That's a bad explanation because it relies on an assumption about how the press in Palestine are operating on the ground and I'm guessing no one on hackernews actually has that info.
We don't know that reporters are rushing into danger or hanging out where the danger is going to be.
In fact, a lot of the "reporters" who we've been watching were never war reporters to begin with. Motaz, for instance was an aspiring travel photographer. Bisan was a filmmaker. Wael was the cheif of Al-Jazera in Gaza.
They're (most likely) not seeking out death and war, they're just reporting on the condition of their city, of their people.
It also ignores 75 years of history. CPJ stated this was the deadliest conflict for journalists in the past 30 years. Reporters Without Borders has accused Israel of intentionally targeting journalists. Human Rights Watch signed a letter stating the US needed to put pressure on Israel to stop killing journalists. Amnesty international says Israel must be investigated for the war crime of killing journalists.
This has also been one of the deadliest wars for civilians in general. Also when you’re using such a loose definition of journalist obviously the deaths would be greater.
Are you saying this war has a higher civilian casualty ratio that other wars? Sadly history shows that civilians have been casualties of war at high rates compared to combatants.
The US defined combatant in their latest wars as any male killed over the age of 14, so the ratio is a bit up to how people choose to define combatant vs civilian.
The wikipedia article should be read as a starting point in understanding how extremely unreliable those numbers are, and how much it depend on how people define combatant and civilian.
Israel estimated 12,000 Hamas at a time when Hamas figures claimed 26,000 dead. That's pretty close to 1:1.
Part of the trouble is Israel can't prove the 12,000, and no one actually believes the Hamas figures are legitimate. But there are not better figures available for either number. So 1:1 for Gaza is the best we can estimate.
The original post made it sound unusual that civilians are dying in such high numbers. It is unfortunately not unusual that civilians die at higher numbers than combatants during war, the opposite is often true.
> This has also been one of the deadliest wars for civilians in general.
That's not actually true. The ratio is similar to other wars. Civilians die in war, they die a lot. War sucks. But Gaza is not unusually deadly compared to other wars.
The double standards are pretty breath-taking - Russia's conduct in Ukraine was labelled a genocide, but Israel's conduct is comparatively white-washed.
While the initial cause for war is obviously different, that does not justify war crimes.
I don't think western-brained folks realise how bad this looks to the rest of the world. For example to India, and the amount damage it does to the West's reputation.
> Because the Russian government took Ukrainian children to raise as Russians, something without parallel in I/P.
I cannot find any reference to this as a reasoning for declaring genocide. 6 countries made a declaration, and all allegations centre around rampant killing of civilians. That's the main benchmark.
> Weirdly, quiet a few of the nations making this critique were notably cool on Ukraine..hypocrisy is in the other direction.
Without googling, can you tell how many armed conflicts are going on in Africa right now?
There is horrible civil war in Sudan and nobody in the west cares. Neighbouring countries have inflows of refugees, etc. So you are perfect example of western-brain, expecting everyone in the world to have same priorities as you do.
Meanwhile we can't even hold our own companies to account, they bypass sanctions through Kazakhstan and other ex-USSR states, and none of the executives are in jail.
>I cannot find any reference to this as a reasoning for declaring genocide. 6 countries made a declaration, and all allegations centre around rampant killing of civilians. That's the main benchmark.
I haven't checked the PR statements, but the arrest warrant regarding the children includes the genocide charge[0], that's where the actual legal action centres, not around 'rampant killing'.
It's based on article 2(e) of the genocide convention: "Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."[1]. Also, Russia is doing it publicly so it's easy to prove.
>Without googling, can you tell how many armed conflicts are going on in Africa right now?
Without googling: I know of Sudan, Congo, the Mali / subsaharan Jihadi mess (they've been sieging Timbuktu for months now?), Somalia (recently also Somaliland area) and Ethiopia (civil war with TPLF reduced, but Oromo still going on). Northern Nigeria always has something bad going on.
Well, let's quiz you then: What country currently has millions of people are risk of starving to death due to war?
I'll give you more clues: it's also one of the largest mass displacements of people due to war in current times, with plenty of rape and ethnic cleansing.
I will of course want to see how many comments you've posted about the topic, and how many HN submissions. Since obviously this war is many times larger than Gaza, so should command a much larger portion of your attention.
That's not whataboutism, the issue at hand is that no one cares about conflicts unless Jews are involved, and I just proved that to you. Whataboutism would be for you to reply to me, I was the one who started the statement.
And you seem incredibly obsessed with this conflict - but no others.
Another explanation is that what Gaza authorities define as a journalist/healthcare worker or aid worker, might be very broad. There are reports of UNRWA employees taking part in the terror attack on Israel on 10/7.
Alternatively, you can watch this documentary where journalists wearing identifying gear away from the action were shot by a sniper during the peaceful "March of Return" (2018). These were the "Palestinian Gandhis" Israel supporters keep talking about. They were massacred.
Sovereign Border? are you recognizing a State of Palestine and it's borders? last I checked none of those existed, so therefore your argument of storming a sovereign border is null and void. They marched near the walls of their concentration camp, no one stormed anything and they were clearly shot at from a distance. I am appaled that so many "intelligent" people just regurgitate what they learned from the idiot box instead of being truly informed. The photos and videos are there for you to see... go look, read...
> Someone trying to invade your country to kill people is not grounds for lethal force?
Sure it is. But that’s not what you described—the border guards did not have enough information to conclude—as judge, jury and executioner—that they were trying to kill people.
Again, what border? between which countries? is there an army on the other side? are you serious? The United States does not recognize the State of Palestine, and therefore there is no border is there? so these people where fenced into an area that is occupied by Israel. If they tried to get out, they were trying to escape their Concentration Camp.
The rate of journalists murdered in Gaza is much higher than other similar situations.
The Geneva convention requires citizens and journalists to not be targeted. [1]
Human Rights Watch [2] and Amnesty International [3] are reporting journalists are actively being targeted. Today, someone's phone can be tracked to target them.
The LA Times also had a piece outlining the journalists experiences [4]
That healthcare workers comparison does indeed not make much sense, it should be healthcare workers involved in retrieving the injured, which are indeed at very high risk (even though theoretically they shouldn't be targeted)
For the curve of journalists killed to bend this way, my rough estimates point it's necessary for the journalist have ~3x the odds of being targeted when compared to a Hamas fighter, or ~75x more when compared to random Gaza inhabitant (~75:1 vs. ~25:1 odds against random person). I posted in detail my estimation method here, but it got downvoted and now sits close to the bottom of this discussion, but you can read it here:
10% would be considered an extremely high death rate for soldiers involved in the fighting. Even 2.5% for healthcare workers is ridiculously high.
Would be interesting to see what the death rates for journalists, medics, soldiers, etc was in afghan war, iraq war, vietnam war, etc. I highly doubt any reaches 10%.
> 10% would be considered an extremely high death rate for soldiers involved in the fighting. Even 2.5% for healthcare workers is ridiculously high.
Hamas based their operations where conventional rules of war prohibit fire. That makes comparing casualty rates incredibly difficult. (To my knowledge, nobody else has done this so comprehensively. Though given its success, I expect it to be emulated. Which unfortunately means prohibitions on bombing hospitals, schools and places of worship are now obsolete.)
What's the point of hiding soldiers among civilian targets if Israel is just going to bomb the civilian targets? The point of any fighter using human shields is that the enemy doesn't fire because they don't want to hurt the human shields. If they're willing to kill the human shields, they don't help you, so why bother with them?
This apparent myth rubs me the same way as "there's no food because Hamas is stealing it" - really? All of it? For what purpose?
It's just noise. Scaling this to other examples: if there was a school shooter inside a school, should the school be bombed? The answer is a resounding no, but with Gaza it turns into a yes.
This is why the common rhetoric given from politicians and jingoists is that all of them are guilty and that no one is innocent. Using the same example, the workers and students of that school are de facto responsible because they allowed that school shooter to enter the school.
> if there was a school shooter inside a school, should the school be bombed?
If there were multiple school shooters inside one school, and they were coördinating with other shooters across the country, that becomes a valid trade off. (In a classic solo shooter scenario, everyone you want to save is inside the building. There is no external context.) In the same way that a hijacked plane, post 9/11, is a valid target for being shot down.
Much as I asked the other commenter, how many school shooters would need to be in the school before we believe it's valid?
Let's change the analogy: ISIS terrorists take over the MIT campus. Inside the university are 50 armed terrorists. Is it valid to now bomb the university? What if there are 100 terrorists?
There is no issue with scale here. No matter how much it scales, you won't reach a point where there is an ethical position that argues for the mass murder of people that we actually view as people. It only becomes ethical when we dehumanize the people affected.
So what do you think would happen if terrorists took over the MIT campus, students sympathized with them, rockets were launched from it, and the US police had no presence there and very sparse intelligence?
The shame here is what you described is literally Hamas' reasoning for carrying out the October attacks. Dehumanization, hyper aggression, and hiding it all behind 'the opposition is inherently evil, guilty by association, so we are fundamentally justified'.
Then a courier arrived with a message from Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, saying, in effect: Don’t worry, we have the Israelis right where we want them.
Hamas’s fighters, the Al-Qassam Brigades, were doing fine, the upbeat message said. The militants were ready for Israel’s expected assault on Rafah, a city on Gaza’s southern edge. High civilian casualties would add to the worldwide pressure on Israel to stop the war, Sinwar’s message said, according to people informed about the meeting.
Are there any other examples from history where the goal of combatants was (or at least appeared to be) to maximize the destruction of their own side? If so, what were the outcomes of these?
> Are there any other examples from history where the goal of combatants was (or at least appeared to be) to maximize the destruction of their own side?
Every false flag operation designed to rally support for a conflict.
I'm not quite clear on what you're implying here, but in any case I would prefer to find an example of a prolonged war rather than an isolated false flag operation.
> I would prefer to find an example of a prolonged war rather than an isolated false flag operation
During the Chinese civil war, the Maoists let the Nationalists take a shellacking when convenient. And while I wouldn’t say America was conducive to civilian deaths on “our” side in Vietnam or Afghanistan, it clearly wasn’t something we optimised for: our priority was protecting our troops.
Hamas is a paramilitary. It serves its own forces. The civilians of Palestine aren’t “its” people; they’re a battlefield element.
Apologies for my ignorance, but aren't Hamas literally the government of Gaza? Have they been renounced by the population in favor of any other government?
Up until quite recently in history, the vast majority of countries have been controlled by unelected autocrats, and as you say, some still are. But I don't recall that ever bothered us from associating conflicts with the countries as a whole.
We mostly don't waste time dwelling on the ethics of long dead people, and the few that do are usually seen as some ivory-tower kinds without any concern for present issues.
But rest assured that the people that study those things know quite well it's the country leaders declaring wars, not the people.
But I'm still wondering where we should be drawing the line. For example, Russia has arguably not had fair and free elections for over two decades, so should we refrain from saying that there's a war between Russia and Ukraine and instead say that there's a war between Putin's party (United Russia) and Ukraine"?
If you believe Russians are somehow to blame for this war, you are completely deluded.
Some (many) tens of thousands of people were arrested for complaining... But don't bother, their punishment was only half a year or so in prision... And in unrelated news, some (many) tens of thousands of Russian prisoners were sent to die at the Ukraine winter, on the frontline, without guns or even socks.
But no, all Russians are in full support of this war. You can read all about this on the news.
I apologize if that's what I implied, that was not my intent; I'm definitely not looking to put blame on regular Russians or anyone else.
I'm just asking a naive geopolitical question of whether we should in general be talking about countries being at war (and I just offered Russia vs Ukraine as an example), or whether it's more appropriate to think of wars as being between leaderships/militaries, whereas the rest of either country should be considered generally uninvolved? Or if "it depends", where should that line be?
If you select target liberally enough, classify combatants on liberal enough criteria and use munition liberal enough, as shown by IDF reports, numbers and whistelblower accounts, the colleteral damage becomes the target.
And hell, you are really surprised after everything Israel did in Gaza so far, that support for Hamas rises? Really? I suggest to whatch the first season of Andor for an in-depth explanation of why a hard crackdown is usually only hardening resistence.
Not sure what want to say, but here some dates, courtesy of wiki:
- Hamas won 42.5% in the elections in 2006, no elections took place since
- Hamas support was not strong, based in the few pols done, it increased after Israels attack
And the last bit what is so not surprising.
Edit: If you are interested in how we ended up with this cluster fuck, wikipedia is good place. Start way back so, in 50s, to get the necessary context. I don't have everything in my head, and reading up yourself is way faster than me retyping a summary.
Israel not leveling Gaza would have a great option.
> Hamas won 42.5% in the elections in 2006, no elections took place since
...because Israel (which still occupies and directly administers some of the territory involved) has refused to cooperate with joint PA/Hamas agreements on subsequent all-Palestine elections, preferring to freeze in place the current split and presence of "elected" governments that most people subject to weren't eligible to vote (and in Gaza, where the median age is about the interval since the election, its right on the edge of the the majority not even having been alive) at the last election.
Genozid and ethinic cleansing are not an act of self defence. That people fail to see that is troublesome.
And no, I won't go back to King David and the Romans. The current conflict between Palestinians and Israel can be traced back to right after WW2. That's were the interesting events start. Going back further is not helpful.
That's your choice, but it's just an arbitrary point in time, by which Arabs have airway been slaughtering Jews for generations. You could have just as well choose last week as a starting point.
> Calling what happened in 2006 “an election” is not a good idea.
From Wikipedia:
> An 84-delegate international observer delegation monitored the elections. It judged the elections to have been peaceful and well-administered.[33] Twenty-seven members of the European parliament were included. Edward McMillan-Scott, the British Conservative head of the European Parliament's monitoring team described the polls as "extremely professional, in line with international standards, free, transparent and without violence".
So you’re gonna have to explain to me who the Arabs were that colonized Palestine in the 17th-19th century. And why that matters in relation to the current conflict. I don’t know whether the Ottoman Empire was a nation state or not (it obviously wasn’t; and I never claimed it was) has any bearing on the popularity of a resistance movement fighting a completely different occupying force.
> Because Hamas have physically killed all major opposition politicians prior to these elections.
The Palestinian Civil War (aka the Battle for Gaza) was after this election. The onset was much more complex then “Hamas killed all opposition”. But even if it was, this civil war had no effect on the election because it happened after it. If you are not referring the the civil war, which instances of political violence are you referring to? The dozens of international observers observing the election certainly didn’t see any? Were they all wrong? Is there some conspiracy we don’t know about?
Elected in 2006. Half the population weren't even alive then. Over then thousand dead children the last months also have had no say even if there had been a recent election. Don't try to blame this on the victims.
Yes, and if you look up the rules of war you will see that if you base your operations there the enemy is allowed to attack it. Besides a desire to not kill your civilian population that's another reason countries don't do that. But Hamas doesn't care for civilians.
yes, right. Lately they preemptively killed civilians when they were in a line for flour, because they were caring for civilians, and therefore prevented them from overeating.
After so many dead Palestinians whether combatants or not, compared to the number of killed Israelis, there is no other way? Laughable. Don't buy into IDF propaganda too much.
You have to think about the exploitability of your strategy. Both the IDF and Hamas optimize for a low exploitability number (though, Israel, really, you need to stagger your religious holidays, this is the second time this kind of thing has happened...), having a "kill count limiter" (in a value less than the mid single digit millions) is obviously a bad strategy and is extremely exploitable.
Are these civilians not their families and communities? According to Hamas does death for their cause not earn you points for your glorious after life? You have to understand their beliefs to understand how they justify their actions. I have no doubt what they are doing is sensible to them else why would they do it?
Protected sites lose their protected status under the law of armed conflict if they are used to hide/support combatants. Agree or disagree with Israel's targeting policies; that's still the law and has been for decades.
THe reason these "international laws" are accepted by majority of modern nations is because they are somewhat reasonable and allow parties to military conflicts to wage military campaigns while attempting to minimize civilian casualties.
If the laws are rewritten to state "you are never allowed to attack a hospital or a school. No exception", then what will follow is one party to the war will put their military installation insides schools and hospitals and the other party to the war to the war will say "these geneva conventions are unreasonable and we wont follow it"
In other words, nobody would respect Geneva conventions if they are unreasonable
Regardless of any second-order effects, the truth on the ground is that many thousands of innocents are suffering, and I have a hard time seeing any societal configuration where civilians can be legally blown up or starved en masse as anything but immoral. If a terrorist government is embedded in your population centers, it should not be legal to raze those population centers in retribution.
How do you distinguish "retribution" from eliminating the threat posed by (in your words) a terrorist government?
What do you propose as an alternative? Simply allow the terrorist government to continue to operate unimpeded, which enables attacks on your own citizens?
There's no population on the planet that would accept that.
Israel is already doing that (for valid reasons IMO) and it hasn’t lost support; if anything, Israel’s position with other Arab countries has never been better. They too would like to see Hamas gone.
So the UN Security Council vote for resolutions against Israel with only 1 dissenting vote (USA) is not losing international support? Or the cavalcade of countries around the world coming out in support of ending the occupation at the ICJ with only 3 countries in support of Israel versus the nearly 60 countries against? Not sure where you get your news, but you may want to consider another source. Would love to hear your valid reasons... but please before giving them to me, how about reading about the Zionism movement (est 1897) the balfour declaration (1917) the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem (an ac of terrorism that killed 91 people - mostly british army officers) and the Nakba (1948) the Deir Yassin Masacre - and the many others... and maybe we can have an intelligent discourse.
Doesn't your argument boil down to "wars are not moral"?
When the Iraqis and the US were besieging and pounding Mosul, was there a lot of discussion about the suffering of the innocents? Did the US or anyone else air drop supplies to them or send aid trucks into Mosul? Maybe- but I don't recall.
Let's not forget that ISIS was thousands of miles from the US and the US was under no direct threat. Contrast that to an enemy much stronger in numbers and arms vs. ISIS 15 minutes from your cities.
This is just evidence to what is the "standard" in how wars are waged in similar situations.
Before the Geneva convention, and obviously after the Geneva convention, some countries/armies would just fire artillery into the besieged city and drop bombs and starve them until there's no more resistance. This would be the Russian or Syrian approach which they copy-pasted many times in the Syrian civil war and in Ukraine (by both sides). Israel is not doing that.
All that said, I think Israel should strive within reason to facilitate aid delivery to civilians. It is doing that but it can probably do more. There are some portions of the Israeli public that think that after Oct 7th the "enemy" should be brought to their knees by any tactic but I don't think that's the majority and I don't think that's what the decision makers are pursuing. There are challenges in getting aid to people in a war zone where random people pop up with RPGs and shoot things or steal the aid for military purposes. If something goes wrong, like it did the other day, and many people died, Israel takes flak (essentially for trying to get aid into those problematic places).
The Hamas, being the elected government of Gaza, and having hoarded provisions for their prolonged battle, is also responsible for the well being of their citizens. They don't give a damn but we shouldn't forget they're responsible (in many ways) for the current situation.
In terms of "razing" there is extensive use of bulldozers, bombs and demolition to neutralize mines, booby traps, tunnel shafts. Expose tunnels. Remove positions the enemy can utilize. This is why the IDF has managed to take over most of Gaza with relatively low casualties (still a lot but a lot less than was expected). I'm ok with this morality in this context, minimizing my casualties in a conflict that the other side insists on continuing. There is a fine line there and the line is international law (which generally allows these tactics).
Hamas was elected in 2006. Hamas was initially funded by Israel - yes they are an Israeli creation to weaken the Palestinian Authority. Let that sink in for a minute. Over 50% of Gaza's population was born after this election. Of the remaining, there was barely 40% turnout and Hamas barely won. But yet, you cling to the narrative fed to you that they are all guilty (which means you ascribe to collective punishment - a war crime).
The infrastructure destruction has been going on for decades. Israel routinely destroys Palestinian homes prior to October 7th. Is that Hamas? when they do it in the West Bank where Hamas is not active, is that Hamas too? How about the Thousands of Palestinian Men, Women and Children arrested without charge or trial and help in inhuman detention camps, is that Hamas? or are you maybe just trying to turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed United States political, financial and military support so that you can sleep better at night.... it was Hamas is getting old. At some point you need to wake up and understand that the real boogeyman is Israel. They are not your friend
Hamas was not "initially funded by Israel". References?
Support for violence and Hamas amongst Palestinians is not "my narrative". It's truth supported by numerous surveys. If you want to get some color go look for the YouTube channel that interviews Palestinians on the street on topical questions over the last decade or so.
Hamas enjoys broad support and would get re-elected, that's why we didn't see any elections after 2006, because the PA would have lost to Hamas. Also the attack of Hamas on Oct 7th has broad support and previous to Oct 7th support for the use of violence against Israel was similarly broad.
"The polls shows 57% of respondents in Gaza and 82% in the West Bank believe Hamas was correct in launching its October 7 onslaught, in which some 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, were murdered and over 240 were taken hostage. A large majority believes Hamas’s claims that it acted to “defend” the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and win the release of Palestinian security prisoners. Only 10% say they believed Hamas has committed war crimes, with a large majority saying they did not see videos showing the terrorists committing atrocities."
"The poll found that 53% of Palestinians believe Hamas is “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people,” while only 14% prefer Abbas’ secular Fatah party." (2021)
I can give you 100's of more surveys over the last decade. It might be true that Hamas' support today in Gaza is waning given the circumstances but probably rising in the west bank. Palestinians were celebrating Oct 7th.
Anyways we are talking about Gaza, how did this get to the West Bank? Your statements about the west bank are also wrong. Israel demolishes houses of terrorists that murder Israeli civilians. That's pretty much the only "routinely destroys homes" I can think of. Israel doesn't arrest children and put them in inhuman(e?) detention camps, where do you get that stuff?
Israel isn't perfect by any means, but the bad guys in this story are the Palestinians. There's no excuse for things like suicide bombers blowing up busses, malls, and restaurants. There's no excuse of Oct 7th. They chose indiscriminate violence as their way of settling the conflict and refused any peaceful attempts to settle it. You're the one that needs to wake up and at the very least learn the facts of this conflict before you make up your mind. EDIT: Also no excuse to firing 10's of thousands of rockets and mortars into Israeli population centers. All these things are war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel's actions as a whole are not.
Things are very simple in my eyes. If tens of thousands of innocents are dying without an end in sight, there is a bleed that needs to be stemmed immediately. It does not matter who started it or whether the crisis is being used as propaganda or leverage. The truth is on the ground.
It would be great to "defeat Hamas" as a solution, but I'm not sure how that's feasible at this point without razing Gaza.
Things are not simple, and a simplistic take of this matter is very prevalent, sadly. I mean, what are even the real numbers? Did you forget about the Hamas rocket hitting a hospital in Gaza, which they claimed was Israel's bombing that killed 500 civilians? Later they settled on 50, when it was widely accepted that it was their doing.
Fighting Hamas is hard, mostly because it uses civilian population and infrastructure to its benefit, but what are the alternatives? reward Hamas' actions by letting them off the hook? I haven't heard any other suggestion on how do deal with Hamas except for fighting them head on.
Are you sure that stopping it will actually minimize the number of deaths in the long run? Is it better to kill 20000 people in a short time to reach permanent peace, or to save some of those people and then repeat the whole ordeal each 2 years, with more and more bloodshed?
I don’t pretend to have an answer, but war brings up very hard to answer moral questions.
This a common misunderstanding of the international laws of war, and international law in general.
