Some context first so my opinion isn't misconstrued as as leftist stereotype. This is within context of the behavior described in the article.
- I'm a Jew in USA, and served in the military for more than a decade.
- I used to get annoyed by the Palestinian protests I'd see in the years before this, and generally sided with Israel, and the operations its military performed in counter-Shia-militia operations etc in the region, and was outraged at the Oct 7 attacks.
Israel's operations as described in the article are clear-cut war crimes. The military and civilian leaders responsible for these ROE should face something similar to the Nuremberg trials. I am embarrassed for my country's support of Israel's operations.
This is large-scale, continued, intentional CIVCAS.
I'll provide context too - I'm a Jewish Israeli. I'd probably be considered left (or even far-left) by Israeli standards, but I'm in the "pro-Israeli" camp as conventionally understood online.
This Haaretz article is very troubling. To the extent it's accurate, there's not much question that it reflects war crimes.
A few thoughts:
1. The article itself says there is an ongoing investigation into some of these accusations. I hope that, to whatever extent this is happening, it's not widespread, and anyone committing war crimes is very visibly and publicly tried in court.
2. There is clearly something broken with the GHF and the new aid delivery - dozens dead every day for weeks. We really need some answers on what's going on.
3. From Haaretz today:
> The U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on Saturday urged Israel to investigate reports that soldiers opened fire towards unarmed Palestinians near aid distribution sites, detailed in a Haaretz expose, calling the allegations "too grave to ignore," while denying that any such incidents occurred within its facilities.
> GHF Interim Director John Acree stated, "There have been no incidents or fatalities at or in the immediate vicinity of any of our distribution sites."
>GHF Interim Director John Acree stated, "There have been no incidents or fatalities at or in the immediate vicinity of any of our distribution sites."
Isn't there a video of dismembered body parts after the mortar shell hit and killed a few dozen?
It sounds like if he is making such a clear statement as this, there should be an investigation, and, if it turns out there were such fatalities, then Acree (and many others) should be tried for covering up war crimes.
I don't like getting involved in political threads but on this I have to.
All information presented is mostly unverified testimony printed verbatim by the press from untrustworthy sources on both sides. It's difficult to tell what is fact and what is not. A lot of early reports in this war turned out to be false information and the rush to immediate news notification rather than quality journalism means that the headline changes context very quickly from the first cut to what people read and remember. (I wrote an extensive suite of software to track this)
Wait and see. Do not judge too early. Take nothing as verbatim from anyone without evidence.
Don't be unknowing partisans of an information war. Veracity takes time.
I think that is what the parent is alluding to, when it comes to waiting for more facts.
One of those facts might be intent or misheard orders. It might just be that this actually happened (as a war crime) but it is probably too early to tell.
Regardless of what happened, it helps to wait until more info comes out.
The "nuanced" rhetoric to add doubt that things may not seem like what they are, is tiresome at this point. neepi's comments seem reasonable, innocent until proven guilty, but it's simply a strategy to exhaust onlookers with bureaucratic formalities of investigation and prosecution under the masquerade of reasonable justice.
It's a cop out and putting one's head in the sand to the real atrocities of zionistic ambitions of usurping Palestinian land.
In America, if someone trespasses into one's home and the home owner kills the trespasser, the vast majority of the time, the owner is justified and there are numerous court cases we can point to. Recently, it has become clear to me that Palestinians are simply trying to defend their own property/land/humanity.
Israel's trespasses are finally seeing the light in the latest set of conflicts and folks reading this comment that are unsure should spend 30 minutes looking up the videos of the conflict.
Israel blocking aid, murdering medical personnel with impunity, the before/after of Gaza, the list of crimes perpetuated by the government is undeniable at this point.
"Look, children may be dying and maybe we're killing them but we need to verify and we need more time. Because first of all what were they even doing there? Oh and also this is our Land anyways and there were no deaths nobody died there aren't even any children in gaza!"
at the point, advocating for neutrality in the face of overwhelming evidence of war crimes day after day after day is a pretty clear indication of not being concerned.
News outlets tell Israeli officers where their journalists intend to be, and they wear jackets that identify them as members of the press. Preventing the journalists from dying is really a matter of communicating to each other, and using visual identification before engaging in direct fire. Both the officers and enlisted have the opportunity to cancel an illegitimate fire mission. Something doctrinal is responsible for this behavior.
Given the unconscionable number of journalists who died at the IDF's hands, it seems like Israel is indeed using the transparency info from journalists to locate and target them with airstrikes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...
So if a journalist decides to wander away from the potemkin village they get denied access. The journalists going on these ridealongs are not doing journalism. This tactic, which america pioneered in response to vietnam war coverage, is designed to only allow journalists who will tell the right kind of narrative.
This person, a Palestinian, was not attacked for documenting something he wasn't supposed to. That's not the claim in the article. He is said to have documented the "the aftermath of Hamas’s massacre on the Gaza-border communities.” but that doesn't seem to be directly relevant.
The context is a protest: "Haruf says he was attacked without cause after leaving a prayer protest broken up by Israeli security forces in the Wadi Joz neighborhood." not the journalistic activities.
I'm not justifying this FWIW, just that it doesn't prove what you're trying to prove. If anything the publication of this article in Israel shows Israel has freedom of press.
also:
"The Border Police later announced that it had suspended the two officers involved in the incident and that the Department of Internal Police Investigations has opened a probe into the matter."
"The Union of Journalists in Israel condemned the incident and said it was “shocked by the violent attack” on Haruf.
The union said the incident was “the 37th attack on Arab journalists since the beginning of the war” on October 7, when Hamas-led terrorists launched their murderous assault on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking some 240 hostages of all ages.
The union, in a December 15 statement, said “most of the attacks [were] carried out by the security forces. This is a reality that dramatically harms freedom of the press and the ability of journalists to perform their duties.”"
Is this perfect? no. Is Israeli press generally free, attacks/criticizes the government, brings to light bad things that happen, and follow up on them? yes.
Haaretz is the last news organization I would expect to knowingly spread anti-israel disinformation. If these guys are telling you what Israel is doing is bad then it's bad.
Yes, and one of the more prominent ones at that. If they had a bias in this, I would expect them to be biased in favor of Israel not against it. If even they are saying Israel is committing these war crimes then I'm inclined to assume that the evidence must be very compelling.
Just for the record, this is almost certainly wrong in the sense you mean it.
Haaretz is a (far?) left, anti-current-government newspaper. It's not outside the mainstream or anything - it is considered largely credible, and its articles are taken seriously - but most people in Israel would find it funny that you assume it wouldn't be biased against Israel. Lots of Netanyahu supporters routinely consider it a "traitorous" publication.
I think its articles should be taken seriously, but you can't simply assume it's automatically right and not "biased". Think of it the way an American Democrat would think of Fox or something - the news org definitely has a viewpoint.
Lots of people still believe that "critical of the government" is not the same as "biased against the country." That's an explicitly authoritarian belief and a disastrous framework to work within. It's antithetical to the concept of human rights and notable historical documents such as the American Constitution.
The bias of a mainstream publication that's considered "traitorous" by genocidal authoritarian ethnonationalists is, given historical consideration, likely to be toward justice.
This has been one of the deadliest conflicts for journalists in history. The number of killed journalists is very safe data, since the names are known and the cause of death is typically relatively well researched.
The story told by the data is that these journalists are overwhelmingly killed by Israeli forces, in some cases with prior notice of the press being where it was.
So if the IDF wants the press to tell the true story on the ground maybe let them do their work without killing them? The quesrion is: at which point do we have to stop assuming incompetence and start to assume malice (at least in parts)? For me personally that point has been months in the past.
This will be a stain on Israel for the rest of history.
Hamas member gets a press west by hamas newspaper or the muslim brotherhood (quatar) then participates in hamas warcrimes like using ambulances as troop transports and gets humused. Nobody believes those loud lies anymore.. that whole narrative is falling apart.
I don't disagree with you there at all. That again backs up my point. There is a lot of information and evidence to back those cases up. Which should be the universal standard that we hold everyone accountable to.
This information didn't just appear out of nowhere. It took time to collate, source and verify.
Sorry, but the killing of unarmed civilians seeking aid has been reported half a dozen times by many different outlets. The IDF denials are getting quite absurd. The only one suffering from disinformation is you.
We are so sorry you "need to get involved" in order to help spread pro-Israeli propaganda :(
1. If by "verified" you simply mean that the Israelis are admitting to what they did then you're right they're still lying about what they're doing everyday. Only verification are the videos, photos and dead bodies themselves of course.
2. The Israelis are out in force on these message boards, IDF. Personally I'm at the point where if I'm seeing any illogical support for the murderous regime of Israel I assume it's the IDF at this point, most real humans no matter what their political beliefs can at least agree that murdering innocent children is not good, only the Israelis struggle away with the way to justify it.
3. Lol, "wait and see..." This was the same attitude of the Nazis in world war II! "Just more time.. we just need more time so we can verify..." Amazing that the IDF is now using the same playbook that was used against them in world war II, I guess you guys figure if it works once you can work again!
I suggest you re-read it a few times. I am not defending any party in this conflict. I want the truth to be established carefully for the sake of everyone. Misinformation just ends up with more bodies stacked up on both sides.
So far all evidence points to bodies being piled on one side. With only few exceptions. Going on over year and half without clear rationale other than vaguely "butbutbut human shields butbutbut propaganda".
By avoiding to admit this you are indeed defending the attacker.
I’m amazed at how you managed to trivialise the deaths of 1915 people in that comment. All people matter on both sides and everyone deserves justice. That only comes if we make accurate prosecutions which requires evidence and due process.
And how dare you make accusations along those lines. Your attitude contributes to the problem.
Fine, what steps were taken to accurately prosecute these 1915 deaths? Are there any people indicted and undergoing fair trial for that? Can you name them? ICC did, but then got practically canceled. So who is to do it and when?
Oh you can't answer that easily without trivializing these deaths yourself. Accusing others, that are suspicious of all of this, of "attitude" is easier.
I haven’t accused anyone less than everyone. There are bad actors on all sides (this spans more than “both sides”).
As for enforcement and prosecution the ICC warrants were justified and the situation that remains is tragic. You can thank the US for throwing a spanner in those works.
I’m not sure why you keep trying to put words in my mouth. Perhaps to justify your partisan position rather than my entirely neutral one? Sure feels like it.
It’s only unlikely because it’s politically inconvenient for it to be unlikely as the nations preventing it don’t want to be judged by the same standards.
Just to go off of this, I'm a Jewish lawyer in America and an Israel supporter
We do need to really consider the source of the information. War is often filled with propaganda and lies, that's just how it is, that's part of war, propaganda. I think we need to look at Israel's long history of humanitarianism, and look at Palenstine's history of terrorism, to get an idea as to who is right and who is wrong here. My belief if the article is a piece of fiction, a hit piece.
So because Israel has a "long history of humanitarianism", we can dismiss evidence of Israeli war crimes as fictitious hit jobs? And once we've dismissed all evidence of Israeli war crimes, we can conclude that Israel has a "long history of humanitarianism"? Rinse, repeat — do I have that right?
The source is one of the biggest Israeli newspapers, by the way.
This rhetoric of “terrorists” is getting quite tiresome.
The world has been watching for over 2 years the atrocities occurring in Gaza and Israel and its people have has lost its credibility to its victimhood on the world stage.
This article is simply 1 extra reporting on a million of Israel’s offenses in the name of terrorism.
Thank you for your unbiased opinion shedding objective light on this incident and reporting. You have brought forth excellent evidence for dismissing this evidence.
I'm as prone to it as the next tech-influenced millennial, but we really need to consider the legibility of deadpan sarcastic mockery in an environment where people are inclined to sincerely hold outrageous beliefs.
Credulity is boundless, even (especially) in this world of open information warfare. Messages that require side-channels and discrimination with intentionally limited information are guaranteed to be misperceived and likely to have harmful memetic impact.
That's fair feedback! I struggled to tamp down on a snarkier response that read more like: "I am a direct beneficiary of one side of this debate. If we are to be intellectually honest then we need to be sure to cast as much skepticism as we can muster onto the other side."
Agreed though, earnestness is one of our most urgent shortages.
This article isn't really about whether there's some situation where there were some wrong doings, but it's yet another piece adding to the overall body of Israel's offenses against humanity.
As a random bystander with no real skin in this conflict, other than being American, what I can say is that for a while, it did seem that Israel the country had to unfairly deal with hate and war and it seemed quite unfortunate.
Most of the horrifying stories that would occasionally rise up seemed unbelievable, if not overblown.
Though in recent weeks, social media & news has provided another perspective.
1. Numerous Israeli citizens mocking Palestinians and having the gall to upload it to social media.
2. Numerous classrooms and children being taught that non-Israeli's do no deserve the same human rights as Israelis, and the children from a young age reveling in their superiority.
3. Videos showing citizens in normal cars being a nuisance to Palestinian medical vehicles.
4. Videos showing the absolute decimation of Gaza.
5. Israeli news articles reporting 70% and more of the population supporting certain war actions.
6. Ex-IDF soldiers whistleblowing the atrocious acts they needed to commit.
7. Citizens barbequing and hanging out right along the Gaza's border as Palestinian folks on the other side starve.
8. The video of Palestinian medics getting murdered on the side of the highway.
9. Pictures of the logos on IDF uniforms showing "our promised land" with a map showing borders that claim the land of Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon.
I don't think there is something "broken" in aid delivery. It appears that there is a systemic and concerted effort by the bulk of the government and citizens (100% of who have to serve in the IDF) to colonize and usurp Palestinian land and beyond.
And it seems that the latest set of conflicts have pulled back the curtain on the attitudes held by both the Israeli citizens and government.
The only news in the article is the way civilians are murdered. The Israeli government already kills far more people per day through deliberately induced starvation.
These events are hard to believe, not because of the cruelty, but because they now happen without a shred of deniability.
> I hope that, to whatever extent this is happening, it's not widespread, and anyone committing war crimes is very visibly and publicly tried in court.
Sorry but you’re either dishonest or totally delusional. Tens of thousands of children murdered, nobody even thinks of putting a stop on this, and you say « it’s not widespread ». What?
There has been so so many atrocities, even before Oct 7th committed by both the Israeli army and armed settlers in the West Bank. There is never, NEVER, anyone being held accountable. Snipers shoot kids on the beach? All good. Torture and rape in your prisons? Fine.
Dude, you should fix your society. You are simply heading towards your own destruction, morally, on the side of public sympathy, and merely as people capable of living with other people peacefully.
Note that this response is from a cynical American sick of Israel always Getting Away With It. I have no problem with Jewish people, but I strongly distrust the state of Israel and believe that it's a force that makes Jewish people less safe as the state screams it is doing what it is doing to protect Jewish people. One of my close college friends is a rabbi, and we've been talking about this since the start of the hostage crisis.
> 1. The article itself says there is an ongoing investigation into some of these accusations. I hope that, to whatever extent this is happening, it's not widespread, and anyone committing war crimes is very visibly and publicly tried in court.
There is zero chance that happens as long as Netanyahu, Likud, Trump, or the Reupublicans are in power. Trump would immediately offer asylum in the US to anybody accused of such a thing.
Even if Israel did investigate, there's nothing more classic than Israel going "we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong".
So if you want accountability, drive that internally with your politicians and get Netanyahu/Likud out of office
> There is zero chance that happens as long as Netanyahu, Likud, Trump, or the Reupublicans are in power. Trump would immediately offer asylum in the US to anybody accused of such a thing.
This is untrue - Israel has investigated war crimes, e.g. famously things like what happened at the Sde Teiman prison.
> So if you want accountability, drive that internally with your politicians and get Netanyahu/Likud out of office
Many have been trying for years. It's not trivial. (About half of Americans dislike {current_president}, whomever that is, but there's very little they can do about it in between elections.)
That would be too impractical. The fact of the matter is that the only effective way is basically how the GHF is doing it already. It's sad that the UN and western media are running with the pro hamas anti GHF narrative. They are giving hamas every incentive to disrupt aid distribution as much as possible. At the very least the shocking fact that UNWRA are against Gazans getting aid when it's not done through them exposes the lie that they care about palestinians.
The GHF undermines Hamas and UNWRA like nothing else has. It terrifies them and they are pulling all the propoganda stops to delegitimise them.
That is, I think, an excellent and pertinent question.
For starters may I suggest applying straightforward quantification on a linear scale and observing the results? See the following two wiki articles / subsections:
Do you mean the data sources it lists in those two articles are not valid? (I am referring to raw figures and not to actual textual content even). The charts themselves (and the proportions thereof) have been observed everywhere incl. in the mainstream media?
Can you present one counterexample as regards quantities / proportions of figures please? One source. (More of course if you'd like)
(My implicit point is that the proportions are so one-sided (orders of magnitude in difference; yes plural) that you will not find one; but please do find one (with actual quantities) and we can all check veracity of your source)
P.S. edit here is one of the sources the first wiki article lists (of multiple):
Lappin, Yaakov (2009). "IDF releases Cast Lead casualty numbers". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on 26 March 2013. Retrieved 5 January 2024. =>
> Where do we place Israel on that scale? Is there more attention on Israel vs. other similar world events?
I’d flip that around: why shouldn’t we expect Israel to be better than a terrorist group like Hamas or the deeply evil Iranian government? When some Americans complained that they were being held to a higher standard than Al-Qaeda or ISIL, they were rightly criticized for betraying our national aspiration to leading rather than trailing the world, and the same is happening here. Israel has rightly set its standards higher than its neighbors when it comes to democracy and civil rights, but that entails criticism where it fails to live up to that self-selected standard.
> Iran and Hamas firing missiles and rockets into population centers is a war crime too. So is their embedding and use of civilians. The entire strategy of Israel's opponents in the middle east is to engage in war crimes.
Where do we place Israel on that scale?
I feel like you're moving the target now. Those are your words above.
But yes, if your scale is that of the western world then harsh criticism of Israel's war crimes should be expected and welcome.
I don't mean to put words in your mouth, maybe you did mean something along those lines and I'm misinterpreting.
It it absolutely fair to criticize Israel the same way that e.g Canada, the US, the UK, France etc. were criticized during their war on the Islamic State.
Let's get some scale here.
- Probably more than 160K killed in this war. Maybe half civilians.
- Siege and constant bombardment/destruction of cities like Mosul.
- Millions of civilians displaced.
- Many war crimes by western powers.
This was in response to what? A few westerners beheaded? Terrorist attacks killing a few dozen people?
Can you really say honestly that the amount of criticism Israel is attracting due to its war in Gaza and the circumstances are comparable? This might just be me but I don't recall huge rallies against the war. I don't recall much negative media coverage. I don't recall anyone held accountable for war crimes. I don't recall the ICC being involved.
Yes, the US bombings of random weddings in Afghanistan with Predator drones and air to surface missiles, or bombing hospitals has occasionally drawn some weak protest. Nothing at the scale of the anti-Israeli sentiment.
This isn't what-about-ism. It's not ok to bomb a wedding and it's not ok to fire into a crowd of people trying to get food. But there is no comparison of the sentiment and focus.
You can’t talk about ISIS in isolation from the U.S. invasion of Iraq which gave Zarqawi the ability to grow so much. That had enormous protests, tons of criticism for the massive civilian death toll, and plenty of negative media coverage. By the time the Islamic system was at its height, most of the reaction was muted in the backdrop of Syria’s civil war and the U.S. failure in Iraq leaving few people jumping to commit more troops into unfriendly territory. In contrast, Israel controls Gaza and has no willingness to give up that control and ownership follows that.
If you read your own link, note how Israel has a near-total blockade and maintains military control. I have absolutely no love for Hamas but I also recognize that there are a ton of civilians caught between the hammer of Israeli and the anvil of Hamas with zero opportunity for self-determination. They have no control over Hamas - the last election was in 2006 so the majority of the Palestinian population has literally never once been able to vote – and they have even less influence with the Israeli government. That is a tragedy by any measure, and Israel’s wanton killing and collective punishment is a recipe for continued conflict because it ensures that there’s a constant supply of people who have a personal grudge because they know someone innocent whose life has been tragically altered.
> If you read your own link, note how Israel has a near-total blockade and maintains military control
For most of the period since 2005, it has been a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade, not an exclusively Israeli one. That has recently changed now that Israel has militarily occupied the Gaza side of the Egypt-Gaza border
But I do find it interesting how Israel gets exclusively blamed for something which Egypt also had a hand in - and they weren’t doing it because “Israel made us”, they had their own security reasons - they feared Hamas would support Islamist rebels in Egypt.
It does seem to support the claim that Israel gets “picked on”, when a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade gets presented as an exclusively Israeli one
Yes, Egypt has some control (imports still require Israeli approval) but they also do not have a great reputation internationally. Israelis are objecting to being seen like Egypt when they aspire to being seen like a western democracy rather than an authoritarian state.
> Israel did give up Gaza and gave Palestinians full control of it
From the very first paragraph in your own link:
> Since then, the United Nations, many other international humanitarian and legal organizations, and most academic commentators have continued to regard the Gaza Strip as being under Israeli occupation ...
"Full control" - except over their border, their imports, their airspace, their electromagnetic frequencies, their coastline, their construction industry, etc etc.
> WW-2, WW-1, the Romans. But the fact still stands that all those "moral" countries didn't hesitate to lay siege, starve people, bomb civilians, for tbh little reason.
... If you're taking the Romans and WW-2 as your baseline for morality, that would start to explain things.
I'm sorry but you're just wrong. The reasons the UN and others still regarded Gaza as under Israeli occupation are either political or technical. In practice when Israel left Gazans got full control. They had a border with Egypt, not to mention tunnels for smuggling goods under that border. They had enough control to build a large army, tunnels, rockets etc. I.e. they had control. They were able to send people to train in Iran.
This anti-Israeli argument that somehow Israel dismantled its settlements and left but yet still "occupied" Gaza is nonsense. It does not stand any minimal scrutiny.
Yes, as a result of Gazans making a choice to engage in war with Israel there was a blockade over that territory. That's about it. Do you expect Israel to allow them to import tanks and jets?
And build and train a large military force. And build an extensive tunnel network in the entirety of the Gaza strip. Complete control over every day to day aspect of their lives, government, healthcare, police force. Elections. Extensive weapons manufacturing. Control of the borders with Israel and Gaza.
Israel has been blockading and controlling Gaza since the 90s. To argue that they've had complete control is just historically and factually wrong. Israel has been gradually tightening the screws on the region for decades.
Nobody has "complete control", sure, but there's a reason Gaza doesn't have an airport (destroyed by the IDF) and can't receive aid by sea (intercepted by the IDF).
Thunberg's flotella isn't a very good example of Israel preventing aid. The flotella carried a symbolic bit of aid, and Israel didn't reject it, they just insisted that it go through proper channels rather than violate a blockade which is in place for justifiable security reasons.
> The movement, founded in 2006 by activists during Israel’s war on Lebanon, went on to launch 31 boats between 2008 and 2016, five of which reached Gaza despite heavy Israeli restrictions.
> Since 2010, all flotillas attempting to break the Gaza blockade have been intercepted or attacked by Israel in international waters.
I don't quite get the point you're getting at; we're all in agreement that there is a blockade. The flotella doesn't really add anything to our understanding of the situation - we already knew there was a blockade and that unauthorized ships wouldn't be allowed to pass.
That doesn't imply much about aid; it's not a total blockade and there are mechanisms for importing aid. One can argue that the aid distribution mechanisms are bad, and it might be reasonable to propose various changes (different aid mechanisms, a relaxation of the blockade, etc), but it wouldn't really make sense for Israel to make exceptions and allow certain unauthorized ships to just circumvent its blockade.
You keep repeating things that are simply not historically true. We know factually that Israel was blockading and enforcing their will in Gaza as early as 1991.
I don't see a need to engage with you further, especially as you increasingly use dog whistles to tacitly support the actions of Israel while repeating clear propaganda. Your arguments are not helping as much as you think, and only increasingly turning people against Israel as their actions become more and more obvious.
The was on ISIS wasn't waged exclusively or even mainly by the West. It was waged on the ground primarily by the local armed forces - Iraqi army in Iraq, YPG militias in both Iraq and Syria etc - who were actively resisting the attempts to take over their communities by force and in some cases outright genocide them. The West provided active military support including air strikes and occasional on-the-ground assistance, but you can't reduce the reasons for that war to "a few westerners beheaded"; you have to look at the totality of crimes against humanity perpetrated by ISIS on its occupied territories to get a comprehensive casus belli on behalf of the opposing forces primarily responsible for all the destruction.
> Can you really say honestly that the amount of criticism Israel is attracting due to its war in Gaza and the circumstances are comparable? This might just be me but I don't recall huge rallies against the war. I don't recall much negative media coverage. I don't recall anyone held accountable for war crimes. I don't recall the ICC being involved.
Genocider complains about double standards.
> Nothing at the scale of the anti-Israeli sentiment.
Because Israel does it systematically, and annexes territories not belonging to them, while also having prominent government figures saying that the enemy is "animals".
Israel is doing a genocide in Gaza, and you are what-abouting some other countries? Sure, we will call on them as well. Doesn't change that Israel, at this very moment, is doing a genocide on the people of Palestine.
- Yoav Gallant called the Palestinians "human animals", which, ironically, is similar to what the Nazis were calling the Jews during WW2: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ReZEJPwrM1k
> Israeli soldiers, attacks Israeli civilians (there are still occasional rockets fired out of Gaza).
Maybe don't use your civilians as human shields then. Why is your military next to your civilians? See how that works?
> Israel does not "annex territories" not belonging to them. Israel e.g. returned Sinai to Egypt. Israel gave Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005. Israel in negotiations with Palestinians created the Palestinian Authority and gave it control of large swaths of territory.
Exactly. It’s fair to criticize Israel for civilian casualties just like all of those countries have been criticized for failing to live up to their stated standards. Countries like Russia or Iran are recognized as being worse but don’t get criticized for being hypocritical because nobody expected them to be good.
Countries like Russia (and probably Iran) still claim to be paragons of human rights in diplomatic settings - just that most are used to ignoring them because of the immense scale and sheer audacity of their hypocrisy.
> Exactly. It’s fair to criticize Israel for civilian casualties just like all of those countries have been criticized for failing to live up to their stated standards.
Russia doesn't target civilian population to the extent Israel does. There is a reason only Israel is charged with genocide, and not Russia. Don't get me wrong, both the countries' governments are run by bunch of homicidal dictators, but only Isreal systematically does enough war crimes and human rights violations to fit the criteria of genocide.
This is entirely incorrect. Putin's arrest warrant is for the mass kidnapping of Ukrainian children. The legal definition of genocide explicitly calls out such a situation as an example. There are other reasons why your comparison is flawed.
> instead of just saying random stuff like a coward.
You can't comment like this on HN, no matter what you're replying to.
You've posted many comments in this thread that are inflammatory and risk breaking the guidelines. On a topic like this one, this guideline is especially important:
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
You've been asked before to make an effort to observe the guidelines. Please remind yourself of them and keep them in mind when commenting here.
Attacking the Qirya, Israel's HQ, with some sort of accuracy is a legitimate military target. It's a pretty large target. Soldiers wear uniform. There are no civilians mixed into that camp.
This is very different than lobbing rockets at Beer-Sheba, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ramat Gan. The casualties from Iran's attacks, minus one off-duty soldier, were all civilians and the targets were nowhere near anything military. The intentionally aim at population centers.
- Yoav Gallant called the Palestinians "human animals", which, ironically, is similar to what the Nazis were calling the Jews during WW2: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ReZEJPwrM1k
> The casualties from Iran's attacks, minus one off-duty soldier, were all civilians and the targets were nowhere near anything military. The intentionally aim at population centers
Maybe don't use your civilians as human shields then. Why is your military next to your civilians? See how that works?
The fantasy of using civilians as a means to say this is a war crime is out the window. In order to stop one country from killing your population, most often the revers effect is the same. neither of which are justified. in order to stop the third Reich the majority of Germany was destroyed along with the mass civilian death. Attacking promptly and aggressively carries civilian death in most cases (U.S. attacking japan). This is a cycle that happens in humanity every so often, one can say we tend to take life for granted over-time. Then some big event or catastrophe happens and a group of nations put some international body in place to reduce big wars and conflicts, this usually hinders large scale conflicts for about 50-80 years until that generation forgets and or history is no longer connected to them some way and the same thing repeats again. Remember that The U.S. and some of the European nations carried the actions, in which there-after developed international body's to protect them from a similar attack like nuclear or mass genocide. The one's affected are the ones that repeat the cycle, if they were the victim last time in the cycle then they will be the perpetrator this tine around.
> The entire strategy of Israel's opponents in the middle east is to engage in war crimes.
I think war crimes are a lot more acceptable/understandable if they’re the only way you even potentially have a chance to get back at your agressors. Nobody blames the resistance during the Nazi occupation for what they did.
Israel is very much not in a position they need to perpetrate war crimes to win the war. They have already won. It’s like a cat playing with the mouse it killed.
This is probably what anti-Soviet groups in WWII thought when they allied with the Nazis and committed atrocities. Most people today don't seem to think they were justified in doing that.
> Nobody blames the resistance during the Nazi occupation for what they did.
Because the Nazis lost. Had the Nazis won, alternative history and all that, the argument would probably be the other way around, how, faced with overwhelmingly strong enemies, they "had to" create death camps to "get back" at their aggressors.
> I'd probably be considered left (or even far-left) by Israeli standards, but I'm in the "pro-Israeli" camp as conventionally understood online.
Would you consider ethno-nationalists of other nations (far) left, based on (speculating) their economic/women's rights/LGBT/other social stances?
(Orthogonally, I can certainly empathize with being pro-something, but not pro-everything-that-something-does. There's certainly nothing intrinsic to a Jewish state that would require firing at unarmed crowds.)
> Would you consider ethno-nationalists of other nations (far) left, based on (speculating) their economic/women's rights/LGBT/other social stances?
If your implication is that I'm an ethno-nationalist, I don't think that characterizes Israel or my thoughts about it, however much "ethnostate" is a favorite slur of people to use against Israel.
I think it might be a slur on, say, reddit, but isn’t most of the world a bunch of ethnostates? Isn’t that kinda one of the things that makes the US stand out, is that it’s explicitly not one? I’m asking this unironically, but I guess I thought e.g. Ireland was pretty homogenous, as is Japan, Ethiopia, Cuba, Peru, and Denmark. (Maybe some of those examples aren’t perfect but you get my point I hope)
> I’m asking this unironically, but I guess I thought e.g. Ireland was pretty homogenous
In the 2022 census, only 76.5% of people in Ireland were ethnically Irish. Over 20% of the population are foreign-born, with the most common countries of foreign birth being Poland, the UK, India, Romania and Lithuania.
So Ireland is far less homogeneous than you perceive it to be.
But the real issue here isn’t how diverse the state’s population is in practice, it is how the state defines itself in its own founding documents (such as the constitution) - as a state for all its citizens, or as a state for a people (ethnos) which is only a subset of the state’s citizens? Israel is (2) but essentially all Western nations nowadays are (1).
Even though the French and German constitutions still express the idea of a “national people” for whom the state exists, they consider anyone who is naturalised as a citizen as joining that people (“ethnos”). By contrast, a non-Jew can immigrate to Israel and become an Israeli citizen-but the state will still not consider them a member of the people for whom the state exists-only conversion to Judaism does that, and only if their conversion is accepted as valid by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate-non-Orthodox conversions will not be accepted, but they sometimes even reject conversions by overseas Orthodox Rabbis whom they don’t consider “rigorous” enough.
So Israel is actually unique in this regard - no Western nation makes becoming “not just a citizen of the state, but a member of the people for whom it exists” contingent on religious conversion. If you want a parallel, you’d have to look at the Islamic world, where non-Muslims are sometimes (not always) permitted citizenship, but are denied membership in the category of “nation for whose sake the state exists”
Israel really is unique among Western nations. Can you point to a Western nation where there is a constitutional distinction between "citizens" and "the nation for whom the state exists", such that you can belong to the former without belonging to the later?
And it isn't "essentially limited to Western Europe". The same is true of the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand – naturalisation as a citizen automatically makes you an official member of the "nation for whom the state exists". I believe it is true for most or all Latin American nations as well.
Now, Israel is not unique globally speaking – I think Malaysia's bumiputera status is a rather close parallel. But I doubt that's a comparison most Zionists are keen to draw attention to.
> "civic" nation-states) and non-nation-states
If you are going to argue that "Germany is a civic nation state, the US is a non-nation-state", that is a false and arbitrary distinction. Because American nationalism is an entirely real thing – but in its mainstream contemporary manifestation it is civic nationalist, not ethnic nationalist, just like how mainstream contemporary German nationalism is civic nationalist not ethnic nationalist. Now, historically America was arguably racial nationalist – America was a nation, not necessarily for any particular White ethnicity, but for White people [0] – but it has evolved from racial nationalism into civic nationalism
[0] The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited US citizenship by naturalization to "free white persons". The Naturalization Act of 1870 made people of African descent eligible for citizenship by naturalization, but people who were categorised as neither "white" nor "African" remained ineligible for citizenship by naturalisation until the The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (the McCarran-Walter Act) removed all racial restrictions on naturalisation. So US nationality law arguably was explicitly racially nationalist from 1790 to 1870, and remained so in a somewhat watered down sense from 1870 to 1952.
Yes, I hold the "America is not a nation-state" perspective. I generally like the analysis by Bret Devereaux on this topic (https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-...), but if that's not convincing I don't have anything to argue this point on beyond my own experiences that "American" is a "civic group" but not a "national group". So, we'll just have to agree to disagree there.
It doesn't really take away from my main point. Yes, Western Europe and pretty much all New World countries are "civic" oriented. No Western state, Israel included I am pretty sure, has in their constitution or equivalent that a subset of citizens has legal rights other citizens do not. The closest I can think of to what you asked for is actually the Baltics - not a citizen-subgroup distinction, but where there is a complex situation due to not having granted most non-ethnic residents at the time of independence automatic citizenship. Otherwise, we are primarily talking about symbolism in the legal documents and cultural norms in the population. Japan is pretty clearly an ethnic nation-state. Eastern European states were generally ethnic nation-states at the time of independence, but some are moving closer to civic nation-states now.
> Yes, I hold the "America is not a nation-state" perspective. I generally like the analysis by Bret Devereaux on this topic (https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-...), but if that's not convincing I don't have anything to argue this point on beyond my own experiences that "American" is a "civic group" but not a "national group". So, we'll just have to agree to disagree there.
But that's defining the word "nation" in a sense which deliberately skews it towards "ethnic nationalism" and away from "civic nationalism". If you are going to insist on defining it in that narrow way, then arguably France and Germany aren't "nation states" any more either, even though they used to be.
And while contemporary mainstream American self-definition is predominantly civic, 19th century Americans commonly viewed their nation in racial terms, as a state for the white race – so, if France and Germany have become "non-nation states" by transforming ethnic nationalism into civic nationalism, then in fundamentally the same way, America has become a "non-nation state" by transforming racial nationalism into civic nationalism
> No Western state, Israel included I am pretty sure, has in their constitution or equivalent that a subset of citizens has legal rights other citizens do not
Israel's constitution insists that all citizens are formally equal in the rights of citizenship, but at the same time officially relegates non-Jewish citizens to the symbolic status of "second class citizens" – what Western state has a constitution that does that? And, the reality on the ground is – there are complaints of real discrimination in practice against non-Jewish citizens of Israel, and unless you are going to argue that none of those complaints are valid, the idea that official symbolic discrimination in the constitution has no causal role to play in sustaining practical discrimination on the ground is rather implausible
> The closest I can think of to what you asked for is actually the Baltics - not a citizen-subgroup distinction, but where there is a complex situation due to not having granted most non-ethnic residents at the time of independence automatic citizenship
The Baltics do not have any legally recognised category of "citizens of the state but not members of the nation for whom it exists"; Israel does. The complex issue of long-term residents who lack citizenship you point to is real, but it isn't the same thing as what Israel does
> Japan is pretty clearly an ethnic nation-state
De jure, it isn't. Japanese law and court decisions are very clear: naturalised Japanese citizens are officially just as Japanese as anyone else. Membership in Japan's historical ethnic supermajority (the Yamato people) has no formal constitutional significance
Now, no denying the social reality that there is a lot of informal discrimination against non-Yamato Japanese citizens. But that social reality has no constitutional basis.
So you are comparing a state which officially declares in its constitution that some of its citizens are "not members of the nation for whom it exists", to a state whose constitution and laws never officially say that, even though it arguably remains a widespread informal belief/attitude amongst its population. Both de jure and de facto "second class citizenship" are bad, but there is an important sense in which the former is a lot worse
>In the 2022 census, only 76.5% of people in Ireland were ethnically Irish. Over 20% of the population are foreign-born, with the most common countries of foreign birth being Poland, the UK, India, Romania and Lithuania.
And there is alot of tension right now because of that. Not just in Ireland, but much of the West.
But really, why do you think states exist if not to protect the interests of its underlying culture/ethnicty/group. If not, why Canada refuse to join USA as a 51st state? From an economic perspective it would be logical, fron a political perspective they would have decisive power due to their relative population. What is the fundamental reasoning behind the refusal to join?
> If not, why Canada refuse to join USA as a 51st state?
Trump’s idea of Canada as a US state is constitutionally ludicrous, because it ignores the fact that Canada is already a federation of provinces - which are essentially equivalent to states, choosing a different name was fundamentally a branding exercise not a difference of substance-indeed, when Britain’s colonies in Australia federated, they decided to be called “states” not “provinces”, because their greater physical distance from the US made them feel less of a need to distinguish themselves from the US. So Canada as a 51st state would create the globally near-unprecedented scenario of a federation within a federation, states within a state. [0] Why would anyone wish to experience such a constitutional novelty?
If you were serious about merging the US and Canada, a more sensible way to do it would be to admit Canada’s provinces as US states. But the problem with that proposal, is not only do most Canadians not want that, I doubt most Americans would either. Sure, Republicans might seem open to the idea as long as it remains a Trump thought bubble with zero chance of ever being implemented - but actually adding Canada’s provinces as US states would fundamentally upset the balance between Republicans and Democrats in the US, most of Canada’s provinces would act like blue states in the US-even many conservatives in Canada are closer to conservative Democrats than liberal Republicans-and would probably shift US politics as a whole in a more “progressive” direction. I think if it actually started to seem like a realistic prospect, Republicans would turn against it out of their own political self-interest and block it.
I think the most realistic scenario in the long-run, is a sort of “exchange” in which Canada loses some provinces to the US (most likely Alberta) but then progressive-leaning areas of the US secede to join Canada. North America might end up reorganised along ideological lines, “Blue-America+Canada” vs “Red-America+Alberta”. Not happening any time soon, but over a century or two I don’t think the possibility can be ruled out.
[0] not totally unprecedented, in that Soviet-era Russia was a federation within the larger federation of the USSR-but the Soviet Union’s authoritarian political system made its federalism more nominal than real, nobody knows how a federation-within-a-federation would work in practice in combination with a genuinely democratic political system
I do not use it as a slur, nor do I think Israel is an exception in this regard - China, Japan, Korea, Ukraine, Poland, Sudan, Finland, Egypt, are all effectively ethno-states. They may host a few minorities, but they are primarily vessels for the self-determination and preservation of their nations.
Ethnostate is an ambiguous word. Does it mean ethnically homogenous? Israel is certainly not that. Does it mean, essentially, a nation-state whose "national group" is an ethnicity? Israel is that - but so is much of Europe and some parts of Asia.
Edit: I asked ChatGPT "How many nations have declared themselves to be the Nation-State of a people?" earlier and got the same answer as you. I asked again just now and got "Israel is the only nation in the world that has legally declared itself the “Nation‑State of the Jewish People.”" [I didn't specify Jewish]
Nationalism could be seen as a "left" movement in the first place in that it often served as an ideology of revolution against the (imperial) powers that be. There have been many prominent leftist nationalist movements and parties, from Sinn Fein to the PKK.
"ethnonationalism" is a redundancy, ethne and natio are just the Greek and Latin words for the same concept
Hamas are not Shia, they're Sunni. And Shia is not some some inherently violent ideology as your usage of the word there implies. And, while I'm at it, you should know the human crimes in the Gaza strip long predate Oct 7. Chemical weapons, starvation, terror bombing, these are tactics that the IDF's deployed in short time I've been alive (21st century).
The commenter is probably referring to Hezbollah and Iran.
And yes, the IDF has been relying on abhorrent & violently escalatory tactics since at least 1982 (Lebanon invasion).
On that note, I recently picked up an excellent book (“Our American Israel”) that dives pretty deep into the US-Israel relationship, and spends a good chunk of time on how the invasion of Lebanon was received by the West.
There are definitely some parallels between 1982 and the ongoing Gaza genocide with regards to the use of violence. But the most salient point to me is that it is quite clear that Israel learned a ton on how to ensure its image in the West does not easily get tarnished going forward.
Yeah, I know the playbook - deflect and deny, etc.
100k dead, more injured, highest number of child casualties in any modern conflict, countless statements of genocidal intent at the highest levels. But population growth is the metric we need focus on at this point, because that’s the Hasbara talking point du jour.
Also, just to add, a lot of this generic population data just doesn't factor in the current military action at all, they just operate on the last known figures. It's a complete red herring to this discussion. No one knows exactly how many people are in Gaza right now. Israeli policy is actively obstructing people from finding out. I suspect (fear) the total death toll may be well above the ~100k figure.
Has China exterminated hungry kids yet? Israel will definitley earn the first prize and will be handed a gold medal at atrocities, you should be proud of your country.
Of course it is, so long as you don’t lazily reduce it to whataboutism. The point is that this isn’t grounds for Nuremberg-style trials, because if it was, nearly every major nation is gonna have to go through it. Like it or not, they probably won’t go along with that idea, so it’s a non-starter.
You see, whataboutism is really only worth calling out in super low risk environments, because the potential future consequences are irrelevant. When we’re talking about putting the world powers on trial, the future consequences are now worth considering. Get off reddit, it’s poisoning your ability to reason.
I love the Jewish community, so I don’t say this lightly, but I view Netanyahu actions as somewhat resembling Nazi Germany in one respect (though certainly not others). He may not believe Israeli Jews have a birthright to the whole world (rather they are trying to strengthen one nation’s borders), but there is no doubt in my mind they are indiscriminately cleansing a people out of existence. That is their aim, beyond simple deterrence or defense.
The October terror attack is not to be defended, but the response is disgusting behavior by the state of Israel. There’s nothing proportionate about this. Rather Israel sees this as an opportunity to strengthen its position and wipe out its enemies - and innocent men, women, and children.
In the United States, we talk about Israel as if it must be protected because it’s the Middle East’s only democracy. It is not a liberal democracy. It exists only to protect the rights of one type of people with one particular type of ethnicity. In America, we wouldn’t recognize this as a democracy.
For our part, it’s important to protect our own interests in the region and so yes, strange bedfellows. But given Netanyahu’s comfort with war crime, given Israel’s weak and distorted democratic institution, and given what nationalism can do to a country, we should be very careful to balance and diversify our interests.
Israel in another 10 years might not be recognizable. It’s cause for alarm.
> Israel in another 10 years might not be recognizable.
The strange thing is, this statement held true before October 7th. Hopefully not everyone has forgotten that there were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets before the war, protesting what Netanyahu was doing to the Israeli government.
> That must be a harrowing situation. It didn't exactly look safe and low stress before the war.
If you mean in terms of the personal safety of the Israeli protesters, it's not dangerous or anything. Certainly nothing like the very brave people in Gaza protesting Hamas, who are actually living through hell, and who risk their lives by protesting.
Thanks, I appreciate the info. I saw some photography and reporting of the protests the summer before the war (in Tel Aviv, I guess) that honestly looked a little worrying. In my memory, they were relying on the military to keep order.
I'm not fan of the Trump administration, but nevertheless, no, it really isn't.
Arab citizens of Israel are systematically and legally discriminated against to an extent with no parallel in the US, and Arabs in the occupied territories (West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza) have effectively no rights at all.
They are coming for everyone that isn't white, christian, and voted for trump. Just check back on this comment in a year or two. These are fascists, there is nobody they won't demonize. Once they have run out of immigrants to incarcerate, and then trans and gay people, they will come after democrats.
Yeah, the narrative of America wanting to protect and maintain democracy has been completely crippled by its actions this year. It's an openly corupt oligarchy (as opposed to at least keeping a facade up for decades prior) for the short term present.
No need for weird acronyms, it has been looking like a clear cut genocide for months now and Trump comments about displacement more than show he is aware and doesn’t care.
It’s not even about being shameful about Israel support at that point. It’s going to be a black stain on both countries forever.
Another POV is that when you distill everyone’s experiences, not just yours, into legitimate votes, people, on both sides of this conflict, choose violence. Does the discourse you participate in achieve your goals? No, it achieves the opposite.
What is this discourse? “Sharpen the fractal of demographics and opinions until you get some rare alignment between them, and you find a supposedly irrefutable and most valid position.” Can you see why winning Internet arguments and getting upvotes doesn’t translate to your goals?
Of course you should share these thoughts and forums like these should publish them. But as much as I hate the Intellectual Dark Web and its philosophies, which are as ridiculous as, “you can gain power by thinking about things differently,” I think they are right that popularity contests are not the end all be all of conflict resolution.
RIght this isn't Israel as a whole, it's the crazed right wing Netanyahu government. I can understand taking out Hamas but their tactics have far superceded what is considered "not a war crime"
47% of Israelis believe that they should invade and kill every person in Gaza. 82% support the ethnic cleansing of the Strip[0]. I can't imagine what a higher plurality supports the "normal" military action.
I'm really surprised to hear another Jewish person speak about this in language that evokes the Nuremberg trials.
The article generally describes the IDF being asked to do crowd control with lethal weapons. For the most part it also described casualties (number unclear/unknown) as unintentional consequences.
I agree this does not look good but it's also not a matter of fact either. We don't know the facts, we don't know the scale, we don't know the intentions, we don't know who is making the allegations, we don't know the details.
War crimes in this war should be dealt with. Nuremberg trials is really not the right analogy.
> War crimes in this war should be dealt with. Nuremberg trials is really not the right analogy.
War crimes for firing into a crowd of civilians, for both the one that ordered it, and those that executed it, should definitely be at the same levels as the nuremberg trials.
The fact that it will never happen doesn’t detract from that. Happily, the ICC seems to already know so, which is why there’s warrants out for all these Isrealian leaders, no?
> The [League of Nations] is a political circus and [the Greater German Reich] is not a signatory. It has no jurisdiction.
> Even if [the Reich] was a signatory the [League of Nations] should only intervene after [the Reich] has done its own investigation and if it failed to hold the relevant standards.
See, this version wouldn't sound convincing to me in the slightest. So I'm unsure why yours is supposed to be any more so.
More broadly, this is either a hopelessly naive or tactically calculated take. 'Why does the police keep arresting criminals, before they've had a chance to conduct their own investigations of their own conduct?'
Wrong. Palestine is a state party to the ICC, effective 1 April 2015. The ICC has jurisdiction on the territory of its member states.
It is the position of both the ICC itself and the United Nations General Assembly that Palestine is a state and ergo entitled to be a member of the ICC. Whether Israel (or you) accept this definition of Palestine is largely irrelevant.
Moreover, whether Israel is or is not a state party to the ICC is completely without bearing on the ICC investigation in question, since Gaza is not part of Israel's territory under any definition, including Israel's own. To my knowledge, no state recognises Gaza as part of Israel, including Israel itself.
TLDR: It is Palestine's membership of ICC that results in the ICC lawfully exercising its jurisdiction on the territory of Gaza.
Palestine is not a state. That much is fact. It's not a matter of "position". It does not meet any definition of state. The UN also does not consider Palestine to be a state and it is not a member of the UN. The UN and the ICC can declare the moon is made of cheese and the earth is flat. Pretty much nobody recognizes the "state" of Palestine.
The ICC and the UNGA recognise Palestine as a state. A sizeable and ever increasing majority of UN members recognise Palestine as a state, and they make up the vast majority of the world by any measure - population, size, economy, what have you.
You are free to assert that you have fact on your side, that there is no dispute, that it's "not a matter of 'position'" all you want, but none of it matters. Your position on whether Palestine is a state (or mine, for that matter) is about as relevant to the membership of the ICC as our respective positions on the planethood of Pluto.
It's fascinating that Israel thinks it can dictate the membership of a body that it refuses to recognise, let alone join. The ICC decides who is a member of the ICC, and the ICC - consistent with widespread state practice in every continent on Earth - considers Palestine a state.
"In today's decision, Pre-Trial Chamber I recalled that the ICC is not constitutionally competent to determine matters of statehood that would bind the international community. By ruling on the territorial scope of its jurisdiction, the Chamber is neither adjudicating a border dispute under international law nor prejudging the question of any future borders. The Chamber's ruling is for the sole purpose of defining the Court's territorial jurisdiction. "
And yes, who am I to argue with China, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Yemen, Afghanistan, Egypt, Belarus, Syria, Sudan, and their friends. Clearly Palestine is a state.
EDIT2: Asking the various AIs supports my position. Despite the recognition of various countries Palestine is not legally a state as it does not meet the criteria for being one. I do agree that the Palestinians have been very effective in fighting Israel in the diplomatic arena but unless they actually negotiate in good faith with Israel I wouldn't count on their future prospects to actually have their own country. Palestinians in general also oppose the two state solution anyways.
> "In today's decision, Pre-Trial Chamber I recalled that the ICC is not constitutionally competent to determine matters of statehood that would bind the international community. By ruling on the territorial scope of its jurisdiction, the Chamber is neither adjudicating a border dispute under international law nor prejudging the question of any future borders. The Chamber's ruling is for the sole purpose of defining the Court's territorial jurisdiction.
I am amused by you quoting this. I suggest you re-read that, they're being very careful with their words, and they are entirely correct.
It is true that the ICC has no capacity to dictate to the rest of the international community what is or is not a state, or the location of international borders; that would have the causality reversed. Instead, it takes the definition of a state or the location of borders from the international community. As the international community widely agrees that Palestine is a state, it therefore satisfies the condition set by the Rome Statute for membership of the ICC.
And, as your very excerpt shows, the the ICC is perfectly competent to rule on who is its member and where its jurisdiction lies. I will admit I am somewhat surprised to see you quote something that so well underlines my argument. I trust this discussion is concluded, then.
I would also note the PTC decision is something that virtually no one talks about (since it's entirely consistent with the ICC's usual position and the decision makes it very clear that the ICC considers Palestine a state), but that does happen to be on the Wikipedia page on this topic, so I somewhat suspect there's been a regression here to strip mining Wiki for cites and refs. I also strongly suspect that those refs are going unread, if you think the PTC decision supports any view other than that Palestine is a state. This would seem to reduce your argument below the level that warrants engagement.
Perhaps, rather than trying to mine that Wikipedia article for ammunition, actually read it, and then go read the PTC decision, and have a long hard think about why many well-meaning rational people (most of the world, in fact) take a different position from you on this issue.
> Asking the various AIs supports my position.
In the future, please begin your posts with this, so people can save time engaging.
> In the future, please begin your posts with this, so people can save time engaging.
I'm sorry but you're the one who is not engaging.
I just used AI at the end of this conversation as a sanity check. I looked at my own arguments and said hey, maybe I am wrong. It wouldn't hurt you to consider this to. I think LLMs are a good tool for this.
Maybe you should consider why many well-meaning rational people take a different position than you on this issue as well. This "state" was formed out of thin air, without meeting any normal criteria for statehood, as a legal weapon against Israel. It does not meet any requirement for an actual state, it does not look like a state, it is not a state. Maybe you should give me your definition of a state.
Ask yourself how come there's no Kurdish state? How come there's no Baloch state? How come there's no state for the Sikhs? What makes Palestinians more deserving? The ethnic minorities in Iran would also love statehood...
EDIT: I'm always open to the possibility of being wrong. I.e. I'm open to look at facts that contradict my theories. Right now my theory is that Israel is being unjustly targeted as a result of antisemitism and world politics. There is a massive, well funded, PR campaign against Israel (primarily by Qatar but also with interests from China and Russia). There is a clear pattern of propaganda messaging here, including the one you're echoing. This doesn't mean Israel is always right. It doesn't mean there aren't war crimes (there are in any war). But it should be clear if you dig deeper there are different standards applied and there is a concerted effort to e.g. equate Jews/Israelis to Nazis, strip Israel of its legitimacy, not allow it to defend itself to the level that other countries are allowed to, excuse Hamas (and Iran e.g.) genocidal attempts and war crimes towards Israel, rewrite history, redefine language. Excuse and normalize human rights violations. This campaign is decades long. Again, I would really love to see Israel behave better but that campaign doesn't need or care about Israel's behavior here. This campaign isn't strictly against Israel, it's also against the west and western values. This campaign also directly translates into higher rates of antisemitism and violence against Jewish people worldwide.
The UN as a body, and the adjacent entities, mostly represents oppressive non-democratic regimes where people do not enjoy the freedoms we enjoy in the west. Ignoring the various outright lies, leveraging what the UN says or doesn't say as a way of supporting a moral, or factual, argument is problematic. UN (UNRWA) workers are documented to have participated in the Oct 7th attack on Israeli civilians. You would have a higher chance of making me change my mind by addressing the question of Palestinian statehood from first principles. Do they control territory? Do they control their borders? Do they have their own currency? Passports? What is the history of their state? What exactly makes them a state other than the political scheming to try and force Israel to accept a two state solution that Palestinians themselves reject today, rejected numerous times in the past, going back to the partition plan, and everyone knows has no chance in hell of succeeding. It's true that international recognition is an important part of being a state, but one can't make a state out of thin air solely with international recognition. Historical precedence is that a state needs to exist and then be recognized, not the other way around.
Palestinians deserve what every other human being deserves. This is not it. This is not the way. This is regression in freedom and norms. This is a post-truth world.
Israel has actively worked to prevent successful political statehood for Palestinians, for instance via supporting Hamas to fracture support for the Palestinian Authority [0]. Your comments here are a result of that work — if Palestine can’t form a state bc they can’t create internal statehood then all recognition of statehood is void.
In that context you’re correct, that Palestinian statehood doesn’t look like others’. Recognition of statehood by any entities is a strategic choice to attempt to break the stranglehold the Zionist narrative has on global politics.
One of the major goals of Israel’s anti-statehood work is to provide people like you the internal cover needed to continue to avoid looking at Israel’s war crimes and genocidal actions. It helps mend the cognitive dissonance between what Israel does and what Israel claims to be.
I hope someday you have the capacity to let go of that narrative and heal what’s broken inside of you.
This is propaganda. Like most- it has a grain of truth. Once the Hamas violently took over Gaza killing its fellow Palestinians and throwing them from rooftops ( https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna19150542 ) the right wing Israeli governments did to some extent prefer Hamas control of Gaza to chaos and liked the division this created.
But it's still a total lie and misrepresentation overall. This fracture was created and maintained primarily by Palestinians and reflect the division in the Palestinian public between the Jihadists and those that prefer other methods to eliminate Israel and the Jews. There is also a backdrop of the PA refusing to engage in dialogue. Israel did hand over Gaza to the PA and Israel did and still supports the PA to date. Without Israel's support the PA would not exist.
The Oslo peace process failed due to Hamas suicide bombing attacks on Israel that made it impossible to make any progress. Gaza failed due to Hamas taking over and using it as a platform to attack Israel. But more fundamentally Palestinians (enough or most of them) don't want peace, they want Israel destroyed. The Oct 7th attack wasn't called "stop the occupation of Gaza", it was called the "Al Aqsa flood". The intent was to murder all Jews in Israel.
But yes, once Hamas was a fact in Gaza, and there was zero chance of getting the PA to retake control, the Israeli government in its foolishness thought that stability with Hamas was better with chaos and maybe some benefit from that political split. There was also a ton of international pressure on Israel to let money and aid flow into Gaza under Hamas. There was really no obvious alternative other than the IDF retaking Gaza (which would look more or less like it's looking now, maybe slightly less worse, but not something the Israelis wanted to pursue).
There's nothing broken inside me. I would love to see peace. You should take a pause yourself and ask why you're joining the antisemitic mob here and aligning yourself with people who share none of your values. You should ask yourself for an example of when did Palestinians try to actually have peaceful coexistence and denounce terrorism and violence. I mean that would surely counter Israel's narrative here? The answer is never. Gaza launched rockets into Israeli population center and Palestinians in the West Bank keep murdering Israeli civilians. You got cause and effect completely reversed.
There is no cognitive dissonance between what Israel does and what it claims to be. There is a very logical and clear story about how we got here if you viewpoint is Israel's right to exist and to defend its citizens and you look at facts and history and not fairy tales or lies.
"the stanglehold the Zionist narrative has" is blatant antisemitism. This is the same old story of the Zionists (Jews) controlling the world. The truth is it's the anti-Israeli narrative has a hold on global politics and Israel despite mostly being in the good side barely gets by.
I agree these don't all look good but you're lumping different things under the same umbrella. And you're blaming the victim. If Hamas didn't attack Israel on Oct 7th then there wouldn't be Israeli soldiers in Gaza killing and getting killed and there wouldn't be issues with ambulances. It doesn't help that Hamas uses ambulances and that its combatants don't wear uniforms and rely on being able to pass as civilians as part of their strategy.
So yes, an Israeli ambush in Gaza that opened fire on a civilian vehicle is something that should be looked at. But they get a lot of leeway because it's a war and in a war mistakes can happen. In order for this to be a crime you need to show beyond doubt the soldiers knew these were civilians and intentionally wanted to kill them. There were other civilians that passed unharmed through the same forces and so proving intent is pretty difficult.
Whether it's on video or not doesn't matter. In a war soldiers will potentially kill civilians. The bar is different from peacetime operations. The war was started, and is continued, by Hamas. Yes it looks bad. Yes the IDF should do whatever it can to minimize it. Yes there are whackos.
I realize I'm not going to convince you but I believe that if the Palestinians stopped using violence you wouldn't see any incidents of Palestinians getting killed by security forces. The stories they are telling you about resistance and occupation are false. I am painting a broad brush here- Some Palestinians just want to live in peace. But too many do not. Pressure on Israel is misguided. Pressure should be on Hamas to surrender. Pressure on Israel emboldens Hamas, makes the war go on longer, and is not helping Palestinians. Even if you believe Israelis are evil you should still pressure the Palestinians because they are the ones who need to end this war. After the war is over we can talk about what to do next. Israelis can't and won't be pressured into letting Hamas remain in power.
I'm lumping them together as they establish a clear pattern of how the genocide machine operates. It's what you do, you kill civilians, doctors, journalists, destroy infrastructure. Then you lie about it. If you lies don't work you don't do anything about it anyway, you endorse this behaviour. You did this long before October 7.
A lot of the world ser you for what you really are.
You're misreading. The civilian casualties are very much intentional. They are being ordered to fire on unarmed people seeking food. There are verified reports of IDF targeting journalists and EMTs. I am also Jewish American and I am 100% convinced that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. I find it utterly reprehensible that this opinion can ever be considered antisemitic since the actions of the Israeli government are so incontrovertibly at odds with Jewish ideology. They shame us all.
Israel has been killing Palestinian civilians. Israel has been restricting food and medical supplies going to Palestinian civilians. All of that was beyond reasonable in regard to military objectives (e.g., bombing hospitals to take out a weapons stash). Israel's political and military leaders have expressed their opinions that Palestinians (not just Hamas or militants) are an ethnicity deserving punishment.
Note that, in the ICC's definitions, genocide does not require intent to eliminate the entirety of a group. It only requires targeting people based on their belonging to a protected group with the intent to diminish that group.
- Israel has not been targeting civilians. Civilian deaths have been a consequence of military objectives and actions. The military objectives are well defined, to release the hostages taken by Hamas and to eliminate Hamas. Both are within reason and not dissimilar to other wars. While it's possible that some war crimes have been committed the official orders and policy is crystal clear.
- Israel has been restricting supplies to the Gaza Strip, no to all Palestinians, as a result of a war. The Palestinian civilians are broadly the responsibility of their government who is refusing to end the war, stealing aid to finance its operations, and hoarding aid to enable the war to be prolonged. Just like North Korean citizens are the responsibility of the North Korean government (as one example) and the Russian citizens are the responsibility of the Russian government.
- Hamas is the elected government of Gaza.
- Various politicians in Israel made various statement. The official position of the government of Israel is that the war is against Hamas, not against Palestinian civilians. This has been said numerous time.
- Hamas makes extensive usage of hospitals and civilian infrastructure. Israel does not "bomb a hospital just to take out a weapons stash". Israel e.g. bombed near a hospital to kill Hamas military leaders in a tunnel. Or raided a hospital, while protecting civilians, to capture militants. Israel has supported the creation of field hospitals to ensure civilians can get some minimal care while Hamas is using the civilian infrastructure that was supposed to be for that purpose. https://gaza-aid-data.gov.il/main/medical-response/ Israel also facilitates moving of patients that can't be treated in Gaza to other locations. You are not going to find any example of a similar war situation where a one side has done more.
- Palestinians are not targeted because they are Palestinians or to diminish that group.
> Civilian deaths have been a consequence of military objectives and actions
So you agree Iran's rockets were fired as a defense against the cowardly unprovoked attack by the genocidal Israeli? Those rockets killed some Israeli civilians but since
Why place your Israeli military next to civilians then? Sounds like you are using your civilians for human shields.
> While it's possible that some war crimes have been committed the official orders and policy is crystal clear
It's genocide and it's been verified by trusted third parties. We are supposed to take Israel's word for it? Especially considering Israel shoots journalists and aid workers, it's pretty clear the genocidal regime doesn't want the truth of their war crimes to come out.
Etymology of the word is irrelevant when it comes to current usage, and current usage and understanding is neatly summarized by Wikipedia in the first sentence of that same article where your quote about the etymology comes from.
"Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people."
Israel is not "targeting Palestinians because of their membership of a group" and does not aim at the "destruction of Palestinians as a people".
Israel is at war with Gaza because Gaza has attacked it on Oct 7th and is holding Israeli hostages and has continued an armed conflict with it since then. Previously Gaza has launched 10's of thousands of rockets into Israeli population centers, executed terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, etc.
The "current use" so to speak of the term is just to weaponize it against Israel as part of a long term strategy. So by that definition - you're absolutely right. In fact the term started popping up before Israel responded at all to Oct 7th. Since Oct 8th more or less.
Israel's government is doing a genocide on the Palestinian people. The ICC sees it and that is why the war criminal Netanyahu has a warrant for his arrest and will be tried in the Hague, not Nuremberg, but close enough.
People ought to understand that this problem of innocent Gazans - often children - being fired upon by IDF soldiers isn't a new one, it predates the current food distribution operation.
An article from October in the NY Times detailing some well-documented atrocities ("44 health care workers saw multiple cases of preteen children who had been shot in the head or chest in Gaza") was published as an opinion piece, in spite of the fact that it consisted of dozens of eyewitness accounts. [0][1]
The incomparable sway that Israel holds in American media and American politics prevents pressure to hold those responsible accountable on an international level. When there's enough pressure within Israel to demand accountability for something terrible (and that's rare enough, outside of their peace movement) the conclusion drawn is typically that the soldiers are just careless, but not acting with malice. [2] If there's a single instance of an IDF soldier being held accountable for a civilian killing in this conflict, someone could make me feel a little better by sharing it.
I just want to point out something important about that article - it's not just talking about children, it's specifically talking about pre-teen children. Hamas recruits many "children" in the sense of under-18s to fight, but that's not true of pre-teen children.
(Btw, I don't necessarily agree that that article proves the IDF is firing on children, there's actually no evidence of that presented in the article. But I want to forestall a common "pro-Israeli" objection that is not true in this case.)
> I don't necessarily agree that that article proves the IDF is firing on children, there's actually no evidence of that presented in the article.
I think the appropriate term is "circumstantial evidence." A doctor wouldn't be in the position to actually witness the cause of a gunshot wound (hey, maybe all these well-placed gunshot wounds are the result of Palestinians shooting their own kids, I guess would be the alternate explanation...), but let's not pretend that these reports are not evidence of crimes, evidence worthy of investigation.
Most people do understand, there are many sites dedicated to citing and maintaining lists of the atrocities for easy access through google. I think it's okay just to refer to the incident in the article and immediate opinions and emotions it evokes.
Children are children. That's why we respond with abject horror when you see them hungry and huddled, riddled with bullets. If you have to prepend a nationality to "child" to justify it, then I regret to inform you that you are a racist.
It doesn't matter whether it happens in Israeli-occupied territory or an American middle school. It's absolutely reprehensible. "stop killing children you dislike" or "stop targeting journalists" should not be a controversial demand in the 21st century. Certainly not to a modernized military.
I always strikes me how the people that encourage the Palestinians to start wars they can't win are oblivious to how much of a shit bag they are for doing that.
I visited Israel for a sports seminar some ~10 years ago and met many nice people. I felt sympathetic to their reality of living in an ever-hostile environment from all sides, and struggle to keep their place in the world safe. I admired their resilience and strength.
When this Gaza conflict started, I saw how the Israeli protested against their government and demanded peace, so I thought there is a semblance of an excuse for glimpses of abhorrence being reported - "it's a small number of people in power, not the Israeli nation doing it, and also there are always 2 sides to the story".
Since then, there have been unfathomable horrors and crimes against humanity done from the Israel side, with extreme intensity and one-sidedness, and it's now been going for so long. I can find no excuse of any kind anymore, for what has been and is being done in Gaza. I don't think any normal person could. The weight of these things, in my mind at least, is such that if the Israeli people really wanted anything different, it was their human duty and utmost responsibility to stop this by now, in whatever way needed. They didn't... It's sad that people who have suffered so much as well, let themselves become the villains to this depth and extent.
I'm German and I really see a lot of the blame for this on our states as well - the US and the EU states (especially Germany, sadly).
As horrible as the Israeli mindset is, their subjective viewpoint is at least somewhat relatable: An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else, just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead - and will with very high likelihood experience terror attacks themselves. That this upbringing doesn't exactly make you want to engage with the other side is psychologically understandable.
(I'm imaging this as the universal experience of all Jewish Israelis, religious or secular, left or right. I'm excluding the religious and Zionist-ideological angles here, because those are a whole different matter once again)
What I absolutely cannot understand is the behavior of our states. We're pretending to be neutral mediators who want nothing more than to end the conflict, yet in reality, we're doing everything to keep the conflict going. We're fully subscribed to Zionist narrative of an exclusive Israeli right to the land (the justifications ranging from ostensibly antifascist to openly religious) and we're even throwing our own values about universal human rights and national sovereignty under the bus to follow the narrative.
If the messianic and dehumanizing tendencies of Israelis are answered by nothing else than full support and encouragement of their allies, I don't find it exactly surprising that they will grow.
What does it even mean 'to want nothing more than to end the conflict'? As far as I can tell it doesn't mean anything. Everybody wants the conflict to end, including the Israelis and the Palestinians. They just want it to end differently, of course.
In theory, we want to end it through the Two-State Solution (though even what this means is vague - certainty not the borders of 1967 that Palestinians and Arabs are demanding)
But yeah, in practice, we seem to want it to end with full Israeli dominance, and the Palestinians either emigrating to Egypt and Jordan or vanishing into thin air, I suppose.
> But yeah, in practice, we seem to want it to end with full Israeli dominance, and the Palestinians either emigrating to Egypt and Jordan or vanishing into thin air, I suppose.
No, the majority of the West strongly wants a two-state solution (on the 1967 border, roughly). So did many Israelis, who voted people into office intent on achieving that goal many times.
The problem is, Israel and Palestine never managed to sign an agreement leading to a two-state solution. And in parallel to the peace process, some Palestinians launched the second intifada, a terror campaign which killed many hundreds of Israelis. This eventually lead most Israelis to think that a two-state solution is impossible.
What exactly ARE the goals / demands of every side. Both what they say in public, and what's generally accepted as the rational real goals each side requests / demands / etc via peace talks as well as through violence.
The breakdown could even focus on factions within the nebulous term of 'sides'. An average citizen is likely to have looser criteria than a government / terrorist.
Hum... when I look at pictures of the very thorough destruction in Gaza (hospitals, civilians etc) it would seem that the israelis think "Remove Hamas" actually means kill everyone one in Gaza.
If not a genocide, at the very least an ethnocide.
It’s absolutely the case that Hamas hasn’t sued for peace with unconditional surrender. (Or recognised that the hostages confer leverage on Israel, not themselves.) Both Hamas and Israel remain belligerents in this conflict until one of them withdraws or surrenders, that’s just how war works.
There are a lot of atrocities being committed in this conflict. But bombing a school that was used as a missile launch site really isn’t one of them.
Mostly Israel due to a firepower disadvantage. But Hamas seems to be about as into committing war crimes as Netanyahu.
In terms of indifference to suffering, the people dying are in Gaza. Not Israel. Hamas should be suing for peace, not posturing because some fucks in Doha would prefer to punt the question. (Palestine unilaterally turning over its hostages would rob Israel of a tremendous amount of leverage.)
Dresden made the Germans surrender? We're really going with that now? Not the Soviets taking Berlin and Hitler blowing his brains out lest they capture him?
Also, the Germans sent untrained 15 year olds to fight Soviet tanks. That's as close to total battlefield defeat as has ever happened in history.
For the record, the firebombing of Dresden was indefensible.
I say this as someone whose family endured 6 years of Nazi German and Soviet crimes, including genocide, violence, rape, large scale looting and destruction of cultural heritage, and mass destruction of cities (85% of Warsaw alone was reduced to rubble, intentionally and systematically).
Why do I mention that? I mention that to underscore that just war is not utilitarian. You cannot justify Dresden or Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It doesn't mean you can't take strong measures, or that circumstances don't make a difference, only that the circumstances did not morally justify these acts. And it seems that the behavior of the Allies in Dresden and Hiroshima serve as precedent that is used to justify crimes like the leveling of Gaza and treating its civilians like cattle.
We stopped dropping bombs on Germany after they surrendered. If you are militarily defeated, then surrender typically results in the bombs stop dropping... unless your catchphrase is "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab" -- I probably wouldn't surrender to those guys or Russians.
Hamas goal with the hostages was exchange has Israel has tens of thousands Palestinian prisoners. Turns out Israel doesn't care anymore and will even sacrifice their own to further right wing Zionist goals.
Unfortunately this Israeli government has consisently refused to articulate any sort of positive goal. Netanyahu is only publicly against things. He is adamant about preventing a Palestinian state and crippling Iran, but seems to have no plan for what should happen in Palestine, hence the seemingly endless horrible situation there.
Hamas wants to destroy Israel, they are pretty open about it. They are also not really holding back about their antisemitism. The mass murdering on 7th October pretty much demonstrates what Hamas is about in general.
They also murdered the Gazan opposition after they were voted into power and have not really allowed voting since. They are pretty much not interested in increasing the situation for the people in Gaza. That's also why they are a terror organization.
The problem with enunciating real positions to domestic audiences are that the extremists on both sides will literally murder anyone who compromises.
Let's not forget Israel's domestic orthodox/right-wing Jewish terrorism and Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.
Ergo, there's even more incentive for leaders to continually espouse positions they know will never happen, but which play well at home.
As a violence in poli sci professor of mine once quipped, this is a 'the only solution is killing the grandmothers' conflict. Because generational narratives of victimization are so ingrained in large parts of both societies that there is no room for compromise.
Silence extremist voices forcefully, wait a generation, and then there might be a path to peace. :(
Who will provide the force to silence these extremist voices?
Maybe there are some parallels in this situation and late 1800’s-mid 1900’s Western Europe. The civil war on the European continent between Germanic states on one hand and French/British ended when two powerful outsiders (US and Soviet Russia) invaded and split the continent. During this occupation west Europeans nations learned how to live with themselves and to atone for their mistakes and to not repeat these mistakes. But they only learned this because they were under military occupation.
This scenario will most likely not happen in the Middle East and so I think there will not be peace there for generations.
The greatest chance for this was probably the US-Arab world, but the Shia/Sunni sectarian-political feudalism made that a non-starter, especially in the context of the Cold War.
As a colleague from Bahrain once quipped, 'the countries of the Arab world love to use Palestinians as propaganda for domestic purposes, but none of them actually give enough of a shit to make hard choices to solve the problem.'
Hamas' explicit goal is "from the river to the sea". If there is an alternative that they are willing to settle for, nobody knows what it is.
The individual Gazans almost certainly have one in mind, likely some variant of the two state solution. But Hamas is in charge, and there is nobody else to talk to about it. Ordinary Gazans don't much like Hamas but they are the only thing standing between them and Israel, who as you know is attacking with impunity.
Israel's nominal goal is to remove Hamas and engage such a negotiation, though there is significant doubt that this tactic is going to lead there. And they know that.
Israelis are roughly equally divided on what they want. About half want to wipe out Gaza and have control of (but not responsibility for) the West Bank. They are the ones in government.
