
| again?
| midasuni wrote:
| The 1967 borders were what was agreed in the peace process
| in the 90s.
|
| 1948 borders are irrelevant.
| programmarchy wrote:
| I can empathize with this, and hope your family remains safe.
| But I'm afraid Netanyahu and Hamas are just tips of icebergs,
| and criticism at that level will not be even remotely
| sufficient to resolve the underlying issues. I'd love to be
| corrected, but it seems to me that _all_ religions (not only
| Judaism or Islam) are plagued by supremacist beliefs about
| their own ethnic group. At the ethnic group level, religion
| seems to be an evolutionary advantage if not a primary
| driving force of genetic success. But at the global, human
| level, it is often catastrophic. Religious apologists tend to
| paper over their (often subconscious?) supremacist
| fundamentals with moral teachings and utopian visions, but I
| think it's crucial that these beliefs are publicly examined
| and criticized on the global stage, "heresy" be damned. Would
| be curious to hear your thoughts.
| edanm wrote:
| Judaism is very different to other religions in some ways.
| It is not a proselytizing religion - it's not looking to
| convert anyone to Judaism.
|
| It has certain supremacist beliefs - the Jews are the
| "chosen people" of God, giving them certain duties and
| certain privileges. But it's not necessarily a "Jews are
| better" line of thinking. Though of course many religious
| Jews may phrase it in those terms.
|
| Worth mentioning that the majority of Israelis are secular,
| so the religious view on this, whatever it is, is a
| minority view in Israel.
| nradov wrote:
| Israelis can potentially vote out Netanyahu in the next
| election. But how exactly would you propose to remove Hamas
| from power without a lot of civilian deaths? Hamas leadership
| prefers the current state of affairs because it has made them
| wealthy by taxing the populace and embezzling foreign aid.
| They have no incentive to agree to a peace deal or allow new
| multiparty elections. There doesn't appear to be any
| realistic solution short of a massive, forceful intervention
| by a neutral foreign coalition.
| nailer wrote:
| > with the goal of a two state solution with Israel and
| Palestine co-existing according to the 1967 borders and UN
| resolution 242
|
| Why? Poland and France are not within their pre-1945 borders.
| cutler wrote:
| But what about reparations? Israel has destroyed most of
| Gaza's infrastructure and housing. Israel is responsible for
| this act of genocide.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| You usually nuke stories that are political. I'm not being
| critical, it clearly leads to significant improvement over
| similar sites.
|
| What makes this one different? When I see a headline like this,
| I usually assume I managed to see it before you did, and if I
| refresh the page that it will probably disappear. So again, and
| without accusation, what's different?
|
| Bad things happen all over the world, nearly constantly or at
| least it seems to a cynic like myself. Some of those bad things
| seem... if not fixable, then at least not intractable. Those
| stories don't seem welcome here though. Surely the situation in
| Israel and Palestine is as intractable as any, and so much more
| than most.
| dang wrote:
| Users usually flag them, but yes, moderators often downweight
| them too--and then there are times that we turn off the
| flags.
|
| The answer to your question goes like this: (1) _some_
| stories with political overlap are on topic (see https://hn.a
| lgolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... (2) we
| try to be careful about which those are, so the site doesn't
| go down in flames; (3) I think it follows from HN's core
| principle (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefi
| x=true&sor...) that we have to allow at least some discussion
| of this topic--to suppress it altogether would contradict the
| intended spirit of HN; and (4) I've explained (or tried to)
| the sense in which this particular story can be on topic for
| HN, in my other comments in this thread.
|
| If you or anyone reads that material and still have a
| question that isn't answered there, I can take a crack at it.
| Just please understand that the answer may or may not be
| satisfying, because even if we agree on the principles,
| different people interpret and draw the lines differently.
| The important thing for HN moderation is the principles,
| though, not the individual calls.
| bitcurious wrote:
| I got the impression that stories about the Ukraine/Russia
| was have been consistently suppressed, including stories
| about the tech side of the war - drones, hacking, etc. Is
| this impression mistaken?
| dang wrote:
| It was similar. Users flagged many posts, and we applied
| the same principles as I've described in this thread, as
| best we could. That involved turning off flags on certain
| stories. Unfortunately, the threads did not go well.
|
| That experience is one reason why I'm taking a different
| approach in the current thread. We're trying to learn
| over time how to support _some_ discussion (but not too
| much) of these difficult topics, while remaining within
| the intended spirit of the site.
| EvgeniyZh wrote:
| I skim through headers of 100+ vote submission daily, and
| since 7.10 I haven't seen anything about this conflict
| until recently, and now this is second in last week. Since
| the discussion usually tend to be broad topic rather than
| specific link, this feels a lot (I left a single comment
| last time and was flooded by responses). Both entries are
| talking negatively about Israel (I think specifically Al
| Jazeera is not very good source being affiliated with
| Qatari government) so it feels kind of biased; of course it
| may just reflect HN users opinion, but the comments were
| more balanced?
| dang wrote:
| Yes - the reason is that it slowly started to dawn on me
| that we can't avoid this topic altogether and still
| remain within the intended spirit of this site. That took
| a while, and it's probably better to have waited in any
| case, because otherwise the odds of reflective rather
| than reflexive responses (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRan
| ge=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) would have been even
| lower than they currently are.
|
| Basically everything in how we run HN is an attempt to
| optimize for the core principle: https://hn.algolia.com/?
| dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... I know it's not
| at all obvious how this topic can be within that spirit,
| but it's also not obvious how avoiding the topic can be
| within that spirit, so it feels to me like we have to
| try. I'm trying to support that in this thread a lot more
| actively than I usually do. (Btw, this has the side
| effect of paying much less attention to what else is on
| HN's front page, or happening in comments elsewhere.
| Usually I make the opposite tradeoff.)
| tmnvix wrote:
| I appreciate the willingness of HN to allow discussion on this
| topic.
|
| Despite the inevitable low-quality or even overly-biased
| comments, I find the comments from both sides of the discussion
| to be generally informative and thoughtful. Certainly more-so
| than in any other online context that I'm aware of. I come here
| to learn and reading opinions that I haven't considered before
| is essentially how that works (especially when those opinions
| are well founded and backed up with sources).
|
| In short, I find HN to be a relatively knowledgeable and
| thoughtful community and I appreciate the opportunity to hear
| this community's thoughts on what is a very important and
| complex topic.
| seabird wrote:
| I've been reading this site for 5+ years at this point and I
| hope that this experiment/exercise does not continue. This is
| an issue where those _demanding_ commentary are generally not
| doing so in good faith, and acknowledging the reality of the
| situation is something that is best not done in polite company.
| There are plenty of places where you can discuss this content
| as much as you 'd like, and nobody's life will be improved by
| this becoming yet another one of them.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I am disappointed in the decision to allow this.
|
| Can you walk me through how the below commentary is adding
| value to the HN community? What % of participants will walk
| away from this conversation with a positive perspective of
| their peers?
| davesque wrote:
| It's really disappointing to see so many exceptions to the no
| politics rule right when we need that rule the most. There
| really isn't anything to be gained by discussing stories like
| this. We all know that atrocities are taking place. It's a war
| zone.
|
| Also, it's a _glaringly_ bad look that the articles that have
| recently been allowed to circumvent the no politics rule just
| happen to share a bias that PG also appears to have on this
| issue.
| beeboobaa wrote:
| What's that supposed bias?
| emmelaich wrote:
| It's hard to find compassion when the truth is hard to find, on
| either side. And I trust Al Jazeera (and some Israeli
| newspapers) less on this topic than other sources.
|
| I definitely feel Palestinians have legitimate grievances but
| on the other hand I fear people's natural compassion being used
| to prolong a war rather than end it.
| edanm wrote:
| I appreciate this thread being allowed on HN. I consider HN to
| have very high quality discussions and high quality people, and
| as an Israeli, I believe it is my duty to both:
|
| 1. Try to offer smart people an insight into my thinking on
| this topic, given that I usually have insights they lack.
|
| 2. Try to seriously consider other viewpoints to help me better
| think through my own view of the current war.
|
| I don't really like that an Al Jazeera story is the "prompt"
| for this, since I think that's a _heavily_ biased source that
| we may as well ignore, but I 'm mostly here for the comments
| anyway.
|
| I don't quite understand the many people here who think it's
| such a problem to allow this thread. If you don't want to argue
| about this topic or be exposed to it - you can always just
| leave this thread alone! Nothing is forcing you to take part in
| it.
| ameminator wrote:
| I honestly don't think this subject should be on here. I don't
| think it's possible for a coherent or respectful or even useful
| conversation to happen here. I haven't seen any conversation
| about this topic that hadn't gone to hell.
| dang wrote:
| Yes, you're of course right--and at the same time, if I ask
| myself how to follow HN's core principle [1] in relation to
| this topic, I can't see "don't touch it at all" as right
| either. It may be an impossible quandary--but it's not in the
| spirit of this place to take an easy way out; or to put it
| differently, the easy way out (if one exists) is not in the
| spirit of this place.
|
| What does "curiosity" mean in a context like this? It certainly
| needs to be more than just a technical dissection of details. I
| think it has to do with being open to learning. For that we
| have to be open to each other. And for that, we have to first
| find some space for the other within ourselves. Comments that
| have to do with annihilating the other (including in virtual
| form, such as by defeating them in internet battle) are
| therefore off-topic in a thread like this, as I posted above.
|
| (Edit: there's also a kind of curiosity in walking into the
| impossible to find out what's doable; and also in taking a
| different approach with each attempt--which is why my pinned
| comment in this thread is different from last time.)
|
| [1]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
| ameminator wrote:
| You're also absolutely right - I hadn't considered that point
| of view, and that we also shouldn't be "de facto" censoring
| subjects. I implore the community here to not ruin the
| general HN forum with the usual insanity around this subject.
| anovick wrote:
| I'm sorry, but even if I concede the notion that this piece
| promotes "intellectual curiosity" in some amount (how much?),
| this news source is highly biased and has been found to
| spread fake news especially on the events since October 7th
| including current war in Gaza.
|
| There is real harm in spreading this information. As you may
| or may not know, mobs and individuals around the world are
| fed such false narratives that demonize Israelis/Jews.
| Combine this with either mental illness or religious
| fundamentalism and you get the kinds of lynching, hateful
| speech, violence threats, etc. against Israelis/Jews and
| sympathizers.
|
| Is whatever "intellectual curiosity" you think you're
| promoting with this piece worth the health and lives of
| innocent people?
| JoshTko wrote:
| Are you saying this article is dangerous because it may
| further engage folks that have been already enraged due to
| having been misinformation elsewhere to the point it could
| result in violence? Also how does that compare with the
| actual harm and health of innocent people mentioned in the
| article?
| dang wrote:
| Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616662
| and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38618540. We're
| trying for a different spirit in this thread.
| anovick wrote:
| > Are you saying this article is dangerous because it may
| further engage folks that have been already enraged due
| to having been misinformation elsewhere to the point it
| could result in violence?
|
| Yes
|
| > Also how does that compare with the actual harm and
| health of innocent people mentioned in the article?
|
| Even if the events as reported in the article are true,
| they are part of war. Like it or not, Gaza's citizens
| chose Hamas as their elected government. Said government
| chose to go start a war with Israel. War is not elegant,
| and unfortunately innocent citizens on both sides pay the
| price.
| biorach wrote:
| > Gaza's citizens chose Hamas as their elected government
|
| Well... They got 44% of the vote in 200 6 and have
| refused to hold elections since
| dang wrote:
| I attempted to answer that question here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38617464, but to add a
| bit more: the idea on HN has always been to go by article
| quality, not site quality (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRang
| e=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). An article appearing on
| HN is by no means an endorsement of the site as a whole,
| nor of anything else appearing on that site.
| chacham15 wrote:
| I would disagree with that policy in this case. In most
| other articles, the reader has a much better ability to
| understand the quality of the article from reading it.
| This audience is primarily technical and not political.
| This topic has such a long history and so much nuance to
| it, that an article about this topic can uniquely spread
| a false narrative to a non political reader. That being
| said, not every reader has little political understanding
| which makes having a discussion even harder. Imagine a
| physicist, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and
| artist trying to have a discussion about "reflections in
| time." With that topic, while a discussion may be
| difficult, it at worst isnt harmful. In this case, a
| false narrative can and has been used to further hateful
| ideas, hate speech, and actual crime. With those negative
| possibilities here, I think we should be erring on the
| side of caution and not on the side of curiosity.
|
| A smaller reason why I disagree with this is that the
| responses to this topic are uniquely capable of
| alienating large quantities of people which is counter to
| what we'd want for a community like this.
| lostdog wrote:
| With respect, Al Jazeera is one of the most biased
| sources covering the conflict. They are still lying about
| the rocket explosion at the hospital for example.
| shashashasha___ wrote:
| so why allow discussion on aljaziera article as they are
| known voice of a terrorist group and backed by a regim that
| puts money directly into hamas bank accounts? why not allow
| such a discussion on more neutral source?
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| "Qatar argues that some its critics misunderstand why it
| hosts Hamas's political leaders - which is not so much out
| of ideological sympathy but because the US has asked it
| to."
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/21/why-is-
| qatar-o...
| drc500free wrote:
| Al Jazeera is state propaganda run by the Qataris, who also
| fund Hamas. The one topic that they absolutely cannot provide
| unbiased commentary on is Israel-Palestine. Picking an AJ
| article as the jumping off point is akin to picking a Pravda
| or RT article as the jumping off point to discuss Ukraine-
| Russia.
|
| I think this community is better than most at keeping things
| analytical, and you're better than any other moderator I've
| encountered in decades on online communities. But it's not
| exactly a neutral framing to kick off the discussion. An
| article about the numerous rapes and tortures committed by
| Palestinians during October 7th and on the hostages
| afterwards would likewise not be the most neutral.
| r00fus wrote:
| This is conjecture, not facts. Please provide some actual
| reason why one should see Al Jazeera as a non-serious
| source.
|
| btw, the same was said about the Al Jazeera's reporting on
| the Iraq occupation, and it was equally false.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _I don 't think it's possible for a coherent or respectful or
| even useful conversation to happen here. I haven't seen any
| conversation about this topic that hadn't gone to hell._
|
| Not sure if you're being honest or poisoning the well (as of
| posting time, nothing has gone to hell - there aren't even many
| other posts at all). One of the issues around this topic is
| that there are so few places to discuss it. To be blunt, most
| discussions, when they veer away from unquestioned support of
| Israel get shut down or accused of anti-Semitism. At the very
| least, an under the radar pseudo anonymous board like this is
| the only place left where free discussions about this topic can
| happen.
| dubcanada wrote:
| There are so few places to talk about it because one side
| always has a higher footing then the other. There does not
| exist a place where both sides are taken at 50/50, that
| doesn't exist for anything politically motivated. So what you
| get is people who tend to be around the middle, accepting
| that both sides are at fault. And then you get the extremist
| views, and those get comments so they jet up to the top.
|
| HackerNews is proportionally North American, so you tend to
| get larger view set from English speaking North Americans.
| And non-English articles are largely ignored. And neither of
| these two populations speak English as their first language.
| So limiting yourself to English limits your view to English
| speaking view.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Statistically that seems quite improbable as Jews are only
| 0.2% of the worlds population vs the Arab and Muslim world
| (which majority supports Palestinians)
|
| Edit: not to mention the CCP and Russia taking an anti Israel
| stance as well, both known to conduct massive online
| campaigns to align with their own agendas.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| There are a lot of zionist christians and publications are
| much safer when reporting from a pro-Israel bias. Most
| muslims don't speak english so if a muslim is commenting
| about this topic, they're probably one of the few million
| in one of the english speaking countries.
| ashirusnw wrote:
| jews + usa protestant evangelicals (the only Christians
| that are specifically pro Zionism) are massively
| outnumbered by Western world Muslims.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| There are 3 million muslims in the US. I don't know how
| many in the UK, NZ, and AU but if you added them up,
| well, I doubt your claim
| ashirusnw wrote:
| 24M in Europe says wiki
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| And idk how many evangelists you'll find online outside
| very specific communities.
|
| Plus a large percentage of Jewish people also don't speak
| English that well / at all, not to mention that you don't
| need to speak English to click upvote/downvote/flag/etc
| password54321 wrote:
| A small yet influential group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/List_of_Jewish_American_busine...
| dang wrote:
| > Not sure if you're being honest or poisoning the well
|
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| doom2 wrote:
| > I don't think it's possible for a coherent or respectful or
| even useful conversation to happen here.
|
| I've seen some variation of this sentiment both here on HN and
| elsewhere. It makes me wonder: is the topic so toxic that no
| conversation can happen at all? If that's the case, what's the
| appropriate forum for debate?
|
| I'd argue that meatspace gathering places tend to not be much
| better (see: current debate about how this is playing out on
| college campuses), which has the net effect of chilling any
| discussion anywhere. That leaves op-ed pages, blog posts,
| Substacks, places where people can broadcast their opinion to
| the world...but not have to engage on it whatsoever. That
| doesn't feel like a great alternative to at least attempting to
| create space to talk about it.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Mostly agree but this particular discussion seems ok. Well done
| @dang.
| banku_brougham wrote:
| Im glad to see the community engage with this -- there couldnt be
| a more significant current event happening right now and its
| jarring that it would be so silent.
|
| Edit: And why is it relevant here? At a minimum coworkers are
| suffering silently through it. The emotional damage just for
| internet bystanders is staggering.
| ameminator wrote:
| In my experience, the "benefit of the doubt" has been lost in
| relation to this subject. I no longer believe it is possible to
| have any thread about this remain civil. It's tragic and a
| tragic subject, although I dispute the "there couldn't be a
| more significant current event" - lots of events are equally
| (or more) significant and relevant. I hope to be proven wrong,
| but I have doubts.
| ardit33 wrote:
| like what? Russian x Ukraine war? Even that, has x10 less the
| civilian rate death. I am talking about women/children. Even
| if Israel thins every adult male is a 'terrorirst', (which is
| not true), the collateral damage is so high, that this is
| starting to look like intentional mass murdering of
| civilians.
|
| What sets this conflict appart is that we, the US is actively
| funding and giving weapons to Israel, and makes us all
| complicit. We work hard in our jobs, get our taxes taken and
| given to a third country who in turn is making gross human
| rights violation.
|
| I am personally very disappointed of our politicians,
| especially in the Democratic side, and make sure to vote
| these current warmonger goons out.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| The white phosphorus Israel is using in Lebanon and
| Palestine is manufactured in Pine Bluff, Arkansas
| ashirusnw wrote:
| They don't use it as munition, it's used by all countries
| in the way Israel uses it
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Current reporting is that there is strong evidence of it
| being used as munitions. You're repeating false or
| outdated information.
| ashirusnw wrote:
| Nope. There are isolated reports which are of doctors in
| Gaza saying they have a seen burns that they estimate to
| be white phosphorus but (a) it's their guess it could be
| from any number of munitions/explosives (b) phosphorus
| used legally in flares could cause injuries if they fall
| unspent (c) Gaza doctors like everyone under Hamas rule
| cannot speak freely to press.
|
| The reports from Lebonon are isolated incurred that are
| highly inclusive too. Plus this accusation is used as
| part of the anti-Israel "genocide" narative that Israel
| simply wants to harm Gazans/Palestinians civilians, but
| why on earth even according to this beer particular view
| would it use white phosphorus as a munition in Lebanon?
| jgeada wrote:
| Sometimes the Onion hits it out the park: "Israel Assures
| It Doing Everything Possible To Minimize Civilians"
|
| https://www.theonion.com/israel-assures-it-doing-
| everything-...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The Canadian Onion has some great articles too:
|
| "Spineless fence-sitter thinks killing children is bad no
| matter who does it":
| https://www.thebeaverton.com/2023/10/spineless-fence-
| sitter-...
|
| https://www.thebeaverton.com/tag/israel/
| snowpid wrote:
| " I am talking about women/children. " Can you elaborate,
| what makes especially women special as a victim?
| vimax wrote:
| The vast majority of combatants are male, so women and
| children are typically viewed as non-combatants by
| default.
| ardit33 wrote:
| I saw some of the incursion footage. How many of the
| hamas troops in the October 7 incursion were women? 0,
| from what I saw in the footage the only women involved
| were isreali victims getting kidnapped. Mostly of the
| incursion was done by males clearly in their 20s/30s.
| Perhaps few 19+, but I didn't see any kids participating
| in it either.
|
| Sure, there might be some women helping out, but we can
| say it is mostly men, and 99% of the women killed, and
| most of the kids under 17 are victims of IDF's
| indiscriminate bombing, paid by our taxes.
|
| If you want to defend war crimes, keep on going, but I
| feel sick how some goons in the tech community are
| justifying the killing by saying a '11 year old' is
| probably a hamas terrorist.
| ashirusnw wrote:
| If you want to keep the discourse HN-worthy then delete
| the last para.
|
| But btw apparently cctv footage showed women and children
| participating in Oct 7 massacre
| https://freebeacon.com/national-security/children-as-
| young-a... (not checked site credibility but it's not the
| only place mentioned). Not saying that I (or Israel)
| would airstrike young teen's house because they joined in
| an atrocity but just addressing your claim that zero
| women/kids involved...
|
| Regardless the footage shows many who are just as likely
| 17 or 18 which are counted amongst the "children" count
| in the reported death tolls when it's entirely likely
| that are are plenty of 17 and 18yo (and younger) fighters
| in Gaza right now.
| ameminator wrote:
| I'll let your comment speak for itself.
|
| We did give lots of aid to Ukraine and we somehow were able
| to have discussions about whether we should continue to do
| so, in a relatively civilized manner. [0]
|
| Somehow, when it comes to Israel and/or Palestine, all
| nuance gets lost, my "side" is "right", and the other
| "side" is an unholy abomination, morally disgusting or some
| other thing without room for earnest discussion.