In our personal lives the government can compel us to follow the law with the threat of overwhelming force; if I break the law I will be arrested, and regardless of how much I fight back I will not be able to stop it. Laws in our everyday lives are like commands from a parent to a child; the government, as the parent, can and will compel the child's obedience.
International law is different. If a state breaks international law, there is no entity willing or capable of using overwhelming force to compel obedience. States have armies and some have nuclear weapons; the amount of force required to compel a state to behave a certain way is huge, and generating that force is extremely costly. When states break international law there are consequences, but at the end of the day violence is generally not on the table.
Effective international law is a balancing act. An international standard of warfare that placed extremely strict standards on when it was permissible to kill civilians would make fighting a war significantly harder. No state would obey such a law because winning the war is the absolute highest priority, making the law worthless. Instead, laws of war try to outlaw actions that don't affect the ability of a country to win a war. No chemical or biological weapons (high explosives are more effective), humane treatment of prisoners (discourages the enemy fighting to the death), and no killing civilians unless in the pursuit of a military objective (if it's not in pursuit of a military objective, then it's a waste of resources). The goal of the laws of war is to prevent unnecessary violence, not prevent violence altogether. It's a case of "perfect is the enemy of good."
Hamas is free to hand out uniforms to its soldiers to prevent civilians getting killed. They’re also free to build barracks instead of tunnels underneath schools to house their fighters. Until they do so civilians will continue to suffer.
The very reason these laws are there is to protect civilians. A hospital can more or less safely operate in a war zone if both parties play by the rules and actually care for their people. If you exploit these very rules for military advantage, then why not just put red crosses on your attack helicopters as well? There aren’t too many laws to war, but this just fundamentally makes sense.
GP is wrong. There is the law of proportionality in the Geneva Conventions which requires "that the expected incidental harm is not excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage."
>The word to pay attention to here is "military advantage" - i.e. "military value" of the target.
Seeing a "hamas" go into a hospital or a rocket being fired from it doesn't give Israel the green light to bomb it. While there is no well-defined metric or number that defines proportionality - it is safe to say that Israelis don't meet the necessary criteria by any reasonable measure. Establishing the necessary proportionality to justify an attack on a hospital, refugee camp or shelter is needless to say, extraordinarily high.
Take the recent ICC arrest warrants as an example. The ICC just ruled that Russian targeting of Ukraine's power grid constituted a war crime.“During this timeframe, there was an alleged campaign of strikes against numerous electric power plants and sub-stations, which were carried out by the Russian armed forces in multiple locations in Ukraine,” the court said. "The ICC said the attacks led by Koblylash and Sokolov on Ukraine’s electrical grid caused civilian harm which was excessive when compared with any expected military advantage". This even though power infrastructure has clear military value.
Now look at the siege and attack on Shifa hospital. If Shifa was a vital command-and-control hub where the head of Hamas operated from , or if it contained a major ammo depot - that may constitute sufficient military value to justify the incidental deaths caused by attacking a hospital. A calendar and a couple of AKs behind an MRI machine doesn't does not. Moreover the fact that Israelis had to go in and spend weeks on a fishing expedition to dig up (or make up) the sufficient evidence to justify the attack after-the-fact, proves that they didn't have the necessary justification to stage the attack in the first place. Thus the attack on the hospital violates the Geneva conventions and is a war crime. (But don't hold your breath for any action from the ICC - They are extremely biased and beholden to US and NATO interests).
At this point the mountain of evidence is simply undeniable. When we compare the intensity of atrocity committed by the Israelis, to those in other recent conflicts - Mosul, Homs, Mariupol, Grozny, Yemen- the israelis sails past them all with a healthy margin. Israelis killed more children in a few months than the syrians, russians did over many years. In terms of civillian/combatant ratio and the sheer intensity of civillian deaths in a short time-frame- I am not aware of any national force committing similar attrocity in the 21st century (Maybe the Ethiopian civil war, but I don't know, i am not versed on that conflict) If this was Russia or Iran we wouldn't be having this conversation.
*>When we compare the intensity of atrocity committed by the Israelis, to those in other recent conflicts - Mosul, Homs, Mariupol, Grozny, Yemen- the israelis sails past them all with a healthy margin.
According to Ukrainian sources, at least 25,000 people died in the siege of Mariupol over the course of less than three months. The current conflict in Gaza is grave, but it is not incomparable or unprecedented.
I remember 10k being the more frequently quoted number. But maybe that needs to be revisited - I was more naive about the degree of underreporting on ukrainian casualties. Maybe the truth is closer to 25k - which would make it comparable to Gaza. It will be difficult/impossible to know the real number given the reported cremations, the fact that the city is under Russian control, and that lot of the missing include residents who fled/were-transferred to Russia. The Gaza numbers are likely higher than official report given all the missing who are still under the rubble.
But the burden of proof rests on the army that attacks said protected site. They need to show that it hid or supported enemy combatants. And to date, no such proof has been provided. Show me proof of the expansive military complex with their large cache of weapons and hidden combatants and I will gladly shut-up.
The Israeli video footage showing of Hamas rocket launch sites inside Gaza schools are faked? Ditto the phone recordings of Hamas ordering ambulances for military transport those are fake as well? Do you believe Hamas follows “laws of war”? When they fire rockets at civilian populations? Are the Hamas rocket attack videos faked? Once the other side starts to bomb your cities and kill your civilians what should they expect will happen to their cities? War is an ugly brutal contest to terrorize or kill the other side to stop resisting. We try to have rules to control war but history shows once those rules start to get violated by one side you should not expect others to stick to them.
All that said I think Israel will be responsible for lots of broken innocent civilian lives and broken infrastructure when this is all done and their best policy in Gaza will be like USA had towards Germany and Japan after WW2.
> Which unfortunately means prohibitions on bombing hospitals, schools and places of worship are now obsolete.
Even if Hamas was fighting from hospitals and schools that is not how this works. Israel would be required to give those schools and hospitals warning first which they have not been doing.
And assuming (incorrectly) that Israel was following the rules of engagement and giving the civilians warning, why are they hitting the refuge camps with 2000lb dumb bombs? Why not guided bombs?
I think you're generally wrong on the "they have not been doing" comment. Israel has been giving warnings, and those warnings were intentionally being ignored to maximize the damage to Israel's reputation. But if you have some comprehensive data here I'd be interested in seeing it.
From my observation the pattern has been Israel giving warnings/ordering evacuations with the response being "it can't be done" only to end with significantly more difficult conditions.
Israel did demand that the entirety of Northern Gaza be evacuated from civilians (including those "camps" you mention, more below, and including all those hospitals) which was again pushed back on as "impossible" or physically prevented by Hamas which in turn caused increased civilian casualty rates and the eventual almost full evacuation under significantly more difficult conditions.
The use of the terminology "refugee camps" is also confusing. Some of what the media refers to as "refugee camps" are permanent settlements, effectively cities, where the population consists of many 1948 refugees. Not what most people think about when they hear "refugee camps". As to why heavy bombs are used I'm not an expert but potentially to penetrate deeper and there might be other reasons.
All that said, I think it should be acknowledged that some of the methods Israel is using are likely to try and achieve some psychological advantage against the enemy. I don't think this that's necessarily a violation of international law given that warnings were given. It's within the realm of what I would call a military objective (demoralizing the enemy forces and destroying their infrastructure).
I didn't say that Israel has never ordered an evacuation. I pushed back on the commenter who stated that finding a militant in a hospital or school makes it a valid target.
> From my observation
Well from Human Rights Watches observation:
> Human Rights Watch has not been able to corroborate them, nor seen any information that would justify attacks on Gaza hospitals. When a journalist at a news conference showing video footage of damage to the Qatar Hospital sought additional information to verify voice recordings and images presented, the Israeli spokesperson said, “our strikes are based on intelligence.” Even if accurate, Israel has not demonstrated that the ensuing hospital attacks were proportionate.
Again, giving a warning doesn't make it ok to bomb a school. Notice how the HRW quote mentions the attack not being "proportionate"? That's why I seek advice from the experts.
"Rule 28. Medical units exclusively assigned to medical purposes must be respected and protected in all circumstances. They lose their protection if they are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy."
We've seen some evidence that hospitals are used outside their humanitarian function.
It's true that even if the hospital loses it's protection that does not mean that it's ok to just go ahead and level it because of the presence of a single combatant (and that hasn't happened, I'm pretty sure e.g. no hospital in Gaza suffered a direct bombing attack e.g. but it may be ok under certain circumstances to completely level a hospital that is used for military purposes if enough warning has been given), the proportionality principles still applies. Proportionate has a very specific meaning in terms of the Geneva convention which most people aren't familiar with. I agree that the IDFs actions must be proportionate in that sense. The IDF claims its actions are. The IDF has lawyers that evaluate actions against international law.
Human Rights Watch isn't necessarily an unbiased observer here. Naturally they would not have access to the IDF's intelligence and the IDF can be justified in not sharing its intelligence to protect its sources.
My basic take is why is it beneficial for the IDF to waste time and resources attacking hospitals that have no military use? It's bad PR, it's wasted efforts that could be directed somewhere else. Doesn't make sense. It's possible it could be "more careful" in avoiding those in certain situations. Is it the highest item in the priority list (e.g. above the security of IDF soldiers), probably not.
There's certainly been no shortage of rhetoric on the Israeli side to exact revenge for Oct 7th. Some of it very extreme. The events of that day traumatized Israelis.
I don't think most Israelis really think the Palestinians are the biblical "Amalek". More like the children of "Ishmael", i.e. "cousins". They likely do view Hamas specifically as an entity that should be annihilated. i.e. all 40k or so Hamas combatants killed or captured. But even if we take this at face value it's still stupid to waste energy on a place that's known to not be a military threat while there are active military threats. First finish the military threat.
When it comes to international law, i think human rights groups are more like the "prosecuter" than a neutral party. They have an interest in this conflict that is not the same as Israel's.
When HRW says Israel is bad, i think its a bit like when a cop says the person they arrested is bad. It may very well be true, but i wouldn't put it as a sure thing until some sort of trial is done.
P.s. in regards to "porportionate" - keep in mind that has a special definition in international law that is different from how people use it in normal conversation.
> They have an interest in this conflict that is not the same as Israel's.
You are quite right, Israel's interest is to kill and displace the Palestinians, crush them as a people. Very few human right groups would have an interest that aligns with that.
Maybe you don't believe them, but if the goal is to determine truth its probably better to start from a place of assuming innocence and change views based on evidence, not the other way around.
You seem to have left out the 17 year blockade of Gaza by Israel, the intentional starvation of the population. The occasional bombings and "targeted" airstrikes... sure they just randomly attacked Israel one day because they felt like it...
That's not the order things occurred. When Israel left Gaza it left it to the Palestinian authority and it wasn't blockaded (there was some partial blockade but it was practically open). The present walls and barriers around Gaza were put in place after the disengagement as a response to specific attacks coming out of Gaza.
The previous restrictions on Gaza were also a result of attacks coming out of Gaza on Israeli civilians.
If the population was starving while Hamas, the government of Gaza, managed to smuggle in RPGs, assault rifles, lathes, trucks, rockets, mortars, sniper rifles, heavy machine guns etc. then clearly the issue is a matter of their priorities, not Israel. Hamas stole concrete to make tunnels, used water pipes to make rockets, was the elected government, and is completely responsible if its population is starving (which I don't think was true anyways). You're also somehow conveniently leaving Egypt out of the picture. Why should Israel feed its enemies (and allow them to work in Israel, and give them water and power). Egypt could have done all that. But Hamas didn't only pick a fight with Israel- they also collaborated with ISIS in Sinai and picked a fight with Egypt.
They "randomly attacked Israel one day" because they are consumed by hate and religious fanaticism. Just listen to what they say. If they chose peace, they'd get peace, Israel has no interest in randomly attacking them.
what is "Israel"? are you referring to the people of Israel? Do you believe that 9 million Israelis have interest of killing and displacing Palestinians and crush them as a people?
and what interest Palestinians have in regard to Israelis from your point of view?
Going by Israeli TV, Telegram channels and polls, unfortunately it really does seem like a large proportion of Israelis think of Palestinians as sub-human bugs to be crushed.
Already we've seen settlers building an "outpost" inside Gaza, while Israeli soldiers watch on. Meanwhile, Israeli civilians block aid to starving children, again while the IDF watch.
> what interest Palestinians have in regard to Israelis from your point of view?
I'm not sure I understand the question? Is it "how to Palestinians feel about Israelis?". If so, I don't know, but I can imagine how I might feel if I'd been dehumanised my entitre life; lived under brutal occupation/blockade my entire life, seen siblings carted off to be tortured in Israeli dungeons, had my father shot in front of me etc. Perhaps Israel should stop stealing land and homes, and stop their institutionalised dehumanisation of Palestinians; many Israelis seem to need de-radicalising.
You specifically asked me for a response about "one side" - I respond, and am accused of bias. I just looked at your post history, and I regret engaging with you, as well, talk about hypocrisy.
I can answer that for you, we expect Israel to abide by the 1993 Oslo Accords which provides for a two state solution agreed upon by both parties. So far Israel has breached that agreement since day one.
In reference to the same poll: "A vast majority of Jewish Israelis believe that the IDF is using an appropriate amount or not enough force" [0]. "Nearly 58 percent of respondents in one poll said they think the IDF is using “too little firepower” in Gaza" [1]
I think most Israelis do not believe peace is possible with the Palestinians. This is a result of the suicide bombing campaign that followed the Oslo peace process.
But I don't think your survey shows what you're saying it shows. I've no doubt that more Israeli Jews want peace than Arabs. Find me a survey that asks this question to both population, do you prefer peace or a war. I have no doubt what the answer would be. You can see this in the public discourse, the Palestinian population supports "resistance" which is war. you won't find much Israeli discourse about initiating violence against the Palestinian population pre Oct 7th. See this: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/new-poll-shows-palestinians...
Palestinians could have peace at any time. On Israeli terms. They can have their freedom, their humans rights. What they can't have is the land they demand, the right of return, and the eviction of the state of Israel.
In terms of Gaza, it's not surprising Israelis are disappointed with the progress in the war. It's been 5 months and Gaza hasn't been completely retaken and Hamas has not been defeated as a military. Again I don't think this actually supports your point of view at all or necessarily paints Israelis in a bad light. If Hamas hadn't attacked on Oct 7th we wouldn't be having this discussion. Since they have Israel is using all its might to destroy them and yes there are severe consequences to the Gazans. Israel is somewhat in the middle in terms of the usage of force in this situation vs. what most of the world considers to be normal. The Russians e.g. would undoubtedly apply a lot more force. Even most of the western world would and has.
> Israel is somewhat in the middle in terms of the usage of force in this situation vs. what most of the world considers to be normal
If we're being honest, I think that perception (such that it may exist) largely depends upon the race of the subject states. Consider the recent bomb blast on Iran, attributed to Israel - if Iran responded in the same manner as Israel did after Oct 7th, our govs would be denouncing them as evil incarnate!
In any case, I really think - really hope - that's not true; surely most civilians don't think forced starvation, massacres of children, torture etc are "OK". If so, there is no hope for humanity.
And bear in mind this is not "just" about Gaza - many more people now know about Israel's illegal and dehumanising actions towards Palestinians, whipping up Islamophobia, and general land-theft and terrorism throughout the region. And we do not understand how this is allowed to happen in our name, supported by our governments.
> Even most of the western world would and has.
In the past, yes. And in times gone by, civilians were kept informed of global events by newspapers and TV news. Now, we are basically seeing a genocide, land-grab and oil-grab unfold right before our very eyes, from the normal, everyday people who are affected - people who now don't seem so different to us, people just like us.
What recent bomb blast on Iran? You're not seriously comparing slaughtering and raping party goers (to say the least), abducting woman, babies and elderly, to a clandestine operation against some infrastructure. Iran says it wants to destroy Israel (and why?) and acts towards it. Israel is allowed to counteract that.
If Israel raided Iran, raped Iranian woman, beheaded random Iranian citizens, abducted Iranian children and elderly, Iran would absolutely be justified to start a war with Israel. Many Iranians are strong supporters of Israel in this conflict by the way. In a war you do anything possible, these days within international law, to defeat your enemy and I'd fully expect Iran to try that under those circumstances.
You're insisting Israel is the bad side here. I'm going to respectfully disagree. There is no comparison between the moral positions of Israel and Hamas.
We're seeing war. The use of the word genocide in the context of this war is propaganda and is eroding the meaning of that word.
EDIT: It's also important to consider that Iran is already waging a proxy war on Israel. A war with no justification.
> that and the fact over 500 Israeli soldiers were killed by Hamas in Gaza so far
Israel are the occupying, attacking force, and have massacred thousands of civilians. You want me to care about war criminals, who routinely broadcast their depraved attrocities on TikTok? Come on now.
Israel is not defending itself. They are actively murdering civilians to the point you can claim it as genocide. [0] Hamas did not killed those civilians it was Israel who killed them.[1] Israel dehumanized Palestinians[2][3]. He is not a Jew hater, you are accusing him of something he is not and trying to deny the reality of the atrocities committed by Israel. As for all Jews, yes, they are all the same. If the Jews didn't have someone at the head of the Jews who was dedicated to building Solomon's temple by committing this atrocity, the Jews wouldn't have the courage to act.
> the organization's senior Middle East official, Sarah Leah Whitson, attempted to extract money from potential Saudi donors by bragging about the group's "battles" with the "pro-Israel pressure groups."
What's wrong with that? Any honest observer will have battles with groups who want to spin the truth.
I'd say one of the biggest problems in the US political system right now is that we don't have enough organizations willing to battle against our own partisan pressure groups (without siding with any of them).
Perhaps that's what's troubling: so many of our organizations have taken sides that it's difficult to understand an organization that hasn't.
As for raising money in Saudi Arabia: they were raising money from private supporters there, not the Saudi government. Do you think no one in SA supports human rights?
Or, if the suggestion is that HRW is siding with the Saudis, take a look at:
Who do you think "private supporters" are in Saudi Arabia?
And no, I don't think anyone with anything resembling power or wealth in Saudi Arabia supports human rights.
HRW execs admit via email to the editor in chief of a nationally respected magazine that they raise money by bragging how tough they are on Israel. And then they are tough on Israel, and you think it's a principled stance. Maybe they just have profitable principles, I dunno.
Israel has bombed the designated safe areas significantly less than the other areas. This is fact. It also never promised not to bomb them and has consistently said that it will go after military targets in those areas as well. This is also fact. Israel has every right to do so according to international law. Israel's intention was to move civilians out of areas that are going to see heavier/intense fighting as the IDF moves to take them over on the ground.
Palestinian propaganda repeats this first point, it's not in good faith.
I'm not familiar with the second incident you're mentioning but I'm sure in any major war there will be plenty of examples of "things that are really bad". E.g. in the Ukraine-Russia war summary executions of surrendering soldiers, intentional bombing of civilians, are things that happen a lot and don't make the news. Give me one example of a major war where these things don't happen. For a western country the answer should be that these incidents should be investigated and the individuals punished. I think that rarely happens (e.g. you're not going to find many incidents of US soldiers, or "private security contractors", punished in the various wars the US engaged with). We should still strive for that. I'm pretty sure the IDF command does not order tanks to run over civilians, that is not policy, quite the opposite.
> Israel did demand that the entirety of Northern Gaza be evacuated from civilians (including those "camps" you mention, more below, and including all those hospitals)
That's true but if the UK military intentionally embeds in all UK cities, in civilian clothes, and launches rockets at Russia from those cities, and the UK sends raids into Russia to kill Russians and then retreats and mixes with civilian population in the UK, what do you feel is a legitimate move or tactic by Russia to defend its citizens in this hypothetical situation?
And what if Russia had been colonizing Scotland, then Wales, then half of England, only left disjointed pockets of UK residents not allowed to vote, being watched 24/7, being beaten, harassed and killed by settlers under the watch of Russian army, and then being beaten when going to the funeral of their dead, being robbed of their natural resources, having to go through checkpoints to see their family, London being half the UK capital and half the Russian capital but actually Russia says the entirety of London is, Russia bombing neighbour countries, all of this illegal and happening for 75 years and no one in the world does anything because the richest country in the world blindly supports Russia ?
It's less of a context than your political position or opinion. I think it's also at the very least naive and simplistic. As one example, those checkpoints you're describing did not exist before terrorism such as suicide bombers and other indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians. They also do not exist in Gaza. I'm finding it hard to follow the rest of your analogy.
My context is that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 as a pilot for a plan for complete disengagement from the Palestinians, effectively the two state solution everyone talks about. It handed this region, that used to be occupied (from Egypt) to the Palestinians to make their own. The settlements in Gaza were dismantled and the settlers left. Nobody was being watched or harassed by Israel. Hamas took control of Gaza by force and turned it into a mini-Caliphate with the sole purpose of killing all Jews in the middle east. Launching suicide bombers from it and launching 10's of thousands of rockets at Israeli cities. I think this is a more accurate context than yours.
What I will agree with you is that the history of the conflict has relevance to the morality of Israel's actions. I would say though that Hamas' conduct is: war crimes, crimes against humanity, and immoral. This does not need any context. It's absolute. I would also be inclined to say, in this light, that Israel's response to Oct 7th is moral regardless of previous context. I don't think there's any "oppression" or "occupation" that justifies the violence we've seen from the Palestinian side. I can't think of any similar historical examples of these levels of indiscriminate violence against civilians. It's not just their violence towards Israel but their violence towards each other (using children or people with mental problems as suicide bombers e.g.). At least not in modern times.
Israel is not "colonizing" anything. The state of Israel is the UN recognized legal entity in Mandatory Palestine, following the British Mandate, following the Ottoman Empire's collapse. I don't think Israeli settlements in the west bank (occupied from Jordan but historically part of the British Mandate, so complicated story there) are useful. I also don't like the settlers harassment of Palestinians (which is really a relatively recent phenomena, not going all the way back to 1967) in the west bank. But Palestinians have been attacking Israelis all along as well in some pretty bad ways and refusing to try and settle.
And I can also say that your view is less context than a personal biased view on the situation. Mixing up Hamas and Palestinians as if they're all the same. Excusing Israel's response as just and proportionate, meaning that shelling entire neighborhoods, sniping people left and right, shooting at an ambulance are somehow fighting terrorism. Saying on all platforms that the goal is to "exterminate animals", from the highest personnel in positions of power. Shooting civilians who try to get food, blocking humanitarian convoys from entering, putting as part of a plan the total blockade of water, food, electricity of millions of people, that's fighting terrorism ?
> Launching suicide bombers from it and launching 10's of thousands of rockets at Israeli cities. I think this is a more accurate context than yours.
If you want to put context, put context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_co... . But a fight on numbers is stupid so let's not go there. You want to put context as to why 10's of rockets explode on Israel cities, you have to explain why for each rocket Israel retaliates with 10 deaths on Palestinian side. It's all part of it.
> Israel is not "colonizing" anything. The state of Israel is the UN recognized legal entity in Mandatory Palestine,
EDIT: I'm not even making this up: "Israel approves plans for 3,400 new homes in West Bank settlements" -- "Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem - land the Palestinians want as part of a future state - in the 1967 Middle East war" <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68490034>
> But Palestinians have been attacking Israelis all along as well in some pretty bad ways and refusing to try and settle.
Oh come on. Let my country come to your land, force you to leave by hundred thousands, harass you, beat you, kill you, and let's see if you accept me settling there nicely and comfortably.