The other half is much more amenable to a two state solution, but they are extremely skeptical of finding it. Long before the October 7 attacks, Israelis routinely have to shelter from rocket attacks. We hear little about them because they are largely ineffective, but it does not give Israelis a lot of confidence in any kind of negotiated settlement. That side is also happy to have Gaza walled off.
And all of these sides are backed by powerful outside forces for whom the conflict itself is their goal.
That is an extremely high level breakdown, as neutral as I can be.
In precisely the same way that the Nazis wanted their conflict to end with Jews emigrating to Africa (Madagascar according to their original plan) or vanishing into thin air.
At this point, I think the Two-State Solution has proven to be incredibly naive.
As long as there are outside forces, such as Iran, willing to embed & fund militants among the Gazan population, the -only- practical solution towards peace is assimilation: have Gazans broken up & spread out through Israel until law enforcement can be practically achieved.
Now assimilation sucks & will likely result in all sorts of social injustice, but I consider it a better alternative to the current ethnic cleansing.
EDIT: @casspipe suggested the option of subsidized resettlement and I agree that is another option that should be explored.
Even assimilation seems hard at this point. If I were a gazan I'd ask the international community to have Israel buy me decent housing somewhere safe in an arab speaking country. Like, I get it you are stronger and don't want me here but give me.somewhere decent to go. I often wonder what are the options for Palestinians and especially gazans who do want to get out of there.
There are not necessarily Arab countries that want to take on millions of Palestinian refugees. There is a broader issue that what you suggest is not considered good for the Palestinian cause. I'll give an example. UNRWA uses a specific definition for Palestinian refugees that differs from the general refugee definition used by UNHCR. They define Palestinian refugees as "persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict". This status also extends to their descendants. This means children and grandchildren of the original 1948 refugees maintain refugee status even if born outside Palestine. When you think about it, this is kind of the opposite of what you suggested. It creates a massive class of legal Palestinians who live in and are citizens of other countries (particularly Jordan), but are ostensibly waiting for their opportunity to return (or receive some other "durable solution" such as compensation).
In general, Arab states and Palestinian leadership argue that naturalizing refugees would undermine their right to return to their original homes. You can interpret this cynically: because many Arab states are not too friendly with Israel, having a massive class of refugees putting political pressure on them could be advantageous, and is probably one of the only ways to "defeat" Israel as a jewish state (because if all of those refugees had the right to live in Israel, jews might become a minority.) But it is true that removing refugee status without a just solution would erase Palestinian claims and rights under international law.
It's interesting to compare that treatment to the Mizrahi Jews who fled persecution in Arab states after 1948 and many settled in Israel. They're not refugees anymore. The Arab states stole tons of property from Mizrahi Jews (adding up to multiple times the size of Israel) but nobody is demanding that the Arab states pay reparations to Mizrahi Jews as a condition for peace. Meanwhile those same Arab states radicalize their populace against Israel by calling Israelis "land thieves" - the hypocrisy is quite amazing considering many of those Israelis literally had their grandparents' land stolen by those same Arab states.
That's not quite fair. The Mizrahi Jews the GP is referring to were kicked out of the country they were born in, and had nowhere else to go but Israel, the land for which was already "stolen" when the Mizrahi Jews got there. (Obviously settlements are ongoing so you can say that land theft is continuing to happen. If that's what you meant, ignore me.)
I've done the math, and if the US had given every Palestinian $100,000 to move elsewhere (surely enough to relocate) they could have forcefully relocated every single Palestinian without killing them all. And they would have spent less money than they have on bombs and stuff for Israel.
Still a dick move, but much less so than wiping out an entire group of people.
It's up to them and Israeli to decide, I guess. Not wanting to help is not the same as killing. If some stranger comes to your home, you're not obliged to let him in and it won't be kill, even if he died afterwards. World is cruel and nobody obliged to nobody, especially at population levels. It's much easier to help single person, of course, but accommodating millions is another matter.
> If some stranger comes to your home, you're not obliged to let him in
Sure.
But if you go over to where a stranger lives and build a wall around them. You are responsible if they then starve to death.
If another stranger is delivering food to a different stranger and you kill the food deliverer. You are responsible for that mans death.
These analogies are much more relevant to the discussion. Isreal is disallowing people from delivering food and has even killed people that do (leading to organizations like word food kitchen to leave).
> If I were a gazan I'd ask the international community to have Israel buy me decent housing somewhere safe in an arab speaking country.
The Arab states seized properties from Mizrahi Jews fleeing to Israel decades ago, land that adds up to multiple times the size of Israel. They have plenty of space to resettle refugees without asking Israel to "buy" their own stolen land back!
When Hamas uses hospitals for military purposes (or any purpose "harmful to their enemy" [other than solely medical care of injured Hamas combatants]), those hospitals lose their protected status otherwise provided by the Geneva Convention.
I don't like the prospect of hospitals being attacked, but if Hamas houses combatants or arms inside a hospital, attacking Hamas therein does not appear to be a war crime, provided Israel has issued a warning and allowed a reasonable time for Hamas to vacate the hospital.
The Geneva Convention does not provide "One Weird Trick to Avoid Combatants Being Attacked"
The Geneva Convention does not provide carveouts to particularly angry personnel. You can try to define fake conditions to justify it but the hearing hasn't happened so you're just speculating.
And you know what? You can document the torture, sexual assault and murder of innocent prisoners without getting a proper investigation from the ICC. Many US citizens will remember that from Abu Ghraib! Lord only knows how much the CIA is shielding Israel from the fallout of SAVAK. You might as well drop the moralizing pretenses and admit that you don't think a fair trial would be desirable.
I'm reminded of an episode of Saga of Tanya the Evil where a 'guerilla military unit' had 'taken over a captured city'. The progag's military unit had to go 'clear the city'. Their military commanders had given clear orders that all hostile forces were enemy soldiers who must be killed. They started by issuing a demand to release the hostages and allow them to exit the war zone. One of the few who didn't want to fight was shot while trying to escape. From that point it predictably went in a very bad direction.
As far as I'm aware, the citizens of Israel are free to leave that country* (free to enter another country is another issue, but they're also free to move about). It's terrorism and illegal military action to knowingly fire upon civilians. I agree with that for all sides of a conflict. The issue with the other side(s) in this conflict is that they do not present as a clearly identified military force. IMO the most proper solution is the same as evaporatively purifying water. Issue sufficient (<< heavy lifting here) warnings for civilians to leave an area, with an area for them to move to. Then any who remain in the military action area are combatants. Probably just like in the anime episode that showcases this circumstance. (war is hell, that's one of the hells.)
The very existence of guidance change on civilian casualties should constitute a war crime, because to put it another way, the IDF decided that Palestinian civilian lives were worth less after the terror attacks.
In other metrics, the October attacks killed 1,200 Israelis, plus 1,700 killed in the war. Versus 50,000+ Palestinian fatalities.
So we're at ~1:17 Israeli: Palestinian killed.
I feel like any human can agree there should be an ethical ceiling to that number. Maybe it's lower or higher than the current number, but it being unlimited is genocide.
The Gulf War had a more extreme casualty ratio of ~1:1,000+. Would you consider that an extremely unethical war? Should the US have done something differently to even out the ratio?
When one military force blends in with the civilian populace, actual civilian casualties will fall somewhere inbetween extremes (100% of those killed and 0%).
Ergo, excessive casualty ratios indicate that either (a) the enemy military force is larger, (b) the IDF is exceedingly good at killing only enemy combatants without taking casualties, or (c) a large number of civilians are being killed.
I don't think anyone would argue that Hamas has as many fighters as the IDF?
I don't think anyone would argue against the fact that the Geneva Conventions require combatants to distinguish themselves from the civilian population.
When Hamas fighters repeatedly, strategically, and intentionally fail to do so, I think they bear significant (and even the majority) responsibility for the resulting increase in what you call "actual civilian casualties".
> The very existence of guidance change on civilian casualties should constitute a war crime
Surely a change in tactics by Hamas could lead to a legitimate reason to change the proportion of civilian risks.
Imagine if Hamas were scrupulously avoiding all civilians and civilian structures by 200 meters before date X and changed tactics on date X to freely intermingle with civilians and occupy civilian structures with military units and arms.
I'd expect before date X for Israel to have minimal civilian casualties be considered acceptable and proportional, but after that change in tactics I would see justification for a change in the math to justify a higher figure as being the lowest reasonable amount of civilian risk.
And indeed, Israel has made token efforts to say this is happening, but I'm not aware of any proof. Which, coupled with the fact that the IDF is explicitly prohibiting reporting, isn't a good look.
Furthermore, even if Israel has a justification for large numbers of civilian casualties, there are other portions of the Geneva Convention it's obviously breaching:
>> ART. 53. — Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or
personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or co-operative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.
>> ART. 55. — To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.
>> ART. 56. — To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the co-operation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties.
I would say that more than one view exists of whether Israel is an Occupying Power in Gaza.
One is that Hamas governs Gaza and Israel is not occupying Gaza via a sustained and continuous military control of the territory and population, but rather has intermittent military operations and is otherwise more akin to an embargo. (The US was not "occupying Cuba" at the height of the Cuban embargo, for example.)
The other is that Israel is occupying Gaza, notwithstanding Hamas' claim to be independently governing the territory and the lack of continuous occupying military forces holding territory on the ground.
Whether Israel or Hamas has effective control over the territory and its population does not appear to me to have a bright-line/clear-cut answer. I don't think either side has less than 10% control, but I don't think they have more than 90% control either.
Iff they are an Occupying Power, then they have those obligations. Many of those obligations presume an effective control by an on-the-ground occupying force.
> It’d be convenient if Jews just stopped existing so the Arabs could take their homeland again
This argument betrays your bias: that the land is yours (Jewish I mean), and "Arabs" stole it and want to steal it again.
Of course, the other side sees it differently. They see a half a century of immigration to their land culminating in a partition that was imposed from the outside in Western colonialist fashion without the consent of the people living there. They saw massacres and expulsions and ethnic cleansing. That is the root of the conflict.
Of course now 80 years and many complications have passed; both sides have legitimate complaints about the other and many people have been born in both territories making them natives and not part of either colonisation or expulsion. It's difficult.
> All of the death toll coming out of Gaza are from Hamas and they revised the numbers back in April to show 72% of the deaths are military aged males.
This betrays it even more. Not only do you cite a non-credible source going against the consensus, but your argument is literally "Palestinian males between 16 and 45 are fair game for extermination". Not sure what to reply to that.
I find it exemplified in the disagreements even in the beginning of the conflict. I feel, pro-Israeli commenters either prefer to start with 1948 (The state somehow appeared like some sort of divine creation and was immediately declared war by all surrounding countries) or in biblical times.
Pro-Palestinian commenters usually start with the Balfour Declaration or Theodor Herzl's books, I believe.
I found 1881/1882 a good starting point, because this was the first time there was organized immigration that explicitly followed Zionist plans and ideology - I.e. people were not abstractly thinking about "returning to Jerusalem" and they weren't immigrating into the Ottoman empire for other reasons, but they were deliberately immigrating with the intention of (re-)establishing a "Jewish homeland" in the biblical Land of Israel.
If you are from US/Australia/... chances are you also think the land is yours and occasionally you celebrate what is for locals an "invasion day"
in this sense Jews are in a much better position because their presence in specifically that area many hundreds of years before Muslim conquest is archeologically documented. Unlike presence of Europeans in Americas or Australia.
What I say does not justify war atrocities. Just that "you are wrong to call it your land" is not a good working logic
I'm unsure what your point is, because that example supports my argument. There is no documented European presence but there is Native presence for millenia in those lands. Yet nobody would seriously argue that non-native Americans/Australians should be kicked out so the land is returned to their "original owners" as defined by "the vague descendents of the earliest known occupiers as defined in a muddy ethnoreligious way"... Yet when talking about this group in particular that claim holds?!
> Yet nobody would seriously argue that non-native Americans/Australians should be kicked out so the land is returned to their "original owners"
Maybe somebody would if they could? Or how about not kicked out but just made subordinate to government by native original owners, how would you like that?
I guess somebody else can say but Americans developed land, built infrastructure and democracy and did good more. But then the same can be said about Israel. And unlike Americans Jews did not invade somewhere new because they were there in BC era
I don't defend bad stuff done by Israel gov but I suggest condemning specifically bad stuff instead of suggesting "bias" that you did. It's a bit more complicated.
Not to mention, the claim that because you’re a boy in your late teens you’re a valid target… it’s just so incredibly…
Do I call it sexist? Stereotyping? What? It entirely denies the existence of males as anything other than enemies, and these are still children we’re talking about.
I'm Swedish. Since I was a child, for decades, I was taught and never questioned the idea that Germany had learnt from their history, in the most admirable way. That it was really ingrained into the German culture to never let anything like the holocaust happen again. That the education system there was very good in really making people understand why it happened, what went wrong, and how to make sure there would be no second one.
In early 2024, I was chatting with a German colleague of mine. Great guy, politically we were the most aligned out of anyone in our team. The genocide in Gaza was already well under way, so the topic came up. He told me, as if it was incredibly obvious "Well of course as Germany we couldn't possibly say anything about Gaza, given our history." For the rest of my life I will remember exactly that moment, where we were stood, the scene, because it came as a shock; this belief that I'd had since childhood turned out to be entirely wrong. It was the exact opposite - Germany had learnt nothing, in fact they'd learnt even less than the countries they had occupied. It was all a complete ruse, and I really lost all respect I had for how Germany has dealt with it all. A country like Japan at least doesn't even pretend to have learnt anything, and I'm not convinced that's the worse option.
I should've known the second news started flowing out of Germany such as "Award ceremony set to honor novel by Palestinian author at the Frankfurt Book Fair canceled “due to the war in Israel,", along with stuff like designating B.D.S as "antisemitic" but I wanted to believe that was just a tiny minority of ignorant people.
Yes, I know that now "the narrative inside Germany has been turning around" but imo it's far too late, and can't possibly be sincere, being entirely fuelled by external pressure rather than any kind of actual realization.
> "the narrative inside Germany has been turning around"
Fully agreeing with your post - and also, it's not. Maybe for parts of the population (though even there, many are extremely conflicted) but definitely not for the current (conservative) leadership. What worries them is that they find the country increasingly isolated and there is a growing risk they could become personally liable - this forces them to make some concerned noises if the atrocities become undeniable.
But they never stopped practically supporting Israel wherever they can, be it with military aid or preventing EU actions that might put pressure on it. They will also snap back into the unequivocally pro-Israel narrative as soon as they can get away with it.
As a German, I think you should cut your colleague some slack.
There's 8 billion people in the world who aren't German. If there's one topic that Germans don't chip in on, it won't move the needle.
Whatever we as Germans say on Israel/Palestine will be taken the wrong way by someone. Critical of Israel? Still an antisemite! Supportive of Israel? Pathological guilt!
It super sucks, but I too will leave it to others to voice strong opinions in this matter. And there's no shortage of that.
There is also an unspoken bit of realpolitik there: Israel is still an ally to Germany, Palestine isn't, Iran isn't, Hamas isn't, etc.
So this is actually a super-nice position to be in, you can support your ally no matter what they do, while still looking contrite and morally superior by pulling the "we are Germany, we are not allowed to have a say in the matter" card.
Also, Israel is a trade partner, which is important because the non-western countries are hesitant to trade with them. Israel is culturally integrated into certain European institutions, in part due to German support (soccer, Eurovision, other sports).
If this was conveyed more honestly, it would at least be understandable (up to some point).
I think what grates me is the dishonesty: We want to do both at the same time: A neutral mediator that advocates for the two state solution and the world's (second-)closest ally of Israel. That's like wanting to be both the coach and the referee. At some point it just becomes an insult to everyone's intelligence.
It half-way is, at least by the new chancellor Merz, who praised Israel for doing our "dirty work" in bombing Iran. And he was promptly criticized by the rest of the political establishment and the press for that.
Well, let's face it: Nobody likes the current Iranian government, and nobody wants yet another state (especially with a leadership like that) to have nukes. Just that nobody dares to do anything beyond sending strongly worded letters and time-wasting "diplomatic initiatives".
> Whatever we as Germans say on Israel/Palestine will be taken the wrong way by someone. Critical of Israel? Still an antisemite! Supportive of Israel? Pathological guilt!
How does that distinguish Israel/Palestine from any other issue?
I am interested to know why you call out Japan as learning nothing. Obviously modern Japan has an excellent reputation and is not known as a warring nation( "no military" but ofc they have the JDF) so I'm guessing there's something deeper I don't know. Genuinely curious.
That's not representative of the Japanese public opinion at all, so I fail to see how it supports the view that the entire country "hasn't learned anything at all."
What is the average level of knowledge around the history of imperial Japan. Is that period covered thoroughly in school?
I was under the impression that Japanese people don't so much deny war crimes, as they just don't talk/learn about the uglier parts of what happened during the first half of the 20th century. Is the Rape of Nanking a well known event in Japan? Are the significant battles and general tactics of the war(s) talked about? Do they talk about the Japanese Army's general treatment of foreign civilians?
I guess, what I'm wondering is if I asked the average person on the street these questions, would they know at all what I'm talking about? Would they have the knowledge to talk about it in more detail?
Is this like in the US where most people have no idea about American intervention in Cuba, and the rest of the meddling that the US was involved in in Latin America?
> I guess, what I'm wondering is if I asked the average person on the street these questions, would they know at all what I'm talking about?
They would, yes, but mostly because South Korea won’t shut up about it nearly a century and several ‘final’ sets of reparations later. It seems to be about as popular a political crutch in SK as it is to kill Palestinians in Israel.
I don’t know. It is about as relevant to current Japanese as the Dutch colonial past is to me. I’m sure we did plenty of bad stuff, but feeling remorse for it now is just bizarre. People several generations before me committed those crimes.
History isn't supposed to be about your personal feelings of ethnic pride or remorse. It's about learning from past successes and failures, and better understanding how people from different cultures may view each other. Other countries can and should learn from Japanese history too, because no country is immune to the mistakes that Japan made during WW2. Especially in this day and age, people around the world should have a hard look at how propaganda was used to commit atrocities.
Also if you care about national interest, it would be counterproductive to "shut up" or forget about past failures for an ego boost. That would make the country detached from reality, isolated from the rest of the world, and prone to the same failures.
Last but not least, it's very insensitive and inconsiderate of you to label South Korean trauma as a mere "political crutch" or the Dutch colonial past as no longer "relevant." Historical injustices can carry on to today's injustices much more than you think. You should try to see the perspective from the other side more before dismissing these things.
> People several generations before me committed those crimes.
It isn't that long ago.
There are still women alive who were used as sex slaves by the Japanese Army. I can see why their (SK) government is unwilling to let the issue be forgotten. Paying reparations does not mean that you can now forget the attrocity. Should the US not teach about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because it was our grandfathers who did it, and we feel like we have made it up by rebuilding Japan? Should we tell the Hibakusha that its time for them to shut-up, and there is no point in talking about what happened since the people who made those attacks are all dead?
The point of this knowledge, at least in the west, isn't to make you feel badly, or remorseful. The point is to remember that there are monsters lurking beneath the surface, even in the modern era. The Banality of Evil (the book) is about demonstrating that even a mediocre, non-fanatical, reluctant Nazi bureaucrat like Eichmann can be a pivotal figure in a genocide. We remember so that we don't repeat. Should we not learn from experiences?
It's covered in much detail as the other eras of Japanese history. At least it's widely understood that there were massacres, rapes, targeting of civilians, displacement and forced labor, etc etc.
It's true that the far right, disproportionately loud in online circles, tries to downplay all of this like in the sibling comment. It's concerning how social media amplifies these voices, but it's still not mainstream opinion.
>As part of a lesson, they were banned having an army
>They have powerful army anyway
>Millions of Koreans live in constant fear of the power and brutality of their army
I've been to SK numerous times. The older people dislike Japan A LOT. But their biggest base is a US one. I've never heard fear of the JDF. They have another more problematic neighbor.
The United States - who made the constitution that banned the military - does exercises with and supports the JDF. Idk if that fits unconstitutional anymore.
Their denial of horrid events and their attempts to suppress the fact that comfort women happened is undeniably awful though and shows many did not learn.
I would not extrapolate from the discourse with one German to a general statement of a heterogeneous population of ~80M people. There are many different opinions and positions in Germany - like in every country in the world. Please keep that in mind.
Germany has indeed still have a ‘vaccination’. How well it works, and whether it is not exploited by politics, is another matter.
Lastly, the conflict in the Middle East is one of the most complex conflicts in recent human history - and there is no easy way out. That also applies to the situation in Gaza.
As someone living in Germany, that philosophy of "we don't have the right to intervene or say anything" is definitely embedded in the culture here. Obviously there are plenty of people who don't follow this philosophy, and there are left-wing pro-Palestine movements here as well, but overall there's a big cultural sense of obligation to Israel due to Germany's history.
A friend of mine even ended up talking to a German diplomat in Israel, who said much the same thing: they could cosign other nations' condemnations of Israeli actions when they happened, but they couldn't condemn Israeli actions unilaterally. Obviously that was just his opinion and not an official viewpoint of the German government, but I found it fascinating that Germany still felt this sense of needing to make things right to Israel specifically.
Weird take. When does it end? Do you feel guilt and hold your tongue on subjects where your country has a history of doing bad? What’s the time limit? 100 years? 10000?
They’re rabidly and actively supporting & covering for a genocide, and have been working tirelessly to suppress all internal dissent to this position (good old Stasi days peeking from under the covers).
Further, they’re going to lengths no other European country is going to in pursuit of this goal of covering for a genocide, all out of national guilt? It is a delusional position to take.
Now, if they actually were holding their tongue on this instead of providing unconditional support and cover, no one would be bringing up that these are the grandchildren of Nazis lecturing us about the right thing to do here :)
> Germany is the absolute last country on this planet to lecture the rest of us on how to criticize Israel
What a bad take. Germany, if it learned its lessons from the Holocaust, which was a genocide they did on the Jewish population, is absolutely the FIRST country in the world to teach Israel that what it's doing is absolutely abhorrent. Don't repeat my mistakes, so to say.
So they perpetrated the Holocaust, claimed that they learned from their mistakes and drowned themselves in guilt, and now act as holier than thou unconditional defenders of Israel as it commits a genocide in Gaza.
If they want to support a genocide - regardless of who the perpetrator is - then they’re tacitly admitting that they have learnt nothing and are just following in the footsteps of their Third Reich forefathers.
At least the Japanese didn’t drown us with hypocritical bullshit about guilt and repentance.
> So they perpetrated the Holocaust, claimed that they learned from their mistakes and drowned themselves in guilt, and now act as holier than thou unconditional defenders of Israel as it commits a genocide in Gaza.
Yes, because they haven't learned shit from their past.
> idea that the injustice & domination should continue because there is no clear cut solution is pure evil
It’s prioritisation. There are multiple horrible civil wars, rebellions and displacements happening around the world right now. Every person doesn’t need to have a position on each one; there is an argument that’s counterproductive. (Exhibit A: the Columbia protests.)
Since you brought up the Columbia protests and general dissent inside the US: how many such conflicts and genocides are directly backed and propped up by the US?
Well, that’s my point. This is the only major ongoing conflict where the US and major Western powers are virtually unconditionally backing the “bad guys”.
So it makes sense that there would be more attention and pushback on this one versus others.
How exactly do you suggest that a country like Germany (since Germanys inaction was the topic of this thread) reach those goals? How does Germany end the blockade of Gaza? How does Germany end apartheid in the West Bank?
Just because I can’t do anything to improve the situation does not mean that I am in favour of the status quo. That does not make me evil either.
Are you seriously asking me this question, or is this an attempt at a rhetorical? And why are we shifting the goalposts once again?
How do you think apartheid South Africa ended? How does any country pressure another?
In a supposedly democratic nation like Germany, how would citizens pressure their government to stop supporting & providing diplomatic cover for another to commit a genocide & maintain apartheid?
> Just because I can’t do anything to improve the situation does not mean that I am in favour of the status quo. That does not make me evil either.
It does. The Germans who stood aside when the Nazis rose to power and the soldiers just "executing orders" were as much to blame for the rise of Hitler as the ones supporting it. Not taking a side against evil is taking evil's side. And you of all peoples should have learned from your history. Genocide is bad.
> How does Germany end apartheid in the West Bank?
By applying pressure on the international community to boycott Israel. Same way Germany is applying pressure on the international community to boycott Russia.
The idea that Isreal is occupying the west bank and or Gaza goes back to the 1967 6 day war and has jack all to do with Palestinian borders real or imaginary.
Those lands were the property of Jordan and Egypt...
Can you please stop posting flamewar comments? It's against the site guidelines because it destroys the curious conversation we're trying for. I know that topic is both important and activating, but that makes it more important, not less, to stick to the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Instead, please make your substantive points thoughtfully, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
Was the problem with my comment the use of profanity? I did not insult the commenter, nor did I make any ad hominem attacks.
I don’t see any rules against profanity in general, or the use of profanity to respond to an argument. I also took the time to clarify why the argument is “bullshit”. But maybe I am missing something.
The German relationship with Israel is very weird, to put it mildly, and I don't mean just the official government position, but the more broad political culture.
To the best of my knowledge, they are the only Western country in which there are far left groups that proactively support Israel specifically wrt what it's doing in Gaza. And by "support" I mean e.g. posters encouraging to drop more bombs on "Hamas Nazis".
David Simon (creator of The Wire) once gave a lecture at a Jewish conference trying to make the case that Jews in America should be uniquely aligned with the plight of Black Americans in the inner cities. The case was that the Jews went through an experience during WW2 that makes them uniquely qualified to always align in solidarity against oppression, poverty, and general suffering.
To be children of ethnic cleansing (obviously I’m describing the Holocaust lightly here) and still commit the same crime in Gaza is profound.
It’s a great point you bring up, that being, what have we learned?
Jews in America are not the ones committing a genocide in Gaza. Quite a significant proportion of the American Jews are absolutely horrified.
Can I ask why you think that American Jews are any more responsible for the crimes of Israel in Gaza than non-Jews, or Jews elsewhere in the world? Do you think that Judaism is a monolith, or that American Jews are the same as all Jews?
I ask because blaming Jews elsewhere for the acts of Israel, and conflating all of Jewry with Israel is a common tactic of anti-Semitic movements. I can't tell if you are doing that intentionally, or if you have just made your point poorly.
Assuming you are acting in good faith, you should look at the history of Black/Jewish relations in the civil rights eras. There was a disproportionate amount of support from American Jews (compared to the population at large) towards the civil rights movement.
MLK himself was outspoken about the support from American Jews:
"How could there be anti-Semitism among Negroes when our Jewish friends have demonstrated their commitment to the principle of tolerance and brotherhood not only in the form of sizable contributions, but in many other tangible ways, and often at great personal sacrifice. Can we ever express our appreciation to the rabbis who chose to give moral witness with us in St. Augustine during our recent protest against segregation in that unhappy city? Need I remind anyone of the awful beating suffered by Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld of Cleveland when he joined the civil rights workers there in Hattiesburg, Mississippi? And who can ever forget the sacrifice of two Jewish lives, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, in the swamps of Mississippi? It would be impossible to record the contribution that the Jewish people have made toward the Negro's struggle for freedom—it has been so great."
I dont believe you're the same. Just saying that Zionists wants this conflation, it plays into Israel being the only safe place for Jews and they want it like that.
> An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else,
They know perfectly well that their settlers are conducting daily pogroms against Palestinian villages in the West Bank, protected by their own army. They know perfectly well that thousands of Palestinians are detained for years without due process, trialled by military courts, kept in a state of apartheid.
The situation is not static. The oppression of the Palestinians is active, progressive, and happens every day. This is not a state you're born in, but it is something you actively participate in or decide to ignore. Those who say "this is just the situation now" are disingenuous, as new crimes by one side against the other are perpetrated every day.
Israel and people of Jewish heritage has a lot of soft-power in the west. And the anti-terrorism rhetoric that Israeli's using to sell this has has previously been deployed by the west to cover up it's own crimes.
I would argue that the Muslim world has gained quite some political power in the West, perhaps as a simple result of immigration. The EU for example seem to have about 50 times more Muslims than Jews.
Anti-terrorism rhetorics has indeed previously led to terrible crimes, but I wouldn't suppose that's a reason to support pro-terrorism rhetorics. It's probably best to look at the content instead of the type of rhetorics.
You're not making sense my friend. The recent Muslim immigrants have nothing to do with soft power and I don't see how that's relevant to this context. Are you saying that it counters the influence that Israel has?
And if we're talking about terrorism, IDF and Mossad are very much known to deploy terror tactics across a lot of their historical engagements. The definition of the word doesn't hinge on designation by a Western organization. And the vast majority of "pro-palestine" people in the world are not Iran proxies and secret anti-semites. They're actually, for the most part, young people that are working from a place of empathy and horror. The most blatant and harmful propganda in this whole mess is the attempt to designate pro-palestine protestors anti-semites and secretly in support of Iran and Hamas policies. What a terrible cheapening of the word. Point is, the ones using the most pro-terror rhetoric are those trying to defend the IDF right now.
>The most blatant and harmful propganda in this whole mess is the attempt to designate pro-palestine protestors anti-semites and secretly in support of Iran and Hamas policies
Propaganda? I am not very familiar with the details and frankly I don’t really care, but at the two pro-Palestinian rallies that I saw were used "From the river to the sea" slogans, and like all protesters were okay with that.
Different words/phrases have different meanings to different groups/over time.
To Zionists, Zionism means that Jews have the right to have a homeland, free of persecution. To non-Zionists, it means that Zionists think that they have the right to a specific area of land (Israel) and that that land is their god-given right, and that they are free to use violence to obtain it. To a secular person, the idea of someone having a "god-given" right to a piece of land is insanity.
"From the river to the sea" has been used to mean "Palestinians will be free everywhere" and also "the Jews that are violently occupying Palestine will be killed from the river to the sea".
I can't speak for specific protestors you encountered, but the majority of people I know that are anti-Israel don't want "all Jews to die" or even any of them. They just want the genocide to stop, for people to stop dying. It's really that simple. Protestors are protesting violence.
What evidence of this do you see? Non Jewish natural born Americans also outnumber Jews in America, yet I don’t see any immigrant students getting deported for criticizing Americans.
Jews have disproportionate levels of soft power in the US. Israel receives billions in support every year. Anti Muslim propaganda is pushed out every year in Hollywood. The medias coverage of Gaza is essentially one big lie by omission. Many states pass laws aimed to deter criticism of Israel.
I don’t see any other group in America that receives this level of support.
I thought I wrote pretty clearly what evidence I have: the EU has about 50 times more Muslims than Jews. That translates into political power in democratic societies.
I'm not an expert on US politics and the reasoning for why the US supports Israel. I do however think that it's sensible to see Israel, with its relatively free elections, women rights, entrepreneurship etc as a more natural ally to the US than other countries in the Middle East, regardless of the "soft-power" you're referring to. The fact that some of its enemies also threaten the US probably plays a role too.
What are you even commenting on? Did I (or anyone?) say that opposing genocide is supporting terrorism? Did I say that human rights are pro-terrorism?
The parent comment was dismissing anti-terrorism rhetorics because previously they were used to committing crimes. That sounds illogical to me, and that's what I was commenting on.
> I'm German and I really see a lot of the blame for this on our states as well - the US and the EU states (especially Germany, sadly).
I understand that you are talking about the recent era, but I wonder if you could speak to the history of the creation of Israel, and the German perception of that. Is there any discussion about the European role in the creation of Israel? After the end of the war, it isn’t as if there was a movement to return property and homes to European Jews. If anything, the powers in Europe after the war (and, in the case of Eichmann, pre war as well) saw Zionism as a solution for what to do with the Jews.
Is there any sympathy or responsibility felt in European communities for essentially using Zionism as a solution?
From my experience, the history of Israel as discussed in the media usually begins in 1948. A standard phrase is "The state was founded and immediately declared war at".
Sometimes discussion goes back a bit further about how the area was a "League of Nations Mandatory Area" before, that was for some reason was administered by the British.
That's usually it.
An interesting detail is that the legitimacy of Israel here is usually explained with the UN (the Partition Plan resolutions and the accepted membership) - not with any kind of divine right. I think that's quite different from how (right wing) Israelis see the source of legitimacy themselves.
I was basically getting at how does Europe see its role in the fact that a big part of what made Israel possible was the more or less complete displacement of European jewry during the war, and the complete lack of will to create a place in post-war europe for their own Jewish community.
This perspective comes from my own family history where a few relatives managed to survive the war in Nazi custody, but then spent longer in Western European refugee camps postwar than they spent in the concentration and death camps during the war. The entire family ended up outside of Europe (USA and Israel) since it was the most viable path out of the camps.
Basically the success of Zionism is due in no small part to the active support from Europe in the years after the war, and my question is, do Europeans see that in as self-interested terms as it can look. More succinctly, does the Western European community realize that creating Israel was a solution to the post-war "Jewish Problem" that conveniently did not require those nations to create a hospitable place for jewish communities within their own borders.
That's a very good question, and thank you for sharing the experience of your family.
I can't really say.
From what I see here, there is not a lot of discussion in that area. (That was the first time I heard about those refugee camps, but that may just be me)
From what I understand, the discussion for a long time was more about whether Jews would even want to come back to.Germany, after all the other Germans did to them.
German reflection on the Nazi period also happened in multiple stages. From what I know, the initial phase, right after the war, was quite inadequate. Yes, there were the Nuremberg Trials, but both Allies and Germans were interested in quickly getting back to some kind of "normal" and rebuilding the country - the US and the Soviets in particular in preparation for the imminent conflict between them. So a lot of Nazi personnel stayed in office.
I believe, support of Israel in that time was seen as a sort of reparation that conveniently made it unnecessary to engage with the Nazi past on a deeper level. (I did wonder when learning more about the conflict recently, why the Allies didn't designate some are inside former Germany as a Jewish state - let's say the Rhineland. That would have been entirely justified IMO. But of course the question of Israel was already settled at that time.)
There was a sort of "second stage" a generation later, during the Civil Rights movement, where students forced a revisit of the Nazi past. I believe, a lot of the currently known details of the Holocaust are coming from that phase. But I think they didn't say a lot about Israel and just saw it as an emancipatory, left-wing project.
Today, people here are enormously proud that Jewish communities exist again in Germany, though it's understood that it's still a lot less than before the war.
It would be an interesting question how the sentiment of German leadership towards Jews was in the 50s and 60s.
In case you are interested in the bigger picture, the camps were called Displaced Person camps in English. Most had closed by 1952, with the last one in Germany closing in 1957.
“Desperate and traumatised Jewish survivors refused to return to neighbours who had denounced or deported them; when some were returned to Poland anyway and met with pogroms and hatred, all prospect of Jewish repatriation evaporated. Following sharp criticism from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which was caring for Jewish survivors, in December 1945 Truman opened up visas in excess of the usual quotas for some 23,000 DPs in the American zone, two-thirds of them Jewish, and from January 1946 UNRRA too recognised Jews as a national group, to be housed apart from other refugees. In this case (and no other), the Soviets and Americans were on the same page, agreeing that refuge outside Europe must be found, ideally in Palestine. The British, having learned how strongly Palestine’s Arab population would resist this project, objected until, in 1948, they surrendered their mandate, leaving – as one departing official put it – the key under the mat. Of some 230,000 registered Jewish DPs, just over 130,000 would settle in the new state of Israel and about 65,000 in the United States.”
I think that part of history is largely forgotten. I don't think a lot of Europeans have much self-interest in mind when picking a side in this conflict today.
Well it's in their self interest to deny any culpability. That way older generations could say "Jews get out of Poland! Go back to Palestine!" And younger generations can say "Jews get out of Palestine! Go back to Poland!" Without acknowledging that taken together, these statements show they just don't want Jews to exist anywhere.
If a genocide survivor showed up on my doorstep with nowhere else to go, I hope that my reaction would be: Welcome fellow man. You must be desperate. How can I help.
Why do you feel the need to lash out at a stranger for expressing love for humans in need?
Do you have some life experience you would be willing to share that could help me understand why my desire to help people in the ways that I can elicits such a response?
Your "desire to help people" seems to consist of giving away things that don't belong to you. If you restricted your helping to giving up things of your own it would be laudable, when you sacrifice things that aren't yours to begin with it's the opposite.
But I don’t think I said anything like that. You asked if I would be willing to offer my own home and personal property to refugees and I said yes.
Now you are saying that I offered something that wasn’t mine to give. And that I should be condemned for it. I promise you, my living room is mine, and it is open to those who need it.
I really feel that you are not understanding me (hopefully), or that alternatively you are misinterpreting my words intentionally.
I didn’t volunteer anyone else’s home. I volunteered mine.
I’m not talking about moving an entire continents worth of genocide survivors to occupied land that I don’t control because I wasn’t asked about that. I wasn’t asked about what o would do if those people set up a system that perpetuated a new human tragedy. That seems to be what you want to engage on, but I haven’t said anything about that, I have only had related statements extended in ways that simply do not represent me or anything I have said to you.
I wanted to have an honest and open discussion, but that doesn’t seem to align with your actions and words. The world is better when we assume good intent instead of ill (it’s the only reason I keep engaging with you to be honest). If you want to do that, please engage with the words I have spoken, not the words or intent I haven’t expressed. Alternatively, if you want to keep attributing to me things I haven’t said and breaking the rules of discourse for HN, please stop.
My recent thoughts on why the US is complicit is that Israel is America's "bad cop" of the world. The trade is that the US will allow Israel to act with impunity in the region as long as Israel gets to be the bad guys to the world.
The reasoning for this is action about nuclear weapons programs. Israel gets to have nukes, developed by sending US expertise to Israel, while Israel has not been subject to nuclear investigation programs.
If things ever got bad, the US doesn't want to nuke the world, then face retribution, they want Israel to shoulder that burden.
> An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else, just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead - and will with very high likelihood experience terror attacks themselves. That this upbringing doesn't exactly make you want to engage with the other side is psychologically understandable.
This "entirety of the surrounding population want them dead" language is both dehumanizing, false, and (perhaps not intended by you) genocidal.
The "surrounding population" is not a monolith. I imagine only a very small minority of people want all Jewish Israelis dead. I do Palestinian liberation work with many non-Jewish people from the middle east (I'm Jewish) and have yet to meet a single one who wants me dead.
They all want an end to Zionism.
Some may want it replaced with an Islamic government (which at its best is not different from the ideal "Zionism" you may hear defended by liberal Zionists, and at its worst is no different from the Zionism instituted by the modern state of Israel today)
Most want it replaced with a secular state where everyone has equal rights.
If your intent was to explain the mindset of an "ordinary Israeli citizen" who supports Zionism, then I agree with you, but it's dangerous to say something like this without distinguishing why this is a flawed mindset which can only exist due to an extensive system of propaganda.
> These numbers are not the same as popular support for a single state “from the river to the sea” with equal rights accorded to Arab and Jewish citizens, as in recent international proposals. In 2020 polls, only about 10 percent of West Bank and Gazan respondents favored this option over either a Palestinian state or two states. Notably, a theological premise underpins the one-state preference: A majority of the Palestinian respondents believe that “eventually, the Palestinians will control almost all of Palestine, because God is on their side”—that is, not because Palestinian control will flow from demographic changes or from a joint arrangement with Israel.
I agree with you that it's not accurate to say that the entirety of Jordan or Egypt want Israelis dead. However, if we're trading anecdote for anecdote: I know someone who grew up in Saudi, and he told me that when he was growing up it was completely normal to insult someone by calling them a jew (especially someone you perceive as being stingy, scammy, or reneging on a deal). He said it was so normalized that when he came to North America, he had an awkward adjustment period before he realized that was considered unacceptable here.
Now, there's a big difference between calling someone a jew as an insult and wanting all jews dead, but I have no trouble believing that antisemitism is very common within the middle east. Don't forget that it wasn't so long ago that there was a mass exodus of jews from the Middle East and North Africa to Israel, which can only be explained by some degree of "push factor" pushing them away from those countries. So while "wants them dead" is probably an exaggeration, you have to empathize a bit with the fact that almost every other middle eastern country was quite hostile towards jews in the past 100 years, and there's not an especially good guarantee that they would not be hostile again.
Speaking of Germany - Israel really weaponized the holocaust, in the sense that's absolutely impossible to criticize Israel without being accused of antisemitism. I actually think it got to the point it makes difficult fighting antisemitism because it's evident to any honest person that the accusation is a weapon now.
I dont disagree with anything you said, but isn't that the role of elected leaders ? Actually making the difficult decisions that may be unpopular, but necessary ?
Or is it the leader class in most western countries have no sense of duty , are effectively cowards, and are in it just to have a profitable, white-collar career ?
It's a bunch of >60yr old western leaders who had 40yrs of seeing violence and terrorism in Israel and Palestine, and every couple years a naive western leader announces they want to fix it, while nothing changes.
People are just numb to the whole area.
The most difficult part is the fact Israel is wealthy and aggressive while (both) Palestine government has been the definition of dysfunction and tribalism for decades, even during peace times. Diplomatic solutions have became harder and harder since the 90s.
You can read the history the political bodies in West Bank and even they seem to not care to fix anything either. They have their own leadership issues (like never electing new leaders).
There’s a major gap between a western savior wanting something bad to stop and actually going there and accomplishing something.
> Or is it the leader class in most western countries have no sense of duty , are effectively cowards, and are in it just to have a profitable, white-collar career ?
They are cowards who are just in it to enrich themselves by bribery, theft, and extortion.
You are looking in the right direction and not seeing just how far our society has gone.
And they may even find it comforting that it's OK to bomb innocent civilians for years because that's the only solution they can think of to deal with their own dissatisfied populace ultimately, when things will predictably get worse in Europe as well...?
> Actually making the difficult decisions that may be unpopular, but necessary ?
What is the unpopular, necessary decision? GP is commenting on the US/EUs continual campaigns to arm and fund Israel's efforts in Gaza without pushback. I don't wish to misinterpret you, but this read to me, that funding/aiding human rights violations and genocide in Gaza is a "necessary" act.
That's a good question. I know, in Germany, saying - let alone doing - anything critical of Israel as a public figure has effectively been a taboo. The justification had always been the Holocaust and the perpetual guilt of Germany towards the Jewish people arising from it.
For a long time, that made some sense - it's starting to shift into quite horrific territory though, if leaders and communities interpret this obligation as some sort of absolute fealty towards the Israeli government, at the exclusion of everything else - even if that government itself is repeating the path of Nazi Germany. Yet this seems to be how a lot of German politicians interpret it.
I found the distinction exemplified in the "Never again" vs "Never again for anyone" slogans.
I don't understand what exactly is going on in the US, but there seems to have been a similar taboo, though maybe stemming from different sources (like that Evangelical end-of-days prophecy that sees Israel literally as part of a divine plan that trumps everything else).
I find it notable that part of Trump's voter support in the election were actually pro-Palestinian groups - because they saw Trump as the only alternative to a complicit Harris administration. Of course, Trump turned out to be even more complicit and openly embracing the Evangelical narrative.
So as far as US voters were concerned, there was no pro-Palestinian or even neutral options to vote for. There was just secular pro-Israel and religious pro-Israel. (Well, there was also Jill Stein, but she had no realistic chance of winning)
Of course there are other voices saying that all those justifications - Holocaust, biblical prophecy, etc - are just show and the real reason for the unconditional support is just ordinary geopolitics. The image of Israel as the "unsinkable aircraft carrier" that guarantees US dominance in the region.
>> An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else, just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead.
You have to look at the other side too. Palestinian's are born knowing that Israeli's have taken lots of their land through violent force. And they want to take more of it. And while the Israeli's live in a well developed wealthy nation they are condemned to poverty.
Consider the King David Hotel Bombing[1]. Israeli terrorists murdered nearly 100 people. In 2006 Netanyahu presided over the unveiling of a memorial plaque, alongside some of the terrorists involved in it, with the plaque specifically remembering the terrorist who died in the attack. So Israeli terrorism is fine, even worthy of praise.
And while the Israelis may grow up scared that the Palestinian's want them dead, 10's of thousands of Palestinian children won't grow up at all.
>> I'm German and I really see a lot of the blame for this on our states as well
I agree. It seems that all over Europe at least, the governments are largely going against public opinion on this issue. But it's not the first time we've seen this (Iraq being a recent example).
I found it a remarkable detail that from the shore of Gaza, you see the port of and industrial zone of Ashdod, only a few kilometers away. It seems almost like a permanent reminder that the entire area is in fact well-developed - the wasteland only exists where they live.
I do not think this simplification works. A lot of the conflict is about systematic attempts at expansion of Israel itself - that is what settlements are and always were. Removal and mistreatment of original population went hand in hand with that.
We are talking about all settlements into territory that was not Israel's regardless of the year. The settlements like that are internationally illegal precisely because they are clear attempt to use civilian population as shields in a land takeover.
That could all be true, it seems plausible, but I don't think any of it is necessary to explain America's unwaivering support for Israel.
American Evangelical Protestants believe that the continued existence of Israel is a prophesied necessary prerequisite for the resurrection of Jesus, who will then start the Apocalypse. They think they can force prophecy by defending Israel. It doesn't matter how badly Israel behaves, they think the ends justify all of it.
> Prior to this both sides were living reasonably peacefully in Israel and Gaza
That's simply not true. Israel never gave up control over airspace, land and sea borders after the disengagement and effectively put the strip under siege after Hamas came to power.
The west bank is cut up into hundreds of small Palestinian enclaves that are separated and controlled by the IDF. There is also a policy of systematically denying Palestinians in the West Bank resources and on the other hand priorizing the settlers.
Both areas have been under siege for decades, just with different intensity.
When the current government was elected - a year before Oct.7 - it made speeding up the land grabs and eventual full annexation of the West Bank a priority. Look at the ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich: Both have deep connections to the settlers and have made deeply dehumanizing statements towards the Palestinians. (Smotrich officially published his "Decisive Plan" in 2017 about his proposal for a "permanent solution": Either "encourage emigration", allow them to live as non-citizens with restricted rights in isolated enclaves or "let the army deal with them". Both ministers are fully on board with the current starvation policy - or rather, it's still too lenient for them)
Ben Gvir is now head of the Israeli police. Smotrich is finance minister and "Minister in the defense ministry", a special role that gives him the ultimate authority about anything that concerns the West Bank.
When I said reasonable peacefully I meant not killing each other and quite a lot of people in Gaza were crossing for jobs on the Israeli side of the border. I wasn't say love and social justice reigned.
When westerners and people like Bill Clinton have got involved they have mostly proposed having a Palestinian state with their own land but the Palestinians have mostly objected to Israel existing so we have the current stuff.
Yes, there was an exchange of job seekers, however even that was among a deliberately resource-constrained Gaza, with no hope of the situation improving.
Hamas was definitely not helping in those regards and Oct.7 cannot be excused. But Israel also never did anything to support an alternative to Hamas.
I recommend you reflect a little deeper on this topic. Maybe look a little bit into how Jews were treated in Europe and the middle east.
The Anti-Israeli crowd is throwing universal human rights under the bus. That crowd doesn't care about human rights under Arab and Muslim rule. It wants to see some imaginary "justice" at the cost of murdering the Jewish people. It promotes antisemitism including justification of the Holocaust.
I'm Israeli and your "relatable" is nonsense. Israelis engaged with the other side in good faith many times. We made peace with Jordan and Egypt. We negotiated with the Palestinians during the Oslo process. What we got in return was a suicide bombing campaign in the late 1990's early 2000's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_at... and then we got Oct 7th. Israelis would be happy with a solution that leaves the with those human rights that you appear to be championing, such as the right not to be murdered.
Modern anti-zionism is just another incarnation of antisemitism. There is really no other way to look at it or explain it. The selectivity and the images used are 1:1 with antisemitism throughout the ages. This is not about whether you can critique Israel or its government. This is purely Jew hatred and racism under the mask of anti-Israeli.
EDIT: And for people who are reading this comment who think antisemitism isn't a reasonable argument here I would recommend the book: https://www.amazon.ca/People-Love-Dead-Jews-Reports/dp/03935... ... Once you read this you will have a better understanding of the different forms antisemitism takes and learn a bit of interesting history too.
Almost half of Jewish Israelis polled said they supported killing everyone in Gaza. https://archive.is/nNzq4 About 80 percent supported ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
I don't think it's just propaganda. These folks know they'll materially benefit from Palestinians being dispossessed of their remaining land.
From the start of Israel’s assault on Gaza, the vast majority of Israelis haven’t shown any concern about the suffering in Gaza. Those who campaign for an end to the war do so purely as a means to secure the release of the hostages.
That's not surprising. They remember the scenes of ecstatic celebration on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank on october 7. And the fact is that the people of Gaza could end the conflict whenever they want. All they need to do is surrender and hand over the hostages. You might think i'm oversimplifying but actually that's really it.
The former prime minister of Israel Ehud Olmert has said Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, and that “thousands of innocent Palestinians are being killed, as well as many Israeli soldiers”.
Olmert, who was the 12th prime minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, wrote in an opinion piece for the Israeli newspaper and website Haaretz that “the government of Israel is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning and with no chances of success”.
He added: “Never since its establishment has the state of Israel waged such a war … The criminal gang headed by Benjamin Netanyahu has set a precedent without equal in Israel’s history in this area, too.
Maybe maybe not but i see no major movement in Gaza towards surrendering. Of course seeing how the UN and most media outlets are working so well to supress any anti hamas narratives in Gaza (it's either that, or everyone in Gaza supports hamas, an absurd suggestion but one which would ironically fully vindicate Israel. The dishonesty of the UN upsets me) , even if there was we would be unlikely to hear about it.
> Of course seeing how the UN and most media outlets are working so well to supress any anti hamas narratives in Gaza
... You have evidence of this? Or, are you making things up without any evidence at all to smear the UN; as we've seen Israel do countless times during this holocaust?
I keep hearing the “the killing would end if Hamas would just release the hostages”. But the Israelis keep offering ceasefire terms that include full release of hostages but no permanent cessation of hostilities, only 60 days and not even temporary full withdrawal from Gaza.
Why do you think the Israelis want to keep their tanks in Gaza even after all the hostages come back? Why won’t they offer a full and permanent ceasefire? I think this hostage justification is just Israelis buying time so they can keep on doing what they actually always wanted, full ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Nonsense. Anything less then a full military occupation of gaza for the medium term at least would be unacceptable. This is so blindingly obvious that it doesn't even need to be explained. Anyway it would benefit the gazans far more then a war
every 5 years.
If they wanted to ethnically cleanse gaza they would have done so long before October 7. You don't seem to understand the reality of war and the consequences of being on the losing side. Nor of the constraints Israel would be forced to work with if they had total control of Gaza.
You didn’t answer the question. Why won’t Israel commit to a permanent ceasefire if “the war ends when the hostages are released”? Why do they insist on being able to start the war again in 60 days if the hostages are all they want?
The hostages aren't all they want. from wikipedia:
>Israel's campaign has four
stated goals: to destroy Hamas, to free the hostages, to ensure Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel, and to
return displaced residents of Northern Israel.
Pretty clear and i never suggested otherwise. I'm not sure where you got that idea from
Please, I really don’t think you’re discussing this in good faith.
“And the fact is that the people of Gaza could end the conflict whenever they want. All they need to do is surrender and hand over the hostages”
So no, Israel decides how and when the killing ends and apparently that’s when “Gaza no longer poses a threat”. Who knows what that means but apparently it involves mass starvation, firing tank rounds into crowds, and destroying every hospital.
I can't comment on specific actions, but it would definitely mean the destruction of hamas and islamic jihad as well as systematically removing all weapons from the gaza strip and the destruction of all tunnels and terror infrastructure. If they surrender the process can happen without loss of life (even the death of all militants can be avoided with a negotiated surrender)
Gaza was a pretty enormous threat, so neutralising it takes an enormous amount of effort. If you cared about the death and destruction of gaza you would be calling for the end of Hamas. It's not like Israel wants to be stuck in an endless conflict in Gaza i think it has shown many times in the recent past that it is prefers peace to war.
The word surrender is carrying quite a lot of meaning but it's still good faith on my part.
If people were able to hit back from within the concentration camps would the inmates cheer it on? If they did would that have given Germany the right to do what they did?
Imagine if your city was invaded by a powerful enemy. They bomb the place to rubble. They blow up every hospital. They enact a blockade and hinder aid organizations from providing basic food. They do this for nearly two years straight and show no sign of stopping.
They say, “just surrender and it will all be over.” Are you going to trust that?
What are you actually expecting an average Israeli who does not agree with this to do? This comment strikes me as wild considering the exact same thing is playing out in America right now, and a bunch of people are making up their minds about "Americans" and what they stand for.
The same has been true for Iran, only up until now (and probably still) we have always had a more nuanced discussion - its the Iranian government, not the people of Iran.
Come on, the government of many countries does not necessarily represent the people.
The problem with this take is that the polls show a strong support for all those things that the Israeli government doing in Gaza among its citizens. That is, the average Israeli does agree. I don't think that the minority that disagrees is to blame, but they also clearly cannot meaningfully speak for the nation anymore.
In a similar vein, I'm ethnically Russian and a Russian citizen. I don't support the Russian invasion of Ukraine in any way, shape, or form, and I don't think that I am responsible for it as a Russian. However, it is also clear to me that the majority of Russians do support it (or at least think that it's fine), and on that basis I don't consider myself to be a part of that nation anymore, regardless of ethnicity.
Israel is supposed to be a democratic state. If the average Israeli disagrees with this they can speak up. The only voices we are hearing now are those who support it's current activities. Those who oppose are fewer and quieter.
I'm also baffled by the suggestion that democracy truly represents a majority and the apparent belief that dissent is quickly processed and rectified by democracy. Which country do you think shows this is working well?
It might be true that I am in a bubble and I am only hearing voices supporting these atrocities.
Democracy need not represent the majority, but if it works against the majority without any repercussions then who is to blame? Will the leadership be held accountable?
This war was started because the government knew they can get away with it. Every citizen is complicit in every crime committed by their government. Don't the citizens enjoy the fruits of crime even after claiming to oppose the actions of their government?
Yes, I am complicit in the crimes of my government. I am helpless do much, but the crime must be acknowledged. We are a part of the system, no sense in burying our head in the sand.
Only when a crime is acknowledge, we can talk about punishments. Will Israeli people not profit from this war? Protests will have some teeth if steps be taken so this will not repeat itself. I don't see this happening.
Look at USA, war after war. Presidents are blamed but not punished and the population enjoys the economical hegemony that is the fruit of war.
> What are you actually expecting an average Israeli who does not agree with this to do?
Funny you say this because you don’t have to look far for people saying that “Gazans deserve what’s happening” because the average Gazan should fight back against Hamas.
* The majority of the Palestinian population are minors (< 18)
* The last nationwide election in Palestine was 2006
In other words, the last time an election was held, the majority of Palestinians weren't yet born, let alone old enough to vote in it. So, it's difficult to hold the Palestinian people en masse responsible for Hamas in the same way we'd hold Israelis responsible for their current government, who held their last election in 2022.
The same thing has been said generally about Muslims and Islamic terror organizations.
Well anyway, it is still crazy to me that somebody is making a decision about the entire population of a country based on the governments actions in 2025.
I upvoted this article because it reminds me that there are Israelis who are opposed to what is going on. And newspapers that take risk to report on it. And maybe even military investigators trying to stop it.
Brainwashing by the government, religion, the media, schools, etc is what I suspect based on documentaries I watched. It’s heartbreaking what people can be made to think and say. I feel bad for the citizens of Israel to have become detached so much from humanity.
> if the Israeli people really wanted anything different, it was their human duty and utmost responsibility to stop this by now
It’s wrong to single out Israel. The US is funding this mass murder of children and blocking attempts to stop it. It should correctly be called the US-Israeli genocide of Gaza.
For my part, as an American and a nobody, I feel helpless to stop the atrocities my government is participating in.
But I’ve found, for myself, the reason to fight the genocide - however I can - isn’t because I expect to stop it. I am powerless to do that. For me it’s to maintain a sense of human dignity in the face of evil.
Knowing my country’s role in the mass murder of children, shrugging my shoulders would feel like I’m surrendering something precious.
There is strong support within Israel for the genocide of Palestinians.
Unfortunately religious zionism isn't limited to Jews. Christian evangelicals also support it, and they make up a huge percentage of voting americans (and even worse, elected officials).
I would put myself in the timeframe of the Holocaust era. Germans were next to the concentration camps and they did nothing. Germans were conditioned to support nationalism. And they trusted the nationalist party (known as nazionale Party). The Germans had convinced themselves that the Jews were different people. (And the Jews had earned much infamy during the time when Germany was suffering economically.)
Today, we see Israelis who are taught to perceive Palestinians as enemies. They see the Palestinian flag during birthrights and are taught by the IDF to hate it. And they are also taught that the west bank is dangerous and they are not to go there. Then we see IDF operations in West Bank and we see silence. We know Gaza is in a plight caused by Israel and we see silence and ignorance. Israel is bad. Israelis are bad too. And the polls have shown that 80% wish for Gaza to be cleansed, 56% support the forced expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel, 47% want the IDF to act according to the Biblical war against Jericho. That is effectively 47% want murder while 33% want expulsion (equivalent of the ghettos+concentration camps). The benefit of doubt is disappearing rapidly fast.
And the west has been supporting Israel for decades in this campaign. This is the second millenial crusade of Europe (aka the west).
I’m becoming very skeptical of the “bad government, good people” idea. Governments need popular support. This goes even for horrible dictatorships. There are degrees, of course. An oppressive state can survive with less popular support than a democracy. But it still needs a decent amount. The machinery of dictatorship is as much about keeping popular support as it is about forcing people to suppress their opposition.
I sometimes wonder if a section of the public just wants plausible deniability for committing atrocities, and their government is happy to provide that for them.
It’s not exactly that they consciously want cover to commit atrocities. It’s more that they can’t really conceive of people they don’t identify with as people. They’ll fiercely defend people they know, and they’ll side with people like them, but everyone else is a sort of vague abstract mass.
We see this in the US today with people who support harsh measures against illegal immigrants while they themselves have friends or family who are the targets (or they are themselves). Then they get very confused when their friends or family get arrested and deported, because “illegal immigrants” is this amorphous mass of bad people, not Jose and Clara down the street. You see it with racists who defend themselves with “I’m not racist, I have black friends.”
Such a person doesn’t automatically think ill of the “other,” but it doesn’t take too much to convince them that the “other” is evil and dangerous and must be dealt with harshly.
Anyone can be mislead factually, but we can't accept the idea that being told a crime is okay gives you a moral license to do it - otherwise every neo-nazi would escape among innumerable other criminals.
That's true, but you have to be realistic about the influence the five to fifteen percent with good morals are going to have in the long run. Especially when they also know the odds and choose to emigrate if they are able. There may have been a resistance in Germany, didn't succeed in the end.
At some point people have to be responsible for themselves if the concept of responsibility is to have any meaning at all. Our views and actions are all the product of our environment.
> Our views and actions are all the product of our environment.
And if that view is manipulated by people way more powerful than you...
I'm all for personal responsibility but we have laws against certain practices because companies can hack brains so well. You don't think states can do it just as well if not better?
Where do you draw the line? Was the thoroughly indoctrinated SS officer shooting untermenschen responsible, or was he just a victim of manipulation? What about the average Nazi who just went to work every day and thought the Fuhrer was doing a decent job?
I just can't implicate a whole country is bad because their regime is bad. I initially had to pause when you questioned "bad regime, good people" but find I can't say all of Iran or China is bad because of their govt - the countries I most often think of when that phrase comes to mind.
Edit: where do you draw the line? Is an immigrant from a 'bad' country a bad person? Why didn't we try more Germans if what you say about support is true?
I don’t mean to suggest that everyone living under a bad government is bad. Just that you don’t have a situation where the entire populace is good but can’t get their government under control. There may be minority rule. Maybe as low as 1/4th of the population supports the government and its actions. But that is still a lot. Far too many for me to say that “the nation” is against it.
There's something deeply sick in a society where the strongest objections to the genocide being carried out are not in opposition to the genocide itself, but rather that the indiscriminate killing could reduce the chances of recovering hostages.
> I’m becoming very skeptical of the “bad government, good people” idea. Governments need popular support. This goes even for horrible dictatorships
You're either being disingenuous or have never experienced real dictatorship. I lived under theocracy in IRAN for more than half my life and I promise you that the Westerns screaming from the back "just revolt!" have no clue what they are talking about.
These regimes control communication, the media, intact laws that punishes any kind of dissent and often has multi layered of security forces to keep the population in check (not including the regular army and police).
It's easy to shout this when it's not your life, your sibling, your child or significant other's life on the line. These regimes will not hesitate to murder their own citizens to stay in power.
I don't know enough about Israel's internal politics and their society to make an assertive comment but what I _can_ say, is that from my interactions with them, they seem like ordinary and kind people who have no intention of harming me or my family.
Unless you are psychopath, you are not going to wake up one day and decide to murder people.
This point of view whitewashes a lot of the history. Israel has been doing horrible things since its founding to Palestinians, starting with the Nakba in 1948 which was an ethnic cleaning campaign to create an ethno state. Many massacres occurred like in Deir Yassin in 1948 and continued with other massacres like in Kahn Younis in 1956 where they lined up more than 200 men over 15 and executed them against the wall.
With the continued persecution of Palestinians, whether its the illegal occupation of the west bank or the siege of Gaza which was essentially a concentration camp, that was "mowed" like grass every few years in terrorist bombing campaigns by Israel, its no surprise that organisations like Hamas, originally a humanitarian charity, exist.
Israelis want peace through domination, just like the French in Algeria. Be aware that Jews are not native to Palestine, except those that had been living there before the state was founded. They are living as colonialists on stolen land, and are continually denying the native Palestinians the right to return, which is part of the definition ethnic cleansing.
I say this as Jewish person originally born in Palestine (or Israel) and who had grandparents that survivide the Holocaust. Once I read about what really happened in 1948, that it was zionist terrorist militias that started the conflict and that Palestinians did not "simply leave", I became an anti zionist. I don't think Israel has the right to exist. People have the right to exist and they have the right to fight back against jewish supremacism.
I highly recommend the book by Prof. Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, from the academic perspective of the situations. His relative was once the mayor of Jerusalem and he's the Editor of the reputable Journal of Palestine Studies based in the US. The book begins with an examination of correspondence from 1889 between his relative Yusuf Diya ad-Din Pasha al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, and Theodor Herzl, father of modern political Zionism [1],[2].
Although the book was published back in 2020 prior to the current conflict, he correctly labeled the many years siege on Gaza by Israel as the act of war against Palestinian people, and it turn out to be manifested in the all out war in 2024.
> Be aware that Jews are not native to Palestine, except those that had been living there before the state was founded.
Not true, many Semitic Jews who fled from those lands due to persecution went to Europe and North Africa, that includes Ashkenazi and Sephardim Jews.
The difficulty I have with your statement is akin to denying a white, blue eyed aboriginal in Australia their heritage to the land just because one of their ancestors slept with a European colonialist - its fundamentally racist.
White skinned blue eyed Australian aboriginals exist.
Palestinians are genetically closer to the jews that populated those lands centuries ago. The reality is palestinians ancestors were mostly jews who decided to convert to islam. Denying their rights to continue living there is absurd.
The state of Israel is just another example of euro white colonialism.
>Palestinians are genetically closer to the jews that populated those lands centuries ago. The reality is palestinians ancestors were mostly jews who decided to convert to islam.
Thank you for pointing this fact, if this is true it makes the Israel govt as self-hating Jews, and is very sad and ironic at the same time. The Israel govt should perform thorough DNA test on the Palestinian people. Potentially many Palestinians can have higher Jews ancestors percentage than the emigrants themselves.
Im not saying that any of this excuses the nationalist movement Israel is today, im just stating a fact that semitic descendants in Europe have heritage to those lands. Just because someone appears white and blue-eyed doesn't necessarily negate that.
Judaism is an ethno-religion, so while some people may have no connection to semitic people, others will have a closer connection and its discriminatory to simply say “they are not native” which my original post was critical of.
Just because they are not native doesn't mean they can't live there, but they shouldn't live while oppressing the native Palestinians and prevent them from returning in order to preserve an ethnic majority.
Jews outside of Palestine are not uniquely descended from Jews that lived there 2000 years ago. Also the idea of Jews as a homogeneous people is a fairly recent phenomenon, people married into Jewish families, converted etc...
Even having mixed parentage can make you an oppressor. During slavery, mixed race people were often used in Brazil to hunt escaped slaves. At the end of the day its not about people's parentage but to what group they get put into and whether they choose to use any privilege they have to fight against oppression.
> Just because they are not native doesn't mean they can't live there
I don't make a claim that they should or should not be allowed to live there. My statement isnt about rights to land, oppressing others or national zionism.
My statement is about heritage and what it means to be “native”, obviously what that means for people and genetic links to semitic peoples varies greatly, and as such, you cannot make blanket statements that “jews are not native” just because you disagree with the nationalist movement.
And you can think the same way about russians. They support all horrors russian people do to Ukrainian cities. And many are trying to earn some extra cash out of it.
> In 2025 USA is supporting russian dictator more than Ukrainian democratic government.
Are they? I see USA still supplying Ukraine with weapons, how many weapons have Russia gotten from USA? None, USA is not selling any weapons to Russia still.
>it was their human duty and utmost responsibility to stop this
Do you apply the same standard to Palestinians for not overthrowing Hamas, to Americans for the US being the key enabler of Israel's military operations, to the citizens of any Western country for not adding Israel next to Russia in all their sanction laws? If not, why?
Or maybe we should be careful with assigning collective guilt and not throw stones in glass house?
It's a state founded on ethnic cleansing. People were already living there when settlers came to create an ethno-state for themselves.
In late 1947, their militias begun a campaign of massacring and expelling Palestinians from mostly defenseless villages. These refuges pouring into neighboring Arab countries is what prompted the 1948 war. When the war ended, they murdered any civilians trying to return to their homes.
Gaza was originally a refugee camp created for receiving these expelled people.
The ethnic cleansing and denial of rights has continued ever since. The current Gaza war is not when the crimes against humanity started. Israel has been commiting crimes against humanity throughout its entire existence.
> People were already living there when settlers came to create an ethno-state for themselves
Including a sizeable Jewish minority.
The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region. But it’s a continuation of outsiders (in particular Westerners, though the Iranians also bought this settler-colonialist nonsense which led to their recent miscalculations) with no connection to the land drawing up broad moral claims for how the Middle East should be divided up.
There was a Jewish community in Palestine (mostly centered around Jerusalem) but they did not come up with the Zionist project. Actually, many were opposed and some of their descendants still do so to this day.
> The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region
The (European) architects of the Zionist project literally called it colonialism.
"You are being invited to help make history. It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews … How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial." -Theodor Herzl
Ze'ev Jabotinsky literally compared the Zionist project to other colonial projects when arguing the people living there would fight back against their colonizers and the need for numbers and strength to counter them.
> Ze'ev Jabotinsky literally compared the Zionist project to other colonial projects
The Zionist Project is comparable to colonialism. That doesn’t make it settler-colonialism. (And Jabotinsky isn’t the final word on anything other than himself.)
The whole notion of settling outside borders is marketing for annexation but has total support from Western Governments, yet those same governments are absolutely against the annexation of Ukraine.
And history tells us that at some point those Jews are going to be a target. Other than the anomaly of the last 50 years or so. It wasn't that long ago that Jews in the US could not be members of golf clubs or were otherwise discriminated against. Antisemitism is on the rise again. If you think you can somehow magically decouple Jewish existence from Zion/Israel then think again. I've also built my life in a western country and antisemitism runs deep below the surface. Up until recently expressing that was frowned upon but seems that's changing.
I mean we know you guys run the media, control the money, run the US government, and fire space lasers from Mars. It's all fun and game until they burn your house and worse.
I'm also worried about Israel in many ways (re: ultra-orthodox ethno state) but if you think that living in Christian states or states of other ethnicity is somehow safer I'm not too sure about that. Even the European Jews that thought they were just Europeans found out they're not. And that story has repeated throughout history. To me a successful, democratic, moral, and Jewish, Israel is important part of the future of the Jewish people. And I'm not going to join the mob that wants it destroyed.
> The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region.
"Outsiders" like the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association that funded Zionist settlement in Palestine? The problem with folks who try to claim that this is ahistorical is that contemporary Zionists talked all the time about colonizing Palestine.
In 1920 (the year when British took over Palestine from the Ottomans) the jewish population was less than 10% Jewish and represented less than 1% of global Jewry. By 1948, after the British flooded in Jewish migrants mainly from Europe and the Americas, the population became about ~65% + arab and 35+% Jewish. Zionism was always predicated on Ethnic cleansing from the start and the founders of zionists were always aware of that fact.
“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country.” - Theodore Herzl , Father of Zionism in 1895.
"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement]. I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." - David Ben Gurion, Father of Israel.
"the world has become accustomed to the idea of mass migrations and has become fond of them. … Hitler – as odious as he is to us – has given this idea a good name in the world." - Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Founder of Revisionist Zionism, 1940.
Zionism is textbook settler-colonialism. I dont see it worth even arguing the point.
Given how every group claims it is a holy place, I'd expect each group would want it held in a state of peace, prosperity, and reverence for the benefits of creation. Instead they all seem bent on holding their holy lands in states of violence, discord, and waste.
You're not wrong that there is deep external interference but wouldn't holy peoples rise above any of that to do better from every side?
There's plenty of videos of orthodox Jewish people getting brutalized in public by Israeli government thugs. There are many Jewish voices that oppose the genocide. Please don't conflate Judaism with a violent project of political extremism, even though the latter uses the former cynically as a "human shield".
> Please don't conflate Judaism with a violent project of political extremism
I’m not. I’m arguing that one can oppose what’s happening in Gaza without careening into counterproductiveness and calling for the destruction of Israel.
A state named "Israel" is not a prerequisite for Jewish people to live peacefully anywhere. In fact, it appears to be the opposite, based on historical fact. There are also Jewish communities that live peacefully with dignity in Iran.
> A state named "Israel" is not a prerequisite for Jewish people to live peacefully anywhere. In fact, it appears to be the opposite, based on historical fact
That's not my take from 2000 years of Jewish prosecution, in muslim countries or europe
One could blame this crackdown on Israel, sure. But that absolves the countries perpetuating persecution of Jews from their own share of responsibility in it. After all, when the American Government interned all those Japanese-Americans - did we blame Japan for it, or did we rightfully blame the American government?
I do not seek to defend Israel's actions against the Palestinian people, but to say that the Jews live "peacefully and with dignity" in places where they often are scapegoated, persecuted, and killed out of hand is not the way. Look at what happened to the Jewish populations of the region between the 40s and now, and you will see a grim picture of persecution, killings, and exodus.
nettanyahu has tried to bribe iranian jews to come to israel. they've chosen not to so I can't imagine its that bad for them there. additionally, iranian jews have positionsof power in government and mandated representation. it would be a very easy argument to make that iranian jews in iran are treated much better than non jewish palestinians have ever been treated in israel.
" In July 2007, Iran's Jewish community rejected financial emigration incentives to leave Iran. Offers ranging from 5,000 to 30,000 British pounds, financed by a wealthy expatriate Jew with the support of the Israeli government, were turned down by Iran's Jewish leaders.[90][106][107] To place the incentives in perspective, the sums offered were up to 3 times or more than the average annual income for an Iranian.[108] However, in late 2007 at least forty Iranian Jews accepted financial incentives offered by Jewish charities for immigrating to Israel.[109]"
“Those who assign responsibility for the bombings to an Israeli or Iraqi Zionist underground movement suggest the motive was to encourage Iraqi Jews to immigrate to Israel.”
> state named "Israel" is not a prerequisite for Jewish people to live peacefully anywhere
Sort of irrelevant. The state of Israel exists. Israelis who call that land their home exist.
Those calling for the destruction of Israel are advocating for a holy war in the Levant. A war that would lead to hundreds of thousands if not millions of casualties.
> A state named "Israel" is not a prerequisite for Jewish people to live peacefully anywhere. In fact, it appears to be the opposite, based on historical fact.
Whatever else you think, this is some massive misunderstanding of history.
Historically, the lack of a state for Jews was one of the main reasons Jews experienced the Holocaust, which originated the term Genocide. Half of the Jewish population, making up (iirc) 90% of the population of Europe, died, because they had nowhere else to go.
And of the ones that survived, they still had nowhere else to go, no one wanted to take them in. The only place they could go, and what was agreed to worldwide, was to go to then-Palestine. Then, the hundreds of thousands of Jews "living peacefully" in Arab countries were ethnically cleansed from their countries, which they'd lived in for generations, and also largely had nowhere to go except Palestine.