|
| I'll let the rest of this thread speak for itself.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37101187
| jfengel wrote:
| It's hard to look at the events of October 7 and not
| conclude that they are "unholy abomination, morally
| disgusting".
|
| It may be that they were provoked by equally abominable
| behavior by the other side. I'll leave that to each
| person's conscience. But it's quite undeniable that at
| least one side committed unspeakable atrocities, and
| there's no merit in saying "Oh, there's no point in
| demonizing them just because they disagree".
|
| This isn't a difference of opinion. There is actual
| violence going on, like real horror-movie stuff. It may
| be that _both_ sides are demonic, but there 's no way to
| make the case that neither side is.
| LtWorf wrote:
| The former Israeli ambassador in Italy has been on Italian
| TV saying that the destruction of Gaza is their goal.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luz1jnI6OIk (video in
| Italian).
|
| So I believe that civilian casualties are intentional, and
| all the talk of safe areas (with no clear indication of
| what these areas are) is just a sham.
| ashirusnw wrote:
| ... and later clarified that his comments had been
| misunderstood
| https://www.israelhayom.com/2023/11/03/battles-on-the-
| public...
|
| (Leaving aside the fact that _former_ ambassadors don 't
| speak for the Israeli government.)
|
| The Israeli government has publicly stated [1] they do
| not intend long-term reoccupation of Gaza.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67039975
| LtWorf wrote:
| Watch the full interview. They offer him many outs,
| saying that perhaps there is a language barrier, and that
| he's going to do no favours to his country by saying
| that. But he insists that it is exactly what he means.
| ashirusnw wrote:
| I don't speak Italian so can't do that but regardless of
| you have to find a former ambassador to Italy then you're
| scratching around, he was looking out of his post before
| any strategy of this war was fought and Israel was using
| the containment strategy re Gaza/Hamas prior to Oct 7
| LtWorf wrote:
| > I don't speak Italian so can't do that
|
| This is hardly my fault. You can hire a professional
| translator if you don't trust my word.
|
| The interview is new.
| lornemalvo wrote:
| Do you really think that the Russo-Ukrainian war has 10x
| LESS civilian fatalities than the current Gaza war?
| 0xDEF wrote:
| The reason people think only 10,000 Ukrainian civilians
| have been killed is that is lowball number the UN made up
| to not offend and anger Russia and China.
|
| It is estimated that 25,000-75,000 Ukrainian civilians
| have been killed just in Mariupol and surrounding areas.
| ardit33 wrote:
| percentage wise, Absolutely yes. Ukraine is 40mil.
|
| If the current rate was sustained in the Ukraine/russia,
| we would have seen at least 400k death rates. The
| estimates are 10-20x less. (between 10 and 20k)
|
| You lost the plot, when even a goon like Putin is
| starting to look more human and conducting a massive war
| with less civilian casualties.
| ashirusnw wrote:
| Russia v Ukraine and Israel v Gaza are incomparable, except
| that they're both wars. A comparable war would be other
| counter-terrorist warzones like Mosul or Raqqa which in
| fact have much higher civilian death rate than Gaza.
|
| And that's even taking the UNWRA/ Gaza Health numbers at
| face value, which somehow indicate zero combatants killed
| in airstrikes.
| burnerburnson wrote:
| "Intentional mass murdering of civilians" is what Palestine
| did to start this war in the first place. So even if Israel
| were deliberately targeting civilians (there's no evidence
| for this) they would still be on the right side of this
| conflict.
| ardit33 wrote:
| bruh.... this is clearly 'faschist' type of argument.
| "They deserve it". The dehumanizing of a whole population
| is just sick.
|
| Last times this happen in europe were: 1) WW2, 2) The
| massacres in the Yogoslavian wars, and especially in
| Sebrenica which was a clear ethnic cleansning/genocide
| and the war leaders ended up getting convicted for war
| crimes and crimes against the humanity.
|
| Benjamin Netanyahu is on the way to become the next
| Milosevic, a war criminal.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| >Even that, has x10 less the civilian rate death.
|
| What a blatant lie. The Siege of Mariupol alone is
| estimated to have killed somewhere between 25000 and 75000
| civilians. The UN's fraudulent claim that "only 10,000
| Ukrainian civilians have been killed" is a blatant lie to
| keep China and Russia happy.
|
| Any discussion about collateral damage should take
| population density into consideration. The population
| density of Ukraine is 63 per square kilometer. The
| population density of Gaza is 5500 per square kilometer.
| mistermann wrote:
| > I no longer believe it is possible to have any thread about
| this remain civil.
|
| I bet almost no one in this thread is able to juggle three
| balls either, even though learning how to do so doesn't take
| all that much practice. But it does take _some_ practice.
|
| Should we be surprised when people are unable to do something
| that requires practice _and education_ , when they lack both?
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| If the vast majority of HN users can't juggle three balls
| simultaneously, but the few experts can, it seems fair that
| the experts shouldn't be restricted from juggling, as long
| as they comply with the rules.
| ameminator wrote:
| I (and many other users of this forum) have expectations on
| the minimum quality of discourse. Moreover, I am happy this
| forum exists with its quality of discussion. I am
| interested in preserving this high level of civilized
| interactions.
|
| Time and time again, when it comes to the subject of Israel
| and Palestine, it has been shown that the discourse never
| meets the minimum standards I usually enjoy here. To the
| point where I am not sure if it's even theoretically
| possible.
|
| To use your metaphor - if this were a forum about juggling,
| I would generally expect people to have an honest interest
| in juggling, and to have discussions about juggling. If
| every discussion about curling, on my juggling forum,
| devolved into abuse - it would be reasonable to avoid
| discussing curling (at a certain point).
| mistermann wrote:
| > I am interested in preserving this high level of
| civilized interactions.
|
| Are you opposed in principle to even higher levels?
|
| > Time and time again, when it comes to the subject of
| Israel and Palestine, it has been shown that the
| discourse never meets the minimum standards I usually
| enjoy here. To the point where I am not sure if it's even
| theoretically possible.
|
| How much compute did you apply to the proposition, and
| what set of algorithms are you personally working with?
|
| > To use your metaphor - if this were a forum about
| juggling, I would generally expect people to have an
| honest interest in juggling, and to have discussions
| about juggling.
|
| Agreed. This site is, to some degree, about systems and
| programming, which involves analysis and logic. I would
| therefore expect that people would at least have at least
| some interest in the exercise of sound analysis and
| logic....and yet, as you note, on certain topics our
| normal standards _within this system_ (HN forums) cannot
| be met. Is this not a rather curious phenomenon? Do you
| believe that it is perhaps worthy of some _analysis_
| (especially considering lives are literally in the
| balance)?
|
| > If every discussion about curling, on my juggling
| forum, devolved into abuse - it would be reasonable to
| avoid discussing curling (at a certain point).
|
| A problem: that which can be "reasoned" is not
| necessarily true.
|
| Another problem: sometimes action (and inaction) has
| deadly consequences. If it was you living in Israel or
| Gaza, do you think you would be advising complacency and
| disinterest on this matter?
| ameminator wrote:
| It's not that I don't have an opinion (or even a strong
| one!) on this subject. The point is that _everyone_ (and
| their mother) has a strong opinion, not only on the
| absolute morality of a side 's actions, but on the
| morality of each source, of each agency involved, with
| various amounts of prejudice and superstition baked in.
|
| Even worse, not one side is willing to really compromise.
| Even for the root issue of the Israel/Palestine conflict
| itself, it's impossible to "square the circle" on both
| the rights of each side, the motives of each side and the
| actions of each side. There's so much history and (mis)
| information flying around that it's hard for anyone to
| make a logical argument or contribute in a meaningful
| way.
|
| I believe all of the above to be true and I believe the
| above could be overcome with earnest effort from both
| "sides" (if we are calling it that). Very, very rarely
| have I ever seen _any_ attempt at compromising or meeting
| in the middle or having even a respectful conversation
| about this subject. So, inevitably, the conversation
| devolves into a mud-fight.
|
| It's like "Godwin's Law" of geopolitics: any conversation
| about the Israel/Palestine conflict inevitably devolves
| into mud-slinging where both sides compare the other to
| Nazis.
|
| So, forgive me if I want my tech-related forum to remain
| "mud-free".
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The last two threads I've seen on HN on this issue have been
| civil and productive. I'm very impressed with HN (and with
| the moderators).
| jerpint wrote:
| I found the silence on HN around these events deafening when
| the Oct 7th attacks first happened (before Israeli
| retaliation). What is depicted here is tragic. There were many
| other tragic depictions then too. It seems fair to discuss both
| tragedies yet here only one instance is used as the "testbed"
| for HN discussions, from a generally biased source. I'm hoping
| we will find some nuance in these tough conversations and the
| ability to empathize as much as possible
| ashirusnw wrote:
| Discussions around Israel disproportionately descend into
| highly polarised opposites. It's a shame @dang allowed this
| one through.
| barryrandall wrote:
| It shouldn't be jarring or even surprising that people won't
| talk about this specific subject, given what frequently happens
| to people who talk about this specific subject.
| jraby3 wrote:
| Just a reminder that Aljazeera is the state sponsored news of
| Qatar, a county that hosts Hamas leaders and is close allies with
| Iran.
|
| It's not a valid news source.
| throwing_away wrote:
| That would explain the factual inaccuracies that I've noticed
| in their reporting since the events of October.
|
| I assumed it was because of a religious ideology, but a state
| sponsor makes sense too.
| ngcazz wrote:
| Can you provide examples where they've been debunked?
| throwing_away wrote:
| Where it crystalized for me was watching
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-
| Ahli_Arab_Hospital_explosio... as it happened live.
|
| The AJ coverage:
| https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/10/16/israel-
| ha...
|
| From reading the AJ coverage, you would believe that Israel
| bombed a hospital and killed hundreds. An inexcusable
| atrocity, obviously, if it were true.
|
| But on Wikipedia, you can see the actual impact of the
| bombing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-
| Ahli_Arab_Hospital_explosio...
|
| The US and Israel's story of it being a jihad rocket seems
| consistent with the explosion. The intelligence assessment
| that it was dozens not hundreds dead seems much more
| plausible to me.
|
| The AJ perspective seems to be to treat Hamas claims as
| valid by default throughout this conflict, which I find
| concerning.
| dekhn wrote:
| Al Jazeera was not unique in their short-term coverage -
| nearly all western outlets also wrote similar articles
| shortly afterward, based mainly on unsupported statements
| from Palestinians. As soon as day broke and people saw
| the actual photos of the impact area it was clearer that
| attributing the attack to either side would be
| challenging; several reputable outfits in the US even
| wrote short postmortems to understand why they did what
| they did and to prevent it in the future.
| abrambleninja wrote:
| They at least have made a strong argument for their case
| [1]. I don't read this as taking Hamas claims as valid by
| default because they backed it up with reasoning from
| their sources. Are they correct? Hard to say for sure,
| but there's more evidence for it than just "Hamas said
| this so we believe it."
|
| [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/19/what-hit-
| ahli-hosp...
| throwing_away wrote:
| They continue to make very strong arguments and propagate
| their story into western media (Channel4 did a story
| about it and so did NYT).
|
| They even have explainer videos, like the one you linked,
| or this one here from a month later:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60EK-3-kGLI
|
| Their arguments are well produced and cast doubt on the
| Israeli/American story in every possible way.
|
| But isn't that also what a sophisticated propaganda
| campaign would look like?
|
| As I said, I watched it unfold live, and my assessment
| was that they couldn't possibly know there were 800 dead
| on such short notice. When the sun rose, I expected to
| see a leveled hospital, like so many other buildings in
| Gaza. Instead, I saw a tiny crater in a parking lot.
|
| It was then that I learned the "Ministry of Health
| (Palestine)" is actually a government agency, effectively
| Hamas. That was the entity that supplied the numbers that
| drove the headlines that caused so many more problems.
|
| You might think "Who would exaggerate the numbers of dead
| to cause international outrage!? That's unthinkable!".
| But they are literal terrorists. This is the playbook.
|
| In the video you linked, they don't show the impact site.
| They don't mention that the hospital is still very much
| functioning. They don't show the surrounding buildings
| not having been impacted. But if you were making an
| honest assessment of "israeli airstrike on hospital" or
| "stray rocket hit hospital parking lot", those details
| make a huge amount of difference.
|
| When it happened, I thought we would see retractions from
| AJ and other Arab media after the sun rose, but they were
| continuing to run the "Israel bombs hospital" story while
| omitting key video and photo details that were widely
| available on Wikiepdia.
| euzi wrote:
| On the other hand, most western news outlets are going
| "Israel said this so we believe it." despite the serial
| lies
| qwertthrowway wrote:
| Aljazeera posts high quality documentaries and news articles.
| It has been much better than US media at publishing news about
| the Israel Palestine situation. Even the BBC was quite poisoned
| by bias on this issue. Aljazeera has been the largest news
| outlet that actually published a Palestinian view also.
| fyloraspit wrote:
| Perhaps a news source with ties to Israel then?
| blaufast wrote:
| You feel suspicious that the content may be misleading because
| of the bias from the newsroom?
| Lendal wrote:
| Is there any news source in the world that isn't in some way
| connected to one of the parties of this war? It has to be a
| news source that has significant presence in the region so that
| they have some topical credibility, but also is not located in
| a country that does any business with either the Arab world or
| Israel. I'll wait.
| sickofparadox wrote:
| There aren't any that would have access to Gaza. If you are
| reporting from the Palestinian side, much of your data/facts
| are going to come straight from Hamas spokespeople. If you
| report from the Israeli side, its going to be IDF
| spokespeople. The fog of war prevents anything but propaganda
| from coming out of this conflict.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Note that it is Israel which prohibits international press
| from accessing Gaza - they monitor the Rafah crossing and
| have prohibited any journalists from contacting
| Palestinians via any means available or releasing reporting
| without going through Israeli censors first. And that there
| are civilian journalists on the ground who are certainly
| not "all hamas"
| nickff wrote:
| Here is an article with a bit more detail on the subject:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/12/hugely-
| frustra...
|
| It seems like Israel has closed some border crossings to
| journalists, and Egypt has done the same on their side.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| 63 of them have been killed:
|
| https://cpj.org/2023/12/journalist-casualties-in-the-
| israel-...
| xdennis wrote:
| Qatar is an authoritarian monarchy. Journalists based there
| can't just publish what they want.
|
| The US is connected to the Middle East, but journalists there
| do have freedom.
| ngcazz wrote:
| Respectfully, I think this is poisoning the well. For one, do
| you think CNN and MSNBC being private organizations clears them
| from charges of state manipulation, let alone bias? Al Jazeera
| doesn't purport to hide its biases in this war, and has had way
| more insightful and urgent reporting on it than any of the
| western outlets have had -- not least because it's been
| reporting from the occupied territories*, and hasn't shied away
| from airing images displaying the extent of the carnage and
| destruction.
|
| (* edit: even when their families are killed by Israeli bombs)
| smoothjazz wrote:
| I hadn't watched Al Jazeera before this conflict but now I
| think they're heroes. You see "reporters" on CNN wearing bullet
| proof vests by a pool in Tel Aviv while Al Jazeera journalists
| are reporting on air while they find out their entire family
| has been killed by Israel. It's incredible stuff and I've never
| seen anything like it. I've lost all respect for US and western
| media journalism.
| dekhn wrote:
| I think of Al Jazeera like I think of the NY Times: it's the
| unofficial mouthpiece of the establishment. I apply my prior
| understanding of those establishments to adjust what I read
| into what i believe is a more factual understanding of the
| underlying reality.
| baz00 wrote:
| Very much this.
|
| What they write in English is completely different to their
| main audience and internal audience. There's enough information
| out there to back this up. Go and do some research with this in
| mind and formulate your own conclusions.
| adhamsalama wrote:
| Well, in that case, we should also ignore all Israeli media, US
| media, and all western media, since they all those countries
| committed countless atrocious war crimes throughout history,
| and killed way more people than Hamas will ever kill even if
| they existed for another 200 years.
|
| But no, you probably believe anything the IDF and Israeli media
| says.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| "Qatar argues that some its critics misunderstand why it hosts
| Hamas's political leaders - which is not so much out of
| ideological sympathy but because the US has asked it to."
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/21/why-is-qatar-o...
| euzi wrote:
| This is an association fallacy. Every media outlet has an
| agenda, journalism has standards and you either point out the
| flaws or quit untrustworthiness allegations.
| password54321 wrote:
| One of the only sources that has journalists on the ground is
| not valid?
| blaufast wrote:
| I think HN readers have a strong desire to speak the inconvenient
| or untouchable topics. I think this is a healthy impulse.
|
| This topic is hard because so many commenters are triggered by
| it, for lack of a better word.
|
| Could AI help here? What if a comment was given an automatic
| 'emotional temperature' score? We might be able to address the
| fact that a lot of the comments will be basically pure emotion,
| and we can discuss the emotions instead of being distracted by
| the content.
| dang wrote:
| Sentiment analysis tools haven't yet proved accurate enough to
| be useful for HN moderation; traditionally they misclassify too
| many things because they don't have access to intent. It does
| seem like LLMs have a chance at doing this better, though, and
| if anyone wanted to work on that, I'd certainly be interested
| in what they find.
| skyyler wrote:
| The things I've read about happening in Gaza are horrific.
|
| I'm ashamed that my taxes are funding this. It doesn't feel like
| there's much that can be done to change that. AIPAC has a very
| serious influence on our government and I worry that its impact
| is just leading to more deaths and more suffering.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| There is one thing you can do as a tax payer: go on strike.
| Think of what effect this would have on the federal
| government's tax revenue as well as the effect on the rich and
| powerful's incomes if half the country did this.
|
| I bring it up because of this news story:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/11/gaza-israel-...
| noworriesnate wrote:
| > "When they spoke to us in Hebrew and we wouldn't understand,
| they'd beat us up," he continues.
|
| > "They hit me in the back where my kidneys are and my legs. They
| took my family, and I don't know where they are," he says, his
| voice breaking.
|
| > Before they were forced inside the warehouse, Israeli female
| soldiers came and spat on the men, Mohammed recalls.
|
| > In the warehouse, it was common for groups of five soldiers to
| suddenly enter and beat one person while the others were forced
| to listen to his screams of pain. If any of the men and teenagers
| nodded off from exhaustion, the soldiers poured cold water on
| them.
|
| > "Their contempt for us was unnatural, like we were lesser
| beings," Mohammed says.
|
| For some reason I find this last sentence so utterly beautiful in
| context it brings tears to my eyes. Here is a 14-year-old Arabic
| boy being tortured by Jews and STILL he operates from a worldview
| that viewing other human beings as lesser is _unnatural_. Thank
| you, Mohammed. What an image of beauty and horror.
| krembo wrote:
| Since the source is AlJazeera can you at least take these
| testimonies with a grain of doubt?
| text0404 wrote:
| what's wrong with al jazeera?
| LtWorf wrote:
| They don't blindly repost Israeli propaganda.
| burnerburnson wrote:
| They are state-owned media for an authoritarian government
| that is hostile to Israel. They are incentivized to make
| Israel look bad.
| r00fus wrote:
| Al-Jazeera has some incredibly great reporting for the
| past couple of decades across many conflicts.
|
| The fact that Israel doesn't like their reporting doesn't
| necessarily make their reporting less factual.
| edanm wrote:
| They are considered incredibly biased against Israel,
| certainly by Israelis.
|
| (Israelis consider a lot of media slightly biased against
| them, but Al Jazeera is in a completely different league.)
| akvadrako wrote:
| They are mostly (or fully, based on their banner) funded by
| Qatar, which is kinda allied with Hamas.
|
| For stuff unrelated to Qatar, they are pretty unbiased. But
| that changes when their owners actually have an interest in
| the matter.
| hydrok9 wrote:
| they're openly biased, but by far the best mainstream news
| Outlet in the region
| sys32768 wrote:
| Scroll through a few dozen of their headlines at
| https://www.aljazeera.com/tag/israel-palestine-conflict/
| and you will quickly discover a glaring pro-Palestinian
| bias that is almost comical if you are proposing they do
| objective, disinterested reporting.
|
| I gave up after about 20 pages to find anything indicating
| otherwise.
| gtroja wrote:
| I would do the other way around....
| jacooper wrote:
| You mean the only news outlet who hasn't lied once since the
| start of the conflict? Unlike CNN, BBC and others who just
| believed IDF lies like the beheaded babies thing?
| ycdxvjp wrote:
| The only take that made any sense to me about what's going on
| there - https://michael-hudson.com/2023/11/israel-as-a-landed-
| aircra...
| blaufast wrote:
| this is great. thanks for sharing
| srackey wrote:
| See Taiwan as another "stationary aircraft carrier"
| cooloo wrote:
| This is one of.the article that have nothing with actual
| reality. Zero understanding of geopolitics and surely zero
| understanding of Israeli political situation
| jgeada wrote:
| Name a conflict or intervention by the US in that region that
| has made use of US assets based in Israel. Hint: there aren't
| any. We instead use assets in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
| Bahrain, etc. Using anything based in Israel would cause more
| problems than would be solved.
|
| Israel isn't really an asset to the US, it is more of a
| liability that we tolerate.
| wharvle wrote:
| Operating out of Israel would be an international relations
| nightmare for both the US and Israel. We'd not do it if we
| had any other options (and we've always had several, for
| relevant values of "always")
|
| We give them aid to prevent another attempt at conquest by
| neighbors. The other prong of that fork is that we also pay
| Egypt (check out the list of top US aid recipients over the
| last few decades) to keep them out of any war-coalition of
| Israel's neighbors, significantly reducing any such move's
| likelihood of success.
|
| _Why_ we do that, I'm not sure. I've not dug enough into the
| situation to have a solid answer. Anyone can think of some,
| but I'm not sure what the actual reasons are. I don't think
| it's anything like "to buy a base in the Levant" though.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| That may have made sense once, but we have landed carriers all
| throughout the ME since before the Gulf Wars. Egypt, Jordan,
| Turkey, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman. KSA, Kuwait, Iraq and Diego
| Garcia as needed. We're not going to ever use an Israeli base
| to attack Iran so unsure what purpose it serves tactically or
| strategically. Turkey/KSA are happy to support our projects in
| Syria.
|
| These facilities are huge, each capable of supporting squadrons
| of US aircraft.
|
| https://www.americansecurityproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2...
|
| Not even complete. Cairo West isn't on there.
| https://www.google.com/maps/@30.116667,30.916667,5961m/data=...
| lossolo wrote:
| Israel has also been imposing apartheid on Palestinians for
| years, a fact that high-ranking officials themselves admit
| [1][2], and which human rights reports confirm[3].