We could go on and on and on but please put the context if you want to talk about it, the real one, not the one you pick. The one that is internationally recognized but no one says anything because of interests. The one that is plain visible for all to see. There is suffering on all sides, please don't pretend it's easy.
Maybe we don't even disagree. The real conflict is between the Israel State and the Palestinian "State", or governing bodies. Let those far-right atrocities who know and help each other fight in a cage and leave the population, on both side, alone.
I think we do agree given your last sentence. I'll sign on to that.
On the details of the history this wasn't "my country come to your land and forced you to leave" it was more like "Jewish people immigrated to this region, their historic homeland, many expelled from their homes in Europe and the middle east and had no options" (compare e.g. to Chinese people from Hong Kong immigrating to Canada) and "war started by the Arab countries against the UN recognized state of Israel led to 700,000 Palestinians refugees" (I'd compare to millions of German refugees in Europe post their loss in WW-II). Jewish immigration to the region was legal and should be viewed as moral on many levels. If the Arab population were to look at it as the positive that it could have been then we'd all be living happily ever after in a prosperous middle east. If anything millions of Jews could have been saved in WW-II if Britain were to allow more of them to immigrate- that was immoral. The Arabs had, and still do, see this as a (racist) zero sum game, not a win-win (vs. how Canada looks at immigration again e.g.). Read Israel's declaration of independence to see how Israel's leadership looked at it (and keep in mind this was 1948!).
The settlements are a tricky topic. I'm opposed to them and the settlers. But this is not what most people talk about when they say Israel is a colonist. What most people mean is the existence of the state of Israel is the "settlement". That's their political perspective and IMO both racist and a distortion of history.
Thanks for providing your pov, it explains a lot of things and even though I have my views I can totally understand why we disagree:
> Jewish immigration to the region was legal
This is the crux of where we disagree. It was legal based on international law, but international law is just western law: Palestinians and neighboring countries said no, and under the same international law they were in the right: they have the right to self-determination. So if we take the legal point, the argument is not receivable
> and should be viewed as moral on many levels
That's plainly subjective and my own thinking makes me say it's immoral to displace hundreds of thousands of people and take their homes, their land, their food, just because.
> But this is not what most people talk about when they say Israel is a colonist. What most people mean is the existence of the state of Israel is the "settlement"
I disagree, anyone I've seen talking about the colonialist aspect of Israel is specifically all the illegal settlements outside its borders, it's the massive control of Palestinian population, it's forbidding them access to their own sea, that kind of things. Everyone who talks about it is clear.
When people talk about the existence of Israel and its racist laws, they will rather use the term "apartheid" which is closer to the truth.
In any case, those disagreements are to be put in perspective to what we both agree on, and that is the nice note of this discussion :)
I wonder if Sir William Wallace, a.k.a. Braveheart, would be considered a Terrorist or a Freedom Fighter. When England invaded and occupied and imposed ridiculous rules on them, should they have not fought back? How about the Potato Famine, how many of you know that this was caused by England INTENTIONALLY by shipping all the food out of Ireland to England. is Sinn Fein a terrorist group still? or were they so named because they fought an occupier?
I'm not familiar at all with these stories. I should read about them.
I think there's a fairly clear delineation between a terrorist and a freedom fighter. A terrorist's goal is to sow terror among the target entity. It does so by random indiscriminate violence (and barbarism). The more random the target is and the more barbaric the attack is the better. 9/11 is a good example. A terrorist has no moral qualms. The goal justifies anything. It's almost certain that the terrorist is losing in any measurable objective. E.g. the Chechen attacks in Moscow leading to Russia essentially levelling Chechnia, or the Sri Lankans destroying the Tamils. It's kind of a lost cause made worse by violence.
A freedom fighter, to contrast, will weigh the morality of their actions vs. what they can accomplish and other non-violent alternatives. They will weigh the violence they use, their targets, against specific "freedom" goals. They will not sacrifice their own humanity to pursue their goal. They have some reasonable chance of achieving some real "freedom" goals out of the targeted acts of violence. WW-II Partisans come to mind.
Gaza is among the most densly populated areas on earth. By definition, any military installation is close to civilians. Same goes for a lot of IDF, and every other military, ehich has bases next to a city. Doesn't mean one just can indiscriminately bomb everything and everyone...
What you have neglected is history. The last time Israel pushed people out of their homes, they were not allowed to return. This fact is seared into the memory of every Palestinian for generations. They carry the keys to their original homes to this day. So forgive them for not wanting to abandon their only homes because they want to kill people they have been abusing for decades. Please read your history prior to making unfounded statements and justifications.
The Palestinians have their own version of history which let's just say is inaccurate. One example is they underplay the seriousness of the Arab attack on Israel in 1948 and things like the Egyptian air force bombing Tel-Aviv seem to evaporate from their version of events. They also tend to completely forget about their collaboration with Nazi Germany and the numerous attacks against Jews pre-1948. Really history in the sense of "his story". You can argue Israelis also do this, which is probably correct, but I think you'll find more diverse views in Israeli society and more access to facts. In fact many Palestinians use Israeli historians as their reference (while conveniently not pointing out what parts of their claims are still under debate/disagreement).
It's true that some people were forced to leave after the Arabs started a war on Israel in 1948 and those people generally weren't allowed back. It's also true that many people chose to leave and also weren't allowed back. That said your logic makes no sense to anyone with western values IMO. Your life is more important than your property. I.e. between the option of staying in your property and dying and leaving and not dying the choice for most people in the west is clear. It's true that if they leave they may not be allowed to return. We can argue about the morality of that given they started this current war as well. I think in practice Gazans will be allowed to go back, but time will tell and events will transpire. If anything in practice leaving their homes to allow Israel to focus on Hamas would have likely shortened the war and increased their chances of getting back home and to normality sooner.
I can't really follow your logic who is wanting to kill who and who has been abusing who.
“Refugee camp” is just a legal designation for certain areas in the Gaza Strip. It refers to “refugees” from events that took place decades before almost anyone in the Gaza Strip was even born.
It's a dense urban area, it has civilians and children.
That bomb is large enough to level an apartment block, so ~100 casualties and they don't know where it will land. Who are they targeting with that type of bomb, 1 Hamas fighter hiding among population?
It's error margin is in hundreds of meters. You are not allowed to kill 100 innocent people in the hopes (not certainty!) of getting 1 enemy soldier. That's exactly what 'indiscriminate killing of civilians' means.
That is why United States has never used this size of bomb, let alone unguided, in it's recent wars in Urban areas. They were also fighting guerrilla fighters - Taliban, Al Qaeda, etc.
The act of using this weapon in Urban area is a war crime, just as it would be a war crime to use chemical weapons, etc.
I am really puzzled by you posting this and thinking it justifies bombing. Are you unable to imagine how this would look if the shoe was on the other foot?
Imagine there was happening in New York - and someone posted a video “They are using Subway and maintenance tunnels to deliver supplies” - obviously infrastructure would be used!
Next step: “therefore any building over a tonne is a valid military target”. Do you realise that would mean basically any building in New York?
If that were true, you could bomb hospitals and it would never be a war crime. You must realise that if you actually think through the logical consequences of your argument.
Military facilities are things like an arsenal, munitions depo, barracks, forward operating base, fire support base, etc. To the best of my knowledge, this was never found.
what are you talking about? my reply was to “credible evidence of a large, undergroud Hamas facility” and I posted that, and not via israeli, but via hamas own channels. I have no idea why you replied what you did.
i guess the result of that civilian smuggling is the access to food, medicine and other lifesaving goods for the civilians? oh, no, it seems like it is weapons and hostages.
I suggest that all nations everywhere blow up their roads, then. After all, they too are civilian infrastructure that is abused for the evil purposes of transporting tanks and ammunition. It must be stopped!
Former AP reporters have come forward and admitted that not only was the AP well aware of Hamas’ presence and activity in the building, but that from time to time, armed Hamas men would burst into their offices demanding they not report on some of those activities.
> Which unfortunately means prohibitions on bombing hospitals, schools and places of worship are now obsolete.
Interesting. I wonder whether genocide of all people seriously harmed by IDF since Oct 7 should also be added to the list of war crimes obsoleted in this recent war. It only makes sense, since all these people are enemies of the state of Israel with a very high probability of causing harm to the civilians living there in the future. Geneva conventions are really showing their age in the past few months.
It's likely he would not be allowed to leave by internal forces. Obviously he could try to sneak away but that's what the Russia aligned guy did back in 2014...
funny, I dont recall 25 year olds forbidden from leaving the US during the last how many years and countless wars? I also dont see a general notice in israel to not leave the country.
But even if it happens other places, it does not change what it is
That assumes upper bound of published figures, 130. Lower bound is about 90. If 130 is 10%, 90 would be 7%. In my estimation post I took conservatively wikipedia's count, close to the lower bound.
> Another possibility is that they also had a second job working for Hamas - so, on a list of "not really journalists".
I think we need less baseless speculation in this discussion. Another commenter posted links to the Times of Israel, which of course is very imperfect, but it's a start.
If you notice many of them died on Oct 7. i.e. they knew about the massacre in advance and were being "journalists" covering it. Reuters even had to publish an article saying they did not know in advance that some of their freelancers were involved.
> If you notice many of them died on Oct 7. i.e. they knew about the massacre in advance and were being "journalists" covering it. Reuters even had to publish an article saying they did not know in advance that some of their freelancers were involved.
Great, something moving us forward. Do you happen to have some substantive basis for those claims?
I realize questions like that are a PITA and we're just talking on an Internet forum, not in a court or in the NY Times, but there is so much mis/disinfo out there on this war that I think it's really needed. Not your fault if you don't happen to have it.
Besides the statistics I advise anyone to also look at the reports of how the individual deaths happened, I've seen them very little discussed in western media.
There's often enough evidence to show an extremely likely deliberate killing (usually with weapons that Hamas doesn't have).
Journalists have been killed outside of the Gaza strip as well.
Just make your own informed opinion.
Furthermore, there have been so few western journalists on the ground because Israel (and Egypt) prevented them from entering, I think this prohibition alone should be considered unacceptable in the 21 century
"The video shows Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several others as the Apache shoots and kills them in a public square in Eastern Baghdad after they are apparently assumed to be insurgents. After the initial shooting, an unarmed group of adults and children in a minivan arrives on the scene and attempts to transport the wounded. They are fired upon as well. The official statement on this incident initially listed all adults as insurgents and claimed the US military did not know how the deaths ocurred."
(We may not have such detailed coverage for Gaza that we have for Baghdad, which is of course also caused by the lack of journalists, since who is dead can no longer report.)
A Canadian Army Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener was assassinated after the IDF "accidentally" bombed a United Nations post that he was posted at - soon after he reported war crimes that he witnessed the IDF doing.
For context, Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener emailed [1] days before saying that Hezbollah were using his positions and the IDF was being forced to fire on them out of "tactical necessity". This isn't as clear-cut as you're attempting to paint it.
A senior UN official, asked about the information contained in Maj. Hess-von Kruedener's e-mail concerning Hezbollah presence in the vicinity of the Khiam base, denied the world body had been caught in a contradiction.
"At the time, there had been no Hezbollah activity reported in the area," he said. "So it was quite clear they were not going after other targets; that, for whatever reason, our position was being fired upon.
"Whether or not they thought they were going after something else, we don't know. The fact was, we told them where we were. They knew where we were. The position was clearly marked, and they pounded the hell out of us."
---
This part states the area was being bombed prior to reports of Hezbollah activity in the area, so yes - the confusion will muddy it.
Nonetheless, he had recently reported IDF war crimes - and the IDF at minimum coincidentally was responsible for killing him; with this seemingly contradictory statement by a senior UN official.
It would be great if you could share some of this credible evidence. There are so many loose claims flying around ...
> Furthermore, there have been so few western journalists on the ground because Israel (and Egypt) prevented them from entering, I think this prohibition alone should be considered unacceptable in the 21 century
Access to war zones has been limited commonly, IIRC, at least since the Iraq war. In Ukraine, journalists talk about government cooperation and, IIRC, approval.
If you are thinking about Vietnam, I think that has become more of the exception than the rule. (I think that in a free society, it should be the rule.)
>Furthermore, there have been so few western journalists on the ground because Israel (and Egypt) prevented them from entering, I think this prohibition alone should be considered unacceptable in the 21 century
I think the prohibition is wrong, but what do you think "real journalists" can offer people that isn't already being spread around? We are inundated with stories from this conflict; what is CNN going to add to the conversation? Most of these outlets are mouthpieces for their respective governments anyway, their point-of-view is predictable.
The Hamas may(?) have less leverage over foreign reporters. For local reporters there's a history of Hamas threatening and using violence against the reporters and their families to get the kind of reporting they want.
I agree with the observation that many of those outlets are mouthpieces for their respective government though.
Here are a few references to keep in mind when thinking about journalists working in Gaza (or you can think about Russia, Iran, North Korea, maybe China as being similar):
"The Gaza Strip is a particularly inhospitable territory for press freedom. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad harass and obstruct journalists suspected of collaborating with Israel," - https://rsf.org/en/country/palestine
"The Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and Gaza are arresting, abusing, and criminally charging journalists and activists who express peaceful criticism of the authorities. ... Both Palestinian governments, operating independently, have apparently arrived at similar methods of harassment, intimidation and physical abuse of anyone who dares criticize them. ... The media freedom group MADA documented 192 incidents in 2015 in which Palestinian authorities infringed on journalists’ right to free expression through summoning and interrogation, arrests, physical assault, detention, and, in Gaza, forbidding journalists from reporting on certain issues or stories. That was a 68 percent increase over 2014. The pattern of abuse that MADA reported, including beatings, torture, warnings to stop criticizing the government, and seizing passwords to search social media accounts, is consistent with the cases Human Rights Watch documented." - https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/30/palestine-crackdown-jour...
Isra Al-Mudalla, the head of foreign relations in Hamas’s Information Ministry said, "The security agencies would go and have a chat with these people. They would give them some time to change their message, one way or another." ... “Some of the journalists who entered the Gaza Strip were under security surveillance. Even under these difficult circumstances, we managed to reach them, and tell them that what they were doing was anything but professional journalism and that it was immoral.” - https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-admits-intimidating-fore...https://www.memri.org/tv/hamas-government-spokesperson-we-de...
Interesting since in my book CNN is very anti-Israeli. Maybe not as anti-Israeli as The Guardian. The "funny" thing is that if some consider you pro-Israeli and some consider you anti-Israeli that doesn't mean you're neutral. It all depends on your viewpoint.
I feel that will take a long time to be able to actually look at the current events with perspective when we have more facts and less emotions. Right now we're seeing an information war and attempts to recruit media and control the narratives.
The thing I find most frustrating is media pretending to be neutral and unbiased where they are in fact always taking sides. To look at another conflict, western media takes the side of Ukraine while still pretending to just be covering the war (and we're mostly ok with that because nobody in the west is taking Russia's side anyways). I think the media should disclose their position and report facts. Instead they often repeat misinformation (and both sides here have similar claims), don't give good context, and take sides without disclosing that.
Whenever I navigate to CNN's web site it mostly features the plight of Palestinians in manipulative and repetitive ways. Stories showing Israel in a bad light will persist for days on the front page. It shows nothing about the plight of Israelis. When I see CNN reporters like Wolf Blitzer interview Israelis they are openly hostile. Christiane Amanpour interviewed Ehud Barak the other day and her tone was quite hostile. Their referral to Israeli data often uses language like "Israel says" or "Israel alleges" even when reporting on matters that are known to be factual. E.g. their reporter will enter a tunnel that obviously goes under a hospital they just saw outside and will report as if that's still a matter of speculation. Often referral to Hamas data is presented as fact.
CNN leans towards the Democrats in the US (obviously) and we're seeing the Democrats overall take a fairly critical stance towards Israel. So it's not a surprise to me that the left leaning media follows that lead. Though CNN has a history of anti-Israeli bias.
Just Googling now it does seem that it's somewhat of meme in certain circles how CNN is Pro-Israeli. That's understandable. To certain circles using the word "Israel" and not "The Occupation" and the word "terrorism" instead of "resistance", or mentioning evils like the two state solution, interviewing any Israelis etc., is Pro-Israeli. Seriously though, it's ridiculous to consider CNN Pro-Israeli when their focus is mostly on making Israel look bad. It makes perfect sense for the enemies of Israel to attack CNN as being Pro-Israeli because they are trying to use any leverage they can to shift US public opinion because Israel relies on US support. No tactic is beneath them to accomplish their goal of the elimination of Israel. The Palestinians have for decades now pursued these sorts of tactics.
I understand that the fact CNN isn't reporting on Israel like Al-Jazeera (Qatar's propaganda arm) does paint them as Pro-Israeli to a certain crowd. It is true they are not Al-Jazeera but they're certainly not Pro-Israeli. Their anti-Israeli bias goes way back.
I expect Hamas is still exerting plenty of control.
I'm not sure what "confirmed what had been reported" really means here. The problem isn't that we're necessarily getting outright lies and fake news (I'm sure we're getting some), but that we're getting a very selective and emotional view into the horrors of war.
There's zero doubt that the impact of the war on Gaza is immense and so there's zero doubt that journalists can get heart wrenching stories of death and destruction out of it. As they can from any war.
Here are some thought experiments:
- Is there a way Israel could have defeated Hamas in a way where the media wouldn't be able to show any death and destruction? I believe the answer is no.
- Could the media have painted a very different picture of the war by changing focus? For sure.
There's just no way you're not getting a biased view here. I can tell any story with the same "raw reality" by selecting things that promote my cause, whatever it is. Where the bias is vs. some "nominal" ground reality is hard to say. If you look e.g. at the Ukraine-Russian war it's clear most western media is 100% biased towards Ukraine.
I think some of those arguments verge into the 'there is no truth, it's all a matter of how you paint it' territory, which is the argument of disinformation and propaganda (I'm saying it not to accuse the parent; I assume they don't want disinfo, etc.)
Objectively, Israel has caused a very high rate of civilian deaths, destruction of property, and is causing a near-famine or famine.
People argue that such outcomes are unavoidable, but they are happening. I think that the news media would be dishonest to paint a different picture than that.
Sure, a large number of civilian deaths, and massive destruction of property.
I have a problem though when the media just shows an endless stream of emotionally manipulative images and stories. I also have a problem with their selectivity, e.g. they don't chose to show us civilians being attacked in Donetsk or something. They also generally don't show us images of Israeli refugees from the north and the south or actually report on that at all. They totally ignore events like rockets being fired at Israeli cities (still happens though a lot less). The coverage of Hezbollah's attacks and massive scale property destruction in the north of Israel is also nonexistent.
Even at the height of the Russia-Ukraine war we weren't being flooded by the same level of images/stories. Yes, we did get some stories out of Mariupol but not nearly as much as we get out of Gaza. Ukraine claims 25,000 civilians were killed in Mariupol (out of 500,000 people!). I think the destruction of Mariupol easily eclipses the destruction in Gaza. The Russians weren't facing anything similar to what Israel is facing in Gaza, they just blitzed the heck out of the city. Who is painted as more "evil" in western media, Russia or Israel? Arguably Israel. Ofcourse Russia invaded Ukraine and for most of us is clearly the "bad guy" here.
EDIT: and by the way, if you consume Israel media, which is obviously very pro-Israeli. You'll still get the same facts about the conditions in Gaza. But if you consume anti-Israeli media you will get no other relevant facts. If you ask people in the west some very basic questions about the conflict you'll find total cluelessness which is a result of that. Ask a random American how far Tel-Aviv is from Gaza, or where is Palestine, or what is Hezbollah, or any number of basic knowledge questions about the conflict and see. Most know O(nothing), see images of suffering and destruction all day, and naturally will align themselves with the side they see suffering.
I feel like an assertion is missing here: What is your conclusion from all of that? Is it that Israel is treated unfairly by the news media and that's why they are criticized?
That may be a factor, but it doesn't feel like a genuine discussion. Maybe Israel is doing some things wrong or there are legitimate concerns about that. The death and destruction are large scale relative to the war zone, and that should be a serious concern and attract exceptional attention no matter who you are. Blaming it all on bias, etc. is a weak response that doesn't address the merits; it also fits, intentionally or not, a very old rhetorical technique of redirection (as is the whataboutism). You seem knowledgeable and thoughtful; what do you really think about the real issues?
Regarding some other issues:
FWIW, in my particular news media bubble (mostly leading print journalism), that's not what I see at all. I read about all the issues you mention, about harm and fear and everything else on both sides. From what I read about my sources, they are biased toward Israel; IME: coverage of the war is pretty balanced. They all omit 99% of the Israeli violence and hate I see reported in the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz. Given your perspective, do you actually read anti-Israeli media? Why?
Americans have little knowledge of geography anywhere; it has nothing to do with Israel. What do you know about, for example, South Korea? Kashmir? Ecuadoran geography? Probably for the average Israeli, they know not much at all.
To your last question I think I know a fair bit. But it's true the average Israeli does not. The average Israeli also doesn't go around telling South Korea what to do or campaigning for the North Koreans or making judgments on which side of Korea is "occupied" by whom or saying that North Korea is a prison and pressuring their local politicians about the plight of the North Koreans.
I think what's going on is partly "Jews Are News". In other words antisemitism. You have to be willingly blind not to see that the coverage of Israel and public outcry is disproportionate to other conflicts and that the focus inevitably seems to be on Israel in a bad way. Maybe another factor is influence in terms of money and effort by those seeking to weaken the west. Internal politics in various countries also have an impact.
Should we then take the position that Israel is above criticism, can do whatever it wants, and face no repercussion? No. Part of my difficulty, as a pro-Israeli, is that there's no doubt that Israel has been drifting in a bad direction. The current government is a disgrace in my opinion. There are many things Israel is doing that are not ok. If you look e.g. at what the Biden administration is saying they are trying to strike this balance of saying "Israel has the right to self defense", "Israel is justified in trying to eliminate Hamas" but at the same time saying things like "Settlements in the west bank are illegal", "Settler violence against Palestinians in the west bank won't be tolerated", "Even though you were dehumanized on Oct 7th you can't dehumanize the other side", "You need to think about the longer term solution". This to me is a measured approach given the existing focus on Israel (if there was no focus then we wouldn't even be talking about these topics).
In terms of being critical I would say what matters is your motivation. If it's coming from a place of genuinely caring about the well being of all people involved, and ideally if you know the facts/history/cultures/geography etc., have at it. The road to hell can still be paved with good intentions but it's much harder to argue with people with good intentions. My problem is with the people that knowingly or not are wanting to see harm come to Israelis (or Jews). Some are outright calling for it (e.g. supporting Oct 7th and general use of indiscriminate violence against random Israelis) and some don't realize that's a consequence of what they're saying (from the river to the sea or stuff like that).
I appreciate that this is on here and I hope we can collectively handle it. Tech isn't isolated from this situation, as difficult as it is to admit and talk about with civility and care. A US military software engineer even self immolated recently in protest of what's happening.
I don't see what's happening in Gaza as being culturally particular to the specific identity groups involved here. It's a very human situation and we are all at risk of falling into these kinds of collective behaviors.
Yeah, there's plenty of relevant tech angles, whether that's Israelis utilizing AI to pick targets while acknowledging they know exactly how many civilians they're going to kill in the process [1], Israeli spyware being used to hack people everywhere in the world, etc.
Strongly disagree. This platform for tech news should not become a place for political posts, nor even for posting regular news headlines. Yes we know that reddit sucks but stop trying to make hn into reddit.
Also the community can't handle it, just look at the handful of comments we already have here.