Some people seem to have the idea that most of the people are European Jews, when in reality, it was more Arab jews, in large part due to the Nazis. The standardized language even reflects this, closet to the local pronounciation of hebrew than the "accents" in Europe. Or even Jiddish
Having a sizeable minority of some kind does not really justify or excuse kicking out other ethnicities and religions to form a new state based on the primacy of that group. The mental gymnastics to think that expelling people living there while bringing in a population from Europe to displace them--literally to the point of having them move into homes vacated by Arabs who were expelled--is something other than a settler-colonialist is pretty astounding.
And the ambivalence and opposition of the Jews of Palestine to the Zionist project is fairly well-documented.
Rabbi Yakov Shapiro talks a lot about that, I think Gabor Mate does to some extent as well.
> People were already living there when settlers came to create an ethno-state for themselves.
Isn't that just history repeating itself? Even in the old testament, they had to clear the current inhabitants of their promised land after wander the desert for 40 years.
Archeology suggests biblical Israel was actually a federation of tribes, some of which were enemies in early parts of the Bible. For example, the philistines which became one of the 12 tribes and also are the origin of the term Palestinian.
They never became an Israeli tribe, they were a people of a foreign origin, probably greek. They have disappeared from history after they were exiled by the babylonians, like most people of the area of that time.
What Palestinians need is what Israelis got: a state. To the extent there is an argument maximally antithetical to that cause, it’s arguing that Israel shouldn’t exist.
Arafat was an hero for the Palestinians, but he was the main responsible for the failing of Oslo agreements.
Moreover Hamas won the elections in Gaza with 45% of the votes and, as we saw immediately after 7/11, most of them was cheering for the slaughterings and the rapes.
Unfortunately Palestinians have an huge responsibility on the actual situation.
> Hamas won the elections in Gaza with 45% of the votes
That was a generation ago.
> as we saw immediately after 7/11, most of them was cheering for the slaughterings and the rapes
One, it’s unclear how widespread this was. But also two, you see similar dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israelis today. That’s just how human psychology works in a war footing—I think we and chimpanzees are the only species that will go out of our way to exterminate a threat.
> Palestinians have an huge responsibility on the actual situation
Oh sure. And I think whether a future Palestinian state could exist peacefully bordering Israel is a real question. But I would push back on the notion that a plebiscite today requiring recognition of Israel as a sovereign state within its current borders in exchange for a Palestinian state (with West Bank settlements transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction) wouldn’t pass.
Some surveys estimated that Hamas consensus was more than 60% before the 7/11. And this is the main reason why there is no other elections in West Bank since than: Fatah leadership is scared to lose elections.
> you see similar dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israelis today
I have many colleagues and friends in Israel and nobody of them is cheering about the civilian killings. At the opposite, they just demand peace and freedom for hostages.
This is the main difference: while in Israel a large part of population is against war and atrocity, Hamas is still supported by an huge part of Palestinian population.
> But I would push back on the notion that a plebiscite today requiring recognition of Israel as a sovereign state within its current borders in exchange for a Palestinian state (with West Bank settlements transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction) wouldn’t pass.
This was mostly the proposal of Oslo agreements and Arafat, as Palestinian representative, refused that. Do you really think that a public opinion supporting Hamas() , will accept that now?
() Hamas wrote in his statuta that any sionistic state must be unacceptable and Israel must be erased from the heart.
> Do you really think that a public opinion supporting Hamas() , will accept that now?
I think it’s worth a shot. (I wouldn’t put much worth in any polling in Gaza, let alone recent polling.)
One could even throw in a reparation fund for the lands Israel conquered since ‘48 as well as those which the French and British gave away. (Hell, eminent domain the West Bank settlers and pay them out, too.)
Even if it will win, having a state, means also to have an army. And guess what will happens immediately?
The problem is also the education: in Gaza, the school system (also the one by ONU/UNWRA paid by us) is completely rotten: they are not preparing people to improve their country, they are preparing people to become martyr and hate Israel.
> One could even throw in a reparation fund for the lands Israel conquered since ‘48 as well as those which the French and British gave away.
Do you have any idea about how many money the Western country put in Gaza for humanitarian and development projects? Well, a big part of those funds are spent on building tunnels, buying weapons and building rockets.
There is no any way to change the situation until Hamas would be there.
> Hell, eminent domain the West Bank settlers and pay them out, too
Israeli settlers are a big obstacle to peace and should be stopped and repressed with force. Unfortunately it will not happen until Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are part of the government
> Even if it will win, having a state, means also to have an army
Sure. Hence why having such a referendum is important. Also, Lebanon has an army as does Egypt, and both are fine neighbours to Israel now.
> Do you have any idea about how many money the Western country put in Gaza for humanitarian and development projects?
Reparations would have to be distributed directly to individuals and be contingent on such a plebescite recognising Israel passing. If Palestinians decide to squander it again, yes, we’ll see another war, but at that point we can begin treating it like we did Nazi Germany versus the non-state with mixed attribution it has today.
> it will not happen until Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are part of the government
If Palestine gave up its hostages and sued for peace, I don’t think these fucks would have a say anymore.
> In any case, Israel doesn't even have the right to exist
It does: UN resolution, 1967.
That you do not recognize an entire state to exist is an admission to preparing a genocide. The fact that 4 countries around Israel are preparing genocide justifies Israel’s measures are reasonable to maintain peace.
What is reasonable?
Well it’s not like Gaza didn’t start the shooting with 7000 rockets pre-October festival (I was myself surprised that Israel didn’t respond pre-October). Those rockets were indiscriminate against population centers, each of them were a war crime. So it’s reasonable to reduce the neighbor’s ability to wage war to dust.
Are the Gazans exempt from responsibility of their state’s actions?
To answer, we need to check whether the Hamas was imposed to the Gazans or whether they voted for it and, in a broader sense, whether the Gazans wish the genocide of Israel. It turns out the 2006 elections were almost the last ones in Gaza, and that’s when the Hamas was elected (and the opponents were not better). So the Gazans are aligned with the actions performed by the collective group of their nation, it’s not a small group of extremists, it represents the will of the nation, and therefore the facilities and support network of the Hamas are part of the war logistics, and deserves to be reduced to dust.
Did Israel act with restraint?
Israel has the nuclear bomb and has enough power to genocide if they want. The fact that they perform spot actions instead of sweeping actions is proof that Israel tries to discriminate the military, its support network with genocide intent against Israel (=pretty much everyone) and tries to spare the innocents, is proof that Israel is not committing a genocide.
Would that be the same UN that Israel (and the US, to a large degree) refuses to recognize the authority of? Can't have your cake and eat it too, friend.
> What is reasonable?
Not instituting so many decrees ("militaty orders") that even the military authority responsible for 'ruling' the area can't produce an accurate or complete list of all of said decrees. Decrees which, I might add, forbid planting flowers, raising a flag, operating a farm tractor, going to school, or making a bank account withdrawal without the permission of the Israeli military: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Order
Let that sink in: if you're a Palestianian you can't go to the bank and take out your own money without permission of the Israeli military.
Another military order allows the Israeli military to seize your business if you don't open during regular business hours.
Those decrees also allow Jews to "buy" (seize) land from Palestinians who refuse to sell to them, merely by asserting "power of attorney"
Not having snipers executing children. Not conducting missile and gun attacks on ambulances and independent worldwide-recognized medical aid organizations, and then attacking rescuers who show up to render aid. Not slaughtering an entire hospital's worth of patients and burying them in mass graves. Not slaughtering people lined up to get food aid. Not purposefully starving millions of people.
Not using a black-box AI to decide who is a "terrorist" and then blowing up their entire house, thus killing not only the supposed terrorist, but the entire family, or possibly the neighbor - because a "smart" bomb would be too expensive.
An UN agreement is still the highest rank of agreements for whether a state exists.
UN is shock-full of anti-Israeli militants, so it is also unsurprising that Israel doesn’t respect all of it.
> Let that sink in: if you're a Palestianian you can't go to the bank and take out your own money without permission of the Israeli military.
Is this money used for the war against Israel? If yes, it can be legitimately seized. If Palestinians didn’t swear the death of Israel, that would be another story.
Both parties wage a war to death. If Israel gets feable, it gets genocide.
The only way out is peace, but you are actively arguing for the entire eradication of Israel, with the entire weight of the Western Civilization behind you, so… oh man that doesn’t help at all.
> Not having snipers executing children
Depends what the children are doing. Without context, it seems horrible, and yet every time we’re filled in on the context that was conveniently forgotten by “journalists” (who are a certain socio demographic of Western youths, surprisingly), then we notice there’s more to it than “Israel kills blindly”.
If Israel killed blindly, they wouldn’t take so many precautions.
And the funny thing is, I’m not even pro-Israel. I’m just here to show the balance that you have forgotten.
Really? Is this why the world does not recognize the north part of Cyprus despite Turkish Cypriots not butchering any Greeks south of the border since 1974, when they unilaterally declared
independence?
Please name some other countries post-WW2 that were "founded by ethnic cleansing" and embraced by the international community and educate the rest of us. And please don't include previously warring peoples whose leaders agreed on a population exchange and imposed that mandatory trauma on their own people.
Palestine, Cyprus, and India had the unenviable luck of being long-term victims of a last gasp British empire's farewell divide-and-conquer gambit.
(and excuse me for ignoring the deflection trolling)
> Please name some other countries post-WW2 that were "founded by ethnic cleansing" and embraced by the international community and educate the rest of us
It was quite common and very accepted method in the 1940s, hell, expelling 15 million germans, some living there for hundreds of years, was proposed by Churchill.
The reason you never heard about the rest of these is because the people were resettled, not kept in a state of permanent inheritable refugee state financed by the UN with financial incentives to be kept that way.
>Please name some of other countries post-WW2 that were "founded by ethnic cleansing"
(proceeds to list examples of countries which were already founded before the ethnic cleansing events they mention or events I already alluded to)
It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to list Libyans expelling italians as a comparable example, when Libya was a colony of Italy. Ditto Germans, a people of belonging to the aggressor country. Bulgaria declared independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1908. And you have to explain why you included the pakistan link, as I already mentioned it in my post.
Look, it's not expelling some imperial troops. but peaceful citizens, who sometimes had lived there for centuries.
The idea that people of different ethnicities live, unmixed, divided by neat borders of nation-states is pretty recent. This was the case neither in Europe, nor in Middle East for a very long time before the advent of state-based nationalism in the 19th century. It was quite normal for people of different ethnicities, languages, and even faiths to live intermixed in certain regions, especially areas of intense trade, which the entire Mediterranean coast used to be. Borders were more about economic and political control than ethnic identity.
(The ethnic unity purportedly achieved by nation-states formed in 19th and early 20th centuries is also often more by fiat: look at the variety of German or Italian languages prior to unification of Germany or Italy, for instance, to say nothing about India.)
Palestinians can be arguably labeled as the aggressor country if that's how you want to spin the narrative. As Jews were peacefully buying lands when the massacres and ethnic cleansing started at 1929.
Most germans were living in their respected newly founded Communist Poland and Czechoslovakia for hundreds of years if not more when expelled.
Italians, even if they were colonialists, were expelled from their homes, by people who previously have been colonialists themselves, some when arriving with the arab conquests.
Bulgaria expelled the turks in the 1950s, and the partition of india, forming pakistan and india, were two newly formed countries around the time of israel and palestine, included ethnic cleansing from both sides
Do you think that these examples of ethnic cleansing post ww2 are irrelevant when no new country was formed?
> when the massacres and ethnic cleansing started at 1929.
Violent conflicts between Jewish settlers and local Arab populations have started long before that, pretty much as soon as the initial settlement began in the 19th century. Nor was it some kind of isolated incidents - Jabotinsky wrote https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-iron-wall-quot in 1923, and he wasn't alone in such views:
> There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority. ... Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the "Land of Israel."
No but when someone says "Israel is uniquely evil and must be destroyed because of [reason that also applies to dozens of other countries whose destruction they're not demanding]" it implies either ignorance or bad faith.
It's not a defense argument rather than reality. People seem to think this conflict is special, but usually due to ignoring similarities to their own countries and their own moralities.
Regarding court, there is a very valid defense in court called selective enforcement, and this is exactly for situations when someone is scape goated
The only thing special about this conflict is that it's far more "televised" than any other genocide in history, due to the proliferation of internet access and social media, and that the US is directly funding it.
I think it makes a lot of sense to be more incensed about the genocide in Palestine vs. the Myanmar civil war if you're an American citizen. Americans are struggling and the government is sending billions of our tax dollars to war criminals overseas.
Except that it's not a genocide, claiming Israel is out to destroy the Palestinian people after two years of war with precision bombs is hilariously incorrect and highly misrepresented.
There's a reason that your example includes mass civilian executions, rapes, ethnic cleansing and burning villages, largely hamas' tactics, rather than precision bombs and evacuation calls in different channels.
Because Israeli tactics are extremely counterproductive for a genocide. There's reasons why genocide is usually done by concentrating populations rather than dispersing, and why aerial bombing can't be used, as victims would flee, or why the victims aren't forewarned..
It seems this entire popular argument rests solely on propaganda and redefining words without any shred of critical thinking
I don't think it's possible to understand the whole issue without taking into account how people fled into Israel, both because of genocide in Europe as well as prosecution in multi-ethnic yet predominantly Arab states. Germany being in an awkward position of being an economically dominant state but also having contributed to the whole misery. Also the US is far from neutral probably due to deeper ties that are just part of reality. You cannot undo the past but I don't think it's possible to unroll the whole problem without properly confronting it. The increasingly horrific escalations have obviously completely detached from any reason
They fled into Palestine*, and later established the state of Israel. Saying they fled into Israel assumes there was an Israel to begin with, but there wasn't.
Yes, it was a British colony... Either way, the vast majority moved there after the state was established. And yes, most suffered prosecution around the world including Arab countries. Pogroms against Jews are documented since centuries.
People being killed in Gaza are the colonizers isn't it? In addition to being colonizers they clearly declared the goal of performing ethnic cleansing of Jews, and proved that it isn't just words by perpetrating genocide of Jews on October 7.
You nicely sidestepped the case of US where Native people are still fighting for their rights and would be killed the same way if they try to perpetrate against Non-Native Americans the things like October 7.
Palestinians perpetrated October 7, Native Americans don't do such things, thus no surprise that the situation is different.
>Maybe because it happened 1000 years ago
So, how old or recent it should be for you to dismiss or not an ethnic cleansing?
Netanyahu is not supported by all israelis, no question. But israeli isn’t a dictatorship - the actions of the state have been varying degrees of genocide and ethnic cleansing for 75+ years, and pinning that all on one man is bonkers. Do you also consider the war in Iraq a war between Bush and the Ba’ath?
Calling what I said “one siding” is similarly bonkers. My point is just to be consistent with the actions of both sides: israel had hostages before oct 7th - if hamas hostages are justification for mass murder of palestinian civilians, then israeli hostages before oct 7th justify the oct 7th attacks. To say otherwise is to one-side the situation.
To be clear: i don’t believe that hostages justify killing civilians. Doesn’t matter who’s hostages they are.
> i don’t believe that hostages justify killing civilians
It is, however, casus belli. And I don’t know how one fights a guerilla force without significant collateral damage.(This order, to be clear, wouldn’t count as collateral damage if accurately presented.)
“casus belli” is the stated reason to go to war. It says nothing about if those reasons are moral. Hamas had casus belli. The US has casus belli when bush invaded iraq based on lies about WMD. Hell, russia has it in ukraine (something something nato).
If you cannot conduct war against a guerilla force without murdering hundreds of thousands, destroying every piece of peaceful infrastructure, and blockading aid - then the truth is it’s wrong to conduct that war.
Casus belli incorporates legitimacy of war. Hamas had it, Israel had it. America did not in Iraq; Russia doesn’t in Ukraine.
> If you cannot conduct war against a guerilla force without murdering hundreds of thousands, destroying every piece of peaceful infrastructure, and blockading aid - then the truth is it’s wrong to conduct that war
If that force is conducting operations in your borders and against your citizens it’s no longer that clear cut. (This goes both ways in this case.)
Both Hamas and Israel have grounds for war. Both of them have conducted it badly. But in both cases, it’s not easy to see how they could have managed it that much better. (Well, actually, for Palestine it is. They should be suing for peace and handing over their hostages. Neither side looks smart when it takes innocent hostages.)
It’s not justifying killing civilians. It is justified for Israel to attempt to get their kidnapped citizens back. Hamas could minimize this, but you and I both know that maximizing Palestinian death is their preference.
It seems like you’re saying the oct 7th attack was entirely justified, as long as one of their goals was to free the Palestinians kept hostage by israel… or that you have two different standards of acceptable conduct for the idf and hamas.
> I don’t believe Netanyahu or the Israeli government glorify the death of their own people
The indifference shown to the fate of the hostages could have fooled me. But yes, Hamas and PJ treat their civilian population expendably in a way Tel Aviv does not.
The difference is that e.g. Māori or native Americans and whatnot are full citizens with full rights.
The "founded on ethnic cleansing" is not the most important bit from the previous post. It's the "ethnic cleansing and denial of rights has continued ever since" that's the most important bit.
No, the difference is that the native population of western countries very much disappeared, because this was an actual genocide their percent of population is now negligible.
While the Palestinian population in Israel proper is around 25% with full rights, while those under the control of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have rights in their respective political entity.
Again there are other examples of countries where the population lost all rights and were expelled like germans in czechoslovakia and poland or greeks from turkey
> the native population of western countries very much disappeared
That's simply not true. It's very obviously not true. Are you denying that Māoris and Native Americans exist today? I cannot phantom why you would say such obvious nonsense.
I no longer believe you are engaging in good faith. Good day.
Māori is something like a fifth of the population of New Zealand. You have no idea what you're talking about and have starting to spread falsehoods of Trumpian proportions. Maybe the Māori are eating the cats and dogs too?
> Facts is that most of the palestinians fled in the earlier phases of the war, and the very little instances of forced evacuation of the population where within the borders of Israel/Palestine, not out of the country.
People don't leave their homes voluntarily. They leave because of violence or fear of violence. The fact is there were Palestinians living all over the map at the "before" stage. Settlers came to form an ethno-state. The orders given to the Zionist militia commanders were literally "cleanse" this or that village. In the "after" stage, all these people are gone from most of the map and the ones trying to return to their homes are shot dead.
That is ethnic cleansing period. The goal was to create an ethno-state in a place where people already lived. These people have been getting confined to smaller and smaller areas ever since. And the oppression continues to this day.
> Regarding the "State founded on ethnic cleaning", in recent times this includes entire South America, parts of Africa, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
Zionists like most national movement of the same time goal was to form an ethnostate, just like the palestinian national movement goal was to form an ethnostate, or the czech, polish, ukraine, etc that's pretty obvious
> People don't leave their homes voluntarily
People flee war torn zones, that's not the same thing as ethnic cleansing.
> The orders given to the Zionist militia commanders were literally to "cleanse" that village
Yes, that happened, that doesn't change the fact that most of the population fled on their own accord, that a very sizeable part of the palestinian population remains in Israel to this day, and that the Palestinians were trying to cleanse the Israel population as well (and were successful in a few instances)
> So what? what's your point?
My point is that the horrors you cite are nothing compared to what your very own country was founded on (and that's an educated guess on where you are from, or all countries of the world founding story really)
>they have ethnically cleansed the Jews like in Hebron
Have you been to Hebron? I'd highly encourage it because you will see literally the most vile state sponsored racists in the western world.
The ethnic cleansing is not as violent as the gazan genocide but it ought to make any person with a conscience sick to the stomach. You walk around looking up at the settlement guards (more of them than there are settlers) pointing guns at you from guard towers as the racist settlers living above literally throw trash down on the Palestinian untermensch living below them.
Every year they squeeze Palestinians who live and work there further and further out.
It's also the home of the venerated terrorist Baruch Goldstein (10% of Israelis consider him a hero because he shot up a mosque), his shrine and Itamir ben Gvir - the national security minister who idolized him.
After seeing that place I became convinced that if anywhere was going to commit a nazi style genocide it would be israel. 8 years later thats exactly what happened.
Netanyahu, when addressing the troops, even said "Do not forget what Amalek has done to you", invoking the memory of the biblical commandment to genocide the Amalekites.
You don't have to have sympathy for them. Their religion literally tells them to kill children to steal their land:
"However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you." - Deuteronomy 20:16-17
And now they are literally doing it.
I wondered how an entire ethnic group could be so depraved and removed from humanity, where literally hundreds of thousands of their members in Hebrew Telegram channels cheer on children being burned alive. And now I know that, it was always their religion that caused their depraved behavior. From a philosophy of racial superiority to literally commands to kill children to steal their land. It was always going to come to this genocidal conclusion.
It's perfectly fine to say Judaism should be canceled, given how Jews are behaving publicly and without shame in their desire to steal land and kill children. They literally don't know that they're not supposed to steal land and kill children. They believe that's completely fine.
The biggest problem with this isn’t the horror of the actual war crime. The far more serious concern are the lengths the government will go to avoid holding anyone accountable. That is so much worse because it unintentionally endorses future crimes and challenges the offenders to take ever more offensive actions without fear of consequences.
They can take out nuclear scientists thousands of kilometers away by either planting bombs in their cars in traffic or firing accurate munitions through their windows when they sleep.
Thousands of kilometers away.
The IDF can be highly sophisticated in their plans and methods when they want to.
No, it’s war. Targeted killing of a military scientist is war. Gunning down civilians trying to get food is a war crime. If we start labelling all war as criminal, the term loses all meaning.
> war crimes are just a label for anyone in opposition to Western domination
Eh, there is a broad consensus on what constitutes a war crime. But there is also broad precedent for these rules not applying to major powers. (China annexed Tibet in 1951.)
I’d also argue that recent history has almost rendered the term worthless, as activists label practically every civilian death as a war crime.
I think the point is that if Israel can do pinpoint decapitation strikes anywhere in Iran they sure as hell can do so in Gaza, but they choose to bomb hospitals and flatten every single building in the Gaza Strip instead.
This. Israel demonstrably has the capability for precision warfare.
That they chose to level infrastructure across Gaza instead is indicative.
And it'd be real stretch to assume they did so even for military-economic reasons.
They knew the world community would give them some leeway after Oct 7th, so exploited it as far as possible to militarily achieve their geo-political goals.
To wit, the elimination of anything resembling a Palestinian state: politically, economically, and demographically.
Which is cynical and evil as fuck, given they're smart enough to realize they eventually either have to (a) kill every Palestinian or (b) make a deal.
Instead, they decided killing 50,000+ Palestinians was worth improving their negotiation position and kicking the can down the road.
> They knew the world community would give them some leeway after Oct 7th, so exploited it as far as possible to militarily achieve their geo-political goals.
That’s my read as well. I was strongly pro-Israel for decades and while I was never comfortable with the plight of Palestinians Hamas had a lot of the blame, too, but the last year really moved me over to thinking that the people who said most of the “accidents” over the years were intentional were correct. They can pull off these amazingly accurate strikes when they want to, it’s implausible that they suddenly have the precision of a drunken 18th century musketeer around aid workers and civilians. Their leadership clearly do not care and collective punishment is a war crime no matter who does it.
The term ”mowing the lawn”[1] has been used to describe their long term strategy, so I can ”excuse” someone for thinking that they can’t control the situation, but it’s been a tactic for a long time.
HN readers can recognize the tactic in other parts of our world too. It’s the strategy of people in power who believe they can control the chaos. When chaos in one group is a benefit to the other, chaos becomes a worthy status quo. When your military is infinitely more powerful, any uprising can eventually be exhausted, and you get automatic casus belli. The Cold War was full of this destabilizing politics, where superpowers tried their best to turn functioning socities into hellholes, in the hopes that it would spread in the enemy’s region. The same works for Israel. The less legitimacy Gaza and the West Bank Palestinians have, the longer they can keep building settlements. If they ever gain independence, it will cause another war, which has been planned for, because settlements have been overwhelmingly built on higher ground. Illegal settlers will not give up easily, and will likely gain military assistance.
To be fair, the Iranian state is a proper military. I’m not sure if there is a way to fight a guerilla force without massive civilian casualties. (Which is why one generally shouldn’t.)
A better analog might be Hezbollah. Surgically dispatched. Resolved with minimal follow-on nonsense from both sides.
On the flip side, this is not as controversial (or even at all in western media) when done by the Ukraine military (not specifically nuclear scientists). This is not a justification, but I think some characteristics of conflict are less interesting/important to focus on when trying to formalise critique against an assailant. This would be more important if contrasted with for example a conflicting ideological narrative.
I‘m sorry, but you’re comparing apples to bedrooms. Israel vs. Iran is a war/conflict between two proper countries‘ militaries - which means that both belligerents stick to certain agreed upon rules and military traditions, such as trying to separate the civilian from the military world/infrastructure. In lack of another word (haven’t slept, please forgive me for the choice of word), there’s “honor“ and a notion of equality and respect (somewhat) between the foes, even if Iran has declared it wants to wipe Israel off the map.
All of this does not apply to the conflict with Hamas. With them muddling the lines, it’s extremely hard to fight a “clean“ war. You’re between a rock and a hard place - either you lose but with your head held high and your moral compass intact, or you stoop to their level thereby slowly losing your values but win in the end. If that win is worth it or not, is heavily debated in the rest of the world, but only debated in the fringes of Israeli society. But no military expert is able to suggest a real alternative of fighting Hamas without inflicting heavy losses on one’s own army.
I find the committed war crimes abhorrent and wish they’d be heavily prosecuted at least.
For as long as countries like Israel stand against giving Palestinians a legitimate state, militias and terror groups will continue to rise. The US showed that it was possible to fight an insurgency as an occupying force without resorting to literally levelling cities. It was not easy, it took more lives than they hoped, but they did it anyway, because they at least acted like war crimes out in the open was off limits.
Until corrective actions with criminal penalties occur incidents like these almost certainly continue with possible increases of frequency and severity. More importantly though when this becomes a matter of conduct and military discipline is that it will spread to other areas even outside Gaza.
This isn’t just a matter of vague speculation as there are historical cases outside of Israel on which to see how things like this develop and what the consequences are both for the victims and the soldiers. These historical accounts also indicate soldiers committing these sorts of actions become victims themselves with catastrophic mental health disorders.
The idea Israeli government would hold anyone accountable is a laughable.
Israel got in trouble with ICJ court, because of quotes from top government officials. Government of Israel was very specific what they will do to Gaza! This was even full scale bombing started!
Trying to reinterpret this as a problem of "military discipline", and "soldiers are victim as well" is just another level of cynicism!
> The idea Israeli government would hold anyone accountable is a laughable.
It's happened, many times. Usually this doesn't make front-page news, but soldiers that break the law are sometimes held accountable. Not nearly enough, and I think it should be far more publicized as a deterrent effect (the fact that it isn't is a pretty big indictment of the current government). But it's certainly not laughable.
Well, he is on trial. So he could be arrested. Prime Ministers have been arrested (and jailed!) before.
A part of what the Isareli opposition has been pushing for in the last few years has been removing Netanyahu from power and presumably jailing him because of the corruption charges.
For each of their "operations" on Gaza they usually had one or two soldiers in trouble for something like stealing and using a civilians credit card. When there were many more serious crimes like deliberately targeting the disabled.
Even ignoring primary crimes, under Israeli law, even incitement to genocide is punishable by death. But so many members of the political and media elite have made inciting statements, that the rubicon is crossed; the political class cannot allow any serious, independent consideration of war crimes to ever occur, because that would risk them all facing the firing squad. This in turn signals to individual soldiers that there will be no accountability, even in the absence of directives.
Regarding the risk to Israelis facing the firing squad, you do know that Israel only executed Eichmann (and one other person in a field court) since the founding of the country?
When it comes to the list of things that Israelis fear, being sentenced to a firing squad is very low down.
Fair enough, but I don't think that makes the incentive much different. If you are convicted of a crime punishable by death, your actual punishment is not likely to be trivial.
Government and regime can always change. Post socialist countries convinced border guards, for shooting unarmed civilians, who were trying to escape across country borders. That was a crime even under socialist laws.
If Israel had regime change, new regime and majority of voters would be pro Arab... New government could actually enforce existing laws!
> even incitement to genocide is punishable by death
For that to happen, the government, and the overall population, would need to consider what's being done in Gaza and on the West Bank to actually be a genocide. I don't think popular support for that actually exists in Israel. Last time I checked, most of the population supported the annexation of Gaza and the forced eviction of the local population to neighboring countries.
I don't think I'll live to see a two-state solution.
There isn't popular support for it when you factor in the Israeli-Palestian but in opinion polling it has now gone beyond 50% among the rest of the Israeli population.
You may be missing a legal wrinkle: the crime of incitement usually does not require the underlying primary crime to actually occur. (Admittedly I'm not sure if that is the definition in Israel, but they inherited a lot of British law so it is likely). So this does not require the Israeli population to accept that this was a genocide, only that some war crimes occurred and that they should be prosecuted. Right now they are not there, but the point is that the government has an incentive to keep the population in that state.
Where I hope this comes back, after the conflict and a new Israel government, is human culpability for automated systems.
AI being whitewashing for IP is disruptive and troubling.
It being whitewashing for war crimes is a much more serious problem.
If Israel/IDF put in place a automated system that gave effectively caused war crimes to be committed, some humans in positions of power need to be held responsible and face consequences.
The world should not allow cases where (a) it's undisputed that war crimes occurred but (b) authority was interwoven in an automated system in such a way that humans escape consequences.
Sadly, it'll probably take the fall of right-wing Israeli and current Russian governments to have a hope of passing through.
For anyone else, who for some reason, feels compelled to comment without reading the article:
> Haaretz has learned that the Military Advocate General has instructed the IDF General Staff's Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism – a body tasked with reviewing incidents involving potential violations of the laws of war – to investigate suspected war crimes at these sites.
Now what will come from this (a proper investigation, etc.), who knows.
Why would the government hold someone accountable for its own actions? Let’s not pretend that this is just some random soldiers doing this, this is exactly what the Israeli government wants.
Soldiers shooting at civilians is a war crime. It does not matter what the intentions of the soldiers are. It doesn’t even matter if the civilians are also armed up until the point they display violent intent according to a common person standard. Shooting at a crowd is a crime.
That said the soldiers pulling the trigger are committing crimes. These are patently illegal actions to a common person standard which eliminates any defense of following military orders. That being said the soldiers, at least, are committing crimes. Accountability starts at the source of the crime.
If the government is ordering these actions then those are illegal orders, according to international standards of military conduct. The soldiers on the ground must ignore those orders on the basis of patently illegal conduct according to a common person standard and the officials facilitating those orders can be investigated for issuing war crimes.
NATO was conducting defensive operations against Yugoslavia around that time. It isn't clear that war crimes can be committed so easily by US allies. It'd be nice if they can be recognised though.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding here. War crimes are not judged by what a diligent investigation after the fact might find. It hinges on the information and judgement by those acting in the moment. You are a soldier told these armed people a click out are the insurgent group you are fighting? Of course you can engage them. And there is a similar lenient standard applied to whoever got that information in the first place. War by any other standard of course would be entirely unworkable.
Because "the govahment" is not a singular entity. In functioning democracies, by popular definition in large parts of the field, legislative and executive powers are kept separated from the judicial powers. So the executive power can not interfere with being held accountable. That's not fullt implemented everywhere, but that is the general idea how it is supposed to work.
Well, the civilian leadership is obviously in favour of massacring civilians, the military leadership orders civilians to be massacred, and the soldiers on the ground revel in the opportunity to massacre civilians. And the courts are happy to allow the massacre of civilians.
In functioning democracies in general, sure, you have to be careful not to tar everyone with the same brush. But in the specific case of Israel in 2015, it's not realistic to argue that the government isn't a single entity, so some parts of it may not be responsible (or even in favour of) crimes against humanity.
Well, there is actually a reasonable reason. Typically you'd want the government to hold people accountable so you could have the thin veneer of operating by the rules of warfare and not committing war crimes. That's usually been a popular strategy of the US for when someone goes a little too far (or gets caught).
As far as I can tell Israel doesn't particularly care for even looking like it's trying to behave responsibly. I don't think they've held anyone responsible for even some of the most obvious war crimes we have evidence of being committed.
> Why would the government hold someone accountable for its own actions?
Because that is what keeps the ICC off of their backs. The ICC only has authority to step in in cases where national jurisdiction is unable or unwilling to prevent and prosecute war crimes.
Can you please make your substantive points thoughtfully, without snark or flamebait? It's not hard if you choose to, and the site guidelines ask people to do so, regardless of how charged or divisive the topic is.
Ok. The parent is the same kind of rhetorical question, whose counter-argument is so evident that it shouldn’t have existed, and it’s disappointing that one side gets the right of way on HN and the other is downvoted, one camp is making use of flaws in your rules to win without merit, aka bullying.
Yes, the parent was the same kind of question; in fact I almost included that observation in my reply to you. However, it's all a matter of degree, and your comment was significantly worse in the degree of snark and flamebait that you were posting. That's why I replied to you and not the other comment. It had nothing to do with which side either of you are on, although I understand how it ends up feeling that way. (I've posted quite a bit about that elsewhere in this thread, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403947.)
Or maybe because this isn't happening at all could be the reason why because there is actually no one to hold accountable because this is just some hysterical anti semitic conspiracy theory.
It's even worse: Awful lot of people die for the careers of politicians and it's not limited to Israel. If someone needs political tension for weathering a scandal or economic turmoil, it can be created artificially by killing certain people and they do it all the time.
I have distaste for Trump but something I appreciate about him is his abilities to stage a theatre with his "fake" bombings. The more mainstream politicians have much more sociopathic tendencies.
If you think about it, %100 of modern wars are about who is going to be the administrator and doesn't feel like can win an election. We live in a world of abundance, there's no reason for a group of people to kill other group for their resources. If it wasn't for the careers of some people with huge egos all this can be sorted out through civil matters. After the wars it gets sorted out anyway, we don't see mass exterminations anymore.
We already knew this was happening from testimony from Gazans, it was obvious that the new US-Israeli monopolized "aid" organization was running the Hunger Games, with dozens killed by Israelis (+ US contractors) every time there was a distribution day, and horrific pictures and video of it. Entirely predictable too when the genocidaires are controlling the aid. It is good there is now proof from the inside as well.
> ...the new US-Israeli monopolized "aid" organization was running the Hunger Games, with dozens killed by Israelis (+ US contractors) every time there was a distribution day ... the genocidaires are controlling the aid.
It was apparently 2 VCs and not the military that came up with GHF (and if I recall, there even was a brief flare up between the ruling Cabinet and the Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, who did not want the IDF to be responsible for aid).
Even though the early planning was led by the Israeli military, two Israeli technology investors played an influential role in shaping discussions as they progressed, according to six Israeli and American individuals familiar with the GHF’s origins. One was Liran Tancman, an entrepreneur and reservist in the IDF’s 8200 signals intelligence unit, who called for using biometric identification systems outside the distribution hubs to vet Palestinian civilians. Another was Michael Eisenberg, an American Israeli venture capitalist who argued that existing U.N. aid distribution networks were sustaining Hamas and needed to be overhauled.
> One was Liran Tancman, an entrepreneur and reservist in the IDF’s 8200 signals intelligence unit, who called for using biometric identification systems outside the distribution hubs to vet Palestinian civilians.
Gives the feeling of the serial number tattoos the Germans used, with tech "fixing" the bad optics of doing that, but the biometric ID serves as one.
Doubting everything you hear from Palestinians is a key part of continuing to disbelieve that genocide is happening. Ignoring victims voices always props up the abuser.
As a westerner, I feel ashamed that my country is Isreal's ally. It makes me guilty by association because the western world is letting Israel commit thoses atrocities.
Worse, we are helping them when they need it, and closing our eyes when they don't want us to watch.
what about the last two years of video evidence of all the other war crimes?
The bodies of burnt children. The reports of doctors who document multiple sniper rounds found in the bodies of small children and toddlers?
I've been seeing reports about internet connectivity being very touch and go in Gaza the last few weeks.
Is it not unreasonable to think, those who are starving the most might not have internet/electricity to charge a device/care to document when they're starving?
Some of it may be real but you really need to pay attention about who posted it originally, who reposted it etc, even people you wouldn't expect sometimes retweeted recycled Syrian footage...
There's probably truthful accounts and there's different sorts of manipulation (like OP article is a bit) but you can't know "a lot" or "a little" of what other people see is true of fake
There is plenty of reason to disbelieve the testimony was reported accurately.
Haaretz’s English edition claims that IDF soldiers were ordered to fire at unarmed Palestinians waiting for food in Gaza, but the original Hebrew version? It states they were told to fire towards crowds to keep them away from the aid sites. This represents a significant difference in intent, legality, and moral implications
For you and me conversation is about facts, reality and accuracy. For them it is about bending the narrative as far as it will go. It's not strange behavior if everyone around you is doing it.
The article cites no evidence except for anonymous accounts. There's no video evidence even though people would widely have smart phones there. The association distributing aid as well as Israel's government have denied any of this happened.
I'd be upset if this happened too, but there's no evidence of that. My guess is that warning shots were fired.
Did I miss something from the article? I did read it.
They have a right to take out Hamas, they don't have the right to mow down crowds of starving people with sub-machine guns while they're just trying to get to some food
Your comment puts you firmly in pro-israel camp by today's western standards.
There's no disagreement about contents of the article being a war crime, if it is true.
Haaretz is not a reliable source, they often publish hearsay and seldom verify the testimonies. We have reports of seemingly daily massacres around food distribution sites mostly originating from one single "journalist" with direct self described sympathy towards Hamas and source always being "locals told me", yet somehow it ends up being published in Reuters et all on a semi-daily basis.
> He also said the activity in his area of service is referred to as Operation Salted Fish – the name of the Israeli version of the children's game "Red light, green light".
The Israeli tradition of giving their Gaza operations names of children's games also continues, after "Operation Cast Lead".
(Not sure if they wanted to make a reference to Squid Games as well...)
I have to say, these warnings are byond any logic I can comprehend. It it not like Hamas does not get these warnings. Obviously they moved aswell. Then again, was this intended by Israel? So in the end nobody can trust these warnings. They are pointless.
Yes I dunno what the term is but it's common to telegraph ops like this. US did the same in Yemen and they see a) civvies moving away from munitions storage areas b) terrorists trying to move munitions to safety. It can inform of new targets
You don't understand military ops. By announcing like this they can see the Hamas operatives expose themselves as they start moving, preparing like little ants and bomb them - not civilians.
This isn't ambiguous. This is really clear evidence of (at minimum) an atrocious and continuing war crime with full intentionality. Realistically, it is more likely explicitly genocidal in intent.
I appreciate that this topic has been permitted to stay on the HN front page. It has been utterly horrific watching the barbaric and inhuman behavior of Israel. I have no idea how we are supposed to ever respect or forgive our own states that have aquiesced in this, let alone Israel.
This comment thread is the most civilised online discussion I have seen in a long while about this particular topic, despite people coming from diverse backgrounds and disagreeing.
In this sense, hackernews gives me hope that online culture is not lost yet.
It's because realistically hn is an oasis of educated people that has been overlooked by astroturfers and foreign interests (very strongly including the government in this piece), and hasn't expanded its core demographic for profit. This is what the rest of the internet would be like without manipulation. Imagine how much better things would be
I was encouraged by yours and parents posts to look at some of the comments but I think I just got duped into wasting time with bots that are in fact astroturfing!
There is absolutely astroturfing happening on HN but not anywhere near the massive campaigns all over Reddit that are cumulatively probably millions of posts and comments
HN is an oasis of borderline autistic people who have no knowledge or rational opinions about anything more open ended than which JavaScript framework is the worst
If HN is so educated and civic, we would be able to have more of that sort of debate and not just once in a while.
Also note that dang is already pretty active here banning people.
It is a topic where deep emotions come up and where fanatism is widespread. Also among educated people. Also not sure if you have not noticed before, but HN is part of a profit orientated venture capitalist company. Still, I also do enjoy this Oasis here. But I don't see how it can scale in any way you seem to imagine.
I think people understand there's a time and a place for important political discussion on an otherwise tech community, especially because the quality and insight tends to be better than other places.
I don't have any delusions about ycombinator seeing some of the things it has supported recently, but in this laughably dumbed down world you take what you can get.
As for new communities I believe in being selective and restrictive- based on location, education, or interest and think it's the only way we can get smart communities again. Think how the tech barrier and slow adoption in the 90s/2000s resulted in a smart bubble online, and how covid was the death knell for distinct non homogenous smart online spaces because it brought everyone further online. It's discriminatory but look what we've become.
It seems civilized because comments that call out Iranian propaganda get flagged. Only one opinion is allowed on the internet. Israel is demonized beyond belief. No one talks about US aid to Egypt, a literal dictatorship, or Saudi Arabia, or the genocide in Yemen. Nope. Just Israel.
After moderate partners abandoned Netanyahu, his only source of support was more right-wing partners, which steadily pushed government policy to the ultra-right.
It's not ironic at all, it's democracy working as intended.
It might superficially appear ironic because us in the west confuse being a democracy with being moderate. But that's not the case if a large fraction of your population are religious fundamentalists, which goes to my point. In Israel, the problem isn't just the government, it's also the culture of the majority of the population.
Considering ~50% of the Knesset is in opposition, I don't think it's proof that a politically large fraction of Israeli society is religiously fundamentalist.
It's non-negligible, but the reasons ultra-right parties like Otzma Yehudit [0] have a voice in politics has more to do with election calculus by Netanyahu.
The ideal 2+ party parliamentary system seems to be >2 but <6.
Below that, you get bad outcomes (US). Above that, you get bad outcomes (Israel, India).
Somewhere in the middle, it forces the right amount of coerced cooperation... most of the time (Germany).
Amnesty international should be dismantled, they have lost all of their credibility by recirculating direct Russian propaganda and now their reporting about Israel is basically direct Hamas PR branch.
I know it’s an overly simplified view but it’s becoming more and more of a reality, Israel is the 21th century nazi.
Yeah it’s not aryan but israelian race that is superior to the Arabians, what’s the difference ?
They don’t send them in camp, they just destroy completely their land, demolish and populate with israelian. What’s the difference ? A family without home and earning is as good as dead.
There is still some democracy in Israel and a small part of the population opposed to that racism but for how long ? War always push people more and more to extremism.
Given how small and boundaried the areas of land are where they are forcing migration to under penalty of mass death, it’s not overly dissimilar to the concept of rounding people up into camps
So nice that pro-Israeli comments get flagged and moderators do nothing about that. Talking about bias and censorship, I guess some contradictory thoughts are not very welcomed for some who think about themselves as standing in the frontlines of democracy. Also disappointed about @dang, there seems very little objective admin work done here.
The reason why your comment was downvoted is not because you've made an assertion contrary to the hivemind, but because you did so in a way that is highly dismissive towards the audience you address, using slurs like "Pallywood. That's low-effort trolling which is, indeed, unwelcome in this community, which the downvoting reflects.
Most of the sources in the article are anonymous. Their descriptions of specific shootings are uncorroberated. I question the veracity of this article. It is clearly designed to elicit a pre-determined result and is conjecture and evocative narrative disguised as journalism. If these officers and soldiers are so morally outraged, let them say so on camera with their name underneath. If this is really happening and they are real soldiers who were actually there, then any concerns for their careers or safety should be secondary to revealing the truth in an open and verifiable way.
This genocide has, for many people, burst any illusions of a "rules based world order".
There multiple EU signatory countries of the Rome Statute (pledging to cooperate with ICC) that have welcomed these war criminals... who have warrants out by the ICC.
And the same war criminals are invited to give a speech at the U.S Congress to near unanimous applause. It really makes you wonder if we're the "good guys".
-- edit -- If you're curious how much your congressperson receives from AIPAC (Israeli lobby) this website is a great resource:
https://www.trackaipac.com/congress
Indeed, the leading countries of so-called "free world" are willing to commit and support war crimes and break the intl law as well as DPRK or Iran when it serves their intrests, all while signaling virtue and progressiveness.
If you're still wondering if you're the good guys, you haven't been paying attention. I don't think there are any "good guys" when it comes to nations, but for the US it's not even close.
Watching Blinken say "rules based international order" on camera about Ukraine was one of the few times I felt good about American foreign policy, then watching Blinken talk about Israel made it clear that it's rules for our enemies only, and loyalty for our "friends" which is the precise opposite of a rules based international order.
Hearing democrats decry Russian foreign influence was also something I was on board with, but much like Nancy Pelosi saying it's not corrupt when she trades on stock with private information, apparently it's not corrupt when the democratic party accepts foreign aid in the form of AIPAC donations, or just as likely threats of the use of Pegasus against them.
It is quite sad to be an American of good conscience right now. It's hard to respect our country in any way when it shows such little moral fiber and such little backbone.
Almost no-one[1] recognizes Crimea as part of Russia because it was entirely manufactured. Unmarked foreign soldiers invaded a country, pretended to be local rebels, staged a referendum and immediately asked to join the invading country to give the shameless land grab a veneer of legitimacy. It's a total joke that has nothing in common with genuine ethnic conflicts. The referendums in Crimea and elsewhere had to be staged because even internal polling leaked from the Russian military admin showed that nowhere did the local population support the invasion; speaking German doesn't mean that you want to live in the Third Reich.
You missed my point. People outside the West have a different idea of what 'riles based order' means. This does not mean they are right or that you have to agree with them. However, the fact is that they see the world differently to you. You like the West and people outside the West see the West as parasites that have used constructs such as 'rules based order' to get away with colonial exploration and whatnot.
As mentioned, you don't have to agree with them, however, it has to be acknowledged that not everyone thinks like you, and that 'rules based order' means different things to different people.
Incidentally, the global majority are not blue and yellow fanatics. China, India, Africa and South America are not on team blue and yellow.
Idk, i quite like the West, doesn’t mean that i can’t see the rule based order and the UN as instruments of American imperialism etc. People that just realize this now seem to never have bothered imho. The same politicians that can lie to you about trickle down economics and social reforms can also lie about foreign policy and good vs evil.
> Crimea, where everyone speaks Russian and identifies as Russian
Blatant falsehood. In 2014 it was about 65% (ethnicity) and 80% (language).
In addition the referendum happened after the invasion and de-facto annexation, without the option of "keep the current situation with Ukraine". If you ask me "do you want to be punched or stabbed?" then I'll choose a punch. Doesn't mean I want to be punched.
My point is that the 'rules based order' means different things to different people. In the West it means one thing and in the rest of the world it means something else.
My point still stands and must be acknowledged even if you are waving the blue and yellow flag, the rainbow flag and the stars and stripes. In any country that the West has brought war to, they know exactly what 'rules based order' means. You don't have to agree with them, they are just on a different team to you.
The guidelines of HN, to be kind and curious in the comments, are difficult to follow in this case. Outrage doesn't bring anything either, but a polite and curious discussion is impossible. The lack of reflection in the western world on this issue is seriously disturbing.
I hear you and I agree that there are topics which conventional politeness cannot respond to adequately, and that this is one of those topics.
If you take those words "kind" and "curious" in a large sense—larger than usual—I think there's enough room there to talk about even this topic without breaking the guidelines.
How to do this? That is something we have to work out together. You're right that it's difficult.
From a moderation point of view, I can tell you that just avoiding garden-variety flamewar and internet tropes already gets us a lot of the way there. You'd be surprised at how many users who think they're taking a grand moral stand against conventional politeness are simply repeating those. Conventional impoliteness isn't any answer either.
Thanks. I was not critical, especially not of the moderation, just tried to sum up what I think about it, and other than meaningless outrage there was nothing there. And yet there is no point in that because that's just letting off steam. I don't think it should be removed either.
I'm mostly just seeing people discuss what Israel's military is doing, with people on both sides adding historical context. It's sure as hell not a "hate-fest."
I don't agree that it's off topic, nor that HN would be better if we suppressed it and acted like this isn't happening. We're trying for a global optimum*, and the most important part of that is not to settle for local optima, such as not discussing difficult things.
I've posted about this quite a bit, since it inevitably comes up every time this topic appears on HN's front page. Here's another part of the current thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403458.
If you're really intent on fostering higher quality, honest discussion maybe don't just make exceptions for the the post about Israeli mistakes which they actually investigate.
There are reasonable discussions to be had, but the submissions which might catalyze them are quickly flagged (as opposed to defended, like this one).
Funnily enough I just finished responding to someone who makes the opposite complaint about us: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403907. Notice that word "always", which both of you use. Interesting, no?
People with strong passions on a topic always feel like the moderators are against them. (As you see, I'm not immune to "always" perceptions either!)
I wish we could do something about that—I don't enjoy having so many people, from all sides of every divisive topic, feeling like we're against them when we're not. However, after years of observing this and thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it's inevitable. The cognitive bias underlying it is just ironclad. We all share this bias, which is why your complaint and the complaint of someone on the opposite side are basically the same.
It's true that HN has hosted several major threads about Israel/Gaza, but it's also true that many (perhaps a hundred times as many) submissions on the topic have ended up flagged and we haven't turned off the flags. I don't see an "always" in there.
As for Saturdays—that factor is so far from affecting how we moderate HN that I had to puzzle for a bit over what you might mean. Nor does this discussion strike me as one-sided. People wouldn't be disagreeing with each other if it were.
dang I cannot respect you enough. Thank you. I have strong feelings about Palestine and learned quite long ago how powerless my rhetoric is. Although I believe I see the truth, it's clear the world needs yet more time. The only thing that must be done now is to facilitate discourse and to leave the flow of information unimpeded. Time will humble us all.
I would be very surprised if the majority, or even a significant fraction, of those who are on the "Israel" side were observing Jews. Jews are probably a minority of Israel-supporting commenters, and observing Jews are, in my experience, a minority of these Jews.
That's a pretty serious accusation, and I don't think you can actually back that up with anything.
Online, pretty much any time Israel is discussed, the majority of commenters (or articles) are anti-Israel. Regardless of why you think that is, it's just a fact. You can't blame dang for that.
You don't decide what's on topic or the spirit of HN. If anyone does it's Deng, who you're arguing with. Sorry you feel the need to decide what adults can talk about.
I've very well aware who Dang is (clearly you don't, at least write his name correctly). You have a lot of venues to vent on reddit, facebook, twitter etc.
Clearly Dang is biased and therefore he bends the guidelines:
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
That's not clear at all. What is clear is an apparent impulse to shut down an unfavourable discussion and throw unproven accusations. There are lots of articles on non-tech posts on HN, you haven't shown he's unfair.
Maybe you should have a bit more intellectual humility. "Clearly Dang is biased" (emphasis mine)? You might be right, you might be wrong, but I for sure don't think you can be certain of dang's motive here, especially considering lots of people on the "other side" of this issue feel he's biased against them!
I believe the majority of stories are voted on, and flagged, by the community. If the community decides these are stories worth discussing, I think they fit within the guidelines of HN. Stories about the Russia/Ukraine war also appear. So do stories about US politics. In all of these threads some people complain that they're off-scope, but apparently enough of the community wants to talk about them that they sometimes get upvoted.
If Russia were to win the war and a Ukrainian underground would launch "guerrilla attacks" against Russia, they would be lauded as heros. Now here we have a somewhat similar story, of a foreign invader that displaced the local people not too long ago and a remaining native opposition. There is no version of this that will end up with the Palestinians getting a fair outcome. I've calling this a genocide quite early on, sadly it looks like I was right and there is probably many condemning details we aren't yet aware of.
This scenario already played out before in history; some people may believe those groups to have been heroes, but most can recognize that fighting in the name of independence did not make those groups any less guilty of committing atrocities against civilians. At the same time, that doesn't take away today from the people fighting for freedom legitimately. If anything, those groups hurt their cause in the long-run, as they gave Russia ammunition for propaganda for the next 80+ years.
Just curious what does fighting for freedom legitimately look like in this context for you?
> For Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth, the colonizer's presence in Algeria is based on sheer military strength. Any resistance to this strength must also be of a violent nature because it is the only "language" the colonizer speaks. [1]
Partisans were kinda notorious for their actions against civilians - sometimes to punish collaborators (although in practice it would often be the entire village deemed collectively responsible if e.g. some partisans were betrayed there, and burned down), but often just targeting the infrastructure to deny it to the Germans even if that meant that civilians would starve to death etc. Here's one famous partisan hero-martyr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoya_Kosmodemyanskaya
I'm not aware of any "resistance groups" fighting the Nazis that created horrors of this kind - though the Soviet army itself probably did. In my opinion, what distinguishes these kinds of massacres is their utter meaninglessness; they serve no military purpose, they are usually even detrimental to military goals. Going door to door killing does nothing to advance a cause - it is purely an expression of hate.
Why though, what does it achieve? Do they want to make sure that there will be terrorists / freedom fighters in the future so that they have a reason not to negotiate? Because they expect to "win" if violence continues?
From Israel's perspective, Palestinians are a problem. Long term, they have a few options:
1) Give them their own state. This is difficult for quite many reasons, and Israel (by which I mean the current government) doesn't want that
2) Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation, and let them participate in the regular political processes. The current government certainly doesn't want that, and I have no idea what part of the Palestinians would want that.
3) Continue to treat them as sub-human, and deal with the consequences of the hatred that fosters. That seems to have been the "strategy" before October last year.
4) Try to exterminate or exile them, or at least decimating them to such an extend that the problem becomes smaller.
Since 1) and 2) are (again, from the perspective of Isreal's government) undesirable, and 3) has stopped working, 4) seems to be their current strategy.
>Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation
As the Palestinians are the majority, the Jewish Israelis would become a minority in terms of citizens and votes. This is very much akin to Apartheid South Africa, where a minority ethnic group rules over the rest of the population.
The White minority in South Africa were around 15% of the population, while Jews and Palestinians in Israel & Palestine seem to be much more around a 50%-50% split.
I think it's the contrary. "Never again" means by any means necessary we will prevent another genocide of our people, even if it means committing genocide unto others. That much has become clear.
I suggest reading this 1923 essay by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, one of the early figures in the history of Israel and the Zionist movement, before Israel became a state.
> There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority. ...
> The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage. ... Every native population, civilised or not, regards its lands as its national home, of which it is the sole master, and it wants to retain that mastery always; it will refuse to admit not only new masters but, even new partners or collaborators. This is equally true of the Arabs. Our Peace-mongers are trying to persuade us that the Arabs are either fools, whom we can deceive by masking our real aims, or that they are corrupt and can be bribed to abandon to us their claim to priority in Palestine , in return for cultural and economic advantages. ...
> We may tell them whatever we like about the innocence of our aims, watering them down and sweetening them with honeyed words to make them palatable, but they know what we want, as well as we know what they do not want. Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the "Land of Israel." ... Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim.
> We cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for Palestine. And therefore, there is no likelihood of any voluntary agreement being reached.
Now, Jabotinsky was arguably naive in that he thought that after the inevitable forcing of the Arabs to accept Jewish colonization of their homeland, once they have "given up on all hopes", they could be negotiated with on the terms of settlement:
> In the second place, this does not mean that there cannot be any agreement with the Palestine Arabs. What is impossible is a voluntary agreement. As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall. Not till then will they drop their extremist leaders, whose watchword is "Never!" And the leadership will pass to the moderate groups, who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions. Then we may expect them to discuss honestly practical questions, such as a guarantee against Arab displacement, or equal rights for Arab citizen, or Arab national integrity.
The problem, of course, is that once you have that amount of upper hand over someone, you don't actually have to negotiate. You can just keep taking everything you want, by force. And that is exactly where Israel found itself in the long term.
Many of the Zionists viewed the Holocaust as teaching that the Jewish people need a state of their own, no matter what it takes or how many people they have to kill. They viewed the European Jews who had died in the Holocaust as weak, passive cowards who had "allowed" the Holocaust to happen, and went like sheep to their slaughter (ignoring the Warsaw Uprising, and all of the underground Jewish resistance movements). I think Israel's current actions reflect this viewpoint.
I don't think there's much overlapping between those who experienced the holocaust and whoever is in charge in Israel right now.
Speaking for experience from some relatives, the immigration laws for people of jewish faith and ancestry were nigh insurmountable if you came from african, arab or middle east countries and pretty much just nominal even in recent times for those who had even a remote connection but came from the US and the UK.
I have the feeling they are jewish the same way Henry IV was a Catholic when he said "Paris is well worth a Mass".
Ongoing war has been a crucial component of the current government's re-election campaigns for decades, so any option that ends the war is a non-starter.
I fear their plan is to expand military operations into additional countries until they can get back into a pseudo-stalemate scenario. That'd explain the bombings in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran.
Or exile is probably the key word. There are more historical examples of exoduses than genocides.
The problem with understanding this situation is that it probably has more to do with Israel's internal politics than what the situation looks like on the ground in Gaza and elsewhere. Just a quick read from the wikipedia page should give an idea just how corrupt the situation really is.
There's also the fact that Palestinians aren't a homogenous group in any sense of the word. That makes it hard for them to unite under any political flag. It also doesn't help that the borders are all closed, from both sides, and no neighboring country are willing to accept them.
From the outside the situation certainly looks very bleak.
> Since 1) and 2) are (again, from the perspective of Isreal's government) undesirable, and 3) has stopped working, 4) seems to be their current strategy.
The Israeli govt and people would be very supportive of (2). After all, there are more Arabs living in Israel than in Palestine. The Palestineans, on the other hand, overwhelmingly reject this option.
And why are they Israel’s problem to solve? What about Jordan who expelled EVERY Palestinian in 1970? What about Qatar? What about Egypt? Lebanon? Any Arab country???
Why is it Israel’s problem? There was a legal agreement in 1948. It could have been so simple.
Palestinian militants have destabilized every host country they’ve inhabited. I say this with sympathy for the displaced. Who wouldn’t consider taking up arms if forced from home, stripped of citizenship, corralled into camps, condemned to generations of refugee status.
But it is also obvious, historically, why Arab countries aren’t welcoming masses of Palestinians into their countries even in these dire moments.
Palestine has had many opportunities for statehood. Current President of Israel is not completely opposed to statehood, citing security concerns which are clearly valid considering Palestine has repeatedly broken cease fire agreements and Hamas entire goal is to eradicate Israel. They are not being treated as sub-human. Remember Israel warns Palestine of air strikes. There have been many reports of Hamas refusing to allow people to leave sites that are targeted for the sole purpose of of martyrdom. The only people being exterminated is the terrorist Organization Hamas.
All 4 bullet points are either completely false or misleading.
Clearly there is disagreement in Israel to some limited degree about the reality and appeal of a two state solution, but it’s hard to see that as a realistic or desired outcome when Netanyahu keeps saying things like “everyone knows that I am the one who for decades blocked the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger our existence.” https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-boasts-of-thwarting-...
Certainly it’s the stated position and goal of the current government, which is what the initial post said.
If your neighbour keeps throwing stones at you and you agree to not throw stones, they continue to throw stones. You would probably not support any of their wishes.
> I didn't particularly like Israeli policy towards Palestinians for the last 15 years, but they were certainly not treated as "sub-human".
Garbage. Gaza had its only airport bombed to oblivion 20 years ago and was told any attempt to repair it would result in the same. Its port has been blockaded by the Israeli navy for 15 years. Its only land exits have been heavily locked down.
Israel will routinely turn electricity off to the country for days to punish for something, be it a rocket attack, or teens throwing stones. They’ve even turned off water for days too.
That’s treating people as subhuman, imprison them and do things like that to them for decades.
The Gazan government is a declared enemy of Israel, wanting its destruction. It has used hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to build its militant group to fight Israel.
Given the circumstances, Gaza's neighbors blockade it to keep it from building an even bigger fighting force.
> Israel will routinely turn electricity off to the country for days to punish for something, be it a rocket attack,
You mean, when occasionally Hamas will try to kill random Israeli civilians using rocket fire? Which is basically a declaration of war and causes Israel to fight back?
> or teens throwing stones.
I don't think that's actually true.
> That’s treating people as subhuman,
Israel is treating Hamas-controlled Gaza as a hostile enemy that is intent on destroying it. Given that Hamas, even under the blockade and with all the restrictions in place, still managed to invade Israel and kill a thousand citizens, while kidnapping and holding hostage 250 civilians, and still, a year and a half later, is holding these people hostage and torturing them daily... given that, I think it's hard to say blockading them was a bad idea.
If you think the blockade is the reason for their actions, then you're quite simply wrong - they were founded many years before and always had the same goal of destroying Israel, including working hard against the peace process that was forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority.
> You mean, when occasionally Hamas will try to kill random Israeli civilians using rocket fire? Which is basically a declaration of war and causes Israel to fight back?
Changing the goalposts, are we?
Yes, that happens.
How is Israel turning off electricity and fresh water to the entire country as a result not considered treating the population as sub-human (as in not deserving of basic human needs), the original point of this discussion ?
> If you think the blockade is the reason for their actions, then you're quite simply wrong - they were founded many years before and always had the same goal of destroying Israel, including working hard against the peace process that was forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority.
Oh, you're so close to the point! "The peace process forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority" is exactly why Netanyuhu and his ilk started supporting Hamas. Because when your explicitly stated goal is to evict Palestinians (and Netanyuhu has said as much, in as many words), global sympathy starts to wane when the PLA is looking for peaceful solutions (yes, admittedly, after periods of violence and terrorism) and now Israel looks like the bad guy. So let's prop up Hamas, because they are more extremist, and make a more convenient bad guy.
> How is Israel turning off electricity and fresh water to the entire country as a result not considered treating the population as sub-human (as in not deserving of basic human needs), the original point of this discussion ?
I think that temporarily not supplying a semi-state with electricity while fighting a war they started, does not fit the definition most people would have of "treating them as sub-human". If you do - fine.
> Oh, you're so close to the point! "The peace process forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority" is exactly why Netanyuhu and his ilk started supporting Hamas.
No, you're getting the chronology very wrong here.
Hamas was founded in the 1980s ('88 I think). The main peace talks started in the 1990s, with Oslo getting signed in '93. The terror campaign Hamas started to wage was around that time, trying to derail the peace talks.
In '95, Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli right-wing extremist, and Netanyahu was elected for the first time as opposed to Rabin's "successor" Peres. A major Hamas terror attack right around that election is largely attributed to tipping the election in favor of Netanahu, who won by the thinnest majority in Israeli history to this day (iirc around 10k votes).
Another PM, Barak, was elected to pursue peace and had talks with the PA in 2000 and 2001. This is when the second intifada was launched, unclear how much from Hamas and how much from the PA. Later, a different PM (Sharon), actually considered a right-wing hawk, was elected and initiated the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005. Olmert, his successor, was elected on a platform of disengaging from the West Bank. In the meantime, Hamas was elected to rule Gaza, the blockade was started, and Hamas began shooting rockets at Israel. Peace negotiations were again held in 2008/2009 between Olmert and Abbas.
Only in 2009 did Netanyahu even get back into power.
So the idea that Netanyahu somehow started supporting Hamas - which is a somewhat of a mischaractirization in any case - is only really relevant several years after the blockade started and rockets were fired, which is many years after Hamas worked to shut down the peace process.
> I think that temporarily not supplying a semi-state with electricity while fighting a war they started, does not fit the definition most people would have of "treating them as sub-human". If you do - fine.
And water. For days or more. And well, most of the world considers it a war crime, but hey, if you think it's NBD...
You make it seem like these things all happen like clockwork, with concrete black and white dates.
And well:
> The Hamas movement was founded by Palestinian Islamic scholar Ahmed Yassin in 1987, after the outbreak of the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation. It emerged from his 1973 Mujama al-Islamiya Islamic charity affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Initially, Hamas was discreetly supported by Israel, as a counter-balance to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Netanyahu was formative in Likud. That whole statement used to "prove" Hamas (look, since we're talking about Hamas - let me be unequivocally clear - is a terrorist organization who do despicable things) has goals of excision/extermination... "From the River (Jordan) to the (Red) Sea"... misses the irony that that was Likud's election slogan for a decade or more.
And when allied countries got too uneasy about them just blocking all aid trucks at the border, they set up their own aid organization to trickle out nominal amounts of food while they take pot shots at people desperate enough to show up: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74ne108e4vo
They didn't just make this up as they go, presumably the plans have been sitting around for a long time waiting for a suitable moment.
> You definitely can kill 2.1 million people by bombing them. It's actually way easier than doing it with a gun
Only if you have enough bombs, which they need to constantly purchase from the US using aid money given to them by the US.
They don't have the stockpiles to eradicate without using their (not so) secret nukes. If they were to do that, there'd be a lot worse follow on effects for Israel. If they simply trickle the deaths over time, people get tired of the horror and need to look away for their own sanity.
Genuinely wondering what terrible effects would there be for Israel if they used nukes? Not morally, internationally. IMO it's perhaps one of the few conflicts in the world where one side could theoretically use nuclear weapons and essentially no one will shoot back. "Trickle the deaths over time" doesn't make any sense - there are probably more births in Gaza than deaths now, and that's not including the general Palestinian population.
Well officially Israel doesn't have nukes. They are widely believed to have them ofc but that's something they have to consider. Breaking the ambiguity by using them could spark a lot of 'we told you they were super dangerous' responses(with action) possibly. You might be right tho.
No one will shoot back now. But it is a signal to other countries that using nukes might not be that bad. Even other banned chemical and biological weapons. So either there is complete chaos or the whole world will have to make sure Israel can not profit from this action.
My point was that the comment I was commenting on was false, and that many people who express that sentiment wouldn't be expressing it if the powers were flipped. I'm personally very glad that the powers aren't flipped because I think that if Hamas had F-16s there would many more deaths.
Do you really genuinely believe that typical american liberal types would ignore a genocide committed against Jewish people by anyone, particularly arabs? In the American liberal mind "genocide" is, essentially, synonymous with The Holocaust, and I think your average liberal is, if anything, sensitive to Jewish discrimination, over and above random people out there in the world. There are definitely anti-semetic Americans and they should be launched into the sun, but I think your sense that people wouldn't care if Jews were being killed in the tens of thousands is extremely off point.
I'm sorry, I live in Europe and I was referring more to the kind of protests and protesters I see around me. The aren't many liberal Americans there. I completely agree that the situation could be different elsewhere.
Jewish groups have been supporting those protests in the US, Europe and Israel.
I have no idea what crowd composition at European protests looks like, but the vast majority of the people upset about the ongoing genocide are not antisemetic.
There is a propaganda campaign in the US trying to conflate being against genocide with being antisemetic. I'm sure similar tactics are being used in Europe.
I am myself supporting many of these protests, and it's exactly from this perspective that I say that many of them are antisemitic. But this is a bit of a useless discussion because neither you nor I can bring any evidence into how antisemitic they are, or how and if they would react if (or when) Palestinians are slaughtering Jews.
If you think it's nonsense, try to go into a anti-war protest with a t-shirt saying that Jews too should be able to live in Middle East. If this thought makes you slightly concerned, you got my point.
Where do you live in Europe that you believe those opposing the Israeli genocide in Gaza would support a genocide of Jewish people anywhere? Because that is an outrageously delusional view.
I don't think that my exact location is very relevant here, but I urge you to ask protesters around you how they see "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" turning into reality, and let me know what happens with the Jews according to their plans.
I am an Arab Jew, and I actually have many friends in Gaza. I don't disagree about the usage of the words Genocide, though I think the terms is a little too easy to apply. I think a Holocaust is a completely different thing. There are Palestinians in the Israeli parliament, in the Supreme Court. No one is gathering Palestinians in gas chambers, and in general the Palestinian population only grew since the establishment of Israel. If there were more Jews in Europe after WW2 than before it, no one would remember it as a Holocaust.
There is war in Gaza in the simple sense that rockets from Gaza still shoot into Israel, that Israeli hostages are still being held, and that Hamas itself (the elected goverenement) says it would attack again. It's a very unbalanced conflict, and in it terrible crimes are committed that you can call genocidal. But Jews in the ghettos weren't bombing Berlin - not during WW2 and not after it.
That's an interpretation of events that I've heard from a lot of Israeli folks that are in some way horrified what's happening in Gaza. I think it's very naive and I don't even think most folks saying this believe in it themselves. What actions from the IDF, what imbalance of power, what civilian casualty rates will you need to see to believe that it's no longer a war? Are you really waiting for the actual mass starvation to take place before accept there's intent? Does it have to be gas chambers? Does the death toll have to pass 1 million? 6 million? Do you really think that the Israeli government wants to brings the hostages back? What do you think would happen after they did bring them back? Will you rescind your support then?
Jews in the Ghetto didn't get the chance to shoot rockets at Berlin but had they been able to fight back, I'd have given them the same understanding that I currently extends to Palestinians that grew up in the concentration camp that is Gaza. Hamas is the direct results of Israeli policies of the past decades. Even if the IDF manages to somehow invent some purity test for Gazans that it can use to confirm there are no longer any Hamas members left and it finally declares it's operations concluded, you'll have people shooting rockets at Israel if they keep their policies with the Gaza strip and the West Bank. But long term solutions come later, right now, Israelis need to wake up and say no to what is unfolding in the name of their security.
I will stop thinking that this conflict is a war when there will be a side in it that doesn't have the motivation to take over all the land, and acts towards it by attempting to kill the other. As long as there are two parties that are constantly trying to kill each other, I call that a war. As I wrote elsewhere - that doesn't mean I disagree with the idea that genocidal actions are being taken during this war.
Your comment about Jews in Ghetto is wrong at every possible level. Jews were killed in the Holocaust _without_ a conflict, _without_ attempting to kill Germans, _without_ fighting with anyone over the land and _without_ having any aspirations to control the other. That is an example of a situation where there is no war, and no, it has nothing to do with the situation between Israelis and Palestinians.
Stop telling lies about Gaza conflict being "war". Israeli military has absolute superiority over Palestinians. What it is is a genocidal campaign meant to wipe them off the face of the Earth.
Also, stop using the Holocaust as a propaganda tool. My grandfather happened to be a Buchenwald concentration camp survival. It didn't give him or anybody else any right to violate Geneva convention.
First, I don't recall you set the rules for discussion here. Now, to your points:
1. Genocidal actions can take place in a war, and no definition of a war ever said that the parties have to be of equal strength. Every war that was ever won by one side or another had some sort of power supremacy. Go read the legal definition for genocide and you'll learn that the question of imbalance of power plays absolutely no role in it.
2. I haven't used it as a propaganda tool, and in fact it wasn't me who brought it up at all. I was only commenting that the current situation in Gaza is not comparable to the Holocaust, and I fully stand behind it. To make it clear, I am very happy that it isn't comparable, and I wouldn't want to see any Palestinian suffering like my ancestors did. Not once in my life have I used it to justify crimes committed by Jews, so please learn to read before commenting on my posts. If anything, I always believed that what Jews went through should serve as a reminder for us to never allow things like that from happening again, and I still see the Holocaust as perhaps one of the main driving forces in my opposition to this war.
Going through your criteria in order: Of course they defended themselves, including attempts to kill Nazis. They also attempted to keep their homes, and certainly would have rather Germany have different leadership
Does that somehow mean the concentration camps were a "war"?
> While somebody from Palestine side did fire the opening salvo on oct7.
Now, that's a re-writing of history if I've ever seen one.
> Israeli and Palestinian deaths preceding the 2023 Gaza war. Of the Palestinian deaths 5,360 were in Gaza, 1,007 in the West Bank, 37 in Israel. Most were
civilians on both sides.
I suspect that it's you who have undergone deep mental conditioning if you think that I am justifying this war. One can hold a complex opinion, and nowhere have I said that I think this war is justified.
Not only I do not belittler their suffering, I personally helped some of them out. I also ran an organization that provided thousands of Gazan with electricity, and I was arrested by the Israeli police when encouraging Palestinians in Israel to vote. At the same time I have family members who were killed (and kidnapped) on the first day of this war. Life isn't black and white.
I am completely OK with being conditioned against siding with a 20 month long genocidal onslaught committed by an apartheid ethnostate against a blockaded territory with no sovereignty and no actual defenses of its own.
I completely agree that life isn’t always black and white. But right now it is, just like it was in countless other situations in the past. You can think it’s “complicated” all you like, but the evidence is overwhelmingly against such a framing, which is where the conditioning comes into the picture.
It is great that you volunteered in Gaza, but it’s also tragic that you fail to see what is happening even after directly interacting with Gazans.
Some day in the future, when free Palestinians can build museums and monuments and make movies to mourn those lost in this genocide, everyone will always have been against this.
Netanyahu has privately expressed preference for terrorist Hamas over political Fatah, and Israel has propped up those terrorist groups in the past (this is well documented not a conspiracy theory).
Why? Because Netanyahu and a good chunk of the Israeli population want the Palestinians to cease to exist and its territory to be part of Israel. An opponent that wants to achieve its goals through political action and appeals to the international community meant that there was a risk of Israel being dragged into a two-state commitment. A terrorist group attacking civilians gives those hardliners a perpetual excuse to go to war.
In short: the answer is yes, that appears to be precisely the point: to prevent any possibility of peaceful reconciliation and drive the Palestinians to eventual expulsion or eradication.
If Israel wanted to kill all Palestinians, wouldn't it be easier to start with the millions of Palestinians living in Israel, unarmed, instead of going into Gaza?