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/06/israel-
| imposin...
|
| [2] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-08-13/ty-
| article/ex...
|
| [3] https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-
| crossed/isra...
| cassepipe wrote:
| I used to think of the situation as an appartheid too as it
| seemed to be the most accurate comparison but if found that the
| more I learned about the situation that that comparison was not
| helpful at all unless your only purpose is to say that the
| situation of Palestinians is immoral (which it can be without
| being "appartheid")
| nemo44x wrote:
| Maybe if Palestinian's would stop strapping bombs to
| themselves and blowing up Jewish people then there wouldn't
| be a need to have walls and checkpoints. The families of
| Palestinians that murder-suicide are paid handsomely when
| family members do this and are treated as hero's. If you're
| naughty then you need a timeout away from civilization.
| LtWorf wrote:
| It seems that in Israel there are (very small) quotas for non
| jewish people to be admitted at university.
|
| I've met muslim israeli who have learnt italian to go to study
| medicine in italy (where there is a notoriously extremely
| difficult entrance exam) because all of this was easier than
| going to a local university.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Source in that?
|
| Here's a source countering
| https://www.timesofisrael.com/number-of-arab-students-in-
| isr...
| LtWorf wrote:
| > Source in that?
|
| Me, I have personally met people doing it, while being a
| student myself.
|
| From your link: > In postgraduate programs, the proportion
| of Arab students rose 60% from 3.9% to 6.3%.
|
| If you have 0 students and then you get one, it increases
| [?]%, but sometimes looking at the % in the title, which is
| just a D of the actual % doesn't tell the whole story.
| bushbaba wrote:
| You state Israeli universities have a limit on the number
| of Arab students. I didn't see anything which supported
| such a remark.
| LtWorf wrote:
| The link you posted yourself doesn't paint a rosy
| picture, despite the clickbait title.
| liorsbg wrote:
| Not sure why you would write this, please research.
|
| 1. There is actually affirmative action for Arab Israelis.
|
| 2. A lot of Israelis (Jewish and Arab alike) go study
| medicine abroad. You need a near perfect score on the SAT-
| equivalent exam to get into med school in Israel (not enough
| spots, too many applicants).
| jo6gwb wrote:
| There are many Israeli (Jewish) students who go to Europe for
| medical school.
|
| A lot of this has to do with Americans going to Israeli
| medical schools who take up the space, and it is doubtful
| this has to do with the individual you met who was Muslim.
|
| This past year Israel actually banned/limited the number of
| Americans who can enroll in their medical schools.
| https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-ends-lucrative-
| american...
|
| Edited to include link
| CloudYeller wrote:
| I disagree on the apartheid claim and so does former anti-
| apartheid activist and South African politician Mosiuoa Lekota
| [1].
|
| Per Wikipedia, Apartheid is a "system of institutionalised
| racial segregation", and Israel's citizens include many Arab
| Muslims and even Palestinians, all of whom have equal rights.
| Israel's declaration of independence explicitly supported
| "equality...without distinction of race, creed, or sex" [2].
| Arabs are 20% of the Israeli population and yet they are 40% of
| doctors [3].
|
| The West bank and Gaza are basically separate countries with
| their own governments. The extremist Israeli settlers should
| leave those areas since they are not part of Israel, but I am
| just stating disagreement with the "apartheid" label. The
| concept of systemic Apartheid is unrelated to a few bad apples
| occupying and illegally settling in areas outside their
| national borders.
|
| [1] https://thesouthafrican.net/2023/09/28/israel-is-not-an-
| apar...
|
| [2] https://www.jta.org/archive/full-text-of-israels-
| proclamatio...
|
| [3] https://www.israel21c.org/the-small-israeli-village-where-
| ev...
| lossolo wrote:
| It's interesting that you are citing a former South African
| politician who opposed apartheid. I will quote a South
| African journalist who fought against apartheid, published
| books about it and defended Israel as a non-apartheid state
| for many years after moving there. Now, he states that it is
| indeed an apartheid state.
|
| "In 2001, I joined Israel's government delegation to the
| world conference against racism in Durban. The government of
| Ariel Sharon invited me because of my expertise after a
| quarter-century as a journalist in South Africa; my specialty
| was reporting on apartheid close up.
|
| At the conference, I was disturbed and angered by the
| multitude of lies and exaggerations about Israel. During the
| years since, I have argued with all my might against the
| accusation that Israel is an apartheid state - in lectures,
| newspaper articles, on TV and in a book."
|
| And later he writes:
|
| "In Israel, I am now witnessing the apartheid with which I
| grew up."
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/19/israel.
| ..
| CloudYeller wrote:
| TBF- Mosiuoa Lekota, who literally went to jail with Nelson
| Mandela, should probably be listened to more than the
| random journalist you cited.
|
| I read the article though and it basically is saying that
| right wing extremism in Israel is doing some things
| reminiscent of Apartheid South Africa. That doesn't sound
| systemic - more like a warning that people need to stand up
| to the right wing extremism is Israel. Fair point. But
| definitely does not lend credence to the claim that there
| is widespread systemic Apartheid.
| HAL3000 wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree with you, in the Humans Right report
| and Amnesty International report they clearly show
| evidence for systemic apartheid. Also former UN chief
| says Israel's treatment of Palestinians may constitute
| apartheid [2].
|
| Overview[1]:
|
| "Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948,
| successive governments have created and maintained a
| system of laws, policies, and practices designed to
| oppress and dominate Palestinians. This system plays out
| in different ways across the different areas where Israel
| exercises control over Palestinians' rights, but the
| intent is always the same: to privilege Jewish Israelis
| at the expense of Palestinians.
|
| Israeli authorities have done this through four main
| strategies:
|
| Fragmentation into domains of control
|
| At the heart of the system is keeping Palestinian
| separated from each other into distinct territorial,
| legal and administrative domains
|
| Dispossession of land and property
|
| Decades of discriminatory land and property seizures,
| home demolitions and forced evictions
|
| Segregation and control
|
| A system of laws and policies that keep Palestinians
| restricted to enclaves, subject to several measures that
| control their lives, and segregated from Jewish Israelis
|
| Deprivation of economic & social rights
|
| The deliberate impoverishment of Palestinians keeping
| them at great disadvantage in comparison to Jewish
| Israelis"
|
| 1. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/is
| raels-...
|
| 2. https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-
| occupation-ap...
| CloudYeller wrote:
| I dislike repeating myself but once again, per Wikipedia,
| apartheid is a "system of institutionalised racial
| segregation".
|
| That Amnesty article contradicts that definition. It's
| talking about mistreating people in East Jerusalem, aka
| The West Bank, which again, is not part of Israel, has
| its own government, etc. And what is the primary race of
| those people in the West Bank? Arab. And Arabs comprise
| how much of the Israeli population? Around 20%. And are
| those Israeli Arabs being systemically mistreated, as
| though by apartheid? If they are, then this "apartheid"
| not only directly opposes Israel's declaration of
| independence, but it's a strange type of Apartheid that
| is highly supportive of Arabs becoming doctors at roughly
| double the expected rate per capita in Israel.
|
| Yes, Israel is treating people differently, but it's not
| based on skin color or race. It's based on whether they
| live inside its national borders.
|
| This is a complex and nuanced situation but please try to
| understand that it's dangerous to unilaterally redefine
| words the way that Amnesty does in that article. There's
| a huge difference between widespread systemic racism and
| some bad apples illegally occupying land outside a
| nation's borders.
| HAL3000 wrote:
| It appears that they do not contradict that definition.
| Please read this article, where you can find the
| definitions in the context of the crime of apartheid:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_apartheid
|
| There is a section there about definition of racial
| discrimination, it's not only about race.
|
| "According to the United Nations Convention on the
| Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
| (ICERD),
|
| the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any
| distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based
| on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin
| which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or
| impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an
| equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms
| in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other
| field of public life.[17]
|
| This definition does not make any difference between
| discrimination based on ethnicity and race, in part
| because the distinction between the two remains debatable
| among anthropologists.[18] Similarly, in British law the
| phrase racial group means "any group of people who are
| defined by reference to their race, colour, nationality
| (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origin"
| cassepipe wrote:
| Those are the most serious allegations:
|
| "The men and teenage boys were taken to a warehouse where they
| sat on a bare floor covered in scattered grains of rice. There
| they were beaten, interrogated and verbally abused. There was no
| sleep, and the grains of rice cut their skin as they sat there,
| undressed."
|
| A man claims: "Some people didn't return from the torture
| sessions. We would hear their screams and then nothing."
|
| From what I read, it seems typical of counterinsurgency war. A
| testimony is no proof but humiliation and torture is commonplace
| is counterinsurgency wars, whether systematic or an initiative of
| lower ranking soldiers operating on the ground, so it's not an
| extraordinary statement. And torture can obviously lead to death.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterinsurgency
|
| Now I am going to argue something polemic and I am arguing it in
| the spirit of discussion. I'd love to read well argued counter-
| arguments :
|
| However supportive of Israel one may be and how repulsed one
| should be by Hamas, I'd say that we should not fool ourselves in
| that the military operation in Gaza is Israel defending itself
| ("Israel's right to defend itself" is now a commonplace phrase)
| rather than avenging itself. You may think it is justified in
| doing so but it still is payback imho.
|
| In my country's law, individual self-defense is defined as such :
|
| 1. It has to happen in the same time as the agression
|
| 2. Its only purpose is to defend against the agression
|
| 3. The defense has to be proportionate
|
| It seems that so 1. is not met since once all the militants
| having trespassed having been killed, Israel was no more
| defending itself. and it's hard to believe that the civilian
| collateral damage is just defending either. I'd say the third
| criteria is met in so far as Hamas has rockets and automatic
| weapons.
|
| Is that an unreasonable take ?
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| The Israeli military also claims to be trying to rescue
| hostages, though whether it's prosecuting the most effective
| strategy there is hotly debated.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| It's ... interesting ... to note that this is precisely the
| sort of "ticking time bomb" scenario often raised in
| justification of torture and rampant surveillance:
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticking_time_bomb_scenario>
|
| It would be interesting to see how well the abusive and
| transgressive approach fares against one that's far more
| sympathetic to the interrogatee. U.S. experience from the
| Iraq war was that soft-touch interrogations were far more
| effective.
|
| _This past November, U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick
| Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at
| West Point, flew to Southern California to meet with the
| creative team behind "24." Finnegan, who was accompanied by
| three of the most experienced military and F.B.I.
| interrogators in the country, arrived on the set as the crew
| was filming.... Finnegan and the others had come to voice
| their concern that the show's central political premise--that
| the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the
| country's security--was having a toxic effect. In their view,
| the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had
| adversely affected the training and performance of real
| American soldiers. "I'd like them to stop," Finnegan said of
| the show's producers. "They should do a show where torture
| backfires."_
|
| <https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/02/19/whatever-it-
| ta...>
|
| (There are other instances of F.B.I. and military
| interrogators reporting both that testimony obtained under
| torture is either misleading or no more accurate, useful, or
| timely than that obtained under sympathetic treatment. I
| believe there was a Fresh Air Interview following 9/11 / the
| 2nd US-Iraq War though I've yet to locate it. There's a
| searchable archive for anyone with stronger search-fu here:
| <https://freshairarchive.org/>. Specifically matching
| "interrogation":
| <https://freshairarchive.org/search?keyword=interrogation>.)
| tomp wrote:
| re: 1.
|
| the aggression is still happening, Hamas is still launching
| rockets into Israel, so I'd personally say this _is_ Israel
| defending itself
| lossolo wrote:
| They have been firing rockets for decades. They killed 28
| people over 20 years with 20k+ rockets[1]. Israel killed 17
| 000 people in two months.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_o
| n_...
| lornemalvo wrote:
| You are reading very selectively (and I think fir a
| reason):
|
| > From 2004 to 2014, these attacks have killed 27 Israeli
| civilians, 5 foreign nationals, 5 IDF soldiers, and at
| least 11 Palestinians[11] and injured more than 1900
| people.[12] Their main effect is their creation of
| widespread psychological trauma and disruption of daily
| life among the Israeli populace.
|
| Please at least try to stay true to the facts, even if you
| are not willing to steelman the other's arguments.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| What fact was op not true to?
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| Technically they killed more than 28 total _people_ ,
| although I agree with the notion that whether it's 28 or
| 40 doesn't really move the needle very much.
| lossolo wrote:
| > You are reading very selectively (and I think fir a
| reason):
|
| I've wrote what is in Overview section in the article.
| Which is "The rockets have killed 28 people and injured
| hundreds more."
|
| > Please at least try to stay true to the facts, even if
| you are not willing to steelman the other's arguments.
|
| Please don't imply intentions that were not mine. When I
| skimmed the article, I literally didn't see the
| information you mentioned. What would even be the point
| of that "selective reading"? Are we discussing a
| difference of 10-20 people against a figure of 17,000?
| This doesn't make sense.
| liorsbg wrote:
| This doesn't make it OK.
| adhamsalama wrote:
| Yes, killing over 17000 people, most of them women and
| children is not OK.
| xpl wrote:
| I don't understand the "kill count" comparison that always
| comes up in such discussions.
|
| What you are trying to say to me is basically that _Israel
| is to blame for being good at defending its citizens_ (so
| only 28 of them were killed). What if Israel didn 't have
| the Iron Dome? How many people would have been killed then
| due to all the missile firing? Think about it.
|
| The _intent_ here is what matters. Hamas obviously has the
| intent to obliterate not just Israel as a state, but to
| kill its people, the civilians. It has been trying hard to
| do that for all these years! Imagine if Hamas were as
| powerful as Israel in terms of military power, how many
| people would have died?
|
| P.S. Another argument that I don't get is "but surely Hamas
| has good reasons to commit terrorism and genocide!". Yeah,
| and Hitler surely also had his good reasons to mass
| exterminate Jews.
| edanm wrote:
| > P.S. Another argument that I don't get is "but surely
| Hamas has good reasons to commit terrorism and
| genocide!". Yeah, and Hitler surely also had his good
| reasons to mass exterminate Jews.
|
| This is a bit disingenuous. Hamas has more reasons to
| fight against Israel than Hitler had to kill Jews.
|
| I don't think those reasons justify what they did, nor do
| I think violent resistance is the correct or moral path
| for Palestinians. But it's still far more justified than
| what Hitler did, relatively speaking.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Nations at war defend themselves by degrading the military
| might and desire to wage war of the enemy state. I find
| Israel's actions to be overly callous towards civilian death,
| but it's important to keep in mind that civilian death was
| inevitable once the government of Gaza decided to invade Israel
| and intentionally target civilians.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| With that same logic you can justify the civilian deaths of
| almost any conflict. Every war crime will be justified.
| Japanese internment? Justified. Hiroshima? Justified. Agent
| Orange in Vietnam? Justified. Genocide of 2million Filipinos
| by the US Army? Justified.... It's exhausting just thinking
| about these atrocities so I'll take a break
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| It's not justification, but the reality. War is horrible
| and innocent people will always die in war.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| Genocide has no justification
| ejb999 wrote:
| It depends on the context - just ask the presidents of
| Harvard, MIT and UPenn
| edanm wrote:
| No, because there's a huge difference between deliberately
| targeting civilians vs collateral damage.
|
| Genocide, which is the intent and actions to destroy an
| entire people, is never justified, because it presupposes
| you'll target and kill many civilians to achieve it.
| forty wrote:
| Isn't defense also supposed to be targeted against an
| aggressor? How could the millions of innocent civilians that
| Israel is displacing, destroying all their houses and
| belongings and killing (and maybe torturing as described in
| this article), be considered in any way as aggressor?
|
| if a terrorist hid in an appartement building, and the police
| came, start killing all the inhabitants of the building and
| destroyed the building, in order to stop that terrorist, would
| you be wondering if that response is legitimate defense? I
| don't think so.
| megaman821 wrote:
| What if that terrorist was launching rockets from that
| apartment? Would it be justified then? These things aren't
| black-and-white. I don't want to be the person who says how
| much collateral damage is okay.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Israel has a proven ability to do precision strikes on
| apartment buildings that would basically only target the
| terrorist - we've seen them do this - but they choose to
| level entire buildings instead. You can probably figure out
| why they choose that option.
| megaman821 wrote:
| Israel also has the proven ability to level all of Gaza,
| but they fact that they don't doesn't mean much. Outsider
| speculation on Israeli military objectives is
| meaningless.
|
| Wars don't end when one side gets yelled at. They either
| end with diplomacy or victory.
| ashirusnw wrote:
| you and the OP are conflating civil war with laws of war.
| October 7th was clearly an act of war, and war has been the
| result. Hamas knew this, but relied on Hezbollah and Houthies
| pitching in in a much larger way, they miscalculated and Gaza
| suffers.
| forty wrote:
| I don't think they miscalculated. Almost everything in this
| benefit them in almost every possible ways. The horrors of
| Gaza makes them almost look nice to the eyes of some (they
| never have been more popular in Palestine and in the
| world), and makes sure they will have no shortage of
| terrorists in the many years to come, among the innocent
| victims and their brothers and sons/orphans. I don't
| imagine they care or didn't anticipate for those killing of
| innocent people.
| Levitz wrote:
| Gaza suffering is the best thing for Hamas. Israel is doing
| the best possible thing for Hamas and that's why Israel
| should stop. Because worse than unjustified, their actions
| are stupid, unless you are a politician saving face.
|
| Pray tell, imagine yourself as a 10 year old Palestinian
| kid who lost half of his family, his house and several
| friends to Israeli military action. What are the odds that
| you are willing to die in order to harm Israel in any way,
| shape or form?
|
| Again, this is the best scenario for Hamas. Their leaders
| are literally not even in Palestine, Israel could decimate
| the population thrice and chances are that the amount of
| terrorists would increase.
| emptyfile wrote:
| >Isn't defense also supposed to be targeted against an
| aggressor?
|
| Gaza is the agressor.
|
| >How could the millions of innocent civilians that Israel is
| displacing, destroying all their houses and belongings and
| killing (and maybe torturing as described in this article),
| be considered in any way as aggressor?
|
| Because they are launching rockets and hostage raids against
| Israel?
|
| >if a terrorist hid in an appartement building, and the
| police came, start killing all the inhabitants of the
| building and destroyed the building, in order to stop that
| terrorist, would you be wondering if that response is
| legitimate defense? I don't think so.
|
| How is that in any way related to the situation in Gaza?
| Hamas aren't random terrorists, they're the government, they
| control the whole territory, they get paid taxes, they have
| bases all over Gaza.
|
| This is war.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| > 1. It has to happen in the same time as the agression
|
| There are still rockets flying out of Gaza into Israel.
|
| > 2. Its only purpose is to defend against the agression
|
| The people sending those rockets are in Gaza, so to stop them,
| Israel has to go there.
|
| > 3. The defense has to be proportionate
|
| That one is regularly the most difficult point of contention in
| individual self-defense. Hamas essentially goes by this
| playbook: https://imgur.com/XX6HVrn
|
| So, moving it back to individual self-defense (or coming to
| somebody's aid, which is covered by approximately the same
| rules): what should be done about the guy holding a loaded gun
| at his hostage's head while covering himself in babys?
| leereeves wrote:
| > what should be done about the guy holding a loaded gun at
| his hostage's head while covering himself in babys?
|
| It's a difficult situation, but I doubt the answer would be
| to shoot the guy and two babies, which is analogous to
| Israel's response, if you believe their claim that 1/3 of the
| people they've killed were Hamas.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| 1. How many though and is it enough to justify the response.
| Why not go after those targets exactly. I'm sure they can
| tell exactly where the rockets are being fired from
|
| 2. Maybe, Netanyahu not sending Hamas hundreds of millions of
| dollars to begin with would have been better
|
| 3. The "human shields" argument got old the moment it came
| out that half the buildings in Gaza were destroyed, more
| homes than Hamas fighters
|
| There's no moral high ground here unless you can find a way
| to dehumanize Palestinians. And that's unacceptable.
| RyanHamilton wrote:
| Has Israel said what the plan is for Gaza in future?
| Politically, Economically, Rebuilding?
| acdha wrote:
| > However supportive of Israel one may be and how repulsed one
| should be by Hamas, I'd say that we should not fool ourselves
| in that the military operation in Gaza is Israel defending
| itself ("Israel's right to defend itself" is now a commonplace
| phrase) rather than avenging itself.
|
| I've felt that as well, and I would add that even if you feel
| every action is justified I am skeptical that it's not
| counterproductive. Each civilian killed by mistake has family,
| friends, and neighbors who might be inclined to avenge them and
| it's hard for me to see how this doesn't end up giving Hamas
| more recruits than they're losing.
|
| I especially liked this FP piece where the author mentioned
| that the big driver they saw for terrorism was loss of land.
| That's forced so much conflict and it seems likely to keep this
| raging for years to come.
|
| https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/israels-failed-bombing...
| mminer237 wrote:
| I think an even bigger driver of terrorism than conflict is
| the fact that most people in Palestine have lived their
| entire lives in a state wholly governed by terrorists. From
| birth, children constantly hear how murdering Jewish
| civilians is one of life's holy accomplishments, how Jews are
| all racist liars, how Israel shouldn't exist, how Hamas is
| their rightful glorious leaders, etc. You shouldn't
| underestimate the impact of decades of racist, nationalist
| propaganda on young minds. In reality, war and terrorism are
| awful, and I wonder if the reality of it doesn't disillusion
| people of its glory.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/04/world/middleeast/to-
| shape...
| acdha wrote:
| I don't want to discount the effects of that but most
| people are also capable of knowing when they're not getting
| the whole story. Only around a quarter of Palestinians
| approved of Hamas before the war.