We know and work with Israelis and former Palestinians, and it is difficult enough to navigate the stresses without the added complexity of each side reading totally different news outlets and never talking about it in the same forums. I always try to handle this stuff at work (and political issues are absolutely part of the lunchtime tapestry that impacts the cohesion of engineering teams) by sticking to the facts, but we need to agree on some shared reality for the facts to be a safe "home base" for diplomatic answers to the tough questions we can't avoid... I think it is very important for some amount of news to leak into the common spaces, as long as we can keep from arguing about it on a level higher than its veracity or importance.
I guess by obtaining a different citizenship and renouncing the original one, but tbh I expect parent poster meant folks who were born in another country from Palestinian parents.
Hardly, a Palestinian has no governing authority allowing it to issue a passport or proof of citizenship. This again is controlled by Israel. So your argument does not hold water.
I found the use of the term "Former Palestinian" offensive. It implies that you are no longer such. Regardless of your citizenship, your ancestry defines your ethnic group. Palestinians are an ethnic group. Those born by parents of said ethnic group are de facto of that ethnic group.
This is the kind of thing I was talking about, nobody can even decide if Palestine exists, so when you say "he used to be a Palestinian" some people think you're trying to verbally erase an entire ethnicity even if you just meant "he got out."
You aren't always defined by your ancestry.
My parents had to emigrate to more human respecting lands, and they still feel they're more part of that land than the one they were born in.
You cannot escape your DNA... Other than American Indians, everyone else in the USA emigrated there. So you can assimilate another culture, but ethnically (DNA-wise) you will always carry your ancestry around, and so will your descendants.
> a Palestinian has no governing authority allowing it to issue a passport
Statelessness is technically illegal according to international treaties, so the lack of specific documentation does not necessarily means lack of citizenship. Besides, acceptance for new citizenship is determined by the new country, not the old.
The main rules o f the law applicable in case of occupation state that:
The occupant does not acquire sovereignty over the territory.
Occupation is only a temporary situation, and the rights of the occupant are limited to the extent of that period.
The occupying power must respect the laws in force in the occupied territory, unless they constitute a threat to its security or an obstacle to the application of the international law of occupation.
The occupying power must take measures to restore and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety.
To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the occupying power must ensure sufficient hygiene and public health standards, as well as the provision of food and medical care to the population under occupation.
The population in occupied territory cannot be forced to enlist in the occupier's armed forces.
Collective or individual forcible transfers of population from and within the occupied territory are prohibited.
Transfers of the civilian population of the occupying power into the occupied territory, regardless whether forcible or voluntary, are prohibited.
Collective punishment is prohibited.
The taking of hostages is prohibited.
Reprisals against protected persons or their property are prohibited.
The confiscation of private property by the occupant is prohibited.
The destruction or seizure of enemy property is prohibited, unless absolutely required by military necessity during the conduct of hostilities.
Cultural property must be respected.
People accused of criminal offences shall be provided with proceedings respecting internationally recognized judicial guarantees (for example, they must be informed of the reason for their arrest, charg ed with a specific offence and given a fair trial as quickly as possible).
Personnel of the International Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement must be allowed to carry out their humanitarian activities. The ICRC, in particular, must be given access to all protected persons, wherever they are, whether or not they are deprived of their liberty.
None of which are being respected.... so I ask again, who is morally reprehensible? and if you are referring to the debunked lies about october 7th, I urge you to read up
There is the legal - armed resistance to an occupation is legal - and there is moral - armed resistance attacking unarmed civilians is never morally right.
Settling occupied territory is neither legal, nor moral. Bombing hospitals is both illegal and immoral, as so many other things the IDF has been doing for the past months. Then there are the crimes committed against Palestinians over the past 80 or so years - it's not because the government is different that your ownership rights can be ignored.
This becomes worse when the governing political parties in question, Hamas and Likud, have charters that exclude the possibility of peaceful coexistence.
FWIW, Hamas's charter states that it's issue is with the Zionist Project and not Jews. They specifically speak about coexistence, albeit in a single entity called Palestine. There is not language to exclude other ethnicities or religions, only to remove the colonialist movement referred to as Zionism - which is not Judaism.
> FWIW, Hamas's charter states that it's issue is with the Zionist Project and not Jews.
Oh yes! Still, that's an untenable position. Israel was created so that all Jews could have a state of their own because of the suffering inflicted upon them. There really is no going back on that.
For me, a single democratic and secular state, with a legal framework that protects everybody's rights equally and fairly would be the best possible solution, but that would be a multi-generation effort (about 80 years too late, BTW).
FWIW, Palestine was a country made up of multiple ethnicities and religions. The official languages were Arabic, English and Hebrew. Jews made up 1.7% of the total population at the time. More and more of them were arriving from Europe to live there.
What ruined everything was the Zionist project, which funded land purchases for farms and then only allowed Jews to work on those farms. Essentially, excluding the majority muslim and christian population from an equal opportunity to work.
These exclusionary measure created tension which resulted in the armed and terroristic attacks by the Zionist groups the Stern Gang and Irgun. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Stern-Gang)
So yes, they could have lived in peace and were living in peace, but Zionism...
But yet, a single democratic secular state is something that is in the hands of the occupier and their supporters.
The Palestinian Authority agreed to the Oslo Accords in 1993 to create a 2 state solution - why has Israel and the USA dragged their feet? Israel has constantly and consistently broken the terms of this agreement without repercussion. We would not be in this situation now if this was enforced then.
The status quo is already effectively a single-state solution. Israel is the only party with an army, the only party that can elect politicians, the only party with airports and a harbor, and a functioning economy. Israel also has almost total control over Golan, West Bank and Gaza. Why would Israel award citizenship and the right to vote to the oppressed minority?
If the majority between the river and the sea wanted a pluralistic, democratic and secular state it would have happened a long time ago. The status quo is what the people of Israel want (revealed preference by their votes). And Palestinians don't get a vote.
This is a gross simplification. Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have tried to hold elections, last time was in 2021. The Palestinian Authority actually held local elections in the West Bank that year. However being occupied does not make elections easy. In 2021 in particular the national elections fell through because Israel didn’t allow Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem to participate. Hamas wanted to hold the election despite that, but the Palestinian Authority cancelled the elections.
Hamas was elected almost two decades ago, and Palestinians in Gaza have been occupied ever since by Israel. Yes, they do have a political system, but said political system is not democratically driven. It is driven by the Israeli occupying forces, in ultimate control by Israeli voters. Both the military administration, Israeli politicians, and Israeli voters show no desire to change this.
HN's standard about this question has been stable for many years: some stories with political overlap are both inevitable and in keeping with the mandate of the site. The question, when it comes to the biggest political topics, is which stories clear that bar.
I've posted about this many times, including quite a few explanations specific to the current topic:
Edit: oh, you were asking about comments. In my haste I missed that and thought you were asking about submissions.
There are lots of comments in this thread that aren't flagged, so discussion isn't being prevented. It's true that a lot of the earlier comments were flagged, but that was (or should be) because they were flamebait. It's one of the downsides of internet commenting that the flameiest and most reflexive comments appear first in a thread—because those reactions are the quickest to flare up. Better, more reflective comments always take longer [1]. This goes 1000x for a topic like this one, unfortunately.
It's surprisingly dismissive. It's not that because not all of the comments aren't flagged that discussion isn't being prevented. And the (or should be) does most of the work when you talk about flagged are flagged because they were flamebait.
I'm pretty sure it's not an easy task to moderate HN. But I'm still surprised by the answer here.
Keep in mind that I was commenting about the situation very early in the thread. My comment applies only to the very first comments that got posted—perhaps the first couple dozen—no later.
How do you reconcile HN's political neutrality and the fact that almost every overtly political story that hits the front page about certain subjects[1] are blatantly biased on one side?
I think part of it is the current situation lends itself to more pro-gaza headlines.
For starters the situation is evolving more on that front. Every new action is a potential headline for palestine. On the other hand Israel's position is much more static: They want to prevent the slaughter on oct 7 from happening again, and are using force to do so. That hasn't changed. You can't make new headlines out of it.
Its probably also inherent to the fact that Israel is currently on the offensive, outside of its territory in an asymetrical urban conflict. The optics on that are always going to be bad for the state in Israel's position regardless of how justified it is. Urban conflict is always a bloody mess, same with asymetric conflicts.
When israel bombs a hospital that makes a great headline. Its easy to understand and verify - hospital used to be there, now it is not. Its emotional - everyone knows in normal circumstances hospitals are supposed to be off limits. The Israeli side is hard to fit into a headline - hospital bombed after it became a military target due to use by militants, in accordance with international law and the principles of porportionality and distinction. For starters that is a mouthful to be a headline. It lacks emotional punch because now we are talking about legalese not deaths of innocets. Its hard to understand - most non experts do not know what the doctrine of porportionality& distinction is. Even if they do, we do not know in the fog of war what israel knew when targeting it and if it was reasonable at the time. Even if we did, where precisely the line is can be controversially grey. Its not like there is a huge amount of case law on this. Determing if it was legal would probably require hundreds of pages of legal argumentation. Even then, there is a whole other question of if the line international law draws is the correct one morally, which you could write a book on. Its just very hard to put all that in a news article.
So i don't think it is HN's fault that most of these articles lean more anti-israel. Its just much easier to write about things from that perspective. It is much more black and white and requires much less nuance and context.
This isn’t rocket science. Israel has killed more than 13,000 children in less than 5 months. This is only counting the children. That’s almost 4.5 9/11’s in children alone. And our (Americans) taxpayer dollars is helping sponsor these war crimes.
Israel has one of the most advanced military and intelligence apparatuses in the world. And Palestinians are some of the most surveilled humans in the world. Israel knows where they’re dropping the bombs and the demographics of the humans who live there. No amount of gaslighting the international community and unsophisticated normies changes this fact. There’s no excuse for these war crimes and it’s an utter shame that the West, led by America, continue to allow Israel to use the tragic events of October 7th as an excuse to murder innocent Palestinian civilians (most of whom are children).
Setting aside the fact that these are numbers provided by Hamas, the same people who claimed 500 people died in a hospital Israel bombed but when it was revealed their own rocket bombed it the casualty numbers dropped 10-fold, war isn’t arithmetic.
The United States killed many more Japanese civilians than American civilians who died during the war, that doesn’t make them right. Hamas has miles of tunnels to provide cover for their rapists but doesn’t allow civilians to shelter, it’s tragic that Hamas is killing its own people this way but Israel should continue until Hamas is defeated like Germany was.
For the record, it was debunked that it was a Hamas rocket as none of them had that potential yield and still do not. The ordinance for that explosion only had one provenance: the United States.
> Setting aside the fact that these are numbers provided by Hamas […]
This is an unserious argument.
1. The numbers come from Gaza’s Ministry of Health, which is indeed “controlled” by Hamas since Hamas is their governing entity.
2. The Ministry has no verifiable history of being wrong on the civilian casualty numbers. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: The Ministry’s numbers have held up to scrutiny in ALL of the previous wars (including scrutiny from Israel) [0].
3. The Biden Administration has corroborated the numbers.
4. Israel hasn’t denied the numbers. In fact, in one report from the IDF a couple months ago, they corroborated the Ministry’s numbers at the time.
5. The same silly argument could be made to dismiss just about anything coming from Israel given their documented history of lying and even manipulating our (American) media, from lies about beheaded babies [1] to pushing propaganda via U.S. media outlets like the New York Times [2].
> The United States killed many more Japanese civilians than American civilians who died during the war, that doesn’t make them right. […]
This is just a whataboutism and another unserious argument.
One evil act doesn’t justify another evil act. This is as serious of an argument as someone trying to justify slavery in 2024 by pointing to America’s history with slavery.
> The Ministry has no verifiable history of being wrong on the civilian casualty numbers
This is laughable. They claimed that Israel bombed a hospital and killed 500 people that the Palestinians themselves bombed. You are either hopelessly biased and unserious or uninformed.
I'm afraid you broke the site guidelines repeatedly and very badly in this thread. That's not ok. You're welcome to make your substantive points while respecting HN's rules, and indeed they will become more persuasive if you do so. But please, no more snark, name-calling, personal attacks, or flamewar posts—no matter how right you are or feel you are, and no matter how divisive the topic.
"However, the sound preceding the explosion, the fireball that accompanied it, the size of the resulting crater, the type of splatter adjoining it, and the type and pattern of fragmentation visible around the crater are all consistent with the impact of a rocket.
Evidence available to Human Rights Watch makes the possibility of a large air-dropped bomb, such as those Israel has used extensively in Gaza, highly unlikely."
Even Human Rights Watch (anti-israel propaganda outlet at this point) has said it was a Palestinian rocket:
"However, the sound preceding the explosion, the fireball that accompanied it, the size of the resulting crater, the type of splatter adjoining it, and the type and pattern of fragmentation visible around the crater are all consistent with the impact of a rocket.
Evidence available to Human Rights Watch makes the possibility of a large air-dropped bomb, such as those Israel has used extensively in Gaza, highly unlikely."
That's not what "debunking" means. It's an article that disputes the current consensus that an errant rocket from Gaza exploded in the hospital. Having the debate is fine (if it's on topic), but preemptively declaring the debate over, misrepresenting the consensus on the issue, and accusing those asserting the current consensus of "misinformation" is disingenuous, and you can't do that and still be civil.
> Setting aside the fact that these are numbers provided by Hamas
The UN and Lancet [0] believe the numbers are credible. Let's not forget there are likely 10k+ civilians still burried under rubble too.
> Hamas has miles of tunnels to provide cover for their rapists
Come on, you are not commenting in good faith. There is zero credible evidence that any rape took place, Hamas have staunchly denied it, and from what returning hostages have said it seems incredibly unlikely. There is however an abundance of evidence that Israel is trying to use rape as attrocity propaganda.
> it’s tragic that Hamas is killing its own people this way
This is absolutely absurd - it's like telling a domestic violence victim it's their own fault.
You think in a sudden 1143 person civilian homicidal attack, going door to door, no rape happened?
“UN team says rape, gang rape likely occurred during Hamas attack on Israel”
UN: “The mission team received clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment occurred against some women and children during their time in captivity.”
> You think in a sudden 1143 person civilian homicidal attack, going door to door, no rape happened
Firstly, the latest figure from Israel is that 695 Israeli civilians were killed, with the rest being security forces. Of those 695, many were armed settlers.
Secondly, the fact you assume rape did occur, especially in the total absence of any evidence, is bizarre, and suggests you may have some deeply-seated biases against Palestinians and/or Muslims.
As I explained in another comment here [0], the UN report is a farce insisted upon by Israel to aid in laundering their lurid attrocity propaganda. The report is not the result of an investigation, it simply regurgitates what Israel presented to Pramila Patten. From the report:
> As a result of the aforementioned challenges, it must be noted that the information gathered by the mission team was in a large part sourced from Israeli national institutions. This is due to the absence of United Nations entities operating in Israel, as well as the lack of cooperation by the State of Israel with relevant United Nations bodies with an investigative mandate
Interesting that it does not bother you that Israel has been indiscriminately bombing civilians BEFORE October 7th as well as engaging in night raids all over the west bank, resulting in one of the deadliest years for Palestinians in the West Bank - again BEFORE October 7th. But somehow, their lives are worth less than the ones tragically lost on October 7th?
Second, as an occupier, there are no internal border. As the United States and Israel do not recognize a Palestinian state, they did not cross a border, they broke out of their concentration camp.
“In the medicolegal assessment of available photos and videos, no tangible indications of rape could be identified,” the report concluded.
> has been indiscriminately bombing civilians BEFORE October 7th
What do you think Hamas firing rockets into Israel is doing?
> their lives are worth less than the ones tragically lost on October 7th?
No. Equal. We need a framework that stops cycles of retribution and saves the most lives long term. Probably imposed by an international coalition since it's easily observed that groups of people obviously respond to massacres against them with more retribution.
> As the United States and Israel do not recognize a Palestinian state, they did not cross a border, they broke out of their concentration camp.
Are you going to treat the invasion of Taiwan the same way? Since US "doesn't recognize it," it's fair game for them to butcher thousands taking Taiwan?
Concentration camp is ridiculous hyperbole. Gaza is dense overall but half of it isn't https://maps.app.goo.gl/hNEpzVno4z5n9WQH9 . Do you expect the Israeli's to currently allow Gaza to freely trade and receive as many weapons as Hamas desire? Egypt supported the blockade. October 7th would've been 5x worse. Strengthening Hamas' weapons just extends this horrid conflict. Israel was relaxing the travel restrictions and more people were border crossing until Hamas attacked. What kind of message does that send to Israel about letting their guard down?
How do you propose to fix this? You want a ceasefire and Palestinians integrated as Israeli citizens in a 1 state solution? There is no will for this from Hamas. Their 2017 charter wants 1967 borders, your "concentration camp," yet they attack outside of it.
I abhor any rapes perpetuated against humans of any kind. Why are you deflecting my correction that GP’s “There is zero credible evidence that any rape took place” is wrong?
"The Grayzone is an American fringe,[7] far-left[19] news website and blog,[23] founded and edited by American journalist Max Blumenthal"
"It is known for its negative coverage of American foreign policy,[1][4] misleading reporting,[25][26] and sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes."
Again debunked, the UN investigation did not speak to any victims or physicians that would validate the claim. The claims came from organizations known to have lied in the past. Why would Israel forbid the doctors involved from speaking to the UN?
Just to make things clear. Few people are denying that sexual violence did occur. These were a bunch of men doing a bunch of violence to other people, I would be shocked if none of them did sexual violence.
What people are debunking is the notion that Hamas used sexual violence as a weapon of war. There are no evidence for that (nor for sexual violence at all, it is just that it is very plausible). And the use of such stories in propaganda purposes.
This is in contrast to the Israeli military who has been recorded using sexual violence as a weapon of war against Palestinians on multiple occasion.
What makes this disgusting, is the use of stories of sexual violence to propagandize anti-Palestinian sentiment. Sexual violence is a horrible crime, that is truly horrendous for the victims. The victims of such crimes deserve better than their horrors being used to justify other crimes.
There are no confirmed accounts of rape, and the NYT Hamas hit piece that is re-laundered daily by the MSM has signs (such as Anat Schwarz) of Israeli intelligence all over it.
Regarding the UN report, it is not the smoking gun you seen to think it is, though I can see why you'd think differently if you only read the "highlights" from MSM - go ahead and read the report [0]:
> As a result of the aforementioned challenges, it must be noted that the information gathered by the mission team was in a large part sourced from Israeli national institutions. This is due to the absence of United Nations entities operating in Israel, as well as the lack of cooperation by the State of Israel with relevant United Nations bodies with an investigative mandate
Pramila Patten didn't "investigate" anything; she previously said on this: "It's not my role to investigate" - her job was to repeat what the Israelis told her. While in Israel she even met with proven hoaxers from Zaka, the organisation responsible for spreading many of the putrid attrocity propaganda that came out at the start.
Pramila Patten also infamously made the incredible, unsubstantiated claim that Russia gave their soldiers viagra and sent them out to rape Ukranains. She's a well-known fraud [1], who now sits in a position created by Hilary Clinton - who herself infamously spread false rape propaganda about Libya.
I feel we are now at an impasse, and so I won't be engaging in this thread any further.
> Is there a number of civilian casualties after which Israel is not allowed to keep fighting to eradicate Hamas?
Murdering over 13,000 children not only does nothing to “eradicate” Hamas, it does the opposite: It creates more Hamas-like groups. All of these women and children Israel has murdered have families, friends, etc. who miss them and will be even more determined now to avenge their deaths.
Isn't the logical extension of this supportive of complete genocide? I don't care about either side in this conflict, but I fail to see how anything short of genocide stops this.
This is what I see:
P: Hamas attacks civilians
I: Responds by saying that this is will never happen again, and they will put their youth into urban combat to ensure it never happens again by eradicating Hamas
P: Engages in urban combat via insurgency, including using civilians as human shields
I: Continues to try and eradicate Hamas. Civilian shields are murdered.
H: If you keep killing civilians, you'll only make more of us!
I: Then come out and fight!
H: No! Keep killing our children.
At some point you have to place the safety of your population over the safety of another population that is currently murdering your civilians and actively stating they want to continue doing so. Plus to my knowledge P still has hostages that they refuse to release.
The problem with your breakdown is the implication that this all started with October 7th, as if Hamas is simply a terrorist group that attacked Israel, unprovoked, for no legitimate reason. I know this is the narrative Israel wants everyone to believe, but the reality proves otherwise.
If the average American had to live for even just a full week under the conditions that Palestinians live under, they would categorically classify the Israeli government and the IDF as the terrorists. I mean, Israel literally has, as a political and military strategy, the concept of “mowing the grass” [0] [1] to periodically terrorize Palestinians and they aren’t even particularly subtle about it.
My phrasing was specific to the Oct 7 attack because that event was the provication of the current conflict.
Despite policies like "mowing the grass" being catalysts for the Oct 7 attack, my point is that Isreal has stated a clear objective: elimination of Hamas. Their terror tactics are described in the Wiki link you provided appear to be supportive of that goal too.
Hamas has also stated a clear objective so far as I know: destruction of the Isreal state (potentially also of all Jews, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say just the state).
I'm undereducated on the issue, but to me it seems that there is no reconciliation of these goals. They are not simultaneously achievable.
My estimate is this conflict could end today if Hamas conceded. What would become of Palestine is a different matter. Their current authority, the PA, seems to have a policy of paying familes for insurgent deaths. Isreal probably won't want them running the show,and they definitely won't want Hamas running it. Other bordering countries like Jordan and Egypt seem to want nothing to do with Palestinians. The Palestinian children appear to be raised to hate Isrealies and are taught to murder, perhaps justifiably (and maybe this is wrong and only propaganda).
I want this fixed, and I can see a path forward where Palestine embraces sovereignty and becomes a mecca of the world by operating as a tax haven for businesses. But in order to do that they need to determine their goal is peace, and ally with other countries for protection against Isrealie aggression. But that is a hard path forward when starting at current state, including the world view held by Palestinians.
And maybe I'm entirely wrong in this post. But my GP post was specific to my perceived, orthogonal objectives of both sides.
Unfortunately, you lose the privilege to call for an end of war when you've (at some point in time) been in the position of the aggressor. War, in itself, is not a number game. You can't just expect the defender of the current conflict to return the favor by doing exactly as much damage as the aggressor did. War is a means to an end and by initiating aggressions, you have to face the very real possibility that the intentions of your opponent may not match your own.
The saw the wind and now reat the worldwind reasoning? Already deeply flawed back when Bomber Harris came up with it.
Yes, once your initial defence is sucessful, you have no justification to turn around and become the aggressor. This is real life and not a game of Civilisation.
In more specific terms regarding the conflict in Palestine: How dar do you want to go back to define the "original" aggressor? Which is utterly pointless, because being attacked is no carte blanche to use whatever means and do whatever you want with the, very loosly defined, "enemy".
Why did they take hostages? Because it was a terror attack?
And no, of course there is no threat if suoerior military starts levelling the city around you, why would that be dangerous in anyway...
By the way, the IDF already killed three hostages waving white flags. Nice rescue operation, I have to admit. At least now those hostages are safe from both, Hamas and the IDF.
Like when they said there’s no tunnels. Then tunnels were found. So everyone’s like no it’s an elevator. Turns out it’s not an elevator. But it wasn’t used. Full of chairs and bed. But there’s no guns. Tunnels are blocked. But they aren’t in use…
Or when they said Israel bombed a hospital and 500 were dead. Then the photos and videos came out and it was Hamas missile and it was in the parking lot with a tiny crater.