If that is true, Israel would now actually, literally be persuing the exact same politics Nazi Germany did until they escalated their attempted genocide by making it intolerable to genocide by industrial scale murder. Not a good look for Israel, at all.
Please don't take HN threads into hard-core ideological and/or nationalistic flamewar. I realize this topic tends strongly in that direction, but that's not a reason to go there, it's a reason not to go there.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Other commenters are doing it too, but it's a matter of degree, and the rhetoric in your post here is a degree worse. You can make your substantive points without resorting to "cult", "stamped out", "criminal ideology" and so on. Fortunately it doesn't look like your account has a habit of doing this, so it should be easy to fix.
When asked, in an representative online, poll, 47% percent of Israeli agreed that the IDF should kill all the inhabitants of cities it conquered[1].
So sure, workers at Haarez probably don't, but when the extermination feeling is widespread enough that 47% feel they can openly agree to a question proscribing the killing women and children, then insisting on the insistence on precision comes across mostly as an attempt at distraction.
There's a palestinian guy living in the US making the rounds on tiktok, talking to random israeli people on something like omegle. The amount of hate he gets is nothing short of depressing. Children cursing at him, IDF soldiers saying they want to kill every single person in Gaza, calling them sub-humans... sounds like the fourth reich is here already.
All this to say you're right, but the government is indocrinating more and more people for these views.
Be very wary of any such weaponized truth: you don't know how much selection bias is at play, how much confirmation bias is requested, you don't even know if the interviewees are what they say they are.
You raise a very valid point, which i will take in consideration. I don't believe it to be the case, since the person in question also shares positive interactions, and i believe some of the worst "contacts" have been doxxed. But your point still stands.
People seem to use the down-vote on my comment, why? I pasted it for discoverability. It is exactly what the parent is talking about, and it indeed is sickening, go check out some videos where many people say disgusting shit. If you do not think it is disgusting, then please imagine they are talking about your children?
And if you disagree with the guy, go dislike his videos.
I disagree: when anything is obviously meaning what someone obviously thinks it means, then others will apply their own obvious understanding of it to justify very non-obvious behaviours.
There is something so deeply disturbing about how casually inhumane Israelis can be. They then drop “Hamas” like it’s a full sentence that magically cleanses whatever depravity they just spewed.
The perpetual fight is mutually beneficial to all. The extremist right would not have been able to claim large swaths of land had they not had the air cover to raze Gaza. Now there is serious talk of going back into Gaza. And talk by Trump to turn it into a seaside resort has the settler movement giddy.
Is anyone surprised at horrific behaviour by Israel and the IDF at this point?
Every country has a percentage of right wing psychopaths. Unfortunately, they seem to be running the government in Israel.
Israel's intended end game seem to be to make Gaza completely uninhabitable, so that the Palestinians are forced to leave, then Israel can grab the land. A bit like they are doing in the West Bank, but on turbo mode. However, the Palestinians don't want to leave their land (why should they?) and no other state wants to take them. So we are left with enormous human misery, with no end in sight.
Most baffling of all, many Western states are not just turning a blind eye, but actively supporting Israel. Shame on them.
Gaza is the the grave yard of not only Palestinians, but the lie of a rules-based international order. Israel has been allowed to get away with - the backing on it's western allies - flagrant legal violations of international law, alongside accusations of Genocide by the ICJ.
Clever piece of engineering that needs to be studied. The US and Israel setup a company/foundation to "distribute" aid. I guess to escape the accusations that they are systematically starving Gaza's population. It seems to be working, they can hide behind this while inflicting even more crimes against Palestinians.
I was going to ask if people really fall for this, but it seems like they do.
Considering the discourse of the past two years and personal experience, I am afraid to say that yes, those are most likely very real people who very openly ignore 50% of the context and generalize their hate towards a whole population of a single country. In addition (and that's from, sadly, day to day experience) those are the same people who extrapolate their hate on one particular ethnical group.
I would have expected HN readers at least check on some context before starting beating their drums. Haaretz is a propaganda outlet that has been stocking the fire under everything related to Israel, for decades now.
> I don't know if they're state actors, or if they're real people with those beliefs
Both. And also trolls, and these days GenAI.
Some say "Never again means now", with the flag of Israel, and no sense of irony or hypocrisy. I wonder if any say the same words with the flag of Palestine? Hamas is still also genocidal, with their leaders giving similar comments about all Jews as the current Israel coalition members give about Palestinians.
When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers. The IDF and Hamas are the elephants, and there are many innocent civilians (metaphorically grass) suffering because of it. The supremely dominant power of the IDF means the suffering grass is overwhelmingly on one side of a border that Israel doesn't recognise, but there are innocents everywhere.
I don't have any answers. I have learned to recognise this kind of mindset, but I cannot find words to act as levers to change those minds.
Your comment is full of attempts to justify, excuse and underplay what the IDF are doing and many Israelis believe in. From Hamas to GenAI to trolls.
Whatever the historical record that brought us here, the fact is, Israel's standing army (not some personal goons of some dictator, the standing army of a moden democratic nation), appear to be practically all in on executing a systemic genocide. And I don't think there's anyway you can justify or underplay that.
Maybe the answer you're looking for is that good people anywhere shouldn't let anyone sell them a holocaust no matter the deal.
I'm literally in that comment describing the IDF as genocidal and dominant. In another comment on this thread, I liken the damage the IDF is causing to "a nuke going off". If you think this is "underplay", what words would you have used? Would you insist I blame all jews, even though this linked story is literally showing jewish people living in Israel being critical of their own government's actions? Would you insist that I said "Palestinians" instead of Hamas, when it's just the militants and not the civilians whose actions on that side I blame?
I do not divide either my criticism or sympathy by nationality, I divide it by victimising and victimhood — and even then with the humility to know that I cannot see through the fog of all the propaganda I'm being shown.
But can't you see that your description of the situation as elephants crashing, your instinct to bring up a hypothetical that there's some Palestine flag waving person out there that has the same extremist thinking that the Israelis are using today, that your need to remind yourself that Hamas (to borrow the words of some other folks in the comments today, an organization that's literally _surrounded_ by overtly hostile populace) is genocidal...can't you see how replying this to what the GP said and the article as a whole can be "mistaken" to be such an attempt at underplaying?
No, I don't blame all Jews at all and I've seen a lot of Jewish people actively work to stop the genocide. But I definitely blame this narrative of Hamas is what's been used to sell to genocide to what are otherwise normal and compassionate people. I believe the only people who can stop this are the Israeli citizens saying no and the time was way too long ago.
Fwiw, I don't read any excuse or justification in parents post. The fact is that the IDF are (right now) more effective than Hamas in exterminating the other party.
What you're saying is completely true. But I like to think that most Israelis believe that the other party doesn't include the countless civilians that were killed so far and are facing dire starvation right now. Israeli people should not let their grief and their fear prevent them from saying no from those amongst them that want to do terrible things.
I'd say it's very hard for a powerful nation to not suppress somebody in the long run.
Just think of any powerful nation (or group of people, or whatever), and try to think of somebody they have oppressed, or are still oppressing. It's typically not hard to come up with examples.
Agreed. Its possible that the group survived their oppression and becomes powerful enough to oppress, they loose their identify, in the sense that their culture evolves, along the way. Resulting in oppression along some axis.
Not sure if I would lump all those up together, these examples are overly broad and have little in common. There's more than a thousand years and basically no causal link between Roman persecution of early Christians and Crusades, let alone European imperialism, especially if you take Ethiopian, Greek, Georgian, and Armenian Christians into account. Same for Russians and Mongols, there's a pretty large gap with a ton of events in between, and Mongol Empire was humongous to begin with, it wasn't about Rus' in particular. And communists that became ruthless oppressors were already radicalized during the persecution, it was literally the radical wing of a militant faction of a huge umbrella party that included people that would have felt right at home in modern EU (e.g. Kollontai and her early activism).
The better explanation is simple and banal - power concentration makes people abuse it.
> There's more than a thousand years and basically no causal link between Roman persecution of early Christians and Crusades
You don't need to go that far forward, though. It took Christians <400 years to promulgate the Edict of Thessalonica that made Christianity (and of a very particular kind at that!) to be the only legal religion. And one can argue that it's no coincidence that it happened pretty much as soon as they have gained the political upper hand in the Roman Empire.
> Same for Russians and Mongols, there's a pretty large gap with a ton of events in between
Not really. Muscovy was still paying tribute to the Golden Horde and recognizing their supreme authority under Ivan III. His grandson Ivan IV ("the Terrible") conquered the Tatar state, making its lands such as Kazan part of his empire, and sent an expedition to start the conquest of Siberia.
The inaccuracies here are not so much with timing, more so with lack of precision wrt the groups involved. In general, though, I think it's fair to say that, for most part of human history, the oppressed become the oppressors pretty much as soon as they are capable of it.
I think that a lot of monotheistic religions, including Christianity, are generally intolerant to other branches and religions, especially when the faith is supposed to represent absolute truth, so it's probably unrelated to the history of persecution. And Muscovy wasn't the only land opressed by Mongols.
>In general, though, I think it's fair to say that, for most part of human history, the oppressed become the oppressors pretty much as soon as they are capable of it.
Doesn't this also hold for non-oppressed that have the opportunity? Although I suppose it'd be hard to find any examples of non-oppressed groups. Pillaging or conquering neighbors was pretty much the norm throughout the history. Rus' was converted to Christianity in part to stop raids such as Siege of Constantinople of 860.
I wouldn't consider this "lumping the groups together", or that they must exist together in time... its likely a group may require many generations before they can "oppress" another group.
My list of examples is very similar to this one and the ven diagram here is "was oppressed became oppressor"... in most cases it appears that only if the oppressed are destroyed or I would argue in the case of America- controlled at the margins... then they don't circle back around to abuse their newly acquired power.
I don't know if it's always the case, but it's true if given the opportunity. In the end all people are the same. Cultures may be different, but our lizard brains are the same. Us vs them, and dehumanizing others into something less than humans, whose suffering does not concern us.
Edit: yikes—quite apart from the current topic, you've been breaking the site guidelines a lot with flamewar posts and personal attacks. We ban accounts that post like this:
I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also posted good things, but if you want to keep participating in this community, it would be good to review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on.
Wait, my message was obviously intended as a bit sarcastic (which isn't very smart, I'll admit). But are you actually saying that I'm now allowed two racist comments without risking a ban? (three, counting this guideline-abiding comment?)
Then I don't understand what you were saying by "this is how HN moderation has worked for over a decade", wasn't that a response to my previous comment that said exactly that?
It's not the case that "for each post that doesn't break the guidelines, you're allowed one that does", and that's not what I was doing. When I said HN moderation has worked the same way for over a decade, I didn't mean that the description you gave was accurate—it isn't. (Nor, I assume, did you mean it to be, since you were being sarcastic.)
We try to persuade users to follow the site guidelines, and tend to give warnings and make requests before banning accounts, especially if they are active participants who have been around for a while. We don't rush to banning such users; we try to explain the intended use of the site and convince them to honor it. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.
Thank you for clarifying and sorry about the sarcasm.
I am absolutely no one, but I'd like to highlight that this kind of policy is (indirectly) why I don't use HN. Tolerating intolerance to the extent you do (which isn't 100% but still a lot) allows people like the one you responded to originally to drive hackers like me, my loved ones, my colleagues and my students away, while attracting other hateful people, as they see that they are tolerated here. In a possibly too extreme comparison, this the same dynamic as the "nazi bar problem" (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nazi_bar). I hope you know what kind of community these policies has made of HN.
I don't agree with that characterization of HN. In my experience, people who make this complaint are usually coming from a place of political passion. That's understandable, and we might have more common ground on that level than you'd expect. But it's no basis for operating a community, assuming you don't want to just exclude people with different views and backgrounds to your own.
It's easy to invoke strong pejoratives like "hateful" when describing people who have opposing viewpoints and passions to one's own—in fact, it's hard not to. But it leads to a rapid escalation. A bad comment turns into a "hateful view", "hateful view" turns into "a hateful person", and soon that leaps to "how can you tolerate hateful people on your site". (The next logical step would be to suspect the mods of being "hateful people" themselves.) This escalation is, in my view, bad for community. It leads to uniformity within one's own group and rage and enmity towards difference.
Having banned countless accounts for breaking the site guidelines over the years, I can't accept that "hateful people" are tolerated here for very long. When accounts are posting abusively, we may give them more warnings than you (or a lot of other users) would prefer, but we ban them in the end. A good example is this very subthread. I ended up banning that account (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403629). (Not, I should probably add, because of this or any other conversation about moderation, but just out of standard practice.)
p.s. You are not no one! I appreciate your comments and I wish I could write a better reply—I know a better one is possible, that expresses more precisely how I think about this. Alas it would take me hours, so I'm making do with one I don't much care for.
I have trouble seeing it your way. The person you were originally responding to, and originally wanted to tolerate because they also did good posts, was saying blatantly racist things about "the arabs in palestine" and that they essentially deserved the war crimes they're suffering, or that they brought it on themselves or whatever. To me this sounds like pretty straightforward political and ideological hate.
But anyway, this is only one case and we should not base our thinking just on it. The problem is the policy (or the way it's systematically enforced) and its broader results. I don't know the details of how the moderation works here nor have I any statistics. I only know that I saw too much racism and hate towards whole groups of people because of their identity here in the past, and that when I occasionally stumble across a HN link, I usually can still see that hate being a lot more represented than in other spaces I frequent, and that the kind of policy you described to me has never worked at building diverse and interesting communities.
We appreciate your biased comment, aimed at portraying Palestinians as terrorists and non-indigenous to the area, cherry-picking history as it suits your narrative. We're not interested, though. Thank you.
I really don't think that it's a coincidence that just as this news was starting to gain traction a few weeks ago, Isreal started bombing Iran. It was the perfect distraction.
There has been so much disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda from so many nations and interested parties that I find it impossible to believe any claims anymore without seeing a video for myself. In this case, there are none. Even according to the article, the soldiers were ordered to fire on looters, which seems reasonable in the context of this war.
Spoken by the Athenians and resulting in a war that, as Thucydides's audience knew quite well, Athens lost big-time.
Which actually holds up quite well for everybody who loves to bring up that quote: realism aka "we shouldn't face the consequences of our actions" is the obvious rallying cry for people facing the consequences of their actions.
If neither side can agree on peace, if neither side has objectives which the other will accept, if neither side is willing to compromise; What other outcome is possible in terms of realpolitik?
It is upsetting to observe. We all want better for humanity.
There have been cases in the past where an external strong power has been able to suppress both sides but it has to be done for generations until the reasons are lost to time.
Depending on who you ask, there have been a variety of external powers stirring the pot. Most people are horrified by the violence. Beyond the territorial, religious and cultural disputes there are opposing geopolitical factions.
Of course it is understandable to be outraged by the violence and atrocities. The human suffering is real, but arguments focusing on these points can miss the larger picture. The underlying incentives dictate outcomes. Atrocities are often marketed as rationalizations for further violence.
We want to prescribe an outcome without atrocities. Yet discussions fall into recrimination before they can describe the conflict coherently.
I guess the Israeli government's original plan to arm and support drug gangs and literally ISIS (euphemistically called 'clans') as "aid security" wasn't working out? Especially after it was revealed said "security" was stealing and reselling the food aid under the protection of IDF while the Israeli govt. and media blamed the looting on Hamas.
And after the Israeli opposition leader exposed the whole charade and Netanyahu defended it saying “On the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas. What’s wrong with that? It only saves the lives of Israeli solders, and publicising this only benefits Hamas.”
To be honest, I do prefer drug dealers over Hamas islamists in general. And where exactly is the proof the gangs are connected to ISIS?
"The basis for Lieberman’s allegation of ties to IS was unclear."
It is easy to throw dirt and hope something sticks, but the main thing speaking against his group seems Netanjahu's support in my opinion. But otherwise I don't see the scandal so much here. Especially not compared to the scandal of intentionally targeting civilian population and indiscriminate killing of starving people like the article states.
Also, if, as in the recent New York City mayoral debate, US politicians are supposed to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which it recognizes itself as, then I don't see the big deal over Palestine as an Islamic state. I myself would prefer to see a secular PFLP state, but the Zionist entity, US, Canada etc. fight against the PFLP, proscribe them as "terrorists" etc.
"he was propping them up prior to the current battles"
Those words indicate something different, than allowing quatari money to reach the civilian part of Hamas government as part of a temporary peace deal. Because that sounds actually reasonable to me.
Now there is indeed more, like this:
"Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who is now Mr. Netanyahu’s finance minister, put it bluntly in 2015, the year he was elected to Parliament.
“The Palestinian Authority is a burden,” he said. “Hamas is an asset.”"
But those words came without context (just a youtube video, that I won't watch right now).
Ironically, the closest you will get to something approaching that type of Marxist-Leninist utopia in the Middle East, is living in an Israeli kibbutz near the border with Gaza.
> To be honest, I do prefer drug dealers over Hamas islamists in general. And where exactly is the proof the gangs are connected to ISIS?
A simple dealer vs an armed wing of a religious theocracy who think people like me are the devil incarnate, I'd pick the dealer.
An organised armed drug network that necessarily has to be at least comparable strength to an existing network of religious theocrats who are obviously getting external support owing to the ability to continue fighting despite the evidence of systematic destruction of their civil environment that satellite imagery shows has been in aggregate comparable in scope and depth to a nuke going off…
I don't want either of them anywhere near anyone I care about. Even if the latter wasn't associated with a different group of religious zealots.
It gets ugly at the latest when remembering that "looting" was always a core part of the Israeli narrative to explain the humanitarian crisis.
Even before the current siege/semi-siege, the standard response to calls from aid orgs had been essentially "Look, it's not us. We're letting in aid, but it's not our fault if Palestinian armed gangs themselves are looting it after we let it in. Palestinians are just too stupid to organize their own survival."
Of course that response was already ridiculous back then: The 1000s of aid trucks stuck at the Egypt-Gazan border are definitely not kept there by Hamas or armed gangs. Even the looting attacks themselves were suspicions: Aid orgs kept reporting they were happening in areas under full control of the IDF - and IDF was forbidding using any other route[1]:
> Israel is doing the opposite of ensuring aid can be delivered to Palestinians in need. For example, a U.N. memo recently obtained by the Washington Post concluded that the armed gangs looting aid convoys could be “benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence” and “protection” from Israel’s military, and that a gang leader had a military-like compound in an area “restricted, controlled and patrolled” by the Israeli military.
The gangs operate in areas under Israeli control, often within eyeshot of Israeli forces. When convoys are looted, Israeli forces watch and do nothing, even when aid workers request assistance. Israeli forces refer to one area about a kilometer from its Kerem Shalom border checkpoint as “the looting zone.” The IDF-designated looting zone might be the only place in Gaza that Israeli forces won’t shoot an armed Palestinian.
But there was still at least some benefit of the doubt that the armed gangs were just some ordinary criminals exploiting the situation. Claims that the gangs themselves were operating under Israeli orders were conspiracy theories.
Netanyahu now confirmed those theories as reality.
Because it kind of reads like an attack towards me for not caring about genocide. If you are curious about my point of view, it is that both Hamas and Israeli leadership belongs in prison and the US and EU should stop supporting them immediately.
But that doesn't mean I support anyone who wants to erease Israel. Do you support Hamas?
This is an article about idf warcrimes, I think the comment you are responding to is just pointing out that you are immediately pivotting to condemning Hamas
But the comment he's responding to already talks primerely about Hamas, it's not he who switched the topic from IDFs horrors to Hamas crimes.
> I guess the Israeli government's original plan to arm and support drug gangs and literally ISIS (euphemistically called 'clans') as "aid security" wasn't working out? Especially after it was revealed said "security" was stealing and reselling the food aid under the protection of IDF while the Israeli govt. and media blamed the looting on Hamas.
To which he responded his opinions about drug and faith dealers.
No, because drug dealers by definition mainly sell drugs to people who want them.
A subset of them indeed engages with dark methods like mixing highly addictive drugs into harmless ones and turf war, but the majority just sells things.
Before weed was legal in germany I engaged with quite some of them and they were mostly decent people all in all. Not the greatest and often messed up themself a bit, but otherwise no danger to me or anyone else. My choice if I damaged myself with their products.
A islamist on the other hand is buisy by definition with spreading the rule of Islam over everyone, everywhere.
So you're equating the drug dealing "clans" in Gaza to your local streetside dealer in Germany?
Both Hamas and the clans are cancers to society, and it's abhorrent that the IDF is dealing with them to distribute aid, instead of being directly involved (which they can easily commit to).
My main issue was equating the term "drug dealer" with something worse than a terrorist.
Now as my edit above hopefully made clear, apparently they ain't just "drug dealers", but ruthless criminals who loot and shoot a UN aid convoy for profit.
And abhorrent are indeed many things about the whole situation.
Sourced articles like these are good and further proof that Israel is a psychopathic state and society. But what's odd is to depict is as "surprising" or even shocking when the same state has been carpet bombing civilian, including women and children for 16 months straight, causing what is estimated at 300 000 deaths, committing every single atrocity or infringement to the international law possible, including targeting medics, journalists, using starvation as a weapon of war, bragging on it on social media, having politicians incite to eradicate the remaining part of the Gaza population, and I could go on and on with nameless atrocities. So just to put things in perspective, this article depicts a horrible incident, but it is entirely in line with the rest of the Israeli policy, and unfortunately pales in comparison with the ongoing large-scale massacre.
They are also firing SHELLS for warning. Direct article quote:
> In one incident, the soldier was instructed to fire a shell toward a crowd gathered near the coastline. "Technically, it's supposed to be warning fire – either to push people back or stop them from advancing," he said. "But lately, firing shells has just become standard practice. Every time we fire, there are casualties and deaths, and when someone asks why a shell is necessary, there's never a good answer. Sometimes, merely asking the question annoys the commanders."
There were Nuremberg trials because Germany capitulated. We don't even have sanctions on Israel and the people responsible will only be jailed if they step outside Israel.
I am not optimistic at all and I am very afraid for Gazans.
We've asked you several times to stop breaking the site guidelines. You've continued to do it anyway. That's not cool.
Moreover, your account has been using HN primarily for political/nationalistic battle, which is also a line at which we ban accounts, quite separately from individual violations.
I respect your judgment, so I've edited out the first bit, but honestly I feel it's not an unreasonable thing to say in response to genocide denial - it was said about the claim, not about the person, and in my opinion it's an accurate description of that claim. /my two cents
From a moderation point of view, it's a question of the effect that these bits have on other people in the community, and therefore the quality of the discussion. It's obviously near-impossible to have a thoughtful conversation about a topic like this across the vast differences (ideological, national, emotional) that separate people. In such a context, even provocations that feel small and justified can set the neighborhood on fire.
If the discussion devolves into just another internet screaming match where people hurl pre-existing talking points and just get even more riled up in rage, then the HN thread is a failure. Maybe it's too much to hope for anything better on this topic, which is probably the most divisive and emotional one we've ever seen, but I think we have to try. That's we allow the topic to appear on the HN front page from time to time. Not to allow it would be easier, at least in the short term, but inconsistent with the intended spirit of the site.
The bulk of your post wasn't doing anything like flamewar at all, so the swipey bits were particularly unfortunate.
p.s. I don't mean to pile on, but "please stop pretending" is also a swipe. You can't know whether someone else is pretending, and there's no reason to suppose that people aren't sincere in their convictions about a highly-charged topic (separately from whether their beliefs are true or false). If you lead by denying that, the rest of what you have to say will have little chance of being heard.
If you try to define that in a way that detaches from larger human concerns, you make it smaller. Curiosity doesn't benefit from that.
I agree with you that there are many reasons to be unhappy with threads like this and how the topic lands on HN generally. I am by no means happy with it—I just don't think that the alternative is better. Curiosity ultimately has to do with relating to what's real and what's true. You can't impose a narrow view of on- and off-topcicness on that.
The problem of how to run a site like HN in accordance with a value like that is subject to a thousand constraints, some obvious, many not. That makes the problem interesting, but also means that it can never be solved—not to everyone's satisfaction, nor even to anyone's satisfaction. Therefore we all have a certain amount of dissatisfaction to tolerate.
Have you seen any comments on this submission that demonstrate intellectual curiosity? It's just flamewarring and complaints as far as I can see, at this point.
I agree that the wrong call was made. I'm also curious why this particular post is the one which was chosen as the poster child on which to set aside the rules and allow "thoughtful" discussion.
It's very relevant, the hacker ethos is not just about technology and VC funding, it's also about curiosity, honesty, skepticism, and in a way, also about distrust of the powerful. This revelation is perfectly on topic.
The comments are actually better than expected given the sensitivity of the topic at hand.
We must be reading different comments. What do you reckon is the ratio of thoughtful comments expressing curiosity, honesty, etc. to the mindless bleatings of the uninformed?
I have no idea which side you think we're favoring, but I can tell you two things for sure: (1) it's whichever side you personally disagree with; and (2) they think we're favoring you. Of everything I've learned about how HN functions (and internet dynamics generally), this is by far the most invariant.
With the risk of being moderated myself, why is it the case that is always the not pro-israel comments that get moderated? The original comment seems quite reasonable but the guy even kind of apologized, for no reason! That's pure coercion to conform, if I may be allowed (lol) to have an opinion.
> why is it the case that is always the not pro-israel comments that get moderated
That is far from the case, as you can see for yourself if you look more closely.
People (I don't mean you personally, but all of us—it seems to be basic human bias) are far too quick to jump to "always". I call this the notice-dislike bias (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), which is a terrible name I'm hoping someone can improve on.
That's about frequency per se, whereas I'm talking about experiences with negative emotional valence.
Thanks for the reply though—I hope someday someone will come up with a good name for it; or better, still, point out that it's a known bias in the standard repertoire and tell me what it's called.
It's "separation between church and state". As in: the institution of The Church. "separation between religion and state" doesn't really exist anywhere, and can't really exist, because it would basically be a thought-crime. For example Joe Biden is a Catholic and I'm some of his actions have almost certainly been inspired in part of fully by his Catholic beliefs. It couldn't be otherwise as being Catholic is part of Joe Biden.
Stories like this often get flagged because they devolve into political/religious flamewars. I think many people might have a knee-jerk reaction to posts about the Israel/Gaza war and flag them, because support for Israel vs. support for Palestine can be quite polarizing and emotional.
Not saying it's right or wrong, or that this sort of article is or isn't interesting to HN readers. But a reasonable reason for flagging an article is a belief that the topic at hand doesn't lend itself to thoughtful, interesting discussion.
People are constantly implying the Russians invaded Ukraine for no reason, or that Iran is the aggressor in the recent war, or that a genocide isn't actially happening.
Haaretz is generally a liberal Zionist Israeli newspaper. As such, I find it easy to trust that it is not lying when it reports sensitive testimony from multiple IDF soldiers.
I wouldn't say it's thoroughly off-topic because not only do a lot of tech companies directly enable or produce the stuff that's enabling Israel but a fair number of major figures have also directly involved themselves politically with Israel.
That said it's the kind of topic I don't expect HN to be able to particularly handle in an interesting or insightful way. It's mostly just going to be a mix of horrified people and then users trying to gaslight others into how this is a good thing.
What should or can we do about it? The US government is not representing the will of its citizens. Contacting my legislative representative isn't likely to accomplish anything to influence Trump continuing to directly facilitate and support genocide and other war crimes.
I also still need to work almost every day to pay the bills and care for my family, otherwise I'd be happy to go camp out and peacefully protest in support of change on the daily. What's the best option for the majority who share my situation? Because I do care a lot, and feel stuck.
Netanyahu is bad, for sure, but are you forgetting the half a million dead after the invasion and regime change in Iraq? Bush and Cheney are living in happy retirement. Rumsfeld has passed, may his soul rot in hell.
And likewise people like you face zero consequences for spreading hate and misinformation disproportionately to your skin in the game. No one else cares about any conflict like they do with Israel. Why? Because they hate Jews. There’s a literal genocide in Yemen right now. Crickets.
Unfortunately it's not funny. There is no coincidence here in how anti-Israeli content is constantly promoted and the what the comment threads turn into.
Oh man that’s awful. I support withdrawing all funding for Hamas and all other organizations who intentionally kill humanitarian aid workers. What do you think?
Anti-Israeli content is continuously promoted here along with anti-Israel commentary while flagging and down-voting of any discussion to the contrary.
Israel can do no right. If it allows food into Gaza Hamas steals it. If it tries to set up a different food distribution scheme and Hamas comes up with various schemes to attack that (including shooting its own people) then that's also a war crime.
There is zero consideration in this discussion to Israel's position. To the hostages. To the realities of war.
That's not to say Israel can't and shouldn't be criticized but this is more of an obsession and a hate fest than any of that. Valid criticism is not cherry picking and piling on, it's a more thorough consideration of the nuanced reality.
Maybe don't be a genocidal state and people will stop criticizing Israel.
There is no nuanced reality when we literally see with our very eyes that the Israeli state is committing a genocide. It's supposed to be never again, so we are doing all we can to stop the evil apartheid genocidal Israel from committing more crimes against humanity.
Even Holocaust survivors who see what Israel is doing at the moment are calling it a genocide.
Israel is evil and most people here are directly responsible for funding the atrocities. That’s why I care. There are a dozen other conflicts just as bad that I would never comment on because I’m just not involved and don’t need to take sides. Maybe if Hamas was taking my tax dollars too then you would see more posts about them, but “radicalized extremist muslims kill somebody” is just a “dog bites man” story compared to “our ally who you directly fund is using your money to slaughter children”
US gives a ton of aid to Egypt which is an oppressive dictatorship. Egypt is also involved in the civil war in Sudan which has seen more than 150,000 people killed and more than 522,000 children die from starvation, and about 10 million people displaced. Where is your outcry? Maybe something to do with the media (social and traditional) not pumping images to your device 24/7. No Jews no news.
Israel is not evil and doesn't need your funding. Your ally is not slaughtering children, your ally is defending itself against an enemy hiding behind children that's trying to get as many civilians killed as they can and get the most shocking images and figures, whether fabricated or not, in front of your eyes.
Hamas was also taking your tax dollars. The US funds Palestinians too, where do you think that money funneled into Gaza ended up?
The US also supports dictatorial regimes like Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (and Turkey, semi-dictatorial). US weapons used by Saudis were slaughtering civilians in Yemen. Not to mention what western powers did in the middle east directly (and other places).
I think you're being manipulated. Israel is far from perfect but it's also far from evil. Any other country in its position would be doing more or less the same thing. If its enemies stopped trying to murder its citizens then there would be no more violence. War crimes, if/when they occur are not ok but Israel has the right to defend its citizens and not too many options.
EDIT: I should also add that not everyone here is American. In general the singling out of Israel and the PR machinery to paint Israel as evil is happening across the world. Many countries and people that provide no aid to Israel are attacking it. So clearly the amount of aid provided is not a factor in anti-Israel sentiments and singling it out. You can do this sort of PR when you have a lot of money (Qatar).
There’s only one opinion allowed on the internet now. If Israel let a mob grab all the aid the news would slam them for not doing anything. The demonization is unreal. Meanwhile, Yemen killed and raped thousands of its own citizens and I haven’t seen anything about it of course. There’s an ACTUAL literal genocide happening in Yemen.
Now they are being colonized by Morocco. They protested against Spanish domination and now they’ve been deported and oppressed by an autocratic regime.
The absurd idea of a "genocide" in Palestine is immediately defeated by a simple search showing that the population of Palestine increased close to 600% since 1948, rendering the all claim nothing more than a usual dog whistle from anti-Semite propaganda.
I said ethnic cleansing, not genocide. Although genocide is what has been happening for the past 2 years in Gaza as described by even Holocaust scholars.
Your argument is a typical claim of racists and zionist colonialists.
1st: you claimed Israel was carrying out ethnic cleansing since 1948. You are now trying to mix words, but when you do ethnic cleaning, you carry out genocide. You were caught in your dog whistle and then tried to get out of it with semantics.
2nd: “Zionist colonialists” is what you call the people that want to have their home in the tiny piece of desert where they where expelled from. By contrast you don’t seem to have any qualms about the Arab colonialists that took all the Middle East and north of Africa. In fact, you support they should even get to keep the tiny piece of desert that belongs to the Jew people. Your problem clearly has to lie in the ethnicity of the people doing the so called colonialism (you even go as far as calling colonialism to people taking hold of their homeland).
> Once again, we are faced with the suggestion that not only are the IDF murderous maniacs, but they also have the worst aim on the planet. The monstrous IDF are such terrible shots that they fire heavy machine guns, mortars, and grenade launchers at crowds of tens of thousands, yet manage to wound no more than 1 to 5 Gazans at a time.
The following quote seems consistent with much of the journalism I’ve read about the conflict for years. It makes you become a bit cynical of the news outlets when you repeatedly see things like this https://x.com/washingtonpost/status/1929961283593367559 Peoples first impressions often last the longest.
> Later, Haaretz quotes an officer saying the intent behind the live fire was crowd control, not carnage. However, it buries this clarification so deeply that it becomes effectively irrelevant. The reader has already been presented with the moral horror headline, and that’s what will endure.
> The author admits they don’t know who is shooting at civilians near these aid distribution centres. Still, rather than consider the possibility that, for example, Hamas might be involved, the article shifts with the loaded line:
“Fire at unarmed crowds” and “fire towards crowds” is the same thing, what sort of semantic ping pong is this? Also propaganda =/= bad. All media is propaganda, in some languages the word “propaganda” has the same semantic meaning as the English word “advertisement”. This comment is war crime apologia.
Sure there is, but we’re not talking about firing “warning shots” at armed combatants, we’re talking about unarmed civilians, most of whom are minors. If you are sympathetic to the idea that these aid sites need to be heavily guarded, then you need to ask yourself why this level of force is necessary, because the explanation the IDF and Israeli officials are giving makes no sense. Can you imagine if we fired “warning shots” towards the homeless for lining up too early for the food bank?
So, not warning shots but targeted fire?
And is there any evidence of those combatants, amongst all the body cams and drone footage?
To be clear, I mean actual combatants, not the IDF definition of "any man of fighting age"(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yot...)
The Hebrew version had also distanced itself from what would be considered Journalism. But with no real field reporting from Gaza, that's the info you can get, and you have to guesstimate the reality from there.
and there would be field reporting if the IDF didn't go around executing any journalist they find (including child "journalists" merely posting on social media)
> “The Gaza Strip should be flattened, and for all of them there is but one sentence, and that is death,” Yitzhak Kroizer, a member of national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said in a radio interview.
Yitzhak is a current sitting member of the Knesset.
I just did. No question a number of these comments are completely inexcusable.
2 points:
1. A number of them, especially by more moderate voices, were made in the immediate days after Oct 7 when there was a tremendous amount of anger as a reaction to what happened.
2. The above comment and others like this were made by the extreme of the extreme right in Israel. I don't think that even Ben Gvir would utter such a thing.
Nobody with decision making powers is making any attempt to exterminate a people.
Have you seen the Israeli hostage families protest in Israel? They get heckled and threatened by the hardliners in the general public and government who want the war continue to and those hardliners essentially want the hostages as an excuse for war. The democracy in Israel has elected a government that wants to continue to acquire land in Gaza and the West Bank in preference over negotiating for return of the hostages. There are multiple video and text reporting on this issue.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-847290
There are also hardline hostage families that want to continue the war over negotiating.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-hamas-hostages-ceasef...
It's complicated and not as simple as your black and white assessment - that people are for either returning the hostages or not returning the hostages and those same opinions are in sync with ending the war/continuing the war with the same priority.
Hamas having hostages serves both Hamas and the hard right wing's long term goals in Israel, and the hard right wing in Israel holds all the power in Israel and Hamas holds the power in Gaza.
> As of November 1, Israeli authorities held nearly 7,000 Palestinians from the occupied territory in detention for alleged security offenses, according to the Israeli human rights organization HaMoked. Far more Palestinians have been arrested since the October 7 attacks in Israel than have been released in the last week. Among those being held are dozens of women and scores of children.
> The majority have never been convicted of a crime, including more than 2,000 of them being held in administrative detention, in which the Israeli military detains a person without charge or trial. Such detention can be renewed indefinitely based on secret information, which the detainee is not allowed to see. Administrative detainees are held on the presumption that they might commit an offense at some point in the future. Israeli authorities have held children, human rights defenders and Palestinian political activists, among others, in administrative detention, often for prolonged periods.
Irrelevant. Israel is obliged to not prevent civilians from receiving food, water and medicine. If it can't do so without 'aiding' Hamas, that's Israel's problem.
I think most people consider Oct 7th and the hostages to be a grave criminal act. It doesn't justify genocide, though, which seems to be what you're implying.
> I know Israel has attempted a 2 state solution 3 different times since 1947, unsuccessful because they were subsequently attacked. That's history.
I agree a two state solution has been derailed by attacks. Full implementation of the Oslo accords were derailed by the assassination of the Prime Minister of Israel. He was assassinated by a right wing Kahanist Jewish Israeli! And now the Israeli cabinet has Kahanist MPs. That's history.
> Now, when friendly fire occurs, when mistakes are made, unintentionally or from bad strategic intelligence, it shocks people more than it used to. Please consider these things as well when determining how you feel about Israel's recent response
We are more connected with digital recording devices in the hands of more people on this planet than ever before. It also makes it possible to isolate information from one perspective, for example, creating a dedicated website to promote an idea.
Just curious, are there similar sites recording the repeated terrorist attacks against Israel? The rapes? Information is only good when it contains enough context to intelligently weigh the facts. I don't suppose you could link those as well could you?
> Just curious, are there similar sites recording the repeated terrorist attacks against Israel?
From your parent comment:
> I've spent my life watching news reports of bombings at their border, bus stops, public squares, their fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, and children picked off.
There has never been a time in the last 30 years where attacks against Israel were insufficiently covered.
This article from the BBC corroprates the claims in the parent article, and also talks about why there are so many civilian casualties at these food distribution centers:
The most obvious problems are that the food distribution centers are placed deep inside military red zones (which is not common practice), and that Israeli soldiers have been ordered to fire at civilians in those zones, even if they obviously pose no threat (which is clearly a war crime).
The sections "Troops describe firing at crowds of aid seekers" and "Aid workers and medics call for end to GHF distribution plan" explain in more detail.
The article you link from NPR seems to mostly cite the Haaretz article. The only possible corroboration are the claims from Adil Husain, but I am hesitant to take his words as corroboration.
The Haaretz article states it is unclear how many died from IDF fire vs the Abu Shabab group. Husain was not at the aid site and so can't state how they were wounded.
If the soldiers truly fired on those who were only running away, not advancing, this should be investigated and charged as a war crime. However, at this point the evidence is not clear aside from a handful of anonymous sources from a single press release.
There have been many many aid trucks refused entry. The famine has been manufactured by Israel. "normal procedure" might have some weight if there weren't 100s of trucks refused entry.
Then they run out of food and their families are starving.
Then you distribute a limited amount of food that will run out long before most get any food.
If your family is starving to death, you can't leave the area and someone is dangling food in front of your face, are you saying you wouldn't risk it for your family and try to get SOME food regardless of the threat of death?
It's just not true that this is "normal procedure". It's just not. It didn't happen before either, and now it's happened how many times? Once or twice, I can believe. This many times? Not so much.
And this line of reasoning:
> If you don't shoot them they will take a sack by force, and then everybody will take a sack by force. Usually they coordinate themselves into bands or gangs to steal the food.
Are we supposed to just accept that because something is status quo, it’s permissible? The consequence for “stealing” food should never be death, ever, in any scenario. It’s also interesting that people taking and distributing food are characterised as “gangs”, this suggests that taking a vital resource and redistributing it is somehow criminal.
You either have not read the article or are deliberately being obtuse.
The article has multiple IDF officers say that this isn't, in fact, normal warzone procedure for distributing food. That they witnessed crowds being dispersed with artillery fire, which isn't normal procedure anywhere.
Like, I don't know what world you live in, but I don't know any other conflict where dozens of civilians get fired upon during food aid distribution every day.
But it's not a warzone, it's a slaughterhouse. The intention isn't to feed people, it's to remove Palestinians from Gaza, by attrition or violence.
Once you understand the motive, you understand why these deliberately concentrated, artificially limited aid delivery systems are used. They make remaining in Gaza the worst option.
>...fought primarily by trying to erode international support for Israel
Agreed.
>Are you suggesting that it is right...
Thank you for the opportunity to further clarify my comment. If this is happening I believe that it is deeply immoral.
My comment posed a hypothetical about the incentives which may be driving these events. As you observed above, it does fit with existing knowledge of Hamas strategy. Examples would include pop-up rocket attacks near schools or hospitals.
Here is a source which some have alleged to be sympathetic to Hamas. I have selected this source not because I prefer it, but to avoid allegations of bias.
>UNRWA condemns placement of rockets, for a second time, in one of its schools
>UNRWA strongly and unequivocally condemns the group or groups responsible for this flagrant violation of the inviolability of its premises under international law
Before levelling claims of bias and racism, consider that the reporting is by a Jewish run, Israeli newspaper and that the sources are IDF officers and soldiers. To jump to a claim of anti-semitism suggestions you really need to examine your own biases.
Atrocities against unarmed civilians are not excused by 'but they started it', who did? The old woman, the 10 year old boy? Justifying collective punishment like this takes a huge degree of racism and heartlessness.
"once started (wars) are sometimes impossible to stop". How convenient then that land (belonging to people who also have nothing to do with 'the first punch') continues to be stolen as long as the war drags out.
War crimes should be taken very seriously, not dealt with in the court of public opinion. Just look at how “ready to convict” people are in this thread, without any evidence whatsoever, just on hearsay —though yes, Haaretz is very reputable. “Blood libel” may be too strong a term, but similar idea: the jews are conspiring to do evil to non-Jews and keep it secret by control of the media or by leveraging the “zog” or maybe shapeshifting or Kabbalah or something more imaginative. It’s all just shades of antisemitism.
Even the stance that such claims must be valid because the reporters are Israeli, is itself derivative of the Jewish conspiracy trope. Is it more likely there is a large conspiracy afoot and Israeli officers are engaging in war crimes at large scale as many in this thread have concluded (even before this report), or that these are isolated and undesirable events playing out in the fog of war and representative of poor decision making in circumstances of which we have only partial knowledge?
My bias, if I have one, is to believe that the Israeli military, or really any competently run military anywhere, is interested in not committing war crimes when avoidable.
There is no such thing as an unavoidable war crime.
Reporting is one way they are brought to light. Commenters are allowed to discuss the validity of the claims, whatever their reasoning. You have decided to believe the Israeli military, others have the right to conclude otherwise.
But that the reporters and sources are Israeli means your knee-jerk claims of their anti-semitism or conspiracy are absurd. Nor does that mean the claims must be valid, just that they shouldn't be dismissed out of hand by hair-triggered, wild accusations of anti-semitism. You do know they aren't doing anyone any favours, right?
Oct 7th is not when anything started. If this is just a response a terror attack, then should Israel be profiting from it? Will the Palestinians be allowed to go back and rebuild?
Without a sense of proportionate response, if Hitler did some false flag attacks, do you expect the whole world to be okay with the Holocaust?
More than 50 years of oppression and countless atrocities. If you are slowly killing a man by choking him and he stabs your eye in defense, is that provocation?
If Hitler bombed a some Germans and blamed it on the Jewish people, should rest of the world be okay with the Holocaust?
Latent? Ive seen flagged comments playing into age old european conspiracies that Jews are controlling the world - on HN.
The reality is a fortified Israel was born of Jewish trauma and while the citizens of the world continue to propel antisemitic nonesense, despot nationalists like Netanyahu will have excuses to justify horrific actions
I’m not going to claim a side in this, but I do have a question to pose. When you have two ideologies which are so diametrically opposed to each other that they cannot coexist in the same space at the same time, what is the alternative outcome? One must destroy the other for peace to exist - this is the nature of war. To think that there is some world where everyone comes away from this with a handshake and an agreement is just naive.
I disagree that there are two driving ideologies here that are diametrically opposed.
Hamas's ideology is certainly opposed to Israel existing, but they are not the only Palestinians, and other ideologies can take hold and be supported by the populace (I hope). The Palestinian Authority has been working together with Israel since its founding, after all, and with all the problems it has, it still represents a model that could work, in theory, and they pursue largely diplomatic ways to gain recognition.
I agree with you that this is not actually the nature of War. However, it's also true that it depends on the type of war being fought.
It's not uncommon to see in history that when a country/village/group of people can't/doesn't want to be subjugated or it's strategically difficult to "keep" them, it gets wiped off.
In the Ancient Rome entire Celtic tribes wiped off, while during Charlemagne's empire it was the Saxons, and more recently during the the Ottoman Empire it was the Greeks, Armenians, and today the Curds.
Unfortunately such things do happen and sadly enough will always happen. Not justifying in any way, I am just saying that we're so used to believe that this is something new, when it actually it isn't, and we also believe we are better than back then, while we actually aren't. :(
> two ideologies which are so diametrically opposed to each other that they cannot coexist
Ideologies aren't platonic solids. They must be constantly refurbished in the minds of the avowed. Every moment of every day informs them—reinforces or depletes them. Changes their character.
It's guaranteed that these minds will, eventually, change. Who survives to bare this change remains to be seen.
Keep in mind, also, that Israel vs. Gaza is in some ways just a proxy war between US/Europe and Iran/Russia who support Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Ideological differences, frankly, are only a surface patina on the same old economic games.
Lastly, consider a third framing: that Israel/Gaza is only the hottest segment of a conflict that encircles the globe: the border between imperial powers and colonized peoples, like US/Mexico etc. Borders, passports, and citizenship are a worldwide system of privileges and protections that Westphalian Nationstates collude to maintain.
I'm not sure what ideologies you refer to. Islam and Judaism? Not really relevant to the discussion, I don't think.
Tell that to the victims of gleeful brutality under the guidance of fundamentalist ideology, like that engrained in Islamist governance and extremist militant groups.
Your post reads like the come-down from intellectual pill-popping. Your attempt to dilute a serious problem in the world to "patinas" and reduce the problem to imperial vs colonized peoples, sounds like a manifesto from the lawns of a university activist encampment.
Consider the framing, you ask. I considered it and reject it, The subjugation of "infidels" under expansionist oppressive religious groups with the intent to bring "peace" is an imperialism all of its own, but much worse. Peace... at the cost of freedom, autonomy, expression, equality.
>The subjugation of "infidels" under expansionist oppressive religious groups with the intent to bring "peace" is an imperialism all of its own, but much worse. Peace... at the cost of freedom, autonomy, expression, equality.
> like that engrained in Islamist governance and extremist militant groups.
Or that engrained in the joint Israeli/American coup that overthrew Iran's last democratically-elected leader. The one that installed a secret police that tortured and disappeared tens of thousands of citizens under the training of CIA and Mossad operatives: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/legal-and-political-mag...
If you think his comment reads like revisionism, imagine how ridiculous you sound to an educated audience. C'mon now.
If you need to wind back the clock before any of us were born to achieve a "gotcha", you're doing a disservice to whatever educated audience remains. Your what-aboutism opens a gaping hole where a point should be.
Ideological differences are gigantic valleys between nations in conflict, that's the point.
When one side shouts God's name as they butcher & jihad whoever's in their way who isn't a fanatic like them, the ideological differences can't be mended with "c'mon now". When one side thrives on martyrdom and human rights violations for breakfast, it's not a time to say "maybe we should look at what they're trying to say, are we just not listening?"
>Israel wouldn't attack Gaza if the terrorists who run that place didn't have a constitutional ambition to destroy Israel.
Really? The > 750,000 Palestinians pushed out of their homes in 1948, when "Israelis" showed up for the first time, backed up by guns, were Hamas? News to me.
What else new. It’s just more blatant this time, but does anyone truly believe bombing all hospitals in the strip is anything but more of the same thing?
They’re deliberately creating martyrs so they can prolong this pointless war into the next generation.
I can’t imagine there’s anyone left in Gaza that wouldn’t happily gun down any Israelian just for a chance to get back at them.
One could make the argument that it's happening right now. Russia+North Korea, Iran, Hamas, they are all intertwined. And then on the other side you could say Ukraine, US, Israel.
Thought experiment: if the Israel/Gaza conflict didn't pop off, would the US presidency be the same right now? How did that change affect the Russia/Ukraine conflict? Etc.
Israel can't even sustain a hot war with Iran, with US backing, despite assassinating dozens of Iranian top brass. China represents 10-20 Irans.
China (and Turkey, Arab states) is more or less content to sit and watch USA destroy itself domestically and internationally over the failed Zionist project. "Do nothing, win."
https://archive.is/8RsGz
Some context first so my opinion isn't misconstrued as as leftist stereotype. This is within context of the behavior described in the article.
Israel's operations as described in the article are clear-cut war crimes. The military and civilian leaders responsible for these ROE should face something similar to the Nuremberg trials. I am embarrassed for my country's support of Israel's operations.This is large-scale, continued, intentional CIVCAS.
I'll provide context too - I'm a Jewish Israeli. I'd probably be considered left (or even far-left) by Israeli standards, but I'm in the "pro-Israeli" camp as conventionally understood online.
This Haaretz article is very troubling. To the extent it's accurate, there's not much question that it reflects war crimes.
A few thoughts:
1. The article itself says there is an ongoing investigation into some of these accusations. I hope that, to whatever extent this is happening, it's not widespread, and anyone committing war crimes is very visibly and publicly tried in court.
2. There is clearly something broken with the GHF and the new aid delivery - dozens dead every day for weeks. We really need some answers on what's going on.
3. From Haaretz today:
> The U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on Saturday urged Israel to investigate reports that soldiers opened fire towards unarmed Palestinians near aid distribution sites, detailed in a Haaretz expose, calling the allegations "too grave to ignore," while denying that any such incidents occurred within its facilities.
> GHF Interim Director John Acree stated, "There have been no incidents or fatalities at or in the immediate vicinity of any of our distribution sites."
>GHF Interim Director John Acree stated, "There have been no incidents or fatalities at or in the immediate vicinity of any of our distribution sites."
Isn't there a video of dismembered body parts after the mortar shell hit and killed a few dozen?
It sounds like if he is making such a clear statement as this, there should be an investigation, and, if it turns out there were such fatalities, then Acree (and many others) should be tried for covering up war crimes.
I don't like getting involved in political threads but on this I have to.
All information presented is mostly unverified testimony printed verbatim by the press from untrustworthy sources on both sides. It's difficult to tell what is fact and what is not. A lot of early reports in this war turned out to be false information and the rush to immediate news notification rather than quality journalism means that the headline changes context very quickly from the first cut to what people read and remember. (I wrote an extensive suite of software to track this)
Wait and see. Do not judge too early. Take nothing as verbatim from anyone without evidence.
Don't be unknowing partisans of an information war. Veracity takes time.
The information is unverified because Israel does not allow journalists into Gaza.
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History is nuanced.
Shooting starving people should be one of those moments of clarity that cuts through the narrative.
I think that is what the parent is alluding to, when it comes to waiting for more facts.
One of those facts might be intent or misheard orders. It might just be that this actually happened (as a war crime) but it is probably too early to tell.
Regardless of what happened, it helps to wait until more info comes out.
It's been every day for weeks, there is video.
Exactly that.
The "nuanced" rhetoric to add doubt that things may not seem like what they are, is tiresome at this point. neepi's comments seem reasonable, innocent until proven guilty, but it's simply a strategy to exhaust onlookers with bureaucratic formalities of investigation and prosecution under the masquerade of reasonable justice.
It's a cop out and putting one's head in the sand to the real atrocities of zionistic ambitions of usurping Palestinian land.
In America, if someone trespasses into one's home and the home owner kills the trespasser, the vast majority of the time, the owner is justified and there are numerous court cases we can point to. Recently, it has become clear to me that Palestinians are simply trying to defend their own property/land/humanity.
Israel's trespasses are finally seeing the light in the latest set of conflicts and folks reading this comment that are unsure should spend 30 minutes looking up the videos of the conflict.
Israel blocking aid, murdering medical personnel with impunity, the before/after of Gaza, the list of crimes perpetuated by the government is undeniable at this point.
This is my favorite response from you guys!
"Look, children may be dying and maybe we're killing them but we need to verify and we need more time. Because first of all what were they even doing there? Oh and also this is our Land anyways and there were no deaths nobody died there aren't even any children in gaza!"
This is a fine example of the irrational discourse that does damage to the whole situation.
Every case needs to be investigated thoroughly and punished accordingly.
> Every case needs to be investigated thoroughly and punished accordingly.
And who exactly do you propose should do that? The Israeli govt?
Hell no. Neither party in a conflict is in a position to do such an investigation. Who do you think?
ICC would be nice but the geopolitical gorilla in the room knocked them down.
The United States isn't preventing the Israeli state from cooperating with the ICC, Israel is.
> Every case needs to be investigated thoroughly and punished accordingly.
Which is the exact reason you should be concerned. Israel has zero accountability for their actions, many of which are documented war crimes.
Did I say I wasn’t concerned?
at the point, advocating for neutrality in the face of overwhelming evidence of war crimes day after day after day is a pretty clear indication of not being concerned.
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IDF has been actively killing journalists too. So many that this is deadliest war for journalist to report on in recorded history.
Could you provide sources? I would assume 'journalists' are only actively killed if they grab a weapon or conduct similar actions.
My understanding of "actively killed" is thy have been the explicit target of an attack and not casualties in general.
News outlets tell Israeli officers where their journalists intend to be, and they wear jackets that identify them as members of the press. Preventing the journalists from dying is really a matter of communicating to each other, and using visual identification before engaging in direct fire. Both the officers and enlisted have the opportunity to cancel an illegitimate fire mission. Something doctrinal is responsible for this behavior.
Given the unconscionable number of journalists who died at the IDF's hands, it seems like Israel is indeed using the transparency info from journalists to locate and target them with airstrikes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...
This is not a war. War is Ukraine vs Russia.
So if a journalist decides to wander away from the potemkin village they get denied access. The journalists going on these ridealongs are not doing journalism. This tactic, which america pioneered in response to vietnam war coverage, is designed to only allow journalists who will tell the right kind of narrative.
It's well-documented what they do to anyone who tries documenting the aftermath: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israeli-troops-...
This person, a Palestinian, was not attacked for documenting something he wasn't supposed to. That's not the claim in the article. He is said to have documented the "the aftermath of Hamas’s massacre on the Gaza-border communities.” but that doesn't seem to be directly relevant.
The context is a protest: "Haruf says he was attacked without cause after leaving a prayer protest broken up by Israeli security forces in the Wadi Joz neighborhood." not the journalistic activities.
I'm not justifying this FWIW, just that it doesn't prove what you're trying to prove. If anything the publication of this article in Israel shows Israel has freedom of press.
also: "The Border Police later announced that it had suspended the two officers involved in the incident and that the Department of Internal Police Investigations has opened a probe into the matter."
There is also followup (again in Israeli press): https://www.timesofisrael.com/border-police-said-to-reinstat...
"The Union of Journalists in Israel condemned the incident and said it was “shocked by the violent attack” on Haruf.
The union said the incident was “the 37th attack on Arab journalists since the beginning of the war” on October 7, when Hamas-led terrorists launched their murderous assault on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking some 240 hostages of all ages.
The union, in a December 15 statement, said “most of the attacks [were] carried out by the security forces. This is a reality that dramatically harms freedom of the press and the ability of journalists to perform their duties.”"
Is this perfect? no. Is Israeli press generally free, attacks/criticizes the government, brings to light bad things that happen, and follow up on them? yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...
Israel is the side with Datalink, in case this chart doesn't make it clear.
Correct. Israel does not allow a free press.
And this is how we know Israel does not believe in democracy and is not a democracy itself, since a free press is a requirement of democracy.
Democracy isn't just having elections. Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Russia has elections, too.
The article we're talking about here is published in Israeli media.
Unless what they're really doing is a thousand times worse and this is the propagandized version..
Haaretz is the last news organization I would expect to knowingly spread anti-israel disinformation. If these guys are telling you what Israel is doing is bad then it's bad.
Could you elaborate? Because it's an Israeli news organization?
Yes, and one of the more prominent ones at that. If they had a bias in this, I would expect them to be biased in favor of Israel not against it. If even they are saying Israel is committing these war crimes then I'm inclined to assume that the evidence must be very compelling.
Just for the record, this is almost certainly wrong in the sense you mean it.
Haaretz is a (far?) left, anti-current-government newspaper. It's not outside the mainstream or anything - it is considered largely credible, and its articles are taken seriously - but most people in Israel would find it funny that you assume it wouldn't be biased against Israel. Lots of Netanyahu supporters routinely consider it a "traitorous" publication.
I think its articles should be taken seriously, but you can't simply assume it's automatically right and not "biased". Think of it the way an American Democrat would think of Fox or something - the news org definitely has a viewpoint.
Lots of people still believe that "critical of the government" is not the same as "biased against the country." That's an explicitly authoritarian belief and a disastrous framework to work within. It's antithetical to the concept of human rights and notable historical documents such as the American Constitution.
The bias of a mainstream publication that's considered "traitorous" by genocidal authoritarian ethnonationalists is, given historical consideration, likely to be toward justice.
This has been one of the deadliest conflicts for journalists in history. The number of killed journalists is very safe data, since the names are known and the cause of death is typically relatively well researched.
The story told by the data is that these journalists are overwhelmingly killed by Israeli forces, in some cases with prior notice of the press being where it was.
So if the IDF wants the press to tell the true story on the ground maybe let them do their work without killing them? The quesrion is: at which point do we have to stop assuming incompetence and start to assume malice (at least in parts)? For me personally that point has been months in the past.
This will be a stain on Israel for the rest of history.
Hamas member gets a press west by hamas newspaper or the muslim brotherhood (quatar) then participates in hamas warcrimes like using ambulances as troop transports and gets humused. Nobody believes those loud lies anymore.. that whole narrative is falling apart.
I don't disagree with you there at all. That again backs up my point. There is a lot of information and evidence to back those cases up. Which should be the universal standard that we hold everyone accountable to.
This information didn't just appear out of nowhere. It took time to collate, source and verify.
>(I wrote an extensive suite of software to track this)
Interesting. . . do you have a page for the project or anything?
No it’s internally used. Think of it like archive.ph but with text extraction and a diff like interface over the text.
Can you share examples then?
I found it: https://magic-8ball.com/
What measure of proof (evidence) do you require?
Wait and see while each day people keep dying? And who the hell is going to do these investigations?
Sorry, but the killing of unarmed civilians seeking aid has been reported half a dozen times by many different outlets. The IDF denials are getting quite absurd. The only one suffering from disinformation is you.
I haven’t made a point either way. Please don’t quote me on things I haven’t said. That is morally and intellectually dishonest.
We are so sorry you "need to get involved" in order to help spread pro-Israeli propaganda :(
1. If by "verified" you simply mean that the Israelis are admitting to what they did then you're right they're still lying about what they're doing everyday. Only verification are the videos, photos and dead bodies themselves of course.
2. The Israelis are out in force on these message boards, IDF. Personally I'm at the point where if I'm seeing any illogical support for the murderous regime of Israel I assume it's the IDF at this point, most real humans no matter what their political beliefs can at least agree that murdering innocent children is not good, only the Israelis struggle away with the way to justify it.
3. Lol, "wait and see..." This was the same attitude of the Nazis in world war II! "Just more time.. we just need more time so we can verify..." Amazing that the IDF is now using the same playbook that was used against them in world war II, I guess you guys figure if it works once you can work again!
I suggest you re-read it a few times. I am not defending any party in this conflict. I want the truth to be established carefully for the sake of everyone. Misinformation just ends up with more bodies stacked up on both sides.
So far all evidence points to bodies being piled on one side. With only few exceptions. Going on over year and half without clear rationale other than vaguely "butbutbut human shields butbutbut propaganda".
By avoiding to admit this you are indeed defending the attacker.
I’m amazed at how you managed to trivialise the deaths of 1915 people in that comment. All people matter on both sides and everyone deserves justice. That only comes if we make accurate prosecutions which requires evidence and due process.
And how dare you make accusations along those lines. Your attitude contributes to the problem.
Fine, what steps were taken to accurately prosecute these 1915 deaths? Are there any people indicted and undergoing fair trial for that? Can you name them? ICC did, but then got practically canceled. So who is to do it and when?
Oh you can't answer that easily without trivializing these deaths yourself. Accusing others, that are suspicious of all of this, of "attitude" is easier.
I haven’t accused anyone less than everyone. There are bad actors on all sides (this spans more than “both sides”).
As for enforcement and prosecution the ICC warrants were justified and the situation that remains is tragic. You can thank the US for throwing a spanner in those works.
I’m not sure why you keep trying to put words in my mouth. Perhaps to justify your partisan position rather than my entirely neutral one? Sure feels like it.
Neutral position that defers to fair justice in a situation where such justice is highly unlikely?
It’s only unlikely because it’s politically inconvenient for it to be unlikely as the nations preventing it don’t want to be judged by the same standards.
Just to go off of this, I'm a Jewish lawyer in America and an Israel supporter
We do need to really consider the source of the information. War is often filled with propaganda and lies, that's just how it is, that's part of war, propaganda. I think we need to look at Israel's long history of humanitarianism, and look at Palenstine's history of terrorism, to get an idea as to who is right and who is wrong here. My belief if the article is a piece of fiction, a hit piece.
So because Israel has a "long history of humanitarianism", we can dismiss evidence of Israeli war crimes as fictitious hit jobs? And once we've dismissed all evidence of Israeli war crimes, we can conclude that Israel has a "long history of humanitarianism"? Rinse, repeat — do I have that right?
The source is one of the biggest Israeli newspapers, by the way.
This rhetoric of “terrorists” is getting quite tiresome.
The world has been watching for over 2 years the atrocities occurring in Gaza and Israel and its people have has lost its credibility to its victimhood on the world stage.
This article is simply 1 extra reporting on a million of Israel’s offenses in the name of terrorism.
Thank you for your unbiased opinion shedding objective light on this incident and reporting. You have brought forth excellent evidence for dismissing this evidence.
Anyway, some more history to consider: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-11-17/ty-article/.p...
I'm as prone to it as the next tech-influenced millennial, but we really need to consider the legibility of deadpan sarcastic mockery in an environment where people are inclined to sincerely hold outrageous beliefs.
Credulity is boundless, even (especially) in this world of open information warfare. Messages that require side-channels and discrimination with intentionally limited information are guaranteed to be misperceived and likely to have harmful memetic impact.
That's fair feedback! I struggled to tamp down on a snarkier response that read more like: "I am a direct beneficiary of one side of this debate. If we are to be intellectually honest then we need to be sure to cast as much skepticism as we can muster onto the other side."
Agreed though, earnestness is one of our most urgent shortages.
Are you also considering Hamas' long history of humanitarianism? I mean, as a government, they do things like welfare...
Selling food they got for free to ghaza-strippers to finance endless genocidal war?
This article isn't really about whether there's some situation where there were some wrong doings, but it's yet another piece adding to the overall body of Israel's offenses against humanity.
As a random bystander with no real skin in this conflict, other than being American, what I can say is that for a while, it did seem that Israel the country had to unfairly deal with hate and war and it seemed quite unfortunate.
Most of the horrifying stories that would occasionally rise up seemed unbelievable, if not overblown.
Though in recent weeks, social media & news has provided another perspective.
1. Numerous Israeli citizens mocking Palestinians and having the gall to upload it to social media.
2. Numerous classrooms and children being taught that non-Israeli's do no deserve the same human rights as Israelis, and the children from a young age reveling in their superiority.
3. Videos showing citizens in normal cars being a nuisance to Palestinian medical vehicles.
4. Videos showing the absolute decimation of Gaza.
5. Israeli news articles reporting 70% and more of the population supporting certain war actions.
6. Ex-IDF soldiers whistleblowing the atrocious acts they needed to commit.
7. Citizens barbequing and hanging out right along the Gaza's border as Palestinian folks on the other side starve.
8. The video of Palestinian medics getting murdered on the side of the highway.
9. Pictures of the logos on IDF uniforms showing "our promised land" with a map showing borders that claim the land of Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon.
I don't think there is something "broken" in aid delivery. It appears that there is a systemic and concerted effort by the bulk of the government and citizens (100% of who have to serve in the IDF) to colonize and usurp Palestinian land and beyond.
And it seems that the latest set of conflicts have pulled back the curtain on the attitudes held by both the Israeli citizens and government.
The only news in the article is the way civilians are murdered. The Israeli government already kills far more people per day through deliberately induced starvation.
These events are hard to believe, not because of the cruelty, but because they now happen without a shred of deniability.
> I hope that, to whatever extent this is happening, it's not widespread, and anyone committing war crimes is very visibly and publicly tried in court.
Sorry but you’re either dishonest or totally delusional. Tens of thousands of children murdered, nobody even thinks of putting a stop on this, and you say « it’s not widespread ». What?
There has been so so many atrocities, even before Oct 7th committed by both the Israeli army and armed settlers in the West Bank. There is never, NEVER, anyone being held accountable. Snipers shoot kids on the beach? All good. Torture and rape in your prisons? Fine.
Dude, you should fix your society. You are simply heading towards your own destruction, morally, on the side of public sympathy, and merely as people capable of living with other people peacefully.
edit: minor typo.
Note that this response is from a cynical American sick of Israel always Getting Away With It. I have no problem with Jewish people, but I strongly distrust the state of Israel and believe that it's a force that makes Jewish people less safe as the state screams it is doing what it is doing to protect Jewish people. One of my close college friends is a rabbi, and we've been talking about this since the start of the hostage crisis.
> 1. The article itself says there is an ongoing investigation into some of these accusations. I hope that, to whatever extent this is happening, it's not widespread, and anyone committing war crimes is very visibly and publicly tried in court.
There is zero chance that happens as long as Netanyahu, Likud, Trump, or the Reupublicans are in power. Trump would immediately offer asylum in the US to anybody accused of such a thing.
Even if Israel did investigate, there's nothing more classic than Israel going "we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong".
So if you want accountability, drive that internally with your politicians and get Netanyahu/Likud out of office
> There is zero chance that happens as long as Netanyahu, Likud, Trump, or the Reupublicans are in power. Trump would immediately offer asylum in the US to anybody accused of such a thing.
This is untrue - Israel has investigated war crimes, e.g. famously things like what happened at the Sde Teiman prison.
> So if you want accountability, drive that internally with your politicians and get Netanyahu/Likud out of office
Many have been trying for years. It's not trivial. (About half of Americans dislike {current_president}, whomever that is, but there's very little they can do about it in between elections.)
Israel investigates harder when it learns that the ICC might otherwise investigate a specific case. Very cynical.
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https://youtu.be/3FO8BmzoPzU?si=L2wcnGolVDERRUzS
why israel is arming gangs in gaza
That would be too impractical. The fact of the matter is that the only effective way is basically how the GHF is doing it already. It's sad that the UN and western media are running with the pro hamas anti GHF narrative. They are giving hamas every incentive to disrupt aid distribution as much as possible. At the very least the shocking fact that UNWRA are against Gazans getting aid when it's not done through them exposes the lie that they care about palestinians.
The GHF undermines Hamas and UNWRA like nothing else has. It terrifies them and they are pulling all the propoganda stops to delegitimise them.
Yes, it’s much easier to get people into killboxes with only a handful of distribution points instead of hundreds. Yay GHF!
Not saying it's operating at maximum efficiency, but if UNWRA actually cared about palestinians they would cooperate to make it work.
If IDF cared about palestinians, they would stop killing them.
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> Where do we place Israel on that scale
That is, I think, an excellent and pertinent question.
For starters may I suggest applying straightforward quantification on a linear scale and observing the results? See the following two wiki articles / subsections:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_co... (see chart preceding the Gaza war (follow anchor))
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war (Gaza war; see top table (and subsequent charts for more detailed breakdown if interested))
Based on this quantitative data where would you place Israel on that aforementioned scale?
Wikipedia on this topic is incredibly biased to one side or the other. It’s not a valid source in this case.
Do you mean the data sources it lists in those two articles are not valid? (I am referring to raw figures and not to actual textual content even). The charts themselves (and the proportions thereof) have been observed everywhere incl. in the mainstream media?
Can you present one counterexample as regards quantities / proportions of figures please? One source. (More of course if you'd like)
(My implicit point is that the proportions are so one-sided (orders of magnitude in difference; yes plural) that you will not find one; but please do find one (with actual quantities) and we can all check veracity of your source)
P.S. edit here is one of the sources the first wiki article lists (of multiple):
Lappin, Yaakov (2009). "IDF releases Cast Lead casualty numbers". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on 26 March 2013. Retrieved 5 January 2024. =>
- https://www.jpost.com/israel/idf-releases-cast-lead-casualty...
- https://web.archive.org/web/20130326192603/http://www.jpost....
As they say, citation needed - political inconvenience isn’t the same as bias.
Nah, it's just #s, and "both sides", as it were, are presented
> Where do we place Israel on that scale? Is there more attention on Israel vs. other similar world events?
I’d flip that around: why shouldn’t we expect Israel to be better than a terrorist group like Hamas or the deeply evil Iranian government? When some Americans complained that they were being held to a higher standard than Al-Qaeda or ISIL, they were rightly criticized for betraying our national aspiration to leading rather than trailing the world, and the same is happening here. Israel has rightly set its standards higher than its neighbors when it comes to democracy and civil rights, but that entails criticism where it fails to live up to that self-selected standard.
My scale isn't ISIL or Al-Qaeda. My scale is the US, the UK, Australia, France etc. The scale of the western world.
> Iran and Hamas firing missiles and rockets into population centers is a war crime too. So is their embedding and use of civilians. The entire strategy of Israel's opponents in the middle east is to engage in war crimes. Where do we place Israel on that scale?
I feel like you're moving the target now. Those are your words above.
But yes, if your scale is that of the western world then harsh criticism of Israel's war crimes should be expected and welcome.
I don't mean to put words in your mouth, maybe you did mean something along those lines and I'm misinterpreting.
It it absolutely fair to criticize Israel the same way that e.g Canada, the US, the UK, France etc. were criticized during their war on the Islamic State.
Let's get some scale here. - Probably more than 160K killed in this war. Maybe half civilians. - Siege and constant bombardment/destruction of cities like Mosul. - Millions of civilians displaced. - Many war crimes by western powers.
This was in response to what? A few westerners beheaded? Terrorist attacks killing a few dozen people?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_against_the_Islamic_State
Can you really say honestly that the amount of criticism Israel is attracting due to its war in Gaza and the circumstances are comparable? This might just be me but I don't recall huge rallies against the war. I don't recall much negative media coverage. I don't recall anyone held accountable for war crimes. I don't recall the ICC being involved.
Yes, the US bombings of random weddings in Afghanistan with Predator drones and air to surface missiles, or bombing hospitals has occasionally drawn some weak protest. Nothing at the scale of the anti-Israeli sentiment.
This isn't what-about-ism. It's not ok to bomb a wedding and it's not ok to fire into a crowd of people trying to get food. But there is no comparison of the sentiment and focus.
You can’t talk about ISIS in isolation from the U.S. invasion of Iraq which gave Zarqawi the ability to grow so much. That had enormous protests, tons of criticism for the massive civilian death toll, and plenty of negative media coverage. By the time the Islamic system was at its height, most of the reaction was muted in the backdrop of Syria’s civil war and the U.S. failure in Iraq leaving few people jumping to commit more troops into unfriendly territory. In contrast, Israel controls Gaza and has no willingness to give up that control and ownership follows that.
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If you read your own link, note how Israel has a near-total blockade and maintains military control. I have absolutely no love for Hamas but I also recognize that there are a ton of civilians caught between the hammer of Israeli and the anvil of Hamas with zero opportunity for self-determination. They have no control over Hamas - the last election was in 2006 so the majority of the Palestinian population has literally never once been able to vote – and they have even less influence with the Israeli government. That is a tragedy by any measure, and Israel’s wanton killing and collective punishment is a recipe for continued conflict because it ensures that there’s a constant supply of people who have a personal grudge because they know someone innocent whose life has been tragically altered.
> If you read your own link, note how Israel has a near-total blockade and maintains military control
For most of the period since 2005, it has been a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade, not an exclusively Israeli one. That has recently changed now that Israel has militarily occupied the Gaza side of the Egypt-Gaza border
But I do find it interesting how Israel gets exclusively blamed for something which Egypt also had a hand in - and they weren’t doing it because “Israel made us”, they had their own security reasons - they feared Hamas would support Islamist rebels in Egypt.
It does seem to support the claim that Israel gets “picked on”, when a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade gets presented as an exclusively Israeli one
Yes, Egypt has some control (imports still require Israeli approval) but they also do not have a great reputation internationally. Israelis are objecting to being seen like Egypt when they aspire to being seen like a western democracy rather than an authoritarian state.
> Israel did give up Gaza and gave Palestinians full control of it
From the very first paragraph in your own link:
> Since then, the United Nations, many other international humanitarian and legal organizations, and most academic commentators have continued to regard the Gaza Strip as being under Israeli occupation ...