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>Each civilian killed by mistake has family, friends, and
| neighbors who might be inclined to avenge them and it's hard
| for me to see how this doesn't end up giving Hamas more
| recruits than they're losing.
|
| Both Japan and Germany have been pretty well behaved since
| the Allies ground them to the dust during WW2 - why do you
| think it couldn't work here?
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Each civilian killed by mistake has family, friends, and
| neighbors who might be inclined to avenge them and it's hard
| for me to see how this doesn't end up giving Hamas more
| recruits than they're losing.
|
| I am not so sure about that.
|
| I don't recall a bunch of anti-British terrorist Germans out
| for revenge for Dresden after WWII.
|
| Nor have there been a bunch of anti-American terrorist
| Japanese out for revenge for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
|
| Even in the US, there really isn't a terrorist movement among
| indigenous people for revenge for the atrocities perpetrated
| on them by the United States (Wounded Knee being only one of
| many).
|
| I think revenge can be a factor in radicalizing, but I think
| it has to be tied to some hope of advancing a goal beyond
| revenge for it to pick up steam.
| ashirusnw wrote:
| It didn't need to be 100% defensive, it can be a calculated
| deterrent.
| banku_brougham wrote:
| I think the self-defense discussion is more of a PR talking
| point, intl law is pretty clear on the rights and
| responsibilties of occupying powers.
|
| That said, we seem to be entering a new world order where
| international law means nothing at all.
| blaufast wrote:
| but did it ever, really? Kissinger died a peaceful death of
| old age
| nahumfarchi wrote:
| No, I don't think that is a reasonable take at all.
|
| 1. This is warfare, not civil law. Hamas, which is the
| sovereign in Gaza (there has been no Israeli military presence
| there for years), commited an act of war in which hundreds were
| killed, raped, and kidnapped. Israel, as a state, has the moral
| duty to fight back and make sure this never happens again.
| Otherwise, it breaks the most basic contract between citizen
| and state ("I give up on violence and in turn you protect me
| from violence").
|
| 2. The aggressors (both in the field and leadership) are still
| largely out there, and holding kidnapped civilians and
| soldiers. They don't get a pass just because the "aggression is
| over" (whatever that means, rockets are still being fired
| indiscriminately at Israeli cities and towns, which is a war
| crime by the way...)
|
| 3. The responsibility for the safety of the Gazan civilians is
| that of Hamas since, again, they are the sovereign in Gaza. We
| shouldn't absolve them of responsibility for picking a fight
| with a better armed opponent. The defense does not have to be
| proportionate since that would mean Israel cannot use it's
| Tanks, warplanes, etc. To imply that Israel should fight with
| it's hands tied behind its back is ridiculous since war is not
| fair. There are some international laws intended to reduce the
| suffering of those that are uninvolved. For example, what does
| have to be proportionate is the harm caused to civilians when
| attacking a military target on a case by case basis, to the
| best of your knowledge (note that, according to international
| law, the target can in fact be a hospital/school/etc if it's
| used for military purposes).
|
| Finally, an honest question, what would you do? How would you
| respond in this situation?
| qwertthrowway wrote:
| I think an honest answer would be to end occupation and
| oppression of the Palestinians by Israel. Any occupying force
| has an interest to silence and stop indigenous people from
| claiming their land rights.
|
| For example, Gaza had been described as an open air prison
| for almost 2 decades because its borders, imports, sea usage,
| had all been controlled by Israel. This is not what we call
| "sovereign rule". The West Bank has been checkered with
| military checkpoints and illegal settlements, contravening
| international agreements.
|
| When people are driven to desperation, and their lives are
| made miserable because the occupying forces want to remove
| them, they do not have many options.
|
| I think it is quite adequate to compare Gaza to the situation
| in for example, the Warsaw Ghetto in WW2, when an uprising
| was quashed by occupying German forces. This Gaza is a
| heavily urban area with vast majority of civilians, it cannot
| be compared to two armies fighting on a battlefield.
| liorsbg wrote:
| In Gaza, all they would have to do is put their weapons
| down. Blockade and restrictions would lift, and Gaza could
| be prosperous.
|
| In the West Bank, I agree that the settlements are
| abhorrent and need to be removed.
| nonviol wrote:
| This is what happened when Gazans tried nonviolent
| protest:
|
| https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2020-03-06/ty-
| article-ma...
|
| https://archive.ph/vDhPP
|
| I'm not implying that October 7 was justified.
| oytis wrote:
| Seeing what happened on 7th of October one can understand
| why IDF is nervous about people getting close (500m is
| the official buffer zone as I understand) to the fence.
| Not implying that competition in number of knees shot is
| justified.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| The internationally recognized State of Palestine is made
| up of two disjoint territories: Gaza and the West Bank.
| Israel gave peace a chance and left Gaza in 2005. The
| Palestinians immediately turned Gaza into a forward base
| and started attacking Israel. Israel only started the
| "blockade" (inspecting imports into Gaza) in 2007.
| rehitman wrote:
| This statement is very uninformed. Isreal left Gaza very
| logn time ago. They had an election and Hamas came to
| power, and they never hold an election after. There is no
| land dispute between Isreal and Gaza (Unlike Westbank where
| there are serious disputes). The main problem is that Hamas
| and its supporter Iran consistentnly in word and in
| practice declared that want to wipe out and destroy Isreal.
| It is not about some land disupte. They want the whole
| Isreal gone. Now, the question is would it be wise to let
| this group of people with clear intention to completely
| destroy Israel have open borders? They make missles even
| without open borders.
|
| If you want to be really honest here. The issue is that
| Hamas need to agree that Israel has the right to exist.
| Period. As far as they don't, I see this war very well
| justified similar to the War with Japanese Empire or Nazi
| Germany.
| biorach wrote:
| > Hamas need to agree that Israel has the right to exist.
|
| Agreed
|
| And maybe Israel needs to agree that Palestine has the
| right to exist
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| The Hamas charter literally says that Israel will exist:
|
| >It advocated for a Palestinian state in the 1967
| borders, describing this as a "formula of national
| consensus".
|
| 1967 borders means two state.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| > There is no land dispute between Isreal and Gaza
|
| Of course there's a land dispute! Something like 70% of
| Gazans are direct descendants of refugees, or refugees
| themselves, of the original 1948 Nakba, which was
| literally when the Palestinians were violently forced out
| of their homes and driven into perpetual refugee status.
| Now those that live in Gaza, even before October 7, live
| under a perpetual blockade which quite literally
| restricts the calories entering the region, along with
| every other necessary resource (gas, steel, etc).
|
| How could one, knowing that context, characterize it as
| "not a land dispute"? Really what you mean is that there
| are no Israeli settlements in Gaza right now. Which is
| true but besides the point, and also ignores that there
| quite literally were settlements, but Israel forced the
| zionist* settlers out when they withdrew their physical
| occupation of Gaza all those years ago (replacing the
| physical occupation with the blockades, border
| restrictions, policies of shooting anyone approaching the
| border wall with sniper rifles, etc)
|
| * I know this term is loaded with a lot of baggage, in
| part because many seem to think it's a dogwhistle for
| "the jews", but it's the most accurate descriptor for the
| philosophy motivating these settlers. Settling the west
| bank is wrong, but settling gaza is next-level crazy. You
| have to be extremely ideologically possessed to want to
| establish an Israeli settlement there because it sure as
| hell isn't a nice place to live.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Isreal left Gaza very logn time ago.
|
| Israel has not left Gaza.
|
| > They had an election and Hamas came to power, and they
| never hold an election after.
|
| Israel has obstructed agreements between the Fatah-led
| Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza on all-Palestine
| elections on several occasions since then (the fact that
| some people who would be voters in such elections live in
| occupied territory outside of what Israel claims _as_
| Israel but which is currently administered by Israel,
| among other factors, gives Israel the power to do this.)
|
| > There is no land dispute between Isreal and Gaza
|
| Yes, there is. Or, rather, there is _no dispute at all_
| that the kill zone of officially 100m and in practice up
| to 1500m that has been enforced by Israel since it
| supposed "disengagement" on the _Gaza_ side of the
| security fence is Gaza, and not Israel, and that Israel
| is exercising control of that swath of Gaza territory,
| against the wishes and interests (and lives) of the
| people living in Gaza.
|
| > The issue is that Hamas need to agree that Israel has
| the right to exist. Period.
|
| Out of Israel, Fatah (the governing party of the PA
| centered in the West Bank), and Hamas, the only one that
| _hasn 't_ accepted the 1967 borders of Israel, with
| presently-occupied territories (plus Gaza, for those who
| accept Israel's claim that it is not presently occupied)
| outside of those borders as a Palestinian State is
| Israel.
|
| Israeli rhetoric about other people needing to accept
| their right to exist is exactly backwards.
| EvgeniyZh wrote:
| Gaza has border with Egypt not controlled by Israel. In
| fact, ~150k people left Gaza in 2022, and numbers from 2023
| are of similar scale [1]. I wouldn't call it a prison
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/Aizenberg55/status/1665745935589076992
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I'm sure you're aware of the indefinite blockade? And
| what Hamas did before that? etc. Let's not have another
| debate that brings out the facts piecemeal; it's
| polarizing, for one thing, and it's also misleading to
| bring them out in isolation. Many following the issue
| know them by now.
| nahumfarchi wrote:
| As a Jew, I have quite a few qualms with the comparison to
| Warsaw. I'm not denying the suffering in Gaza in any way,
| but it's far fetched to put this on the same grounds as
| Warsaw, in which an estimated 300-400k Jews were murdered,
| and which was just one of an industrial system of mass
| murder.
|
| I agree that the settlements are an obstacle to peace, no
| argument there. But there are solid reasons why the border
| between Israel and Gaza has been closed (putting aside the
| fact that we're not obligated to open our borders,
| especially when the other side isn't exactly friendly).
| Note that they also have a border with Egypt, how come
| that's pretty much closed as well? (I'll give you a hint -
| Gaza is ruled by what is basically a fanatic death cult,
| and Eygpt wants nothing to do with it).
|
| Your proposed solution is "end occupation and oppression".
| I'll ignore the one-sided phrasing and just say we've tried
| that with the Oslo accords, the disengagement from Gaza,
| and numerous negotiations, all leading to this point in
| time. So again, what would you do?
| qwertthrowway wrote:
| 1, this is a human issue above all. One does not have to
| be Jewish or non-Jewish to recognize the extreme human
| toll being exacted on Gaza. When I see bombs collapse
| buildings of innocent residents, hospitals invaded with
| entire ICU units dying, mass starvation due to a
| blockade, and a death toll with over 40% being children;
| I think all of this warrants comparisons with industrial
| mass murder. Just because it is being termed "self-
| defense" or a "war" does not make it any less
| blameworthy. Let's look at the real human loss here: it's
| mostly innocent people in an urban area being killed,
| where a large percentage of the population is children.
|
| 2, the terming of hamas as a "fanatic death cult" appears
| quite an extreme label. Hamas is more comparable to a
| political party with political, social, and military
| wings. In fact, it's quite clear that Hamas's brands
| itself as part of the resistance against occupation; and
| the motives for recent attacks lie in the Israeli
| aggression committed against Palestinians in the West
| Bank this summer and seeking to release Palestinian
| prisoners, many who were children, women, and held
| without formal charges. Even comparing how many hostages
| who have been released talked about how they were treated
| by Hamas, with the way Palestinian prisoners were treated
| by Israeli captors, shows that Hamas is not merely a
| "fanatic death cult", given they treated prisoners with a
| degree of humanity they didn't need to.
|
| It's also unclear that removing Hamas will fix the
| situation; after all, before Hamas, the PLO was labeled
| terrorists and dealt with brutally. In a resistance
| situation, the occupying force will typically seek to
| discredit and derail any process that threatens its
| control.
|
| 3, a desire to end occupation must be one that can be
| accepted by the occupied people. None of the peace
| process deals appeared to be honest efforts from the
| Israeli camp because the ultimate end goal of the
| occupying force has been to take control of "greater
| Israel" without the people who are living there.
|
| I would propose a way to move forward for Israel would be
| a one-state solution: to recognize Palestinians as equal
| people with human rights, give them citizenship in a
| democratic rule, and allow them to return to their land.
| All of this without any military occupations. Because it
| is clear that a two-state solution has been dead for
| quite a while, given the occupying force has no
| intentions to end its theft of land in the West Bank.
| scythe wrote:
| >we've tried that
|
| Here's a former Israeli official responding to this claim
| better than I reasonably could:
|
| https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2023/10/10/the-
| crisi...
|
| https://www.hoover.org/profiles/shlomo-brom
|
| >[Shlomo Brom] retired from the Israel Defense Forces,
| where he held the position of director of strategic
| planning in the general staff, in 1998. He was also the
| deputy national security advisor, 2000-2001.
| prmph wrote:
| > For example, Gaza had been described as an open air
| prison for almost 2 decades because its borders, imports,
| sea usage, had all been controlled by Israel.
|
| Those restrictions are in place for a reason, which Hamas
| has confirmed on October 7th. And, what suffering does this
| cause exactly? Gaza had an HDI larger than that of many
| countries not at war, and had areas described as "wealthy".
|
| Any close reading of this conflicts shows that it is an
| ideological conflict. Hamas and their supporters in Gaza
| actually prefer that Gaza becomes a hellhole, to rally
| allies to their side. Do you really think they want a
| peaceful and prosperous Gaza? No, they want to blow up the
| conflict, to energize it, to force a reckoning, with the
| ultimate goal of reclaiming land from the river to the sea,
| per their own charter.
|
| Under such circumstances, what should Israel do? Pack up
| their bags and leave?
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| I don't really feel like clearing up all the half-truths
| or outright lies here, but I wanted to just call out one:
|
| > with the ultimate goal of reclaiming land from the
| river to the sea, per their own charter.
|
| The "from the river to the sea" is the language in the
| Likud charter, the party ruling Israel and dropping
| thousands of 2-ton bombs on Gaza right now. The popular
| chant "from the river to the sea palestine will be free"
| is a direct response to that. I'm unaware of Hamas'
| charter using the "from the river to the sea" language,
| although I'm open for correction here because I have not
| read the entire charter.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > Finally, an honest question, what would you do? How would
| you respond in this situation?
|
| The situation is by design. I am not going to pretend I don't
| think Netanyahu wanted this.
| nielsbot wrote:
| This is a longer version of "Israel has the right to defend
| itself". Maybe Israel shouldn't exist but since it does I
| think we can agree it has a right to defend itself since if
| it doesn't innocents will be harmed/killed/raped.
|
| That said, even in war, there are long established rules of
| engagement in war designed to protect (as possible) non-
| combatants. Israel is not respecting these rules at all. And
| beyond the insane death toll and indiscriminate bombing,
| Gazans are hungry and without water and shelter.
|
| Of course, Israel should exercise restraint, especially since
| it's better armed and has such sophisticated intelligence.
| Now it's making itself a pariah (except in the US)
| edanm wrote:
| > That said, even in war, there are long established rules
| of engagement in war designed to protect (as possible) non-
| combatants. Israel is not respecting these rules at all.
|
| Israel absolutely should be respecting the rules of war. As
| far as I know, it is.
|
| People often like to claim that it's not, hinting at some
| vague "war crimes" or claiming that Israel is targeting
| civilians, but there is no proof of that happening on
| purpose, that I'm aware.
|
| This is complicated by Hamas deliberately using human
| shields and trying to get Gazans killed to make Israel look
| bad. It is a very complicated situation to fight in and
| Israel is absolutely making mistakes, but I urge you, show
| evidence of it actually committing war crimes in the
| killing of citizens.
|
| > And beyond the insane death toll and indiscriminate
| bombing, Gazans are hungry and without water and shelter.
|
| Hamas is the government responsible for Gazans. if they are
| hungry, it's because Hamas is failing in its duty to its
| citizens. They are literally stealing food from aid trucks
| in order to feed themselves (and probably stockpile food in
| tunnels) instead of feeding their own citizens.
|
| Not to mention, they could return the hostages and
| surrender and spare themselves and their citizens all of
| this death and pain.
|
| As for the "insane death tool" - what makes it "insane" in
| your mind?
|
| Note: every death is a tragedy. Civilians dying, on either
| side, is tragic. Hell, even soldiers and Hamas militants
| dying is tragic - every death is a tragedy. I'm talking
| about all this analytically but the death and suffering
| here is horrible.
| shihab wrote:
| Israel absolutely has the right to fight Hamas. But on the
| question of whether it's really defense vs avenge on entire
| population, I urge you to go through recent nytimes article
| titled "Gaza After Nine Weeks of War" with an open mind [1].
| Entire neighborhoods has been bombed to rubbles, parks and
| roads have been bulldozed. Every single civilian structures,
| hotels, homes, playgrounds, port- on a large stretch beside
| sea has been utterly destroyed.
|
| That's not a picture of a moral army fighting insurgents
| embedded in Civilian population, it's the picture of a fight
| against the entire civilian population- or "mowing the grass"
| in Israeli military's parlance.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/12/world/middlee.
| ..
| edanm wrote:
| Every time somebody says this, I always ask the same
| question - what is the alternative? What should Israel do
| _instead_?
|
| This is war. War is horrible and tragic, and far more so
| because Hamas hides within civilian buildings and used
| human shields.
|
| What should Israel do instead to protect itself and to
| fight Hamas?
| shihab wrote:
| Please, go through the images first. Then explain to me,
| how bulldozing a _park_ aids in Israel 's effort to fight
| Hamas?
|
| Again, Israel has the right to fight and fight hard,
| anyone would do that in their place. But I think many
| people in the west are awefully unaware of just the scale
| and magnitude of the destruction Israel has unleashed.
| edanm wrote:
| Yes, Israel has destroyed a lot of Gaza. This is a big
| problem, especially for the "day after" the war. As for
| many people being unaware - most people are unaware of
| anything to do with this conflict and only know a couple
| of slogans.
|
| To your question - how does bulldozing a park help? I
| have no idea. Nobody outside of the IDF really knows the
| specific reasons for bombing some locations. I trust the
| IDF to not be shooting rockets at targets for no reason,
| which is probably a level of trust that most people don't
| share.
|
| I'm sure someone with more military understanding could
| offer plausible theories, but if you're inclined to
| believe that Israel is trying to level Gaza just to hurt
| Gazans, I doubt any theory they offer would sound
| convincing.
| shihab wrote:
| Oh, I trust them alright-
|
| + "We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba" - Agricultural
| Minister of Israel.
|
| + "We are fighting human animals, and we are acting
| accordingly...We will eliminate everything - they will
| regret it" - Yoav Gallant, Defence Minister.
|
| + "dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip an option" -
| Heritage Minister.
|
| + "Nakba? Expel them all," Nissim Vaturi, deputy speaker
| for Israel's parliament.
|
| + "There will be no electricity and no water (in Gaza),
| there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will
| get hell." Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian.
|
| + "only solution left is "voluntary" evacuation of Gazans
| to countries around the world" - Finance Minister Bezalel
| Smotrich.
|
| + "If it [Hezbollah] makes mistakes of this kind, the
| ones who will pay the price are first of all the citizens
| of Lebanon. What we are doing in Gaza we know how to do
| in Beirut," - Yoav Gallant, Defence Minister.
|
| + "You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says
| our Holy Bible. And we do remember" - Prime Minister
| Benjamin Netanyahu. (that verse goes on to command King
| Saul in the first Book of Samuel to kill every person in
| Amalek, a rival nation to ancient Israel)
| throwawayeiror wrote:
| Israel is (in its current form) 75 years old. It's far
| from a deeply rooted and established state. They fear
| that the whole Arab world might come and try to
| extinguish them - they have been threatened thus
| innumerable times. So do you think they will be forgiving
| and cautious when attacked, or will they be panicked and
| kick in all directions?
|
| They won't nuke Gaza alright, that's just polemics.
| Threats != actions.
| edanm wrote:
| I've seen this list many times.
|
| Firstly, some of it was taken out of context.
|
| That said, some of the statements there are appalling,
| and I detest many of these politicians and condemn these
| statements. Some of the statements were widely panned,
| btw. Luckily, the worst of these politicians aren't the
| ones actually calling the shots (except Netanyahu).
|
| Lastly, and most importantly - these lists have gone
| around many times, and they are bad, but they are also
| wartime propoganda. I find it far more relevant to see
| these statements in a broader context - the vast majority
| of statements that most of these politicans have made are
| explicitly _against_ this idea.
|
| That doesn't make these statements less heinous, but if
| politicians are saying 99 statements along the lines of
| "we only target terrorists and are doing our best to
| protect civilians", and 1 time out of 100 say the
| opposite, it's the 1 statement that makes the rounds for
| months, without any reference to the fact that it might
| be retracted, and/or 99% of the time the statements go
| the other way.
|
| You can choose to insist on only believing the bad
| statements, because those "show what they really think"
| or something, but that's again dragging your personal
| view of Israel into it.
| adammarples wrote:
| I think Israel has to ask itself why there is such a
| large militant force on its borders, embedded in the
| civilian population. Why the population support it and
| why it is hell bent on destroying Israel. Why for example
| does this problem not occur for other nations? Could
| Israel be responsible in some way for the situation it is
| in? The alternative might lie some way from addressing
| that.
| oytis wrote:
| Being located in the Middle East is their main mistake.
| Being a Jewish state in the Middle East makes it even
| worse.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| I have no love for Islam (nor hatred) but Jews have
| always been considered a protected class under Islamic
| law. Which I mention to bring up the point that if we had
| an organic Jewish state that arose naturally (i.e. via
| voluntary accumulation of land via purchases, etc, as
| opposed to theft which is how the state of Israel was
| formed), I see no reason why they couldn't maintain
| healthy relations with the surrounding states.
|
| I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention that the modern
| phenomenon of violent Islamic terrorism did not exist a
| century ago. In my view it's basically a direct result of
| Israeli & Western foreign policy. It's really hard to
| take land from people and in some cases commit literal
| massacres
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre) and
| not end up with a significant portion of the affected
| population turning to terrorism.
| bjourne wrote:
| > Every time somebody says this, I always ask the same
| question - what is the alternative? What should Israel do
| instead?
|
| Israel DELIBERATELY assassinated a Palestinian English
| professor:
|
| > On 6 December 2023, Alareer was killed in an Israeli
| airstrike, along with his brother, sister and her three
| children, during the 2023 Hamas-Israel war. The Euro-Med
| Monitor released a statement saying that Alareer was
| deliberately targeted, "surgically bombed out of the
| entire building", and came after weeks of "death threats
| that Refaat received online and by phone from Israeli
| accounts."