Or when they said Israel bombed the Egypt trucks bringing supplies to civilians. Then the videos and photos came out and it was the civilians intercepting the trucks for food because Hamas steals it all.
Yeah let’s believe everything Hamas tells us haha. Brainwashed by the media to believe conspiracy theories. You probably support Russia too.
If Russia is attacked and defends itself, respexting international law and not commiting war crimes, yes I absolutely support them. They din't, so I don't.
I don't believe Hamas, nor the IDF. I tend to believe UN investigations of past conflicts around that very question, and those didn't find evidence.
And the Hamas stealing food is such a twisted take, it almost is lying.
What I do not support is war xcimes, ethnic cleanising and the suffering of civilians. Regardless of who is doing or causing it. You on the other hand, I'm not so sure.
Thousands of Palestinian hostages? What are you talking about? Please clarify, as I assume you are not talking about prisoners convicted of terror activities.
I think OP osbreferring to the 160 children and over a thousand Palestinians held without charges in Israeli prisons as of April 2022. Just a guess so.
Not that it justifies the Hamas attack, but it goes a long way explaining it.
Yes, such as "throwing stones" at armoured vehicles - truly despicable! Many are held without charge too. And many are held under "administrative detention", which means they can be held in a dungeon, without charge, forever. These are not the actions of a modern, progressive, democratic country.
I'm sure that some are imprisoned for good reason, buy many are there for spurious reasons - and none of them should be tortured or subject to sexual abuse, regardless of their supposed crimes.
You are moving the goalposts and reaching. Administrative detention is used on Israelis too, this is not the argument here.
Those released in the latest exchange and in the Gilad Shalit exchange were convicted, many of which had innocent blood on their hands.
Hamas isn't looking to correct the Israeli justice system, and you are calling actual and attempted murderers hostages...
> Those released in the latest exchange and in the Gilad Shalit exchange were convicted
Yes, and the list of crimes was made public. Many of them were indeed "throwing stones".
As I said, some are definitely held because of terrible crimes they actually committed; however, it must be noted that Palestinians are tried under an apartheid system, by a military court. Furthermore, it seems that many are held for no good reason, and many are tortured or sexually abused - confirmed by human rights groups.
BTW, if a convicted prisoner dies before they complete their sentence, they keep the body on ice until the sentence expires - that is just... evil.
Way, way back there was an IDF officer who said, in TV, after having a Palestinian boys arm broken something along the lines of "he wont throw a stone with that arm any time soon".
I hope that this is not the standard we hold, because if it is, there is no moral ground anymore to stand on when it comes to denouncing terrorism.
Police brutality isn't something specific to this region (IDF is policing in the west bank), or to Palestinians in the region. Hamas murdered and kidnapped hundreds of civilians to protest this?
I think it's pretty clear that Hamas would prioritize the release of a high ranking terrorist with civilian blood on their hands over someone that may be wrongfully detained.
Yes, Hamas attacked, killed and kidnapped people in a terror attack to protest this. Also to have hostages to exchange for some of their own. And yes, these "own" are Hamas members and not the innocent bystanders. Was there ever any doubt about this?
None of that justifies, again, the levelling of Gaza, the starving of around 500,000 people and the deliberate targeting of civilians who have nothing to do with any of that.
You what works? Identifying the purpetrators, prosecuting and convicting them. If you want to go ultra tough, use Mossad to go after Hamas leadership. Heck, even using precision strikes at Hamas leadership in Gaza wouod be better, regardless of the related colleteral damage and casualties. Israel is not doing any of that, Israel started levelling Gaza right south of the border and continue southwards, hoping people flee to Egypt which would allow Israel to close the doors behind them. There is a term for this: ethnic cleansing. That is undefensible, period.
No, the term is ethinic cleansing. In war there are rules regarding civilians, rules Israel ignoring. And no, (in)actions by the enemy do not give the otherside a justification to do whatever they want. Rules and laws still apply during war.
I tired so tryong to get that point across to people. And worried what that attitude might mean for the future.
Israel gave civilians weeks to leave areas of fighting and warns them ahead of time before attacking. This is not ethnic cleansing no matter how many times you repeat the phrase.
Presence of civilians does not render an area illegal to attack. Using civilian cover to initiate attacks is a war crime, not wearing uniforms is also a war crime - both things Hamas does. Using civilian buildings for military purposes makes attacking those areas legal and within the rules of war. You don't get to change the definition of words or invent laws of war when convenient to attack Israel.
>You what works? Identifying the purpetrators, prosecuting and convicting them. If you want to go ultra tough, use Mossad to go after Hamas leadership. Heck, even using precision strikes at Hamas leadership in Gaza wouod be better, regardless of the related colleteral damage and casualties. Israel is not doing any of that
ah, yes, it's that simple, just press the magic button that makes all Hamas disappear and all uninvolved civilians live well and prosper...
To me it seems that if those who care about innocent civilians were more focused on demanding Hamas to surrender and release the hostages promptly would be do more to save lives than constantly criticizing Israel, which gives Hamas hope they can survive this (and do what they did again later on)
Right now only one side is doing the blowing things up stuff: Israel.
You know what makes, maybe, Hamas go away? Open and free election, a cease fire followed by a peace treaty followed by international recognition of Palestine as a nation with free access to the sea and everything else that entails. With a neutral, demilitarized zone between Israel and Palestine, a zone save guarded by an international force with a very robust mandate. Because by know, both side need to be seperated to avoid future conflict. That would also mean a full review by an international court of all sentences by Israeli military courts against Palestinians, in cases a general amnesty is not applicable.
Oh, I almost forgot: A rebuilding plan for Gaza and other Palestinian territories. A massive one, comparable to the Marshall Plan after WW2. A plan in which Israel would have a keen interest in paeticipating if peace is the goal. Oh, yes, and a complete abandonnent of Israels illegal settlement policy and the settlements.
In exchange for Israel recognizing all of the above, and international support of that, the new Palestinian nation agrees to recognize Israel as well.
How does that sound? Not magic, I know, but something that worked in principle in Northern Ireland for example.
the point here is that stone throwing kills people, it’s not a joke. so the policy of it being illegal and punishable is not a "crushing" or "hate crime" and definitely is not "hostage taking".
If peopel are properly, as in a proper, fair and unbiased trial, based on equally fair and balanced laws, convicted, sure, you are right.
Holding people without charges is defenitely not that. If it were, whatever Russia is doing with people opposing the war Ukraine would totally swell as well. And it isn't.
You onw what else kills people, and is illegal by international law? Throwing bombs on civilians. Espesially if said civilians didn't do anything.
Restraint is the word and appriach that would allow Israel to project strength and maintain support. What Israel is doing now is a) butthurt and pathetic and b) a despicable disregard of human rights. No amount of stone throwing justifies, or explains, any of that. At best using stome throwing as a justification is excusing conduct that amounts to war crimes. And I hope we can agree those are unacceptable, regardless of whom and which conflict. They happen as it is way too often, if we accept them as justified onxe, we risk opening a door to a place everyone is ok with conducting war in a criminal way. Infor one don't want a world like that, the last time rules of warfare were systematically ignored by everyone, it was incredibly ugly.
> Those who embrace this view fail, however, to explain how it aligns with the inherent right of self-defense
That's quite a rich comment in light of the Dahiya doctrine. It's times like these that I'm glad HN won't let you delete comments for posterity's purpose.
> what scope of military action is necessary to secure the safety of the Israeli population from the Hamas (and Palestinian Islamic Jihad) threat emanating from Gaza?
When you define it like that, literally any military action, up to and including the destruction of all of Israel and it's inhabitants (a-la Samson option) is excusable. The "we have to go to their country and kill them all to protect our way of life" mindset is the fascistic seed of genocide.
Nobody is going to play by that definition. You're delusional if you think the scope of a perceived threat justifies the intensity of an actualized retaliation - it's a misunderstanding of strike warfare. The laser-focus on total war has impaired the IDF's ability to respond to precision threats in a dignified way. It's impossible to argue that Hamas hasn't exploited this obsession, and it's destroying foreign support at an unprecedented rate. You can only massacre so many Qibyas before your government's long-term strategy comes into question.
> Indeed, it is likely that historians will question whether Israel exercised unnecessary restraint up to this point
Here's a thought-exercise for you; how does the world look at America for developing the nuclear bomb? Do you think they love us, for subjugating the world under the ironclad-rule of a nuclear age? Do you think historians criticize America for showing too much restraint in Nagasaki?
Food for thought, may it nourish your starving soul.
> Sometimes I wished HN had an "ignore user" button
FWIW, there is a "mute" button, but it still allows Hasbara drones to harass you, claim you're a terrorist supporter, antisemite etc - you know, the usual slander they resort to once facts are in the way. The level of denial and falsehoods coming from pro-Israeli accounts is awful, especially here, a place renowned for inspiring curiosity and research.
Today is the first day I've wished for an HN block button too :(
For the record, you do not have to occupy 100% to be an occupier. If you push the current residents out of their own homes and lands and occupy said land, you are an occupier regardless of the amount of land you occupy.
The fact still stands, Israel has occupied Palestine since 1948.
If said illegal/legal immigrants took up arms, killed my population and declared a separate state in what was my state, then yes. But people crossing a border illegally just makes them immigrants without immigration approval.
I think it's a legit concern and it worries me too.
We can only go by the articles that users submit, and then only the subset we see, which is a function of (a) randomness and (b) users bringing specific cases to our attention. If there's a bias in the stories that have made HN's front page, that bias is present in the underlying data (I mean this stream of articles) to begin with. Why might that be? Well, there are a lot of possible reasons and people would most likely dispute about those as much as they do about the underlying topic.
For what it's worth (which may not be much), all I can tell you is that we want deeply, and are trying hard, to be even-handed. At the same time, we're not going to apply some sort of mechanical both-sides balancing because, although it might make things superficially easier in the short term, I don't think it would be in the spirit of the site, and we don't do that about anything else.
The even-handedness I'm talking about is probably easier to notice in our moderation of comments, so far, than of the articles. I feel pretty confident that we've done a good job of that [1], more than I am about the articles. Perhaps that's because there have been thousands of comments, but only a handful of frontpage articles, on the topic. One consistent lesson of HN is that you can't draw general conclusions from a handful of datapoints. It takes a lot more than that before reliable patterns show up.
What matters to me is that there be principles underlying the moderation and that these get applied equally. This isn't fully achievable because there's always interpretation involved—we don't get every call right. But I think the principles are the right ones for HN (I've explained what these are in the links mentioned above), and I'm always open to hearing arguments about how to apply them more even-handedly. When people make a fair point, such as xyzelement did about the submitted URL of the OP (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39621225), we're happy to change something. Another example that sticks in my mind is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146630 from a few weeks ago. That was about title, not URL, but the principle is the same.
I don't know how satisfactory this answer can possibly be but I hope it's at least clear that I hear you and care about the question.
[1] That is, when people break HN's rules in the comments, such as by posting flamebait or snark or personal attack, we flag and/or reply and/or ban irrespective of what the commenter is for or against. It might not appear that way to many readers who have strong passions on a topic, but it's not as hard to do as one might assume, especially after 10 years of practice.
"If there's a bias in the stories that have made HN's front page, that bias is present in the underlying data (I mean this stream of articles) to begin with"
This really cannot be understated. HackerNews draws an educated demographic, which generally tends to be centrist, perhaps leaning a bit to the centre-left. Remember, this is based on demographics. Individual exceptions will occur but do not prove the rule.
The uncomfortable thing about political discussions is that most (not all) of them occur over things for which there isn't a clear-cut scientific consensus. If something is truly clear cut and self evident, then it usually won't turn into a political issue. You can set up an argument that is unassailable from one viewpoint but which crumbles from another. Two people who are reasonable and logical can have stark disagreements over political issues because of how they approach the issue. When people we respect and admire express political views that do not match our own, it can be disquieting.
The most important thing is to maintain respect for each other, even when we disagree. Political discussions on HackerNews usually don't descend into flame-wars, and I appreciate that. Perhaps you've hit on something important by limiting the frequency of such discussions. If they occur infrequently enough that they aren't a constant irritant, perhaps its easier for participants to keep their cool.
FWIW, it's also easy to claim HN is biased, because people are biased differently, and HN is close to global.
As a northern european, I for instance would say that I often find HN trend conservative, compared to the discourses in my country. But someone from a different part of the world could claim HN to lean progressive, based on their political environment.
So I don't think there is an easy way here. If one were to decide that HN should balance both-sides, who draws where the middle lies?
I agree with you. From my Southern European perspective, I don't find this site particularly "progressive" at all. I would describe most of the comments as liberal or centre-right.
And indeed, there is no solution here other than to be tolerant of other opinions, which may come from very different contexts than your own.
american foreign policy often becomes european union migration policy. just remember that, for example, when discussing international affairs.
Having said that, I have to say that HN is one of the communities that is better at dealing with different opinions, from different places. It's much harder on Reddit. On Metafilter, it is absolutely impossible: anything far from mainstream American liberalism is considered taboo.
The only thing I'd add to your point is that while HN is certainly global (or let's say highly international), the community is still overwhelmingly from Western countries. (Not all hold pro-Western views, of course, but that's different.) This means that users from non-Western countries who want to contribute views that go against what is commonly believed in the West, have a hard time. We do what we can to help, but unfortunately it's not much, because the forces of large numbers and group psychology are unstoppable, especially together.
I like when people take issue with me, shame it rarely amounts to much more than the subsequent chaos that ensues because humans refuse to resolve their differences via communication.
dang - Productive and honest public discourse is arguably the most important issue in the world right now - arguably our greatest need. And that seems to depend on moderation.
Ideally, with sufficiently effective moderation technique any groups could be brought together and talk it out. We'll never reach that ideal but my point is, moderation has incredible potential value.
You've done a good job of it here, you're thoughtful about it, probably you have studied and learned more than fits in HN comments. You might do whatever research remains and write a book. I hope you will!
> I'm always open to hearing arguments about how to apply them more even-handedly. When people make a fair point, such as xyzelement did about the submitted URL of the OP (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39621225), we're happy to change something. Another example that sticks in my mind is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146630 from a few weeks ago. That was about title, not URL, but the principle is the same.
Probably you've thought of it, but it's not even-handed when strict scrutiny is applied to some positions but not others. OTOH, I appreciate that hot topics get a different level of scrutiny.
Because you ask, I'll lay it out in more detail. But it's a general point that might not even apply in these cases (it's only two mod actions and so not a lot of data points) so I don't mean to over-emphasize it:
The two changes you listed and I quoted, while I think they improve the quality of those OPs, resulted from a level of scrutiny that seems higher than what most OPs receive.
Imagine Vim and Emacs users were again at odds. And imagine that Vim users raised every possible objection to Emacs OPs, resulting in a lot of extra scrutiny of the Emacs posts. Even if each mod action was even-handed, overall the actions wouldn't be even-handed between Vim and Emacs.
But as I said, the Gaza war is a very hot topic and extra scrutiny seems like a good idea. Anything that cuts down on unsubstantiated claims seems especially good.
Thanks for the response. I guess i just don't understand why some political stories make it through, when the vast majority (like this one[1]) are rightfully flagged.
If you look at the links I listed in my GP comment, I've posted quite a few explanations of how and when we turn off the flags on an article. If there's a question I haven't answered there, I'd like to know what it is.
There are things sometimes that don't have two sides to balance out perspectives.
Not a lot of them, but there are for sure.
Difficult conversations often require the ability to reflect and contemplate on one's own understanding before being quick to validate it and reinforce it by putting it on others.
Saying something is biased on one side and therefore wrong or unfair is incorrect because it denies the idea of objective truth.
If there is no such thing as objective truth, then nobody has any foundation upon which to make any judgements, and therefore power alone becomes the ultimate arbiter or conflict.
The idea that there is no objective truth is a core tenet of fascism.
So in a "curious" place you would expect openness to new explanations, but you would also expect one-sided-ness because there is an objective truth to approach and the purpose of curiosity is to approach that truth.
If there is no objective truth, there is no reason to be curious.
If there is an objective truth, then there is no reason to complain about one-sided-ness because what matters is our best approximation of the truth.
A quote from Yale professor of history Timothy Snyder's book: On Tyranny
To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.
If nothing is true, then no one can criticize
power, because there is no basis upon which
to do so. If nothing is true, then all is
spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for
the most blinding lights.
With many social networks, we have many platforms to discuss politics directly. IMHO, HN should keep to tech and not politics, with an exception of politics related to tech (eg. EU trying to destroy e2e encryption,... again,... government hacks, etc).
We have literally everywhere else to pick sides and point fingers.
When people talk about "politics" they aren't talking about it conceptually. They are talking about the myriad of controversial topics that are fiercely argued about by state political leaders and prominent political parties. But that's a mouthful so we call it "politics".
Using the common meaning of "politics", it's very easy to sort the majority of subjects into "politics" and "non-politics".
> This platform for tech news should not become a place for political posts, nor even for posting regular news headlines.
What's a political post? What's "regular news"? And where do you draw the line? If not interested, you can just move on and ignore. There's plenty of AI articles all over the front page.
What is the appropriate number of times to "just move on and ignore" before finally deciding to say something because the integrity of hn as a platform is at risk?
The latter. There are two recent topics that ended in flagging and really low quality doscussions, no curiosity, no open mindedness and sometimes utter disregard of human rights: Caste based discrimination and the war in Gaza. The latter usually has "pro-Gaza" submissions flagged even faster than the former had for stuff critizing castes and caste based discrimination.
I am torn, in the one hand those discussions are often rightfully flagged for the coments themselves. On the other hand, this shows a general social development I don't like, especially since HN used to be, or at least is suppossed to be, a place where even hairy topics can be discussed. And I think the "tech" community at large would only benefi from multiple views on those subjects.
There are not multiple views on subjects, that part is subjective, per se. There is objective truth which this site is trying to prevent via flagging and other ways to limit discussions. The whole point around HN is about tech news etc. is BS, to me at least, as there is no way to disentangle anything from politics as we live in the world ruled and controlled by such interests.
To be fair I would think a story about a huge corporate exec talking to stuffy congress would be the exact opposite of hacker news. Hackers don’t care about policy or stiffs in suits. Post open source software and projects involving actual hacking instead.
Add some faith (belief without proof, we all do it, and can't recognize it in ourselves or other ingroup members) and you are good to go...provided current planetary results are okay in your books I suppose.
Maybe it's not a matter of who we are, but who we should be?
Easier said than done? Oh yeah, we're soft and lazy from a life diet high on - literally - coconvenience.
Put another way, when we collectively decide "we can't talk about X or Y" the control of that topic gets outsourced: outsourced to "leaders" who evidently are less capable.
In short, yes there is risk. But the alternatives consistently qualify as insanity.
By reading the comments on this post I have learned about non-central hypergeometric distributions - which I didn't know about (and turn out to be relevant to a bunch of problems I am thinking about for my job).
HN readers and contributors at least try to think of themselves as the grown-ups in the room. So, by having conversations about contentious topics in a civilized and respectful way, we learn things.
For me this article raised a estimation problem that I deem as interesting as the German tank problem[1]. I took a crack at it. Wish to see what people with better statistical knowledge than me think of the data and the conclusions. I think my maths/stats intuition for problems like this is OK, but I lack rigour.
You are perhaps obligated to take an interest in your own democracy, although that doesn't mean you're obligated to inject it into your workplace and every facet of life.
You are by no means obligated to take an interest in wars on other continents.
Especially not to subject your poor coworkers to your Gell-Man Amnesia-ridden opinions on it!
The article discussing Russia's invasion of Ukraine has received a significant amount of engagement and upvotes on Hacker News. To be frank, I didn't expect that you would share a similar comment about this particular topic, would you?
Did you strongly disagree on the numerous posts related to Ukraine and Russia which have appeared on this forum in the past? or is it the topic that bothers you? You cannot close your eyes to event in which your country is complicit. Ignorance is not an excuse.
There is an interesting and delicate conversation about how a twenty-something engineer in the military ends up frequenting anti-military and anti-democracy subreddits. I think that fits in with hn.
There is another interesting and delicate conversation about what that person thought about Gaza and about Israeli Jews, and where those ideas came from. He posted on Reddit that Hamas's stated intent to destroy Israel - where 7 million Jews live - would not count as genocide. That is a higher percentage than the extermination of 6 million European Jews in the Holocaust, when there were more Jews alive than now.
He based this on the belief that Israel is a US and UK colony, which is hard to take seriously either literally (since it isn't) or figuratively (since none of the many non-middle-eastern waves of Jewish refugees came from the US or UK).
He also had a deeply held belief that the violence killing 1% of Palestinians in Gaza IS a genocide (and I think it's safe to assume that he fully accepted Hamas's claims that 30k people have died, and fully rejected IDF's claims that 12k of those were Hamas militants). So deeply held that he burned himself to death over it.
To me, the inconsistency of holding those two beliefs so strongly at the same time is a sign of antisemitism believed more deeply than I personally believe in anything. And that contradiction does not survive a moment's rational thought - to me at least. Which makes me assume that someone whose profession is built around thinking rationally was simply unable to think rationally about the Israel-Gaza conflict and see the inherent asymmetry of what he was saying.
So I think there is a discussion here. Not about whether he was right that the devastation in Gaza amounts to a genocide, or right about whether democracy is evil, or right about whether America is evil. But the limits of rationality compared to how engineers usually think about themselves, and whether we are more or less susceptible than anyone else when it comes to online echo chambers.
And it is incredibly hard to have that conversation without getting into flame wars. Or projecting our personal beliefs about the Israel/Palestine conflict to the point that it prevents useful discourse.
That's not just Hamas's claim, that's the UN's claim, Amnesty international has this claim. There's plenty of independent thirds parties which hold this claim. The same cannot be said for the 12k militants claim, for which the idf has supplied no evidence, and is not repeated by independent third parties.
And beyond that, I don't think the belief that killing 1% of a population and displacing and injuring many more has much to do with any feelings towards any race. If the Belgians came into my country and killed 1% of everyone, I'd be pretty miffed, but that doesn't mean I have an ethnic hatred of Belgians.
Even the IDF uses those numbers. The number is likely much higher as it does not take into account those buried under the rubble - which cannot be reached without proper equipment.
In every legal system, intent without capacity is not considered to be intent. It is so laughable and pathetic, frankly, that you brought it up at all.
> It is so laughable and pathetic, frankly, that you brought it up at all.
If the claim you're making is "we should not bring up the fact that the Hamas' stated intent is to kill and/or deport every Jew in Israel because they don't have the capacity to do that"... I mean, I've seen variations of that claim before, but I still find it baffling.
(Standards disclaimers apply, the Hamas having genocidal intent doesn't justify the IDF's war crimes, etc.)
This is why the conversation is nearly impossible, even on hn. It's hard to find enough people who agree on which facts are objectively true in order to have the discussion.
Things end up stuck in endless loops of the loudest voices claiming that either "any criticism at all of Israel, no matter what it does, is antisemitic" or "no criticism of Israel is ever antisemitic unless it explicitly and directly refers to Judaism."
Ironically, I've observed many of the former have trouble understanding that racism can exist without using a racial slur, while many of the latter can easily write a 1000 word essay about dog whistles and implicit bias against groups other than Jews.
What the Israelis are doing now is no different from what the Romans did to quell various rebellions, what the British Empire did in their colonies, or what the Nazis did to the Warsaw ghetto after the uprising.