"Full control" - except over their border, their imports, their airspace, their electromagnetic frequencies, their coastline, their construction industry, etc etc.
> WW-2, WW-1, the Romans. But the fact still stands that all those "moral" countries didn't hesitate to lay siege, starve people, bomb civilians, for tbh little reason.
... If you're taking the Romans and WW-2 as your baseline for morality, that would start to explain things.
I'm sorry but you're just wrong. The reasons the UN and others still regarded Gaza as under Israeli occupation are either political or technical. In practice when Israel left Gazans got full control. They had a border with Egypt, not to mention tunnels for smuggling goods under that border. They had enough control to build a large army, tunnels, rockets etc. I.e. they had control. They were able to send people to train in Iran.
This anti-Israeli argument that somehow Israel dismantled its settlements and left but yet still "occupied" Gaza is nonsense. It does not stand any minimal scrutiny.
Yes, as a result of Gazans making a choice to engage in war with Israel there was a blockade over that territory. That's about it. Do you expect Israel to allow them to import tanks and jets?
Sorry, to be clear, you’re saying that proof of their freedom is that they could build tunnels to smuggle goods?
And build and train a large military force. And build an extensive tunnel network in the entirety of the Gaza strip. Complete control over every day to day aspect of their lives, government, healthcare, police force. Elections. Extensive weapons manufacturing. Control of the borders with Israel and Gaza.
So yeah. I think we can say they had control.
Israel has been blockading and controlling Gaza since the 90s. To argue that they've had complete control is just historically and factually wrong. Israel has been gradually tightening the screws on the region for decades.
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Nobody has "complete control", sure, but there's a reason Gaza doesn't have an airport (destroyed by the IDF) and can't receive aid by sea (intercepted by the IDF).
The latter happened as recently as this month; the IDF commandeered a boat delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza and arrested its passengers in international waters. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/06/israeli-forces-commandeer-aid...
Thunberg's flotella isn't a very good example of Israel preventing aid. The flotella carried a symbolic bit of aid, and Israel didn't reject it, they just insisted that it go through proper channels rather than violate a blockade which is in place for justifiable security reasons.
Saying that Israel gets to determine the "proper channels" for people and aid to enter Gaza is a tacit admission that the strip is occupied by Israel.
Post Oct 7, of course there's an occupation now that Israel has boots on the ground.
October 7 was not the start of Israel intercepting aid in international waters: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/9/freedom-flotillas-a-...
> The movement, founded in 2006 by activists during Israel’s war on Lebanon, went on to launch 31 boats between 2008 and 2016, five of which reached Gaza despite heavy Israeli restrictions.
> Since 2010, all flotillas attempting to break the Gaza blockade have been intercepted or attacked by Israel in international waters.
I don't quite get the point you're getting at; we're all in agreement that there is a blockade. The flotella doesn't really add anything to our understanding of the situation - we already knew there was a blockade and that unauthorized ships wouldn't be allowed to pass.
That doesn't imply much about aid; it's not a total blockade and there are mechanisms for importing aid. One can argue that the aid distribution mechanisms are bad, and it might be reasonable to propose various changes (different aid mechanisms, a relaxation of the blockade, etc), but it wouldn't really make sense for Israel to make exceptions and allow certain unauthorized ships to just circumvent its blockade.
Read further up the thread. There are definitely people here who don't agree that Israel is occupying Gaza.
You keep repeating things that are simply not historically true. We know factually that Israel was blockading and enforcing their will in Gaza as early as 1991.
I don't see a need to engage with you further, especially as you increasingly use dog whistles to tacitly support the actions of Israel while repeating clear propaganda. Your arguments are not helping as much as you think, and only increasingly turning people against Israel as their actions become more and more obvious.
> So yeah. I think we can say they had control.
Since the 90's Israel has been blockading Gaza: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip
So your statement is 100% a lie.
> Control of the borders with Israel and Gaza.
Was maintained by Israel, the apartheid state creators. Stop the genocide!
The was on ISIS wasn't waged exclusively or even mainly by the West. It was waged on the ground primarily by the local armed forces - Iraqi army in Iraq, YPG militias in both Iraq and Syria etc - who were actively resisting the attempts to take over their communities by force and in some cases outright genocide them. The West provided active military support including air strikes and occasional on-the-ground assistance, but you can't reduce the reasons for that war to "a few westerners beheaded"; you have to look at the totality of crimes against humanity perpetrated by ISIS on its occupied territories to get a comprehensive casus belli on behalf of the opposing forces primarily responsible for all the destruction.
> Can you really say honestly that the amount of criticism Israel is attracting due to its war in Gaza and the circumstances are comparable? This might just be me but I don't recall huge rallies against the war. I don't recall much negative media coverage. I don't recall anyone held accountable for war crimes. I don't recall the ICC being involved.
Genocider complains about double standards.
> Nothing at the scale of the anti-Israeli sentiment.
Because Israel does it systematically, and annexes territories not belonging to them, while also having prominent government figures saying that the enemy is "animals".
Israel is doing a genocide in Gaza, and you are what-abouting some other countries? Sure, we will call on them as well. Doesn't change that Israel, at this very moment, is doing a genocide on the people of Palestine.
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> Israel's war in Gaza is what any western country would be doing in response to the Oct 7th attack
All I hear is twisting of the truth, not surprising from an apartheid genocidal regime.
Let's look at the statistics before Oct 7-th, for the years 2008-2020:
https://www.statista.com/chart/16516/israeli-palestinian-cas...
- 5590 dead Palestinians
- 250 dead Israeli
And, the most recent ones:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war
- 56772 Palestinians
- 1706 Israeli
What else is there to say? Your genocidal government is:
- Withholding humanitarian aid (war crime): https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-attacks-ki...
- Shooting at civilians and children (war crime): https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_forces_fatally_shoot_1...
- Bombing hospitals (war crime): https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2jvx3yjg3o
- Yoav Gallant called the Palestinians "human animals", which, ironically, is similar to what the Nazis were calling the Jews during WW2: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ReZEJPwrM1k
- Using starvation as a weapon (war crime): https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0k3d1y10pzo.
> Israeli soldiers, attacks Israeli civilians (there are still occasional rockets fired out of Gaza).
Maybe don't use your civilians as human shields then. Why is your military next to your civilians? See how that works?
> Israel does not "annex territories" not belonging to them. Israel e.g. returned Sinai to Egypt. Israel gave Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005. Israel in negotiations with Palestinians created the Palestinian Authority and gave it control of large swaths of territory.
They do, illegally occupying and expanding on land that doesn't belong to them https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1j5954edlno
So, everything you said is a lie, which is 100% expected from a supporter of a genocidal state
Exactly. It’s fair to criticize Israel for civilian casualties just like all of those countries have been criticized for failing to live up to their stated standards. Countries like Russia or Iran are recognized as being worse but don’t get criticized for being hypocritical because nobody expected them to be good.
Countries like Russia (and probably Iran) still claim to be paragons of human rights in diplomatic settings - just that most are used to ignoring them because of the immense scale and sheer audacity of their hypocrisy.
> Exactly. It’s fair to criticize Israel for civilian casualties just like all of those countries have been criticized for failing to live up to their stated standards.
Russia doesn't target civilian population to the extent Israel does. There is a reason only Israel is charged with genocide, and not Russia. Don't get me wrong, both the countries' governments are run by bunch of homicidal dictators, but only Isreal systematically does enough war crimes and human rights violations to fit the criteria of genocide.
This is entirely incorrect. Putin's arrest warrant is for the mass kidnapping of Ukrainian children. The legal definition of genocide explicitly calls out such a situation as an example. There are other reasons why your comparison is flawed.
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> What are you even talking about, bot account?
> instead of just saying random stuff like a coward.
You can't comment like this on HN, no matter what you're replying to.
You've posted many comments in this thread that are inflammatory and risk breaking the guidelines. On a topic like this one, this guideline is especially important:
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
You've been asked before to make an effort to observe the guidelines. Please remind yourself of them and keep them in mind when commenting here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
IDF HQ is next to a mall, so Israel is doing the same as Hamas?
And where is the Pentagon?
Attacking the Qirya, Israel's HQ, with some sort of accuracy is a legitimate military target. It's a pretty large target. Soldiers wear uniform. There are no civilians mixed into that camp.
This is very different than lobbing rockets at Beer-Sheba, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ramat Gan. The casualties from Iran's attacks, minus one off-duty soldier, were all civilians and the targets were nowhere near anything military. The intentionally aim at population centers.
All I hear is twisting of the truth, not surprising from an apartheid genocidal regime that Israel is.
Let's look at the statistics before Oct 7-th, for the years 2008-2020:
https://www.statista.com/chart/16516/israeli-palestinian-cas...
- 5590 dead Palestinians
- 250 dead Israeli
And, the most recent ones:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war
- 56772 Palestinians
- 1706 Israeli
What else is there to say? Your genocidal government is:
- Withholding humanitarian aid (war crime): https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-attacks-ki...
- Shooting at civilians and children (war crime): https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_forces_fatally_shoot_1...
- Bombing hospitals (war crime): https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2jvx3yjg3o
- Yoav Gallant called the Palestinians "human animals", which, ironically, is similar to what the Nazis were calling the Jews during WW2: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ReZEJPwrM1k
- Using starvation as a weapon (war crime): https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0k3d1y10pzo.
> The casualties from Iran's attacks, minus one off-duty soldier, were all civilians and the targets were nowhere near anything military. The intentionally aim at population centers
Maybe don't use your civilians as human shields then. Why is your military next to your civilians? See how that works?
So, everything genocidal state
So you agree that your argument is nonsense.
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The fantasy of using civilians as a means to say this is a war crime is out the window. In order to stop one country from killing your population, most often the revers effect is the same. neither of which are justified. in order to stop the third Reich the majority of Germany was destroyed along with the mass civilian death. Attacking promptly and aggressively carries civilian death in most cases (U.S. attacking japan). This is a cycle that happens in humanity every so often, one can say we tend to take life for granted over-time. Then some big event or catastrophe happens and a group of nations put some international body in place to reduce big wars and conflicts, this usually hinders large scale conflicts for about 50-80 years until that generation forgets and or history is no longer connected to them some way and the same thing repeats again. Remember that The U.S. and some of the European nations carried the actions, in which there-after developed international body's to protect them from a similar attack like nuclear or mass genocide. The one's affected are the ones that repeat the cycle, if they were the victim last time in the cycle then they will be the perpetrator this tine around.
> The entire strategy of Israel's opponents in the middle east is to engage in war crimes.
I think war crimes are a lot more acceptable/understandable if they’re the only way you even potentially have a chance to get back at your agressors. Nobody blames the resistance during the Nazi occupation for what they did.
Israel is very much not in a position they need to perpetrate war crimes to win the war. They have already won. It’s like a cat playing with the mouse it killed.
This is probably what anti-Soviet groups in WWII thought when they allied with the Nazis and committed atrocities. Most people today don't seem to think they were justified in doing that.
> Nobody blames the resistance during the Nazi occupation for what they did.
Because the Nazis lost. Had the Nazis won, alternative history and all that, the argument would probably be the other way around, how, faced with overwhelmingly strong enemies, they "had to" create death camps to "get back" at their aggressors.
Not a great argument, I think.
> Nobody blames the resistance during the Nazi occupation for what they did.
Are you really sure about that? Maybe now, but while it was happening, I'm not so sure everyone was on board. Quite the opposite.
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> I'd probably be considered left (or even far-left) by Israeli standards, but I'm in the "pro-Israeli" camp as conventionally understood online.
Would you consider ethno-nationalists of other nations (far) left, based on (speculating) their economic/women's rights/LGBT/other social stances?
(Orthogonally, I can certainly empathize with being pro-something, but not pro-everything-that-something-does. There's certainly nothing intrinsic to a Jewish state that would require firing at unarmed crowds.)
> Would you consider ethno-nationalists of other nations (far) left, based on (speculating) their economic/women's rights/LGBT/other social stances?
If your implication is that I'm an ethno-nationalist, I don't think that characterizes Israel or my thoughts about it, however much "ethnostate" is a favorite slur of people to use against Israel.
I think it might be a slur on, say, reddit, but isn’t most of the world a bunch of ethnostates? Isn’t that kinda one of the things that makes the US stand out, is that it’s explicitly not one? I’m asking this unironically, but I guess I thought e.g. Ireland was pretty homogenous, as is Japan, Ethiopia, Cuba, Peru, and Denmark. (Maybe some of those examples aren’t perfect but you get my point I hope)
> I’m asking this unironically, but I guess I thought e.g. Ireland was pretty homogenous
In the 2022 census, only 76.5% of people in Ireland were ethnically Irish. Over 20% of the population are foreign-born, with the most common countries of foreign birth being Poland, the UK, India, Romania and Lithuania.
So Ireland is far less homogeneous than you perceive it to be.
But the real issue here isn’t how diverse the state’s population is in practice, it is how the state defines itself in its own founding documents (such as the constitution) - as a state for all its citizens, or as a state for a people (ethnos) which is only a subset of the state’s citizens? Israel is (2) but essentially all Western nations nowadays are (1).
Even though the French and German constitutions still express the idea of a “national people” for whom the state exists, they consider anyone who is naturalised as a citizen as joining that people (“ethnos”). By contrast, a non-Jew can immigrate to Israel and become an Israeli citizen-but the state will still not consider them a member of the people for whom the state exists-only conversion to Judaism does that, and only if their conversion is accepted as valid by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate-non-Orthodox conversions will not be accepted, but they sometimes even reject conversions by overseas Orthodox Rabbis whom they don’t consider “rigorous” enough.
So Israel is actually unique in this regard - no Western nation makes becoming “not just a citizen of the state, but a member of the people for whom it exists” contingent on religious conversion. If you want a parallel, you’d have to look at the Islamic world, where non-Muslims are sometimes (not always) permitted citizenship, but are denied membership in the category of “nation for whose sake the state exists”
Israel is not at all unique in this regard. Your (1) is essentially limited to Western Europe ("civic" nation-states) and non-nation-states.
Israel really is unique among Western nations. Can you point to a Western nation where there is a constitutional distinction between "citizens" and "the nation for whom the state exists", such that you can belong to the former without belonging to the later?
And it isn't "essentially limited to Western Europe". The same is true of the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand – naturalisation as a citizen automatically makes you an official member of the "nation for whom the state exists". I believe it is true for most or all Latin American nations as well.
Now, Israel is not unique globally speaking – I think Malaysia's bumiputera status is a rather close parallel. But I doubt that's a comparison most Zionists are keen to draw attention to.
> "civic" nation-states) and non-nation-states
If you are going to argue that "Germany is a civic nation state, the US is a non-nation-state", that is a false and arbitrary distinction. Because American nationalism is an entirely real thing – but in its mainstream contemporary manifestation it is civic nationalist, not ethnic nationalist, just like how mainstream contemporary German nationalism is civic nationalist not ethnic nationalist. Now, historically America was arguably racial nationalist – America was a nation, not necessarily for any particular White ethnicity, but for White people [0] – but it has evolved from racial nationalism into civic nationalism
[0] The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited US citizenship by naturalization to "free white persons". The Naturalization Act of 1870 made people of African descent eligible for citizenship by naturalization, but people who were categorised as neither "white" nor "African" remained ineligible for citizenship by naturalisation until the The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (the McCarran-Walter Act) removed all racial restrictions on naturalisation. So US nationality law arguably was explicitly racially nationalist from 1790 to 1870, and remained so in a somewhat watered down sense from 1870 to 1952.
Yes, I hold the "America is not a nation-state" perspective. I generally like the analysis by Bret Devereaux on this topic (https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-...), but if that's not convincing I don't have anything to argue this point on beyond my own experiences that "American" is a "civic group" but not a "national group". So, we'll just have to agree to disagree there.
It doesn't really take away from my main point. Yes, Western Europe and pretty much all New World countries are "civic" oriented. No Western state, Israel included I am pretty sure, has in their constitution or equivalent that a subset of citizens has legal rights other citizens do not. The closest I can think of to what you asked for is actually the Baltics - not a citizen-subgroup distinction, but where there is a complex situation due to not having granted most non-ethnic residents at the time of independence automatic citizenship. Otherwise, we are primarily talking about symbolism in the legal documents and cultural norms in the population. Japan is pretty clearly an ethnic nation-state. Eastern European states were generally ethnic nation-states at the time of independence, but some are moving closer to civic nation-states now.
> Yes, I hold the "America is not a nation-state" perspective. I generally like the analysis by Bret Devereaux on this topic (https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-...), but if that's not convincing I don't have anything to argue this point on beyond my own experiences that "American" is a "civic group" but not a "national group". So, we'll just have to agree to disagree there.
But that's defining the word "nation" in a sense which deliberately skews it towards "ethnic nationalism" and away from "civic nationalism". If you are going to insist on defining it in that narrow way, then arguably France and Germany aren't "nation states" any more either, even though they used to be.
And while contemporary mainstream American self-definition is predominantly civic, 19th century Americans commonly viewed their nation in racial terms, as a state for the white race – so, if France and Germany have become "non-nation states" by transforming ethnic nationalism into civic nationalism, then in fundamentally the same way, America has become a "non-nation state" by transforming racial nationalism into civic nationalism
> No Western state, Israel included I am pretty sure, has in their constitution or equivalent that a subset of citizens has legal rights other citizens do not
Israel's constitution insists that all citizens are formally equal in the rights of citizenship, but at the same time officially relegates non-Jewish citizens to the symbolic status of "second class citizens" – what Western state has a constitution that does that? And, the reality on the ground is – there are complaints of real discrimination in practice against non-Jewish citizens of Israel, and unless you are going to argue that none of those complaints are valid, the idea that official symbolic discrimination in the constitution has no causal role to play in sustaining practical discrimination on the ground is rather implausible
> The closest I can think of to what you asked for is actually the Baltics - not a citizen-subgroup distinction, but where there is a complex situation due to not having granted most non-ethnic residents at the time of independence automatic citizenship
The Baltics do not have any legally recognised category of "citizens of the state but not members of the nation for whom it exists"; Israel does. The complex issue of long-term residents who lack citizenship you point to is real, but it isn't the same thing as what Israel does
> Japan is pretty clearly an ethnic nation-state
De jure, it isn't. Japanese law and court decisions are very clear: naturalised Japanese citizens are officially just as Japanese as anyone else. Membership in Japan's historical ethnic supermajority (the Yamato people) has no formal constitutional significance
Now, no denying the social reality that there is a lot of informal discrimination against non-Yamato Japanese citizens. But that social reality has no constitutional basis.
So you are comparing a state which officially declares in its constitution that some of its citizens are "not members of the nation for whom it exists", to a state whose constitution and laws never officially say that, even though it arguably remains a widespread informal belief/attitude amongst its population. Both de jure and de facto "second class citizenship" are bad, but there is an important sense in which the former is a lot worse
>In the 2022 census, only 76.5% of people in Ireland were ethnically Irish. Over 20% of the population are foreign-born, with the most common countries of foreign birth being Poland, the UK, India, Romania and Lithuania.
And there is alot of tension right now because of that. Not just in Ireland, but much of the West.
But really, why do you think states exist if not to protect the interests of its underlying culture/ethnicty/group. If not, why Canada refuse to join USA as a 51st state? From an economic perspective it would be logical, fron a political perspective they would have decisive power due to their relative population. What is the fundamental reasoning behind the refusal to join?
> If not, why Canada refuse to join USA as a 51st state?
Trump’s idea of Canada as a US state is constitutionally ludicrous, because it ignores the fact that Canada is already a federation of provinces - which are essentially equivalent to states, choosing a different name was fundamentally a branding exercise not a difference of substance-indeed, when Britain’s colonies in Australia federated, they decided to be called “states” not “provinces”, because their greater physical distance from the US made them feel less of a need to distinguish themselves from the US. So Canada as a 51st state would create the globally near-unprecedented scenario of a federation within a federation, states within a state. [0] Why would anyone wish to experience such a constitutional novelty?
If you were serious about merging the US and Canada, a more sensible way to do it would be to admit Canada’s provinces as US states. But the problem with that proposal, is not only do most Canadians not want that, I doubt most Americans would either. Sure, Republicans might seem open to the idea as long as it remains a Trump thought bubble with zero chance of ever being implemented - but actually adding Canada’s provinces as US states would fundamentally upset the balance between Republicans and Democrats in the US, most of Canada’s provinces would act like blue states in the US-even many conservatives in Canada are closer to conservative Democrats than liberal Republicans-and would probably shift US politics as a whole in a more “progressive” direction. I think if it actually started to seem like a realistic prospect, Republicans would turn against it out of their own political self-interest and block it.
I think the most realistic scenario in the long-run, is a sort of “exchange” in which Canada loses some provinces to the US (most likely Alberta) but then progressive-leaning areas of the US secede to join Canada. North America might end up reorganised along ideological lines, “Blue-America+Canada” vs “Red-America+Alberta”. Not happening any time soon, but over a century or two I don’t think the possibility can be ruled out.
[0] not totally unprecedented, in that Soviet-era Russia was a federation within the larger federation of the USSR-but the Soviet Union’s authoritarian political system made its federalism more nominal than real, nobody knows how a federation-within-a-federation would work in practice in combination with a genuinely democratic political system
I do not use it as a slur, nor do I think Israel is an exception in this regard - China, Japan, Korea, Ukraine, Poland, Sudan, Finland, Egypt, are all effectively ethno-states. They may host a few minorities, but they are primarily vessels for the self-determination and preservation of their nations.
Ethnostate is not a slur, it's an accurate description of a country that itself passed the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People.
(A basic law in Israel is roughly like a constitutional amendment in the US.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law%3A_Israel_as_the_Nat...
Ethnostate is an ambiguous word. Does it mean ethnically homogenous? Israel is certainly not that. Does it mean, essentially, a nation-state whose "national group" is an ethnicity? Israel is that - but so is much of Europe and some parts of Asia.
How many of those have declared themselves to be the Nation-State of the X people? (at least after the 1940s)
Many former Soviet and former Yugoslavia nations did this.
I ran the question by AI, and it seems to think that somewhere between 30-50 since WWII have done so explicitly.
Seems fair to call those ethnostates as well.
Edit: I asked ChatGPT "How many nations have declared themselves to be the Nation-State of a people?" earlier and got the same answer as you. I asked again just now and got "Israel is the only nation in the world that has legally declared itself the “Nation‑State of the Jewish People.”" [I didn't specify Jewish]
Can't rely on AI.
Nationalism could be seen as a "left" movement in the first place in that it often served as an ideology of revolution against the (imperial) powers that be. There have been many prominent leftist nationalist movements and parties, from Sinn Fein to the PKK.
"ethnonationalism" is a redundancy, ethne and natio are just the Greek and Latin words for the same concept
>"ethnonationalism" is a redundancy, ethne and natio are just the Greek and Latin words for the same concept
This is sophistic equivocating. Stratification based on ethnicity is neither a necessary nor essential component of nationalism.
Hamas are not Shia, they're Sunni. And Shia is not some some inherently violent ideology as your usage of the word there implies. And, while I'm at it, you should know the human crimes in the Gaza strip long predate Oct 7. Chemical weapons, starvation, terror bombing, these are tactics that the IDF's deployed in short time I've been alive (21st century).
Tracking on the Shia; sorry about the confusion! Referring to Iran-backed ops in Syria etc.
The commenter is probably referring to Hezbollah and Iran.
And yes, the IDF has been relying on abhorrent & violently escalatory tactics since at least 1982 (Lebanon invasion).
On that note, I recently picked up an excellent book (“Our American Israel”) that dives pretty deep into the US-Israel relationship, and spends a good chunk of time on how the invasion of Lebanon was received by the West.
There are definitely some parallels between 1982 and the ongoing Gaza genocide with regards to the use of violence. But the most salient point to me is that it is quite clear that Israel learned a ton on how to ensure its image in the West does not easily get tarnished going forward.
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Yeah, I know the playbook - deflect and deny, etc.
100k dead, more injured, highest number of child casualties in any modern conflict, countless statements of genocidal intent at the highest levels. But population growth is the metric we need focus on at this point, because that’s the Hasbara talking point du jour.
Also, just to add, a lot of this generic population data just doesn't factor in the current military action at all, they just operate on the last known figures. It's a complete red herring to this discussion. No one knows exactly how many people are in Gaza right now. Israeli policy is actively obstructing people from finding out. I suspect (fear) the total death toll may be well above the ~100k figure.
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They absolutely should face something similar to the Nuremberg trials. This is planned extermination of a group of people.
Unfortunately the Israeli lobby has so much money and power they would silence anyone who says that publicly by accusing them of being antisemitic.
Arguably then, shouldn’t China be ahead of them in line for Uighur camps, and the US for the Japanese camps?
Has China exterminated hungry kids yet? Israel will definitley earn the first prize and will be handed a gold medal at atrocities, you should be proud of your country.
Yes. Anyways, I’m not Israeli, I’m American, and I’m used to coming in first, so this is something of a letdown (a joke!)
It's possible to have multiple trials occurring simultaneously. Also whataboutism is not at all helpful to the discussion at hand.
Of course it is, so long as you don’t lazily reduce it to whataboutism. The point is that this isn’t grounds for Nuremberg-style trials, because if it was, nearly every major nation is gonna have to go through it. Like it or not, they probably won’t go along with that idea, so it’s a non-starter.
You see, whataboutism is really only worth calling out in super low risk environments, because the potential future consequences are irrelevant. When we’re talking about putting the world powers on trial, the future consequences are now worth considering. Get off reddit, it’s poisoning your ability to reason.
I love the Jewish community, so I don’t say this lightly, but I view Netanyahu actions as somewhat resembling Nazi Germany in one respect (though certainly not others). He may not believe Israeli Jews have a birthright to the whole world (rather they are trying to strengthen one nation’s borders), but there is no doubt in my mind they are indiscriminately cleansing a people out of existence. That is their aim, beyond simple deterrence or defense.
The October terror attack is not to be defended, but the response is disgusting behavior by the state of Israel. There’s nothing proportionate about this. Rather Israel sees this as an opportunity to strengthen its position and wipe out its enemies - and innocent men, women, and children.
In the United States, we talk about Israel as if it must be protected because it’s the Middle East’s only democracy. It is not a liberal democracy. It exists only to protect the rights of one type of people with one particular type of ethnicity. In America, we wouldn’t recognize this as a democracy.
For our part, it’s important to protect our own interests in the region and so yes, strange bedfellows. But given Netanyahu’s comfort with war crime, given Israel’s weak and distorted democratic institution, and given what nationalism can do to a country, we should be very careful to balance and diversify our interests.
Israel in another 10 years might not be recognizable. It’s cause for alarm.
> Israel in another 10 years might not be recognizable.
The strange thing is, this statement held true before October 7th. Hopefully not everyone has forgotten that there were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets before the war, protesting what Netanyahu was doing to the Israeli government.
There are many protesting this government as we speak, as well.
That must be a harrowing situation. It didn't exactly look safe and low stress before the war.
> That must be a harrowing situation. It didn't exactly look safe and low stress before the war.
If you mean in terms of the personal safety of the Israeli protesters, it's not dangerous or anything. Certainly nothing like the very brave people in Gaza protesting Hamas, who are actually living through hell, and who risk their lives by protesting.
Thanks, I appreciate the info. I saw some photography and reporting of the protests the summer before the war (in Tel Aviv, I guess) that honestly looked a little worrying. In my memory, they were relying on the military to keep order.
Of course not comparable to Gaza.
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I'm not fan of the Trump administration, but nevertheless, no, it really isn't.
Arab citizens of Israel are systematically and legally discriminated against to an extent with no parallel in the US, and Arabs in the occupied territories (West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza) have effectively no rights at all.
They are coming for everyone that isn't white, christian, and voted for trump. Just check back on this comment in a year or two. These are fascists, there is nobody they won't demonize. Once they have run out of immigrants to incarcerate, and then trans and gay people, they will come after democrats.
Yeah, the narrative of America wanting to protect and maintain democracy has been completely crippled by its actions this year. It's an openly corupt oligarchy (as opposed to at least keeping a facade up for decades prior) for the short term present.
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> Some context first so my opinion isn't misconstrued
too late, m8
anybody with unfavorable opinions against Israeli government is a "leftist stereotype"
any unfavorable opinions and facts against Israeli government gets you pinned as a "anti-semite" these days
No need for weird acronyms, it has been looking like a clear cut genocide for months now and Trump comments about displacement more than show he is aware and doesn’t care.
It’s not even about being shameful about Israel support at that point. It’s going to be a black stain on both countries forever.
Another POV is that when you distill everyone’s experiences, not just yours, into legitimate votes, people, on both sides of this conflict, choose violence. Does the discourse you participate in achieve your goals? No, it achieves the opposite.
What is this discourse? “Sharpen the fractal of demographics and opinions until you get some rare alignment between them, and you find a supposedly irrefutable and most valid position.” Can you see why winning Internet arguments and getting upvotes doesn’t translate to your goals?
Of course you should share these thoughts and forums like these should publish them. But as much as I hate the Intellectual Dark Web and its philosophies, which are as ridiculous as, “you can gain power by thinking about things differently,” I think they are right that popularity contests are not the end all be all of conflict resolution.
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What do you mean by "most likely be banned soon"? Banned from where, and by who?
I think he's referring to actions taken in Israel against Haaretz, e.g. cutting off government contact from Haaretz, etc.
That makes sense, thanks for the clarification.
How many Muslims are writing for Haaretz?
one (used to be two, but one ran away to US)
RIght this isn't Israel as a whole, it's the crazed right wing Netanyahu government. I can understand taking out Hamas but their tactics have far superceded what is considered "not a war crime"
47% of Israelis believe that they should invade and kill every person in Gaza. 82% support the ethnic cleansing of the Strip[0]. I can't imagine what a higher plurality supports the "normal" military action.
[0] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/majority-israelis-support...
I'm really surprised to hear another Jewish person speak about this in language that evokes the Nuremberg trials.
The article generally describes the IDF being asked to do crowd control with lethal weapons. For the most part it also described casualties (number unclear/unknown) as unintentional consequences.
I agree this does not look good but it's also not a matter of fact either. We don't know the facts, we don't know the scale, we don't know the intentions, we don't know who is making the allegations, we don't know the details.
War crimes in this war should be dealt with. Nuremberg trials is really not the right analogy.
> War crimes in this war should be dealt with. Nuremberg trials is really not the right analogy.
War crimes for firing into a crowd of civilians, for both the one that ordered it, and those that executed it, should definitely be at the same levels as the nuremberg trials.
The fact that it will never happen doesn’t detract from that. Happily, the ICC seems to already know so, which is why there’s warrants out for all these Isrealian leaders, no?
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> The [League of Nations] is a political circus and [the Greater German Reich] is not a signatory. It has no jurisdiction.
> Even if [the Reich] was a signatory the [League of Nations] should only intervene after [the Reich] has done its own investigation and if it failed to hold the relevant standards.
See, this version wouldn't sound convincing to me in the slightest. So I'm unsure why yours is supposed to be any more so.
More broadly, this is either a hopelessly naive or tactically calculated take. 'Why does the police keep arresting criminals, before they've had a chance to conduct their own investigations of their own conduct?'
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Wrong. Palestine is a state party to the ICC, effective 1 April 2015. The ICC has jurisdiction on the territory of its member states.
It is the position of both the ICC itself and the United Nations General Assembly that Palestine is a state and ergo entitled to be a member of the ICC. Whether Israel (or you) accept this definition of Palestine is largely irrelevant.
Moreover, whether Israel is or is not a state party to the ICC is completely without bearing on the ICC investigation in question, since Gaza is not part of Israel's territory under any definition, including Israel's own. To my knowledge, no state recognises Gaza as part of Israel, including Israel itself.
TLDR: It is Palestine's membership of ICC that results in the ICC lawfully exercising its jurisdiction on the territory of Gaza.
Palestine is not a state. That much is fact. It's not a matter of "position". It does not meet any definition of state. The UN also does not consider Palestine to be a state and it is not a member of the UN. The UN and the ICC can declare the moon is made of cheese and the earth is flat. Pretty much nobody recognizes the "state" of Palestine.
The ICC and the UNGA recognise Palestine as a state. A sizeable and ever increasing majority of UN members recognise Palestine as a state, and they make up the vast majority of the world by any measure - population, size, economy, what have you.
You are free to assert that you have fact on your side, that there is no dispute, that it's "not a matter of 'position'" all you want, but none of it matters. Your position on whether Palestine is a state (or mine, for that matter) is about as relevant to the membership of the ICC as our respective positions on the planethood of Pluto.
It's fascinating that Israel thinks it can dictate the membership of a body that it refuses to recognise, let alone join. The ICC decides who is a member of the ICC, and the ICC - consistent with widespread state practice in every continent on Earth - considers Palestine a state.
The situation isn't as simple as you're describing it even from the ICC's perspective.
https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/icc-pre-trial-chamber-i-issues-...
"In today's decision, Pre-Trial Chamber I recalled that the ICC is not constitutionally competent to determine matters of statehood that would bind the international community. By ruling on the territorial scope of its jurisdiction, the Chamber is neither adjudicating a border dispute under international law nor prejudging the question of any future borders. The Chamber's ruling is for the sole purpose of defining the Court's territorial jurisdiction. "
And yes, who am I to argue with China, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Yemen, Afghanistan, Egypt, Belarus, Syria, Sudan, and their friends. Clearly Palestine is a state.
EDIT: for a more coherent argument: https://www.drake.edu/media/departmentsoffices/dussj/2006-20...
EDIT2: Asking the various AIs supports my position. Despite the recognition of various countries Palestine is not legally a state as it does not meet the criteria for being one. I do agree that the Palestinians have been very effective in fighting Israel in the diplomatic arena but unless they actually negotiate in good faith with Israel I wouldn't count on their future prospects to actually have their own country. Palestinians in general also oppose the two state solution anyways.
> "In today's decision, Pre-Trial Chamber I recalled that the ICC is not constitutionally competent to determine matters of statehood that would bind the international community. By ruling on the territorial scope of its jurisdiction, the Chamber is neither adjudicating a border dispute under international law nor prejudging the question of any future borders. The Chamber's ruling is for the sole purpose of defining the Court's territorial jurisdiction.
I am amused by you quoting this. I suggest you re-read that, they're being very careful with their words, and they are entirely correct.
It is true that the ICC has no capacity to dictate to the rest of the international community what is or is not a state, or the location of international borders; that would have the causality reversed. Instead, it takes the definition of a state or the location of borders from the international community. As the international community widely agrees that Palestine is a state, it therefore satisfies the condition set by the Rome Statute for membership of the ICC.
And, as your very excerpt shows, the the ICC is perfectly competent to rule on who is its member and where its jurisdiction lies. I will admit I am somewhat surprised to see you quote something that so well underlines my argument. I trust this discussion is concluded, then.
I would also note the PTC decision is something that virtually no one talks about (since it's entirely consistent with the ICC's usual position and the decision makes it very clear that the ICC considers Palestine a state), but that does happen to be on the Wikipedia page on this topic, so I somewhat suspect there's been a regression here to strip mining Wiki for cites and refs. I also strongly suspect that those refs are going unread, if you think the PTC decision supports any view other than that Palestine is a state. This would seem to reduce your argument below the level that warrants engagement.
Perhaps, rather than trying to mine that Wikipedia article for ammunition, actually read it, and then go read the PTC decision, and have a long hard think about why many well-meaning rational people (most of the world, in fact) take a different position from you on this issue.
> Asking the various AIs supports my position.
In the future, please begin your posts with this, so people can save time engaging.
> In the future, please begin your posts with this, so people can save time engaging.
I'm sorry but you're the one who is not engaging.
I just used AI at the end of this conversation as a sanity check. I looked at my own arguments and said hey, maybe I am wrong. It wouldn't hurt you to consider this to. I think LLMs are a good tool for this.
Maybe you should consider why many well-meaning rational people take a different position than you on this issue as well. This "state" was formed out of thin air, without meeting any normal criteria for statehood, as a legal weapon against Israel. It does not meet any requirement for an actual state, it does not look like a state, it is not a state. Maybe you should give me your definition of a state.
Ask yourself how come there's no Kurdish state? How come there's no Baloch state? How come there's no state for the Sikhs? What makes Palestinians more deserving? The ethnic minorities in Iran would also love statehood...
EDIT: I'm always open to the possibility of being wrong. I.e. I'm open to look at facts that contradict my theories. Right now my theory is that Israel is being unjustly targeted as a result of antisemitism and world politics. There is a massive, well funded, PR campaign against Israel (primarily by Qatar but also with interests from China and Russia). There is a clear pattern of propaganda messaging here, including the one you're echoing. This doesn't mean Israel is always right. It doesn't mean there aren't war crimes (there are in any war). But it should be clear if you dig deeper there are different standards applied and there is a concerted effort to e.g. equate Jews/Israelis to Nazis, strip Israel of its legitimacy, not allow it to defend itself to the level that other countries are allowed to, excuse Hamas (and Iran e.g.) genocidal attempts and war crimes towards Israel, rewrite history, redefine language. Excuse and normalize human rights violations. This campaign is decades long. Again, I would really love to see Israel behave better but that campaign doesn't need or care about Israel's behavior here. This campaign isn't strictly against Israel, it's also against the west and western values. This campaign also directly translates into higher rates of antisemitism and violence against Jewish people worldwide.
The UN as a body, and the adjacent entities, mostly represents oppressive non-democratic regimes where people do not enjoy the freedoms we enjoy in the west. Ignoring the various outright lies, leveraging what the UN says or doesn't say as a way of supporting a moral, or factual, argument is problematic. UN (UNRWA) workers are documented to have participated in the Oct 7th attack on Israeli civilians. You would have a higher chance of making me change my mind by addressing the question of Palestinian statehood from first principles. Do they control territory? Do they control their borders? Do they have their own currency? Passports? What is the history of their state? What exactly makes them a state other than the political scheming to try and force Israel to accept a two state solution that Palestinians themselves reject today, rejected numerous times in the past, going back to the partition plan, and everyone knows has no chance in hell of succeeding. It's true that international recognition is an important part of being a state, but one can't make a state out of thin air solely with international recognition. Historical precedence is that a state needs to exist and then be recognized, not the other way around.
https://libertascouncil.org/only-20-percent-of-people-live-i...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatari_involvement_in_US_highe...
https://forward.com/opinion/574346/freepalestine-tiktok-isra...
Palestinians deserve what every other human being deserves. This is not it. This is not the way. This is regression in freedom and norms. This is a post-truth world.
Israel has actively worked to prevent successful political statehood for Palestinians, for instance via supporting Hamas to fracture support for the Palestinian Authority [0]. Your comments here are a result of that work — if Palestine can’t form a state bc they can’t create internal statehood then all recognition of statehood is void.
In that context you’re correct, that Palestinian statehood doesn’t look like others’. Recognition of statehood by any entities is a strategic choice to attempt to break the stranglehold the Zionist narrative has on global politics.
One of the major goals of Israel’s anti-statehood work is to provide people like you the internal cover needed to continue to avoid looking at Israel’s war crimes and genocidal actions. It helps mend the cognitive dissonance between what Israel does and what Israel claims to be.
I hope someday you have the capacity to let go of that narrative and heal what’s broken inside of you.
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
This is propaganda. Like most- it has a grain of truth. Once the Hamas violently took over Gaza killing its fellow Palestinians and throwing them from rooftops ( https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna19150542 ) the right wing Israeli governments did to some extent prefer Hamas control of Gaza to chaos and liked the division this created.
But it's still a total lie and misrepresentation overall. This fracture was created and maintained primarily by Palestinians and reflect the division in the Palestinian public between the Jihadists and those that prefer other methods to eliminate Israel and the Jews. There is also a backdrop of the PA refusing to engage in dialogue. Israel did hand over Gaza to the PA and Israel did and still supports the PA to date. Without Israel's support the PA would not exist.
https://www.cija.ca/palestinians_have_never_had_the_opportun...
The Oslo peace process failed due to Hamas suicide bombing attacks on Israel that made it impossible to make any progress. Gaza failed due to Hamas taking over and using it as a platform to attack Israel. But more fundamentally Palestinians (enough or most of them) don't want peace, they want Israel destroyed. The Oct 7th attack wasn't called "stop the occupation of Gaza", it was called the "Al Aqsa flood". The intent was to murder all Jews in Israel.
But yes, once Hamas was a fact in Gaza, and there was zero chance of getting the PA to retake control, the Israeli government in its foolishness thought that stability with Hamas was better with chaos and maybe some benefit from that political split. There was also a ton of international pressure on Israel to let money and aid flow into Gaza under Hamas. There was really no obvious alternative other than the IDF retaking Gaza (which would look more or less like it's looking now, maybe slightly less worse, but not something the Israelis wanted to pursue).
There's nothing broken inside me. I would love to see peace. You should take a pause yourself and ask why you're joining the antisemitic mob here and aligning yourself with people who share none of your values. You should ask yourself for an example of when did Palestinians try to actually have peaceful coexistence and denounce terrorism and violence. I mean that would surely counter Israel's narrative here? The answer is never. Gaza launched rockets into Israeli population center and Palestinians in the West Bank keep murdering Israeli civilians. You got cause and effect completely reversed.
There is no cognitive dissonance between what Israel does and what it claims to be. There is a very logical and clear story about how we got here if you viewpoint is Israel's right to exist and to defend its citizens and you look at facts and history and not fairy tales or lies.
"the stanglehold the Zionist narrative has" is blatant antisemitism. This is the same old story of the Zionists (Jews) controlling the world. The truth is it's the anti-Israeli narrative has a hold on global politics and Israel despite mostly being in the good side barely gets by.
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We don't know the facts. Like we didn't do with the buried ambulances and journalists like Shireen Akleh.
It didn't happen. We didn't do it. If it happened Hamas did it. If we did it they deserved it. Oh it's on video, our bad, we did an oopsie.
Countless of cases like this.
I agree these don't all look good but you're lumping different things under the same umbrella. And you're blaming the victim. If Hamas didn't attack Israel on Oct 7th then there wouldn't be Israeli soldiers in Gaza killing and getting killed and there wouldn't be issues with ambulances. It doesn't help that Hamas uses ambulances and that its combatants don't wear uniforms and rely on being able to pass as civilians as part of their strategy.
So yes, an Israeli ambush in Gaza that opened fire on a civilian vehicle is something that should be looked at. But they get a lot of leeway because it's a war and in a war mistakes can happen. In order for this to be a crime you need to show beyond doubt the soldiers knew these were civilians and intentionally wanted to kill them. There were other civilians that passed unharmed through the same forces and so proving intent is pretty difficult.
Whether it's on video or not doesn't matter. In a war soldiers will potentially kill civilians. The bar is different from peacetime operations. The war was started, and is continued, by Hamas. Yes it looks bad. Yes the IDF should do whatever it can to minimize it. Yes there are whackos.
I realize I'm not going to convince you but I believe that if the Palestinians stopped using violence you wouldn't see any incidents of Palestinians getting killed by security forces. The stories they are telling you about resistance and occupation are false. I am painting a broad brush here- Some Palestinians just want to live in peace. But too many do not. Pressure on Israel is misguided. Pressure should be on Hamas to surrender. Pressure on Israel emboldens Hamas, makes the war go on longer, and is not helping Palestinians. Even if you believe Israelis are evil you should still pressure the Palestinians because they are the ones who need to end this war. After the war is over we can talk about what to do next. Israelis can't and won't be pressured into letting Hamas remain in power.
I'm lumping them together as they establish a clear pattern of how the genocide machine operates. It's what you do, you kill civilians, doctors, journalists, destroy infrastructure. Then you lie about it. If you lies don't work you don't do anything about it anyway, you endorse this behaviour. You did this long before October 7.
A lot of the world ser you for what you really are.
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You're misreading. The civilian casualties are very much intentional. They are being ordered to fire on unarmed people seeking food. There are verified reports of IDF targeting journalists and EMTs. I am also Jewish American and I am 100% convinced that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. I find it utterly reprehensible that this opinion can ever be considered antisemitic since the actions of the Israeli government are so incontrovertibly at odds with Jewish ideology. They shame us all.
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Let's go by the ICC definition for genocide (Article 6 of their Elements of Crimes):
https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Ele...
Israel has been killing Palestinian civilians. Israel has been restricting food and medical supplies going to Palestinian civilians. All of that was beyond reasonable in regard to military objectives (e.g., bombing hospitals to take out a weapons stash). Israel's political and military leaders have expressed their opinions that Palestinians (not just Hamas or militants) are an ethnicity deserving punishment.
Note that, in the ICC's definitions, genocide does not require intent to eliminate the entirety of a group. It only requires targeting people based on their belonging to a protected group with the intent to diminish that group.
- Israel has not been targeting civilians. Civilian deaths have been a consequence of military objectives and actions. The military objectives are well defined, to release the hostages taken by Hamas and to eliminate Hamas. Both are within reason and not dissimilar to other wars. While it's possible that some war crimes have been committed the official orders and policy is crystal clear.
- Israel has been restricting supplies to the Gaza Strip, no to all Palestinians, as a result of a war. The Palestinian civilians are broadly the responsibility of their government who is refusing to end the war, stealing aid to finance its operations, and hoarding aid to enable the war to be prolonged. Just like North Korean citizens are the responsibility of the North Korean government (as one example) and the Russian citizens are the responsibility of the Russian government.
- Hamas is the elected government of Gaza.
- Various politicians in Israel made various statement. The official position of the government of Israel is that the war is against Hamas, not against Palestinian civilians. This has been said numerous time.
- Hamas makes extensive usage of hospitals and civilian infrastructure. Israel does not "bomb a hospital just to take out a weapons stash". Israel e.g. bombed near a hospital to kill Hamas military leaders in a tunnel. Or raided a hospital, while protecting civilians, to capture militants. Israel has supported the creation of field hospitals to ensure civilians can get some minimal care while Hamas is using the civilian infrastructure that was supposed to be for that purpose. https://gaza-aid-data.gov.il/main/medical-response/ Israel also facilitates moving of patients that can't be treated in Gaza to other locations. You are not going to find any example of a similar war situation where a one side has done more.
- Palestinians are not targeted because they are Palestinians or to diminish that group.
> Israel has not been targeting civilians.
Israel has very much been targeting civilians.
> Civilian deaths have been a consequence of military objectives and actions
So you agree Iran's rockets were fired as a defense against the cowardly unprovoked attack by the genocidal Israeli? Those rockets killed some Israeli civilians but since
Why place your Israeli military next to civilians then? Sounds like you are using your civilians for human shields.
> While it's possible that some war crimes have been committed the official orders and policy is crystal clear
It's genocide and it's been verified by trusted third parties. We are supposed to take Israel's word for it? Especially considering Israel shoots journalists and aid workers, it's pretty clear the genocidal regime doesn't want the truth of their war crimes to come out.
Stop the genocide.
Etymology of the word is irrelevant when it comes to current usage, and current usage and understanding is neatly summarized by Wikipedia in the first sentence of that same article where your quote about the etymology comes from.
"Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people."
Israel is not "targeting Palestinians because of their membership of a group" and does not aim at the "destruction of Palestinians as a people".
Israel is at war with Gaza because Gaza has attacked it on Oct 7th and is holding Israeli hostages and has continued an armed conflict with it since then. Previously Gaza has launched 10's of thousands of rockets into Israeli population centers, executed terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, etc.
The "current use" so to speak of the term is just to weaponize it against Israel as part of a long term strategy. So by that definition - you're absolutely right. In fact the term started popping up before Israel responded at all to Oct 7th. Since Oct 8th more or less.
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Israel's government is doing a genocide on the Palestinian people. The ICC sees it and that is why the war criminal Netanyahu has a warrant for his arrest and will be tried in the Hague, not Nuremberg, but close enough.
Stop the Israeli genocide on Palestinian people.
There is no genocide charge in the ICC case. Khan's initial charges included extermination, but that was rejected by the pre-trial chamber.
Stop the genocide
People ought to understand that this problem of innocent Gazans - often children - being fired upon by IDF soldiers isn't a new one, it predates the current food distribution operation.
An article from October in the NY Times detailing some well-documented atrocities ("44 health care workers saw multiple cases of preteen children who had been shot in the head or chest in Gaza") was published as an opinion piece, in spite of the fact that it consisted of dozens of eyewitness accounts. [0][1]
The incomparable sway that Israel holds in American media and American politics prevents pressure to hold those responsible accountable on an international level. When there's enough pressure within Israel to demand accountability for something terrible (and that's rare enough, outside of their peace movement) the conclusion drawn is typically that the soldiers are just careless, but not acting with malice. [2] If there's a single instance of an IDF soldier being held accountable for a civilian killing in this conflict, someone could make me feel a little better by sharing it.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/09/opinion/gaza-...
[1] https://archive.is/9Lr00
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yotam...
I just want to point out something important about that article - it's not just talking about children, it's specifically talking about pre-teen children. Hamas recruits many "children" in the sense of under-18s to fight, but that's not true of pre-teen children.
(Btw, I don't necessarily agree that that article proves the IDF is firing on children, there's actually no evidence of that presented in the article. But I want to forestall a common "pro-Israeli" objection that is not true in this case.)
> I don't necessarily agree that that article proves the IDF is firing on children, there's actually no evidence of that presented in the article.
I think the appropriate term is "circumstantial evidence." A doctor wouldn't be in the position to actually witness the cause of a gunshot wound (hey, maybe all these well-placed gunshot wounds are the result of Palestinians shooting their own kids, I guess would be the alternate explanation...), but let's not pretend that these reports are not evidence of crimes, evidence worthy of investigation.
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That doesn't justify annexing neighbors, destroying civilian infrastructure or fratricide on the IDF's behalf, though.
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Following your logic, Russia should keep annexing Ukraine until it no longer exist as justifiable, does it make sense for you?
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Define "terrorist state" for us, then. Take your time considering any... uh... contradictions.
Most people do understand, there are many sites dedicated to citing and maintaining lists of the atrocities for easy access through google. I think it's okay just to refer to the incident in the article and immediate opinions and emotions it evokes.
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Children are children. That's why we respond with abject horror when you see them hungry and huddled, riddled with bullets. If you have to prepend a nationality to "child" to justify it, then I regret to inform you that you are a racist.
It doesn't matter whether it happens in Israeli-occupied territory or an American middle school. It's absolutely reprehensible. "stop killing children you dislike" or "stop targeting journalists" should not be a controversial demand in the 21st century. Certainly not to a modernized military.
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I always strikes me how the people that encourage the Palestinians to start wars they can't win are oblivious to how much of a shit bag they are for doing that.
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I visited Israel for a sports seminar some ~10 years ago and met many nice people. I felt sympathetic to their reality of living in an ever-hostile environment from all sides, and struggle to keep their place in the world safe. I admired their resilience and strength.
When this Gaza conflict started, I saw how the Israeli protested against their government and demanded peace, so I thought there is a semblance of an excuse for glimpses of abhorrence being reported - "it's a small number of people in power, not the Israeli nation doing it, and also there are always 2 sides to the story".
Since then, there have been unfathomable horrors and crimes against humanity done from the Israel side, with extreme intensity and one-sidedness, and it's now been going for so long. I can find no excuse of any kind anymore, for what has been and is being done in Gaza. I don't think any normal person could. The weight of these things, in my mind at least, is such that if the Israeli people really wanted anything different, it was their human duty and utmost responsibility to stop this by now, in whatever way needed. They didn't... It's sad that people who have suffered so much as well, let themselves become the villains to this depth and extent.
I'm German and I really see a lot of the blame for this on our states as well - the US and the EU states (especially Germany, sadly).
As horrible as the Israeli mindset is, their subjective viewpoint is at least somewhat relatable: An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else, just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead - and will with very high likelihood experience terror attacks themselves. That this upbringing doesn't exactly make you want to engage with the other side is psychologically understandable.
(I'm imaging this as the universal experience of all Jewish Israelis, religious or secular, left or right. I'm excluding the religious and Zionist-ideological angles here, because those are a whole different matter once again)
What I absolutely cannot understand is the behavior of our states. We're pretending to be neutral mediators who want nothing more than to end the conflict, yet in reality, we're doing everything to keep the conflict going. We're fully subscribed to Zionist narrative of an exclusive Israeli right to the land (the justifications ranging from ostensibly antifascist to openly religious) and we're even throwing our own values about universal human rights and national sovereignty under the bus to follow the narrative.
If the messianic and dehumanizing tendencies of Israelis are answered by nothing else than full support and encouragement of their allies, I don't find it exactly surprising that they will grow.
What does it even mean 'to want nothing more than to end the conflict'? As far as I can tell it doesn't mean anything. Everybody wants the conflict to end, including the Israelis and the Palestinians. They just want it to end differently, of course.
In theory, we want to end it through the Two-State Solution (though even what this means is vague - certainty not the borders of 1967 that Palestinians and Arabs are demanding)
But yeah, in practice, we seem to want it to end with full Israeli dominance, and the Palestinians either emigrating to Egypt and Jordan or vanishing into thin air, I suppose.
> But yeah, in practice, we seem to want it to end with full Israeli dominance, and the Palestinians either emigrating to Egypt and Jordan or vanishing into thin air, I suppose.
No, the majority of the West strongly wants a two-state solution (on the 1967 border, roughly). So did many Israelis, who voted people into office intent on achieving that goal many times.
The problem is, Israel and Palestine never managed to sign an agreement leading to a two-state solution. And in parallel to the peace process, some Palestinians launched the second intifada, a terror campaign which killed many hundreds of Israelis. This eventually lead most Israelis to think that a two-state solution is impossible.
Not to mention that all the Palestinian borders are made up, and they've actively disagreed with them as defined by intermediaries every time.
What exactly are the borders of Israel then?
I'd "assume" they're very similar to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine
I'd like better news coverage of that:
What exactly ARE the goals / demands of every side. Both what they say in public, and what's generally accepted as the rational real goals each side requests / demands / etc via peace talks as well as through violence.
The breakdown could even focus on factions within the nebulous term of 'sides'. An average citizen is likely to have looser criteria than a government / terrorist.
Here's the coverage you've asked (opinions my own, I do not pretend to rep. anyone)
Israel stated goals of war:
1. Return the hostages
2. Remove Hamas regime from Gaza
3. (arguably done) bring north-Israel communities safely back home
Unstated goals:
1. Open Egypt-Gaza border. This had failed.
2. Create safe zone on the Gaza-Israeli border. This is mostly done in practice. This goal cannot be stated (though it'll save many lives)
Hamas goals:
Read Hamas chapter, or see interviews with captured Hamas militants post 7/10 attack (if you believe it's not scripted)
Gazan who are not part of Hamas regime goals: survive
Another unstated goal: punitively deter future attacks.
100%. Thanks for mentioning that.
Stated goal (by Ben Givir, Smoltrich and, yes, Bibi himself): genocide of Gaza.
Half the cabinet of the current Israeli government has made public statements to the effect of wanting to starve everyone or kill all the kids.
We've seen the videos and, with !gt, we can read the translations.
There's also the poll that was conducted by penn state -
It found that 82% of Israelis want to expel Gazans, and 47% of support killing all Palestinians in Gaza.
Article was featured in Haaretz - linked to here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/poll-82-of-israelis-wan...
> Half the cabinet of the current Israeli government has made public statements to the effect of wanting to starve everyone or kill all the kids.
There's a database tracking those: https://law4palestine.org/law-for-palestine-releases-databas...
Hum... when I look at pictures of the very thorough destruction in Gaza (hospitals, civilians etc) it would seem that the israelis think "Remove Hamas" actually means kill everyone one in Gaza.
If not a genocide, at the very least an ethnocide.
Next step: Riviera Gaza!
They think Palestinian = Hamas
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Ah ... I understand your point.
All those jew death camps in Gaza must be closed down, for sure.
All those Gaza tanks and those Gaza fighter jets must be taken down.
And don't forget the Gaza navy patrolling the sea, preventing the israelis from fishing for their subsistence.
Totally agree with you.
Now... back to reality...
It’s absolutely the case that Hamas hasn’t sued for peace with unconditional surrender. (Or recognised that the hostages confer leverage on Israel, not themselves.) Both Hamas and Israel remain belligerents in this conflict until one of them withdraws or surrenders, that’s just how war works.
There are a lot of atrocities being committed in this conflict. But bombing a school that was used as a missile launch site really isn’t one of them.
Who is committing the atrocities?
> Who is committing the atrocities?
Mostly Israel due to a firepower disadvantage. But Hamas seems to be about as into committing war crimes as Netanyahu.
In terms of indifference to suffering, the people dying are in Gaza. Not Israel. Hamas should be suing for peace, not posturing because some fucks in Doha would prefer to punt the question. (Palestine unilaterally turning over its hostages would rob Israel of a tremendous amount of leverage.)
> Germany surrendered, so we stopped bombing Dresden.
And no British person was pubished as war criminal for the war crime of attacking Dresden. :-(
Dresden made the Germans surrender? We're really going with that now? Not the Soviets taking Berlin and Hitler blowing his brains out lest they capture him?
Also, the Germans sent untrained 15 year olds to fight Soviet tanks. That's as close to total battlefield defeat as has ever happened in history.
For the record, the firebombing of Dresden was indefensible.
I say this as someone whose family endured 6 years of Nazi German and Soviet crimes, including genocide, violence, rape, large scale looting and destruction of cultural heritage, and mass destruction of cities (85% of Warsaw alone was reduced to rubble, intentionally and systematically).
Why do I mention that? I mention that to underscore that just war is not utilitarian. You cannot justify Dresden or Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It doesn't mean you can't take strong measures, or that circumstances don't make a difference, only that the circumstances did not morally justify these acts. And it seems that the behavior of the Allies in Dresden and Hiroshima serve as precedent that is used to justify crimes like the leveling of Gaza and treating its civilians like cattle.
We stopped dropping bombs on Germany after they surrendered. If you are militarily defeated, then surrender typically results in the bombs stop dropping... unless your catchphrase is "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab" -- I probably wouldn't surrender to those guys or Russians.
Unstated goal #1 for Netanyahu: avoid prison at any cost.
That's another straw man argument. No other prime minister would act differently in his place.
Hamas goal with the hostages was exchange has Israel has tens of thousands Palestinian prisoners. Turns out Israel doesn't care anymore and will even sacrifice their own to further right wing Zionist goals.
Unfortunately this Israeli government has consisently refused to articulate any sort of positive goal. Netanyahu is only publicly against things. He is adamant about preventing a Palestinian state and crippling Iran, but seems to have no plan for what should happen in Palestine, hence the seemingly endless horrible situation there.
Hamas wants to destroy Israel, they are pretty open about it. They are also not really holding back about their antisemitism. The mass murdering on 7th October pretty much demonstrates what Hamas is about in general.
They also murdered the Gazan opposition after they were voted into power and have not really allowed voting since. They are pretty much not interested in increasing the situation for the people in Gaza. That's also why they are a terror organization.
The problem with enunciating real positions to domestic audiences are that the extremists on both sides will literally murder anyone who compromises.
Let's not forget Israel's domestic orthodox/right-wing Jewish terrorism and Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.
Ergo, there's even more incentive for leaders to continually espouse positions they know will never happen, but which play well at home.
As a violence in poli sci professor of mine once quipped, this is a 'the only solution is killing the grandmothers' conflict. Because generational narratives of victimization are so ingrained in large parts of both societies that there is no room for compromise.
Silence extremist voices forcefully, wait a generation, and then there might be a path to peace. :(
Who will provide the force to silence these extremist voices?
Maybe there are some parallels in this situation and late 1800’s-mid 1900’s Western Europe. The civil war on the European continent between Germanic states on one hand and French/British ended when two powerful outsiders (US and Soviet Russia) invaded and split the continent. During this occupation west Europeans nations learned how to live with themselves and to atone for their mistakes and to not repeat these mistakes. But they only learned this because they were under military occupation.
This scenario will most likely not happen in the Middle East and so I think there will not be peace there for generations.
The greatest chance for this was probably the US-Arab world, but the Shia/Sunni sectarian-political feudalism made that a non-starter, especially in the context of the Cold War.
As a colleague from Bahrain once quipped, 'the countries of the Arab world love to use Palestinians as propaganda for domestic purposes, but none of them actually give enough of a shit to make hard choices to solve the problem.'
Hamas' explicit goal is "from the river to the sea". If there is an alternative that they are willing to settle for, nobody knows what it is.
The individual Gazans almost certainly have one in mind, likely some variant of the two state solution. But Hamas is in charge, and there is nobody else to talk to about it. Ordinary Gazans don't much like Hamas but they are the only thing standing between them and Israel, who as you know is attacking with impunity.
Israel's nominal goal is to remove Hamas and engage such a negotiation, though there is significant doubt that this tactic is going to lead there. And they know that.
Israelis are roughly equally divided on what they want. About half want to wipe out Gaza and have control of (but not responsibility for) the West Bank. They are the ones in government.
The other half is much more amenable to a two state solution, but they are extremely skeptical of finding it. Long before the October 7 attacks, Israelis routinely have to shelter from rocket attacks. We hear little about them because they are largely ineffective, but it does not give Israelis a lot of confidence in any kind of negotiated settlement. That side is also happy to have Gaza walled off.
And all of these sides are backed by powerful outside forces for whom the conflict itself is their goal.
That is an extremely high level breakdown, as neutral as I can be.
Didn't they remove that from their charter, same as Likud?
In precisely the same way that the Nazis wanted their conflict to end with Jews emigrating to Africa (Madagascar according to their original plan) or vanishing into thin air.
At this point, I think the Two-State Solution has proven to be incredibly naive.
As long as there are outside forces, such as Iran, willing to embed & fund militants among the Gazan population, the -only- practical solution towards peace is assimilation: have Gazans broken up & spread out through Israel until law enforcement can be practically achieved.
Now assimilation sucks & will likely result in all sorts of social injustice, but I consider it a better alternative to the current ethnic cleansing.
EDIT: @casspipe suggested the option of subsidized resettlement and I agree that is another option that should be explored.
Even assimilation seems hard at this point. If I were a gazan I'd ask the international community to have Israel buy me decent housing somewhere safe in an arab speaking country. Like, I get it you are stronger and don't want me here but give me.somewhere decent to go. I often wonder what are the options for Palestinians and especially gazans who do want to get out of there.
Israel's neighbours are absolutely unwilling to take large numbers of Palestinians, for reasons that seem perfectly fair.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_insurgency_in_Sout...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinai_insurgency#Gaza_Strip_sp...
There are not necessarily Arab countries that want to take on millions of Palestinian refugees. There is a broader issue that what you suggest is not considered good for the Palestinian cause. I'll give an example. UNRWA uses a specific definition for Palestinian refugees that differs from the general refugee definition used by UNHCR. They define Palestinian refugees as "persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict". This status also extends to their descendants. This means children and grandchildren of the original 1948 refugees maintain refugee status even if born outside Palestine. When you think about it, this is kind of the opposite of what you suggested. It creates a massive class of legal Palestinians who live in and are citizens of other countries (particularly Jordan), but are ostensibly waiting for their opportunity to return (or receive some other "durable solution" such as compensation).
In general, Arab states and Palestinian leadership argue that naturalizing refugees would undermine their right to return to their original homes. You can interpret this cynically: because many Arab states are not too friendly with Israel, having a massive class of refugees putting political pressure on them could be advantageous, and is probably one of the only ways to "defeat" Israel as a jewish state (because if all of those refugees had the right to live in Israel, jews might become a minority.) But it is true that removing refugee status without a just solution would erase Palestinian claims and rights under international law.
It's interesting to compare that treatment to the Mizrahi Jews who fled persecution in Arab states after 1948 and many settled in Israel. They're not refugees anymore. The Arab states stole tons of property from Mizrahi Jews (adding up to multiple times the size of Israel) but nobody is demanding that the Arab states pay reparations to Mizrahi Jews as a condition for peace. Meanwhile those same Arab states radicalize their populace against Israel by calling Israelis "land thieves" - the hypocrisy is quite amazing considering many of those Israelis literally had their grandparents' land stolen by those same Arab states.
> nobody is demanding that the Arab states pay reparations to Mizrahi Jews as a condition for peace
Why not?
Maybe the Mizrahi Jews can get their property back if they return the land they stole?
Seriously though, if you look back far enough, all land is stolen. I think it's more prudent to focus on the present day.
That's not quite fair. The Mizrahi Jews the GP is referring to were kicked out of the country they were born in, and had nowhere else to go but Israel, the land for which was already "stolen" when the Mizrahi Jews got there. (Obviously settlements are ongoing so you can say that land theft is continuing to happen. If that's what you meant, ignore me.)
I've done the math, and if the US had given every Palestinian $100,000 to move elsewhere (surely enough to relocate) they could have forcefully relocated every single Palestinian without killing them all. And they would have spent less money than they have on bombs and stuff for Israel.
Still a dick move, but much less so than wiping out an entire group of people.
Nobody wants palestinian population. Egypt built a wall for a reason.
So just kill them all or even what?
It's up to them and Israeli to decide, I guess. Not wanting to help is not the same as killing. If some stranger comes to your home, you're not obliged to let him in and it won't be kill, even if he died afterwards. World is cruel and nobody obliged to nobody, especially at population levels. It's much easier to help single person, of course, but accommodating millions is another matter.
> If some stranger comes to your home, you're not obliged to let him in
Sure.
But if you go over to where a stranger lives and build a wall around them. You are responsible if they then starve to death.
If another stranger is delivering food to a different stranger and you kill the food deliverer. You are responsible for that mans death.
These analogies are much more relevant to the discussion. Isreal is disallowing people from delivering food and has even killed people that do (leading to organizations like word food kitchen to leave).
> Not wanting to help is not the same as killing.
You do realize that a significant fraction of Israel's military budget comes from the US?
Maybe they need to get control over their leadership?
Why would any Arab-speaking country accept 2M Palestinian refugees?
> I'd ask the international community to have Israel buy me decent housing somewhere safe in an arab speaking country
The degree to which France and the UK have dodged the question of reparations in this debate is frankly surprising to me.
Assimilation definitely would be a hard option.
I agree that subsidized resettlement should be another option explored by middle east nations.
> If I were a gazan I'd ask the international community to have Israel buy me decent housing somewhere safe in an arab speaking country.
The Arab states seized properties from Mizrahi Jews fleeing to Israel decades ago, land that adds up to multiple times the size of Israel. They have plenty of space to resettle refugees without asking Israel to "buy" their own stolen land back!
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Is there a way for IDF to fight Hamas without "inflict war crimes, or terrorism on civilians" though? How would that work in practical terms?
When Hamas uses hospitals for military purposes (or any purpose "harmful to their enemy" [other than solely medical care of injured Hamas combatants]), those hospitals lose their protected status otherwise provided by the Geneva Convention.
I don't like the prospect of hospitals being attacked, but if Hamas houses combatants or arms inside a hospital, attacking Hamas therein does not appear to be a war crime, provided Israel has issued a warning and allowed a reasonable time for Hamas to vacate the hospital.
The Geneva Convention does not provide "One Weird Trick to Avoid Combatants Being Attacked"
The Geneva Convention does not provide carveouts to particularly angry personnel. You can try to define fake conditions to justify it but the hearing hasn't happened so you're just speculating.
And you know what? You can document the torture, sexual assault and murder of innocent prisoners without getting a proper investigation from the ICC. Many US citizens will remember that from Abu Ghraib! Lord only knows how much the CIA is shielding Israel from the fallout of SAVAK. You might as well drop the moralizing pretenses and admit that you don't think a fair trial would be desirable.
If fighting X requires you to inflict war crimes, perhaps you should question the premise of why you are fighting in the first place.
And assuming the answer to the questioning is that the war is currently required.
Let's say in order to return the hostages (considered popular amongst the Zionists).
Now what is the practical way to execute the war without the abovementioned consequences?
What's the alternative?
Quit meddling in Arab democracies?
I'm reminded of an episode of Saga of Tanya the Evil where a 'guerilla military unit' had 'taken over a captured city'. The progag's military unit had to go 'clear the city'. Their military commanders had given clear orders that all hostile forces were enemy soldiers who must be killed. They started by issuing a demand to release the hostages and allow them to exit the war zone. One of the few who didn't want to fight was shot while trying to escape. From that point it predictably went in a very bad direction.
As far as I'm aware, the citizens of Israel are free to leave that country* (free to enter another country is another issue, but they're also free to move about). It's terrorism and illegal military action to knowingly fire upon civilians. I agree with that for all sides of a conflict. The issue with the other side(s) in this conflict is that they do not present as a clearly identified military force. IMO the most proper solution is the same as evaporatively purifying water. Issue sufficient (<< heavy lifting here) warnings for civilians to leave an area, with an area for them to move to. Then any who remain in the military action area are combatants. Probably just like in the anime episode that showcases this circumstance. (war is hell, that's one of the hells.)
It's been widely reported that the IDF substantially loosened their acceptable civilian collateral casualty rules after Oct 7th.
>> In each strike, the order said, officers had the authority to risk killing up to 20 civilians. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/world/middleeast/israel-h...
The very existence of guidance change on civilian casualties should constitute a war crime, because to put it another way, the IDF decided that Palestinian civilian lives were worth less after the terror attacks.
In other metrics, the October attacks killed 1,200 Israelis, plus 1,700 killed in the war. Versus 50,000+ Palestinian fatalities.
So we're at ~1:17 Israeli: Palestinian killed.
I feel like any human can agree there should be an ethical ceiling to that number. Maybe it's lower or higher than the current number, but it being unlimited is genocide.
The Gulf War had a more extreme casualty ratio of ~1:1,000+. Would you consider that an extremely unethical war? Should the US have done something differently to even out the ratio?
Apples/oranges. In the Gulf War there were identifiable, organized military forces.
Ergo, the majority of those casualties could be attributed to military:military.
Given the nature of the Gaza conflict, trying to sub-classify casualties leads inevitably to the 'military aged male' problem.
It seems like we're in agreement now that total casualty ratios alone (like that 1:17 ratio) aren't very meaningful metrics.
Civilian casualty ratios are more relevant to ethics, but we don't know that number since Hamas doesn't report their losses.
We are not: it depends on the conflict.
When one military force blends in with the civilian populace, actual civilian casualties will fall somewhere inbetween extremes (100% of those killed and 0%).
Ergo, excessive casualty ratios indicate that either (a) the enemy military force is larger, (b) the IDF is exceedingly good at killing only enemy combatants without taking casualties, or (c) a large number of civilians are being killed.
I don't think anyone would argue that Hamas has as many fighters as the IDF?
I don't think anyone would argue against the fact that the Geneva Conventions require combatants to distinguish themselves from the civilian population.
When Hamas fighters repeatedly, strategically, and intentionally fail to do so, I think they bear significant (and even the majority) responsibility for the resulting increase in what you call "actual civilian casualties".
> The very existence of guidance change on civilian casualties should constitute a war crime
Surely a change in tactics by Hamas could lead to a legitimate reason to change the proportion of civilian risks.
Imagine if Hamas were scrupulously avoiding all civilians and civilian structures by 200 meters before date X and changed tactics on date X to freely intermingle with civilians and occupy civilian structures with military units and arms.
I'd expect before date X for Israel to have minimal civilian casualties be considered acceptable and proportional, but after that change in tactics I would see justification for a change in the math to justify a higher figure as being the lowest reasonable amount of civilian risk.
And indeed, Israel has made token efforts to say this is happening, but I'm not aware of any proof. Which, coupled with the fact that the IDF is explicitly prohibiting reporting, isn't a good look.
Furthermore, even if Israel has a justification for large numbers of civilian casualties, there are other portions of the Geneva Convention it's obviously breaching:
>> ART. 53. — Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or co-operative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.
>> ART. 55. — To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.
>> ART. 56. — To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the co-operation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties.
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-...
I would say that more than one view exists of whether Israel is an Occupying Power in Gaza.
One is that Hamas governs Gaza and Israel is not occupying Gaza via a sustained and continuous military control of the territory and population, but rather has intermittent military operations and is otherwise more akin to an embargo. (The US was not "occupying Cuba" at the height of the Cuban embargo, for example.)
The other is that Israel is occupying Gaza, notwithstanding Hamas' claim to be independently governing the territory and the lack of continuous occupying military forces holding territory on the ground.
Whether Israel or Hamas has effective control over the territory and its population does not appear to me to have a bright-line/clear-cut answer. I don't think either side has less than 10% control, but I don't think they have more than 90% control either.
Iff they are an Occupying Power, then they have those obligations. Many of those obligations presume an effective control by an on-the-ground occupying force.
The US didn't have troops in Havana during the Cuban embargo.
Israel certainly has the military capability to control aid, ergo they have the responsibility to facilitate it.
Are you serious? ... congratulations on your PhD in Gaslighting.
You've earned it.
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If that were true, the Palestinians in the West Bank should be living in peace and prosperity. Yet they aren't...
They are considerably better off than Gazans, though I'd agree "living in piece and prosperity" would not be the first adjective comes to mind.