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refaat_Alareer
|
| What should Israel do instead? How about not
| assassinating poets?
| pgeorgi wrote:
| > it's the picture of a fight against the entire civilian
| population
|
| Israel could have been done with that 6 weeks ago, if they
| didn't care about making the distinction. It's a pretty
| small region, after all.
|
| Are they doing a good job in distinguishing military
| targets and civilians? No. Could anybody do better and
| still make progress towards the stated goal? Uncertain.
|
| But I don't think that "Israel is not even trying to
| protect civilians" is supported by Israel's actions.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| You seem to be arguing from a bizarre perspective that Israel
| is the defender here. In reality, Israel is the aggressor,
| and Palestine is the state that has been under occupation and
| illegal blockade for decades. October 7th was an (illegal,
| abhorrent and criminal!) act of retaliation against previous
| Israeli aggressions, not an unprovoked attack. If Ukraine
| were to bomb a Russian city during the current war, no one
| would views it as legitimate for Russia to bomb a Ukrainian
| city back: Russia started the whole conflict and is expected
| to bear the consequences, until such a time as it stops the
| occupation.
|
| In general, the overall solution would be for Israel to allow
| Palestine to be an independent state, recognized in the UN,
| with full control of its own borders. It is fully within its
| rights to keep its border with Gaza closed, of course, but
| there is no right whatsoever to blockade Gaza's access by
| sea. There is also a good argument to be made for paying
| reparations to Palestine for the occupied territories and for
| the entire illegal blockade duration - though that is
| ultimately secondary. The thornier question is of course how
| to connect Gaza to the West Bank.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| > but there is no right whatsoever to blockade Gaza's
| access by sea
|
| This by the way is an important fact to bring up when the
| claim that "Israel left Gaza many years ago and the problem
| didn't improve". In actuality, they withdrew their
| occupying army but still kept up a blockade, including a
| literal cap to the number of calories allowed to enter the
| country, which I can only interpret as a population control
| measure. That's of course in addition to all the other
| stuff they kept doing, but that's probably a discussion for
| another day.
|
| I'd note that the GP was careful to specifically mention
| Israel having withdrawn its military from Gaza which is
| true, so I'm not disputing the veracity of their claim on
| that specifically.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _including a literal cap to the number of calories
| allowed to enter the country, which I can only interpret
| as a population control measure_
|
| Lots of foodstuffs can be turned into rocket fuel, FYI.
| Source: pyro kid. Also aerospace engineer.
|
| That said, yes, it's difficult to look at Israel's
| ascendant right wing as anything other than hateful.
| Collective punishment has been normalised, unfortunately,
| by both sides in this conflict.
| h3rsko wrote:
| Israels next door neighbor calls for its total
| destruction and routinely launches rockets at its cities.
| In what world would they not blockade them?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If Ukraine were to bomb a Russian city during the
| current war, no one would views it as legitimate for Russia
| to bomb a Ukrainian city back_
|
| If Kyiv went into Russia to capture children and seniors
| after gunning down a rave, their Western backing would
| evaporate overnight. Russia would be vindicated in its
| claim that their neighbour poses a security threat.
|
| Had Hamas hit military installations (demonstrating Israeli
| impotency) and taken hostages, but treated them well
| (taking the moral high ground as images of Nonna being
| served tea and falafel are juxtaposed with those of aerial
| bombardment), our conversation right now would be very
| different.
|
| You're broadly right. One component of the solution must be
| an independent Gaza (if not Palestinian state). Another has
| to be reparations for the Nakba. Israel can be partly
| responsible, but the primary debtor should be the U.K. and
| possibly French. (Reparations for the blockade are
| needlessly divisive. Israel can always argue, legitimately,
| I believe, that it was Palestine's Arab allies who
| repeatedly attacked it first.)
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > If Ukraine went into Russia to capture children and
| seniors after gunning down a group of kids partying, I'm
| pretty sure their Western backing would evaporate
| overnight. Russia, in some sense, would be vindicated in
| its claim that their neighbour poses a security threat.
|
| That is an interesting thought experiment in itself. I'd
| like to believe you are right, but then I remember that
| there was virtually no condemnation when the daughter of
| one of Putin's propagandists was assassinated. There was
| also little interest to determine if Ukraine may have
| been behind the destruction of the dam that killed many
| innocent civilians. So, I'm not entirely sure how
| European and US opinion would have oriented.
|
| > Israel can be partly responsible, but the primary
| debtor should be the U.K.--they are the ones who took the
| land and gave it to another
|
| That is a good point, and I'm pretty sure other European
| states would have quite a bit to attone for to help set
| this right.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _there was virtually no condemnation when the daughter
| of one of Putin 's propagandists was assassinated_
|
| Massive difference between targeted killing and broad
| slaughter. To put this on the other shoe, it's why we
| were never going to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan
| or Vietnam.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Yes, I didn't mean to equivocate. Unquestionably what
| Hamas did was much, much worse. Still, logically
| speaking, if we can excuse murdering one innocent
| civilian, we might have excused murdering a thousand as
| well.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Is there any reason to believe that a Palestinian state
| with full control of its borders would not immediately
| begin the process of accumulating weapons to repeat Oct 7?
| Hamas has never affirmed Israel's right to exist.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Treaties and UN involvement could be arranged to help
| guarantee this.
|
| However, what is clear is that Israel's current approach
| is not working to ensure its security, and that in the
| last few decades it has only succeeded in turning the
| population of Palestine ever more bitter against them.
| So, unless they are prepared to wipe them out entirely,
| what possible hope is there in continuing in this
| direction?
|
| Say Hamas is successfully eliminated. Every single Hamas
| leader and soldier is killed or captured. Is there any
| reason whatsoever to imagine that people in Gaza could
| return to their bulldozed and bombed "homes" and feel
| friendly towards Israel? Or did this incursion all but
| guarantee that the next generation of Gazans will feel
| even more justified in defying Israel?
|
| And note, the same question is true of Hamas' monstrous
| attack - no doubt the vast majority of those hurt by the
| Hamas attack will feel justified in hating and fearing
| Gaza and Hamas. It's just harder to ask the ones being
| oppressed to just bear with it in the hope their
| oppressor might stop.
| scythe wrote:
| >Finally, an honest question, what would you do? How would
| you respond in this situation?
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/israel-hamas-
| ceas...
|
| There are _plenty_ of cases of countries being attacked by
| terrorists and not responding like Israel has. PKK has
| carried out acts of terrorism in Turkey. FARC carried out
| attacks in Colombia for _half a century_.
| bjornsing wrote:
| > Israel, as a state, has the moral duty to fight back and
| make sure this never happens again.
|
| This is often said and I'm sure often in good faith, but I
| always find it a bit unsettling. If by "making sure it never
| happens again" you mean stronger protection of the boarder
| going forward it's fine of course. But if you're referring to
| someone kind of offensive operation (as I assume most who say
| this are, since they are defending an offensive operation) I
| can't see how that would be possible within the law of armed
| conflict. It would require sending Gaza back to the stone age
| and keeping it that way forever, or permanent occupation, or
| something like that.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| Thinking about a conflict between nations or large groups of
| people in terms of common law is not the right approach. Before
| going further I do want to say that I do not condone torture,
| prisoners of war and/or detained civilians should not be
| subjected to violence after they have surrendered or been
| captured. That being said, the only way to think about this is
| in terms of a war. Israel has officially declared war on Hamas
| which is the ruling body of the Palestinian territories. A war
| does not end when the soldiers involved in the first battle are
| killed, it does not have to only be defensive and it does not
| have to be proportionate. Other nations may attempt to
| influence the conduct of nations who are at war but the only
| recourse beyond political and economic pressure is military
| action. Israel has no obligation to stop the war until they
| have achieved their goal which is understandably the complete
| elimination of Hamas and an end to any further attacks on
| Israel. This is both a reasonable and an achievable goal given
| the territory involved and its proximity to Israel. They are
| not fighting a war halfway around the globe for reasons that
| may hypothetically affect them at some point in the future.
| They are fighting on the very borders of their country after
| just the latest and most horrific attack out of a long history
| of sustained violence against them. So yes I do think your
| proposition is unreasonable, I know that if my country was in
| the same situation that they would respond in the same way and
| I suspect every last country in the world able to defend itself
| would do the same.
| belorn wrote:
| They sound eerily similar to the reporting done by Wikileaks
| over what the Americans did over in Iraq and Afghanistan.
|
| 1: Define all males killed or captured as combatants and thus
| valid military target.
|
| 2: Either redefine torture or outsource it.
|
| 3: Define every military operation as critical to counter
| terrorism and part of self defense.
|
| The media response back then was that this is just normal part
| of the horrors of war, and that this kind of reporting "don't
| tell us much that we didn't already know in broad outline".
| amluto wrote:
| I don't think your take is entirely unreasonable, but I do
| think you've missed a critical detail: Hamas continues to
| attack Israel. So Israel's military operation is
| contemporaneous with a threat, and does at least serve some
| degree of self-defense purpose.
|
| As I understand it (and wow, the press coverage is incomplete
| in so many ways), Hamas has a very large number of,
| approximately, these things:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket
|
| And they fire them, on an ongoing basis, from civilian sites,
| at Israel. And Israel could, arguably, feel that it defending
| itself, contemporaneously, from ongoing attacks, thus
| satisfying #1 and #2. And, while the defense might not be
| proportionate per se, it's not that easy to see how, from a
| purely tactical perspective, Israel is supposed to defend
| itself more proportionately. Certainly firing an equal number
| of rockets back at random civilian sites would make no sense.
| Although Israel could probably find a way for their soldiers to
| treat people in a much less dehumanizing way.
|
| (And I think this situation is horrible. And I suspect it's
| intentional on Hamas's part -- see my other comment.)
| edanm wrote:
| I think the rockets being fired into Israel is one threat,
| but the far greater threat is just Hamas repeating the
| October 7th invasion again.
|
| They've said, numerous times, that they will do it - invade
| Israel again and again, killing as many Israelis as they can.
| (Leaders have also said they will kill Jews anywhere in the
| world, btw.)
|
| If Israel doesn't take out Hamas, it is entirely unclear if
| it will be able to prevent them from carrying out more
| attacks in the future.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| > Leaders have also said they will kill Jews anywhere in
| the world, btw
|
| I'm curious, is your claim that one of the current leaders
| of Hamas said this? If so I'd love to read the quote.
|
| > If Israel doesn't take out Hamas, it is entirely unclear
| if it will be able to prevent them from carrying out more
| attacks in the future.
|
| One counterargument is that taking out Hamas, if they
| succeed (I'm not bullish), is likely to just result in
| another possibly more radical group rising to power. Doubly
| so when we've seen something like 20,000 casualties in the
| last two months, overwhelmingly civilian, which is very
| obviously going to breed another generation that is full of
| hatred and vengeance.
|
| Anyway, moving on I frankly think it should be possible for
| Israel to prevent another October 7 even in a universe
| where Hamas is still in power. They have enormous
| technological and economic superiority as well as the full
| backing of the US government. It seems like dysfunctional
| organizational dynamics are a problem here, because Israel
| had all the intel it could possibly have needed to see this
| attack coming and stop it, but it didn't. So personally I
| think looking internally rather than externally is the most
| likely way to secure the safety of the Israeli populace
| into the future.
| thrownv7032g wrote:
| If you want to see what Hamas says, or the tone of a
| segment of regional discussions, I encourage you to use
| your favorite translator on https://www.aljazeera.net/.
| The arabic-language views are not always shared on the
| english-language version. The blog section is
| particularly aggressive at times.
|
| For the most inflammatory statements by leaders you can
| look at https://www.memri.org/, whose translation choices
| are sometimes disputed, and who is accused of being some
| sort of CIA-backed saboteur for choosing the worst
| statements without enough context, but I think can give
| you an idea.
| vacuity wrote:
| To your last paragraph, as I understand it, 9/11 was also
| moreso caused by lack of intelligence being acted on
| properly, rather than being completely blindsided. Of
| course, it may be that all the surveillance measures
| could mitigate future terrorist attacks, but in reality
| the cost is high and the benefits are empirically not
| great. I think that if Israel withdraws now and focuses
| on defense, it may not prevent (civilian, primarily)
| deaths entirely, but it will be more workable for a
| lasting truce in the future. I don't want to say that
| those deaths would be a "sacrifice" or "necessary evil",
| but it is a realistic cost, as unfair as it is.
| edanm wrote:
| > I'm curious, is your claim that one of the current
| leaders of Hamas said this? If so I'd love to read the
| quote.
|
| I saw a video of this today, the quote was from 2019
| though (and he was condemned for it and walked it back),
| so maybe this shouldn't be taken "too seriously" (it was
| on my mind cause I saw it today, mostly):
|
| > In July 2019, Hamad urged members of the Palestinian
| diaspora to kill "Jews everywhere". His comments were
| characterized as incitement to genocide by Committee for
| Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America[18] and the
| Simon Wiesenthal Center.[19] His rhetoric was widely
| condemned by other Palestinians and he later stated that
| he supports the Hamas policy of "limiting its resistance
| to the Zionist occupation that usurps Palestine's land
| and defiles its holy sites".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathi_Hamad
|
| > One counterargument is that taking out Hamas, if they
| succeed (I'm not bullish), is likely to just result in
| another possibly more radical group rising to power.
| Doubly so when we've seen something like 20,000
| casualties in the last two months, overwhelmingly
| civilian, which is very obviously going to breed another
| generation that is full of hatred and vengeance.
|
| Firstly, I'm not sure what you mean by "overwhelmingly
| civilian". Hamas doesn't publish numbers of militants vs.
| civilians, as far as I know the only good source for that
| figure is the IDF, which says more or less a 2:1 ratio
| (civilian:militant). Is that "overwhelmingly" civilian?
|
| Secondly, what's the alternative? Leave Hamas in power,
| trying to do this again and again? It's true that Israel
| doesn't have many good options here, it's all variations
| of bad, but taking out Hamas is a decent way to gain a
| _lot_ of security. (And is better for the long-term peace
| process, IMO, and better for Gazans.)
|
| > [...] I frankly think it should be possible for Israel
| to prevent another October 7 even in a universe where
| Hamas is still in power.
|
| I thought so too, but after talking a lot about this I
| think you're wrong. Hamas aren't idiots - they're a
| smart, increasingly well-funded enemy. Israel has a lot
| of capabilities, but Hamas is _right on the border_. They
| are fully capable of waiting a few years and then
| launching another attack using other means. They are
| fully capable of eroding Israel 's ability to defend the
| border by sending "peaceful civilians" to the border,
| putting Israel in a position of either shooting at
| civilians or accepting many thousands of people on the
| border (similar happened in 2018).
|
| Their rockets are getting better, their intel gathering
| is getting better, etc. It is incredibly naive (and
| arrogant!) to think you can forever outwit an enemy.
| Guerilla armies have beaten larger forces many times.
|
| Not to mention, the more defense you throw at them, the
| more economically costly this is for you,
| theautist wrote:
| >So Israel's military operation is contemporaneous with a
| threat, and does at least serve some degree of self-defense
| purpose
|
| There really is no self-defense purpose in my mind to what
| Israel is doing. It's more self-avenging as others mentioned.
|
| You can argue it's a preventative operation to prevent future
| attack by taking out Hamas, but the approach they're taking
| does not indicate that since it's completely counter-
| productive and Israel must know that. When you level entire
| neighborhoods, and kill thousands of women and children, and
| make hundreds of thousands of them homeless, do you really
| expect those people to start liking Israel now? If killing is
| the solution to this conflict, it would have been solved a
| long time ago.
|
| If I lost a loved one at the hands of Israel in such
| malicious and careless manner, I'm never going to not
| consider Israel as nothing but an enemy.
| prewett wrote:
| How do you expect Israel to defend itself against an enemy
| that lives next door and is indistinguishable from the
| citizenry? Doing nothing is not an option: Hamas' explicit,
| public goal is the annihilation of Israel, and they are
| right next door. An analogous situation would be if some
| member(s) of the family next door publicly wanted you dead,
| and randomly shot at you, your family, and your house. But
| you don't know which ones, or how many, and you're pretty
| sure that most of the family is more or less okay with you
| living there. What do you think the police are going to do?
| And in this case, there is no police. So what is Israel
| supposed to do? (The reality is, there is no good solution,
| in part because Hamas engineered it that way, although I
| don't see any good solution even if they haddn't.)
| amluto wrote:
| > There really is no self-defense purpose in my mind to
| what Israel is doing. It's more self-avenging as others
| mentioned.
|
| > You can argue it's a preventative operation to prevent
| future attack by taking out Hamas, but the approach they're
| taking does not indicate that since it's completely
| counter-productive and Israel must know that.
|
| dang has asked us to engage in thoughtful, curious
| conversation, and absolutes like you're using seem
| unhelpful to this end.
|
| What is a "self-defense purpose?" I genuinely believe that
| Israel has such a purpose, and I think I argued it
| reasonably well. I didn't say Israel's actions were
| productive or wise, but the self-defense purpose exists.
|
| If Israel's military command thinks of Gazans as machines
| or beasts, then it could see itself as doing the right
| thing. I personally believe that, especially when there is
| some form of conflict, one needs to remember that people
| are human, with human feelings and motivations, and
| consider those feelings and motivations, and Israel might
| act differently if its military command did so.
|
| And this leads to:
|
| > If I lost a loved one at the hands of Israel in such
| malicious and careless manner, I'm never going to not
| consider Israel as nothing but an enemy.
|
| I think this exact feeling is a large part of the problem
| on both sides. Both sides have killed loved ones on the
| other side in ways that seem intentional, callous and
| pointless. (Remember what started the current war, and what
| Israel is doing as part of this war!) So, if people on both
| sides share this type of permanent hatred, then they will
| have a hard time ever finding peace. (And neither Israel
| nor Gaza are monoliths. Their people, their governments,
| their deceased ancestors, etc are separate. The actions of
| some IDF members, the orders from command, the actions of
| the government, and the actions of the average people are
| all different. And similarly for Gaza.)
| edanm wrote:
| > I'd say that we should not fool ourselves in that the
| military operation in Gaza is Israel defending itself
| ("Israel's right to defend itself" is now a commonplace phrase)
| rather than avenging itself. You may think it is justified in
| doing so but it still is payback imho.
|
| This is absolutely not the case. A few other people have
| written about why your numbered list makes this clear, but I
| want to take a different tack.
|
| This war is costing Israel _a lot_. It 's costing the lives of
| soldiers. It's hurting Israel's economy indirectly. It is
| directly very expensive. It's prolonging an ongoing situation
| which is very traumatic for many Israelis (rockets shot at them
| and having to go to bomb shelters).
|
| Most importantly, many Israelis want to see the hostages
| released, and while there are many good arguments for why this
| war is helping to achieve that goal, there are many good
| arguments against the war if the purpose is to return hostages.
|
| Despite all of the above, Israelis are in general _very_
| unified in wanting this war to continue until Hamas is
| destroyed. This includes many right-wing Israelis who may have
| nationalistic /territorial aspirations, but it also includes
| almost the entire Israeli left, who _dislike_ the current
| government and _hate_ Netanyahu and some members of his
| cabinet.
|
| The reason everyone is willing to pay such a high price, and
| being for waging a war that is costing so much, is _not_ just
| revenge. It 's because Israelis truly feel, to their core, that
| Hamas has proven themselves to be an enemy that must be
| destroyed, otherwise Israelis are just never going to be safe
| again.
| erokar wrote:
| > It's because Israelis truly feel, to their core, that Hamas
| has proven themselves to be an enemy that must be destroyed,
| otherwise Israelis are just never going to be safe again.
|
| Has there been public debate in Israel wheter:
|
| 1. It is realistic to eradicate Hamas. 2. To what extent
| Israel's operation will sow new hate and resistance among the
| Palestinians, so that the risk of future attacks increases,
| whether that be by Hamas or any other resistance group.
| edanm wrote:
| 1. All the time, though not quite as much as outside
| Israel. I think outsiders don't feel quite as determined as
| Israelis do - we believe that it's achievable because we
| feel we are fighting for our lives, to an extent - which
| makes a lot of things that are hard-but-not-impossible to
| achieve suddenly achievable.
|
| 2. Yes, there is a bit of talk about "the day after" and
| how to keep the peace. No one really knows or has good
| answers here. (I have my answers for what should happen
| short-term and long-term, but luckily I have no part in
| this government!)