I speak Hebrew and I listen to a broad range of voices coming out of Israel. Do you?
If you tell me what country you're from I'll try the same trick on you, take some selective voices from your "leadership" and present them as if they're policy or the official position of your country.
Punishment or retribution is not Israel's policy here and is not what's being executed on the ground. Are there some crazy voices in Israeli politics. Yes. That proves nothing. Also many of those voices were heard in the immediate aftermath of Oct 7th that was so brutal, barbaric, and shocking, that "blood was boiling" and emotions ran high.
What you're saying here is basically blood libel. To take your analogies, it's not different than the stories about Jews drinking the blood of Christian children. It's an antisemitic lie in the form you present it. That people have the audacity to draw comparisons between what the Nazis did to the Jews and what's going on in Gaza is mind boggling.
How can you claim that what a minister says is not indicative of
government policy? How come you are in a better position to interpret
government policy than the ministers themselves?
"I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no
electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed ... we are fighting
against human animals" - Israel's defense minister. "You must remember
what Amalek has done to you" Israel's fucking prime minister. "It is
an entire nation out there that is responsible" Israel's president.
It is very clear that what is going on is fueled by vengeance. Israel
knows it can't destroy Hamas, but it can make the civilians suffer
which it thinks will act as a deterrent. "Was it worth it?" they ask
and hope that future Palestinians will answer "No".
You can accuse me of blood libel all you want, but this is exactly
what the Nazis did to resistance groups in the territories they
occupied. And the German people cheered them on, just like the
Israelis do now.
I can claim it because it is true. A minister (that is part of a coalition of many parties in Israel) is not indicative of government policy. There are some pretty whacky ministers in the Israeli government right now with some pretty weird opinions. This is not Israeli policy. Policy is determined by Cabinet and broader government votes, not by what people are saying (responding emotionally or trying to appease some political base). It's also what's executed on the ground. Israel's government is also subject to judicial oversight, the government can't just do whatever it wants. You just don't understand Israel's political system and how it works, and you're taking statements either made under extreme emotional states or by extremists and presenting them as official policy.
You're taking the Israeli defense minister quote, a snippet of it, made at the height of shock, as factual policy, when you know this is not true on the ground, e.g. Israel is letting food and fuel in and has not laid a complete siege on Gaza since Oct 7th. It also supplies Gaza with water. I'll concede that in the immediate shock after the barbaric Oct 7th attack there were some very strong statements made but actual policy has been within the laws of war. Gallant was also mostly referring to what Israel supplies Gaza but Israel has no direct control over the Gaza-Egypt border. His referral of "fighting human animals" was referring to Hamas's Oct 7th rape, mutilation, murder, torture, etc. Maybe not the best choice of words.
I am going to maintain that this is a blood libel.
I do think I'm in a better position to interpret government policy because I actually listen to the broader voices and understand how the system works. You're obviously not exposed to the broad public discourse in Israel but rather to highly filtered/cherry-picked views.
"Israel is doing all it can to get civilians out of harm's way as it battles Hamas in Gaza, including dropping leaflets warning them to flee, but its attempts to minimize casualties were "not successful", Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.": https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-not-success...
"“We don’t seek to govern Gaza, we don’t seek to occupy it. But we seek to give it and us a better future … and that requires defeating Hamas,” he said. “I’ve set goals, I didn’t set a timetable because it can take more time.”: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/10/netanyahu-says-not...
"The PMO said that when Netanyahu used the biblical quotation “Remember what Amalek did to you,” he was using it as a way of describing the savage Hamas attack of October 7, and certainly not as a call for wanton killings.
The PMO pointed out that the same phrase appears in a permanent exhibit at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, as well at a memorial in The Hague itself for Dutch Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
The IDF spokesperson has said hundreds of times in his daily briefings that the war is not against Palestinians, it's against Hamas:
"“I’ve seen, personally, many types of targets that we have. The resolution of the intelligence, as in whose house it is, which Hamas commander uses the facility or what the offices in a certain building are used by Hamas for,” Conricus said. “I can tell you that the intelligence is solid and it is focused and that we are striking targets that are directly related to Hamas and not targets that don’t have anything to do with them.” https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4250823-tapper-presses-id...
""I want to be clear from the beginning, there is not a single drop of cynicism about Palestinian civilian casualties. We do not want and we are not trying to achieve any casualties. Our fight is against the evil terrorist organization Hamas. It is them that we are targeting, not the civilian population. But unfortunately, because Hamas hides behind them, unfortunately, civilians get caught in the middle," he said." https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/hamas-prefers-t...
EDIT: and again, the comparison of Israel to the Nazis is ignorant and disgusting.
Your argumentation is a form of damage control. Just like modern
neo-Nazis either downplay, minimize, or try to justify atrocities
committed by the Nazi regime you try to downplay, minimize or justify
atrocities committed by the Israeli regime. The neo-Nazis say that the
number of victims of the Holocaust is grossly overstated. You will say
that there is no grounds for accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. The
neo-Nazis say that ordinary Germans had no idea about the
concentration camps. You will say that ordinary Jewish Israelis do not
revel in Gaza's destruction. Neo-Nazis spreads the myth of the clean
Wehrmacht (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht),
just like you will spread the myth of the clean IDF. Neo-Nazis
downplay statements from leading Nazi leaders just like you downplay
statements from leading Israeli leaders. They say "Yeah, Hitler said
he wanted to exterminate Jews but he didn't mean it!" and you say
"Yeah, Gallant said Gaza should be starved but he didn't mean it!"
While Golan is a minister without a portfolio, she wouldn't be in her
position if she was not a popular politician or if her views were not
aligned with those of the rest of the government. And she certainly
has power to affect government policy. Although these ministers may be
"whacky" to you the very fact that they are ministers prove that they
aren't wacky to most Jewish Israelis. After all, they were elected.
Children are starving to death in Gaza and your country is on trial
for genocide. While you try to excuse these crimes and justify calls
for genocide (Amalek). Whine about anti-Semitism all you want, in my
eyes you are nothing but an Israeli neo-Nazi. You have learned nothing
from history and had you been German you would have justified the
Nazi crimes too.
Your argument is that Israelis are Nazis and therefore Israelis are Nazis. You refuse to entertain the possibility that the literal Nazis here are the Hamas and their supporters despite all the evidence and their rhetoric saying so.
Your comparison of Israel to Nazis is disgusting, ignorant and antisemitic.
You're taking natural emotional responses when your people are brutally raped, mutilated, kidnapped, slaughtered in their homes and comparing it to the deliberate calculated murder of 6 million Jews that did nothing to the Germans over years.
EDIT: You are the one who is "downplay, minimize, or try to justify atrocities committed by the Nazi regime". What does that make you by your own definition? A lot of people have died, I'm not happy about it. There's been a lot of destruction. I blame Hamas for starting the war. There are starving children, yes. These are nothing compared to the Nazis. Nothing. Israel is within its rights to wage this war, it has good reasons, it is persecuting it within the norms for similar wars. It is not committing genocide and "your country is on trial for genocide" is bullshit and you know it.
No, the argument is that Israeli Jews are acting exactly like Germans
did during the Nazi era. They either don't care or they cheer on the
slaughter of innocent civilians. The destruction of Gaza is more
complete than the destruction of Dresden during WWI or of
Warsaw after the ghetto uprising. Yet more than half of all Jewish
Israelis think their army is using too little force! This and many
other frightening statistics indicate that Jewish Israelis are just as
genocidal as the Germans were or the Hutsi.
The difference is that Jewish Israelis have access to contrarian
views. The Germans and Rwandans had no free press and no internet to
access alternative opinions on. That the Jewish Israelis have, but by
and large still choose fascism and murder is despicable.
> You're taking natural emotional responses
This bullshit makes you complicit. You're not in uniform, perhaps, but
you are here online debate-lording your way to the last word. The
Spanish government did not call for genocide after the 2004 Madrid
attack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings), nor
did the French government after the 2015 Paris attack
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks). Neither
Spain nor France took revenge on the Islamists by carpet-bombing
civilians.
> Israel is within its rights to wage this war, it has good reasons,
it is persecuting it within the norms for similar wars. It is not
committing genocide and "your country is on trial for genocide" is
bullshit and you know it.
No, I don't know it and neither does the court that decided to accept
the case. No, Israel is not "persecuting it within the norms for
similar wars". It currently has displaced almost all Gazans, destroyed
over 50% of all buildings (that much more than Japan and Germany
during WWII), and is starving children to death. If you can't see how
fucking evil that is, you are a lost cause.
This line of reasoning is very similar to an infamous post where stackoverflow was used to promote the owners views on elections, and was a watershed moment in that site losing credibility and interest.
Actually reading this article shows some heavy conjecture.
They talk about the existence of Pegasus software, and they talk about the fact that generically, it has been used in the world to track journalists.
They don't actually cite a single example of a Palestinian, much less a journalist, being tracked through Pegasus. Likewise, they say it "appears" that this data is then used for targeting but no indication as to what makes it appear that way.
The article is basically "spyware exists" - and the rest is pure speculation about how it could possibly be used but no evidence (mentioned) that it's used that way.
While the US violently cleansed the land of various indigenous peoples, there was no Internet through which stern condemnation could arrive. The Israelis have to do the same but broadcasted to every single person's palm. It's quite unfortunate for them, really. Sometimes you gotta help your little bro out.
I have little care about something that happened 100-300 years ago. I wasnt alive. My opinion has literally 0 bearing over stuff that's happened.
What I care about now is that we quit supporting Israel's own holocaust. Just because they had something horrible happen in the 1940's, doesn't mean they get "One Free Holocaust Ticket".
Let them fend for themselves. Sanction them. Run battleships in the Mediterranean to break the Gaza blockade. Basically we should put them in the proverbial time-out corner until they can behave like civilized adults.
The continued existence of Israel in the Middle East is like fire underwater. Without a serious continous injection of energy, it'll die out instantly. Everything I've read hints that the Arabs will wipe them out completely if they don't have ~billions coming in from the US annually.
Look up how Arabs have historically treated Jews living on "their" land, and the various expulsions of Jews from modern Arab states. It paints a GRIM picture of a post-umbilical cord Israel.
> Traditionally, Jews in the Muslim world ... were subjected to dhimmi status. They were afforded relative security against persecution, provided they did not contest the varying inferior social and legal status imposed on them under Islamic rule.
> In 1945, there were between 758,000 and 866,000 Jews living in communities throughout the Arab world. Today, there are fewer than 8,000.
I'm not taking a position on what the US should do in this post, but withdrawing support for Israel is definitely going to lead to horrific violence all the same.
Israel has distracted the entire West from Ukraine and is mostly being driven by someone who seems to be more self-interested than anything else. The West has been played like a total fool and this is what Hamas wanted, to follow Israel into creating an unstable environment where we are now even bombing Yemen all while other countries like China continue to grow.
The fact that the attack happened right as relations were about to normalise with both Turkey and Saudi Arabia is all you need as evidence.
In my opinion a tristate solution is the best approach. If you want democracy and coexistence you go to the good place, if you want that not you goto the bad place.
Judgment not on group basis, but individual basis with massive surveillance as basis for review..
Could send the extremists of both sides to the bad place for bonus points.
If you occupy territories for decades, with notable differences in the rights of those occupied, you get an insurgency. To me, "terrorism" doesn't really describe the situation well. There have certainly been specific incidents that fit that label, but plenty that look a lot more like plain old rebellion. There have also been acts from the Israelis that could be looked at as terroristic, if you subscribe to the definition of using violence and intimidation for political gain.
Yeah, if both parties have declared war against each other, I think it's fair to call it a war.
Besides, does it matter what you call it? It's a war for all intents and purposes.
Every war/invasion/special military operation is seemingly a "The good guys (me) against the bad guys/terrorists (you)" conflict, and if that's not war, I'm not sure what is.
You cannot declare war on a territory you occupy and control. It is as if the United States declared war on Washington DC or any of their numerous prisons.
Israel neither occupied nor controlled the Gaza interior prior to Hamas' attack. They only controlled the border and what goes in and out of Gaza (some cross border tunnels excepted). Within Gaza, Hamas and the Palistinian National Authority ruled.
> They only controlled the border and what goes in and out of Gaza
"only" is used here to diminish the suffering of the Gazan people. Israel has had Gaza under a brutal blockade, across air, land and sea. They control everything that enters or leaves, and infamously were so cruel they counted the calories entering Gaza [0] [1]. Israel even claims control of the air over Gaza, and prevents civilians from collecting rainwater [2] [3] [4].
Israel has been enforcing collective punishment for decades - they want that land, and they want it only for themselves.
Israel certainly has agreements and treaties with Egypt that would make it difficult for Egypt not to do what the Israelis say regarding the border. Agreements and treaties made at a time and situation where Egypt didn't have much leverage.
Egypt is not free, for example, to allow aid in that Israel has not specifically approved.
You can read quotes from Israeli officials about their approval process for the Rafah crossing. They've also bombed the crossing when they feel like the process isn't being followed.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that statement, but I guess you're somehow implying it's not US-backed Israel's fault that they prevents legitimate goods (such as crayons, seeds, fishing rods etc) from entering Gaza... because Egypt?
Whataboutism aside, it's well known that US-backed Israel is indeed largely in control of what Egypt does and does not do in regard to Gaza.
They did both... They control everything that goes in and out of gaza:
I quote from MSNBC "Despite pleas from the United Nations and human rights groups, Israel has maintained a land, air and sea blockade on Gaza since 2007 that has had a devastating effect on Palestinian civilians."
How do you rule if you control nothing? all the utilities are controlled by Israel. Travel, nope, controlled by Israel. Exports, nope, controlled by Israel. What are they ruling?
Israel created Hamas to weaken the Palestinian Authority - which itself is severely corrupt and complacent. People are seeking a better life. How else do you think Trump got elected? was he the better candidate? (and yes, I did just conflate Trump and Hamas)
I think it would be appropriate to put Hamas leadership, Trump, Biden and Bibi all in there along with a host of others. They're all produced by the same awful games that reward powerful, reprehensible men, promoting even those with majority disapproval to the top of the chain.
And then the same vagueness is the same tactics used by the most well funded, the most sophisticated propaganda machine ever - to make people think being against the actions of their current Israeli government, e.g. war crimes they're committing and have been committing, is anti-Semitism.
How is it a terrorist group? The nation state you are referring to is an occupying colonialist state. This same "state" is an apartheid state and not a democracy. You just have to scratch a little under the surface to see it. The nightly raids in the west bank. The concentration camp referred to as Gaza - where this "state" controls all utilities and imports. Hold anyone under your thumb for long enough and they will do their best to get out from under it. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction (Newton's Law of Motion seems to aptly fit)
I recall seeing this shortly after Oct 7; though at that time it was difficult to distinguish whether it was propaganda.
I think the Hannibal Directive is not great, but at the same time the Israelis wouldn't have committed those acts had the terrorists not crossed into Isreal intending to do terrorist things.
It's terrorism whether you invade to kidnapp civilians or to murder them, and they're was plenty of civilian murdering happening that day as well.
Even if Isreal goaded them into doing it to justify genocide, it's still Hamas who decided to do the terrorism.
Israel prevents foreign journalists from entering Gaza to cover the conflict - that fact alone should cast heavy doubt on their intentions.
Many journalists appear to have been deliberately targeted: killed by snipers, bombed while sleeping in their own homes, or hit by airstrikes while travelling.
> Around 10% of Gaza's journalists have been killed versus 2.5% of healthcare workers.
These figures are insane! The number of journalists killed crossed the threshold where Gaza journalists can be declared officially decimated, according to the historical definition of the term as 1/10 killed[1]. I noticed if we plot the journalist killings against general population killings in Gaza, the graph deviates from an approximately straight line that might be expected if journalists were merely being killed as a result of "collateral damage" amidst indiscriminated bombings, and I got nerd sniped[2] by the question: Do data give any clues Israel purposefully targets journalists, beyond the large values[3]?
After spending some days grappling with it, I think the shape of data supports it, as displayed here:
Looking at the plot of the ratio of journalists killed by israeli forces over all killed, it appears to be slightly decreasing over time instead of keeping constant. My working hypothesis is, as journalists are dispoportionally targeted, their numbers get comparatively depleted over time, making slightly harder to kill more journalists. This can be modelled as an urn problem[4], when each ball colour has different odds of being drawn, in addition to being present in different numbers. But instead of black/white balls, we have people, and instead of being drawn out from an urn, they are drawn out of life, by being shot at[5], shelled, bombed, run over by bulldozers[6], et cetera. The urn problem with different weights on each color can be modeled by a noncentral hypergeometric distribution[7], either Wallenius' noncentral hypergeometric distribution[8], for the case where balls are sampled one by one in such a way that there is competition between the balls, or Fisher's noncentral hypergeometric distribution[9], for the case where the balls are sampled simultaneously or independently of each other.
There's some disagreement on published numbers of killed journalists. For example, the Comitee to Protect Journalists counts around 90 jornalists killed[10]. The Euro-Med Monitor over 130[11]. I'm not sure about the causes of this disagreement, but I suspect is due to who is counted as journalist, only people that actualy write reports and give face and voice to established news sources, or also their supporting crews (camera men, fixers, drivers...) and freelancers. In doubt I used data extracted from a table given by wikipedia[12], that is closer to the more conservative estimate given by CPJ and lists individual names and sources. The pattern of journalists killed each day in the dataset (1, 3, 1, 3, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 5, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 6, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1, 3, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 3, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1) indicates they're taken down mostly one at a time, and even large individual massacres, like the recent flour bag massacre[13], kills less than 1/10000 of the total population from Gaza Strip each, so Wallenius' distribution should approximate it better. In fact, it appears it is more likely for journalists to be killed together with their families at home than together with other journalists doing fieldwork, as we can infer by reading the entries in the description field of the table. For the figures on the whole strip, I collected daily reports published in the site of United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and scraped some barcharts[14].
> I noticed if we plot the journalist killings against general population killings in Gaza, the graph deviates from an approximately straight line that might be expected if journalists were merely being killed as a result of "collateral damage" amidst indiscriminated bombings
I think this assumption is wrong. Journalists are known to try to get the most shocking photos and reports. I would expect their rates of injury compared to random Joes in similar situations to be similar to that of people doing extreme sports compared to people doing recreational sports.
There should be some level of occupational hazard, but surely not 3x as high when compared to people actually engaged in combat (Journalist:~75:1; Hamas militant:~25:1), and high enough to greatly deplete their numbers.
In those figures, "Hamas militant" actually means adult man. Nobody is identifying every person killed and checking against a list of Hamas members, they're just claiming every man killed belonged to Hamas.
Is there a way to verify this? I tend to agree, but I have no way to be rigorously convinced.
For example, iirc Palestine health authority reports the names of all the civilians[0] that have been killed. I think the number is something like 30k. I frequently wonder if that number is simply exaggerated, as it would be in Palestine's interest to do so. However, if the number is supported by a corresponding list of the names of individuals, I would think the Israeli intelligence services would be incentivised and capable of refuting a significant enough number of false claims[1] to cast serious doubt upon the claimed number of civilian deaths.
To my knowledge, Israel has not done so, and so I don't doubt the number too much.
[0] As noted, it is extremely challenging to pin down whether or not someone is 'Hamas'. I assume Palestine is reporting all deaths as civilian, in the same way Israel seems to report them all as combatant.
[1] whether it is an individual that does not exist, perished prior to Oct 7. '23, or is still alive.
AFAIK, and I've seen news articles saying the same, Israel has not provided any evidence for its claim to have killed 12,000 Hamas fighters.
But the latest reported death toll is over 30k, 22k of whom are women and children. Another 10k or more are missing and presumed dead. If about one-third of the missing are adult men, matching the ratio of deaths, then about 12k adult men are dead or missing.
Is it plausible that Israel is so precise that all the adult men they've killed were Hamas fighters?
> Is it plausible that Israel is so precise that all the adult men they've killed were Hamas fighters?
We know from some of their previous actions in the region that they could be, if they wanted to - we've seen them take out individual aparment units with missiles, for example.
But given how many unguided munitions Israel are using in Gaza... I mean, almost the whole of Gaza has been reduced to rubble - the idea that every military-age male is Hamas is just not credible.
There is an article published in The Lanced where they investigated this. They found no evidence of inflated numbers. But if later they are found inflated anyway, this makes the high number of journalists killed more of an anomaly, not less.
Surely there is, but I still didn't figure out how to. I'm not used to work with this Wallenius distribution (indeed, I discovered it existed a few days ago, while working on this problem). To get some semblance of error bars, I just took max/min overs a couple tens of runner ups. But I explained in detail the assumptions in my reasoning and posted the source code for my analysis, so people with better statistical shops than me can replicate and improve upon it.
But the uncertainty here probably is dominated by uncertainty in the inputs. I used the lower estimates for journalists deaths, about 90 on 01/03. But some organizations publish figures as high as 130. The uncertainty in total deaths also high, I would not be surprised if 1.5-2x higher, given all missing people.
SciPy stats includes a Wallenius’ discrete random variable[15], that takes four parameters on its creation: M is the total number of subjects, n is the number of Type I subjects (journalists), and odds is the odds ratio: the odds of killing a journalist rather than a non-journalist when there is only one individual of each. The random variate represents the number of journalists that end dead if Israeli forces kills pre-determined x people from Gaza Strip one by one. The total population in the strip (M) is approximately known. x is known from OCHA daily stats. For the effective population of journalists (n) and odds ratio (odds) we can use Wallenius' to test several value pairs and check which best fit the data. From the article we can estimate the membership of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate at 1200. That is a upper bound on the effective number of journalists, taking into account the likely inclusion of supporting staff and the many professionals forced to flee the Strip[16], sometimes after receiving explicit threats[17]. About the odds ratio, the current body count is about 1.3% of the total population in the Strip. Meanwhile, US estimates about 20%-30% of the 30000 strong Hamas forces were killed[18]. This number is probably exaggerated, as it implies every dead male in the age bracket around 13-60 is being counted as a Hamas militant, but for the sake of iron-manning the argument, let's assume those figures are true. That means the average Hamas militant is about 20:1 to 30:1 times more likely to be killed than a random person. So we should expect jurnalists' odds ratio to sit between somewhere between random citizen and Hamas militant, taking into account occupational hazards but not deliberate targeting. In doubt I took 100:1 as an upper bound, and wrote a model (source bellow).