> It’d be convenient if Jews just stopped existing so the Arabs could take their homeland again
This argument betrays your bias: that the land is yours (Jewish I mean), and "Arabs" stole it and want to steal it again.
Of course, the other side sees it differently. They see a half a century of immigration to their land culminating in a partition that was imposed from the outside in Western colonialist fashion without the consent of the people living there. They saw massacres and expulsions and ethnic cleansing. That is the root of the conflict.
Of course now 80 years and many complications have passed; both sides have legitimate complaints about the other and many people have been born in both territories making them natives and not part of either colonisation or expulsion. It's difficult.
> All of the death toll coming out of Gaza are from Hamas and they revised the numbers back in April to show 72% of the deaths are military aged males.
This betrays it even more. Not only do you cite a non-credible source going against the consensus, but your argument is literally "Palestinian males between 16 and 45 are fair game for extermination". Not sure what to reply to that.
I find it exemplified in the disagreements even in the beginning of the conflict. I feel, pro-Israeli commenters either prefer to start with 1948 (The state somehow appeared like some sort of divine creation and was immediately declared war by all surrounding countries) or in biblical times.
Pro-Palestinian commenters usually start with the Balfour Declaration or Theodor Herzl's books, I believe.
I found 1881/1882 a good starting point, because this was the first time there was organized immigration that explicitly followed Zionist plans and ideology - I.e. people were not abstractly thinking about "returning to Jerusalem" and they weren't immigrating into the Ottoman empire for other reasons, but they were deliberately immigrating with the intention of (re-)establishing a "Jewish homeland" in the biblical Land of Israel.
If you are from US/Australia/... chances are you also think the land is yours and occasionally you celebrate what is for locals an "invasion day"
in this sense Jews are in a much better position because their presence in specifically that area many hundreds of years before Muslim conquest is archeologically documented. Unlike presence of Europeans in Americas or Australia.
What I say does not justify war atrocities. Just that "you are wrong to call it your land" is not a good working logic
I'm unsure what your point is, because that example supports my argument. There is no documented European presence but there is Native presence for millenia in those lands. Yet nobody would seriously argue that non-native Americans/Australians should be kicked out so the land is returned to their "original owners" as defined by "the vague descendents of the earliest known occupiers as defined in a muddy ethnoreligious way"... Yet when talking about this group in particular that claim holds?!
> Yet nobody would seriously argue that non-native Americans/Australians should be kicked out so the land is returned to their "original owners"
Maybe somebody would if they could? Or how about not kicked out but just made subordinate to government by native original owners, how would you like that?
I guess somebody else can say but Americans developed land, built infrastructure and democracy and did good more. But then the same can be said about Israel. And unlike Americans Jews did not invade somewhere new because they were there in BC era
I don't defend bad stuff done by Israel gov but I suggest condemning specifically bad stuff instead of suggesting "bias" that you did. It's a bit more complicated.
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Not to mention, the claim that because you’re a boy in your late teens you’re a valid target… it’s just so incredibly…
Do I call it sexist? Stereotyping? What? It entirely denies the existence of males as anything other than enemies, and these are still children we’re talking about.
You just discovered the concept of male expendability.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_expendability
I understand the biological incentives, but we’re supposed to be better than that.
I'm Swedish. Since I was a child, for decades, I was taught and never questioned the idea that Germany had learnt from their history, in the most admirable way. That it was really ingrained into the German culture to never let anything like the holocaust happen again. That the education system there was very good in really making people understand why it happened, what went wrong, and how to make sure there would be no second one.
In early 2024, I was chatting with a German colleague of mine. Great guy, politically we were the most aligned out of anyone in our team. The genocide in Gaza was already well under way, so the topic came up. He told me, as if it was incredibly obvious "Well of course as Germany we couldn't possibly say anything about Gaza, given our history." For the rest of my life I will remember exactly that moment, where we were stood, the scene, because it came as a shock; this belief that I'd had since childhood turned out to be entirely wrong. It was the exact opposite - Germany had learnt nothing, in fact they'd learnt even less than the countries they had occupied. It was all a complete ruse, and I really lost all respect I had for how Germany has dealt with it all. A country like Japan at least doesn't even pretend to have learnt anything, and I'm not convinced that's the worse option.
I should've known the second news started flowing out of Germany such as "Award ceremony set to honor novel by Palestinian author at the Frankfurt Book Fair canceled “due to the war in Israel,", along with stuff like designating B.D.S as "antisemitic" but I wanted to believe that was just a tiny minority of ignorant people.
Yes, I know that now "the narrative inside Germany has been turning around" but imo it's far too late, and can't possibly be sincere, being entirely fuelled by external pressure rather than any kind of actual realization.
> "the narrative inside Germany has been turning around"
Fully agreeing with your post - and also, it's not. Maybe for parts of the population (though even there, many are extremely conflicted) but definitely not for the current (conservative) leadership. What worries them is that they find the country increasingly isolated and there is a growing risk they could become personally liable - this forces them to make some concerned noises if the atrocities become undeniable.
But they never stopped practically supporting Israel wherever they can, be it with military aid or preventing EU actions that might put pressure on it. They will also snap back into the unequivocally pro-Israel narrative as soon as they can get away with it.
As a German, I think you should cut your colleague some slack.
There's 8 billion people in the world who aren't German. If there's one topic that Germans don't chip in on, it won't move the needle.
Whatever we as Germans say on Israel/Palestine will be taken the wrong way by someone. Critical of Israel? Still an antisemite! Supportive of Israel? Pathological guilt!
It super sucks, but I too will leave it to others to voice strong opinions in this matter. And there's no shortage of that.
There is also an unspoken bit of realpolitik there: Israel is still an ally to Germany, Palestine isn't, Iran isn't, Hamas isn't, etc.
So this is actually a super-nice position to be in, you can support your ally no matter what they do, while still looking contrite and morally superior by pulling the "we are Germany, we are not allowed to have a say in the matter" card.
There's nothing that Israel needs from Germany, in effect the support is little more than symbolic.
I'm not sure why you think that any of this makes Germany look morally superior. I certainly don't feel that way.
Mostly weapons and weapons components. E.g. Israel operates a number of German-built and partially gifted submarines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin-class_submarine
Also, Israel is a trade partner, which is important because the non-western countries are hesitant to trade with them. Israel is culturally integrated into certain European institutions, in part due to German support (soccer, Eurovision, other sports).
If this was conveyed more honestly, it would at least be understandable (up to some point).
I think what grates me is the dishonesty: We want to do both at the same time: A neutral mediator that advocates for the two state solution and the world's (second-)closest ally of Israel. That's like wanting to be both the coach and the referee. At some point it just becomes an insult to everyone's intelligence.
(The US does the same spiel)
It half-way is, at least by the new chancellor Merz, who praised Israel for doing our "dirty work" in bombing Iran. And he was promptly criticized by the rest of the political establishment and the press for that.
Criticized for saying the quiet part out loud. I don't see any actual opposition to the strikes, just opposition to the wording.
Well, let's face it: Nobody likes the current Iranian government, and nobody wants yet another state (especially with a leadership like that) to have nukes. Just that nobody dares to do anything beyond sending strongly worded letters and time-wasting "diplomatic initiatives".
And so you leave your politicians to set the official German opinion of unconditional support for Israel.
> Whatever we as Germans say on Israel/Palestine will be taken the wrong way by someone. Critical of Israel? Still an antisemite! Supportive of Israel? Pathological guilt!
How does that distinguish Israel/Palestine from any other issue?
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I am interested to know why you call out Japan as learning nothing. Obviously modern Japan has an excellent reputation and is not known as a warring nation( "no military" but ofc they have the JDF) so I'm guessing there's something deeper I don't know. Genuinely curious.
There is some denial about the crimes committed by Imperial Japan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre_denial https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gb94m1/why_...
That's not representative of the Japanese public opinion at all, so I fail to see how it supports the view that the entire country "hasn't learned anything at all."
What is the average level of knowledge around the history of imperial Japan. Is that period covered thoroughly in school?
I was under the impression that Japanese people don't so much deny war crimes, as they just don't talk/learn about the uglier parts of what happened during the first half of the 20th century. Is the Rape of Nanking a well known event in Japan? Are the significant battles and general tactics of the war(s) talked about? Do they talk about the Japanese Army's general treatment of foreign civilians?
I guess, what I'm wondering is if I asked the average person on the street these questions, would they know at all what I'm talking about? Would they have the knowledge to talk about it in more detail?
Is this like in the US where most people have no idea about American intervention in Cuba, and the rest of the meddling that the US was involved in in Latin America?
> I guess, what I'm wondering is if I asked the average person on the street these questions, would they know at all what I'm talking about?
They would, yes, but mostly because South Korea won’t shut up about it nearly a century and several ‘final’ sets of reparations later. It seems to be about as popular a political crutch in SK as it is to kill Palestinians in Israel.
I don’t know. It is about as relevant to current Japanese as the Dutch colonial past is to me. I’m sure we did plenty of bad stuff, but feeling remorse for it now is just bizarre. People several generations before me committed those crimes.
History isn't supposed to be about your personal feelings of ethnic pride or remorse. It's about learning from past successes and failures, and better understanding how people from different cultures may view each other. Other countries can and should learn from Japanese history too, because no country is immune to the mistakes that Japan made during WW2. Especially in this day and age, people around the world should have a hard look at how propaganda was used to commit atrocities.
Also if you care about national interest, it would be counterproductive to "shut up" or forget about past failures for an ego boost. That would make the country detached from reality, isolated from the rest of the world, and prone to the same failures.
Last but not least, it's very insensitive and inconsiderate of you to label South Korean trauma as a mere "political crutch" or the Dutch colonial past as no longer "relevant." Historical injustices can carry on to today's injustices much more than you think. You should try to see the perspective from the other side more before dismissing these things.
> People several generations before me committed those crimes.
It isn't that long ago.
There are still women alive who were used as sex slaves by the Japanese Army. I can see why their (SK) government is unwilling to let the issue be forgotten. Paying reparations does not mean that you can now forget the attrocity. Should the US not teach about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because it was our grandfathers who did it, and we feel like we have made it up by rebuilding Japan? Should we tell the Hibakusha that its time for them to shut-up, and there is no point in talking about what happened since the people who made those attacks are all dead?
The point of this knowledge, at least in the west, isn't to make you feel badly, or remorseful. The point is to remember that there are monsters lurking beneath the surface, even in the modern era. The Banality of Evil (the book) is about demonstrating that even a mediocre, non-fanatical, reluctant Nazi bureaucrat like Eichmann can be a pivotal figure in a genocide. We remember so that we don't repeat. Should we not learn from experiences?
It's covered in much detail as the other eras of Japanese history. At least it's widely understood that there were massacres, rapes, targeting of civilians, displacement and forced labor, etc etc.
It's true that the far right, disproportionately loud in online circles, tries to downplay all of this like in the sibling comment. It's concerning how social media amplifies these voices, but it's still not mainstream opinion.
That is awful, I see.
>As part of a lesson, they were banned having an army >They have powerful army anyway >Millions of Koreans live in constant fear of the power and brutality of their army
Japan obviously learn nothing.
I've been to SK numerous times. The older people dislike Japan A LOT. But their biggest base is a US one. I've never heard fear of the JDF. They have another more problematic neighbor.
The United States - who made the constitution that banned the military - does exercises with and supports the JDF. Idk if that fits unconstitutional anymore.
Their denial of horrid events and their attempts to suppress the fact that comfort women happened is undeniably awful though and shows many did not learn.
I would not extrapolate from the discourse with one German to a general statement of a heterogeneous population of ~80M people. There are many different opinions and positions in Germany - like in every country in the world. Please keep that in mind.
Germany has indeed still have a ‘vaccination’. How well it works, and whether it is not exploited by politics, is another matter.
Lastly, the conflict in the Middle East is one of the most complex conflicts in recent human history - and there is no easy way out. That also applies to the situation in Gaza.
As someone living in Germany, that philosophy of "we don't have the right to intervene or say anything" is definitely embedded in the culture here. Obviously there are plenty of people who don't follow this philosophy, and there are left-wing pro-Palestine movements here as well, but overall there's a big cultural sense of obligation to Israel due to Germany's history.
A friend of mine even ended up talking to a German diplomat in Israel, who said much the same thing: they could cosign other nations' condemnations of Israeli actions when they happened, but they couldn't condemn Israeli actions unilaterally. Obviously that was just his opinion and not an official viewpoint of the German government, but I found it fascinating that Germany still felt this sense of needing to make things right to Israel specifically.
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Is Germany lecturing anyone else here? I think I'm missing some context to your comment.
Have you not been following the German government’s position and statements on the Gaza conflict?
Weird take. When does it end? Do you feel guilt and hold your tongue on subjects where your country has a history of doing bad? What’s the time limit? 100 years? 10000?
They’re rabidly and actively supporting & covering for a genocide, and have been working tirelessly to suppress all internal dissent to this position (good old Stasi days peeking from under the covers).
Further, they’re going to lengths no other European country is going to in pursuit of this goal of covering for a genocide, all out of national guilt? It is a delusional position to take.
Now, if they actually were holding their tongue on this instead of providing unconditional support and cover, no one would be bringing up that these are the grandchildren of Nazis lecturing us about the right thing to do here :)
> Germany is the absolute last country on this planet to lecture the rest of us on how to criticize Israel
What a bad take. Germany, if it learned its lessons from the Holocaust, which was a genocide they did on the Jewish population, is absolutely the FIRST country in the world to teach Israel that what it's doing is absolutely abhorrent. Don't repeat my mistakes, so to say.
> if it learned its lessons from the Holocaust
It clearly did not, because it is actively supporting a genocide right now.
Anyhow, I can’t be bothered to spend too much time expanding on this position - so you’ll have to either get it or not. I don’t care either way tbh.
We are on the same page. Germany IS supporting Israel's genocide on Palestine right now.
So they perpetrated the Holocaust, claimed that they learned from their mistakes and drowned themselves in guilt, and now act as holier than thou unconditional defenders of Israel as it commits a genocide in Gaza.
If they want to support a genocide - regardless of who the perpetrator is - then they’re tacitly admitting that they have learnt nothing and are just following in the footsteps of their Third Reich forefathers.
At least the Japanese didn’t drown us with hypocritical bullshit about guilt and repentance.
> So they perpetrated the Holocaust, claimed that they learned from their mistakes and drowned themselves in guilt, and now act as holier than thou unconditional defenders of Israel as it commits a genocide in Gaza.
Yes, because they haven't learned shit from their past.
No, there is nothing “complex” about Gaza - neither before nor after Oct 7.
The late Michael Brooks shared a small thought experiment that might help elucidate this: https://youtu.be/7ebPj_FqM5Q
It’s one thing to call the situation “nothing complex”, but there was no solution in this clip.
Usually when people call something complex they mean that the solution is complex.
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> idea that the injustice & domination should continue because there is no clear cut solution is pure evil
It’s prioritisation. There are multiple horrible civil wars, rebellions and displacements happening around the world right now. Every person doesn’t need to have a position on each one; there is an argument that’s counterproductive. (Exhibit A: the Columbia protests.)
Since you brought up the Columbia protests and general dissent inside the US: how many such conflicts and genocides are directly backed and propped up by the US?
> how many such conflicts and genocides are directly backed and propped up by the US?
Fewer than you’d think [1]. (We send aid to Sudan and are practically uninvolved in Myanmar.)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_confli...
Well, that’s my point. This is the only major ongoing conflict where the US and major Western powers are virtually unconditionally backing the “bad guys”.
So it makes sense that there would be more attention and pushback on this one versus others.
Hmm, thank you. Hadn’t considered that.
(It’s interesting because it requires disentangling anti-American sentiments from the equation.)
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How exactly do you suggest that a country like Germany (since Germanys inaction was the topic of this thread) reach those goals? How does Germany end the blockade of Gaza? How does Germany end apartheid in the West Bank?
Just because I can’t do anything to improve the situation does not mean that I am in favour of the status quo. That does not make me evil either.
Are you seriously asking me this question, or is this an attempt at a rhetorical? And why are we shifting the goalposts once again?
How do you think apartheid South Africa ended? How does any country pressure another?
In a supposedly democratic nation like Germany, how would citizens pressure their government to stop supporting & providing diplomatic cover for another to commit a genocide & maintain apartheid?
> Just because I can’t do anything to improve the situation does not mean that I am in favour of the status quo. That does not make me evil either.
It does. The Germans who stood aside when the Nazis rose to power and the soldiers just "executing orders" were as much to blame for the rise of Hitler as the ones supporting it. Not taking a side against evil is taking evil's side. And you of all peoples should have learned from your history. Genocide is bad.
> How does Germany end apartheid in the West Bank?
By applying pressure on the international community to boycott Israel. Same way Germany is applying pressure on the international community to boycott Russia.
The idea that Isreal is occupying the west bank and or Gaza goes back to the 1967 6 day war and has jack all to do with Palestinian borders real or imaginary.
Those lands were the property of Jordan and Egypt...
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Can you please stop posting flamewar comments? It's against the site guidelines because it destroys the curious conversation we're trying for. I know that topic is both important and activating, but that makes it more important, not less, to stick to the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Instead, please make your substantive points thoughtfully, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
Was the problem with my comment the use of profanity? I did not insult the commenter, nor did I make any ad hominem attacks.
I don’t see any rules against profanity in general, or the use of profanity to respond to an argument. I also took the time to clarify why the argument is “bullshit”. But maybe I am missing something.
Not profanity per se, but if you lead with "Bullshit." then you're already well into aggressive flamewar mode.
"You can try all you want to erase [etc.]" is a form of personal attack. You don't need that.
Got it, I will dial it down a bit then :)
The German relationship with Israel is very weird, to put it mildly, and I don't mean just the official government position, but the more broad political culture.
To the best of my knowledge, they are the only Western country in which there are far left groups that proactively support Israel specifically wrt what it's doing in Gaza. And by "support" I mean e.g. posters encouraging to drop more bombs on "Hamas Nazis".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Germans_(political_curren...
> A country like Japan at least doesn't even pretend to have learnt anything
I was under the impression that they had a lot to say about how WWII taught them the virtues of pacifism?
Germany has learned to be critical of themselves, and not be critical of others. Especially the victims of Nazisim.
That worked when Germany was occupied, or split in half, or broke.
Now that a unified Germany is in a position of leadership, rethinking history in terms of absolute right and wrong is probably a good idea.
Of course you’ll learn nothing when you’re not allowed to question…
David Simon (creator of The Wire) once gave a lecture at a Jewish conference trying to make the case that Jews in America should be uniquely aligned with the plight of Black Americans in the inner cities. The case was that the Jews went through an experience during WW2 that makes them uniquely qualified to always align in solidarity against oppression, poverty, and general suffering.
To be children of ethnic cleansing (obviously I’m describing the Holocaust lightly here) and still commit the same crime in Gaza is profound.
It’s a great point you bring up, that being, what have we learned?
Jews in America are not the ones committing a genocide in Gaza. Quite a significant proportion of the American Jews are absolutely horrified.
Can I ask why you think that American Jews are any more responsible for the crimes of Israel in Gaza than non-Jews, or Jews elsewhere in the world? Do you think that Judaism is a monolith, or that American Jews are the same as all Jews?
I ask because blaming Jews elsewhere for the acts of Israel, and conflating all of Jewry with Israel is a common tactic of anti-Semitic movements. I can't tell if you are doing that intentionally, or if you have just made your point poorly.
Assuming you are acting in good faith, you should look at the history of Black/Jewish relations in the civil rights eras. There was a disproportionate amount of support from American Jews (compared to the population at large) towards the civil rights movement.
MLK himself was outspoken about the support from American Jews:
"How could there be anti-Semitism among Negroes when our Jewish friends have demonstrated their commitment to the principle of tolerance and brotherhood not only in the form of sizable contributions, but in many other tangible ways, and often at great personal sacrifice. Can we ever express our appreciation to the rabbis who chose to give moral witness with us in St. Augustine during our recent protest against segregation in that unhappy city? Need I remind anyone of the awful beating suffered by Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld of Cleveland when he joined the civil rights workers there in Hattiesburg, Mississippi? And who can ever forget the sacrifice of two Jewish lives, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, in the swamps of Mississippi? It would be impossible to record the contribution that the Jewish people have made toward the Negro's struggle for freedom—it has been so great."
I would say that Israel/Zionism wants to conflate worldwide jewelry with itself.
And the KKK claims to represent all whites....
It does not matter that someone claims to represent a population, if in obvious fact, they do not.
I dont believe you're the same. Just saying that Zionists wants this conflation, it plays into Israel being the only safe place for Jews and they want it like that.
Agreed - living in New York City, I know quite a lot of Jews. Not a single one supports the genocide.
> An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else,
They know perfectly well that their settlers are conducting daily pogroms against Palestinian villages in the West Bank, protected by their own army. They know perfectly well that thousands of Palestinians are detained for years without due process, trialled by military courts, kept in a state of apartheid.
They just don't care.
I think they meant, they are born into the situation and don't have an outsiders perspective, not that they are ignorant of what's happening
The situation is not static. The oppression of the Palestinians is active, progressive, and happens every day. This is not a state you're born in, but it is something you actively participate in or decide to ignore. Those who say "this is just the situation now" are disingenuous, as new crimes by one side against the other are perpetrated every day.
I agree. Dwelling on the past is pointless. All of this is new.
Israel and people of Jewish heritage has a lot of soft-power in the west. And the anti-terrorism rhetoric that Israeli's using to sell this has has previously been deployed by the west to cover up it's own crimes.
I would argue that the Muslim world has gained quite some political power in the West, perhaps as a simple result of immigration. The EU for example seem to have about 50 times more Muslims than Jews.
Anti-terrorism rhetorics has indeed previously led to terrible crimes, but I wouldn't suppose that's a reason to support pro-terrorism rhetorics. It's probably best to look at the content instead of the type of rhetorics.
You're not making sense my friend. The recent Muslim immigrants have nothing to do with soft power and I don't see how that's relevant to this context. Are you saying that it counters the influence that Israel has?
And if we're talking about terrorism, IDF and Mossad are very much known to deploy terror tactics across a lot of their historical engagements. The definition of the word doesn't hinge on designation by a Western organization. And the vast majority of "pro-palestine" people in the world are not Iran proxies and secret anti-semites. They're actually, for the most part, young people that are working from a place of empathy and horror. The most blatant and harmful propganda in this whole mess is the attempt to designate pro-palestine protestors anti-semites and secretly in support of Iran and Hamas policies. What a terrible cheapening of the word. Point is, the ones using the most pro-terror rhetoric are those trying to defend the IDF right now.
>The most blatant and harmful propganda in this whole mess is the attempt to designate pro-palestine protestors anti-semites and secretly in support of Iran and Hamas policies
Propaganda? I am not very familiar with the details and frankly I don’t really care, but at the two pro-Palestinian rallies that I saw were used "From the river to the sea" slogans, and like all protesters were okay with that.
Different words/phrases have different meanings to different groups/over time.
To Zionists, Zionism means that Jews have the right to have a homeland, free of persecution. To non-Zionists, it means that Zionists think that they have the right to a specific area of land (Israel) and that that land is their god-given right, and that they are free to use violence to obtain it. To a secular person, the idea of someone having a "god-given" right to a piece of land is insanity.
"From the river to the sea" has been used to mean "Palestinians will be free everywhere" and also "the Jews that are violently occupying Palestine will be killed from the river to the sea".
I can't speak for specific protestors you encountered, but the majority of people I know that are anti-Israel don't want "all Jews to die" or even any of them. They just want the genocide to stop, for people to stop dying. It's really that simple. Protestors are protesting violence.
What evidence of this do you see? Non Jewish natural born Americans also outnumber Jews in America, yet I don’t see any immigrant students getting deported for criticizing Americans.
Jews have disproportionate levels of soft power in the US. Israel receives billions in support every year. Anti Muslim propaganda is pushed out every year in Hollywood. The medias coverage of Gaza is essentially one big lie by omission. Many states pass laws aimed to deter criticism of Israel.
I don’t see any other group in America that receives this level of support.
I thought I wrote pretty clearly what evidence I have: the EU has about 50 times more Muslims than Jews. That translates into political power in democratic societies.
I'm not an expert on US politics and the reasoning for why the US supports Israel. I do however think that it's sensible to see Israel, with its relatively free elections, women rights, entrepreneurship etc as a more natural ally to the US than other countries in the Middle East, regardless of the "soft-power" you're referring to. The fact that some of its enemies also threaten the US probably plays a role too.
> Anti-terrorism rhetorics has indeed previously led to terrible crimes, but I wouldn't suppose that's a reason to support pro-terrorism rhetorics
Opposing genocide is not supporting terrorism. Labelling support for basic human rights as being pro-terrorism is, well, part of the genocide.
What are you even commenting on? Did I (or anyone?) say that opposing genocide is supporting terrorism? Did I say that human rights are pro-terrorism?
The parent comment was dismissing anti-terrorism rhetorics because previously they were used to committing crimes. That sounds illogical to me, and that's what I was commenting on.
> I'm German and I really see a lot of the blame for this on our states as well - the US and the EU states (especially Germany, sadly).
I understand that you are talking about the recent era, but I wonder if you could speak to the history of the creation of Israel, and the German perception of that. Is there any discussion about the European role in the creation of Israel? After the end of the war, it isn’t as if there was a movement to return property and homes to European Jews. If anything, the powers in Europe after the war (and, in the case of Eichmann, pre war as well) saw Zionism as a solution for what to do with the Jews.
Is there any sympathy or responsibility felt in European communities for essentially using Zionism as a solution?
From my experience, the history of Israel as discussed in the media usually begins in 1948. A standard phrase is "The state was founded and immediately declared war at".
Sometimes discussion goes back a bit further about how the area was a "League of Nations Mandatory Area" before, that was for some reason was administered by the British.
That's usually it.
An interesting detail is that the legitimacy of Israel here is usually explained with the UN (the Partition Plan resolutions and the accepted membership) - not with any kind of divine right. I think that's quite different from how (right wing) Israelis see the source of legitimacy themselves.
That's a whole other fork of the story.
I was basically getting at how does Europe see its role in the fact that a big part of what made Israel possible was the more or less complete displacement of European jewry during the war, and the complete lack of will to create a place in post-war europe for their own Jewish community.
This perspective comes from my own family history where a few relatives managed to survive the war in Nazi custody, but then spent longer in Western European refugee camps postwar than they spent in the concentration and death camps during the war. The entire family ended up outside of Europe (USA and Israel) since it was the most viable path out of the camps.
Basically the success of Zionism is due in no small part to the active support from Europe in the years after the war, and my question is, do Europeans see that in as self-interested terms as it can look. More succinctly, does the Western European community realize that creating Israel was a solution to the post-war "Jewish Problem" that conveniently did not require those nations to create a hospitable place for jewish communities within their own borders.
That's a very good question, and thank you for sharing the experience of your family.
I can't really say.
From what I see here, there is not a lot of discussion in that area. (That was the first time I heard about those refugee camps, but that may just be me)
From what I understand, the discussion for a long time was more about whether Jews would even want to come back to.Germany, after all the other Germans did to them.
German reflection on the Nazi period also happened in multiple stages. From what I know, the initial phase, right after the war, was quite inadequate. Yes, there were the Nuremberg Trials, but both Allies and Germans were interested in quickly getting back to some kind of "normal" and rebuilding the country - the US and the Soviets in particular in preparation for the imminent conflict between them. So a lot of Nazi personnel stayed in office.
I believe, support of Israel in that time was seen as a sort of reparation that conveniently made it unnecessary to engage with the Nazi past on a deeper level. (I did wonder when learning more about the conflict recently, why the Allies didn't designate some are inside former Germany as a Jewish state - let's say the Rhineland. That would have been entirely justified IMO. But of course the question of Israel was already settled at that time.)
There was a sort of "second stage" a generation later, during the Civil Rights movement, where students forced a revisit of the Nazi past. I believe, a lot of the currently known details of the Holocaust are coming from that phase. But I think they didn't say a lot about Israel and just saw it as an emancipatory, left-wing project.
Today, people here are enormously proud that Jewish communities exist again in Germany, though it's understood that it's still a lot less than before the war.
It would be an interesting question how the sentiment of German leadership towards Jews was in the 50s and 60s.
In case you are interested in the bigger picture, the camps were called Displaced Person camps in English. Most had closed by 1952, with the last one in Germany closing in 1957.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displaced_persons_camps_in_pos...
“Desperate and traumatised Jewish survivors refused to return to neighbours who had denounced or deported them; when some were returned to Poland anyway and met with pogroms and hatred, all prospect of Jewish repatriation evaporated. Following sharp criticism from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which was caring for Jewish survivors, in December 1945 Truman opened up visas in excess of the usual quotas for some 23,000 DPs in the American zone, two-thirds of them Jewish, and from January 1946 UNRRA too recognised Jews as a national group, to be housed apart from other refugees. In this case (and no other), the Soviets and Americans were on the same page, agreeing that refuge outside Europe must be found, ideally in Palestine. The British, having learned how strongly Palestine’s Arab population would resist this project, objected until, in 1948, they surrendered their mandate, leaving – as one departing official put it – the key under the mat. Of some 230,000 registered Jewish DPs, just over 130,000 would settle in the new state of Israel and about 65,000 in the United States.”
From a recent review in the LRB of a book (Lost Souls) about those camps and their inhabitants. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n10/susan-pedersen/owner...
Europeans were eager to see Jews gone, one way or another. “Pogroms and hatred” sounds pretty violent.
I think that part of history is largely forgotten. I don't think a lot of Europeans have much self-interest in mind when picking a side in this conflict today.
Well it's in their self interest to deny any culpability. That way older generations could say "Jews get out of Poland! Go back to Palestine!" And younger generations can say "Jews get out of Palestine! Go back to Poland!" Without acknowledging that taken together, these statements show they just don't want Jews to exist anywhere.
And what if the jews set up shop in your living room? What would you say to that?
What if the Arab states stole property multiple times the size of Israel from Mizrahi Jews? Which they did.
The Arab states clearly owe Israelis more reparations than the other way around.
If a genocide survivor showed up on my doorstep with nowhere else to go, I hope that my reaction would be: Welcome fellow man. You must be desperate. How can I help.
Well there you go, we solved the whole israel-palestine conflict. We'll just send all the jews to you instead, that way everyone's happy.
Why do you feel the need to lash out at a stranger for expressing love for humans in need?
Do you have some life experience you would be willing to share that could help me understand why my desire to help people in the ways that I can elicits such a response?
I would like to understand.
Your "desire to help people" seems to consist of giving away things that don't belong to you. If you restricted your helping to giving up things of your own it would be laudable, when you sacrifice things that aren't yours to begin with it's the opposite.
But I don’t think I said anything like that. You asked if I would be willing to offer my own home and personal property to refugees and I said yes.
Now you are saying that I offered something that wasn’t mine to give. And that I should be condemned for it. I promise you, my living room is mine, and it is open to those who need it.
I really feel that you are not understanding me (hopefully), or that alternatively you are misinterpreting my words intentionally.
I didn’t volunteer anyone else’s home. I volunteered mine.
I’m not talking about moving an entire continents worth of genocide survivors to occupied land that I don’t control because I wasn’t asked about that. I wasn’t asked about what o would do if those people set up a system that perpetuated a new human tragedy. That seems to be what you want to engage on, but I haven’t said anything about that, I have only had related statements extended in ways that simply do not represent me or anything I have said to you.
I wanted to have an honest and open discussion, but that doesn’t seem to align with your actions and words. The world is better when we assume good intent instead of ill (it’s the only reason I keep engaging with you to be honest). If you want to do that, please engage with the words I have spoken, not the words or intent I haven’t expressed. Alternatively, if you want to keep attributing to me things I haven’t said and breaking the rules of discourse for HN, please stop.
Nope. It's basically forgotten. At least, I haven't heard anyone talking about it, either in my circles or in the media.
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My recent thoughts on why the US is complicit is that Israel is America's "bad cop" of the world. The trade is that the US will allow Israel to act with impunity in the region as long as Israel gets to be the bad guys to the world.
The reasoning for this is action about nuclear weapons programs. Israel gets to have nukes, developed by sending US expertise to Israel, while Israel has not been subject to nuclear investigation programs.
If things ever got bad, the US doesn't want to nuke the world, then face retribution, they want Israel to shoulder that burden.
> An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else, just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead - and will with very high likelihood experience terror attacks themselves. That this upbringing doesn't exactly make you want to engage with the other side is psychologically understandable.
This "entirety of the surrounding population want them dead" language is both dehumanizing, false, and (perhaps not intended by you) genocidal.
The "surrounding population" is not a monolith. I imagine only a very small minority of people want all Jewish Israelis dead. I do Palestinian liberation work with many non-Jewish people from the middle east (I'm Jewish) and have yet to meet a single one who wants me dead.
They all want an end to Zionism.
Some may want it replaced with an Islamic government (which at its best is not different from the ideal "Zionism" you may hear defended by liberal Zionists, and at its worst is no different from the Zionism instituted by the modern state of Israel today)
Most want it replaced with a secular state where everyone has equal rights.
If your intent was to explain the mindset of an "ordinary Israeli citizen" who supports Zionism, then I agree with you, but it's dangerous to say something like this without distinguishing why this is a flawed mindset which can only exist due to an extensive system of propaganda.
> Most want it replaced with a secular state where everyone has equal rights.
I believe that this is true of most of the people you've worked with. However, polling in the West Bank and Gaza finds that to be a fairly unpopular position. Quoting https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/what-do-... :
> These numbers are not the same as popular support for a single state “from the river to the sea” with equal rights accorded to Arab and Jewish citizens, as in recent international proposals. In 2020 polls, only about 10 percent of West Bank and Gazan respondents favored this option over either a Palestinian state or two states. Notably, a theological premise underpins the one-state preference: A majority of the Palestinian respondents believe that “eventually, the Palestinians will control almost all of Palestine, because God is on their side”—that is, not because Palestinian control will flow from demographic changes or from a joint arrangement with Israel.
I agree with you that it's not accurate to say that the entirety of Jordan or Egypt want Israelis dead. However, if we're trading anecdote for anecdote: I know someone who grew up in Saudi, and he told me that when he was growing up it was completely normal to insult someone by calling them a jew (especially someone you perceive as being stingy, scammy, or reneging on a deal). He said it was so normalized that when he came to North America, he had an awkward adjustment period before he realized that was considered unacceptable here.
Now, there's a big difference between calling someone a jew as an insult and wanting all jews dead, but I have no trouble believing that antisemitism is very common within the middle east. Don't forget that it wasn't so long ago that there was a mass exodus of jews from the Middle East and North Africa to Israel, which can only be explained by some degree of "push factor" pushing them away from those countries. So while "wants them dead" is probably an exaggeration, you have to empathize a bit with the fact that almost every other middle eastern country was quite hostile towards jews in the past 100 years, and there's not an especially good guarantee that they would not be hostile again.
> just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead
So naturally, the logical response is to wish that on others. Seriously, wat?
Speaking of Germany - Israel really weaponized the holocaust, in the sense that's absolutely impossible to criticize Israel without being accused of antisemitism. I actually think it got to the point it makes difficult fighting antisemitism because it's evident to any honest person that the accusation is a weapon now.
I dont disagree with anything you said, but isn't that the role of elected leaders ? Actually making the difficult decisions that may be unpopular, but necessary ?
Or is it the leader class in most western countries have no sense of duty , are effectively cowards, and are in it just to have a profitable, white-collar career ?
It's a bunch of >60yr old western leaders who had 40yrs of seeing violence and terrorism in Israel and Palestine, and every couple years a naive western leader announces they want to fix it, while nothing changes.
People are just numb to the whole area.
The most difficult part is the fact Israel is wealthy and aggressive while (both) Palestine government has been the definition of dysfunction and tribalism for decades, even during peace times. Diplomatic solutions have became harder and harder since the 90s.
You can read the history the political bodies in West Bank and even they seem to not care to fix anything either. They have their own leadership issues (like never electing new leaders).
There’s a major gap between a western savior wanting something bad to stop and actually going there and accomplishing something.
> Or is it the leader class in most western countries have no sense of duty , are effectively cowards, and are in it just to have a profitable, white-collar career ?
They are cowards who are just in it to enrich themselves by bribery, theft, and extortion.
You are looking in the right direction and not seeing just how far our society has gone.
And they may even find it comforting that it's OK to bomb innocent civilians for years because that's the only solution they can think of to deal with their own dissatisfied populace ultimately, when things will predictably get worse in Europe as well...?
It's not Russia or terrorism they are afraid of.
> Actually making the difficult decisions that may be unpopular, but necessary ?
What is the unpopular, necessary decision? GP is commenting on the US/EUs continual campaigns to arm and fund Israel's efforts in Gaza without pushback. I don't wish to misinterpret you, but this read to me, that funding/aiding human rights violations and genocide in Gaza is a "necessary" act.
That's a good question. I know, in Germany, saying - let alone doing - anything critical of Israel as a public figure has effectively been a taboo. The justification had always been the Holocaust and the perpetual guilt of Germany towards the Jewish people arising from it.
For a long time, that made some sense - it's starting to shift into quite horrific territory though, if leaders and communities interpret this obligation as some sort of absolute fealty towards the Israeli government, at the exclusion of everything else - even if that government itself is repeating the path of Nazi Germany. Yet this seems to be how a lot of German politicians interpret it.
I found the distinction exemplified in the "Never again" vs "Never again for anyone" slogans.
I don't understand what exactly is going on in the US, but there seems to have been a similar taboo, though maybe stemming from different sources (like that Evangelical end-of-days prophecy that sees Israel literally as part of a divine plan that trumps everything else).
I find it notable that part of Trump's voter support in the election were actually pro-Palestinian groups - because they saw Trump as the only alternative to a complicit Harris administration. Of course, Trump turned out to be even more complicit and openly embracing the Evangelical narrative.
So as far as US voters were concerned, there was no pro-Palestinian or even neutral options to vote for. There was just secular pro-Israel and religious pro-Israel. (Well, there was also Jill Stein, but she had no realistic chance of winning)
Of course there are other voices saying that all those justifications - Holocaust, biblical prophecy, etc - are just show and the real reason for the unconditional support is just ordinary geopolitics. The image of Israel as the "unsinkable aircraft carrier" that guarantees US dominance in the region.
>> An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else, just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead.
You have to look at the other side too. Palestinian's are born knowing that Israeli's have taken lots of their land through violent force. And they want to take more of it. And while the Israeli's live in a well developed wealthy nation they are condemned to poverty.
Consider the King David Hotel Bombing[1]. Israeli terrorists murdered nearly 100 people. In 2006 Netanyahu presided over the unveiling of a memorial plaque, alongside some of the terrorists involved in it, with the plaque specifically remembering the terrorist who died in the attack. So Israeli terrorism is fine, even worthy of praise.
And while the Israelis may grow up scared that the Palestinian's want them dead, 10's of thousands of Palestinian children won't grow up at all.
>> I'm German and I really see a lot of the blame for this on our states as well
I agree. It seems that all over Europe at least, the governments are largely going against public opinion on this issue. But it's not the first time we've seen this (Iraq being a recent example).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
No question about that.
I found it a remarkable detail that from the shore of Gaza, you see the port of and industrial zone of Ashdod, only a few kilometers away. It seems almost like a permanent reminder that the entire area is in fact well-developed - the wasteland only exists where they live.
And in the US insurrectionists are pardoned. That’s a striking parallel.
A quarter of Israeli citizens immigrated there, so probably quite a few of them do know something else.
I do not think this simplification works. A lot of the conflict is about systematic attempts at expansion of Israel itself - that is what settlements are and always were. Removal and mistreatment of original population went hand in hand with that.
Are we talking about the expansion out of Lebanon in 2000 or the expansion out of Gaza in 2005?
We are talking about all settlements into territory that was not Israel's regardless of the year. The settlements like that are internationally illegal precisely because they are clear attempt to use civilian population as shields in a land takeover.
What territory wasn’t Israel’s? And when? And at what point?
Any territory which Israel occupies without granting the local population citizenship is definitely not Israel's, by their own admission.
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That could all be true, it seems plausible, but I don't think any of it is necessary to explain America's unwaivering support for Israel.
American Evangelical Protestants believe that the continued existence of Israel is a prophesied necessary prerequisite for the resurrection of Jesus, who will then start the Apocalypse. They think they can force prophecy by defending Israel. It doesn't matter how badly Israel behaves, they think the ends justify all of it.
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> Prior to this both sides were living reasonably peacefully in Israel and Gaza
That's simply not true. Israel never gave up control over airspace, land and sea borders after the disengagement and effectively put the strip under siege after Hamas came to power.
The west bank is cut up into hundreds of small Palestinian enclaves that are separated and controlled by the IDF. There is also a policy of systematically denying Palestinians in the West Bank resources and on the other hand priorizing the settlers.
Both areas have been under siege for decades, just with different intensity.
When the current government was elected - a year before Oct.7 - it made speeding up the land grabs and eventual full annexation of the West Bank a priority. Look at the ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich: Both have deep connections to the settlers and have made deeply dehumanizing statements towards the Palestinians. (Smotrich officially published his "Decisive Plan" in 2017 about his proposal for a "permanent solution": Either "encourage emigration", allow them to live as non-citizens with restricted rights in isolated enclaves or "let the army deal with them". Both ministers are fully on board with the current starvation policy - or rather, it's still too lenient for them)
Ben Gvir is now head of the Israeli police. Smotrich is finance minister and "Minister in the defense ministry", a special role that gives him the ultimate authority about anything that concerns the West Bank.
All that happened before Oct.7.
When I said reasonable peacefully I meant not killing each other and quite a lot of people in Gaza were crossing for jobs on the Israeli side of the border. I wasn't say love and social justice reigned.
When westerners and people like Bill Clinton have got involved they have mostly proposed having a Palestinian state with their own land but the Palestinians have mostly objected to Israel existing so we have the current stuff.
> but the Palestinians have mostly objected to Israel existing so we have the current stuff.
It was not the Palestinians who killed Rabin.
They were killing each other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settler_violence
Yes, there was an exchange of job seekers, however even that was among a deliberately resource-constrained Gaza, with no hope of the situation improving.
Hamas was definitely not helping in those regards and Oct.7 cannot be excused. But Israel also never did anything to support an alternative to Hamas.
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I recommend you reflect a little deeper on this topic. Maybe look a little bit into how Jews were treated in Europe and the middle east.
The Anti-Israeli crowd is throwing universal human rights under the bus. That crowd doesn't care about human rights under Arab and Muslim rule. It wants to see some imaginary "justice" at the cost of murdering the Jewish people. It promotes antisemitism including justification of the Holocaust.
I'm Israeli and your "relatable" is nonsense. Israelis engaged with the other side in good faith many times. We made peace with Jordan and Egypt. We negotiated with the Palestinians during the Oslo process. What we got in return was a suicide bombing campaign in the late 1990's early 2000's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_at... and then we got Oct 7th. Israelis would be happy with a solution that leaves the with those human rights that you appear to be championing, such as the right not to be murdered.
Modern anti-zionism is just another incarnation of antisemitism. There is really no other way to look at it or explain it. The selectivity and the images used are 1:1 with antisemitism throughout the ages. This is not about whether you can critique Israel or its government. This is purely Jew hatred and racism under the mask of anti-Israeli.
EDIT: And for people who are reading this comment who think antisemitism isn't a reasonable argument here I would recommend the book: https://www.amazon.ca/People-Love-Dead-Jews-Reports/dp/03935... ... Once you read this you will have a better understanding of the different forms antisemitism takes and learn a bit of interesting history too.
Almost half of Jewish Israelis polled said they supported killing everyone in Gaza. https://archive.is/nNzq4 About 80 percent supported ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
I don't think it's just propaganda. These folks know they'll materially benefit from Palestinians being dispossessed of their remaining land.
From the start of Israel’s assault on Gaza, the vast majority of Israelis haven’t shown any concern about the suffering in Gaza. Those who campaign for an end to the war do so purely as a means to secure the release of the hostages.
The civilians even blocked aid entering Gaza.
That's not surprising. They remember the scenes of ecstatic celebration on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank on october 7. And the fact is that the people of Gaza could end the conflict whenever they want. All they need to do is surrender and hand over the hostages. You might think i'm oversimplifying but actually that's really it.
The former prime minister of Israel Ehud Olmert has said Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, and that “thousands of innocent Palestinians are being killed, as well as many Israeli soldiers”.
Olmert, who was the 12th prime minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, wrote in an opinion piece for the Israeli newspaper and website Haaretz that “the government of Israel is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning and with no chances of success”.
He added: “Never since its establishment has the state of Israel waged such a war … The criminal gang headed by Benjamin Netanyahu has set a precedent without equal in Israel’s history in this area, too.
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-05-27/ty-article-opinio...
> All they need to do is surrender and hand over the hostages. You might think i'm oversimplifying but actually that's really it.
“The people of Gaza” have about as much chance of doing this as the ICC has of arresting and putting Netanyahu on trial.
Maybe maybe not but i see no major movement in Gaza towards surrendering. Of course seeing how the UN and most media outlets are working so well to supress any anti hamas narratives in Gaza (it's either that, or everyone in Gaza supports hamas, an absurd suggestion but one which would ironically fully vindicate Israel. The dishonesty of the UN upsets me) , even if there was we would be unlikely to hear about it.
> Of course seeing how the UN and most media outlets are working so well to supress any anti hamas narratives in Gaza
... You have evidence of this? Or, are you making things up without any evidence at all to smear the UN; as we've seen Israel do countless times during this holocaust?
I keep hearing the “the killing would end if Hamas would just release the hostages”. But the Israelis keep offering ceasefire terms that include full release of hostages but no permanent cessation of hostilities, only 60 days and not even temporary full withdrawal from Gaza.
Why do you think the Israelis want to keep their tanks in Gaza even after all the hostages come back? Why won’t they offer a full and permanent ceasefire? I think this hostage justification is just Israelis buying time so they can keep on doing what they actually always wanted, full ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Nonsense. Anything less then a full military occupation of gaza for the medium term at least would be unacceptable. This is so blindingly obvious that it doesn't even need to be explained. Anyway it would benefit the gazans far more then a war every 5 years.
If they wanted to ethnically cleanse gaza they would have done so long before October 7. You don't seem to understand the reality of war and the consequences of being on the losing side. Nor of the constraints Israel would be forced to work with if they had total control of Gaza.
You didn’t answer the question. Why won’t Israel commit to a permanent ceasefire if “the war ends when the hostages are released”? Why do they insist on being able to start the war again in 60 days if the hostages are all they want?
The hostages aren't all they want. from wikipedia:
>Israel's campaign has four stated goals: to destroy Hamas, to free the hostages, to ensure Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel, and to return displaced residents of Northern Israel.
Pretty clear and i never suggested otherwise. I'm not sure where you got that idea from
Please, I really don’t think you’re discussing this in good faith.
“And the fact is that the people of Gaza could end the conflict whenever they want. All they need to do is surrender and hand over the hostages”
So no, Israel decides how and when the killing ends and apparently that’s when “Gaza no longer poses a threat”. Who knows what that means but apparently it involves mass starvation, firing tank rounds into crowds, and destroying every hospital.
I can't comment on specific actions, but it would definitely mean the destruction of hamas and islamic jihad as well as systematically removing all weapons from the gaza strip and the destruction of all tunnels and terror infrastructure. If they surrender the process can happen without loss of life (even the death of all militants can be avoided with a negotiated surrender)
Gaza was a pretty enormous threat, so neutralising it takes an enormous amount of effort. If you cared about the death and destruction of gaza you would be calling for the end of Hamas. It's not like Israel wants to be stuck in an endless conflict in Gaza i think it has shown many times in the recent past that it is prefers peace to war.
The word surrender is carrying quite a lot of meaning but it's still good faith on my part.
Israel is currently paying contractors 5000 shekels per house they destroy in Gaza.
Is this a “reality of war”? Complete destruction of infrastructure? Perhaps every uninhabited house is actually Hamas.
If this isn’t ethnic cleansing, what is it?
What does surrender even mean here? How do Gazans surrender?
If people were able to hit back from within the concentration camps would the inmates cheer it on? If they did would that have given Germany the right to do what they did?
Imagine if your city was invaded by a powerful enemy. They bomb the place to rubble. They blow up every hospital. They enact a blockade and hinder aid organizations from providing basic food. They do this for nearly two years straight and show no sign of stopping.
They say, “just surrender and it will all be over.” Are you going to trust that?
Yes. In military terms it's known as a "defeat".
Historically, being “defeated” by an enemy that’s committing mass murder of civilians doesn’t typically stop the killing.
What are you actually expecting an average Israeli who does not agree with this to do? This comment strikes me as wild considering the exact same thing is playing out in America right now, and a bunch of people are making up their minds about "Americans" and what they stand for.
The same has been true for Iran, only up until now (and probably still) we have always had a more nuanced discussion - its the Iranian government, not the people of Iran.
Come on, the government of many countries does not necessarily represent the people.
The problem with this take is that the polls show a strong support for all those things that the Israeli government doing in Gaza among its citizens. That is, the average Israeli does agree. I don't think that the minority that disagrees is to blame, but they also clearly cannot meaningfully speak for the nation anymore.
In a similar vein, I'm ethnically Russian and a Russian citizen. I don't support the Russian invasion of Ukraine in any way, shape, or form, and I don't think that I am responsible for it as a Russian. However, it is also clear to me that the majority of Russians do support it (or at least think that it's fine), and on that basis I don't consider myself to be a part of that nation anymore, regardless of ethnicity.
Israel is supposed to be a democratic state. If the average Israeli disagrees with this they can speak up. The only voices we are hearing now are those who support it's current activities. Those who oppose are fewer and quieter.
what evidence do you have to support that claim?
I'm also baffled by the suggestion that democracy truly represents a majority and the apparent belief that dissent is quickly processed and rectified by democracy. Which country do you think shows this is working well?
It might be true that I am in a bubble and I am only hearing voices supporting these atrocities.
Democracy need not represent the majority, but if it works against the majority without any repercussions then who is to blame? Will the leadership be held accountable?
This war was started because the government knew they can get away with it. Every citizen is complicit in every crime committed by their government. Don't the citizens enjoy the fruits of crime even after claiming to oppose the actions of their government?
What specifically do you want individual citizens to do? Are you yourself complicit in everything your government does? Do you even know what they do?
Israelis are protesting, for better or worse this is what democracy looks like.
Another question to ask, does every Russian support the war in Ukraine? What can they do about it?
Yes, I am complicit in the crimes of my government. I am helpless do much, but the crime must be acknowledged. We are a part of the system, no sense in burying our head in the sand.
Only when a crime is acknowledge, we can talk about punishments. Will Israeli people not profit from this war? Protests will have some teeth if steps be taken so this will not repeat itself. I don't see this happening.
Look at USA, war after war. Presidents are blamed but not punished and the population enjoys the economical hegemony that is the fruit of war.
People aren't speaking up because it's only a democracy on paper. If you're too vocal about your opposition to Israel you will be taken care of.
> What are you actually expecting an average Israeli who does not agree with this to do?
Funny you say this because you don’t have to look far for people saying that “Gazans deserve what’s happening” because the average Gazan should fight back against Hamas.
Some things to consider:
* The majority of the Palestinian population are minors (< 18)
* The last nationwide election in Palestine was 2006
In other words, the last time an election was held, the majority of Palestinians weren't yet born, let alone old enough to vote in it. So, it's difficult to hold the Palestinian people en masse responsible for Hamas in the same way we'd hold Israelis responsible for their current government, who held their last election in 2022.
The same thing has been said generally about Muslims and Islamic terror organizations.
Well anyway, it is still crazy to me that somebody is making a decision about the entire population of a country based on the governments actions in 2025.
I upvoted this article because it reminds me that there are Israelis who are opposed to what is going on. And newspapers that take risk to report on it. And maybe even military investigators trying to stop it.
It’s no different with the American military.
Brainwashing by the government, religion, the media, schools, etc is what I suspect based on documentaries I watched. It’s heartbreaking what people can be made to think and say. I feel bad for the citizens of Israel to have become detached so much from humanity.
By now Gaza has been so destroyed that it has become a nation of children. About 40% of people there are age 14.
> if the Israeli people really wanted anything different, it was their human duty and utmost responsibility to stop this by now
It’s wrong to single out Israel. The US is funding this mass murder of children and blocking attempts to stop it. It should correctly be called the US-Israeli genocide of Gaza.
For my part, as an American and a nobody, I feel helpless to stop the atrocities my government is participating in.
But I’ve found, for myself, the reason to fight the genocide - however I can - isn’t because I expect to stop it. I am powerless to do that. For me it’s to maintain a sense of human dignity in the face of evil.
Knowing my country’s role in the mass murder of children, shrugging my shoulders would feel like I’m surrendering something precious.
There is strong support within Israel for the genocide of Palestinians.
Unfortunately religious zionism isn't limited to Jews. Christian evangelicals also support it, and they make up a huge percentage of voting americans (and even worse, elected officials).
https://theconversation.com/in-israel-calls-for-genocide-hav...
https://theconversation.com/christian-zionism-hasnt-always-b...
I would put myself in the timeframe of the Holocaust era. Germans were next to the concentration camps and they did nothing. Germans were conditioned to support nationalism. And they trusted the nationalist party (known as nazionale Party). The Germans had convinced themselves that the Jews were different people. (And the Jews had earned much infamy during the time when Germany was suffering economically.)
Today, we see Israelis who are taught to perceive Palestinians as enemies. They see the Palestinian flag during birthrights and are taught by the IDF to hate it. And they are also taught that the west bank is dangerous and they are not to go there. Then we see IDF operations in West Bank and we see silence. We know Gaza is in a plight caused by Israel and we see silence and ignorance. Israel is bad. Israelis are bad too. And the polls have shown that 80% wish for Gaza to be cleansed, 56% support the forced expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel, 47% want the IDF to act according to the Biblical war against Jericho. That is effectively 47% want murder while 33% want expulsion (equivalent of the ghettos+concentration camps). The benefit of doubt is disappearing rapidly fast.
And the west has been supporting Israel for decades in this campaign. This is the second millenial crusade of Europe (aka the west).
I’m becoming very skeptical of the “bad government, good people” idea. Governments need popular support. This goes even for horrible dictatorships. There are degrees, of course. An oppressive state can survive with less popular support than a democracy. But it still needs a decent amount. The machinery of dictatorship is as much about keeping popular support as it is about forcing people to suppress their opposition.
These people are manipulated by the media and by their government and by their spiritual leaders.
I sometimes wonder if a section of the public just wants plausible deniability for committing atrocities, and their government is happy to provide that for them.
Pretty much.
It’s not exactly that they consciously want cover to commit atrocities. It’s more that they can’t really conceive of people they don’t identify with as people. They’ll fiercely defend people they know, and they’ll side with people like them, but everyone else is a sort of vague abstract mass.
We see this in the US today with people who support harsh measures against illegal immigrants while they themselves have friends or family who are the targets (or they are themselves). Then they get very confused when their friends or family get arrested and deported, because “illegal immigrants” is this amorphous mass of bad people, not Jose and Clara down the street. You see it with racists who defend themselves with “I’m not racist, I have black friends.”
Such a person doesn’t automatically think ill of the “other,” but it doesn’t take too much to convince them that the “other” is evil and dangerous and must be dealt with harshly.
Could be, but that doesn’t really matter in the end. Support is support.
You were judging the morality of the people in your above comment. Being manipulated into giving support doesn't make the people bad.
Anyone can be mislead factually, but we can't accept the idea that being told a crime is okay gives you a moral license to do it - otherwise every neo-nazi would escape among innumerable other criminals.
I am just not willing to say a whole country is bad because a current bad regime has support.
That's true, but you have to be realistic about the influence the five to fifteen percent with good morals are going to have in the long run. Especially when they also know the odds and choose to emigrate if they are able. There may have been a resistance in Germany, didn't succeed in the end.
At some point people have to be responsible for themselves if the concept of responsibility is to have any meaning at all. Our views and actions are all the product of our environment.
> Our views and actions are all the product of our environment.
And if that view is manipulated by people way more powerful than you...
I'm all for personal responsibility but we have laws against certain practices because companies can hack brains so well. You don't think states can do it just as well if not better?
Where do you draw the line? Was the thoroughly indoctrinated SS officer shooting untermenschen responsible, or was he just a victim of manipulation? What about the average Nazi who just went to work every day and thought the Fuhrer was doing a decent job?
I just can't implicate a whole country is bad because their regime is bad. I initially had to pause when you questioned "bad regime, good people" but find I can't say all of Iran or China is bad because of their govt - the countries I most often think of when that phrase comes to mind.
Edit: where do you draw the line? Is an immigrant from a 'bad' country a bad person? Why didn't we try more Germans if what you say about support is true?
I don’t mean to suggest that everyone living under a bad government is bad. Just that you don’t have a situation where the entire populace is good but can’t get their government under control. There may be minority rule. Maybe as low as 1/4th of the population supports the government and its actions. But that is still a lot. Far too many for me to say that “the nation” is against it.
There's something deeply sick in a society where the strongest objections to the genocide being carried out are not in opposition to the genocide itself, but rather that the indiscriminate killing could reduce the chances of recovering hostages.
> I’m becoming very skeptical of the “bad government, good people” idea. Governments need popular support. This goes even for horrible dictatorships
You're either being disingenuous or have never experienced real dictatorship. I lived under theocracy in IRAN for more than half my life and I promise you that the Westerns screaming from the back "just revolt!" have no clue what they are talking about.
These regimes control communication, the media, intact laws that punishes any kind of dissent and often has multi layered of security forces to keep the population in check (not including the regular army and police).
It's easy to shout this when it's not your life, your sibling, your child or significant other's life on the line. These regimes will not hesitate to murder their own citizens to stay in power.
I don't know enough about Israel's internal politics and their society to make an assertive comment but what I _can_ say, is that from my interactions with them, they seem like ordinary and kind people who have no intention of harming me or my family.
Unless you are psychopath, you are not going to wake up one day and decide to murder people.
This point of view whitewashes a lot of the history. Israel has been doing horrible things since its founding to Palestinians, starting with the Nakba in 1948 which was an ethnic cleaning campaign to create an ethno state. Many massacres occurred like in Deir Yassin in 1948 and continued with other massacres like in Kahn Younis in 1956 where they lined up more than 200 men over 15 and executed them against the wall.
With the continued persecution of Palestinians, whether its the illegal occupation of the west bank or the siege of Gaza which was essentially a concentration camp, that was "mowed" like grass every few years in terrorist bombing campaigns by Israel, its no surprise that organisations like Hamas, originally a humanitarian charity, exist.
Israelis want peace through domination, just like the French in Algeria. Be aware that Jews are not native to Palestine, except those that had been living there before the state was founded. They are living as colonialists on stolen land, and are continually denying the native Palestinians the right to return, which is part of the definition ethnic cleansing.
I say this as Jewish person originally born in Palestine (or Israel) and who had grandparents that survivide the Holocaust. Once I read about what really happened in 1948, that it was zionist terrorist militias that started the conflict and that Palestinians did not "simply leave", I became an anti zionist. I don't think Israel has the right to exist. People have the right to exist and they have the right to fight back against jewish supremacism.
I highly recommend the book by Prof. Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, from the academic perspective of the situations. His relative was once the mayor of Jerusalem and he's the Editor of the reputable Journal of Palestine Studies based in the US. The book begins with an examination of correspondence from 1889 between his relative Yusuf Diya ad-Din Pasha al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, and Theodor Herzl, father of modern political Zionism [1],[2].
Although the book was published back in 2020 prior to the current conflict, he correctly labeled the many years siege on Gaza by Israel as the act of war against Palestinian people, and it turn out to be manifested in the all out war in 2024.
1] The Hundred Years' War on Palestine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hundred_Years%27_War_on_Pa...
[2] A new abyss’: Gaza and the hundred years’ war on Palestine (2024):
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/11/a-new-abyss-ga...
> Be aware that Jews are not native to Palestine, except those that had been living there before the state was founded.
Not true, many Semitic Jews who fled from those lands due to persecution went to Europe and North Africa, that includes Ashkenazi and Sephardim Jews.
The difficulty I have with your statement is akin to denying a white, blue eyed aboriginal in Australia their heritage to the land just because one of their ancestors slept with a European colonialist - its fundamentally racist. White skinned blue eyed Australian aboriginals exist.
Palestinians are genetically closer to the jews that populated those lands centuries ago. The reality is palestinians ancestors were mostly jews who decided to convert to islam. Denying their rights to continue living there is absurd.
The state of Israel is just another example of euro white colonialism.
>Palestinians are genetically closer to the jews that populated those lands centuries ago. The reality is palestinians ancestors were mostly jews who decided to convert to islam.
Thank you for pointing this fact, if this is true it makes the Israel govt as self-hating Jews, and is very sad and ironic at the same time. The Israel govt should perform thorough DNA test on the Palestinian people. Potentially many Palestinians can have higher Jews ancestors percentage than the emigrants themselves.
Im not saying that any of this excuses the nationalist movement Israel is today, im just stating a fact that semitic descendants in Europe have heritage to those lands. Just because someone appears white and blue-eyed doesn't necessarily negate that.
Judaism is an ethno-religion, so while some people may have no connection to semitic people, others will have a closer connection and its discriminatory to simply say “they are not native” which my original post was critical of.
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Just because they are not native doesn't mean they can't live there, but they shouldn't live while oppressing the native Palestinians and prevent them from returning in order to preserve an ethnic majority.
Jews outside of Palestine are not uniquely descended from Jews that lived there 2000 years ago. Also the idea of Jews as a homogeneous people is a fairly recent phenomenon, people married into Jewish families, converted etc...
Even having mixed parentage can make you an oppressor. During slavery, mixed race people were often used in Brazil to hunt escaped slaves. At the end of the day its not about people's parentage but to what group they get put into and whether they choose to use any privilege they have to fight against oppression.
> Just because they are not native doesn't mean they can't live there
I don't make a claim that they should or should not be allowed to live there. My statement isnt about rights to land, oppressing others or national zionism.
My statement is about heritage and what it means to be “native”, obviously what that means for people and genetic links to semitic peoples varies greatly, and as such, you cannot make blanket statements that “jews are not native” just because you disagree with the nationalist movement.
And you can think the same way about russians. They support all horrors russian people do to Ukrainian cities. And many are trying to earn some extra cash out of it.
No different how Americans are brain washed that they are supporting a noble goal democracy at whatever cost around the world
Are they brainwashed? Are they really supporting?
In 2025 USA is supporting russian dictator more than Ukrainian democratic government.
> In 2025 USA is supporting russian dictator more than Ukrainian democratic government.
Are they? I see USA still supplying Ukraine with weapons, how many weapons have Russia gotten from USA? None, USA is not selling any weapons to Russia still.
>it was their human duty and utmost responsibility to stop this
Do you apply the same standard to Palestinians for not overthrowing Hamas, to Americans for the US being the key enabler of Israel's military operations, to the citizens of any Western country for not adding Israel next to Russia in all their sanction laws? If not, why?
Or maybe we should be careful with assigning collective guilt and not throw stones in glass house?
It's a state founded on ethnic cleansing. People were already living there when settlers came to create an ethno-state for themselves.
In late 1947, their militias begun a campaign of massacring and expelling Palestinians from mostly defenseless villages. These refuges pouring into neighboring Arab countries is what prompted the 1948 war. When the war ended, they murdered any civilians trying to return to their homes.
Gaza was originally a refugee camp created for receiving these expelled people.
The ethnic cleansing and denial of rights has continued ever since. The current Gaza war is not when the crimes against humanity started. Israel has been commiting crimes against humanity throughout its entire existence.
> People were already living there when settlers came to create an ethno-state for themselves
Including a sizeable Jewish minority.
The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region. But it’s a continuation of outsiders (in particular Westerners, though the Iranians also bought this settler-colonialist nonsense which led to their recent miscalculations) with no connection to the land drawing up broad moral claims for how the Middle East should be divided up.
> Including a sizeable Jewish minority.
There was a Jewish community in Palestine (mostly centered around Jerusalem) but they did not come up with the Zionist project. Actually, many were opposed and some of their descendants still do so to this day.
> The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region
The (European) architects of the Zionist project literally called it colonialism.
"You are being invited to help make history. It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews … How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial." -Theodor Herzl
Ze'ev Jabotinsky literally compared the Zionist project to other colonial projects when arguing the people living there would fight back against their colonizers and the need for numbers and strength to counter them.
> Ze'ev Jabotinsky literally compared the Zionist project to other colonial projects
The Zionist Project is comparable to colonialism. That doesn’t make it settler-colonialism. (And Jabotinsky isn’t the final word on anything other than himself.)
The whole notion of settling outside borders is marketing for annexation but has total support from Western Governments, yet those same governments are absolutely against the annexation of Ukraine.
… fuck I hate politics :(
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Sure. I can find terrible people opining on the case for a Palestinian state, too. That isn’t really an argument about what it is.
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There are a lot of Jews that have built their lives in Western countries and are not keen on joining a ultra orthodox ethno state.
Always good to remember that most Jews aren't religious crazies- although the crazies breed faster unfortunately.
And history tells us that at some point those Jews are going to be a target. Other than the anomaly of the last 50 years or so. It wasn't that long ago that Jews in the US could not be members of golf clubs or were otherwise discriminated against. Antisemitism is on the rise again. If you think you can somehow magically decouple Jewish existence from Zion/Israel then think again. I've also built my life in a western country and antisemitism runs deep below the surface. Up until recently expressing that was frowned upon but seems that's changing.
I mean we know you guys run the media, control the money, run the US government, and fire space lasers from Mars. It's all fun and game until they burn your house and worse.
I'm also worried about Israel in many ways (re: ultra-orthodox ethno state) but if you think that living in Christian states or states of other ethnicity is somehow safer I'm not too sure about that. Even the European Jews that thought they were just Europeans found out they're not. And that story has repeated throughout history. To me a successful, democratic, moral, and Jewish, Israel is important part of the future of the Jewish people. And I'm not going to join the mob that wants it destroyed.
> The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region.
"Outsiders" like the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association that funded Zionist settlement in Palestine? The problem with folks who try to claim that this is ahistorical is that contemporary Zionists talked all the time about colonizing Palestine.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Jewish_Colonizatio...
In 1920 (the year when British took over Palestine from the Ottomans) the jewish population was less than 10% Jewish and represented less than 1% of global Jewry. By 1948, after the British flooded in Jewish migrants mainly from Europe and the Americas, the population became about ~65% + arab and 35+% Jewish. Zionism was always predicated on Ethnic cleansing from the start and the founders of zionists were always aware of that fact.
“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country.” - Theodore Herzl , Father of Zionism in 1895.
"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement]. I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." - David Ben Gurion, Father of Israel.
"the world has become accustomed to the idea of mass migrations and has become fond of them. … Hitler – as odious as he is to us – has given this idea a good name in the world." - Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Founder of Revisionist Zionism, 1940.
Zionism is textbook settler-colonialism. I dont see it worth even arguing the point.
> how the Middle East should be divided up
Given how every group claims it is a holy place, I'd expect each group would want it held in a state of peace, prosperity, and reverence for the benefits of creation. Instead they all seem bent on holding their holy lands in states of violence, discord, and waste.
You're not wrong that there is deep external interference but wouldn't holy peoples rise above any of that to do better from every side?
There's plenty of videos of orthodox Jewish people getting brutalized in public by Israeli government thugs. There are many Jewish voices that oppose the genocide. Please don't conflate Judaism with a violent project of political extremism, even though the latter uses the former cynically as a "human shield".
> Please don't conflate Judaism with a violent project of political extremism
I’m not. I’m arguing that one can oppose what’s happening in Gaza without careening into counterproductiveness and calling for the destruction of Israel.
A state named "Israel" is not a prerequisite for Jewish people to live peacefully anywhere. In fact, it appears to be the opposite, based on historical fact. There are also Jewish communities that live peacefully with dignity in Iran.
> A state named "Israel" is not a prerequisite for Jewish people to live peacefully anywhere. In fact, it appears to be the opposite, based on historical fact
That's not my take from 2000 years of Jewish prosecution, in muslim countries or europe
There are Jewish communities within Iran, yes. But peacefully?
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/iran/2025-06-27/ty-... (archive: https://archive.is/0qEg9)
One could blame this crackdown on Israel, sure. But that absolves the countries perpetuating persecution of Jews from their own share of responsibility in it. After all, when the American Government interned all those Japanese-Americans - did we blame Japan for it, or did we rightfully blame the American government?
I do not seek to defend Israel's actions against the Palestinian people, but to say that the Jews live "peacefully and with dignity" in places where they often are scapegoated, persecuted, and killed out of hand is not the way. Look at what happened to the Jewish populations of the region between the 40s and now, and you will see a grim picture of persecution, killings, and exodus.
nettanyahu has tried to bribe iranian jews to come to israel. they've chosen not to so I can't imagine its that bad for them there. additionally, iranian jews have positionsof power in government and mandated representation. it would be a very easy argument to make that iranian jews in iran are treated much better than non jewish palestinians have ever been treated in israel.
While most Iranian Jews left Iran and are currently in Israel, 200k compared to 9k left in Iran, so the numbers don't really support your statement
source?
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Jews
" In July 2007, Iran's Jewish community rejected financial emigration incentives to leave Iran. Offers ranging from 5,000 to 30,000 British pounds, financed by a wealthy expatriate Jew with the support of the Israeli government, were turned down by Iran's Jewish leaders.[90][106][107] To place the incentives in perspective, the sums offered were up to 3 times or more than the average annual income for an Iranian.[108] However, in late 2007 at least forty Iranian Jews accepted financial incentives offered by Jewish charities for immigrating to Israel.[109]"
Israel literally bombed their own jews in Iraq to force them to relocate to israel
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950%E2%80%931951_Baghdad_bo...
“Those who assign responsibility for the bombings to an Israeli or Iraqi Zionist underground movement suggest the motive was to encourage Iraqi Jews to immigrate to Israel.”
You’re stating a supposition as a fact.
> state named "Israel" is not a prerequisite for Jewish people to live peacefully anywhere
Sort of irrelevant. The state of Israel exists. Israelis who call that land their home exist.
Those calling for the destruction of Israel are advocating for a holy war in the Levant. A war that would lead to hundreds of thousands if not millions of casualties.
> A state named "Israel" is not a prerequisite for Jewish people to live peacefully anywhere. In fact, it appears to be the opposite, based on historical fact.
Whatever else you think, this is some massive misunderstanding of history.
Historically, the lack of a state for Jews was one of the main reasons Jews experienced the Holocaust, which originated the term Genocide. Half of the Jewish population, making up (iirc) 90% of the population of Europe, died, because they had nowhere else to go.
And of the ones that survived, they still had nowhere else to go, no one wanted to take them in. The only place they could go, and what was agreed to worldwide, was to go to then-Palestine. Then, the hundreds of thousands of Jews "living peacefully" in Arab countries were ethnically cleansed from their countries, which they'd lived in for generations, and also largely had nowhere to go except Palestine.
Some people seem to have the idea that most of the people are European Jews, when in reality, it was more Arab jews, in large part due to the Nazis. The standardized language even reflects this, closet to the local pronounciation of hebrew than the "accents" in Europe. Or even Jiddish
Having a sizeable minority of some kind does not really justify or excuse kicking out other ethnicities and religions to form a new state based on the primacy of that group. The mental gymnastics to think that expelling people living there while bringing in a population from Europe to displace them--literally to the point of having them move into homes vacated by Arabs who were expelled--is something other than a settler-colonialist is pretty astounding.
And the ambivalence and opposition of the Jews of Palestine to the Zionist project is fairly well-documented.
Rabbi Yakov Shapiro talks a lot about that, I think Gabor Mate does to some extent as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7POk0hVsgM
> People were already living there when settlers came to create an ethno-state for themselves.
Isn't that just history repeating itself? Even in the old testament, they had to clear the current inhabitants of their promised land after wander the desert for 40 years.
Archeology suggests biblical Israel was actually a federation of tribes, some of which were enemies in early parts of the Bible. For example, the philistines which became one of the 12 tribes and also are the origin of the term Palestinian.
They never became an Israeli tribe, they were a people of a foreign origin, probably greek. They have disappeared from history after they were exiled by the babylonians, like most people of the area of that time.
Many states were "founded on ethnic cleansing". They are widely considered to posses a right of existence, and even expected to defend their citizens.
(excuse me for ignoring the history trolling)
A right to exist doesn't justify a million other things that are completely unacceptable about the Israeli state.
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It's a popular opinion these days, all the cool kids are doing it
> It's a popular opinion these days
Westerners with no connection to the Middle East deciding they know best for the people actually there has been a popular opinion for a long time.
Suspiciously consistent with the Israeli-connected Americans who deliberately minimize the significance of issues in Lebanon and Syria.
Annexing one's neighbors sure fosters some queer international consequences.
> Many states were "founded on ethnic cleansing".
So what? I don't get your point.