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Individual self-defense is legally restricted in your (and my)
| country because you can rely on the state to take up the fight
| once the immediate threat has passed. If someone tells you that
| they're going to come and shoot you at some point in the
| future, you call the police, and the police will pre-emptively
| use force against them by putting them in jail. At least that's
| the theory.
|
| I agree that Israel are probably being recklessly indifferent
| to civilian lives and likely committing war crimes, but Hamas
| explicitly has the genocide of the Jews as their founding
| principle. For Israel to be safe, Hamas has to go. I can't see
| any other way this ends, and with the way Hamas embeds
| themselves within the civilian population, collateral damage is
| inevitable. Although, to repeat, I do think Israel need to do
| more to minimise it.
| emmelaich wrote:
| I keep hearing "3. The defense has to be proportionate" but how
| does that make sense?
|
| The point is to remove Hamas from a position of power. If that
| happens with _fewer_ casualties, do they then continue war and
| kill a few more just to be "proportionate"? That makes no
| sense.
|
| Also regard 2, if you genuinely feel your cause is just, the
| result you want is unconditional surrender.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The point is to remove Hamas from a position of power. If
| that happens with fewer casualties, do they then continue war
| and kill a few more just to be "proportionate"?
|
| Proportionality is a _maximum_ limitation in just war theory,
| not a measure of _minimum_ acceptable violence. (The same is
| generally true in more personal law when proportionality is a
| component of self-defense provisions.)
|
| > Also regard 2, if you genuinely feel your cause is just,
| the result you want is unconditional surrender.
|
| No, you want a resolution with acceptable conditions which
| align with your cause: unconditional surrender necessarily
| achieves that, but it is by no means generally necessary.
| starik36 wrote:
| As others have said, Israel is still under constant
| rocket/missile shower from Gaza. So I think it's safe to
| conclude that your point 2 is met as well.
|
| You can follow along with the missile alerts at
| https://www.oref.org.il//12481-en/Pakar.aspx (VPN to Israel
| required).
|
| The alerts aren't as overwhelming as in October and November,
| but still happen with regularity.
| anovick wrote:
| Reminder: this is the same news outlet that originated the fake
| report that Israel bombed the al-Ahli Hospital and killed 500+
| people with an airstrike[1].
|
| The event was analyzed[2] by many international organizations
| including Human Rights Watch whose report stated that the
| available evidence made an Israeli airstrike "highly unlikely".
| Intelligence sources indicate the cause of the explosion was a
| failed rocket launch from within Gaza by the Palestinian Islamic
| Jihad (PIJ) group.
|
| [1]:https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/10/17/photos-an-
| israe... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-
| Ahli_Arab_Hospital_explosio...
| jacooper wrote:
| They did, and the New York times confirmed it.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/world/middleeast/israel-g...
|
| And they bombed many hospitals since then, but that doesn't
| matter to you, does it?
| hiddencost wrote:
| My political awareness was forged by the 9/11 terrorist attacks
| and the American response.
|
| The core lesson: the point of a terrorist attack is to trigger an
| over reaction. America wildly over reacted and became
| fundamentally hostile to Arab and Muslim people.
|
| This reaction led to some of the most successful recruiting of
| radicals in generations.
|
| Israel's response to this crisis seems to have failed to learn
| from that mistake.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| To misquote Bryan Cantrill, one should not make the mistake of
| anthropomorphizing Netanyahu.
|
| When a nationalist politician like him is faced with an event
| like this, long-term international diplomacy considerations
| barely enter the picture.
|
| The violence just comforted him in his previous worldviews, all
| he saw was that his nationalistic policies were justified and
| the only viable answer was to be even more of a nationalist.
|
| I don't see any reality where he didn't have the most violent
| response he could get away with.
| megaman821 wrote:
| If there as an election tomorrow in Israel, do you think the
| new leader would be against war? Like it or not, Hamas'
| actions have prompted a response from the Israeli people, a
| different leader wouldn't change that sentiment.
| angiosperm wrote:
| True, Israeli votes are the only votes that have had, and
| can have, any material effect there. They have voted for
| Netanyahu reliably for years, so the present situation,
| Hamas included, is what they have, collectively, chosen.
| Hamas has always been Netanyahu's staunchest political
| ally. If Israeli voters ever choose differently, change
| might be possible. Until then, things will be reliably more
| of the same.
| ido wrote:
| Netanyahu has in fact won less than 50% of the votes but
| due to a technicality managed to assemble a coalition
| with other parties that amounted to 64 of 120 seats in
| parliament (similar to Bush Jr. and Trump having won US
| elections despite winning less than 50% of the votes due
| to the electoral college). The latest polls show
| Netanyahu and his government with a less than 30%
| approval rating, this was hardly a slam dunk victory (and
| in fact Netanyahu replaced another prime minister who
| ruled between his terms when he barely won the November
| 2022 elections).
| angiosperm wrote:
| It remains the US's collective fault that Bush minor and
| Trump got into office on minority votes. We know how to
| fix the electoral system, and numerous states have chosen
| to implement that fix, so it just waits on a few more
| states to sign on.
|
| What you say offers more hope than I had imagined
| possible.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Isreali-Palestinian history didn't begin on October 7th.
| The sentiment isn't a creation of that event, though
| obviously the attack influenced it. The sentiment is also
| partly a creation of years of right-wing politics and an
| ineffectual opposition.
|
| It's an issue in many countries, as we (even on HN) throw
| humanitarianism away, and the study of it, we will of
| course lose quite a lot. What replaces it?
| dubcanada wrote:
| Israel's response tends to stem from a history of oppression
| which is where it gets touchy. Jewish have not exactly been
| treated well for most of the 20th century. Not saying that is a
| reason to invoke that upon someone else, but it tends to be
| where most thoughts come from. A sense of if we don't do
| something we'll lose "our" home.
| hef19898 wrote:
| That explains what happened in 50s and 60s. Leveling Gaza in
| 2023 doesn't fall in that category, Hamas never had the power
| to do anything about Israel's existence as a state.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| The Zionist project began long before WW2 (and before WW1)
| hef19898 wrote:
| Not sure what that has to do with it. The current
| conflict between Palsetinians and Israel roots back to
| the foubdation of Israel as a state after WW2. Which I
| get, jews came pretty close to extinction, and arguably
| not a lot of people actually cared about that. Hence the
| need for a state of their own.
|
| 80 years and a bunch of wars, insurgencies, counter-
| insurgencies, terror and air campaigns later, interseded
| with a handful of peace initiatives, the situation is
| truely FUBAR. I am not convinced so that leveling Gaza
| actually does a lot to solve that problem.
| Maken wrote:
| The origins of Israel go back to the post-WW1 Ottoman
| partition. WW2 just fed them more colonists.
| lolinder wrote:
| From the perspective of Israel's defense forces, Hamas
| doesn't have that power _because_ Israel responds the way
| it does. I 'd imagine that for many in Israel the lesson of
| the 60s is that if given an opening _all_ of their
| neighbors will attack, so Israel cannot ever be seen as
| responding lukewarmly to an attack, even one by a party
| that couldn 't destroy them singlehandedly.
|
| (I'm not arguing that this position is correct, just trying
| to explain another possible perspective.)
| hef19898 wrote:
| That's the problem, isn't it? If you put yourself in the
| shoes of either side, you can see how they have very good
| reason to do what they do (except Israelian settlement
| policies, those basically amount to borderline ethnic
| cleansing, and force the IDF to move in after the fact,
| but that's a different beast).
|
| And since both sides are "right", there is no way this
| can end without outside intervention. An intervention
| that won't come, becaues nobody who could intervene is
| neutral enough, nor willing to be drawn into this.
| falserum wrote:
| It's multigenerational vendeta. Both sides have what to
| avenge for.
|
| Three ways how piece can be achieved here:
|
| - side a is wiped out
|
| - side b is wiped out
|
| - both sides turn the other cheek and shake hands.
|
| Both sides know that, and neither of them believe in
| cheeky business.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I saw an interview a while ago of an Israeli father who
| lost his kid in one of the previous wars, and who now
| works a Palestinian father, who also lost his kid, in
| order to find a peaceful solution. He confirmed your
| point by saying, I paraphrase, "we are doomed to live
| share this land together, or the graveyard under it".
|
| I really, really hope it will be tze "cheely" solution,
| the alternatives are, unfortunately, very much imaginable
| and incredibly painful and ugly.
| bloaf wrote:
| I disagree. Palestinian terrorism is objectively
| counterproductive and driven by unreasonable domestic
| politics, not reasonable geopolitics.
|
| You can't be a successful politician in Palestine with a
| position of "lets make concessions to Israel so we can
| stop suffering." The only successful politicians for the
| past 60-odd years have been the ones promising to fight
| Israel and get the Palestinians their stuff back.
|
| The problem is that Palestine as a state has no military,
| economic, cultural or geopolitical bargaining chips to
| get their stuff back.
|
| That means every successful Palestinian politician is
| elected with a mandate to "get our stuff back" but
| without the means to do it. So they have two options:
| either make concessions to get some stuff back, or try to
| fight.
|
| If they make concessions, they lose their grip on power
| to the groups saying "Those guys are giving away stuff to
| Israel! We'll get your stuff back!"
|
| If they try to fight a conventional war they lose in a
| matter of weeks (evidently.) So their only option is to
| fight just enough that their constituents are convinced
| they're doing a good job, but not so much that Israel
| wipes them out. Hence, the 60-year history of terrorism
| and targeting civilians.
|
| In conclusion:
|
| Palestinians need to make concessions for peace so that
| they can accumulate the bargaining chips they need to get
| their stuff back from Israel. They are not doing that
| because the Palestinian people will not support any
| leaders that pursue that strategy; they believe violence
| is a viable means of getting their stuff back even though
| that has been factually incorrect for the past 60 years.
| It is possible that the geopolitical landscape may change
| in the future, and violence becomes a viable option, but
| wasting resources on fruitless wars does not help change
| it.
|
| Therefore it is not true that both sides have very good
| reasons to do what they do.
| amluto wrote:
| I think that what's going on in the minds of those calling
| the shots on Israel's side (or at least most of them) is:
| they're not trying to level Gaza. They're trying to fight a
| war against Hamas, and Hamas is fighting from positions in
| cities that are often literally on the grounds of or inside
| what ought to be protected civilian sites: hospitals,
| mosques, etc. And they are surely making what seems a
| straightforward tactical calculation: they could send
| infantry in to try to minimize civilian casualties at
| enormous cost to their infantry, or they could use their
| massively superior firepower to just destroy the Hamas
| positions from a distance.
|
| And the Israeli command feels the need to fight on the
| ground in the first place because Hamas is holding
| obviously innocent hostages and shooting militarily-useless
| but nonetheless quite dangerous explosive-filled rockets
| over the border. Hamas is goading them very effectively. If
| Israel could magically snap its fingers to destroy Hamas,
| get rid of all of Hamas' weapons, and leave Gazan
| civilians, buildings and infrastructure alone, of course
| they would!
|
| One might ask why Hamas is doing any of the above. I don't
| think Hamas is at all on the side of the residents of Gaza.
| Their strategy seems much better explained by some rather
| different goals: improving their own status in the world,
| raising money, making a really big show, weakening Israel,
| seeming and feeling important, and recruiting more militant
| members. I think that every Gazan civilian injury and death
| is _in Hamas' favor_. Israel making itself look bad is in
| Hamas' favor. More Gazans who hate Israel and feel hopeless
| and marginalized is in Hamas' favor. So of course Hamas
| wants to keep holding hostages and randomly blowing stuff
| up in Israel.
|
| To be clear: I do not think Israel is making an ethically
| or strategically appropriate decision here. But I
| understand where they're coming from.
|
| And I don't think Hamas is making the right decisions
| either, ethically or strategically, at least if the goal is
| making a good, safe life for residents of Gaza.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Politically, Hamas has something in common with
| Nethanyahus government: the urge to stay in power. From
| that perspective, at least for now, both sides, Israels
| politicak leadership and Hamas leadership, have achieved
| their goal.
|
| Another thing both have in common: they don't give a fuck
| about the price _other people_ have to pay in order to
| achieve that goal.
| stoorafa wrote:
| That's an interesting parallel, Gazan's response is also
| borne of a history of oppression. Living with food
| insecurity, being an intergenerational refugee unable to
| return to home a few miles away, watching family members
| harmed, etc seems to motivate a lot of Palestinian behavior.
| ifdefdebug wrote:
| "being an intergenerational refugee" is one of the most
| absurd problems that exist in this conflict. Nobody should
| be a refugee just because their grandparents were. They
| should be plain citizens of whatever region they were born
| in.
|
| If we extrapolate this stance to other past conflicts, we'd
| have today tens of millions of German "intergenerational"
| refugees sitting in Germany and waiting for their return to
| their home a few miles away, across the Oder river.
| natch wrote:
| Their ancestors lost their homes when they needlessly
| started, and then lost, a war against people who owned land
| outright and others who moved onto the land only after the
| UN divided it and gave a vast proportion of it to Jordan,
| and part to Israel... ancestors who also abandoned their
| land after the war defeat on the advice of their warlike
| leaders. The ones who stayed behind became Israeli (Arab
| muslims, Christians, etc.) and kept their land as long as
| they held valid documented title to it, and many of those
| who made that move (or whose parents did) say they would
| prefer to live under Israeli rule versus PA rule. The
| Youtuber TravelinIsrael has some good videos on history
| about this.
|
| Obviously there are also modern alleged losses of land and
| homes but each case has its own details. In some, Israelis
| (often settlers) are clearly in the wrong, but in others,
| it is less clear and more disputed than common rhetoric
| about "oppression" and "occupation" would imply.
| barrkel wrote:
| As I wrote on September 14th, 2001, 3 days after 9/11, "Just
| don't act rashly".
|
| https://groups.google.com/g/borland.public.delphi.non-techni...
| anovick wrote:
| One big difference:
|
| Israel lives by the border of Gaza, right next to the
| terrorists that forged the October 7th attack.
|
| Meanwhile, the US had no border with the belligerent terrorist
| organization's societies (Iraq, Syria, ME).
|
| Would the US allow a terrorist organization that both DECLARES,
| has CAPABILITIES to, and HAS DEMONSTRATED INTENT to harm its
| citizens to live by its borders, and threaten with continued
| assaults? hell no.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Do you think the cartels have never kidnapped an american
| citizen or killed DEA agents?
| blaufast wrote:
| the more i think about it, the cartels are a pretty good
| comparison
| slibhb wrote:
| How? The cartels want to make money through illegal
| means, they don't want to destroy America. The cartels
| studiously avoid killing Americans. When they do kill
| Americans, the leadership either kills the members who
| killed Americans or turns them in, e.g.
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/gulf-cartel-
| apologizes-...
| slibhb wrote:
| If Mexico-based cartels killed 1000 Americans and kidnapped
| 200, the US would send armed forces into Mexico in a
| heartbeat, probably with the support of the Mexican
| government.
|
| Of course the cartels don't do that, though, because their
| goal isn't to murder Americans and destroy America.
| anovick wrote:
| AFAIK cartel gang members by the border of US aren't taught
| from young age that all US citizens are demons that stole
| something that belongs to them, and that their goal in life
| is to kill as many americans as possible.
|
| They also don't obtain and launch thousands of rockets at
| US cities, or go on 3,000-men raid of US cities by the
| border for the main objective of killing, hurting,
| kidnapping and instilling fear into US citizens.
|
| The comparison of cartels to terrorist militias like Hamas
| is ridiculous and reveals ignorance.
| dang wrote:
| As I explained in the pinned comment at the top
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616662) and my
| other posts in this thread, comments in this thread must
| not be in the spirit of battle, but rather of something
| more spacious within ourselves. It's not always possible
| to find that (for many legitimate reasons), but in that
| case it's best to refrain from posting until one can.
|
| I'm afraid your comments in this thread are crossing out
| of that and back in to the spirit of battle. This is 100%
| understandable and I get it, but we need something else
| in this discussion.
|
| The same goes for some of the commenters arguing against
| your position--my moderation point here is certainly not
| about agreeing with them and disagreeing with you (I add
| this because I know it can all too easily feel that way).
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| And the US does operate closely with Mexican forces to root
| them out. In addition, the govt in Mexico is cooperative.
| If that is not the case, I think we'll see a much more
| hostile response.
|
| https://www.dea.gov/press-releases/2023/07/07/cooperation-
| be...
| kif wrote:
| The US does have a history of helping fund terrorist
| organizations, just like Netanyahu has helped fund Hamas.
| edanm wrote:
| This is a common, but very flawed misunderstanding of the
| situation in Israel, by analogizing it to 9/11. (Many Israelis
| were pushing this narrative at the start of this, btw, but that
| doesn't make it true.)
|
| This _wasn 't_ just a terror attack, like 9/11 was. It was an
| _invasion_. Thousands of armed militants breached the border
| and invaded Israel, then killed more than a thousand Israelis.
| The militants were inside Israel for a few days after. In
| addition to the ground invasion, Hamas shot rockets into
| Israel, and has continues to shoot rockets at Israel this
| entire time.
|
| This wasn't a terror attack. It was an invasion and a
| declaration of war.
|
| In addition to all of that, for the first few weeks after this
| invasion, it was _very_ unclear whether this would lead to a
| wider, joint attack by other forces as well. It is very hard
| for people in the US, and for most Westerners, to really
| understand what it 's like to be afraid of losing a war. Israel
| probably would've survived even if this war turned into a
| combined attack by not just Hamas, but by Hezbollah and
| possibly even others. (Who, btw, are _also_ shooting at Israel
| every day, just not doing it enough to really be considered
| another combatant.)
|
| The response to 9/11 was maybe an overreaction. But 9/11 was
| not a real threat to the US , and this was fairly clear. This
| is an entirely different situation - there is a sworn enemy of
| Israel on its borders, proving they have the capability to kill
| thousands of citizens, and claiming they're going to do this
| over and over. That's a situation that a country _can 't live
| with_, which is why Israel's reaction is not an overreaction -
| it's what any country on earth would do.
|
| Notes:
|
| 1. This doesn't mean that everything Israel does is ok - there
| are different ways of prosecuting a war, Israel could still be
| doing it in a very immoral way and be consistent with
| everything I said above (I don't think that's true, but it's
| orthogonal to my point in this comment).
|
| 2. This comment also doesn't say anything about whether or not
| Hamas is "justified" in invading Israel, nor does it claim that
| "history started on October 7th" or anything silly like that.
| Of course there's context to this whole situation. (It should
| be needless to say but I'll say it anyway - there is no excuse
| for Hamas's deliberate targeting of civilians, and no excuse
| for the slaughter they committed. Still, that's also orthogonal
| to the point I'm making in this comment.)