The best fit I got over the search grid had an effective journalist population of 155 and odds ratio of 75:1. As the data is noisy, I took the top 20 matches to have some idea of error intervals, and got ranges of 135 - 205 effective population and 51 - 96 odds ratio. The odds ratio is larger than our estimate for Hamas militants, indicating that in fact Israeli forces are busier targeting journalists than Hamas militants. Even if we assume the total kill counts are underestimates, given all people missing under the rubble and lack of proper rescue work due to targeting of rescue crews, say, adding a xs = [2*x for x in xs] line after the first definition of xs, to double the total counts, we still get killing odds for journalists equal or greater than for militants.
import csv
from collections import Counter
from datetime import date, timedelta
from itertools import accumulate, islice
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
from scipy.stats import nchypergeom_wallenius
from statistics import linear_regression
def batched(iterable, n):
# batched('ABCDEFG', 3) --> ABC DEF G
if n < 1:
raise ValueError('n must be at least one')
it = iter(iterable)
while batch := tuple(islice(it, n)):
yield batch
def dateab(a, b):
# Lists dates from day a to day b.
i = 0
while (c := a + timedelta(days = i)) <= b:
yield c.isoformat()
i += 1
def reader(file):
with open(file, newline='', encoding='utf-8') as csvfile:
for row in csv.reader(csvfile, delimiter=';', quotechar='"'):
yield row[0:2]
def sum_absdiff(iter1, iter2):
# Compute absolute differences sum between vectors, as error measure.
return sum(abs(x - y) for x, y in zip(iter1, iter2))
days = list(dateab(date(2023, 10, 7), date(2024, 3, 1)))
weeks = [e for e in batched(days, 7) if len(e) == 7]
total_killings = [(d, int(n)) for d, n in islice(reader('gs_cummulative_total_killings.csv'), 1, None)]
d = dict(total_killings)
xs = list(max(d.setdefault(e, 0) for e in week) for week in weeks)
journalist_killings = [t[0] for t in reader('gaza_strip_journalists_killed.csv')]
c = Counter(journalist_killings)
ys = list(accumulate(sum(c.setdefault(e, 0) for e in week) for week in weeks))
slope, intercept = linear_regression(xs, ys, proportional=True)
fitted = [slope * x + intercept for x in xs]
print('Linear regression parameters: slope =', slope, ';', 'intercept =', intercept, '\n')
M = 2375259 # 2022 population estimate (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip)
ns = [i for i in range(1, 1200) if i % 5 == 0]
odds = [i for i in range(1, 100) if i % 3 == 0]
candidate_store = {}
for n in ns:
for odd in odds:
L = []
for x in xs:
r = nchypergeom_wallenius(M, n, x, odd).mean()
L.append(r)
candidate_store[(n, odd)] = L[:]
best_wallenius_fit = min(candidate_store, key= lambda e: sum_absdiff(candidate_store[e], ys))
print('n, odds (best Wallenius fit):', best_wallenius_fit, '\n')
top_20 = sorted(candidate_store, key= lambda e: sum_absdiff(candidate_store[e], ys))[:20]
print('Top 20 (n, odds):', top_20, '\n')
top_20_ns = [e[0] for e in top_20]
top_20_odds = [e[1] for e in top_20]
print('Top 20 n variation in range:', min(top_20_ns), '-', max(top_20_ns))
print('Top 20 odds variation in range:', min(top_20_odds), '-', max(top_20_odds))
fig, ax1 = plt.subplots()
ax1.plot(xs, ys, label='Available data')
ax1.plot(xs, fitted, label='Linear regression fit')
ax1.plot(xs, candidate_store[best_wallenius_fit], label='Wallenius\' distribution fit')
ax1.set_xlabel('General population (source: ochaopt.org)')
ax1.set_ylabel('Journalists (source: wikipedia.org)')
ax1.set_title('Cummulative killings by Israeli forces in Gaza Strip\n2023-10-07 to 2024-03-01')
ax1.legend()
plt.show()
Output (in addition to figure above):
Python 3.11.8 (main, Feb 7 2024, 00:00:00) [GCC 13.2.1 20231011 (Red Hat 13.2.1-4)] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license()" for more information.
========== RESTART: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ==========
Linear regression parameters: slope = 0.00344597608865967 ; intercept = 0.0
n, odds (best Wallenius fit): (155, 75)
Top 20 (n, odds): [(155, 75), (160, 72), (145, 84), (165, 69), (170, 66), (150, 78), (175, 63), (140, 87), (135, 93), (150, 81), (185, 60), (140, 90), (180, 60), (190, 57), (195, 54), (200, 54), (135, 96), (180, 63), (205, 51), (185, 57)]
Top 20 n variation in range: 135 - 205
Top 20 odds variation in range: 51 - 96
For context, a total of 69 journalists were killed in WWII, 63 in the Vietnam war both of which lasted several years. As of today March 6th 2024, the Gaza invasion has left 86 journalists dead in less than 4 months. That is an amazingly high percentage for the expected mean in a conflict.
That may be true but a couple things have changed since those very dated sample points. (1) Definition of journalist (2) quantity of journalists (3) willingness to be on the very front lines in order to get better stories (4) technology enabling journalists thus being able to be more dangerous spots. (5) speculation -> journalists who are using press credentials as cover
I'm neither way on the conflict but want to correct some of your arguments assumptions that lead your conclusion astray.
Yes if you google 'how many journalists died in WW2' in Russian you get numbers from a couple of hundred to over a thousand for the Soviet Union alone. The 69 number listed at https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/world/middleeast/30embed.... is almost certainly just US journalists.
Tbf, a lot of those victims were due to dubious strategic choices. They could have probably conceded Stalingrad, for example, and refused to simply because of the propaganda angle. That battle alone was an absolute meat-grinder, and didn't really have to be.
But yes, the overall cost in human lives was higher for the Soviet Union than for any other country or federation.
Stalingard was a trap for the 6th Army, which was beyond overextended and undersupplied. I have a strong prior that giving up Stalingrad and allowing Germans and their allies to resupply would've caused even more causalties, especially considering the Soviets would have had to attack over Volga. That final Russian bridgehead in Stalingrad was a horrible place, I imagine.
No, that was "the great war" that started with what's called "WWI" by many and ended with what's called "WWII". Basically, one big war with a really long intermission.
Ah, you are one of the people seeing WW1 and 2 as the new 30 years war. Ok. Still wrong saying tze assination started WW2, and oversimolyfied saying it started WW1.
Worth pointing out that your view is still not mainstream.
They are linked, for sure. The Versaille treaty and reparations did not directly cause the Nazi's rise to power so. I know it is a popular believe, it is just not the case. At best, they were a Nazi talking point. After all, the pre-Nazi goverment got rid of them. Same for the economic downturn, no direct link to Nazi popularity. It simply made it a little bit easier for them.
Re WW1: The assassination gave the Austrians the excuse to pose excagerated demands on Serbia. Because Austrian leadership, politically but especially military, wanted to conquer the Balkans. Austria got German support for those demands after Russia got involved on Serbias side, Germany was affraid a war with Russia was inevitable and would be unwinnable for Germany at a later date (history would proof both of these points correct).
Proof for the assassination being a welcome excuse, and not the reason: Serbia agreed to basically all of Austria's demands. Austria refused on basis of minor details, and the fact thatvthey needed an excuse. Back the day, formal declarations of war and acceptable excuses were still a thing in diplomacy, truely more civilized days in some regards.
After Austria declared war on Serbia, and launched its almost failed invasion, all the existing treaties kicked in: Austria and Germany declared war on Russia, France and Britain declared war on the central powers, including the Ottoman Empire, and events couldn't be stopped anymore. After all, everyone believen it would be a quick affaire, akin to the war of 1870. Didn't work out like that.
After the war, the German Empire was no more. The ancient guard and Prussian royalists were as opposed to the Weimar Republic as were the communists and Nazis (they came later). The result was a mess politically. When the conservatives failed to gain a majority in parliament, in part because society driffted away from the middle to the fringes left and right (immensly supported by mas media, radio, and Hitlers and the Nazis brilliant use of that as well as air travel, Hitler sometimes held two rallies the same day in different parts of Germany), they formed a coalition led by tze NSDAP. Conservative leadership hoped they could control the "Austrian private". They couldn't.
Which brings me to another myth: The Nazis were never led legitimate government. Truth is, they did. The first election on 1933 was in deed free and as fair as the other ones in the Weimar era. The fact that the NSDAP needed a coalition is normal, Germany was back the, and is today, a multi-party system. The times one party won a majority and not a mere plurality are extremely rare. Hence, the fust Nazi-led government was legitimate, they won that role fair and square.
The interesting, and today extremely important, part is thus: Once the Nazis were in power, they lost no time dismantling democracy from within. The next election the same year were the opposite of free and fair. The Nazis used their party apparatus, very well established across Germany, as a shadow govenrmwnt and administration. They used violence and every other trick in the book to manipulate the election outcome. It worked, they won a majority. And with that majority, their shadow party government and the additional powers assigned to the Chancellor, thay took power. When Hindenburg died, they merged the powers of Prwsident and Chancellor into the role of the Fuhrer, and their power grab was done.
The lesson of this being: democracies are a fragile beast, they can be attacked and destroyed from within if we are not carefull. And when this happens, well, the outcome usually is very, very ugly. Everybody should keep that in mind when they vote in 2024, regardless of where they are.
What? That Germany started WW2 by attacking Poland in cahoots with the USSR? How is that wrong?
Edit: The European theatre, in Asia the war started earlier when Japan invaded China. The most commonly understood start of WW2 was thebinvasion of Poland and the resulting declarations of war.
The narrative that USSR started the war, surrounding the "Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact" often misinterprets it as a partnership between the Nazis and Soviets to undermine the sovereignty of Central and Eastern European nations. Typically misrepresented as an "alliance," this controversial "nonaggression" pact, which included undisclosed provisions, was actually the culmination of a complex and urgent sequence of events. It's noteworthy that similar agreements had previously been established with Nazi Germany, such as Britain's naval arms agreement in 1934, and a nonaggression pact with Poland that same year. Additionally, it was almost exclusively the Soviet Union that took a stand against fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War two years later, offering support to the democratically elected government facing a fascist uprising, without the backing of other international powers.
Finally the infamous Munich agreement of 1938, where Britain and France agreed to the dismemberment of the last democratic and multinational state in Central and East Europe, Czechoslovakia, occurred without any consultation with the Soviets.
Appeasement was a failure. And enabled Hitler a lot. It also gave him legitimacy.
And no, the USSR did not start the war, that "honour" goes to Germany. The USSR did grap its portion of Poland so.
Regarding Munich, even worse, Czechoslovakia wasn't really consulted neither.
Edit: The war in Europe was ended by all allies, including the USSR. And that the USSR did most of the fighting, and dying outside the holocaust, should be crystal clear to everyone who ever read a short history of WW2 on wikipedia.
> (1) Definition of journalist (2) quantity of journalists (3) willingness to be on the very front lines in order to get better stories (4) technology enabling journalists thus being able to be more dangerous spots.
How have these things changed, and how have the changes affected the number of journalists killed? The changes could reduce the number.
My point is, we need much less speculation and possibilities, and much more credible fact. CPJ provides some credible fact.
Internet does not allow nearly all to be publishers? Does not foster many small online news sources? Has number of news sources not gone up with rise of the internet? Outsourcing of news collection by global news sources to (technology connected) hired locals has not gone up? Number doing (and claiming to be doing) journalism has not gone up?
TFA has a list of those included, who they worked for, and the circumstances of their death. I saw one that was only credited with having a podcast (which has 225k followers on their instagram account,) and a few others that seemed to work for smaller local websites and whatnot, but it seems like the vast majority had affiliations with established news agencies.
I think the argument is that its a lot easier to protect journalists if there are very few journalists in the war zone, so absolute numbers are the wrong way to look at it.
So you don’t think there is a difference between a huge front across a country, and a tiny blob of very densely packed land, with a huge population density? Just something as simple as the chance of a bomb exploding near you is significantly higher in case of one.
I think the US chose not to level Baghdad and if it had, it would’ve been at least as catastrophic as what’s going on in Gaza. So no it’s not merely a matter of a different situation, it’s a matter of different decisions.
I am however pointing out the very significant differences between what the original comment is referring to and what is happening and what might be driving the largest (if true) difference in numbers.
I didn’t say you were. I am pointing out a more directly analogous war to demonstrate that similar militaries have waged similar wars against similar adversaries for far, far greater spans of time yielding far fewer journalist deaths.
I am also pointing out that “this war is extra hard to prosecute” is not actually justification for certain actions. The difficulty of fighting the war falls on the people fighting the war, including the difficulty of protecting civilians during that war. What else would any standards or laws mean if that weren’t the case? The whole premise of these standards is to set a ceiling on what sort of awful conditions can be allowed during warfare.
> The onus of protecting journalists (and medical workers) falls on the military regardless of how difficult the war they’re trying to prosecute is.
No it doesn't?
Just searched the International Criminal Court's English document on war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity for 'journalist' and found no results.
1. Onus doesn’t mean legal requirement. Civilized nations can be, should be, and generally are held to standards far exceeding legal statutes.
2. They DO have an actual legal obligation to protect journalists as well, try searching for “civilian.” If they are targeting journalists (read: civilians) that would obviously be illegal.
> Onus doesn’t mean legal requirement. Civilized nations can be, should be, and generally are held to standards far exceeding legal statutes.
Are they? USA literally has a law on the books that authorizes bombing the netherlands if any of their troops are ever held responsible. Trump pardoned 4 people who masacared civilians (including 2 children) in Iraq
The west doesn't just not go beyond the legal requirements, it flouts the legal requirements when convinent.
GP is referring to the "Hague Invasion Act", aka "American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002" passed under GW Bush to authorize a US invasion of The Hague, to protect American officials and military personnel from prosecution [by the ICC] or rescue them from custody. Originally drafted in response to the Iraq invasion.
Oh dear... I knew the US is one of the few to not recognize the ICC. Never heard of Section 2008. The wording so interesting, especially part covering also people of NATO allies: So theoretically, the US could sent Seal Team Six to extract a member of the Dutch armed forces from The Hague, and attack a NATO member in order to free a citizen from said NATO member. Theoretically, right after Seal Team Six delivered a wanted war criminal to The Hague. Well, I guess at least the strike is easy to position in that case...
Thanks for the throw back to the times of bad George W. policy and laws, almost forgot how bad it was over everything that happened since 2016...
You said "protecting" and protection is far different from "not target".
We have laws for an important reason, without them it's up to any individual to decide for themselves what is just at any given moment. What happens when Israel decides that what's fair and just seems barbaric to you or me? We agree on the rules ahead of time so that we can act accordingly.
If you want war crimes to include "must protect journalists", then I'd suggest your best chance at realizing that goal would be to get the legal codes modified.
You said journalists, not civilians. If you want to talk about civilians now not journalists, that's a new topic.
Sorry, correction, Concentration Camp would be a proper term in this case. Prison implies a crime, the only crime is that they are born in an occupied land by a brutal occupier.
The Israelis are the ones setting those parameters and creating the conditions, though. It's not a "gotcha" to point out that journalists are also affected along with the other noncombatants.
> but all you can muster is evidence that journalists are not being targeted but are rather being killed at rates of other civilians.
No, they are being killed at much faster rate, to the point of depletion in relation to other civilians. Look at this plot: https://imgur.com/a/SWNSYOn
In my first post in this thread I did a detailed estimate that for the curve to bend this way, the journalists must be decimated with odds between 51:1 - 96:1 higher when compared to other civilians. This post got heavily downvoted and now sits at the bottom of the thread, but you can read the full explanation there.
Is it actually a reasonable assumption that journalists die at the same rate as civilians? Arguably, journalists are much more susceptible to go to dangerous places, close to actual combat, etc, for better videos.
In my estimates I used a biased urn model. Given the number of remaining journalists is very small when compared to total population (hundreds vs. millions), the final proportions should still be similar, unless the risk disparity is huge enough to overcome the effect of four order of magnitude difference in absolute number between groups.
Some of the individual incidents do point pretty strongly to deliberate acts. The incidents in Lebanon, for example, rule out a lot of the "proximity" reasoning, as do the methods and types of weapons.
That 69 figure cannot be remotely close to accurate. Millions of civilians died from mass bombing campaigns alone, which certainly killed many journalists working for local outlets in those cities!
Each atomic bomb on its own probably killed more than 69 journalists.
"Of the 715, the Syrian regime was responsible for the killing of 553 journalists, including five children, one woman, five foreign journalists, and 47 journalists who died due to torture, while 24 journalists were killed at the hands of Russian forces."
That's a remarkably small number. It makes me think journalists weren't present in the warzone at all.
Irrespective of which side you support, Hamas is notorious for colocating themselves among civilians. An elevated civilian death count, including journalists is to be expected.
However, the numbers being THIS high in this short a time is alarming and tragic.
> Hamas is notorious for colocating themselves among civilians.
I despise Hamas, but this claim is disingenuous propaganda (by the leaders who make it, not the parent who repeats it):
First, Hamas is 'notorious' for it because it's endlessly repeated by their enemies. That rhetoric doesn't make anything true. (Haven't we had the Internet long enough that people know it well by now?)
Second, Hamas is an assymetric, irregular force, and assymetric forces cannot operate bases or fight open battles anywhere; they all must blend in with civilians (or hide in wilderness); it's just the nature of being that kind of force:
They have personal weapons, mostly. They cannot bring their rifles and RPGs to fight a fully capable modern state military's tanks and planes on an open battlefield - would you? The modern state military would kill them all immediately; it would be pointless. Might as well surrender.
Therefore the assymetric force cannot hold ground, and therefore cannot build bases separate from civilians: If they had identifiable bases, the state military would erradicate them in minutes.
The laws of war require militaries to distinguish soldiers from civilians, but I wonder if that is written by 'symmetric' forces and to their advantage. For assymetric forces, they might as well have bullseyes on their uniforms.
I agree with the premise that Hamas wouldn't be able to fight open battles. But it doesn't make using human shields (directly by putting military infrastructure in civilian ones or indirectly by not distinguishing themselves) not their fault. The death of human shields is their responsibility, and their alone (without getting into details of which part of dead civilians is actually due to being human shields). Of course, that is a sacrifice they are willing to make, but why would you justify it?
> using human shields (directly by putting military infrastructure in civilian ones or indirectly by not distinguishing themselves)
That doesn't mean they are using human shields (and it doesn't mean they are not): Asymetric forces need to blend into the environment - the mountains, the city, etc. In the city, that means blending into the civilian population - it doesn't require any intent to use them as shields (but they still could intend it - they even could intend to cause civilian deaths to drive world opinion).
> The death of human shields is their responsibility, and their alone
The asymetric force is at least partly to blame for the deaths of civilians, but that doesn't excuse the 'symmetric' force (is there a better term?) from all laws of war and basic human morality. They can still minimize civilian death and still follow rules of proportionality - Israel can't justify nuking the Gaza strip because Hamas is hiding among civilians.
Being indistinguishable from civilians (blending in) is exactly using civilian as a shield -- the opponent can't identify you and can't kill everyone who looks like you
> They can still minimize civilian death
Arguably Israel does it with fairly low civilian: combatant death ratio
> Arguably Israel does it with fairly low civilian: combatant death ratio
Fairly low compared to what? The USSR invasion of Afghanistan? Assad engaged in a civil war? WW2 carpet bombings?
No recent war has seen anywhere near the deplorable civilian:combatant death ratio that we see here.
And if you also take into account that the IDF basically defines adult male as combatant, so that a lot of the "combatants" killed were actually just adult male civilians, then the picture gets even grimmer.
Not to mention, we keep talking about direct casualties, but Israel is going beyond this - they are not allowing some kinds of critical aid into Gaza at all (water treatment pills are forbidden, for one egregious example), and they are generally only allowing a trickle of aid of any kind in - in effect starving the population.
No rate is acceptable. The debate is not about abiding to any modern war KPIs but rather the intent to minimize civilian casualties. Israel definitely does NOT do that by actively engaging with their current strategy of retaliation and that's already enough to say that, from a human perspective, Israel needs to stop right now and enable any sort of progression into a longer holding peace in that area.
I'll rephrase. What rate do you expect in city fights against the enemy mixed with civilians and actively using them as human shields, assuming that the attacking side makes reasonable effort to minimize civilian casualties.
> intent to minimize civilian casualties
Intent is very hard to argue about. Especially when talking about proportionality which is not rigorously defined. Numbers are easier to argue about. It is reasonable to expect that civilian casualty rate will be higher in cases where there is no intent to minimize civilian casualties compared to cases where it is; comparing numbers with conflict in similar conditions where you believe there was such intent is a good starting point
> enable any sort of progression into a longer holding peace in that area
Getting rid of terrorist government who promised to repeat 7th of October looks like necessary condition for peace.
No, the responsibility is always on who is shooting at civilians. If you can't beat the Hamas in Gaza without shooting civilians, don't shoot, retreat in Israel and focus on protecting Israel.
And that's the breaking point of the whole debate whether Israel's current way of defense is justified. This is literally THE point where most of the general population has split opinions and chooses to condemn or not Israel's actions.
Most people think killing thousands of people to eliminate a terrorist group is a trade-off that should be made which baffles my mind. Where do we live? No human life can be weighted upon anything else.
Do you imply that if you're attacked by an army mixed with civilians you're just supposed to surrender and not make a single shot? Luckily people who wrote the Geneva and other conventions understood that it made zero sense.
Um, the things Israel has done to Palestinian citizens in Gaza over the past 15 years (e.g. [0] - [3]) have been pretty horrific, as are the things Hamas has done to Israeli citizens. This situation didn't randomly start on October 7, 2023.
I found this interview pretty thought provoking. I think it is still pro-Israel, but it provides a view of Hamas's strategy that I haven't seen anywhere else.
Basically, what I think Hamas leadership was thinking was to mirror the Hezbollah-Israel conflict from, what, 10 years ago, on a much bigger scale. According to this CIA officer, Hamas had 30,000 soldiers ready to engage in fighting with Israel in an urban environment, and the initial terror attack was trying to sucker the Israelis into rushing in and suffering huge casualties. Not 30,000 soldiers in uniforms and formations to your point, but nonetheless a large force. (This part starts at about 7:30 into the video).
According to the intel officer in the interview, Israel did NOT rush in, and is engaging in effective counterattacks per the Intelligence officer. I understand everyone thinks the press is owned by Israel, but in the failed conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon there was plenty of stories about the Israeli army failing.
I have not heard those stories. Just desperate stories from the Palestinian side, which tells me the Israelis are being quite effective.
Hamas is embedded with civilians by default: the Gaza strip is stuffed full of people, it has very high population density due to the insane 8 children-per-woman population expansion of the Palestinians over the last 60-70 years.
> Israel did NOT rush in, and is engaging in effective counterattacks
According to all the experts I read, Israel rushed in without a political outcome planned. All warfare is a tool to achieve political outcomes (unless the outcome was to drive Palestinians out of Gaza or just destroy as many people and buildings as possible). All warfare ends only with a stable political solution; otherwise it continues indefinitely; an example is Afghanistan, where the US failed to achieve a stable political solution and so the war never ended - unfortunately the Taliban have acheived a stable political solution, to some degree.
> I have not heard those stories. Just desperate stories from the Palestinian side, which tells me the Israelis are being quite effective.
I agree that the Israeli military has spared itself the hubris and casualities they experienced when they attacked Hezbollah around 20 years ago.
But we still see stories criticizing the Israeli military, and we don't hear desperate stories from Hamas, only from civilians. A military killing civilians isn't accomplishing anything. The question is, are they being effective against Hamas and in establishing some desireable political outcome?
> it has very high population density due to the insane 8 children-per-woman population expansion of the Palestinians over the last 60-70 years.
The political aim was to cause a LOT of casualties. I'm not going to disagree that this is ugly stuff, but Hamas must have known this was the result. Also I do think the Israelis think they can get a large amount of Hamas leadership.
Gaza is a mafia state under control by Hamas, who likely control all aid coming into the country and certainly the Iranian military funding.
Israel seems to apply a 10x minimum response to any Israeli casualties over the years. This attack is well above the 10x number already.
And remember, the Israelis do not completely surround Gaza. Egypt is complicit in closing the walls of the prison on Gaza, and Egypt I'm told hates the Palestinians more than Israel does. I wonder why this is, Egypt did manage/oversee Gaza for 25 years and I guess said "no thanks".