Israel has continuously been oppressing the Palestinians for almost 80 years. That is immoral. Israel is in the wrong.
> They are widely considered to posses a right of existence, and even expected to defend their citizens.
You are just jumping to a different topic. I said nothing about its right to exist.
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That's not entirely true but your are changing the subject.
Have the Palestinians been ethnically cleansed? Yes or no? Have they been oppressed for almost 80 years? Yes or no?
No and yes.
What Palestinians need is what Israelis got: a state. To the extent there is an argument maximally antithetical to that cause, it’s arguing that Israel shouldn’t exist.
> What Palestinians need is what Israelis got: a state.
Palestinians had several opportunities to get that, especially with Oslo agreements, but their leadership refused that everytime.
> their leadership refused that everytime
I don’t think it’s fair to extend that to “Palestinians had several opportunities.”
Arafat was an hero for the Palestinians, but he was the main responsible for the failing of Oslo agreements. Moreover Hamas won the elections in Gaza with 45% of the votes and, as we saw immediately after 7/11, most of them was cheering for the slaughterings and the rapes.
Unfortunately Palestinians have an huge responsibility on the actual situation.
> Hamas won the elections in Gaza with 45% of the votes
That was a generation ago.
> as we saw immediately after 7/11, most of them was cheering for the slaughterings and the rapes
One, it’s unclear how widespread this was. But also two, you see similar dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israelis today. That’s just how human psychology works in a war footing—I think we and chimpanzees are the only species that will go out of our way to exterminate a threat.
> Palestinians have an huge responsibility on the actual situation
Oh sure. And I think whether a future Palestinian state could exist peacefully bordering Israel is a real question. But I would push back on the notion that a plebiscite today requiring recognition of Israel as a sovereign state within its current borders in exchange for a Palestinian state (with West Bank settlements transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction) wouldn’t pass.
> That was a generation ago.
Some surveys estimated that Hamas consensus was more than 60% before the 7/11. And this is the main reason why there is no other elections in West Bank since than: Fatah leadership is scared to lose elections.
> you see similar dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israelis today
I have many colleagues and friends in Israel and nobody of them is cheering about the civilian killings. At the opposite, they just demand peace and freedom for hostages. This is the main difference: while in Israel a large part of population is against war and atrocity, Hamas is still supported by an huge part of Palestinian population.
> But I would push back on the notion that a plebiscite today requiring recognition of Israel as a sovereign state within its current borders in exchange for a Palestinian state (with West Bank settlements transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction) wouldn’t pass.
This was mostly the proposal of Oslo agreements and Arafat, as Palestinian representative, refused that. Do you really think that a public opinion supporting Hamas() , will accept that now?
() Hamas wrote in his statuta that any sionistic state must be unacceptable and Israel must be erased from the heart.
> Do you really think that a public opinion supporting Hamas() , will accept that now?
I think it’s worth a shot. (I wouldn’t put much worth in any polling in Gaza, let alone recent polling.)
One could even throw in a reparation fund for the lands Israel conquered since ‘48 as well as those which the French and British gave away. (Hell, eminent domain the West Bank settlers and pay them out, too.)
> I think it’s worth a shot.
Even if it will win, having a state, means also to have an army. And guess what will happens immediately? The problem is also the education: in Gaza, the school system (also the one by ONU/UNWRA paid by us) is completely rotten: they are not preparing people to improve their country, they are preparing people to become martyr and hate Israel.
> One could even throw in a reparation fund for the lands Israel conquered since ‘48 as well as those which the French and British gave away.
Do you have any idea about how many money the Western country put in Gaza for humanitarian and development projects? Well, a big part of those funds are spent on building tunnels, buying weapons and building rockets. There is no any way to change the situation until Hamas would be there.
> Hell, eminent domain the West Bank settlers and pay them out, too
Israeli settlers are a big obstacle to peace and should be stopped and repressed with force. Unfortunately it will not happen until Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are part of the government
> Even if it will win, having a state, means also to have an army
Sure. Hence why having such a referendum is important. Also, Lebanon has an army as does Egypt, and both are fine neighbours to Israel now.
> Do you have any idea about how many money the Western country put in Gaza for humanitarian and development projects?
Reparations would have to be distributed directly to individuals and be contingent on such a plebescite recognising Israel passing. If Palestinians decide to squander it again, yes, we’ll see another war, but at that point we can begin treating it like we did Nazi Germany versus the non-state with mixed attribution it has today.
> it will not happen until Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are part of the government
If Palestine gave up its hostages and sued for peace, I don’t think these fucks would have a say anymore.
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Wait are you calling me "European"? This is honestly insulting.
Would you please apologize on-record or edit that out? Thanks
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> In any case, Israel doesn't even have the right to exist
It does: UN resolution, 1967.
That you do not recognize an entire state to exist is an admission to preparing a genocide. The fact that 4 countries around Israel are preparing genocide justifies Israel’s measures are reasonable to maintain peace.
What is reasonable?
Well it’s not like Gaza didn’t start the shooting with 7000 rockets pre-October festival (I was myself surprised that Israel didn’t respond pre-October). Those rockets were indiscriminate against population centers, each of them were a war crime. So it’s reasonable to reduce the neighbor’s ability to wage war to dust.
Are the Gazans exempt from responsibility of their state’s actions?
To answer, we need to check whether the Hamas was imposed to the Gazans or whether they voted for it and, in a broader sense, whether the Gazans wish the genocide of Israel. It turns out the 2006 elections were almost the last ones in Gaza, and that’s when the Hamas was elected (and the opponents were not better). So the Gazans are aligned with the actions performed by the collective group of their nation, it’s not a small group of extremists, it represents the will of the nation, and therefore the facilities and support network of the Hamas are part of the war logistics, and deserves to be reduced to dust.
Did Israel act with restraint?
Israel has the nuclear bomb and has enough power to genocide if they want. The fact that they perform spot actions instead of sweeping actions is proof that Israel tries to discriminate the military, its support network with genocide intent against Israel (=pretty much everyone) and tries to spare the innocents, is proof that Israel is not committing a genocide.
Would that be the same UN that Israel (and the US, to a large degree) refuses to recognize the authority of? Can't have your cake and eat it too, friend.
> What is reasonable?
Not instituting so many decrees ("militaty orders") that even the military authority responsible for 'ruling' the area can't produce an accurate or complete list of all of said decrees. Decrees which, I might add, forbid planting flowers, raising a flag, operating a farm tractor, going to school, or making a bank account withdrawal without the permission of the Israeli military: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Order
Let that sink in: if you're a Palestianian you can't go to the bank and take out your own money without permission of the Israeli military.
Another military order allows the Israeli military to seize your business if you don't open during regular business hours.
Those decrees also allow Jews to "buy" (seize) land from Palestinians who refuse to sell to them, merely by asserting "power of attorney"
Not having snipers executing children. Not conducting missile and gun attacks on ambulances and independent worldwide-recognized medical aid organizations, and then attacking rescuers who show up to render aid. Not slaughtering an entire hospital's worth of patients and burying them in mass graves. Not slaughtering people lined up to get food aid. Not purposefully starving millions of people.
Not using a black-box AI to decide who is a "terrorist" and then blowing up their entire house, thus killing not only the supposed terrorist, but the entire family, or possibly the neighbor - because a "smart" bomb would be too expensive.
> UN (…) Israel does not recognize
An UN agreement is still the highest rank of agreements for whether a state exists.
UN is shock-full of anti-Israeli militants, so it is also unsurprising that Israel doesn’t respect all of it.
> Let that sink in: if you're a Palestianian you can't go to the bank and take out your own money without permission of the Israeli military.
Is this money used for the war against Israel? If yes, it can be legitimately seized. If Palestinians didn’t swear the death of Israel, that would be another story.
Both parties wage a war to death. If Israel gets feable, it gets genocide.
The only way out is peace, but you are actively arguing for the entire eradication of Israel, with the entire weight of the Western Civilization behind you, so… oh man that doesn’t help at all.
> Not having snipers executing children
Depends what the children are doing. Without context, it seems horrible, and yet every time we’re filled in on the context that was conveniently forgotten by “journalists” (who are a certain socio demographic of Western youths, surprisingly), then we notice there’s more to it than “Israel kills blindly”.
If Israel killed blindly, they wouldn’t take so many precautions.
And the funny thing is, I’m not even pro-Israel. I’m just here to show the balance that you have forgotten.
> That you do not recognize an entire state to exist is an admission to preparing a genocide.
Israel doesn't recognise Palestine as a state, so by your own definition Israel is preparing a genocide.
Really? Is this why the world does not recognize the north part of Cyprus despite Turkish Cypriots not butchering any Greeks south of the border since 1974, when they unilaterally declared independence?
Please name some other countries post-WW2 that were "founded by ethnic cleansing" and embraced by the international community and educate the rest of us. And please don't include previously warring peoples whose leaders agreed on a population exchange and imposed that mandatory trauma on their own people.
Palestine, Cyprus, and India had the unenviable luck of being long-term victims of a last gasp British empire's farewell divide-and-conquer gambit.
(and excuse me for ignoring the deflection trolling)
> Please name some other countries post-WW2 that were "founded by ethnic cleansing" and embraced by the international community and educate the rest of us
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Greeks_from_Istan...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_German...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_of_Turks_from_Bulgaria_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istrian%E2%80%93Dalmatian_exod...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_expulsion_of_Italians_fro...
It was quite common and very accepted method in the 1940s, hell, expelling 15 million germans, some living there for hundreds of years, was proposed by Churchill.
The reason you never heard about the rest of these is because the people were resettled, not kept in a state of permanent inheritable refugee state financed by the UN with financial incentives to be kept that way.
>Please name some of other countries post-WW2 that were "founded by ethnic cleansing"
(proceeds to list examples of countries which were already founded before the ethnic cleansing events they mention or events I already alluded to)
It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to list Libyans expelling italians as a comparable example, when Libya was a colony of Italy. Ditto Germans, a people of belonging to the aggressor country. Bulgaria declared independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1908. And you have to explain why you included the pakistan link, as I already mentioned it in my post.
Look, it's not expelling some imperial troops. but peaceful citizens, who sometimes had lived there for centuries.
The idea that people of different ethnicities live, unmixed, divided by neat borders of nation-states is pretty recent. This was the case neither in Europe, nor in Middle East for a very long time before the advent of state-based nationalism in the 19th century. It was quite normal for people of different ethnicities, languages, and even faiths to live intermixed in certain regions, especially areas of intense trade, which the entire Mediterranean coast used to be. Borders were more about economic and political control than ethnic identity.
(The ethnic unity purportedly achieved by nation-states formed in 19th and early 20th centuries is also often more by fiat: look at the variety of German or Italian languages prior to unification of Germany or Italy, for instance, to say nothing about India.)
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Palestinians can be arguably labeled as the aggressor country if that's how you want to spin the narrative. As Jews were peacefully buying lands when the massacres and ethnic cleansing started at 1929.
Most germans were living in their respected newly founded Communist Poland and Czechoslovakia for hundreds of years if not more when expelled.
Italians, even if they were colonialists, were expelled from their homes, by people who previously have been colonialists themselves, some when arriving with the arab conquests.
Bulgaria expelled the turks in the 1950s, and the partition of india, forming pakistan and india, were two newly formed countries around the time of israel and palestine, included ethnic cleansing from both sides
Do you think that these examples of ethnic cleansing post ww2 are irrelevant when no new country was formed?
> when the massacres and ethnic cleansing started at 1929.
Violent conflicts between Jewish settlers and local Arab populations have started long before that, pretty much as soon as the initial settlement began in the 19th century. Nor was it some kind of isolated incidents - Jabotinsky wrote https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-iron-wall-quot in 1923, and he wasn't alone in such views:
> There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority. ... Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the "Land of Israel."
What, like it's happened elsewhere so it's OK now? How do you think that kind of defense argument goes down in court?
No but when someone says "Israel is uniquely evil and must be destroyed because of [reason that also applies to dozens of other countries whose destruction they're not demanding]" it implies either ignorance or bad faith.
It's not a defense argument rather than reality. People seem to think this conflict is special, but usually due to ignoring similarities to their own countries and their own moralities.
Regarding court, there is a very valid defense in court called selective enforcement, and this is exactly for situations when someone is scape goated
The only thing special about this conflict is that it's far more "televised" than any other genocide in history, due to the proliferation of internet access and social media, and that the US is directly funding it.
I think it makes a lot of sense to be more incensed about the genocide in Palestine vs. the Myanmar civil war if you're an American citizen. Americans are struggling and the government is sending billions of our tax dollars to war criminals overseas.
Except that it's not a genocide, claiming Israel is out to destroy the Palestinian people after two years of war with precision bombs is hilariously incorrect and highly misrepresented.
There's a reason that your example includes mass civilian executions, rapes, ethnic cleansing and burning villages, largely hamas' tactics, rather than precision bombs and evacuation calls in different channels.
Because Israeli tactics are extremely counterproductive for a genocide. There's reasons why genocide is usually done by concentrating populations rather than dispersing, and why aerial bombing can't be used, as victims would flee, or why the victims aren't forewarned..
It seems this entire popular argument rests solely on propaganda and redefining words without any shred of critical thinking
I don't think it's possible to understand the whole issue without taking into account how people fled into Israel, both because of genocide in Europe as well as prosecution in multi-ethnic yet predominantly Arab states. Germany being in an awkward position of being an economically dominant state but also having contributed to the whole misery. Also the US is far from neutral probably due to deeper ties that are just part of reality. You cannot undo the past but I don't think it's possible to unroll the whole problem without properly confronting it. The increasingly horrific escalations have obviously completely detached from any reason
They fled into Palestine*, and later established the state of Israel. Saying they fled into Israel assumes there was an Israel to begin with, but there wasn't.
Yes, it was a British colony... Either way, the vast majority moved there after the state was established. And yes, most suffered prosecution around the world including Arab countries. Pogroms against Jews are documented since centuries.
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Maybe because it happened 1000 years ago and there are people being killed in Gaza at this very moment?
People being killed in Gaza are the colonizers isn't it? In addition to being colonizers they clearly declared the goal of performing ethnic cleansing of Jews, and proved that it isn't just words by perpetrating genocide of Jews on October 7.
You nicely sidestepped the case of US where Native people are still fighting for their rights and would be killed the same way if they try to perpetrate against Non-Native Americans the things like October 7.
Palestinians perpetrated October 7, Native Americans don't do such things, thus no surprise that the situation is different.
>Maybe because it happened 1000 years ago
So, how old or recent it should be for you to dismiss or not an ethnic cleansing?
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There were hundreds of Palestinians held by the IDF without charges on Oct 6th. What’s another word for “held without charges”? Yes it’s hostage.
There were 3 days of idf bombing in gaza in september 2023.
Bringing up “hostages” as a reason for anything is a lie, a distortion, and a laundering of genocide.
> Bringing up “hostages” as a reason for anything is a lie, a distortion, and a laundering of genocide
One siding a war between Netanyahu and Hamas is a lie, distortion and laundering of atrocities.
Such weird framing.
Netanyahu is not supported by all israelis, no question. But israeli isn’t a dictatorship - the actions of the state have been varying degrees of genocide and ethnic cleansing for 75+ years, and pinning that all on one man is bonkers. Do you also consider the war in Iraq a war between Bush and the Ba’ath?
Calling what I said “one siding” is similarly bonkers. My point is just to be consistent with the actions of both sides: israel had hostages before oct 7th - if hamas hostages are justification for mass murder of palestinian civilians, then israeli hostages before oct 7th justify the oct 7th attacks. To say otherwise is to one-side the situation.
To be clear: i don’t believe that hostages justify killing civilians. Doesn’t matter who’s hostages they are.
> i don’t believe that hostages justify killing civilians
It is, however, casus belli. And I don’t know how one fights a guerilla force without significant collateral damage.(This order, to be clear, wouldn’t count as collateral damage if accurately presented.)
“casus belli” is the stated reason to go to war. It says nothing about if those reasons are moral. Hamas had casus belli. The US has casus belli when bush invaded iraq based on lies about WMD. Hell, russia has it in ukraine (something something nato).
If you cannot conduct war against a guerilla force without murdering hundreds of thousands, destroying every piece of peaceful infrastructure, and blockading aid - then the truth is it’s wrong to conduct that war.
Casus belli incorporates legitimacy of war. Hamas had it, Israel had it. America did not in Iraq; Russia doesn’t in Ukraine.
> If you cannot conduct war against a guerilla force without murdering hundreds of thousands, destroying every piece of peaceful infrastructure, and blockading aid - then the truth is it’s wrong to conduct that war
If that force is conducting operations in your borders and against your citizens it’s no longer that clear cut. (This goes both ways in this case.)
Both Hamas and Israel have grounds for war. Both of them have conducted it badly. But in both cases, it’s not easy to see how they could have managed it that much better. (Well, actually, for Palestine it is. They should be suing for peace and handing over their hostages. Neither side looks smart when it takes innocent hostages.)
> Casus belli incorporates legitimacy of war. Hamas had it, Israel had it. America did not in Iraq; Russia doesn’t in Ukraine.
These are your opinions. They have no legitimacy except in the eyes of people who share your opinions.
> If that force is conducting operations in your borders
If you build your borders on other people’s homes, it’s pretty clear cut actually.
It’s not justifying killing civilians. It is justified for Israel to attempt to get their kidnapped citizens back. Hamas could minimize this, but you and I both know that maximizing Palestinian death is their preference.
It seems like you’re saying the oct 7th attack was entirely justified, as long as one of their goals was to free the Palestinians kept hostage by israel… or that you have two different standards of acceptable conduct for the idf and hamas.
Leadership on both sides is incentivised to continue the war for domestic purposes.
I agree with that point. However, I don’t believe Netanyahu or the Israeli government glorify the death of their own people.
> I don’t believe Netanyahu or the Israeli government glorify the death of their own people
The indifference shown to the fate of the hostages could have fooled me. But yes, Hamas and PJ treat their civilian population expendably in a way Tel Aviv does not.
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The difference is that e.g. Māori or native Americans and whatnot are full citizens with full rights.
The "founded on ethnic cleansing" is not the most important bit from the previous post. It's the "ethnic cleansing and denial of rights has continued ever since" that's the most important bit.
No, the difference is that the native population of western countries very much disappeared, because this was an actual genocide their percent of population is now negligible.
While the Palestinian population in Israel proper is around 25% with full rights, while those under the control of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have rights in their respective political entity.
Again there are other examples of countries where the population lost all rights and were expelled like germans in czechoslovakia and poland or greeks from turkey
> the native population of western countries very much disappeared
That's simply not true. It's very obviously not true. Are you denying that Māoris and Native Americans exist today? I cannot phantom why you would say such obvious nonsense.
I no longer believe you are engaging in good faith. Good day.
I said "negligible". The original population was largely killed and replaced
Māori is something like a fifth of the population of New Zealand. You have no idea what you're talking about and have starting to spread falsehoods of Trumpian proportions. Maybe the Māori are eating the cats and dogs too?
There's a bunch of native tribes that got completely wiped out. What are you talking about?
> Facts is that most of the palestinians fled in the earlier phases of the war, and the very little instances of forced evacuation of the population where within the borders of Israel/Palestine, not out of the country.
People don't leave their homes voluntarily. They leave because of violence or fear of violence. The fact is there were Palestinians living all over the map at the "before" stage. Settlers came to form an ethno-state. The orders given to the Zionist militia commanders were literally "cleanse" this or that village. In the "after" stage, all these people are gone from most of the map and the ones trying to return to their homes are shot dead.
That is ethnic cleansing period. The goal was to create an ethno-state in a place where people already lived. These people have been getting confined to smaller and smaller areas ever since. And the oppression continues to this day.
> Regarding the "State founded on ethnic cleaning", in recent times this includes entire South America, parts of Africa, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
So what? What's your point?
> People don't leave their homes voluntarily. They leave because of violence or fear of violence.
Well the same applies to the Mizrahi Jews who fled Arab countries to Israel.
The Arab countries then seized their properties, which are estimated to add up to multiple times the size of Israel itself.
So on the larger ledger of who owes who reparations, the Arab states clearly owe Israelis more than the other way around.
> Settlers came to form an ethnostate
Zionists like most national movement of the same time goal was to form an ethnostate, just like the palestinian national movement goal was to form an ethnostate, or the czech, polish, ukraine, etc that's pretty obvious
> People don't leave their homes voluntarily
People flee war torn zones, that's not the same thing as ethnic cleansing.
> The orders given to the Zionist militia commanders were literally to "cleanse" that village
Yes, that happened, that doesn't change the fact that most of the population fled on their own accord, that a very sizeable part of the palestinian population remains in Israel to this day, and that the Palestinians were trying to cleanse the Israel population as well (and were successful in a few instances)
> So what? what's your point?
My point is that the horrors you cite are nothing compared to what your very own country was founded on (and that's an educated guess on where you are from, or all countries of the world founding story really)
Judaism isn't an ethnicity. And I would agree those states are founded on the same ideals. All should be abolished.
>they have ethnically cleansed the Jews like in Hebron
Have you been to Hebron? I'd highly encourage it because you will see literally the most vile state sponsored racists in the western world.
The ethnic cleansing is not as violent as the gazan genocide but it ought to make any person with a conscience sick to the stomach. You walk around looking up at the settlement guards (more of them than there are settlers) pointing guns at you from guard towers as the racist settlers living above literally throw trash down on the Palestinian untermensch living below them.
Every year they squeeze Palestinians who live and work there further and further out.
It's also the home of the venerated terrorist Baruch Goldstein (10% of Israelis consider him a hero because he shot up a mosque), his shrine and Itamir ben Gvir - the national security minister who idolized him.
After seeing that place I became convinced that if anywhere was going to commit a nazi style genocide it would be israel. 8 years later thats exactly what happened.
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Netanyahu, when addressing the troops, even said "Do not forget what Amalek has done to you", invoking the memory of the biblical commandment to genocide the Amalekites.
Reposting as it was flagged by Zionists:
You don't have to have sympathy for them. Their religion literally tells them to kill children to steal their land:
"However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you." - Deuteronomy 20:16-17
And now they are literally doing it.
I wondered how an entire ethnic group could be so depraved and removed from humanity, where literally hundreds of thousands of their members in Hebrew Telegram channels cheer on children being burned alive. And now I know that, it was always their religion that caused their depraved behavior. From a philosophy of racial superiority to literally commands to kill children to steal their land. It was always going to come to this genocidal conclusion.
It's perfectly fine to say Judaism should be canceled, given how Jews are behaving publicly and without shame in their desire to steal land and kill children. They literally don't know that they're not supposed to steal land and kill children. They believe that's completely fine.
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What do you think is a proper solution? 30% being pro genocide is insane.
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The biggest problem with this isn’t the horror of the actual war crime. The far more serious concern are the lengths the government will go to avoid holding anyone accountable. That is so much worse because it unintentionally endorses future crimes and challenges the offenders to take ever more offensive actions without fear of consequences.
I do not believe it is unintentional.
They can take out nuclear scientists thousands of kilometers away by either planting bombs in their cars in traffic or firing accurate munitions through their windows when they sleep.
Thousands of kilometers away.
The IDF can be highly sophisticated in their plans and methods when they want to.
Those things you described are also war crimes.
Calling it sophisticated does not change that fact.
> Those things you described are also war crimes
No, it’s war. Targeted killing of a military scientist is war. Gunning down civilians trying to get food is a war crime. If we start labelling all war as criminal, the term loses all meaning.
Unless prosecuted and people either go to jail or are executed, war crimes are just a label for anyone in opposition to Western domination.
> war crimes are just a label for anyone in opposition to Western domination
Eh, there is a broad consensus on what constitutes a war crime. But there is also broad precedent for these rules not applying to major powers. (China annexed Tibet in 1951.)
I’d also argue that recent history has almost rendered the term worthless, as activists label practically every civilian death as a war crime.
I think the point is that if Israel can do pinpoint decapitation strikes anywhere in Iran they sure as hell can do so in Gaza, but they choose to bomb hospitals and flatten every single building in the Gaza Strip instead.
This. Israel demonstrably has the capability for precision warfare.
That they chose to level infrastructure across Gaza instead is indicative.
And it'd be real stretch to assume they did so even for military-economic reasons.
They knew the world community would give them some leeway after Oct 7th, so exploited it as far as possible to militarily achieve their geo-political goals.
To wit, the elimination of anything resembling a Palestinian state: politically, economically, and demographically.
Which is cynical and evil as fuck, given they're smart enough to realize they eventually either have to (a) kill every Palestinian or (b) make a deal.
Instead, they decided killing 50,000+ Palestinians was worth improving their negotiation position and kicking the can down the road.
> They knew the world community would give them some leeway after Oct 7th, so exploited it as far as possible to militarily achieve their geo-political goals.
That’s my read as well. I was strongly pro-Israel for decades and while I was never comfortable with the plight of Palestinians Hamas had a lot of the blame, too, but the last year really moved me over to thinking that the people who said most of the “accidents” over the years were intentional were correct. They can pull off these amazingly accurate strikes when they want to, it’s implausible that they suddenly have the precision of a drunken 18th century musketeer around aid workers and civilians. Their leadership clearly do not care and collective punishment is a war crime no matter who does it.
The term ”mowing the lawn”[1] has been used to describe their long term strategy, so I can ”excuse” someone for thinking that they can’t control the situation, but it’s been a tactic for a long time.
HN readers can recognize the tactic in other parts of our world too. It’s the strategy of people in power who believe they can control the chaos. When chaos in one group is a benefit to the other, chaos becomes a worthy status quo. When your military is infinitely more powerful, any uprising can eventually be exhausted, and you get automatic casus belli. The Cold War was full of this destabilizing politics, where superpowers tried their best to turn functioning socities into hellholes, in the hopes that it would spread in the enemy’s region. The same works for Israel. The less legitimacy Gaza and the West Bank Palestinians have, the longer they can keep building settlements. If they ever gain independence, it will cause another war, which has been planned for, because settlements have been overwhelmingly built on higher ground. Illegal settlers will not give up easily, and will likely gain military assistance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mowing_the_grass
To be fair, the Iranian state is a proper military. I’m not sure if there is a way to fight a guerilla force without massive civilian casualties. (Which is why one generally shouldn’t.)
A better analog might be Hezbollah. Surgically dispatched. Resolved with minimal follow-on nonsense from both sides.
You do understand they actually targeted whole apartment blocks in Iran, right? 10s of civilians dead. Not so sophisticated. Just criminals.
On the flip side, this is not as controversial (or even at all in western media) when done by the Ukraine military (not specifically nuclear scientists). This is not a justification, but I think some characteristics of conflict are less interesting/important to focus on when trying to formalise critique against an assailant. This would be more important if contrasted with for example a conflicting ideological narrative.
I‘m sorry, but you’re comparing apples to bedrooms. Israel vs. Iran is a war/conflict between two proper countries‘ militaries - which means that both belligerents stick to certain agreed upon rules and military traditions, such as trying to separate the civilian from the military world/infrastructure. In lack of another word (haven’t slept, please forgive me for the choice of word), there’s “honor“ and a notion of equality and respect (somewhat) between the foes, even if Iran has declared it wants to wipe Israel off the map.
All of this does not apply to the conflict with Hamas. With them muddling the lines, it’s extremely hard to fight a “clean“ war. You’re between a rock and a hard place - either you lose but with your head held high and your moral compass intact, or you stoop to their level thereby slowly losing your values but win in the end. If that win is worth it or not, is heavily debated in the rest of the world, but only debated in the fringes of Israeli society. But no military expert is able to suggest a real alternative of fighting Hamas without inflicting heavy losses on one’s own army.
I find the committed war crimes abhorrent and wish they’d be heavily prosecuted at least.
For as long as countries like Israel stand against giving Palestinians a legitimate state, militias and terror groups will continue to rise. The US showed that it was possible to fight an insurgency as an occupying force without resorting to literally levelling cities. It was not easy, it took more lives than they hoped, but they did it anyway, because they at least acted like war crimes out in the open was off limits.
Until corrective actions with criminal penalties occur incidents like these almost certainly continue with possible increases of frequency and severity. More importantly though when this becomes a matter of conduct and military discipline is that it will spread to other areas even outside Gaza.
This isn’t just a matter of vague speculation as there are historical cases outside of Israel on which to see how things like this develop and what the consequences are both for the victims and the soldiers. These historical accounts also indicate soldiers committing these sorts of actions become victims themselves with catastrophic mental health disorders.
The idea Israeli government would hold anyone accountable is a laughable.
Israel got in trouble with ICJ court, because of quotes from top government officials. Government of Israel was very specific what they will do to Gaza! This was even full scale bombing started!
Trying to reinterpret this as a problem of "military discipline", and "soldiers are victim as well" is just another level of cynicism!
> The idea Israeli government would hold anyone accountable is a laughable.
It's happened, many times. Usually this doesn't make front-page news, but soldiers that break the law are sometimes held accountable. Not nearly enough, and I think it should be far more publicized as a deterrent effect (the fact that it isn't is a pretty big indictment of the current government). But it's certainly not laughable.
Btw, the literal sub-headline of the article includes this sentence:
"prompting the military prosecution to call for a review into possible war crimes".
Who is gonna arrest Bibi?
Well, he is on trial. So he could be arrested. Prime Ministers have been arrested (and jailed!) before.
A part of what the Isareli opposition has been pushing for in the last few years has been removing Netanyahu from power and presumably jailing him because of the corruption charges.
The same people who arrested Olmert
For each of their "operations" on Gaza they usually had one or two soldiers in trouble for something like stealing and using a civilians credit card. When there were many more serious crimes like deliberately targeting the disabled.
Even ignoring primary crimes, under Israeli law, even incitement to genocide is punishable by death. But so many members of the political and media elite have made inciting statements, that the rubicon is crossed; the political class cannot allow any serious, independent consideration of war crimes to ever occur, because that would risk them all facing the firing squad. This in turn signals to individual soldiers that there will be no accountability, even in the absence of directives.
Regarding the risk to Israelis facing the firing squad, you do know that Israel only executed Eichmann (and one other person in a field court) since the founding of the country?
When it comes to the list of things that Israelis fear, being sentenced to a firing squad is very low down.
Fair enough, but I don't think that makes the incentive much different. If you are convicted of a crime punishable by death, your actual punishment is not likely to be trivial.
Government and regime can always change. Post socialist countries convinced border guards, for shooting unarmed civilians, who were trying to escape across country borders. That was a crime even under socialist laws.
If Israel had regime change, new regime and majority of voters would be pro Arab... New government could actually enforce existing laws!
israel executes plenty of people. maybe if it’s done by the military it doesnt count
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_war_crimes_in_the_Gaza...
https://web.archive.org/web/20240104213949/https://www.middl...
https://web.archive.org/web/20240424005326/https://news.un.o...
https://web.archive.org/web/20240409122432/https://thehill.c...
https://archive.is/UJb6g
> even incitement to genocide is punishable by death
For that to happen, the government, and the overall population, would need to consider what's being done in Gaza and on the West Bank to actually be a genocide. I don't think popular support for that actually exists in Israel. Last time I checked, most of the population supported the annexation of Gaza and the forced eviction of the local population to neighboring countries.
I don't think I'll live to see a two-state solution.
There isn't popular support for it when you factor in the Israeli-Palestian but in opinion polling it has now gone beyond 50% among the rest of the Israeli population.
You may be missing a legal wrinkle: the crime of incitement usually does not require the underlying primary crime to actually occur. (Admittedly I'm not sure if that is the definition in Israel, but they inherited a lot of British law so it is likely). So this does not require the Israeli population to accept that this was a genocide, only that some war crimes occurred and that they should be prosecuted. Right now they are not there, but the point is that the government has an incentive to keep the population in that state.
Where I hope this comes back, after the conflict and a new Israel government, is human culpability for automated systems.
AI being whitewashing for IP is disruptive and troubling.
It being whitewashing for war crimes is a much more serious problem.
If Israel/IDF put in place a automated system that gave effectively caused war crimes to be committed, some humans in positions of power need to be held responsible and face consequences.
The world should not allow cases where (a) it's undisputed that war crimes occurred but (b) authority was interwoven in an automated system in such a way that humans escape consequences.
Sadly, it'll probably take the fall of right-wing Israeli and current Russian governments to have a hope of passing through.
> is human culpability for automated systems.
Human culpability for crimes committed by large human systems isn't ever going to happen. I wouldn't hold my breath for the automated ones.
For anyone else, who for some reason, feels compelled to comment without reading the article:
> Haaretz has learned that the Military Advocate General has instructed the IDF General Staff's Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism – a body tasked with reviewing incidents involving potential violations of the laws of war – to investigate suspected war crimes at these sites.
Now what will come from this (a proper investigation, etc.), who knows.
Why would the government hold someone accountable for its own actions? Let’s not pretend that this is just some random soldiers doing this, this is exactly what the Israeli government wants.
Soldiers shooting at civilians is a war crime. It does not matter what the intentions of the soldiers are. It doesn’t even matter if the civilians are also armed up until the point they display violent intent according to a common person standard. Shooting at a crowd is a crime.
That said the soldiers pulling the trigger are committing crimes. These are patently illegal actions to a common person standard which eliminates any defense of following military orders. That being said the soldiers, at least, are committing crimes. Accountability starts at the source of the crime.
If the government is ordering these actions then those are illegal orders, according to international standards of military conduct. The soldiers on the ground must ignore those orders on the basis of patently illegal conduct according to a common person standard and the officials facilitating those orders can be investigated for issuing war crimes.
As an example read about Slobodan Milošević
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87
NATO was conducting defensive operations against Yugoslavia around that time. It isn't clear that war crimes can be committed so easily by US allies. It'd be nice if they can be recognised though.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding here. War crimes are not judged by what a diligent investigation after the fact might find. It hinges on the information and judgement by those acting in the moment. You are a soldier told these armed people a click out are the insurgent group you are fighting? Of course you can engage them. And there is a similar lenient standard applied to whoever got that information in the first place. War by any other standard of course would be entirely unworkable.
Because "the govahment" is not a singular entity. In functioning democracies, by popular definition in large parts of the field, legislative and executive powers are kept separated from the judicial powers. So the executive power can not interfere with being held accountable. That's not fullt implemented everywhere, but that is the general idea how it is supposed to work.
Well, the civilian leadership is obviously in favour of massacring civilians, the military leadership orders civilians to be massacred, and the soldiers on the ground revel in the opportunity to massacre civilians. And the courts are happy to allow the massacre of civilians.
In functioning democracies in general, sure, you have to be careful not to tar everyone with the same brush. But in the specific case of Israel in 2015, it's not realistic to argue that the government isn't a single entity, so some parts of it may not be responsible (or even in favour of) crimes against humanity.
Well, there is actually a reasonable reason. Typically you'd want the government to hold people accountable so you could have the thin veneer of operating by the rules of warfare and not committing war crimes. That's usually been a popular strategy of the US for when someone goes a little too far (or gets caught).
As far as I can tell Israel doesn't particularly care for even looking like it's trying to behave responsibly. I don't think they've held anyone responsible for even some of the most obvious war crimes we have evidence of being committed.
> Why would the government hold someone accountable for its own actions?
Because that is what keeps the ICC off of their backs. The ICC only has authority to step in in cases where national jurisdiction is unable or unwilling to prevent and prosecute war crimes.
They were just following orders.
You mean the government whose leader is facing a corruption trial?
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Can you please make your substantive points thoughtfully, without snark or flamebait? It's not hard if you choose to, and the site guidelines ask people to do so, regardless of how charged or divisive the topic is.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Ok. The parent is the same kind of rhetorical question, whose counter-argument is so evident that it shouldn’t have existed, and it’s disappointing that one side gets the right of way on HN and the other is downvoted, one camp is making use of flaws in your rules to win without merit, aka bullying.
But yes. I’ll speak without snarkiness.
Yes, the parent was the same kind of question; in fact I almost included that observation in my reply to you. However, it's all a matter of degree, and your comment was significantly worse in the degree of snark and flamebait that you were posting. That's why I replied to you and not the other comment. It had nothing to do with which side either of you are on, although I understand how it ends up feeling that way. (I've posted quite a bit about that elsewhere in this thread, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403947.)
Ok. I’ll be better in the future. My apologies.
Thank you for maintaining this community.
Or maybe because this isn't happening at all could be the reason why because there is actually no one to hold accountable because this is just some hysterical anti semitic conspiracy theory.
It's even worse: Awful lot of people die for the careers of politicians and it's not limited to Israel. If someone needs political tension for weathering a scandal or economic turmoil, it can be created artificially by killing certain people and they do it all the time.
I have distaste for Trump but something I appreciate about him is his abilities to stage a theatre with his "fake" bombings. The more mainstream politicians have much more sociopathic tendencies.
If you think about it, %100 of modern wars are about who is going to be the administrator and doesn't feel like can win an election. We live in a world of abundance, there's no reason for a group of people to kill other group for their resources. If it wasn't for the careers of some people with huge egos all this can be sorted out through civil matters. After the wars it gets sorted out anyway, we don't see mass exterminations anymore.
We already knew this was happening from testimony from Gazans, it was obvious that the new US-Israeli monopolized "aid" organization was running the Hunger Games, with dozens killed by Israelis (+ US contractors) every time there was a distribution day, and horrific pictures and video of it. Entirely predictable too when the genocidaires are controlling the aid. It is good there is now proof from the inside as well.
> ...the new US-Israeli monopolized "aid" organization was running the Hunger Games, with dozens killed by Israelis (+ US contractors) every time there was a distribution day ... the genocidaires are controlling the aid.
It was apparently 2 VCs and not the military that came up with GHF (and if I recall, there even was a brief flare up between the ruling Cabinet and the Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, who did not want the IDF to be responsible for aid).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/05/24/gaza-humanit... / https://archive.vn/TugwR> One was Liran Tancman, an entrepreneur and reservist in the IDF’s 8200 signals intelligence unit, who called for using biometric identification systems outside the distribution hubs to vet Palestinian civilians.
Gives the feeling of the serial number tattoos the Germans used, with tech "fixing" the bad optics of doing that, but the biometric ID serves as one.
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Gazans aren't exactly the most reliable witnesses. Most of them are already brainwashed after 2 decades of the Hamas regime...
Doubting everything you hear from Palestinians is a key part of continuing to disbelieve that genocide is happening. Ignoring victims voices always props up the abuser.
As a westerner, I feel ashamed that my country is Isreal's ally. It makes me guilty by association because the western world is letting Israel commit thoses atrocities.
Worse, we are helping them when they need it, and closing our eyes when they don't want us to watch.
THe USA is currently run by a convicted felon, so it doesn't really surprise me.
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what about the last two years of video evidence of all the other war crimes?
The bodies of burnt children. The reports of doctors who document multiple sniper rounds found in the bodies of small children and toddlers?
I've been seeing reports about internet connectivity being very touch and go in Gaza the last few weeks.
Is it not unreasonable to think, those who are starving the most might not have internet/electricity to charge a device/care to document when they're starving?
jsyk many cases of evidence turned out to be propaganda and instead was showing Syria (https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231229-war-of-narrat... and Bellingcat looked into it as well)
Some of it may be real but you really need to pay attention about who posted it originally, who reposted it etc, even people you wouldn't expect sometimes retweeted recycled Syrian footage...
> Some of it may be real
From first-hand accounts, a lot of it is in-fact real. Including the babies who were left to die in the NICU. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/09/opinion/gaza-...
There's probably truthful accounts and there's different sorts of manipulation (like OP article is a bit) but you can't know "a lot" or "a little" of what other people see is true of fake
Maybe their phones are running a bit low on charge and they can't find an outlet here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kSHED-mRP1g
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Is there a reason to disbelieve the soldiers’ testimony?
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Here's a story from NPR that makes much stronger claims agaist Israel (and cites sources) than the Haaretz story:
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/28/nx-s1-5449587/israel-gaza-haa...
> Haaretz has become a radical-Islam mouthpiece and will most likely be banned soon
Okay but this is just another claim that seems to require evidence. Why should I believe this?
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There is plenty of reason to disbelieve the testimony was reported accurately.
Haaretz’s English edition claims that IDF soldiers were ordered to fire at unarmed Palestinians waiting for food in Gaza, but the original Hebrew version? It states they were told to fire towards crowds to keep them away from the aid sites. This represents a significant difference in intent, legality, and moral implications
https://mrandrewfox.substack.com/p/haaretz-the-lies-continue
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44404779
> fire at unarmed Palestinians waiting for food in Gaza
> fire towards crowds to keep them away from the aid sites
I am struggling to understand the distinction.
The difference is the agenda of the reader, sadly.
Who cares about the word used in that sentence. They also said they killed people every day by doing this. How is that explained away?
For you and me conversation is about facts, reality and accuracy. For them it is about bending the narrative as far as it will go. It's not strange behavior if everyone around you is doing it.
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I'm fairly certain you haven't read the haaretz article. Otherwise your comment is inexplicable.
The article cites no evidence except for anonymous accounts. There's no video evidence even though people would widely have smart phones there. The association distributing aid as well as Israel's government have denied any of this happened.
I'd be upset if this happened too, but there's no evidence of that. My guess is that warning shots were fired.
Did I miss something from the article? I did read it.
They have a right to take out Hamas, they don't have the right to mow down crowds of starving people with sub-machine guns while they're just trying to get to some food
Your comment puts you firmly in pro-israel camp by today's western standards.
There's no disagreement about contents of the article being a war crime, if it is true.
Haaretz is not a reliable source, they often publish hearsay and seldom verify the testimonies. We have reports of seemingly daily massacres around food distribution sites mostly originating from one single "journalist" with direct self described sympathy towards Hamas and source always being "locals told me", yet somehow it ends up being published in Reuters et all on a semi-daily basis.
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> He also said the activity in his area of service is referred to as Operation Salted Fish – the name of the Israeli version of the children's game "Red light, green light".
The Israeli tradition of giving their Gaza operations names of children's games also continues, after "Operation Cast Lead".
(Not sure if they wanted to make a reference to Squid Games as well...)
Green light : They send out notifications to people telling them aid is available at a certain location.
Red light: 10 minutes later they send out another notification saying no aid is being distributed there today and start shooting anyone in the area
Just like several months ago, “we advise Gazans to move to southern Gaza as operations intensify in the north”.
Within days: “Israeli bombing of southern Gaza intensifies 80%”.
I have to say, these warnings are byond any logic I can comprehend. It it not like Hamas does not get these warnings. Obviously they moved aswell. Then again, was this intended by Israel? So in the end nobody can trust these warnings. They are pointless.
The target for the warnings isn't Palestinians, it's a figleaf for international media.
Yes I dunno what the term is but it's common to telegraph ops like this. US did the same in Yemen and they see a) civvies moving away from munitions storage areas b) terrorists trying to move munitions to safety. It can inform of new targets
You don't understand military ops. By announcing like this they can see the Hamas operatives expose themselves as they start moving, preparing like little ants and bomb them - not civilians.
This isn't ambiguous. This is really clear evidence of (at minimum) an atrocious and continuing war crime with full intentionality. Realistically, it is more likely explicitly genocidal in intent.
The UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories has concluded in a pretty comprehensive report that there is a genocide occurring in Gaza. https://reliefweb.int/attachments/f78b0a28-c3af-44ed-a010-9b...
The same UN that supported Hamas in it's war on Israel and persecutions of gazans?
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Right, you can fire really awesome warning shots with mortars.
But that is still a war crime.
And yet this harmelss "scare away" firing has been routinely killing tens of crowd members per day.
Not to mention that Israel is openly using starvation as a weapon of war.
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I appreciate that this topic has been permitted to stay on the HN front page. It has been utterly horrific watching the barbaric and inhuman behavior of Israel. I have no idea how we are supposed to ever respect or forgive our own states that have aquiesced in this, let alone Israel.
Thank you Dang!
It's worth comparing these reports to the Flour Massacre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour_Massacre) that occurred over a year ago.
I'd also suggest this (impassioned) video about the event: https://youtu.be/sCW-ARvywto?t=5020
Compare this reporting from a year ago with the Wikipedia page now. How has this reporting from a year ago held up?
This comment thread is the most civilised online discussion I have seen in a long while about this particular topic, despite people coming from diverse backgrounds and disagreeing.
In this sense, hackernews gives me hope that online culture is not lost yet.
It's because realistically hn is an oasis of educated people that has been overlooked by astroturfers and foreign interests (very strongly including the government in this piece), and hasn't expanded its core demographic for profit. This is what the rest of the internet would be like without manipulation. Imagine how much better things would be
HN has an experienced and famously fair moderator for whom cultivating the conversation on this site is a full time job.
I have no doubt whatsoever that dang is the biggest reason that HN comment sections are so high quality compared to the rest of the web.
I was encouraged by yours and parents posts to look at some of the comments but I think I just got duped into wasting time with bots that are in fact astroturfing!
There is absolutely astroturfing happening on HN but not anywhere near the massive campaigns all over Reddit that are cumulatively probably millions of posts and comments
HN is an oasis of borderline autistic people who have no knowledge or rational opinions about anything more open ended than which JavaScript framework is the worst
If HN is so educated and civic, we would be able to have more of that sort of debate and not just once in a while.
Also note that dang is already pretty active here banning people.
It is a topic where deep emotions come up and where fanatism is widespread. Also among educated people. Also not sure if you have not noticed before, but HN is part of a profit orientated venture capitalist company. Still, I also do enjoy this Oasis here. But I don't see how it can scale in any way you seem to imagine.
I think people understand there's a time and a place for important political discussion on an otherwise tech community, especially because the quality and insight tends to be better than other places.
I don't have any delusions about ycombinator seeing some of the things it has supported recently, but in this laughably dumbed down world you take what you can get.
As for new communities I believe in being selective and restrictive- based on location, education, or interest and think it's the only way we can get smart communities again. Think how the tech barrier and slow adoption in the 90s/2000s resulted in a smart bubble online, and how covid was the death knell for distinct non homogenous smart online spaces because it brought everyone further online. It's discriminatory but look what we've become.
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This is at t= 3 hours, and large swathes of people asleep on a weekend.
These types of topics pull themselves apart VERY fast, as the homogenity of discussion norms / definitions, shared by users decreases.
I don't really see much debate. The top comments and votes are pretty clearly pro-human.
It seems civilized because comments that call out Iranian propaganda get flagged. Only one opinion is allowed on the internet. Israel is demonized beyond belief. No one talks about US aid to Egypt, a literal dictatorship, or Saudi Arabia, or the genocide in Yemen. Nope. Just Israel.
Israel is an excellent example of what happens if a fundamentalist theocracy becomes too powerful compared to its neighbors.
I thought Israel was a parliamentary democracy?
Ironically, Israel's government would be less theocratic-conservative if it weren't so hard to form governing coalitions in the Knesset.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_twent...
After moderate partners abandoned Netanyahu, his only source of support was more right-wing partners, which steadily pushed government policy to the ultra-right.
It's not ironic at all, it's democracy working as intended.
It might superficially appear ironic because us in the west confuse being a democracy with being moderate. But that's not the case if a large fraction of your population are religious fundamentalists, which goes to my point. In Israel, the problem isn't just the government, it's also the culture of the majority of the population.
Considering ~50% of the Knesset is in opposition, I don't think it's proof that a politically large fraction of Israeli society is religiously fundamentalist.
It's non-negligible, but the reasons ultra-right parties like Otzma Yehudit [0] have a voice in politics has more to do with election calculus by Netanyahu.
The ideal 2+ party parliamentary system seems to be >2 but <6.
Below that, you get bad outcomes (US). Above that, you get bad outcomes (Israel, India).
Somewhere in the middle, it forces the right amount of coerced cooperation... most of the time (Germany).
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otzma_Yehudit
> Considering ~50% of the Knesset is in opposition
You mean < 50% (strictly less than 50%) right? Otherwise the opposition would form a government
"Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire."
The aid workers and their protectors are trying to prevent a mob scene. They are not firing "at". The correct translation was "towards".
https://x.com/COLRICHARDKEMP/status/1938899719364784350
Your source is a Zionist whackjob who thinks Amnesty UK should have its charity status removed
who somehow got dozens of gazans to stand behind him cheering and smiling even though they are terrified of being shot any second now
Dozens of people who have all the liberties that could ever be afforded to anyone, along with sufficient resources to resist coercion.
"If you want food today, pose for the video."
See how easy that was?
> "If you want food today, pose for the video."
anybody who watches that video can clearly see that you are wrong
Amnesty international should be dismantled, they have lost all of their credibility by recirculating direct Russian propaganda and now their reporting about Israel is basically direct Hamas PR branch.
I know it’s an overly simplified view but it’s becoming more and more of a reality, Israel is the 21th century nazi.
Yeah it’s not aryan but israelian race that is superior to the Arabians, what’s the difference ?
They don’t send them in camp, they just destroy completely their land, demolish and populate with israelian. What’s the difference ? A family without home and earning is as good as dead.
There is still some democracy in Israel and a small part of the population opposed to that racism but for how long ? War always push people more and more to extremism.
Given how small and boundaried the areas of land are where they are forcing migration to under penalty of mass death, it’s not overly dissimilar to the concept of rounding people up into camps
How credible is the reporting in in Haaretz?
I am normally fairly well accustomed to the reliability and credibility of newspapers, but I have never read this newspaper.
Historically it's the pre-eminent center-left paper in Israel, with the Jerusalem Post being the center-right flagship.
It is a credible source with a left-wing focus.
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Thanks for the info. The tone of the publication sounded like that.
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So nice that pro-Israeli comments get flagged and moderators do nothing about that. Talking about bias and censorship, I guess some contradictory thoughts are not very welcomed for some who think about themselves as standing in the frontlines of democracy. Also disappointed about @dang, there seems very little objective admin work done here.
I think this should be a moment of reflection that the world is waking up to the atrocities of Israel, and not a time to complain about censorship.
The reason why your comment was downvoted is not because you've made an assertion contrary to the hivemind, but because you did so in a way that is highly dismissive towards the audience you address, using slurs like "Pallywood. That's low-effort trolling which is, indeed, unwelcome in this community, which the downvoting reflects.
Most of the sources in the article are anonymous. Their descriptions of specific shootings are uncorroberated. I question the veracity of this article. It is clearly designed to elicit a pre-determined result and is conjecture and evocative narrative disguised as journalism. If these officers and soldiers are so morally outraged, let them say so on camera with their name underneath. If this is really happening and they are real soldiers who were actually there, then any concerns for their careers or safety should be secondary to revealing the truth in an open and verifiable way.
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The news from Palestine are atrocious; a genocide is unfolding before our eyes, and world leaders are doing nothing to stop it.
A lot of world leaders are helping speed it up.
Like with most genocides in history.
The vast majority barely make the global news.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides
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This genocide has, for many people, burst any illusions of a "rules based world order".
There multiple EU signatory countries of the Rome Statute (pledging to cooperate with ICC) that have welcomed these war criminals... who have warrants out by the ICC.
And the same war criminals are invited to give a speech at the U.S Congress to near unanimous applause. It really makes you wonder if we're the "good guys".
-- edit -- If you're curious how much your congressperson receives from AIPAC (Israeli lobby) this website is a great resource: https://www.trackaipac.com/congress
Indeed, the leading countries of so-called "free world" are willing to commit and support war crimes and break the intl law as well as DPRK or Iran when it serves their intrests, all while signaling virtue and progressiveness.
If you're still wondering if you're the good guys, you haven't been paying attention. I don't think there are any "good guys" when it comes to nations, but for the US it's not even close.
Watching Blinken say "rules based international order" on camera about Ukraine was one of the few times I felt good about American foreign policy, then watching Blinken talk about Israel made it clear that it's rules for our enemies only, and loyalty for our "friends" which is the precise opposite of a rules based international order.
Hearing democrats decry Russian foreign influence was also something I was on board with, but much like Nancy Pelosi saying it's not corrupt when she trades on stock with private information, apparently it's not corrupt when the democratic party accepts foreign aid in the form of AIPAC donations, or just as likely threats of the use of Pegasus against them.
It is quite sad to be an American of good conscience right now. It's hard to respect our country in any way when it shows such little moral fiber and such little backbone.
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Please don't attack other users, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Your comment would be fine without that bit.
Almost no-one[1] recognizes Crimea as part of Russia because it was entirely manufactured. Unmarked foreign soldiers invaded a country, pretended to be local rebels, staged a referendum and immediately asked to join the invading country to give the shameless land grab a veneer of legitimacy. It's a total joke that has nothing in common with genuine ethnic conflicts. The referendums in Crimea and elsewhere had to be staged because even internal polling leaked from the Russian military admin showed that nowhere did the local population support the invasion; speaking German doesn't mean that you want to live in the Third Reich.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...
You missed my point. People outside the West have a different idea of what 'riles based order' means. This does not mean they are right or that you have to agree with them. However, the fact is that they see the world differently to you. You like the West and people outside the West see the West as parasites that have used constructs such as 'rules based order' to get away with colonial exploration and whatnot.
As mentioned, you don't have to agree with them, however, it has to be acknowledged that not everyone thinks like you, and that 'rules based order' means different things to different people.
Incidentally, the global majority are not blue and yellow fanatics. China, India, Africa and South America are not on team blue and yellow.
You have your truth, they have theirs.
Idk, i quite like the West, doesn’t mean that i can’t see the rule based order and the UN as instruments of American imperialism etc. People that just realize this now seem to never have bothered imho. The same politicians that can lie to you about trickle down economics and social reforms can also lie about foreign policy and good vs evil.
> Crimea, where everyone speaks Russian and identifies as Russian
Blatant falsehood. In 2014 it was about 65% (ethnicity) and 80% (language).
In addition the referendum happened after the invasion and de-facto annexation, without the option of "keep the current situation with Ukraine". If you ask me "do you want to be punched or stabbed?" then I'll choose a punch. Doesn't mean I want to be punched.
I think you completely missed my point!
My point is that the 'rules based order' means different things to different people. In the West it means one thing and in the rest of the world it means something else.
My point still stands and must be acknowledged even if you are waving the blue and yellow flag, the rainbow flag and the stars and stripes. In any country that the West has brought war to, they know exactly what 'rules based order' means. You don't have to agree with them, they are just on a different team to you.
The guidelines of HN, to be kind and curious in the comments, are difficult to follow in this case. Outrage doesn't bring anything either, but a polite and curious discussion is impossible. The lack of reflection in the western world on this issue is seriously disturbing.
I hear you and I agree that there are topics which conventional politeness cannot respond to adequately, and that this is one of those topics.
If you take those words "kind" and "curious" in a large sense—larger than usual—I think there's enough room there to talk about even this topic without breaking the guidelines.
How to do this? That is something we have to work out together. You're right that it's difficult.
From a moderation point of view, I can tell you that just avoiding garden-variety flamewar and internet tropes already gets us a lot of the way there. You'd be surprised at how many users who think they're taking a grand moral stand against conventional politeness are simply repeating those. Conventional impoliteness isn't any answer either.
Thanks. I was not critical, especially not of the moderation, just tried to sum up what I think about it, and other than meaningless outrage there was nothing there. And yet there is no point in that because that's just letting off steam. I don't think it should be removed either.
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I'm mostly just seeing people discuss what Israel's military is doing, with people on both sides adding historical context. It's sure as hell not a "hate-fest."
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Their nonsense is already flag'd and dead'd, you'd need to enable showdead in your profile to see their posts.
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I don't agree that it's off topic, nor that HN would be better if we suppressed it and acted like this isn't happening. We're trying for a global optimum*, and the most important part of that is not to settle for local optima, such as not discussing difficult things.
I've posted about this quite a bit, since it inevitably comes up every time this topic appears on HN's front page. Here's another part of the current thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403458.
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
If you're really intent on fostering higher quality, honest discussion maybe don't just make exceptions for the the post about Israeli mistakes which they actually investigate.
There are reasonable discussions to be had, but the submissions which might catalyze them are quickly flagged (as opposed to defended, like this one).
Examples:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44409805
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44409708
If you're going to defend how this inflammatory post is some kind of exception to your policies, you're going to have to do a better job.
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Funnily enough I just finished responding to someone who makes the opposite complaint about us: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403907. Notice that word "always", which both of you use. Interesting, no?
People with strong passions on a topic always feel like the moderators are against them. (As you see, I'm not immune to "always" perceptions either!)
I wish we could do something about that—I don't enjoy having so many people, from all sides of every divisive topic, feeling like we're against them when we're not. However, after years of observing this and thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it's inevitable. The cognitive bias underlying it is just ironclad. We all share this bias, which is why your complaint and the complaint of someone on the opposite side are basically the same.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
It's true that HN has hosted several major threads about Israel/Gaza, but it's also true that many (perhaps a hundred times as many) submissions on the topic have ended up flagged and we haven't turned off the flags. I don't see an "always" in there.
As for Saturdays—that factor is so far from affecting how we moderate HN that I had to puzzle for a bit over what you might mean. Nor does this discussion strike me as one-sided. People wouldn't be disagreeing with each other if it were.
You do good work Dang. I'd love to buy you a beer sometime.
dang I cannot respect you enough. Thank you. I have strong feelings about Palestine and learned quite long ago how powerless my rhetoric is. Although I believe I see the truth, it's clear the world needs yet more time. The only thing that must be done now is to facilitate discourse and to leave the flow of information unimpeded. Time will humble us all.
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I would be very surprised if the majority, or even a significant fraction, of those who are on the "Israel" side were observing Jews. Jews are probably a minority of Israel-supporting commenters, and observing Jews are, in my experience, a minority of these Jews.
I agree, that argument seemed fairly wrong to me.
It's some people, but a minority, I'm fairly certain.
That's a pretty serious accusation, and I don't think you can actually back that up with anything.
Online, pretty much any time Israel is discussed, the majority of commenters (or articles) are anti-Israel. Regardless of why you think that is, it's just a fact. You can't blame dang for that.
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You don't decide what's on topic or the spirit of HN. If anyone does it's Deng, who you're arguing with. Sorry you feel the need to decide what adults can talk about.
I've very well aware who Dang is (clearly you don't, at least write his name correctly). You have a lot of venues to vent on reddit, facebook, twitter etc. Clearly Dang is biased and therefore he bends the guidelines:
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
That's not clear at all. What is clear is an apparent impulse to shut down an unfavourable discussion and throw unproven accusations. There are lots of articles on non-tech posts on HN, you haven't shown he's unfair.
Maybe you should have a bit more intellectual humility. "Clearly Dang is biased" (emphasis mine)? You might be right, you might be wrong, but I for sure don't think you can be certain of dang's motive here, especially considering lots of people on the "other side" of this issue feel he's biased against them!
I believe the majority of stories are voted on, and flagged, by the community. If the community decides these are stories worth discussing, I think they fit within the guidelines of HN. Stories about the Russia/Ukraine war also appear. So do stories about US politics. In all of these threads some people complain that they're off-scope, but apparently enough of the community wants to talk about them that they sometimes get upvoted.
The problem is that generally the community does flag these posts, but the moderators (Dang or others) turn the flags off.
Good. Because a couple dozen people are not the whole community and should not get to decide what's allowed to be discussed by the rest.
https://www.standupforpeace.org/ is intended to help organize around this issue.
If Russia were to win the war and a Ukrainian underground would launch "guerrilla attacks" against Russia, they would be lauded as heros. Now here we have a somewhat similar story, of a foreign invader that displaced the local people not too long ago and a remaining native opposition. There is no version of this that will end up with the Palestinians getting a fair outcome. I've calling this a genocide quite early on, sadly it looks like I was right and there is probably many condemning details we aren't yet aware of.
This scenario already played out before in history; some people may believe those groups to have been heroes, but most can recognize that fighting in the name of independence did not make those groups any less guilty of committing atrocities against civilians. At the same time, that doesn't take away today from the people fighting for freedom legitimately. If anything, those groups hurt their cause in the long-run, as they gave Russia ammunition for propaganda for the next 80+ years.
Just curious what does fighting for freedom legitimately look like in this context for you?
> For Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth, the colonizer's presence in Algeria is based on sheer military strength. Any resistance to this strength must also be of a violent nature because it is the only "language" the colonizer speaks. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frantz_Fanon
Continuing the WWII example, I think of partisans running sabotage operations while hiding out in the forests.
In contrast, if the actions look closer to those of literal Nazi collaborators, then there is only depravity in that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khatyn_massacre
Partisans were kinda notorious for their actions against civilians - sometimes to punish collaborators (although in practice it would often be the entire village deemed collectively responsible if e.g. some partisans were betrayed there, and burned down), but often just targeting the infrastructure to deny it to the Germans even if that meant that civilians would starve to death etc. Here's one famous partisan hero-martyr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoya_Kosmodemyanskaya
Would you say the same about fighting nazi occupation ? Whatever the cost and the consequences (targeting civilians, infrastructure, etc)
I'm not aware of any "resistance groups" fighting the Nazis that created horrors of this kind - though the Soviet army itself probably did. In my opinion, what distinguishes these kinds of massacres is their utter meaninglessness; they serve no military purpose, they are usually even detrimental to military goals. Going door to door killing does nothing to advance a cause - it is purely an expression of hate.
And that's just the beginning. They want to expand to the east.
Poor people :(
And qatar is at it again
Why though, what does it achieve? Do they want to make sure that there will be terrorists / freedom fighters in the future so that they have a reason not to negotiate? Because they expect to "win" if violence continues?
From Israel's perspective, Palestinians are a problem. Long term, they have a few options:
1) Give them their own state. This is difficult for quite many reasons, and Israel (by which I mean the current government) doesn't want that
2) Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation, and let them participate in the regular political processes. The current government certainly doesn't want that, and I have no idea what part of the Palestinians would want that.
3) Continue to treat them as sub-human, and deal with the consequences of the hatred that fosters. That seems to have been the "strategy" before October last year.
4) Try to exterminate or exile them, or at least decimating them to such an extend that the problem becomes smaller.
Since 1) and 2) are (again, from the perspective of Isreal's government) undesirable, and 3) has stopped working, 4) seems to be their current strategy.
>Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation
As the Palestinians are the majority, the Jewish Israelis would become a minority in terms of citizens and votes. This is very much akin to Apartheid South Africa, where a minority ethnic group rules over the rest of the population.
The White minority in South Africa were around 15% of the population, while Jews and Palestinians in Israel & Palestine seem to be much more around a 50%-50% split.
You'd think given Israel's history they'd do everything they could to not make 4) acceptable.
It's very common for people to treat their own side as naturally right, and excuse anything their side does, simply *because* it is their own side.
For a commonplace example, look at a soccer match, fans screaming at the referee whenever a decision doesn't go their team's way.
I think it's the contrary. "Never again" means by any means necessary we will prevent another genocide of our people, even if it means committing genocide unto others. That much has become clear.
I suggest reading this 1923 essay by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, one of the early figures in the history of Israel and the Zionist movement, before Israel became a state.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-iron-wall-quot
> There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority. ...
> The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage. ... Every native population, civilised or not, regards its lands as its national home, of which it is the sole master, and it wants to retain that mastery always; it will refuse to admit not only new masters but, even new partners or collaborators. This is equally true of the Arabs. Our Peace-mongers are trying to persuade us that the Arabs are either fools, whom we can deceive by masking our real aims, or that they are corrupt and can be bribed to abandon to us their claim to priority in Palestine , in return for cultural and economic advantages. ...
> We may tell them whatever we like about the innocence of our aims, watering them down and sweetening them with honeyed words to make them palatable, but they know what we want, as well as we know what they do not want. Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the "Land of Israel." ... Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim.
> We cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for Palestine. And therefore, there is no likelihood of any voluntary agreement being reached.
Now, Jabotinsky was arguably naive in that he thought that after the inevitable forcing of the Arabs to accept Jewish colonization of their homeland, once they have "given up on all hopes", they could be negotiated with on the terms of settlement:
> In the second place, this does not mean that there cannot be any agreement with the Palestine Arabs. What is impossible is a voluntary agreement. As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall. Not till then will they drop their extremist leaders, whose watchword is "Never!" And the leadership will pass to the moderate groups, who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions. Then we may expect them to discuss honestly practical questions, such as a guarantee against Arab displacement, or equal rights for Arab citizen, or Arab national integrity.
The problem, of course, is that once you have that amount of upper hand over someone, you don't actually have to negotiate. You can just keep taking everything you want, by force. And that is exactly where Israel found itself in the long term.
Many of the Zionists viewed the Holocaust as teaching that the Jewish people need a state of their own, no matter what it takes or how many people they have to kill. They viewed the European Jews who had died in the Holocaust as weak, passive cowards who had "allowed" the Holocaust to happen, and went like sheep to their slaughter (ignoring the Warsaw Uprising, and all of the underground Jewish resistance movements). I think Israel's current actions reflect this viewpoint.
I don't think there's much overlapping between those who experienced the holocaust and whoever is in charge in Israel right now.
Speaking for experience from some relatives, the immigration laws for people of jewish faith and ancestry were nigh insurmountable if you came from african, arab or middle east countries and pretty much just nominal even in recent times for those who had even a remote connection but came from the US and the UK.
I have the feeling they are jewish the same way Henry IV was a Catholic when he said "Paris is well worth a Mass".
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Ongoing war has been a crucial component of the current government's re-election campaigns for decades, so any option that ends the war is a non-starter.
I fear their plan is to expand military operations into additional countries until they can get back into a pseudo-stalemate scenario. That'd explain the bombings in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran.
Or exile is probably the key word. There are more historical examples of exoduses than genocides.
The problem with understanding this situation is that it probably has more to do with Israel's internal politics than what the situation looks like on the ground in Gaza and elsewhere. Just a quick read from the wikipedia page should give an idea just how corrupt the situation really is.
There's also the fact that Palestinians aren't a homogenous group in any sense of the word. That makes it hard for them to unite under any political flag. It also doesn't help that the borders are all closed, from both sides, and no neighboring country are willing to accept them.
From the outside the situation certainly looks very bleak.
> Since 1) and 2) are (again, from the perspective of Isreal's government) undesirable, and 3) has stopped working, 4) seems to be their current strategy.
The Israeli govt and people would be very supportive of (2). After all, there are more Arabs living in Israel than in Palestine. The Palestineans, on the other hand, overwhelmingly reject this option.
Funny how exiling Gazans to the West Bank is out of the question. It's almost as if they have designs on the entirety of it.
And why are they Israel’s problem to solve? What about Jordan who expelled EVERY Palestinian in 1970? What about Qatar? What about Egypt? Lebanon? Any Arab country???
Why is it Israel’s problem? There was a legal agreement in 1948. It could have been so simple.
Palestinian militants have destabilized every host country they’ve inhabited. I say this with sympathy for the displaced. Who wouldn’t consider taking up arms if forced from home, stripped of citizenship, corralled into camps, condemned to generations of refugee status.
But it is also obvious, historically, why Arab countries aren’t welcoming masses of Palestinians into their countries even in these dire moments.
Perhaps it shouldn't be up to Israel to decide the future of non-citizens then.
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How does this post misrepresent Israel’s options and its apparent decision?
Palestine has had many opportunities for statehood. Current President of Israel is not completely opposed to statehood, citing security concerns which are clearly valid considering Palestine has repeatedly broken cease fire agreements and Hamas entire goal is to eradicate Israel. They are not being treated as sub-human. Remember Israel warns Palestine of air strikes. There have been many reports of Hamas refusing to allow people to leave sites that are targeted for the sole purpose of of martyrdom. The only people being exterminated is the terrorist Organization Hamas.
All 4 bullet points are either completely false or misleading.
Clearly there is disagreement in Israel to some limited degree about the reality and appeal of a two state solution, but it’s hard to see that as a realistic or desired outcome when Netanyahu keeps saying things like “everyone knows that I am the one who for decades blocked the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger our existence.” https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-boasts-of-thwarting-...
Certainly it’s the stated position and goal of the current government, which is what the initial post said.
> that would endanger our existence
> citing security concerns
If your neighbour keeps throwing stones at you and you agree to not throw stones, they continue to throw stones. You would probably not support any of their wishes.
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> I didn't particularly like Israeli policy towards Palestinians for the last 15 years, but they were certainly not treated as "sub-human".
Garbage. Gaza had its only airport bombed to oblivion 20 years ago and was told any attempt to repair it would result in the same. Its port has been blockaded by the Israeli navy for 15 years. Its only land exits have been heavily locked down.
Israel will routinely turn electricity off to the country for days to punish for something, be it a rocket attack, or teens throwing stones. They’ve even turned off water for days too.
That’s treating people as subhuman, imprison them and do things like that to them for decades.
The Gazan government is a declared enemy of Israel, wanting its destruction. It has used hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to build its militant group to fight Israel.
Given the circumstances, Gaza's neighbors blockade it to keep it from building an even bigger fighting force.
> Israel will routinely turn electricity off to the country for days to punish for something, be it a rocket attack,
You mean, when occasionally Hamas will try to kill random Israeli civilians using rocket fire? Which is basically a declaration of war and causes Israel to fight back?
> or teens throwing stones.
I don't think that's actually true.
> That’s treating people as subhuman,
Israel is treating Hamas-controlled Gaza as a hostile enemy that is intent on destroying it. Given that Hamas, even under the blockade and with all the restrictions in place, still managed to invade Israel and kill a thousand citizens, while kidnapping and holding hostage 250 civilians, and still, a year and a half later, is holding these people hostage and torturing them daily... given that, I think it's hard to say blockading them was a bad idea.
If you think the blockade is the reason for their actions, then you're quite simply wrong - they were founded many years before and always had the same goal of destroying Israel, including working hard against the peace process that was forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority.
> You mean, when occasionally Hamas will try to kill random Israeli civilians using rocket fire? Which is basically a declaration of war and causes Israel to fight back?
Changing the goalposts, are we?
Yes, that happens.
How is Israel turning off electricity and fresh water to the entire country as a result not considered treating the population as sub-human (as in not deserving of basic human needs), the original point of this discussion ?
> If you think the blockade is the reason for their actions, then you're quite simply wrong - they were founded many years before and always had the same goal of destroying Israel, including working hard against the peace process that was forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority.
Oh, you're so close to the point! "The peace process forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority" is exactly why Netanyuhu and his ilk started supporting Hamas. Because when your explicitly stated goal is to evict Palestinians (and Netanyuhu has said as much, in as many words), global sympathy starts to wane when the PLA is looking for peaceful solutions (yes, admittedly, after periods of violence and terrorism) and now Israel looks like the bad guy. So let's prop up Hamas, because they are more extremist, and make a more convenient bad guy.
> How is Israel turning off electricity and fresh water to the entire country as a result not considered treating the population as sub-human (as in not deserving of basic human needs), the original point of this discussion ?
I think that temporarily not supplying a semi-state with electricity while fighting a war they started, does not fit the definition most people would have of "treating them as sub-human". If you do - fine.
> Oh, you're so close to the point! "The peace process forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority" is exactly why Netanyuhu and his ilk started supporting Hamas.
No, you're getting the chronology very wrong here.
Hamas was founded in the 1980s ('88 I think). The main peace talks started in the 1990s, with Oslo getting signed in '93. The terror campaign Hamas started to wage was around that time, trying to derail the peace talks.
In '95, Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli right-wing extremist, and Netanyahu was elected for the first time as opposed to Rabin's "successor" Peres. A major Hamas terror attack right around that election is largely attributed to tipping the election in favor of Netanahu, who won by the thinnest majority in Israeli history to this day (iirc around 10k votes).
Another PM, Barak, was elected to pursue peace and had talks with the PA in 2000 and 2001. This is when the second intifada was launched, unclear how much from Hamas and how much from the PA. Later, a different PM (Sharon), actually considered a right-wing hawk, was elected and initiated the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005. Olmert, his successor, was elected on a platform of disengaging from the West Bank. In the meantime, Hamas was elected to rule Gaza, the blockade was started, and Hamas began shooting rockets at Israel. Peace negotiations were again held in 2008/2009 between Olmert and Abbas.
Only in 2009 did Netanyahu even get back into power.
So the idea that Netanyahu somehow started supporting Hamas - which is a somewhat of a mischaractirization in any case - is only really relevant several years after the blockade started and rockets were fired, which is many years after Hamas worked to shut down the peace process.
> I think that temporarily not supplying a semi-state with electricity while fighting a war they started, does not fit the definition most people would have of "treating them as sub-human". If you do - fine.
And water. For days or more. And well, most of the world considers it a war crime, but hey, if you think it's NBD...
You make it seem like these things all happen like clockwork, with concrete black and white dates.
And well:
> The Hamas movement was founded by Palestinian Islamic scholar Ahmed Yassin in 1987, after the outbreak of the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation. It emerged from his 1973 Mujama al-Islamiya Islamic charity affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Initially, Hamas was discreetly supported by Israel, as a counter-balance to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Netanyahu was formative in Likud. That whole statement used to "prove" Hamas (look, since we're talking about Hamas - let me be unequivocally clear - is a terrorist organization who do despicable things) has goals of excision/extermination... "From the River (Jordan) to the (Red) Sea"... misses the irony that that was Likud's election slogan for a decade or more.