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > it was very unclear whether this would lead to a wider,
| joint attack by other forces as well
|
| I agree that it's easy to discuss rationally from the
| outside.
|
| Hamas is not a threat to Israeli existence. Without extensive
| and far superior outside help, Hamas could not hold a square
| meter of Israeli (non-Gazan) territory).
|
| Do you have insight into why Israelis talk about an
| "existential" war? I'm not dismissing their feelings - WTF do
| I know? - but I think it goes beyond expected overreaction
| and the exaggerations of a few fringe figures.
|
| (And obviously, existential or not, Israelis will not want to
| experience future attacks like this Oct 7.)
| JohnPrine wrote:
| Israel is surrounded by nations which want to see Israel
| destroyed, and which have banded together in the past to
| attempt exactly that (e.g. the Yom Kippur War in 1973). If
| Israel fails to retaliate against aggression forcefully
| enough it could embolden the surrounding nations enough to
| form a new coalition and attack.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| First, how realistic is that?
|
| The most powerful neighbor, part of the Yom Kippur War,
| is Egypt, which in 1979 signed a peace treaty that nobody
| thinks they will violate. Jordan is a peaceful,
| cooperative neighbor. Lebanon is not capable but
| Hezbollah, in southern Lebanonon, is dangerous, of course
| - too dangerous for Israel to attack, probably, but to
| invade Israel and take territory? That is much different
| (and I don't know). Syria has just been through a long
| civil war. I'm not sure I see much potential at the
| moment.
|
| Also, the US would openly fight on Israel's side.
|
| But second, it's easy to say, 'it's probably fine' from
| the outside, when your neck and your future isn't at
| risk.
|
| > If Israel fails to retaliate against aggression
| forcefully enough it could embolden the surrounding
| nations enough to form a new coalition and attack.
|
| And too much force could provoke them. It's not that
| simple. Escalation is generally considered a bad, amateur
| move in international relations. The trick is to
| accomplish your aim (deterrence) without creating a
| bigger problem. That's how you end up in major wars.
| JohnPrine wrote:
| > But second, it's easy to say, 'it's probably fine' from
| the outside, when your neck and your future isn't at
| risk.
|
| Yeah this was basically going to be my response to the
| first part of your response. Israel wants to be around
| for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. You can't accept
| existential risk, even if small, if that's your goal.
|
| > And too much force could provoke them. It's not that
| simple.
|
| I agree. My comment was just trying to look at the
| question of why the initial invasion by Hamas was seen as
| an existential threat great enough to justify an all out
| counterattack. I don't know how to answer when enough is
| enough, and I could easily believe that Israel isn't even
| considering that question out of rage.
|
| The damage to Israel's international reputation could
| outweigh any security it gains through deterrence - the
| fact that Hamas hasn't freed their hostages or stopped
| firing rockets suggests that they don't want Israel to
| stop fighting for this reason
| Nathanba wrote:
| > the point of a terrorist attack is to trigger an over
| reaction
|
| I don't agree with that at all, the point of a terrorist attack
| is to continue a war of attrition. An overreaction is actually
| the worst thing that can happen to terrorists: It nullifies
| their attempt to win via small incremental attritional steps.
| The reason why the US didn't win the war against terror is
| because it didn't attack the core ideology that causes the
| terror. For example in their fight against Nazi ideology in
| post war Germany the US "overreacted" hard and made sure that
| Germany was forced to make the nazi ideology wholly illegal and
| every depiction of a nazi symbol in public illegal.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| My political awareness was forged by participating in the Iraq
| war on the US side after falling for the massive propaganda
| before. I've literally never been the same person since, and
| have spent most of my waking free hours in between the jobs I
| can barely hold down for my PTSD trying to understand the
| details behind the global geopolitical situation.
|
| The truth is this is likely just a continuation of the same
| playbook, and until one understands the true reasons behind the
| GWOT one will not be able to understand why it seems those
| "mistakes" haven't been learned from. When I started asking Cui
| Bono about Iraq (I did not participate in Afghanistan) and the
| various real results of the war I keep returning to Israel. For
| example, I know a person who was in the Green Zone when an
| Iraqi general came and said "I have 40k military men about to
| have no job, what do you want to do with them, please hire
| them." and the top-down directive that every boot-on-the-ground
| with half a brain knew would result in majorly increased chaos
| was to tell them to f-off! My conclusion after tons of reading
| is that balkanization was part of the intention as part of
| prepping for Oded Yinon. (I won't even start on the various
| secret societies (ancient mystery religions) obsession with
| Solomons temple and rebuilding the third temple, which would
| require the destruction of Al Aqsa)
|
| Then as I started truly analyzing 9/11 and doing what the intel
| bubbas call "threat finance", I keep ending up at deep state
| actors heavily tied to Israel (and the UK) even within my (US)
| government. For an example that is even mirrored in this recent
| escalation, are indicators of pre-knowledge via trading that
| occurred prior. This happened on 9/11 (by a firm formerly
| chaired by AB Buzzy Krongard, A.B. Brown, acquired by Banker's
| Trust turned Banker's Trust-AB Brown) and before 10/7, and in a
| way that is mathematically provable to be major outliers.
|
| My point is that there are much deeper things going on that
| surface analysis will fail to provide understanding for. If I
| went into further detail, I would for sure be seen as a "crazy
| conspiracy theorist"...
|
| I riff on Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean "You'd best
| start believing in ghost stories, because you're in one!"
| next_xibalba wrote:
| I have reached a point where I question and doubt any news that
| comes out of this conflict. Both sides and their proxies are
| waging massive propaganda campaigns. I only feel contempt for the
| leaders on both sides, and pity for all the regular people caught
| in the carnage. But of course, their suffering will be fodder for
| yet more propaganda...
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| That should be the norm for all news. Always remain skeptical,
| of all sides.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Meanwhile, Egypt seems to get a free pass, minimal criticism for
| keeping its border locked down while being adjacent to a terrible
| conflict?
|
| They could at least let the most vulnerable/sick/injured flee.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| They have prepared and requested to send a large amount of aid
| through that border which Israel disallowed. As for opening the
| border for Israel's request to Nakba the whole population into
| someone else's desert...
| pgeorgi wrote:
| Egypt prefers dead Palestinians within Gaza over Palestinians
| living elsewhere and Israel, maybe, controlling the Gaza strip.
|
| Al-Sisi, as reported in
| https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-
| east/2023/10/12/Ga...:
|
| > But the case of Gazans "is different", he said, because their
| displacement would mean "the elimination of the (Palestinian)
| cause."
| stoorafa wrote:
| What an impressive interpretation.
|
| If Palestinians leave Gaza to Egypt, then Egypt will be
| complicit with Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| > If Palestinians leave Gaza to Egypt, then Egypt will be
| complicit with Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
|
| But at least it guarantees that there are Palestinians who
| can seek redress, e.g. at the ICJ. But I suppose when
| there's the "Palestinian cause", Palestinian lives cease to
| matter.
|
| (let's ignore West Bank for a moment since Al-Sisi and you
| both did)
| bluescrn wrote:
| And if they keep the border shut tight, aren't they
| complicit in Hamas's use of civilians as human shields?
| falserum wrote:
| If they open border they will let the Hamas out of the
| trap.
|
| (Then Cairo could start receiving air deliveries of
| either hamas bombs or hamas hunter bombs; neither is
| nice)
| jacooper wrote:
| Give me a single reliable source that says Hamas were in
| hospitals or schools that were bombed. The IDF is a
| bullshit source btw, they lied and they still lie while
| burning humanitarian aid.
|
| https://x.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1733627762085183877
|
| To the point Israelis have recognized the truth, it's an
| apartheid.
| https://x.com/Robert_Martin72/status/1734436437825839539
| lornemalvo wrote:
| All neighboring countries have a fair share of experiences with
| palestinian groups starting civil wars/trying to overthrow
| their governments. Even if it was not for keeping the conflict
| with Israel alive (which is a perfect tool for them to distract
| from their own problems), they would not want them in.
| Unfrozen0688 wrote:
| They dont want to let Hamas in. Hamas comes from the Egypt, now
| banned, Muslim brotherhood party.
|
| If they let 1-2 mil Palestinians, the sinai penninsula would be
| taken over.
| tmnvix wrote:
| The Rafah crossing is one of about half a dozen border
| crossings in Gaza. Is it really so out of the question that
| Israel allow civilians to seek refuge within Israel while they
| wage their campaign? I am fully aware that it would be
| politically unpopular, but without allowing that to happen I
| find it hard to take Israeli politicians at their word when
| they claim they are doing everything to minimise civilian
| casualties.
| edanm wrote:
| It is absolutely impossible. There is no way to tell who are
| civilians and who are Hamas militants - they purposeful wear
| civilian clothing and hide amongst civilians.
|
| If Israel were to let them through the border into Israel,
| there is no possible way to prevent Hamas militants from
| killing many many more people.
|
| (Unless you mean to create temporary refuge camps heavily
| armed within Israel that would still be closed borders, which
| doesn't seem like an improvemnt over the current situation,
| if you know anything about the geography of the area.)
| tmnvix wrote:
| I would assume it could be guaranteed that they would
| arrive unarmed.
|
| > Unless you mean to create temporary refuge camps heavily
| armed within Israel that would still be closed borders,
| which doesn't seem like an improvemnt over the current
| situation
|
| You are right that they would have to remain in a confined
| space. Still, they wouldn't be in danger of being bombarded
| which would be a vast improvement. Compared with an
| evacuation into Egypt it would also have the advantage that
| people would presumably feel more confident that they would
| eventually be allowed to return (given that Israel would
| rather they returned to Gaza than remain indefinitely
| within Israel).
| r00fus wrote:
| It's really interesting how the IDF claims to be doing
| targeted strikes and operations while at the same time
| there is the general "we can't tell who is civilian vs.
| militants".
|
| It all codes to attitude of "there is no such thing as a
| non-combatant Palestinian" which leads to collective
| punishment which is a war crime according to the Geneva
| convention.
|
| I can't imagine Israelis haven't thought this through - so
| it seems premeditated.
| adhamsalama wrote:
| Israel controls who gets in and out from Egypt to Palestine and
| when/how many aid trucks get it. Now imagine how much they
| control Palestine.
| cracrecry wrote:
| Egypt and specially Jordan are not stupid. They saw what
| happened in Lebanon.
| knallfrosch wrote:
| Altough you're right: Jordan has its own, earlier, history
| with Palestinian arabs.
|
| The Palestinians moved to Jordan after losing the 1967 war,
| started a "civil" war in Jordan and were expelled to Lebanon
| after losing in 1971. Only then they started the 1975 "civil"
| war in Lebanon.
| feedforward wrote:
| In 1948 Jewish terrorists drove numbers of Palestinians from
| their homes into Egypt during the Nakba. Israel has refused to
| let the refugees they created return for the past 75 years. So
| while Israel is carpet bombing Gaza,the party to be condemned
| is - Egypt? For not cooperating in Israel's effort to drive the
| Gazans from their homes?
| megaman821 wrote:
| Taken in isolation there is nothing wrong with this type of
| reporting, the IDF should be held to high standards. In the
| context of the Israeli/Palestine conflict, there is a tendency to
| hold Israel to a much higher standard and excuse the Palestine
| side as if they were naive children. I don't see how that could
| possibly set up any lasting peace. Israel will become more deaf
| to outsiders, and Palestinians will not be entrusted to make
| decisions for themselves.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| I think there is good reason to hold Israel to a higher
| standard. It is by many metrics one of the most sophisticated
| states in the whole world. It has one of the highest fractions
| of people with higher education, it is a highly innovative
| economy. It is the second largest country of origin for NASDAQ
| stocks - US being the first one - despite being small by
| numbers at around 10m people. Whereas the Palestinian
| territories barely classify as the third world.
|
| Similarly, it was awful, but not really surprising when the
| Taliban were torturing people but it was a shock when the US
| troops in Afghanistan did so.
|
| This isn't an excuse or justification for Hamas. But indeed I
| think our expectations of Israel should be higher.
| megaman821 wrote:
| If prisoner well-being was Qatar's concern, it would be best
| to bring accusations during diplomatic discussions. This is
| more like Russia Today calling out prisoner abuse in
| Guantanamo Bay. I don't think Israelis see Al Jazeera as a
| neutral player here, and are now less likely to demand better
| of the IDF.
| edanm wrote:
| I completely agree that Israel should be held (and hold
| itself) to a higher standard than Hamas.
|
| I think one thing Israelis... dislike... is that often Israel
| is held to higher standards than _every other country on
| Earth_ , is held to impossible standards. And when it falls
| short of those standards - it is considered proof that Israel
| is evil.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Every other country? Which standards are you talking about?
| edanm wrote:
| Obviously this depends on who you're listening to.
|
| Certainly, the chants for a ceasefire right now because
| there are civilian deaths in Gaza can be a way of holding
| Israel to impossible standards. No country on Earth can
| wage war without civilians being killed, so unless you
| believe that Israel isn't entitled to wage war against
| Hamas in this situation, it's not clear what a call for
| ceasefire means - Israel should just surrender?
|
| Also, it's hard to tell how much of this is a Twitter
| bubble vs not, but the amount of people calling what
| Israel is doing genocide is very large (despite this
| being completely wrong), and many people are saying
| something to the effect of "nothing at all makes it ok to
| kill civilians", see above what that kind of statement
| means.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| I'm critical of Israel's handling of this conflict just as
| much as I'm critical of Turkey's response to Kurdish
| separatists. No one is held to impossible standards.
| Everyone deserves dignity
| ImJamal wrote:
| And yet no where near as many people are crying and
| protesting against Turkey. Maybe people are just
| critical, but they refuse to take the same actions. How
| many people support BDS against Israel? How many support
| it against Turkey?
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| There are US military bases in the Kurdish administered
| part of Syria. The US has troops stationed here for many
| reasons, one of the biggest ones being to protect the
| Kurds in the region(just recently the US military shot
| down a Turkish drone flying in this airspace)
|
| Turkey already has a lot of human rights violations on
| its record, but, if it got to the level of Israeli
| repression in West Bank against Palestinians, there would
| be a lot more sanctions against Turkey
| ImJamal wrote:
| I'm not talking about the US government doing stuff. I'm
| talking about ordinary people doing stuff. If people
| cared about human rights abuses they would protest Turkey
| and Israel (and plenty of other countries). We should, of
| course, also get protests against Hamas since they are
| doing a lot of shitty things as well. Instead we only get
| protests on one side. It feels so partisan. I think the
| major problem is people like things to be black and
| white. Israel is bad so that means Hamas is good. They
| can't just accept that there are two bad guys. I think
| people have a hard time separating Hamas and the
| Palestinian people which makes it harder for them to call
| out Hamas.
|
| Frankly, I don't think we know the scale of abuses. The
| idea that Turkey has less than Israel is just an
| assumption. As far as I can tell there are significantly
| more eyes on Israel. When Israel does something wrong it
| is all over the news. When Turkey does something wrong it
| is often crickets and when it is reported it doesn't make
| it to the front page of HN like this post. Just upvoting
| an article doesn't take any real effort but people can't
| even be bothered to do that about Turkey or any other
| atrocity but when it comes to Israel they can.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| I understand the concern but I also understand the
| general public reaction to Israel's actions. The
| occupation is one thing, but the genocidal rhetoric by
| Israeli officials and the desecration of muslim holy
| sites and harassment of Armenian Christians in Jerusalem
| is another. Israel needs to do more to change its
| behavior and protect its image if it doesn't want people
| to be repulsed by its actions
|
| Turkey isn't innocent but Turkey is calculated and
| careful. They know Kurdish people represent a significant
| part of their population (20 million) and they can't
| carelessly stomp around like Israel is used to doing
| leereeves wrote:
| Under what standard is conduct like this acceptable?
|
| _"One of the soldiers said I looked like his nephew and
| that this nephew was killed in front of his grandmother who
| was taken hostage by Hamas and that the soldiers will
| slaughter us all,"_
|
| _Those who dared to leave their homes for whatever vital
| errand were shot down in the streets by snipers._
|
| _"They made us empty out our bags on the floor and blocked
| us from picking up our money or our wives' gold," Nader
| recalls. "What little food we had, they also threw away.
| They took our money, IDs and phones."_
|
| _The men and teenage boys were taken to a warehouse where
| they sat on a bare floor covered in scattered grains of
| rice. There they were beaten, interrogated and verbally
| abused. There was no sleep, and the grains of rice cut
| their skin as they sat there, undressed._
| edanm wrote:
| I don't trust a story reported by Al Jazeera, which is
| heavily biased against Israel, without outside
| verification.
|
| That said, I'm sure Israel falls short of ideal on many
| occasions, not everything it does is exemplary, to say
| the least. On the whole, Israel's conduct is, I believe,
| moral and legitimate.
| leereeves wrote:
| Do you trust Amnesty International?
|
| _Amnesty International has for decades documented
| widespread torture by Israeli authorities in places of
| detention across the West Bank. However, over the past
| four weeks, videos and images have been shared widely
| online showing gruesome scenes of Israeli soldiers
| beating and humiliating Palestinians while detaining them
| blind-folded, stripped, with their hands tied, in a
| particularly chilling public display of torture and
| humiliation of Palestinian detainees._
|
| https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-
| opt-ho...
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Is Israel being held to a highest standards though? I think
| the US wars are a great point of comparison. US got totally
| dragged through the gutter for, frankly, all of its Middle
| Eastern interventions: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. Libya is
| maybe the odd one out - maybe.
|
| To be clear, I'm staying clear of any assessment of moral
| ground of either side. I'm making a limited argument about
| expected standards.
| edanm wrote:
| Well, it's hard to say - the US killed far, far more
| people in its wars. That said this war has been waged for
| far less time.
|
| It really depends on how you extrapoalate out the deaths
| in Gaza. If it's "Israel kills 10k people a month", that
| would be a horrible situation where Israel would be
| acting very immoraly.
|
| If you assume that there are going to be far less
| casualties going forward, relatively speaking (which is
| my view, given that Isarel has switched to a ground
| offsenve), then this war will end up with far fewer
| deaths than Iraq or Afghanistan
| random_upvoter wrote:
| > there is a tendency to hold Israel to a much higher standard
|
| No high standards are required here. The massacre that Israel
| is perpetrating in Gaza has transgressed the lowest boundaries
| of humanity. Even by the most permissive standards the actions
| of Israel are outrageous, unhinged and terrorist.
| liorsbg wrote:
| Why do you think that?
| random_upvoter wrote:
| Thousands of children have been killed. It is not really a
| matter of opinion.
| dang wrote:
| Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616662 and
| please don't comment in this spirit in this thread. We're
| trying for something different, to the extent that that's
| possible, and so far this thread has at least been doing
| better than the previous one.
|
| The same goes for some of the commenters arguing against your
| position--my moderation point here is certainly not about
| agreeing with them and disagreeing with you (I add this
| because I know it can all too easily feel that way).
| pimpampum wrote:
| IDF kills more innocent people, woman and children (percentwise
| and in amount) than Hamas.
| ImJamal wrote:
| Maybe? We are trusting Hamas' numbers on the number of people
| in Palestine who died. Not exactly the most objective
| source...
| truculent wrote:
| > there is a tendency to hold Israel to a much higher standard
| and excuse the Palestine side as if they were naive children
|
| What "Palestine side"? Hamas? the PA? The civilians, many of
| whom are actual children, dying in droves?
| password54321 wrote:
| > Excuse the Palestine side as if they were naive children.
|
| I am not seeing this anywhere, unless being treated as
| civilians (which they mostly are) is now equivalent to being
| treated as "naive children".
| megaman821 wrote:
| It depends on the characterization you give Palestinian
| citizens; are they captives of Hamas, are they complicit in
| Hamas holding hostages and firing rockets at civilians, or
| are they just part of Hamas?
| jddj wrote:
| One of my filter bubbles presents me with something similar
| to what the parent is seeing, for another datapoint.
|
| There are extremely different narratives which one can be
| presented with.
|
| In one, the pro-palestine marches have been commandeered by
| russia/iran and/or neonazis, to the extent of chanting 30's
| era slogans and marking people's homes based on their
| Jewishness. The on the ground atrocities and brutal tactics
| of Hamas are hilighted against the humanness of Israeli
| victims.
|
| In another, Israel, aided by the US, is committing the
| systematic genocide of a severely underdefended population
| and there's an unspoken understanding of how Hamas could have
| arisen in such conditions. There's a sense that everything
| Hamas is doing is ineffectual and anyway reactive. The on the
| ground atrocities pale in comparison to the Israeli-sourced
| on the ground atrocities due to the imbalance of power and an
| implied overarching guilt / causality.
| unhammer wrote:
| https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/07/middleeast/palestinian-is...
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| The true problem as usual is religion. As Christopher Hitchens
| once said religion poisons everything.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| The Palestinian people and cause has both Muslims and
| Christians. Most zionists are secular Jewish people. This isn't
| about religion, but, land.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Zionism has at the start and to this day major support from
| Christian institutions as well
| baz00 wrote:
| Hamas statements have said it's about killing Jews and it
| being the moral duty of Palestinians to do that and sacrifice
| their children to the cause. It's religious in at least one
| direction.
|
| It was about land once. I suspect, to throw the exact level
| of thinking on the table by these people, about as worthy as
| a meme at this point.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| Any source for Hamas saying it wants to kill Jews. I read
| it was in their charter but they removed it ~20 years ago
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| You will not find any current or reliable source for this
| line of propaganda.
| CloudYeller wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_Marty
| rs_...
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/hamas-member-says-repeat-
| attacks-0656...
| CloudYeller wrote:
| It was removed from their 2017 charter but they still do
| "pay for slay"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_Marty
| rs_...
| CloudYeller wrote:
| There's also their senior official saying they will
| essentially repeat the Oct 7 attack until Israel is
| completely destroyed
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/hamas-member-says-repeat-
| attacks-0656...
| thefaux wrote:
| Hitchens was brilliant but also seemingly rather
| unselfconscious of how his atheistic zealotry mirrored the
| religious dogmatism that he constantly railed against. This is
| the paradox of religious criticism: the more you accuse of
| others of ignorant dogmatism, the more you become exactly what
| you accuse the other of.
| adhamsalama wrote:
| This has nothing to do with religion.
|
| Palestinians, like any other people, will fight colonizers,
| regardless of their religion.
| TehShrike wrote:
| The more I read about war the shittier it gets. This sounds like
| a lot of the others.
|
| I keep reading about wars, though. It seems more dangerous to
| look away.
| frontman1988 wrote:
| War is hell. Mostly innocents suffering on both sides of the
| border. And we don't seem to learn, entire human civilization's
| history is full of war, even peace time is just preparation for
| the next war.
| iddan wrote:
| As an Israeli I find it so rich HN gets to discuss my country's
| ethic while there are LITERAL ROCKETS SHOT AT CIVILIANS every
| day. People commenting from their cosy couches. Let me ask you
| this: why are other wars not discussed? How come nobody cares
| about what's going on in other countries in the ME (which most of
| them are bloody dictatorships). Maybe, just maybe, people are
| obsessed with Israel because of antisemitism? Maybe because
| Qatar, Iran, Russia and China are trying to keep Israel looking
| bad in the press? Honestly feeling unwelcome here. I refrained
| from writing about the horrors Hamas did to people my age in my
| country to not violate HNs manners about politics and yet here I
| am finding another thread like this.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| I always saw it as the Israel-Palestine conflict has been
| ongoing for 75+ years with no resolution. It's a conflict
| that's symbolic of the deep divide of the historical imperial
| powers and the Global south that suffered from colonialism. I
| feel this is why people in different continents of the world
| react so differently to the conflict and why many find it so
| interesting.
| lornemalvo wrote:
| Framing it as some kind of "(post-)colonial" conflict
| inevitably leads to skewing/biasing the whole analysis and is
| theoretically flawed.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Generalized bias aside, is the UN similarly biased
| specifically in officially classifying Israel as a
| (colonial) occupying force and the Palestinian population
| as refugee?
| 0xDEF wrote:
| The UN is blatantly biased. There are ~50 Islamic states
| in the UN that compulsively always vote against Israel.
| These Islamic states have even made rambling and
| screaming about Israel a mandatory ceremony (Item 7) at
| UNHRC sessions.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Who set the criteria for occupying force, refugee
| population?
| tgv wrote:
| I'm not going to defend Israel's actions of the last
| weeks, but
|
| Israel cannot be called a colonizer. That's stretching
| the meaning of the word too far, only for demagogic
| effect.
|
| And yes, the UN are biased. The number of resolutions
| against Israel is absurd. From wikipedia: "Since the
| UNHRC's creation in 2006, it has resolved almost as many
| resolutions condemning Israel alone than on issues for
| the rest of the world combined." I don't think any
| Israeli loses sleep over UN resolutions, nor does it give
| any Palestinian hope.
|
| Hamas cannot win the conflict with Israel, at least not
| in the foreseeable future. So they'll keep suppressing
| Palestinians (because they've got quite a tyrannic regime
| in Gaza), and do stupid things against Israel. Which then
| retaliates, and has also taken it as an excuse for other
| policies.
|
| That cycle is not broken by some contorted, meaningless
| analysis using fashionable terminology. It will only make
| enemies in both camps. In a recent interview, John Gray
| said (about climate change, but it fits here too): "I
| think that's the politics of narcissism: "I want to feel
| good." But in the meantime, you're wasting resources and
| you're wasting time."
|
| This conflict needs actions by a party with enough power
| to provoke a change on both sides. Ok, that's my bedside
| analysis, but the politically correct name calling
| (colonizer, fascist, terrorist) only widens the divide.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Could you provide some basis for those claims? I'm not
| saying your wrong or right, but especially for this
| situation, we need some reason to believe ...
| nicoburns wrote:
| Other wars are discussed. There have been threads on Russia vs.
| Ukraine in recent months.
|
| Perhaps Israel look bad in the press because they are acting
| badly. It seems to me that Israel are unambiguously the
| stronger power in this conflict: they have are much stronger
| military, and additionally have the backing of the US and a
| bunch of other nations that would step in were Israeli
| territory under threat. And they are using that power to
| aggressively attack the weaker power in the conflict with
| little regard for civilian casualties ("collateral damage") or
| proportionality of response.
| qwerpy wrote:
| The way you put it, it sounds like Israel got up in the
| morning one day and for reasons no one can understand,
| decided to start inflicting civilian casualties on
| Palestinians.
| nico wrote:
| You are correct that there is a history there, but
|
| They way you put it, it sounds like Israel wasn't created
| by forcefully stealing land from the Palestinian people
| that were already there
| liorsbg wrote:
| It wasn't.
| lossolo wrote:
| Someone else might say the same about the Hamas attack on
| October 7th. As the UN Secretary-General said, "This most
| recent violence does not occur in a vacuum. It stems from a
| long-standing conflict, a 56-year-long occupation, and the
| absence of a political solution in sight."[1]
|
| Whichever side you are on (if any), responding to
| atrocities with further atrocities is not justifiable. It
| doesn't matter who commits these atrocities
|
| 1. https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2023-10-09/
| secr...
| edanm wrote:
| > And they are using that power to aggressively attack the
| weaker power in the conflict with little regard for civilian
| casualties ("collateral damage") or proportionality of
| response.
|
| It is certainly aggressively attacking Hamas, but that's
| because, despite Hamas being weaker, they've shown themselves
| capable of invading Israel and killing thousands of citizens.
|
| You write "little regard for civilian casualties", but I
| don't think that's true - please, explain how you arrive at
| that conclusion.
|
| And proportionality of response doesn't mean what many people
| think it means - is' not "Hamas kill X people so Israel
| should kill f(X) people". It's measured by how many civilians
| would die while achieving a valid military objective.
| Destroying Hamas is absolutely a valid military objective -
| the question is if Israel is managing to do it without a
| disproportianate number of civilians killed.
|
| I think based on the best-known numbers we have - which place
| the civilian-to-combatant kill ration at 2:1, meaning 2
| civilians killed per 1 militant - I think that this is valid
| and in-line with similar wars fought by Western countries in
| the past.
| tmnvix wrote:
| > the best-known numbers we have - which place the
| civilian-to-combatant kill ration at 2:1, meaning 2
| civilians killed per 1 militant
|
| Could you share any source for these numbers?
|
| The majority of the reporting I have seen is that around
| 17-18,000 people have died in Gaza since October 7 and that
| the majority have been women and children. If we take that
| at face value, it seems that we would almost have to assume
| that the majority of men killed are being counted as Hamas
| militants. Given that there were assumed to be ~40,000 of
| these (as far as I can recall) in a total population of
| over 2 million, it seems unlikely.
| slibhb wrote:
| The fact that Israel is stronger doesn't seem especially
| relevant. We're not talking about a couple kids fighting
| during recess. The weaker side isn't automatically right and
| the stronger side can't be expected to moderate its response
| when we're talking about the murder of ~1000 civilians.
|
| It's also absurd to think Israel should chill out and let the
| US handle its defense. As if an occasional murder-raid and
| constant rocket fire is just something Israel should tolerate
| because, if the Arabs _actually_ invade again, the US will
| bail them out.
|
| That aside, Israel should do more to avoid civilian
| casualties. And it should treat captives better than this
| story indicates.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > the stronger side can't be expected to moderate its
| response when we're talking about the murder of ~1000
| civilians.
|
| A fundamental principle of the Laws of Armed Conflict
| (LOAC) is distinguishing military and civilian targets, and
| minimizing harm to the latter. That applies to all sides in
| every war. [0]
|
| In warfare, generally all sides are outraged, filled with
| hatred and revenge. They wouldn't be killing each other
| otherwise. That is not an exceptional situation, it's the
| norm; that's what the LOAC was written for. 1200 civilian
| deaths, though absolutely horrible, unforunately also is
| well within the norm for warfare. 100,000+ have died in
| places and times, including at US hands.
|
| Obviously Hamas didn't follow that principle (they seem to
| have intentionally violated it). I can't say how well
| Israel is doing it, but it's an essential issue. Saying
| 'we're angry' or 'our people were killed' is not
| exceptional in warfare and does not create exceptions.
|
| [0] https://www.justsecurity.org/89489/expert-guidance-law-
| of-ar...
| stoorafa wrote:
| That's interesting. I think it's rich that Israel is a "victim"
| despite having nuclear arms and one of the most advanced
| militaries in the world, but there's somehow still a need to
| torture villagers-turned-refugees en masse. Let alone the fact
| that antizionism is not antisemitism.
| Nathanba wrote:
| You can have a nuclear missile in your pocket and still be a
| victim of a guy with a rock that comes up to you from behind.
| The idea that Israel can't be a victim because they are
| stronger militarily is absurd, the whole point of terror and
| guerilla warfare is to win asymmetrically while being
| militarily inferior
| blaufast wrote:
| semitic: of, relating to, or constituting a subfamily of the
| Afro-Asiatic language family that includes Hebrew, Aramaic,
| Arabic, and Amharic
| darigo wrote:
| Hmm, On the other hand.
|
| >Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-
| Semitism)[a] is hostility to, prejudice towards, or
| discrimination against Jews.
|
| I'm a fellow fan of looking into words' etymologies, but it
| would seem that antisemitic has not had much to do with
| 'semitic' for quite some time.
| regularjack wrote:
| Maybe rockets wouldn't be shot if Israel would not illegally
| occupy territories.
|
| It seems pretty logical to me that when a state starts
| illegally extending its borders pretty much immediately after
| its formation, their neighbors will not be happy about it and
| will fight back.
|
| No need to be an antisemite to understand this, it's just
| common sense.
| edanm wrote:
| What are you talking about? Israel was attacked by several
| armies and conquered land as part of a defensive war, that is
| a completely legitimate capturing of that land.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| > Maybe rockets wouldn't be shot if Israel would not
| illegally occupy territories.
|
| Tell me you know nothing about this conflict without telling
| me you know nothing about it. Israel was inches away from
| just having to give the Palestinians their own state. Why
| then, did Hamas attack just before that? The answer is
| simple: it is and always has been about removing Israel.
| That's true for Hamas and all their supporters. They aren't
| interested in a two-state solution. So don't act like it's
| about Israel not being a nice neighbour.
| regularjack wrote:
| I know enough about this conflict to know that Israel
| illegally occupies territories. If I am wrong about that,
| please do educate me.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Israel was inches away from just having to give the
| Palestinians their own state.
|
| I follow that situation pretty closely and my understanding
| is that it was the opposite: The Palestinians' supporters
| were about to make deals with Israel - deals they refused
| to make while Palestinian territory was occupied - and
| leave the Palestinians mostly in the cold. Interview with
| Hamas leaders after the attack, iirc, said the same - they
| were going to be forgotten and needed to put the
| Palestinians back at the center of the issue. For years
| before the attack, Israel had openly disparaged and
| abandoned the two-state solution, and expended settlements
| in the West Bank (which is supposed to be Palestinian
| territory under the two-state solution).
|
| Do you have anything that says a two-state solution was
| imminent?
|
| > don't act like it's about Israel not being a nice
| neighbour
|
| Could it be both? Hamas did something horrible. Murdering
| civilians isn't justified (why do I need to type that?) but
| history didn't start that day.
| edanm wrote:
| Iddan - I get where you're coming from, and it's a very valid
| criticism to say that the West in general pays far more
| attention to Israel than to much worse conflicts.
|
| That said, I don't think this is a valid criticism of HN. There
| have been plenty of threads about other wars, and there have
| been very few threads about Israel, actually.
| adhamsalama wrote:
| Over 18000 Palestinians were killed, about 70% of them were
| women and children. Many more under the rubble. 1.9 millions
| (85% of the population) are displaced.
|
| And you're calling people antisemitic (how original) because
| they care about the massacres and ethnic cleansing Israel is
| committing against Palestinians (who are in fact Semitic).
| bitcurious wrote:
| >According to the UN, over 150,000 people have been killed in
| Yemen, as well as estimates of more than 227,000 dead as a
| result of an ongoing famine and lack of healthcare facilities
| due to the war.
|
| I think the OP point is why is this the only war being
| discussed, not that war is victimless.
| dang wrote:
| Can you please see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38618713 and please not
| comment in this spirit in the thread? You've been crossing
| well into the battle that we're explicitly asking users to
| avoid.
|
| I don't say this in a spirit of criticism--I am certain that
| you have deep and legitimate reasons for feeling the way that
| you do. But we're trying hard to have a certain sort of
| discussion here, one that remains within the intended spirit
| of this site, as expressed at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you
| can't find that place in yourself, that's entirely
| understandable and ok, but please don't post in this thread
| unless you can.
|
| The same goes for some of the commenters arguing against your
| position--my moderation point here is certainly not about
| agreeing with them and disagreeing with you (I add this
| because I know it can all too easily feel that way).
| cjdrake wrote:
| Slightly related, I wonder what opportunity cost the Israeli tech
| sector will incur from this conflict. Instead of developing their
| startups, lots of young people are busy with warfare at the
| moment.
| nahumfarchi wrote:
| The least of our worries at the moment... but honestly, the
| Israeli tech sector is highly intertwined with the army, so I
| doubt this will damage it in the long run.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| How is it intertwined? Startups or big weapons manufacturers?
| nahumfarchi wrote:
| Both I think. Weapons manufacturers are the obvious one.
| But more importantly IMO is that there are a couple of tech
| units in the army (look up 8200 for example) whose
| graduates start a lot of startups (frequently skipping
| university). Some of these startups are arms/cyber related,
| but not necessarily. It's one big feedback loop really.
| edanm wrote:
| Israel has brought in 300k reservists. In a country of 9
| million, that's a not insignificant percentage of the
| population.
|
| Many of those are part of the tech sector and are currently
| not working.
| nahumfarchi wrote:
| You're assuming that the probability to be drafted is the
| same for a tech worker as for the rest of the population.
| I don't know whether that's a valid assumption or not...
| edanm wrote:
| I'm not sure of the statistics but this is probably
| roughly true. Probably higher, actually, as tech workers
| tend to be more from populations that actually enlist in
| the military, and tech is a huge sector of the economy.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| I know the IDF uses Gaza as a testing ground for battle testing
| new weapons, so it goes both ways.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| This is actually true; it's been discussed with citations in
| previous HN threads. Elbit systems notoriously used to
| advertise this on their website (doing R&D on the population
| of Gaza to bill their drones as "battle tested") until the
| latest redesign, but they're not the only ones.
| throwaway48r7r wrote:
| It would be nice if people in the region at least pretended to be
| working towards peaceful solutions.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| Hard to do when most of the middle east is run by autocratic
| regimes that either get military aid from the US or the US is
| their security guarantor. You have to seem Pro-Palestinian to
| please the masses but ultimately undermine the cause to please
| the US
| Unfrozen0688 wrote:
| Al-Jazeera English operates under the ownership of the Al Jazeera
| Media Network, which, in turn, is funded by the government of
| Qatar.
|
| Up to you if you trust them or not. I do not. Swedish.
| thomasfromcdnjs wrote:
| I've understood that this topic hasn't been allowed to be
| discussed here, and I think I've preferred that.
|
| But this is the first time I've seen a thread allowed, and a
| bit personally perplexed to see that it's an Al-Jazeera post.
|
| Zero trust. Australian.
| knallfrosch wrote:
| I agree that it's weird to see the discussion open with this
| timing (late) and this topic (a weird side-note compared to
| the terrorist attack and bombin) and this source (state
| source from Qatar, which is Hamas-friendly.)
| gerash wrote:
| I don't want to pick sides in this sad generational conflict and
| I can see each side has their points but I want this parasitic
| Israel-US relationship to end.
|
| AIPAC has worked hard over the years to make any politicians with
| the slightest opposition to Israel to be unelectable. I don't see
| how that's ok. They pretty much own the US government at federal
| and state levels. They have passed laws at the state level where
| boycotting Israeli goods are now illegal (how is that law even
| constitutional?)
|
| So the first step for ordinary citizens is to make anyone
| supported by AIPAC unelectable. The billions of dollars / year of
| aid to Israel, Egypt, etc. that could be spent domestically
| instead also needs to be cut.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about this topic appearing on HN as I feel
| like folks are entrenched one way or the other and information
| isn't going to sway anyone. If this were a discussion we want to
| have here, this feels like a very bad article as by it's nature
| it's a one-sided subjective narrative with very little light to
| shed on the depth of the conflict. An interesting differentiator
| left unsaid in this article is that Israel released these guys
| upon investigation which by wartime standards is good behavior
| (in contrast to hostages kidnapped and held by Hamas still)
|
| A thing that makes this conflict difficult to talk about is that
| the prevalence of coverage makes so many people take sides, while
| the depth of their understanding is basically just hearing the
| repetition of a word and applying the emotion of that word to the
| conflict. For example people hear "genocide in Gaza" and their
| opinion is simple: genocide is bad. It takes a little digging
| that most people don't bother to realize the population of Gaza
| has continued to grow exponentially [1] which is basically the
| opposite of genocide.
|
| Sometimes reading about this conflict feels like seeing someone
| outraged at an oncologist because of what the radiation treatment
| is doing to a patient. Yes its bad, yes it's hurting them, but
| you can't really make sense of that unless you understand cancer
| and the greater danger that necessitates this kind of response.
|
| [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/gaza-
| populati...
| makeworld wrote:
| Genocide can still occur against a population that is growing
| in number. You have to understand that, right?
| slibhb wrote:
| If you're committing genocide against a population of people
| that's growing, at the very least we can say that you're not
| very good at genocide.
| edanm wrote:
| Can you define what you mean by genocide exactly?
| falserum wrote:
| Not op, but my guess would be: mass killings based on
| genes.
| emmelaich wrote:
| And yet many Palestinians are genetically
| indistinguishable from many Jordanians, Egyptians,
| Syrians. And for what it's worth Jewish and Christian and
| other non-hostile Palestinians.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > I feel like folks are entrenched one way or the other and
| information isn't going to sway anyone
|
| People like to profess doom and hopelessness but I see
| productive conversations, in this thread and another recent
| one. Why, in the face of the evidence, is it important to
| believe and convince people that it's hopeless?
|
| The trend to despair just pisses me off. Nobody ever taught me
| to embrace despair; I don't know about you. Let's get off our
| asses and make sh-t happen.
| szundi wrote:
| Ah this managed to infiltrate even HN?
| digitalsin wrote:
| Al Jazeera on the front of HN? Is Alex Jones and Enquirer coming
| up next?
| axus wrote:
| My impression is that leaders of both militaries have a goal to
| remove the civilians of the other side from the borders of
| Israel, permanently.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| When you consider Netanyahu, for years, propped up and funded
| Hamas, it makes everything more confusing to understand
|
| https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
| roynasser wrote:
| "Al Jazeera" lol
| blaufast wrote:
| I suspect a very large number of people are too smart to speak
| up, but also resentful of the forces that work to prevent actual
| nuanced dialogue. That's certainly the sentiment in my bubble.
|
| As somebody who isn't fond of the idea of an ethnostate and sees
| atrocities coming from all of the actors here, I don't feel
| comfortable speaking up due to the lack of nuance in public
| forums.
| vacuity wrote:
| I hear you. While reading your comment, I had the thought
| "'atrocities coming from all of the actors'? Are you saying
| they're equally bad?" Of course, that's not what you said and
| there are far better responses if one is concerned about
| debating the relative moral standings of Israel and Hamas. It
| was more of a kneejerk reaction, and I quickly dismissed that
| from rational consideration, but the fact that I thought it
| nonetheless (and, in a different world, just replied with that)
| is a bit unsettling. Especially when we can't be certain what's
| a truth or lie when it comes to coverage of this conflict, it's
| far too easy to lose sight of the nuance.
| asylteltine wrote:
| One side launches rockets AT civilians, one side responds and
| can't AVOID civilians because Hamas intentionally mixes their
| forces with civilians (which is illegal, but of course the UN
| doesn't care)
|
| Please don't try to both sides this.
| metta2uall wrote:
| The IDF actually can avoid the vast majority of civilian
| casualties - they are the ones choosing to drop a huge number
| of bombs. They can do their job of defending Israel by
| actually protecting the border, and go after Hamas in a much
| slower & more precise way.
|
| See this article from Israel for an in-depth examination of
| IDF tactics: https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-
| factory-israel-cal...
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > They can do their job of defending Israel by actually
| protecting the border
|
| They can't. Hamas launched thousands of rockets on October
| 7th, and Israel has no way of stopping something like that
| again short of what they're doing now, a massive bombing
| campaign and land invasion to take out as much of Hamas'
| built-up stockpiles and war infrastructure as possible.
|
| There is no workable defense here that doesn't require
| significant offense.
| l3mure wrote:
| > Hamas intentionally mixes their forces with civilians
|
| This is the entire point of mandatory Israeli military
| service and aggressive illegal settlements/settlers protected
| by the IDF.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| It's hard to argue Israel "cant avoid civilians" when 40% of
| Gaza's housing is rubble. Israel's airstrikes aren't
| "calculated" if they calculate everything as a legitimate
| target
| xchip wrote:
| Thanks to HN for not banning this topic.
| l3mure wrote:
| > The bombing of power targets, according to intelligence sources
| who had first-hand experience with its application in Gaza in the
| past, is mainly intended to harm Palestinian civil society: to
| "create a shock" that, among other things, will reverberate
| powerfully and "lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas," as one
| source put it.
|
| > Several of the sources, who spoke to +972 and Local Call on the
| condition of anonymity, confirmed that the Israeli army has files
| on the vast majority of potential targets in Gaza -- including
| homes -- which stipulate the number of civilians who are likely
| to be killed in an attack on a particular target. This number is
| calculated and known in advance to the army's intelligence units,
| who also know shortly before carrying out an attack roughly how
| many civilians are certain to be killed.
|
| > In one case discussed by the sources, the Israeli military
| command knowingly approved the killing of hundreds of Palestinian
| civilians in an attempt to assassinate a single top Hamas
| military commander. "The numbers increased from dozens of
| civilian deaths [permitted] as collateral damage as part of an
| attack on a senior official in previous operations, to hundreds
| of civilian deaths as collateral damage," said one source.
|
| > "Nothing happens by accident," said another source. "When a
| 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it's because someone
| in the army decided it wasn't a big deal for her to be killed --
| that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another]
| target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets.
| Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral
| damage there is in every home."
|
| > According to the investigation, another reason for the large
| number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in
| Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called "Habsora" ("The
| Gospel"), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and
| can "generate" targets almost automatically at a rate that far
| exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as
| described by a former intelligence officer, essentially
| facilitates a "mass assassination factory."
|
| https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-cal...
| xchip wrote:
| Glad to see so many civil and enriching conversations, you are an
| example to the internet on how to have respectful and productive
| discussions on controversial topics.
|
| Thanks.
| theonething wrote:
| Voices from the other side:
|
| https://www.october7.org/
| xg15 wrote:
| I don't want to start another top-level thread on this topic, as
| it is contentious enough already - but just as an aside, the UN
| General Assembly just passed a (symbolic) resolution calling for
| an immediate ceasefire with 153 to 10, an even stronger majority
| than the last resolution.
|
| Of course UN votes are always subject to all kinds of political
| considerations and power dynamics and the saying "nations have no
| friends, only interests" still applies, but when such a wide
| range of countries from completely different geopolitical
| alignments vote for this (e.g. pro-palestinian but strongly anti-
| Hamas Egypt together with hosts of Hamas Turkey, Qatar and Iran,
| together with pro-Israel western countries such as France and
| Switzerland), this does give a strong hint how the world opinion
| on the matter seems to be.
|
| News bulletin: https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144717
|
| Votes by nation:
| https://twitter.com/UN_News_Centre/status/173468680169949197...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| If they're being tortured that's a real problem I'd hope is
| investigated but at the same time, suicide bombers are a thing. I
| see no issue with being asked to strip.
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