Gaza was governed by Hamas under an Israeli blockade. You don't think that had any effect on Gaza lives?
(An Israeli and Egyptian blockade)
Yes, I do think it had an effect, but less of one than their governing body did, hence my saying so.
Either way, unless you think the blockade itself is "Israel treating Gazans as sub-human", then my point still stands.
You can't kill 2.1 million people by bombing them.
That's why Israel has systematically taken out every hospital in Gaza: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdd25d9vp2qo
Has blocked and sabotaged aid at every turn, including bombing UN food trucks: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/01/1158746
And when allied countries got too uneasy about them just blocking all aid trucks at the border, they set up their own aid organization to trickle out nominal amounts of food while they take pot shots at people desperate enough to show up: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74ne108e4vo
They didn't just make this up as they go, presumably the plans have been sitting around for a long time waiting for a suitable moment.
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> You definitely can kill 2.1 million people by bombing them. It's actually way easier than doing it with a gun
Only if you have enough bombs, which they need to constantly purchase from the US using aid money given to them by the US.
They don't have the stockpiles to eradicate without using their (not so) secret nukes. If they were to do that, there'd be a lot worse follow on effects for Israel. If they simply trickle the deaths over time, people get tired of the horror and need to look away for their own sanity.
Genuinely wondering what terrible effects would there be for Israel if they used nukes? Not morally, internationally. IMO it's perhaps one of the few conflicts in the world where one side could theoretically use nuclear weapons and essentially no one will shoot back. "Trickle the deaths over time" doesn't make any sense - there are probably more births in Gaza than deaths now, and that's not including the general Palestinian population.
Well officially Israel doesn't have nukes. They are widely believed to have them ofc but that's something they have to consider. Breaking the ambiguity by using them could spark a lot of 'we told you they were super dangerous' responses(with action) possibly. You might be right tho.
No one will shoot back now. But it is a signal to other countries that using nukes might not be that bad. Even other banned chemical and biological weapons. So either there is complete chaos or the whole world will have to make sure Israel can not profit from this action.
The point is to colonize Gaza, they won't irradiate it first.
Though probably true, it is irrelevant. Hamas doesn't have the power, and Israel does. This war is almost entirely one sided.
My point was that the comment I was commenting on was false, and that many people who express that sentiment wouldn't be expressing it if the powers were flipped. I'm personally very glad that the powers aren't flipped because I think that if Hamas had F-16s there would many more deaths.
> and that many people who express that sentiment wouldn't be expressing it if the powers were flipped
That is definitely not true.
Do you really genuinely believe that typical american liberal types would ignore a genocide committed against Jewish people by anyone, particularly arabs? In the American liberal mind "genocide" is, essentially, synonymous with The Holocaust, and I think your average liberal is, if anything, sensitive to Jewish discrimination, over and above random people out there in the world. There are definitely anti-semetic Americans and they should be launched into the sun, but I think your sense that people wouldn't care if Jews were being killed in the tens of thousands is extremely off point.
I'm sorry, I live in Europe and I was referring more to the kind of protests and protesters I see around me. The aren't many liberal Americans there. I completely agree that the situation could be different elsewhere.
Jewish groups have been supporting those protests in the US, Europe and Israel.
I have no idea what crowd composition at European protests looks like, but the vast majority of the people upset about the ongoing genocide are not antisemetic.
There is a propaganda campaign in the US trying to conflate being against genocide with being antisemetic. I'm sure similar tactics are being used in Europe.
I am myself supporting many of these protests, and it's exactly from this perspective that I say that many of them are antisemitic. But this is a bit of a useless discussion because neither you nor I can bring any evidence into how antisemitic they are, or how and if they would react if (or when) Palestinians are slaughtering Jews.
If you think it's nonsense, try to go into a anti-war protest with a t-shirt saying that Jews too should be able to live in Middle East. If this thought makes you slightly concerned, you got my point.
Not sure I get your point.
Try the same, but opposite argument.
Something like: Would you wear a t-shirt saying “Palestine is treated unfairly” to oct7 memorial or airport/border crossing?
People are protesting with this kind of shirts in Israel basically every week.
Where do you live in Europe that you believe those opposing the Israeli genocide in Gaza would support a genocide of Jewish people anywhere? Because that is an outrageously delusional view.
I don't think that my exact location is very relevant here, but I urge you to ask protesters around you how they see "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" turning into reality, and let me know what happens with the Jews according to their plans.
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I am an Arab Jew, and I actually have many friends in Gaza. I don't disagree about the usage of the words Genocide, though I think the terms is a little too easy to apply. I think a Holocaust is a completely different thing. There are Palestinians in the Israeli parliament, in the Supreme Court. No one is gathering Palestinians in gas chambers, and in general the Palestinian population only grew since the establishment of Israel. If there were more Jews in Europe after WW2 than before it, no one would remember it as a Holocaust.
There is war in Gaza in the simple sense that rockets from Gaza still shoot into Israel, that Israeli hostages are still being held, and that Hamas itself (the elected goverenement) says it would attack again. It's a very unbalanced conflict, and in it terrible crimes are committed that you can call genocidal. But Jews in the ghettos weren't bombing Berlin - not during WW2 and not after it.
That's an interpretation of events that I've heard from a lot of Israeli folks that are in some way horrified what's happening in Gaza. I think it's very naive and I don't even think most folks saying this believe in it themselves. What actions from the IDF, what imbalance of power, what civilian casualty rates will you need to see to believe that it's no longer a war? Are you really waiting for the actual mass starvation to take place before accept there's intent? Does it have to be gas chambers? Does the death toll have to pass 1 million? 6 million? Do you really think that the Israeli government wants to brings the hostages back? What do you think would happen after they did bring them back? Will you rescind your support then?
Jews in the Ghetto didn't get the chance to shoot rockets at Berlin but had they been able to fight back, I'd have given them the same understanding that I currently extends to Palestinians that grew up in the concentration camp that is Gaza. Hamas is the direct results of Israeli policies of the past decades. Even if the IDF manages to somehow invent some purity test for Gazans that it can use to confirm there are no longer any Hamas members left and it finally declares it's operations concluded, you'll have people shooting rockets at Israel if they keep their policies with the Gaza strip and the West Bank. But long term solutions come later, right now, Israelis need to wake up and say no to what is unfolding in the name of their security.
I will stop thinking that this conflict is a war when there will be a side in it that doesn't have the motivation to take over all the land, and acts towards it by attempting to kill the other. As long as there are two parties that are constantly trying to kill each other, I call that a war. As I wrote elsewhere - that doesn't mean I disagree with the idea that genocidal actions are being taken during this war.
Your comment about Jews in Ghetto is wrong at every possible level. Jews were killed in the Holocaust _without_ a conflict, _without_ attempting to kill Germans, _without_ fighting with anyone over the land and _without_ having any aspirations to control the other. That is an example of a situation where there is no war, and no, it has nothing to do with the situation between Israelis and Palestinians.
Stop telling lies about Gaza conflict being "war". Israeli military has absolute superiority over Palestinians. What it is is a genocidal campaign meant to wipe them off the face of the Earth.
Also, stop using the Holocaust as a propaganda tool. My grandfather happened to be a Buchenwald concentration camp survival. It didn't give him or anybody else any right to violate Geneva convention.
First, I don't recall you set the rules for discussion here. Now, to your points:
1. Genocidal actions can take place in a war, and no definition of a war ever said that the parties have to be of equal strength. Every war that was ever won by one side or another had some sort of power supremacy. Go read the legal definition for genocide and you'll learn that the question of imbalance of power plays absolutely no role in it.
2. I haven't used it as a propaganda tool, and in fact it wasn't me who brought it up at all. I was only commenting that the current situation in Gaza is not comparable to the Holocaust, and I fully stand behind it. To make it clear, I am very happy that it isn't comparable, and I wouldn't want to see any Palestinian suffering like my ancestors did. Not once in my life have I used it to justify crimes committed by Jews, so please learn to read before commenting on my posts. If anything, I always believed that what Jews went through should serve as a reminder for us to never allow things like that from happening again, and I still see the Holocaust as perhaps one of the main driving forces in my opposition to this war.
I didn't mention any HN rules, so you're mainly arguing with yourself.
Shooting at mothers trying to get humanitarian aid for their starving children does not fulfil any definition of war I am aware of.
Read history books yourself. Once one side of a war becomes dominant, it just ends.
Unless it is not really a war but a hideous genocide campaign cynically carried out by Israeli government under the pretext of self-defensive war.
> Once one side of a war becomes dominant, it just ends.
Sorry for being pedanto, but other side must stop resisting for war to end. Guerrilla warfare is quite usual when there is great power imbalance.
There were more than 100 armed jewish uprisings in Germany during WWII:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_resistance_in_German-oc...
Going through your criteria in order: Of course they defended themselves, including attempts to kill Nazis. They also attempted to keep their homes, and certainly would have rather Germany have different leadership
Does that somehow mean the concentration camps were a "war"?
I think the parent meant there were no shooting before the genocide started. Jewish resistances were reactive to nazi actions.
I.e. there was not even a possibility that nazis were defending. While somebody from Palestine side did fire the opening salvo on oct7.
> While somebody from Palestine side did fire the opening salvo on oct7.
Now, that's a re-writing of history if I've ever seen one.
> Israeli and Palestinian deaths preceding the 2023 Gaza war. Of the Palestinian deaths 5,360 were in Gaza, 1,007 in the West Bank, 37 in Israel. Most were civilians on both sides.
Quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Israeli%E2%80%...
See the chart on the top right with the orange bars
I do understand that it was not the first first salvo.
And that blockading policy and financing of anything but fatah and bunch of other stuff influenced today situation.
But you must admit that oct 7 was unusual escalation. Which now are used as the reason for current idf actions.
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I suspect that it's you who have undergone deep mental conditioning if you think that I am justifying this war. One can hold a complex opinion, and nowhere have I said that I think this war is justified.
Not only I do not belittler their suffering, I personally helped some of them out. I also ran an organization that provided thousands of Gazan with electricity, and I was arrested by the Israeli police when encouraging Palestinians in Israel to vote. At the same time I have family members who were killed (and kidnapped) on the first day of this war. Life isn't black and white.
Thank you for sharing your perspective Yoav, it's refreshing to read comments from an actual observer and not an army of armchair warriors.
I am completely OK with being conditioned against siding with a 20 month long genocidal onslaught committed by an apartheid ethnostate against a blockaded territory with no sovereignty and no actual defenses of its own.
I completely agree that life isn’t always black and white. But right now it is, just like it was in countless other situations in the past. You can think it’s “complicated” all you like, but the evidence is overwhelmingly against such a framing, which is where the conditioning comes into the picture.
It is great that you volunteered in Gaza, but it’s also tragic that you fail to see what is happening even after directly interacting with Gazans.
Some day in the future, when free Palestinians can build museums and monuments and make movies to mourn those lost in this genocide, everyone will always have been against this.
Netanyahu has privately expressed preference for terrorist Hamas over political Fatah, and Israel has propped up those terrorist groups in the past (this is well documented not a conspiracy theory).
Why? Because Netanyahu and a good chunk of the Israeli population want the Palestinians to cease to exist and its territory to be part of Israel. An opponent that wants to achieve its goals through political action and appeals to the international community meant that there was a risk of Israel being dragged into a two-state commitment. A terrorist group attacking civilians gives those hardliners a perpetual excuse to go to war.
In short: the answer is yes, that appears to be precisely the point: to prevent any possibility of peaceful reconciliation and drive the Palestinians to eventual expulsion or eradication.
> to prevent any possibility of peaceful reconciliation
This seems like a feasible goal.
> and drive the Palestinians to eventual expulsion or eradication.
That strategy haven't worked for what 50 years, what makes anyone think it'll work anytime ever?
The Palestinians don't exactly have anywhere to go.
If there is a lot of malnutrition, population numbers will change without migration.
That would take a long time, and the world won't look away for that long -- I hope not
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If Israel wanted to kill all Palestinians, wouldn't it be easier to start with the millions of Palestinians living in Israel, unarmed, instead of going into Gaza?
They are doing that. Most people in Gaza were displaced from other legal Palestinian territories. Gaza is was the (big) internment camp.
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If that is true, Israel would now actually, literally be persuing the exact same politics Nazi Germany did until they escalated their attempted genocide by making it intolerable to genocide by industrial scale murder. Not a good look for Israel, at all.
Israel cares less about looks and more about american support, ehich this administration has cut them a blank cheque for
What is the evidence for that?
If Israel wanted them to leave, wouldn't they seek cooperation with a nation that is willing to have them, and organize mass transports there?
At least I haven't heard of any such thing.
> wouldn't they seek cooperation with a nation that is willing to have them
There is no such nation. Iirc Israeli politicians have more than once responded to critique with "you take them, then". But there aren't any takers.
Just like the Jews in Germany back before WW2, in fact.
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Please don't take HN threads into hard-core ideological and/or nationalistic flamewar. I realize this topic tends strongly in that direction, but that's not a reason to go there, it's a reason not to go there.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Other commenters are doing it too, but it's a matter of degree, and the rhetoric in your post here is a degree worse. You can make your substantive points without resorting to "cult", "stamped out", "criminal ideology" and so on. Fortunately it doesn't look like your account has a habit of doing this, so it should be easy to fix.
You do realise that the people writing for Haaretz are also nationals of that country right? Maybe learn to be precise, helps in all situations.
When asked, in an representative online, poll, 47% percent of Israeli agreed that the IDF should kill all the inhabitants of cities it conquered[1].
So sure, workers at Haarez probably don't, but when the extermination feeling is widespread enough that 47% feel they can openly agree to a question proscribing the killing women and children, then insisting on the insistence on precision comes across mostly as an attempt at distraction.
[1] https://theconversation.com/in-israel-calls-for-genocide-hav...
Israel here obviously standing for "the current government of Israel" (with presumed majority support), not "every single Israeli person".
Fortunately many Israelis are against the ongoing genocide, but powerless to stop it.
There's a palestinian guy living in the US making the rounds on tiktok, talking to random israeli people on something like omegle. The amount of hate he gets is nothing short of depressing. Children cursing at him, IDF soldiers saying they want to kill every single person in Gaza, calling them sub-humans... sounds like the fourth reich is here already.
All this to say you're right, but the government is indocrinating more and more people for these views.
Be very wary of any such weaponized truth: you don't know how much selection bias is at play, how much confirmation bias is requested, you don't even know if the interviewees are what they say they are.
You raise a very valid point, which i will take in consideration. I don't believe it to be the case, since the person in question also shares positive interactions, and i believe some of the worst "contacts" have been doxxed. But your point still stands.
You can find the videos here: https://www.youtube.com/@HamzahSaadah
It is indeed sickening. They straight out tell you how they want all Palestinian children to die.
People seem to use the down-vote on my comment, why? I pasted it for discoverability. It is exactly what the parent is talking about, and it indeed is sickening, go check out some videos where many people say disgusting shit. If you do not think it is disgusting, then please imagine they are talking about your children?
And if you disagree with the guy, go dislike his videos.
I disagree: when anything is obviously meaning what someone obviously thinks it means, then others will apply their own obvious understanding of it to justify very non-obvious behaviours.
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> It's not pretty, but
That's a wild phrase to use in the context of killing indiscriminate civilians after luring them to the food they're desperate for.
There is something so deeply disturbing about how casually inhumane Israelis can be. They then drop “Hamas” like it’s a full sentence that magically cleanses whatever depravity they just spewed.
And it’s all so casual and self righteous.
its not pretty? Selling for profit? You missed the "ah war is hell. Just give up resisting so everything will be fine" part of the propaganda book.
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The perpetual fight is mutually beneficial to all. The extremist right would not have been able to claim large swaths of land had they not had the air cover to raze Gaza. Now there is serious talk of going back into Gaza. And talk by Trump to turn it into a seaside resort has the settler movement giddy.
"all"
Is anyone surprised at horrific behaviour by Israel and the IDF at this point?
Every country has a percentage of right wing psychopaths. Unfortunately, they seem to be running the government in Israel.
Israel's intended end game seem to be to make Gaza completely uninhabitable, so that the Palestinians are forced to leave, then Israel can grab the land. A bit like they are doing in the West Bank, but on turbo mode. However, the Palestinians don't want to leave their land (why should they?) and no other state wants to take them. So we are left with enormous human misery, with no end in sight.
Most baffling of all, many Western states are not just turning a blind eye, but actively supporting Israel. Shame on them.
Gaza is the the grave yard of not only Palestinians, but the lie of a rules-based international order. Israel has been allowed to get away with - the backing on it's western allies - flagrant legal violations of international law, alongside accusations of Genocide by the ICJ.
The accusations of genocide were brought by South Africa, not the ICJ which hasn't made any finding on the matter yet.
Clever piece of engineering that needs to be studied. The US and Israel setup a company/foundation to "distribute" aid. I guess to escape the accusations that they are systematically starving Gaza's population. It seems to be working, they can hide behind this while inflicting even more crimes against Palestinians.
I was going to ask if people really fall for this, but it seems like they do.
The comment section in the article is revolting. I don't know if they're state actors, or if they're real people with those beliefs, but my god.
Considering the discourse of the past two years and personal experience, I am afraid to say that yes, those are most likely very real people who very openly ignore 50% of the context and generalize their hate towards a whole population of a single country. In addition (and that's from, sadly, day to day experience) those are the same people who extrapolate their hate on one particular ethnical group.
I would have expected HN readers at least check on some context before starting beating their drums. Haaretz is a propaganda outlet that has been stocking the fire under everything related to Israel, for decades now.
> I don't know if they're state actors, or if they're real people with those beliefs
Both. And also trolls, and these days GenAI.
Some say "Never again means now", with the flag of Israel, and no sense of irony or hypocrisy. I wonder if any say the same words with the flag of Palestine? Hamas is still also genocidal, with their leaders giving similar comments about all Jews as the current Israel coalition members give about Palestinians.
When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers. The IDF and Hamas are the elephants, and there are many innocent civilians (metaphorically grass) suffering because of it. The supremely dominant power of the IDF means the suffering grass is overwhelmingly on one side of a border that Israel doesn't recognise, but there are innocents everywhere.
I don't have any answers. I have learned to recognise this kind of mindset, but I cannot find words to act as levers to change those minds.
Your comment is full of attempts to justify, excuse and underplay what the IDF are doing and many Israelis believe in. From Hamas to GenAI to trolls.
Whatever the historical record that brought us here, the fact is, Israel's standing army (not some personal goons of some dictator, the standing army of a moden democratic nation), appear to be practically all in on executing a systemic genocide. And I don't think there's anyway you can justify or underplay that.
Maybe the answer you're looking for is that good people anywhere shouldn't let anyone sell them a holocaust no matter the deal.
I'm literally in that comment describing the IDF as genocidal and dominant. In another comment on this thread, I liken the damage the IDF is causing to "a nuke going off". If you think this is "underplay", what words would you have used? Would you insist I blame all jews, even though this linked story is literally showing jewish people living in Israel being critical of their own government's actions? Would you insist that I said "Palestinians" instead of Hamas, when it's just the militants and not the civilians whose actions on that side I blame?
I do not divide either my criticism or sympathy by nationality, I divide it by victimising and victimhood — and even then with the humility to know that I cannot see through the fog of all the propaganda I'm being shown.
But can't you see that your description of the situation as elephants crashing, your instinct to bring up a hypothetical that there's some Palestine flag waving person out there that has the same extremist thinking that the Israelis are using today, that your need to remind yourself that Hamas (to borrow the words of some other folks in the comments today, an organization that's literally _surrounded_ by overtly hostile populace) is genocidal...can't you see how replying this to what the GP said and the article as a whole can be "mistaken" to be such an attempt at underplaying?
No, I don't blame all Jews at all and I've seen a lot of Jewish people actively work to stop the genocide. But I definitely blame this narrative of Hamas is what's been used to sell to genocide to what are otherwise normal and compassionate people. I believe the only people who can stop this are the Israeli citizens saying no and the time was way too long ago.
Fwiw, I don't read any excuse or justification in parents post. The fact is that the IDF are (right now) more effective than Hamas in exterminating the other party.
What you're saying is completely true. But I like to think that most Israelis believe that the other party doesn't include the countless civilians that were killed so far and are facing dire starvation right now. Israeli people should not let their grief and their fear prevent them from saying no from those amongst them that want to do terrible things.
If we look at history, do the oppressed always become oppressors?
No. Many times the oppressed simply cease to exist (by assimilation, assassination, or other means).
Neanderthals aren’t going to become oppressors.
For a more recent example of a group that was basically exterminated wholesale because they refused to fight back as a matter of principle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriori
Well yeah, I meant if they go on to survive and become significant enough to be considered oppressive...
I'd say it's very hard for a powerful nation to not suppress somebody in the long run.
Just think of any powerful nation (or group of people, or whatever), and try to think of somebody they have oppressed, or are still oppressing. It's typically not hard to come up with examples.
Agreed. Its possible that the group survived their oppression and becomes powerful enough to oppress, they loose their identify, in the sense that their culture evolves, along the way. Resulting in oppression along some axis.
Mostly, yes.
Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire, then became conquerors of the world.
Russians were oppressed by the Mongols, then became conquerors of Eurasia.
Communists were oppressed by Tsarists, then became ruthless oppressors themselves.
Protestants were oppressed in Europe, so they set sail to America and became oppressors of the natives.
Not sure if I would lump all those up together, these examples are overly broad and have little in common. There's more than a thousand years and basically no causal link between Roman persecution of early Christians and Crusades, let alone European imperialism, especially if you take Ethiopian, Greek, Georgian, and Armenian Christians into account. Same for Russians and Mongols, there's a pretty large gap with a ton of events in between, and Mongol Empire was humongous to begin with, it wasn't about Rus' in particular. And communists that became ruthless oppressors were already radicalized during the persecution, it was literally the radical wing of a militant faction of a huge umbrella party that included people that would have felt right at home in modern EU (e.g. Kollontai and her early activism).
The better explanation is simple and banal - power concentration makes people abuse it.
> There's more than a thousand years and basically no causal link between Roman persecution of early Christians and Crusades
You don't need to go that far forward, though. It took Christians <400 years to promulgate the Edict of Thessalonica that made Christianity (and of a very particular kind at that!) to be the only legal religion. And one can argue that it's no coincidence that it happened pretty much as soon as they have gained the political upper hand in the Roman Empire.
> Same for Russians and Mongols, there's a pretty large gap with a ton of events in between
Not really. Muscovy was still paying tribute to the Golden Horde and recognizing their supreme authority under Ivan III. His grandson Ivan IV ("the Terrible") conquered the Tatar state, making its lands such as Kazan part of his empire, and sent an expedition to start the conquest of Siberia.
The inaccuracies here are not so much with timing, more so with lack of precision wrt the groups involved. In general, though, I think it's fair to say that, for most part of human history, the oppressed become the oppressors pretty much as soon as they are capable of it.
I think that a lot of monotheistic religions, including Christianity, are generally intolerant to other branches and religions, especially when the faith is supposed to represent absolute truth, so it's probably unrelated to the history of persecution. And Muscovy wasn't the only land opressed by Mongols.
>In general, though, I think it's fair to say that, for most part of human history, the oppressed become the oppressors pretty much as soon as they are capable of it.
Doesn't this also hold for non-oppressed that have the opportunity? Although I suppose it'd be hard to find any examples of non-oppressed groups. Pillaging or conquering neighbors was pretty much the norm throughout the history. Rus' was converted to Christianity in part to stop raids such as Siege of Constantinople of 860.
I wouldn't consider this "lumping the groups together", or that they must exist together in time... its likely a group may require many generations before they can "oppress" another group.
My list of examples is very similar to this one and the ven diagram here is "was oppressed became oppressor"... in most cases it appears that only if the oppressed are destroyed or I would argue in the case of America- controlled at the margins... then they don't circle back around to abuse their newly acquired power.
Were protestants the oppressors of the native Americans? Many partook, for example the French.
Communists were absolutely not oppressed by Tsarists.
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I don't know if it's always the case, but it's true if given the opportunity. In the end all people are the same. Cultures may be different, but our lizard brains are the same. Us vs them, and dehumanizing others into something less than humans, whose suffering does not concern us.
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No racial flamewar on HN, please. I realize this topic is fraught with it but that's no reason to jump straight in—it's a reason to do the opposite:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: yikes—quite apart from the current topic, you've been breaking the site guidelines a lot with flamewar posts and personal attacks. We ban accounts that post like this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604429 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604394 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596070 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596065 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43593235 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43593219 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322414 (March 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43251495 (March 2025)
I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also posted good things, but if you want to keep participating in this community, it would be good to review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on.
Edit: I did end up banning you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403629. We simply can't have people posting like that to HN.
Is this a new karma system where for each post that doesn't break the guidelines, you're allowed one that does?
No, this is how HN moderation has worked for over a decade.
Wait, my message was obviously intended as a bit sarcastic (which isn't very smart, I'll admit). But are you actually saying that I'm now allowed two racist comments without risking a ban? (three, counting this guideline-abiding comment?)
I'm not saying that, no.
Then I don't understand what you were saying by "this is how HN moderation has worked for over a decade", wasn't that a response to my previous comment that said exactly that?
Oh, I see. Let me try to be clearer.
It's not the case that "for each post that doesn't break the guidelines, you're allowed one that does", and that's not what I was doing. When I said HN moderation has worked the same way for over a decade, I didn't mean that the description you gave was accurate—it isn't. (Nor, I assume, did you mean it to be, since you were being sarcastic.)
I meant that what I was doing in the GP comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403362) was standard practice. As you can see from https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que..., it goes back a long time.
We try to persuade users to follow the site guidelines, and tend to give warnings and make requests before banning accounts, especially if they are active participants who have been around for a while. We don't rush to banning such users; we try to explain the intended use of the site and convince them to honor it. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.
Why such an involved effort just to keep racists on the website?
This feels like a 'have you stopped beating your wife yet' question. Those are not really very motivating.
Thank you for clarifying and sorry about the sarcasm.
I am absolutely no one, but I'd like to highlight that this kind of policy is (indirectly) why I don't use HN. Tolerating intolerance to the extent you do (which isn't 100% but still a lot) allows people like the one you responded to originally to drive hackers like me, my loved ones, my colleagues and my students away, while attracting other hateful people, as they see that they are tolerated here. In a possibly too extreme comparison, this the same dynamic as the "nazi bar problem" (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nazi_bar). I hope you know what kind of community these policies has made of HN.
I don't agree with that characterization of HN. In my experience, people who make this complaint are usually coming from a place of political passion. That's understandable, and we might have more common ground on that level than you'd expect. But it's no basis for operating a community, assuming you don't want to just exclude people with different views and backgrounds to your own.
It's easy to invoke strong pejoratives like "hateful" when describing people who have opposing viewpoints and passions to one's own—in fact, it's hard not to. But it leads to a rapid escalation. A bad comment turns into a "hateful view", "hateful view" turns into "a hateful person", and soon that leaps to "how can you tolerate hateful people on your site". (The next logical step would be to suspect the mods of being "hateful people" themselves.) This escalation is, in my view, bad for community. It leads to uniformity within one's own group and rage and enmity towards difference.
Having banned countless accounts for breaking the site guidelines over the years, I can't accept that "hateful people" are tolerated here for very long. When accounts are posting abusively, we may give them more warnings than you (or a lot of other users) would prefer, but we ban them in the end. A good example is this very subthread. I ended up banning that account (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403629). (Not, I should probably add, because of this or any other conversation about moderation, but just out of standard practice.)
p.s. You are not no one! I appreciate your comments and I wish I could write a better reply—I know a better one is possible, that expresses more precisely how I think about this. Alas it would take me hours, so I'm making do with one I don't much care for.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 is one time that I got closer to it, and maybe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31812293. I still like the phrase "supported communication across differences". Unsupported communication across differences just leads to Hobbesian flamewar.
I have trouble seeing it your way. The person you were originally responding to, and originally wanted to tolerate because they also did good posts, was saying blatantly racist things about "the arabs in palestine" and that they essentially deserved the war crimes they're suffering, or that they brought it on themselves or whatever. To me this sounds like pretty straightforward political and ideological hate.
But anyway, this is only one case and we should not base our thinking just on it. The problem is the policy (or the way it's systematically enforced) and its broader results. I don't know the details of how the moderation works here nor have I any statistics. I only know that I saw too much racism and hate towards whole groups of people because of their identity here in the past, and that when I occasionally stumble across a HN link, I usually can still see that hate being a lot more represented than in other spaces I frequent, and that the kind of policy you described to me has never worked at building diverse and interesting communities.
What are some diverse and interesting communities you have experience with that work differently?
We appreciate your biased comment, aimed at portraying Palestinians as terrorists and non-indigenous to the area, cherry-picking history as it suits your narrative. We're not interested, though. Thank you.
I really don't think that it's a coincidence that just as this news was starting to gain traction a few weeks ago, Isreal started bombing Iran. It was the perfect distraction.
A street in Gaza, a map of dreams, and the people desperate to live
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/jun/26...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44387199
There has been so much disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda from so many nations and interested parties that I find it impossible to believe any claims anymore without seeing a video for myself. In this case, there are none. Even according to the article, the soldiers were ordered to fire on looters, which seems reasonable in the context of this war.
I doubt you will believe even if you see a video. You will probably think it is fake.
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This is a description of blackest evil.
Anyone who knows they are raising an assault rifle to a crowd of civilians and pulls the trigger is a mass murderer and a psychopath
The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. -- Thucydidus
Spoken by the Athenians and resulting in a war that, as Thucydides's audience knew quite well, Athens lost big-time.
Which actually holds up quite well for everybody who loves to bring up that quote: realism aka "we shouldn't face the consequences of our actions" is the obvious rallying cry for people facing the consequences of their actions.
It is descriptive, but not prescriptive.
If neither side can agree on peace, if neither side has objectives which the other will accept, if neither side is willing to compromise; What other outcome is possible in terms of realpolitik?
It is upsetting to observe. We all want better for humanity.
There have been cases in the past where an external strong power has been able to suppress both sides but it has to be done for generations until the reasons are lost to time.
Depending on who you ask, there have been a variety of external powers stirring the pot. Most people are horrified by the violence. Beyond the territorial, religious and cultural disputes there are opposing geopolitical factions.
Of course it is understandable to be outraged by the violence and atrocities. The human suffering is real, but arguments focusing on these points can miss the larger picture. The underlying incentives dictate outcomes. Atrocities are often marketed as rationalizations for further violence.
We want to prescribe an outcome without atrocities. Yet discussions fall into recrimination before they can describe the conflict coherently.
When power, not justice, guides actions and policies, yes.
I guess the Israeli government's original plan to arm and support drug gangs and literally ISIS (euphemistically called 'clans') as "aid security" wasn't working out? Especially after it was revealed said "security" was stealing and reselling the food aid under the protection of IDF while the Israeli govt. and media blamed the looting on Hamas.
And after the Israeli opposition leader exposed the whole charade and Netanyahu defended it saying “On the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas. What’s wrong with that? It only saves the lives of Israeli solders, and publicising this only benefits Hamas.”
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/06/netanyahu-defe...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Abu_Shabab
[3] - https://archive.is/20250606144357/https://www.ynetnews.com/a...
To be honest, I do prefer drug dealers over Hamas islamists in general. And where exactly is the proof the gangs are connected to ISIS?
"The basis for Lieberman’s allegation of ties to IS was unclear."
It is easy to throw dirt and hope something sticks, but the main thing speaking against his group seems Netanjahu's support in my opinion. But otherwise I don't see the scandal so much here. Especially not compared to the scandal of intentionally targeting civilian population and indiscriminate killing of starving people like the article states.
Edit: But I just read
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerem_Shalom_aid_convoy_loot...
And well, that is indeed better to show who we are dealing with, ruthless criminals who loot and shoot a UN aid convoy for profit.
> I do prefer drug dealers over Hamas islamists
Netanyahu prefers Hamas, he was propping them up prior to the current battles, according to the New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...
Also, if, as in the recent New York City mayoral debate, US politicians are supposed to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which it recognizes itself as, then I don't see the big deal over Palestine as an Islamic state. I myself would prefer to see a secular PFLP state, but the Zionist entity, US, Canada etc. fight against the PFLP, proscribe them as "terrorists" etc.
"he was propping them up prior to the current battles"
Those words indicate something different, than allowing quatari money to reach the civilian part of Hamas government as part of a temporary peace deal. Because that sounds actually reasonable to me.
Now there is indeed more, like this:
"Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who is now Mr. Netanyahu’s finance minister, put it bluntly in 2015, the year he was elected to Parliament.
“The Palestinian Authority is a burden,” he said. “Hamas is an asset.”"
But those words came without context (just a youtube video, that I won't watch right now).
Palestinians preferred them as well since they elected Hamas.
When was the last actual election?
Ironically, the closest you will get to something approaching that type of Marxist-Leninist utopia in the Middle East, is living in an Israeli kibbutz near the border with Gaza.
Why is a civic state in the Middle East is utopia? Do you think that the US not based on white nationalism is also a Marxist-Leninist utopia?
> To be honest, I do prefer drug dealers over Hamas islamists in general. And where exactly is the proof the gangs are connected to ISIS?
A simple dealer vs an armed wing of a religious theocracy who think people like me are the devil incarnate, I'd pick the dealer.
An organised armed drug network that necessarily has to be at least comparable strength to an existing network of religious theocrats who are obviously getting external support owing to the ability to continue fighting despite the evidence of systematic destruction of their civil environment that satellite imagery shows has been in aggregate comparable in scope and depth to a nuke going off…
I don't want either of them anywhere near anyone I care about. Even if the latter wasn't associated with a different group of religious zealots.
It gets ugly at the latest when remembering that "looting" was always a core part of the Israeli narrative to explain the humanitarian crisis.
Even before the current siege/semi-siege, the standard response to calls from aid orgs had been essentially "Look, it's not us. We're letting in aid, but it's not our fault if Palestinian armed gangs themselves are looting it after we let it in. Palestinians are just too stupid to organize their own survival."
Of course that response was already ridiculous back then: The 1000s of aid trucks stuck at the Egypt-Gazan border are definitely not kept there by Hamas or armed gangs. Even the looting attacks themselves were suspicions: Aid orgs kept reporting they were happening in areas under full control of the IDF - and IDF was forbidding using any other route[1]:
> Israel is doing the opposite of ensuring aid can be delivered to Palestinians in need. For example, a U.N. memo recently obtained by the Washington Post concluded that the armed gangs looting aid convoys could be “benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence” and “protection” from Israel’s military, and that a gang leader had a military-like compound in an area “restricted, controlled and patrolled” by the Israeli military.
The gangs operate in areas under Israeli control, often within eyeshot of Israeli forces. When convoys are looted, Israeli forces watch and do nothing, even when aid workers request assistance. Israeli forces refer to one area about a kilometer from its Kerem Shalom border checkpoint as “the looting zone.” The IDF-designated looting zone might be the only place in Gaza that Israeli forces won’t shoot an armed Palestinian.
But there was still at least some benefit of the doubt that the armed gangs were just some ordinary criminals exploiting the situation. Claims that the gangs themselves were operating under Israeli orders were conspiracy theories.
Netanyahu now confirmed those theories as reality.
[1] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/gaza-aid/
Well, Israel could have worked with the UN… it’s not the like choices are ONLY Hamas or Drug Dealers.
Unless, of course, delivering aid is not actually your intent.
> To be honest, I do prefer drug dealers over Hamas islamists in general. And where exactly is the proof the gangs are connected to ISIS?
Comments like this coming from an audience currently not being genocided is going to haunt our history forever.
Can you get a bit more specific here?
Because it kind of reads like an attack towards me for not caring about genocide. If you are curious about my point of view, it is that both Hamas and Israeli leadership belongs in prison and the US and EU should stop supporting them immediately. But that doesn't mean I support anyone who wants to erease Israel. Do you support Hamas?
This is an article about idf warcrimes, I think the comment you are responding to is just pointing out that you are immediately pivotting to condemning Hamas
But the comment he's responding to already talks primerely about Hamas, it's not he who switched the topic from IDFs horrors to Hamas crimes.
> I guess the Israeli government's original plan to arm and support drug gangs and literally ISIS (euphemistically called 'clans') as "aid security" wasn't working out? Especially after it was revealed said "security" was stealing and reselling the food aid under the protection of IDF while the Israeli govt. and media blamed the looting on Hamas.
To which he responded his opinions about drug and faith dealers.
Asking if I support Hamas makes this unworthy of a response.
You could just state "no", if you don't, then I would have apologized.
But you gave a response, but avoided the question. Together with your comment history and wording I do conclude now that you do.
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> First, Hamas are openly genocidal terrorists
Israel is the one actually committing a genocide though.
> the claim that Mossad funded ISIS is antisemitic propaganda, on the face of it.
Is that why ISIS apologised after accidentally attacking IDF? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-is...
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No, because drug dealers by definition mainly sell drugs to people who want them.
A subset of them indeed engages with dark methods like mixing highly addictive drugs into harmless ones and turf war, but the majority just sells things.
Before weed was legal in germany I engaged with quite some of them and they were mostly decent people all in all. Not the greatest and often messed up themself a bit, but otherwise no danger to me or anyone else. My choice if I damaged myself with their products.
A islamist on the other hand is buisy by definition with spreading the rule of Islam over everyone, everywhere.
Dangerous to any non muslim.
So you're equating the drug dealing "clans" in Gaza to your local streetside dealer in Germany?
Both Hamas and the clans are cancers to society, and it's abhorrent that the IDF is dealing with them to distribute aid, instead of being directly involved (which they can easily commit to).
My main issue was equating the term "drug dealer" with something worse than a terrorist.
Now as my edit above hopefully made clear, apparently they ain't just "drug dealers", but ruthless criminals who loot and shoot a UN aid convoy for profit.
And abhorrent are indeed many things about the whole situation.
Sourced articles like these are good and further proof that Israel is a psychopathic state and society. But what's odd is to depict is as "surprising" or even shocking when the same state has been carpet bombing civilian, including women and children for 16 months straight, causing what is estimated at 300 000 deaths, committing every single atrocity or infringement to the international law possible, including targeting medics, journalists, using starvation as a weapon of war, bragging on it on social media, having politicians incite to eradicate the remaining part of the Gaza population, and I could go on and on with nameless atrocities. So just to put things in perspective, this article depicts a horrible incident, but it is entirely in line with the rest of the Israeli policy, and unfortunately pales in comparison with the ongoing large-scale massacre.
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Now try to spin tanks firing ”warning shots” at civilians.
They are also firing SHELLS for warning. Direct article quote:
> In one incident, the soldier was instructed to fire a shell toward a crowd gathered near the coastline. "Technically, it's supposed to be warning fire – either to push people back or stop them from advancing," he said. "But lately, firing shells has just become standard practice. Every time we fire, there are casualties and deaths, and when someone asks why a shell is necessary, there's never a good answer. Sometimes, merely asking the question annoys the commanders."
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There were Nuremberg trials because Germany capitulated. We don't even have sanctions on Israel and the people responsible will only be jailed if they step outside Israel.
I am not optimistic at all and I am very afraid for Gazans.
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> We are the most moral and ethical army in the world.
I mean, the Swiss army has never invaded another country.
That's a pretty high bar to surpass.
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Condemning Israel will imply admission of complicity for many of these nations.
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We've asked you several times to stop breaking the site guidelines. You've continued to do it anyway. That's not cool.
Moreover, your account has been using HN primarily for political/nationalistic battle, which is also a line at which we ban accounts, quite separately from individual violations.
If you keep doing this, we're going to ban you. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use this site as intended going forward, we'd appreciate it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42177567 (Nov 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39151611 (Jan 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36472783 (June 2023)
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> This is a delusional take, please stop pretending
Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. It only makes things worse.
Your comment would be just fine without those bits.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I respect your judgment, so I've edited out the first bit, but honestly I feel it's not an unreasonable thing to say in response to genocide denial - it was said about the claim, not about the person, and in my opinion it's an accurate description of that claim. /my two cents
I don't disagree with that.
From a moderation point of view, it's a question of the effect that these bits have on other people in the community, and therefore the quality of the discussion. It's obviously near-impossible to have a thoughtful conversation about a topic like this across the vast differences (ideological, national, emotional) that separate people. In such a context, even provocations that feel small and justified can set the neighborhood on fire.
If the discussion devolves into just another internet screaming match where people hurl pre-existing talking points and just get even more riled up in rage, then the HN thread is a failure. Maybe it's too much to hope for anything better on this topic, which is probably the most divisive and emotional one we've ever seen, but I think we have to try. That's we allow the topic to appear on the HN front page from time to time. Not to allow it would be easier, at least in the short term, but inconsistent with the intended spirit of the site.
The bulk of your post wasn't doing anything like flamewar at all, so the swipey bits were particularly unfortunate.
p.s. I don't mean to pile on, but "please stop pretending" is also a swipe. You can't know whether someone else is pretending, and there's no reason to suppose that people aren't sincere in their convictions about a highly-charged topic (separately from whether their beliefs are true or false). If you lead by denying that, the rest of what you have to say will have little chance of being heard.
Why not just get rid of the whole post? It's not relevant to HN and the comments range from uninteresting to terrible.
As I said in the comment you are replying to, I believe we have to try, because it would be inconsistent with the intended spirit of this site not to.
I don't agree that it isn't relevant to HN. The central value of this site is intellectual curiosity, construed broadly (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
If you try to define that in a way that detaches from larger human concerns, you make it smaller. Curiosity doesn't benefit from that.
I agree with you that there are many reasons to be unhappy with threads like this and how the topic lands on HN generally. I am by no means happy with it—I just don't think that the alternative is better. Curiosity ultimately has to do with relating to what's real and what's true. You can't impose a narrow view of on- and off-topcicness on that.
The problem of how to run a site like HN in accordance with a value like that is subject to a thousand constraints, some obvious, many not. That makes the problem interesting, but also means that it can never be solved—not to everyone's satisfaction, nor even to anyone's satisfaction. Therefore we all have a certain amount of dissatisfaction to tolerate.
Have you seen any comments on this submission that demonstrate intellectual curiosity? It's just flamewarring and complaints as far as I can see, at this point.
Sorry but I think you made the wrong call here.
I agree that the wrong call was made. I'm also curious why this particular post is the one which was chosen as the poster child on which to set aside the rules and allow "thoughtful" discussion.
It's very relevant, the hacker ethos is not just about technology and VC funding, it's also about curiosity, honesty, skepticism, and in a way, also about distrust of the powerful. This revelation is perfectly on topic.
The comments are actually better than expected given the sensitivity of the topic at hand.
We must be reading different comments. What do you reckon is the ratio of thoughtful comments expressing curiosity, honesty, etc. to the mindless bleatings of the uninformed?
Because then you can't moderate just one side of the discussion. Unfortunately, there's a clear pattern here.
I have no idea which side you think we're favoring, but I can tell you two things for sure: (1) it's whichever side you personally disagree with; and (2) they think we're favoring you. Of everything I've learned about how HN functions (and internet dynamics generally), this is by far the most invariant.
With the risk of being moderated myself, why is it the case that is always the not pro-israel comments that get moderated? The original comment seems quite reasonable but the guy even kind of apologized, for no reason! That's pure coercion to conform, if I may be allowed (lol) to have an opinion.
> why is it the case that is always the not pro-israel comments that get moderated
That is far from the case, as you can see for yourself if you look more closely.
People (I don't mean you personally, but all of us—it seems to be basic human bias) are far too quick to jump to "always". I call this the notice-dislike bias (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), which is a terrible name I'm hoping someone can improve on.
> which is a terrible name I'm hoping someone can improve on
It seems to be very similar to Baader-Meinhoff. I guess it’s called “frequency illusion” now, which is much more descriptive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
That's about frequency per se, whereas I'm talking about experiences with negative emotional valence.
Thanks for the reply though—I hope someday someone will come up with a good name for it; or better, still, point out that it's a known bias in the standard repertoire and tell me what it's called.
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Ok.
Can we stop the genocide now?
Hamas release all hostages and surrender would probably do it.
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You know, we had separation between church/religion and state for a good reason.
Who has it? Certainly not Israel. Or America. The U.K. does far better in practice, but not fully - nor does it claim to be.
It's "separation between church and state". As in: the institution of The Church. "separation between religion and state" doesn't really exist anywhere, and can't really exist, because it would basically be a thought-crime. For example Joe Biden is a Catholic and I'm some of his actions have almost certainly been inspired in part of fully by his Catholic beliefs. It couldn't be otherwise as being Catholic is part of Joe Biden.
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Stories like this often get flagged because they devolve into political/religious flamewars. I think many people might have a knee-jerk reaction to posts about the Israel/Gaza war and flag them, because support for Israel vs. support for Palestine can be quite polarizing and emotional.
Not saying it's right or wrong, or that this sort of article is or isn't interesting to HN readers. But a reasonable reason for flagging an article is a belief that the topic at hand doesn't lend itself to thoughtful, interesting discussion.
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> by the same people who claim they had a genocide commited against them
C'mon, you can't just go around implying that the Jews only "claimed" to have a genocide against them.
People are constantly implying the Russians invaded Ukraine for no reason, or that Iran is the aggressor in the recent war, or that a genocide isn't actially happening.
And this shit is happening now.
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Haaretz is generally a liberal Zionist Israeli newspaper. As such, I find it easy to trust that it is not lying when it reports sensitive testimony from multiple IDF soldiers.
It’s pretty thoroughly off-topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I wouldn't say it's thoroughly off-topic because not only do a lot of tech companies directly enable or produce the stuff that's enabling Israel but a fair number of major figures have also directly involved themselves politically with Israel.
That said it's the kind of topic I don't expect HN to be able to particularly handle in an interesting or insightful way. It's mostly just going to be a mix of horrified people and then users trying to gaslight others into how this is a good thing.
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What should or can we do about it? The US government is not representing the will of its citizens. Contacting my legislative representative isn't likely to accomplish anything to influence Trump continuing to directly facilitate and support genocide and other war crimes.
I also still need to work almost every day to pay the bills and care for my family, otherwise I'd be happy to go camp out and peacefully protest in support of change on the daily. What's the best option for the majority who share my situation? Because I do care a lot, and feel stuck.
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Netanyahu is bad, for sure, but are you forgetting the half a million dead after the invasion and regime change in Iraq? Bush and Cheney are living in happy retirement. Rumsfeld has passed, may his soul rot in hell.
Pretty sure the various polling in Israel has shown that the majority of the population do not think there are innocent civilians in Gaza.
IMO Netanyahu changing won’t make this go away.
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Maybe someone should tell that to the soldiers.
“Israeli Soldiers Killed at Least 410 People at Food Aid Sites in Gaza This Month” —https://theintercept.com/2025/06/27/israel-killed-palestinia...
Sure I definitely believe it. It’s definitely true. For sure.
It’s such a shame that you get to face zero consequences for your repugnant dismissal if you’re wrong.
And likewise people like you face zero consequences for spreading hate and misinformation disproportionately to your skin in the game. No one else cares about any conflict like they do with Israel. Why? Because they hate Jews. There’s a literal genocide in Yemen right now. Crickets.
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US/UK, Iran?
Notice how israel (the country currently committing the genocide) is not even mentioned in your reply.
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It's because the internet is filled with bots, I won't be surprised if here is also the case.
I also don't see why this kind of article is at the top. It's clearly political and is not related to the site's mainstream.
Unfortunately it's not funny. There is no coincidence here in how anti-Israeli content is constantly promoted and the what the comment threads turn into.
Oh man that’s awful. I support withdrawing all funding for Hamas and all other organizations who intentionally kill humanitarian aid workers. What do you think?
I'm not following your point.
Anti-Israeli content is continuously promoted here along with anti-Israel commentary while flagging and down-voting of any discussion to the contrary.
Israel can do no right. If it allows food into Gaza Hamas steals it. If it tries to set up a different food distribution scheme and Hamas comes up with various schemes to attack that (including shooting its own people) then that's also a war crime.
There is zero consideration in this discussion to Israel's position. To the hostages. To the realities of war.
That's not to say Israel can't and shouldn't be criticized but this is more of an obsession and a hate fest than any of that. Valid criticism is not cherry picking and piling on, it's a more thorough consideration of the nuanced reality.
Maybe don't be a genocidal state and people will stop criticizing Israel.
There is no nuanced reality when we literally see with our very eyes that the Israeli state is committing a genocide. It's supposed to be never again, so we are doing all we can to stop the evil apartheid genocidal Israel from committing more crimes against humanity.
Even Holocaust survivors who see what Israel is doing at the moment are calling it a genocide.
Stop the genocide.
Israel is evil and most people here are directly responsible for funding the atrocities. That’s why I care. There are a dozen other conflicts just as bad that I would never comment on because I’m just not involved and don’t need to take sides. Maybe if Hamas was taking my tax dollars too then you would see more posts about them, but “radicalized extremist muslims kill somebody” is just a “dog bites man” story compared to “our ally who you directly fund is using your money to slaughter children”
US gives a ton of aid to Egypt which is an oppressive dictatorship. Egypt is also involved in the civil war in Sudan which has seen more than 150,000 people killed and more than 522,000 children die from starvation, and about 10 million people displaced. Where is your outcry? Maybe something to do with the media (social and traditional) not pumping images to your device 24/7. No Jews no news.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudanese_civil_war_(2023%E2%80...
Israel is not evil and doesn't need your funding. Your ally is not slaughtering children, your ally is defending itself against an enemy hiding behind children that's trying to get as many civilians killed as they can and get the most shocking images and figures, whether fabricated or not, in front of your eyes.
Hamas was also taking your tax dollars. The US funds Palestinians too, where do you think that money funneled into Gaza ended up?
The US also supports dictatorial regimes like Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (and Turkey, semi-dictatorial). US weapons used by Saudis were slaughtering civilians in Yemen. Not to mention what western powers did in the middle east directly (and other places).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_involvement_in_the_Yem...
I think you're being manipulated. Israel is far from perfect but it's also far from evil. Any other country in its position would be doing more or less the same thing. If its enemies stopped trying to murder its citizens then there would be no more violence. War crimes, if/when they occur are not ok but Israel has the right to defend its citizens and not too many options.
EDIT: I should also add that not everyone here is American. In general the singling out of Israel and the PR machinery to paint Israel as evil is happening across the world. Many countries and people that provide no aid to Israel are attacking it. So clearly the amount of aid provided is not a factor in anti-Israel sentiments and singling it out. You can do this sort of PR when you have a lot of money (Qatar).
I don’t want to be involved with the Middle East at all bro this doesn’t help.
> No Jews no news
You got that right!
There’s only one opinion allowed on the internet now. If Israel let a mob grab all the aid the news would slam them for not doing anything. The demonization is unreal. Meanwhile, Yemen killed and raped thousands of its own citizens and I haven’t seen anything about it of course. There’s an ACTUAL literal genocide happening in Yemen.
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Now they are being colonized by Morocco. They protested against Spanish domination and now they’ve been deported and oppressed by an autocratic regime.
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How is that related to the historical context I gave?
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Is this generated by an AI, a Markov chain or schizophrenia?
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You mean the barbarity of the zionist militias and IDF who have been ethnically cleansing and murdering Palestinians since 1948?
This is no different thank French people in Algeria who committed a genocide during all the way up to the liberation.
Its the same standard that should be upheld with South Africa and the Nazi regime
The absurd idea of a "genocide" in Palestine is immediately defeated by a simple search showing that the population of Palestine increased close to 600% since 1948, rendering the all claim nothing more than a usual dog whistle from anti-Semite propaganda.
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/state-of-pale...
I said ethnic cleansing, not genocide. Although genocide is what has been happening for the past 2 years in Gaza as described by even Holocaust scholars.
Your argument is a typical claim of racists and zionist colonialists.
1st: you claimed Israel was carrying out ethnic cleansing since 1948. You are now trying to mix words, but when you do ethnic cleaning, you carry out genocide. You were caught in your dog whistle and then tried to get out of it with semantics.
2nd: “Zionist colonialists” is what you call the people that want to have their home in the tiny piece of desert where they where expelled from. By contrast you don’t seem to have any qualms about the Arab colonialists that took all the Middle East and north of Africa. In fact, you support they should even get to keep the tiny piece of desert that belongs to the Jew people. Your problem clearly has to lie in the ethnicity of the people doing the so called colonialism (you even go as far as calling colonialism to people taking hold of their homeland).
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HN is explicitly about more than tech. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
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I never thought I would see the end of the Status Quo in my lifetime and yet here we are.
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You can't do this here. We've banned the account.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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This bit is also important in my opinion:
> Once again, we are faced with the suggestion that not only are the IDF murderous maniacs, but they also have the worst aim on the planet. The monstrous IDF are such terrible shots that they fire heavy machine guns, mortars, and grenade launchers at crowds of tens of thousands, yet manage to wound no more than 1 to 5 Gazans at a time.
The following quote seems consistent with much of the journalism I’ve read about the conflict for years. It makes you become a bit cynical of the news outlets when you repeatedly see things like this https://x.com/washingtonpost/status/1929961283593367559 Peoples first impressions often last the longest.
> Later, Haaretz quotes an officer saying the intent behind the live fire was crowd control, not carnage. However, it buries this clarification so deeply that it becomes effectively irrelevant. The reader has already been presented with the moral horror headline, and that’s what will endure.
> The author admits they don’t know who is shooting at civilians near these aid distribution centres. Still, rather than consider the possibility that, for example, Hamas might be involved, the article shifts with the loaded line:
“Fire at unarmed crowds” and “fire towards crowds” is the same thing, what sort of semantic ping pong is this? Also propaganda =/= bad. All media is propaganda, in some languages the word “propaganda” has the same semantic meaning as the English word “advertisement”. This comment is war crime apologia.
There is a difference between shooting people and firing warning shots.
Sure there is, but we’re not talking about firing “warning shots” at armed combatants, we’re talking about unarmed civilians, most of whom are minors. If you are sympathetic to the idea that these aid sites need to be heavily guarded, then you need to ask yourself why this level of force is necessary, because the explanation the IDF and Israeli officials are giving makes no sense. Can you imagine if we fired “warning shots” towards the homeless for lining up too early for the food bank?
How do warning shots kill over 50 people in a day?
War zone in a dense urban areas where combatants aren’t identified by uniform and are integrated in the civilian population.
So, not warning shots but targeted fire? And is there any evidence of those combatants, amongst all the body cams and drone footage? To be clear, I mean actual combatants, not the IDF definition of "any man of fighting age"(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yot...)
Helpful context: https://x.com/peligrietzer/status/1938979993666695207
"both the English and Hebrew are the only usage-standard constructions for when the verb is shooting and the object is a crowd"
"you can read the Hebrew Wikipedia page about, like, 2017 Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock and see that is says Paddock 'ירה לעבר' the crowd"
The Hebrew version had also distanced itself from what would be considered Journalism. But with no real field reporting from Gaza, that's the info you can get, and you have to guesstimate the reality from there.
and there would be field reporting if the IDF didn't go around executing any journalist they find (including child "journalists" merely posting on social media)
Other outlets (including NPR) independently verified the story.
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Exactly. Clear astroturfing to hide war crimes is not going unnoticed anymore.
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I encourage you to read the quotes from Israeli political and social leaders in this piece: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/27/israel...
> “The Gaza Strip should be flattened, and for all of them there is but one sentence, and that is death,” Yitzhak Kroizer, a member of national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said in a radio interview.
Yitzhak is a current sitting member of the Knesset.
I just did. No question a number of these comments are completely inexcusable.
2 points:
1. A number of them, especially by more moderate voices, were made in the immediate days after Oct 7 when there was a tremendous amount of anger as a reaction to what happened.
2. The above comment and others like this were made by the extreme of the extreme right in Israel. I don't think that even Ben Gvir would utter such a thing.
Nobody with decision making powers is making any attempt to exterminate a people.
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Have you seen the Israeli hostage families protest in Israel? They get heckled and threatened by the hardliners in the general public and government who want the war continue to and those hardliners essentially want the hostages as an excuse for war. The democracy in Israel has elected a government that wants to continue to acquire land in Gaza and the West Bank in preference over negotiating for return of the hostages. There are multiple video and text reporting on this issue. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-847290 There are also hardline hostage families that want to continue the war over negotiating. https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-hamas-hostages-ceasef... It's complicated and not as simple as your black and white assessment - that people are for either returning the hostages or not returning the hostages and those same opinions are in sync with ending the war/continuing the war with the same priority. Hamas having hostages serves both Hamas and the hard right wing's long term goals in Israel, and the hard right wing in Israel holds all the power in Israel and Hamas holds the power in Gaza.
> As of November 1, Israeli authorities held nearly 7,000 Palestinians from the occupied territory in detention for alleged security offenses, according to the Israeli human rights organization HaMoked. Far more Palestinians have been arrested since the October 7 attacks in Israel than have been released in the last week. Among those being held are dozens of women and scores of children.
> The majority have never been convicted of a crime, including more than 2,000 of them being held in administrative detention, in which the Israeli military detains a person without charge or trial. Such detention can be renewed indefinitely based on secret information, which the detainee is not allowed to see. Administrative detainees are held on the presumption that they might commit an offense at some point in the future. Israeli authorities have held children, human rights defenders and Palestinian political activists, among others, in administrative detention, often for prolonged periods.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/29/why-does-israel-have-so-...
The civilians that are also being starved?
Israel's official policy is that "Hamas must not get aid". If that were successful, there'd be no food for the hostages either.
Irrelevant. Israel is obliged to not prevent civilians from receiving food, water and medicine. If it can't do so without 'aiding' Hamas, that's Israel's problem.
Is shooting unarmed civilians trying to avoid starvation supposed to free the hostages, or what’s the connection here?
I think most people consider Oct 7th and the hostages to be a grave criminal act. It doesn't justify genocide, though, which seems to be what you're implying.
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It lasted only a few minutes initially before being flagged, but now it seems officially allowed and not just vouched for.
I am glad it is visible. And hope for some more civic debate about the topic.
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Are you really of this opinion or are you trying to incite replies? :)
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Cannot believe there are still people doing the “both sides” thing. Nothing remotely justifies the Israeli government’s actions.
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This is just war crime denying spam. Words do not matter in the light of what the IDF actually did.
So there's a substantial difference between "firing towards masses" (comprised of Palestinians) and "firing at Palestinians"?
Laughable spin.
I think that's also what they said on Bloody Sunday: not firing "at Catholic protestors", but firing "towards the masses".
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> these are clearly illegal orders and MUST be refused by any IDF soldier who listened during training.
They must train them differently these days. Multiple IDF soldiers have reported being asked to fire on their own comrades circumstantially: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive
I suppose that's the sort of trouble you should expect staffing an army with hardline theocratic officers and conscripted civilian infantry.
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> I know Israel has attempted a 2 state solution 3 different times since 1947, unsuccessful because they were subsequently attacked. That's history.
I agree a two state solution has been derailed by attacks. Full implementation of the Oslo accords were derailed by the assassination of the Prime Minister of Israel. He was assassinated by a right wing Kahanist Jewish Israeli! And now the Israeli cabinet has Kahanist MPs. That's history.
> Now, when friendly fire occurs, when mistakes are made, unintentionally or from bad strategic intelligence, it shocks people more than it used to.
Enshrining it in your military doctrine probably doesn't help the international response: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive
> Now, when friendly fire occurs, when mistakes are made, unintentionally or from bad strategic intelligence, it shocks people more than it used to. Please consider these things as well when determining how you feel about Israel's recent response
OK https://zionism.observer / https://tiktokgenocide.com
We are more connected with digital recording devices in the hands of more people on this planet than ever before. It also makes it possible to isolate information from one perspective, for example, creating a dedicated website to promote an idea.
Just curious, are there similar sites recording the repeated terrorist attacks against Israel? The rapes? Information is only good when it contains enough context to intelligently weigh the facts. I don't suppose you could link those as well could you?
> Just curious, are there similar sites recording the repeated terrorist attacks against Israel?
From your parent comment:
> I've spent my life watching news reports of bombings at their border, bus stops, public squares, their fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, and children picked off.
There has never been a time in the last 30 years where attacks against Israel were insufficiently covered.
> dedicated website to promote an idea
Idea or reality?
> don't suppose you could link those as well could you?
I can, but that's not what is under any scrutiny or question by you.
The video on tiktokgenocide of the little girl begging for soup is fucking heartbreaking.
I don't know what to do. I give money to non-profits and progressive political candidates, but I still feel like it's hopeless.
How do we stop Israel doing this when the US is run by evangelical christian zionists.
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This article from the BBC corroprates the claims in the parent article, and also talks about why there are so many civilian casualties at these food distribution centers:
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/28/nx-s1-5449587/israel-gaza-haa...
The most obvious problems are that the food distribution centers are placed deep inside military red zones (which is not common practice), and that Israeli soldiers have been ordered to fire at civilians in those zones, even if they obviously pose no threat (which is clearly a war crime).
The sections "Troops describe firing at crowds of aid seekers" and "Aid workers and medics call for end to GHF distribution plan" explain in more detail.
The article you link from NPR seems to mostly cite the Haaretz article. The only possible corroboration are the claims from Adil Husain, but I am hesitant to take his words as corroboration.
The Haaretz article states it is unclear how many died from IDF fire vs the Abu Shabab group. Husain was not at the aid site and so can't state how they were wounded.
It is also the case that doctors without borders is far from a non-partisan group and has harbored terrorists in the past (e.g. https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-slain-gazan-named-as-docto...)
If the soldiers truly fired on those who were only running away, not advancing, this should be investigated and charged as a war crime. However, at this point the evidence is not clear aside from a handful of anonymous sources from a single press release.
There have been many many aid trucks refused entry. The famine has been manufactured by Israel. "normal procedure" might have some weight if there weren't 100s of trucks refused entry.
First you impose a blockade against people.
Then they run out of food and their families are starving.
Then you distribute a limited amount of food that will run out long before most get any food.
If your family is starving to death, you can't leave the area and someone is dangling food in front of your face, are you saying you wouldn't risk it for your family and try to get SOME food regardless of the threat of death?
It's just not true that this is "normal procedure". It's just not. It didn't happen before either, and now it's happened how many times? Once or twice, I can believe. This many times? Not so much.
And this line of reasoning:
> If you don't shoot them they will take a sack by force, and then everybody will take a sack by force. Usually they coordinate themselves into bands or gangs to steal the food.
is just dehumanising and morally abject.
Are we supposed to just accept that because something is status quo, it’s permissible? The consequence for “stealing” food should never be death, ever, in any scenario. It’s also interesting that people taking and distributing food are characterised as “gangs”, this suggests that taking a vital resource and redistributing it is somehow criminal.
Edited to correct syntactical error.
You either have not read the article or are deliberately being obtuse.
The article has multiple IDF officers say that this isn't, in fact, normal warzone procedure for distributing food. That they witnessed crowds being dispersed with artillery fire, which isn't normal procedure anywhere.
Like, I don't know what world you live in, but I don't know any other conflict where dozens of civilians get fired upon during food aid distribution every day.
They don’t have basic crowd control tools such as water and tear gas, so instead they use state of the art lethal weapons?
But it's not a warzone, it's a slaughterhouse. The intention isn't to feed people, it's to remove Palestinians from Gaza, by attrition or violence.
Once you understand the motive, you understand why these deliberately concentrated, artificially limited aid delivery systems are used. They make remaining in Gaza the worst option.
This is genocide. It's unforgivable.
If we accept this and the claim that Hamas deliberately seeks to maximize civilian casualties, then consider the hypothetical:
What would stop them from deliberately drawing fire under this scenario?
Aside from meeting the Israeli demands, what other options remain for Hamas?
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>...fought primarily by trying to erode international support for Israel
Agreed.
>Are you suggesting that it is right...
Thank you for the opportunity to further clarify my comment. If this is happening I believe that it is deeply immoral.
My comment posed a hypothetical about the incentives which may be driving these events. As you observed above, it does fit with existing knowledge of Hamas strategy. Examples would include pop-up rocket attacks near schools or hospitals.
Here is a source which some have alleged to be sympathetic to Hamas. I have selected this source not because I prefer it, but to avoid allegations of bias.
https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/unrwa-condemns...
>UNRWA condemns placement of rockets, for a second time, in one of its schools
>UNRWA strongly and unequivocally condemns the group or groups responsible for this flagrant violation of the inviolability of its premises under international law
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Before levelling claims of bias and racism, consider that the reporting is by a Jewish run, Israeli newspaper and that the sources are IDF officers and soldiers. To jump to a claim of anti-semitism suggestions you really need to examine your own biases.
Atrocities against unarmed civilians are not excused by 'but they started it', who did? The old woman, the 10 year old boy? Justifying collective punishment like this takes a huge degree of racism and heartlessness.
"once started (wars) are sometimes impossible to stop". How convenient then that land (belonging to people who also have nothing to do with 'the first punch') continues to be stolen as long as the war drags out.
War crimes should be taken very seriously, not dealt with in the court of public opinion. Just look at how “ready to convict” people are in this thread, without any evidence whatsoever, just on hearsay —though yes, Haaretz is very reputable. “Blood libel” may be too strong a term, but similar idea: the jews are conspiring to do evil to non-Jews and keep it secret by control of the media or by leveraging the “zog” or maybe shapeshifting or Kabbalah or something more imaginative. It’s all just shades of antisemitism.
Even the stance that such claims must be valid because the reporters are Israeli, is itself derivative of the Jewish conspiracy trope. Is it more likely there is a large conspiracy afoot and Israeli officers are engaging in war crimes at large scale as many in this thread have concluded (even before this report), or that these are isolated and undesirable events playing out in the fog of war and representative of poor decision making in circumstances of which we have only partial knowledge?
My bias, if I have one, is to believe that the Israeli military, or really any competently run military anywhere, is interested in not committing war crimes when avoidable.
There is no such thing as an unavoidable war crime.
Reporting is one way they are brought to light. Commenters are allowed to discuss the validity of the claims, whatever their reasoning. You have decided to believe the Israeli military, others have the right to conclude otherwise.
But that the reporters and sources are Israeli means your knee-jerk claims of their anti-semitism or conspiracy are absurd. Nor does that mean the claims must be valid, just that they shouldn't be dismissed out of hand by hair-triggered, wild accusations of anti-semitism. You do know they aren't doing anyone any favours, right?
Oct 7th is not when anything started. If this is just a response a terror attack, then should Israel be profiting from it? Will the Palestinians be allowed to go back and rebuild?
Without a sense of proportionate response, if Hitler did some false flag attacks, do you expect the whole world to be okay with the Holocaust?
Oct 7th was certainly not the start of the conflict, but it was at a level of barbarity that one can not consider it to be provoked.
> Without a sense of proportionate response, if Hitler did some false flag attacks, do you expect the whole world to be okay with the Holocaust?
Can you explain this point? I don't think I quite understand.
More than 50 years of oppression and countless atrocities. If you are slowly killing a man by choking him and he stabs your eye in defense, is that provocation?
If Hitler bombed a some Germans and blamed it on the Jewish people, should rest of the world be okay with the Holocaust?
The responsible are all ministers in the administration.
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Latent? Ive seen flagged comments playing into age old european conspiracies that Jews are controlling the world - on HN.
The reality is a fortified Israel was born of Jewish trauma and while the citizens of the world continue to propel antisemitic nonesense, despot nationalists like Netanyahu will have excuses to justify horrific actions
I’m not going to claim a side in this, but I do have a question to pose. When you have two ideologies which are so diametrically opposed to each other that they cannot coexist in the same space at the same time, what is the alternative outcome? One must destroy the other for peace to exist - this is the nature of war. To think that there is some world where everyone comes away from this with a handshake and an agreement is just naive.
I’ll ask again: What is the alternative?
I disagree that there are two driving ideologies here that are diametrically opposed.
Hamas's ideology is certainly opposed to Israel existing, but they are not the only Palestinians, and other ideologies can take hold and be supported by the populace (I hope). The Palestinian Authority has been working together with Israel since its founding, after all, and with all the problems it has, it still represents a model that could work, in theory, and they pursue largely diplomatic ways to gain recognition.
> One must destroy the other for peace to exist - this is the nature of war.
Wars generally don't end with genocide.
Conquered people don't cease to exist. Worst case they are subjugated, but these days they just assimilated/absorbed.
The alternative is perpetual war, or some sort of compromise.
If Hamas surrendered unconditionally tomorrow, what would Israel do?
> Wars generally don't end with genocide.
I agree with you that this is not actually the nature of War. However, it's also true that it depends on the type of war being fought.
It's not uncommon to see in history that when a country/village/group of people can't/doesn't want to be subjugated or it's strategically difficult to "keep" them, it gets wiped off.
In the Ancient Rome entire Celtic tribes wiped off, while during Charlemagne's empire it was the Saxons, and more recently during the the Ottoman Empire it was the Greeks, Armenians, and today the Curds.
Unfortunately such things do happen and sadly enough will always happen. Not justifying in any way, I am just saying that we're so used to believe that this is something new, when it actually it isn't, and we also believe we are better than back then, while we actually aren't. :(
> two ideologies which are so diametrically opposed to each other that they cannot coexist
Ideologies aren't platonic solids. They must be constantly refurbished in the minds of the avowed. Every moment of every day informs them—reinforces or depletes them. Changes their character.
It's guaranteed that these minds will, eventually, change. Who survives to bare this change remains to be seen.
Keep in mind, also, that Israel vs. Gaza is in some ways just a proxy war between US/Europe and Iran/Russia who support Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Ideological differences, frankly, are only a surface patina on the same old economic games.
Lastly, consider a third framing: that Israel/Gaza is only the hottest segment of a conflict that encircles the globe: the border between imperial powers and colonized peoples, like US/Mexico etc. Borders, passports, and citizenship are a worldwide system of privileges and protections that Westphalian Nationstates collude to maintain.
I'm not sure what ideologies you refer to. Islam and Judaism? Not really relevant to the discussion, I don't think.
> "surface patina"
Tell that to the victims of gleeful brutality under the guidance of fundamentalist ideology, like that engrained in Islamist governance and extremist militant groups.
Your post reads like the come-down from intellectual pill-popping. Your attempt to dilute a serious problem in the world to "patinas" and reduce the problem to imperial vs colonized peoples, sounds like a manifesto from the lawns of a university activist encampment.
Consider the framing, you ask. I considered it and reject it, The subjugation of "infidels" under expansionist oppressive religious groups with the intent to bring "peace" is an imperialism all of its own, but much worse. Peace... at the cost of freedom, autonomy, expression, equality.
>The subjugation of "infidels" under expansionist oppressive religious groups with the intent to bring "peace" is an imperialism all of its own, but much worse. Peace... at the cost of freedom, autonomy, expression, equality.
Are you arguing for or against Israel?
> like that engrained in Islamist governance and extremist militant groups.
Or that engrained in the joint Israeli/American coup that overthrew Iran's last democratically-elected leader. The one that installed a secret police that tortured and disappeared tens of thousands of citizens under the training of CIA and Mossad operatives: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/legal-and-political-mag...
If you think his comment reads like revisionism, imagine how ridiculous you sound to an educated audience. C'mon now.
If you need to wind back the clock before any of us were born to achieve a "gotcha", you're doing a disservice to whatever educated audience remains. Your what-aboutism opens a gaping hole where a point should be.
Ideological differences are gigantic valleys between nations in conflict, that's the point.
When one side shouts God's name as they butcher & jihad whoever's in their way who isn't a fanatic like them, the ideological differences can't be mended with "c'mon now". When one side thrives on martyrdom and human rights violations for breakfast, it's not a time to say "maybe we should look at what they're trying to say, are we just not listening?"
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>Israel wouldn't attack Gaza if the terrorists who run that place didn't have a constitutional ambition to destroy Israel.
Really? The > 750,000 Palestinians pushed out of their homes in 1948, when "Israelis" showed up for the first time, backed up by guns, were Hamas? News to me.
History doesn't begin in 1948.
If it the right thing to do, why isn't Israel embracing and announcing the said genocide?
Is the only wrong thing Hitler did is to not make a few false flag attacks on the Germans before announcing the 'Final solution'?
What else new. It’s just more blatant this time, but does anyone truly believe bombing all hospitals in the strip is anything but more of the same thing?
They’re deliberately creating martyrs so they can prolong this pointless war into the next generation.
I can’t imagine there’s anyone left in Gaza that wouldn’t happily gun down any Israelian just for a chance to get back at them.
WW3 is going to be China vs Israel. Watch.
One could make the argument that it's happening right now. Russia+North Korea, Iran, Hamas, they are all intertwined. And then on the other side you could say Ukraine, US, Israel.
Thought experiment: if the Israel/Gaza conflict didn't pop off, would the US presidency be the same right now? How did that change affect the Russia/Ukraine conflict? Etc.
Israel can't even sustain a hot war with Iran, with US backing, despite assassinating dozens of Iranian top brass. China represents 10-20 Irans.
China (and Turkey, Arab states) is more or less content to sit and watch USA destroy itself domestically and internationally over the failed Zionist project. "Do nothing, win."
How does this belong on HN.