AFAIK, it's not like the Sinai peninsula is some valuable land, I think Egypt has room to take in Palestinian refugees. They simply refuse to do it. I have not gotten any good reason why they hate them. I guess the Lebanese hate their Palestinian enclave. It is clear the Arab world doesn't care about the Palestinians, and a common brotherhood of Islam doesn't carry weight.
Egypt has said that if people are displaced it will put the peace agreement with Israel at risk. It's understandable that they do want 2 million more people to feed and the problems will just move to Sinai as among those 2 millions many will also support Hamas.
Its also not true that Egyptians hate Palestines. In fact I would say its rather unison that they feel great sympathy with the Palestines in the occupied areas, and the boycott of companies that support Israel is strong. McDonald's and Burger Kings are mostly empty and there are Palestine flags at shops, stickers attached to products you buy and people are sad about the situation.
> I think Egypt has room to take in Palestinian refugees. They simply refuse to do it. I have not gotten any good reason why they hate them. I guess the Lebanese hate their Palestinian enclave. It is clear the Arab world doesn't care about the Palestinians, and a common brotherhood of Islam doesn't carry weight.
This is a bad take. Egypt, and others, refuse to take "Palestinian refugees" because doing so would make them complicit in Israel's ethic cleansing. Why should Palestinians be forced off their own land?
Palestinian refugees have started civil wars in Jordan and Lebanon. Neither country is keen to repeat that experience and Egypt is not keen to join that list.
Russia doesn't allow ukrainians back to the occupied territories, they deport the non-complicit ones and the remaining ones are heavily oppressed. That should be the excuse for Poland or the rest of EU to not let the refugees in?
If Egypt were to abandon leave with Isreal, they would take in refugees and then allow them to return back across their border to Gaza. Maybe they fear that Isreal would bomb them, but it would be harder to politically justify if Egypt wasn't agressing AND the returning Palestinians were returning to create a peaceful state.
The problem seems to be that Palestinians don't want peace, or are unable to separate themselves from the terrorists government.
Yea, it will probably never end as Palestines have a right according to international law to attack Israel as they are occupied by them. Even if Hamas disappear as an organisation the resistance part will continue and there will probably never be peace until Palestines get the country they were promised and the illegal settlements are removed.
>> Hamas is notorious for colocating themselves among civilians.
> this claim is disingenuous propaganda
> Hamas is an assymetric, irregular force, and assymetric forces cannot operate bases or fight open battles anywhere; they all must blend in with civilians
Is the hangup on the word "notorious"? Because you appear to first claim the notion of colocation to be propaganda before explaining why it's also a logistical inevitability.
My point is that the Israeli / pro-Israeli leaders - the ones who understand asymmetric warfare - calling Hamas somehow evil for doing it are spreading disingenuous propaganda. They know very well that an asymmetric force must blend into its surroundings. The Taliban blended into the mountains; Hamas blends into densely populated Gaza.
Hamas does a lot of bad things; they still are 'notorious'; but this thing is just fundamental asymmetric operations, at least generally speaking.
> Hamas is notorious for colocating themselves among civilians.
> this claim is disingenuous propaganda
> Hamas is an assymetric, irregular force, and assymetric forces cannot operate bases or fight open battles anywhere; they all must blend in with civilians
Are you listening to yourself here? Pure cognitive dissonance
Still, you got it wrong: It wasn't cognitive dissonance, but miscommunication. I'm not trying to score a point; I'm trying to say that jumping to conclusions - despite it's popularity these days - often yields wrongness, and we all are especially prone to it when we are emotionally charged. Curiosity, as a policy and rule, is an effective prophylactic against screwing yourself. :)
Yes? Use your basic reasoning. Hamas fights in civilian clothing, they hide in civilian buildings, they hide in hospitals. They use regular civilians as shields. This is not your average fight; Hamas hates their enemy more than they love their own country.
If you can't tell innocent people from legit targets... rethink the approach?
Here is my reasoning: they hide in civilian clothes, okay let's not shoot civilians. They hide in hospitals, okay let's not bomb hospitals. They use civilian buildings, okay let's not bomb civilian buildings.
They use civilians as shields... let's not shoot the shields.
Essentially that implies Israel will get shot at and not be allowed to shoot back. I suspect most Israelis would find that unreasonable. Israeli civilians don't like being killed anymore than Palestinian civilians do.
The thing that usually prevents war is that both sides lose in the end. If only one side is allowed to shoot, why would the side being allowed to shoot ever stop? They would be getting all the benefits of war with none of the drawbacks.
> Israel will get shot at and not be allowed to shoot back.
The logic doesn't really follow
What shots exactly? the missiles? Attack the launch sites. They're pretty clear as they expose themselves. Israel has 24/7 surveillance it shouldn't be a challenge. Can you support your claim by showing evidence that a hospital was used to launch missiles?
You likely don't have evidence that Israel is targeting anything. It seems every street in the city was indiscriminately bombed, every hospital was distroyed, and tens of thousands of civilians were murdered. That's a massacre not a "response".
I would be referring to all forms of military violence, whether that be guns, rockets or something else.
I also believe if the facility was being used to conduct the war in a significant capacity, e.g. as an ammunition store or as a command and control center then it becomes fair game. Just waiting around for someone to open fire, shoot back only when they are firing, and letting them escape back to their base of operations is not a way to prevent future attacks and puts the defender at an unreasonable disadvantage.
This should still be subject to the doctrine of porportionality and discrimination of course.
> Can you support your claim by showing evidence that a hospital was used to launch missiles?
I never claimed that. It is especially impossible to show since hamas has not been using missiles in this conflict as far as i know. Perhaps you mean rockets?
My main claim is that if the hospital is being used in any significant capacity to conduct military operations it is reasonable that it could be targeted. Whether any specific instance in this war is justified - i don't know, i don't have the full picture of what happened and i don't know what Israel knew at the time of targeting (intent matters). More to the point, i do not believe that allowing hamas impunity so long as they co-locate their activity near civilians is reasonable.
> You likely don't have evidence that Israel is targeting anything.
Only circumstantial based on the civilian death ratio being much lower in this conflict than in other wars where the military bombed indiscriminately.
Generally crimes have an innocent until proven guiltly element. The onus is on evidence is the other way around.
> That's a massacre not a "response".
Whether or not it is ever justified to bomb a hospital is a very different conversation than whether the actions in this specific conflict are justified. For the latter the details matter a lot.
> What if those launch sites are top of hospitals or media buildings?
Is that a claim or just a hypothetical scenario? If it's a claim, please provide evidance that supports hospitals were used to launch rockets.
You know what is not hypothetical? the fact that Israel bombed hospitals, UN schools, churches, mosques, civilian shelters, ambulances, and killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians: women, children, journalists, UN staff, Red Crescent members. You know what else isn't hypothetical? Israeli minister's call to wipe out a Palestinian village. It's not about a hospital here or there. Just me typing that sentence makes me sick. The fact that we're past the point where a hospital bombing makes a difference in illustrating the crimes committed. Sadly, the attrocities are far greater.
Here are some not hypothetical Massacres and war crimes committed by Israel:
Same as Hamas is fighting an asymmetrical warfare at a disadvantage by IDF, IDF is at the same disadvantage on the journalistic side. They have the monopoly on reporting their side while Hamas is every person with a camera creating whatever narrative they want.
So yeah I can see why you choose not to take their word when they say that they have evidence.
But trust me bro :-)
But seriously now, I don't really understand why it would be shocking to discover Hamas is operating from hospitals, mosques and schools. They are fighting a war and will do anything they can to gain an advantage.
It's very convenient to deploy your base under a hospital, for so many seasons, that I really don't understand why people find it hard to believe...
What is the something else? There is an extensive tunnel network that likely allows insurgents to travel from the hospital to elsewhere. So you can't lay siege to it.
You could send troops in, but now you're in disadvantaged close quarters combat, which is horrific and guaranteed to get many of your troops killed.
The only reasonable strategy is to bomb the hospital. It saves the loves of your troops. Will there be civilian casualties? Yes. Is that preferred to losing your own citizens? Absolutely.
A lot of evidence, if you choose to believe videos coming out of IDF.
But to take a step back, why would Hamas operating from hospitals, schools and mosques surprise you in any way ? Would you then think anything different of them ? This is asymmetrical warfare. Of course they would use anything they can to create an advantage. Let's not kid ourselves. It's the same as using human shields. That's just how this type of war works.
You work with what you have to survive and gain an advantage
> Why did 500 Israeli soldiers die in Gaza from your perspective?
Are saying you committed massacres and
bombed hospitals, UN schools, mosques, churches, and ambulances, as some sort of retaliation?
leveling the entire place, displacing a million, and killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians most of whom were women, children, medical staff and red cross members because...? enlighten me please
When the IRA was periodically attacking UK institutions and killing civilians, did the UK feel entitled to level Belfast and say that the IRA is to blame?
This war in Palestine is much closer to a civil war than to any country-to-country combat, especially since Palestine is simply not an independent country. Since Israel is in control of the Gaza strip for 50+ years (explicit military control till the 2005, still in full control of their borders today), it is on them to treat this as authorities in any country are expected to treat insurgencies on territory they control, not as if they were attacked by a foreign country.
The british controlled the police in northern ireland, Israel does not control the police or other government functions insude Gaza. (As an aside it should be noted that that conflict is orders of magnitude less violent. If the IRA did what Hamas did, i suspect belfast would be leveled) At most israel control their border with gaza (but not egypt's border with gaza) the sea access and air access. A blockade no doubt, but not donestic government functions.
Whether or not gaza is independent is complicated, since they have some features of independence but not others and don't quite squarely fit in either camp. Nonetheless if your suggestion is that israel should have called in whatever their equivalent of a police swat team is - that's impossible because hamas controlled all domestic government functions in gaza. You can't use domestic police techniques on land where you only control the border but not the land itself.
Northern Ireland/UK was not similar to Gaza/Israel at all. The UK was always Northern Ireland's government and controlled all state functions. A better comparison is Mainland China/Taiwan: according to various outsiders, the two are the same country supposedly, but in reality they function as two different states, with entirely separate governments. The main difference between these situations (aside from Taiwan being an island) is that China actually wants Taiwan, whereas Israel really doesn't want Gaza.
Like, if Israel doesn't want the Gaza strip/west bank, then why hasn't there been a two state solution?
> The UK was always Northern Ireland's government and controlled all state functions.
This is 100% not true, Ulster (the majority of which is in Northern Ireland) was historically the part of Ireland that resisted British/English invasions the most, such that the British brought in lots of scottish settlers to try and make the area more favourable to them.
Honestly though, Northern Ireland is more similar to the West Bank, rather than Gaza due to the settlers.
Like, fundamentally, oppressing the nationalist aspirations of the Palestinian people is never, never going to work, and October 7th will happen again and again until the Israeli people realise this, and make attempts towards peace (which the Palestinians should also do, but right now the Israeli's have a lot more power in the situation).
> Like, if Israel doesn't want the Gaza strip/west bank, then why hasn't there been a two state solution?
My understanding is support for a 2 state solution is relatively low on both sides. Especially now that things have deteriorated, but even before oct 7 it seemed unlikely.
Even if Israel doesn't want Gaza, they still have an interest in not getting shot at. I don't think they believe that they would be safe from attacks if they left Gaza alone, and based on both history as well as current rhetoric from Palestinian leaders, it doesn't seem like an irrational fear.
> Like, fundamentally, oppressing the nationalist aspirations of the Palestinian people is never, never going to work, and October 7th will happen again and again until the Israeli people realise this, and make attempts towards peace (which the Palestinians should also do, but right now the Israeli's have a lot more power in the situation).
I think a fundamental problem here is historically, israeli overtures towards peace (imperfect as they may have been) have often been met with an increase in violence. Its hard to sell peace to someone when they don't have a lot of reason to believe it will actually result in peace and not increased violence.
How about some history, let's go back to 1993 and the Clinton presidency. There was a nice little deal called the Oslo Accords. Not the best deal for the Palestinians, but it created a lasting peace and established a Palestinian state.
Israel has never lived up to their side of the agreement. How do you expect anyone to trust them at this point. So yes, confidence is low and will continue to be low as long as Israel is not beholden to international law and continues to be protected by the USA.
There are many murmurs that Netanyahu orchestrated the death of the accords starting with the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
Both sides claim the other did not live up to their end of the deal, and i think both have a point to a certain extent. However it does not exactly give strong evidence of peace deals actually leading to peace.
> My understanding is support for a 2 state solution is relatively low on both sides. Especially now that things have deteriorated, but even before oct 7 it seemed unlikely.
I find that pretty hard to believe (particularly from the Palestinian side). I agree that Israel's government doesn't want this (Netanyahu has been against since forever), but the options are occupation and the consequent destruction of Israel as a liberal democratic state, or a two state solution. Fundamentally, nothing else will work.
> Even if Israel doesn't want Gaza, they still have an interest in not getting shot at. I don't think they believe that they would be safe from attacks if they left Gaza alone, and based on both history as well as current rhetoric from Palestinian leaders, it doesn't seem like an irrational fear.
I completely understand the fears that many Israelis have, but fundamentally if they stopped settling the west bank and moved towards actually working towards a two state solution, there would be a lot less violence.
> I think a fundamental problem here is historically, israeli overtures towards peace (imperfect as they may have been) have often been met with an increase in violence. Its hard to sell peace to someone when they don't have a lot of reason to believe it will actually result in peace and not increased violence.
Can you give me some examples here? I'm open to being convinced, but I haven't noted much of this over the twenty years I've been following this conflict.
> I completely understand the fears that many Israelis have, but fundamentally if they stopped settling the west bank and moved towards actually working towards a two state solution, there would be a lot less violence.
To be clear, i 100% agree with this, for moral reasons if nothing else. However i imagine its not lost on israelis that the violence seems to be coming from Gaza not the west bank.
> Can you give me some examples here? I'm open to being convinced, but I haven't noted much of this over the twenty years I've been following this conflict.
I was referring to the second intifada, as well as the rise of hamas and their general kill israel rhetoric. Which both came after Oslo (or arguably its semi-failure) To be clear, i am aware that both of these have complex causes, and perhaps my simplification is unfair, but i also don't think that matters to the optics of the situation.
> Because Hamas wants Israel destroyed, and a state actor doing that is a much bigger problem for Israel than a non-state actor.
Hamas is fundamentally a response to the co-option of the PA by (perceived) western/israeli governments. It's rather like the provisional IRA versus the constitutional nationalists in Ireland.
If people see that only violence has any impact, there will be more violence. The events post October 7th (i.e. what's happened in Gaza) have basically created the next Hamas, even in the vanishingly unlikely case that the IDF can wipe them out now.
Israel has had a long-standing policy of propping up Hamas in order to divide Palestinians and thwart the creation of a Palestinian state. Here's an actual quote from Netanyahu on this from 2019 :
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
To the contrary, they want Gaza for the 500 billion dollar natural gas field which is in it's international waters - this would turn Palestine into another Qatar.
> Essentially that implies Israel will get shot at and not be allowed to shoot back. I suspect most Israelis would find that unreasonable. Israeli civilians don't like being killed anymore than Palestinian civilians do.
We are talking about Gaza. The only Israelis being shot there are Israeli militari attacking the Gaza strip.
If you are talking missiles, well Israel should abandon the colonies and create a no man's land where no civilian, be it Israeli or Palestinian, can go, and only shoot those that trespass.
If you are talking missiles, Israel has air defense systems.
> We are talking about Gaza. The only Israelis being shot there are Israeli militari attacking the Gaza strip.
What exactly do you think happened on oct 7?
> If you are talking missiles, well Israel should abandon the colonies and create a no man's land where no civilian, be it Israeli or Palestinian, can go, and only shoot those that trespass.
They did do that to Gaza in 2005. That is how we arrived at the current situation.
> They did do that to Gaza in 2005. That is how we arrived at the current situation.
No, they didn't "do that to Gaza" - Israel has kept Gaza under a brutal blockade, by air, land and sea. Israel kept the place like an open air prison, and had it surrounded by military outposts and remotely operated guns. Hundreds of civilians were shot in 2023 prior to Oct 7th, including peaceful protesters.
The person i was responding to didn't say israel should stop the blockade. They said israel should dismantle their colonies. Which they did in Gaza in 2005. There are no colonies currently in gaza.
It should also be noted that the blockade happened in 2007, so there was a 2 year period there. In any case, the israeli withdrawl is one of the key historical facts that lead to the current geopolitical context.
What would be useful is a historic example where another approach has worked. I don't approve of Israel's methods. I'd prefer an egalitarian solution. But, I'm all out of ideas. Find me an instance of 2 co-habiting or neighboring groups that hate each other, have huge disputes and ended up in relative peace.
I can give you my recent examples of previous instances that are now mostly peaceful, and all of them violate the geneva convention or UN human rights declaration.
Xinjiang = permament open air prison and extreme brain washing
Srilanka LTTE = violent genocide of all suspected participants and their innocent family. 100k civilians killed
Bosnia - Sijekovac killings = violent genocide of thousands of innocent Bosnians in the Bosnian war
Kosovo - thousands of killings, massive population displacement (1+ million) & US military intervention
So what is it ? Do we want the US to intervene and guarantee safety to Israel ? Do we want real open air prisons and complete cultural eradication ? Do we want population displacement of every Gazan to a 3rd location ? Hopefully we are not in support of genocide ?
Well, so what is 'another method' ?
Every single instance of haphazardly drawn post-WW2 line, has led to some kind of insurgency, war, genocide or forced population displacement. Peaceful borders are drawn in the blood of ancestors. The west is simply fortunate enough to have concluded it's killing mid-way through the 20th century. Israel is currently going through one such process. It is especially rich to see the criticism come from western nations who first created the problem. They encouraged the conditions that led to Oct 2023: 2005 withdrawl of Israel and rise of Hamas, and its unilateral control on aid. They refuse to propose any middle ground solution. It's ridiculous.
We actually have very clear examples from history of how to turn an enemy into a friend: the Marshall plan and the similar levels of aid that the USA poured into post-nazi Germany, post-fascist Italy, post-imperial Japan. That turned War-torn bitter enemies into some of the staunchest US allies today.
Given Israel's position of power, they can and should be doing this. However, Israeli politicians just don't want this. Netanyahu has publicly boasted numerous times that he has personally been actively fighting to prevent a two-state solution. A one-state solution is unthinkable to even the moderates in Israel (the Supreme Court has repeatedly iterated that the government MUST protect both the Jewish and the Democratic character of Israel, so integrating the populations of Gaza and the West Bank as full Israeli citizens like this would be unconstitutional, but integrating them as second class citizens would also be unconstitutional).
So what is Israel's solution? Destroying Hamas is a pipe dream - the famine, death, and destruction they are pereptrating in Gaza today will, inevitably, create a new wave of terrorism, whether it's called "Hamas" or something else, as it always has throughout all of history.
The only real solution is massive economic investments in Gaza and the West Bank, and relying on police-like peacekeeping to prevent attacks as much as possible. This is the obvious long-term solution, anything else will worsen, not improve, Israel's security.
> Destroying Hamas is a pipe dream - the famine, death, and destruction they are pereptrating in Gaza today will, inevitably, create a new wave of terrorism, whether it's called "Hamas" or something else, as it always has throughout all of history.
I've seen it argued that is exactly what Israel want - to whip up a new frenzy of Islamophobia, both encouraging immigration to Israel and also making it easier to attack their neighbours and advance their plan for "Greater Israel".
I thought it sounded unlikely at first, but with everything going on in the UK right now... I'm inclined to believe it.
>We actually have very clear examples from history of how to turn an enemy into a friend: the Marshall plan
Japan, Germany, and Italy's people didn't practice a religion that required them to hate Americans. For Germany and Italy in particular, they followed (basically) the same religion as most Americans. Japan never really had much religion. And none of these WWII powers were theocratic states in any way, or governed by religious extremists.
The idea that Israel and Gaza are somehow going to become staunch allies seems like a pipe dream.
However, if you really do want to follow the WWII example, you're totally forgetting that the Allies completely flattened major cities and killed millions of civilians, intentionally, before finally getting unconditional surrenders from their enemies. Basically, one side had to hit rock-bottom before it could be built up again into an ally by the victor. Being so completely devastated and defeated in a major war caused the losing powers to collectively change, on a societal level, the way they viewed the world.
You do know that the vast majority of Muslim people live in countries that don't have any higher hatred of the USA than the average person, right? The largest Muslim country is Indonesia, followed by Bangladesh and Pakistan. So religion has nothing to do with this.
The fact that Palestine is ruled by extremists is not a happenstance, it is a direct consequence of how the Palestinian people have been treated after the war. They lived under full military occupation until 2005, for close to 30 years. Is it any wonder that they became extremists?
What we are seeing are the exact same consequences of the Versailles agreement after WW1, with Germany becoming more and more radicalized because of the extreme economic conditions until a deranged lunatic came to power. This didn't repeat after WW2 exactly because, instead of occupying the defeated countries or imposing harsh economic penalties (both of which Israel did to Palestine after the war) we helped them build up.
Were there terrorists and radicalized groups in the Palestinian territories immediately after the war as well? Of course. But they were fringe groups, and were to be expected when so many had been displaced from their homes. They would have quieted down if the next 30 years had been full of economic growth, instead of military occupation and deprivation.
>What we are seeing are the exact same consequences of the Versailles agreement after WW1, with Germany becoming more and more radicalized because of the extreme economic conditions until a deranged lunatic came to power. This didn't repeat after WW2 exactly because, instead of occupying the defeated countries or imposing harsh economic penalties (both of which Israel did to Palestine after the war) we helped them build up.
You're missing some stuff. In Germany, the Allies didn't just build them up economically and hope for the best, they carried out a strong de-Nazification campaign to basically brainwash everyone out of the Nazi ideology that they had brainwashed themselves into. It wasn't like the Germans suddenly all realized they were wrong and horrible and their racist ideology was bad. This is the same reason the US tried similar de-Baathification after defeating Iraq.
For something similar to happen in Gaza, Israel needs to completely and utterly defeat the ruling government there, then use military forces to occupy the land and create a military government for a while until a civilian government, completely controlled by Israel, can be set up. Meanwhile, they have to control education and teach the Gazans, forcefully (i.e., no free-speech allowed), that their ideology is wrong (along with their interpretation of their Islamic religion). Anyone who publicly supports the atrocities of Hamas get to go to prison. (In Germany, denying the Holocaust or supporting the Nazi government is a criminal offense, remember.)
Is this really what you want?
>You do know that the vast majority of Muslim people live in countries that don't have any higher hatred of the USA than the average person, right? The largest Muslim country is ... So religion has nothing to do with this.
First, this isn't about the USA, it's about Israel vs. Gaza. The people in Gaza hate Israel.
Secondly, talking about Indonesia is like equating Catholics and Protestants, when they've historically hated each other and had wars. They might all be "Muslims" to you, but they're not the same and their beliefs aren't the same. Looking at the last century, it's pretty obvious that Middle Eastern Muslims are not happy about having a Jewish-dominated country in their midst. They aren't even happy about having different kinds of Muslims living around them, which is why they've had so many Sunni vs Shia wars, or ISIS who hated everyone who wasn't as ridiculously extremist as themselves.
> Japan, Germany, and Italy's people didn't practice a religion that required them to hate Americans.
I'm not sure if you're equating Islam with hatred of the USA, or if you mean because so many Israelis believe Palestinians are "amalek", no better than bugs?
> Allies completely flattened major cities and killed millions of civilians, intentionally
And out of these horrors came international agreement on what actions are allowed during wartime, with the aim of ensuring such atrocities weren't repeated. Israel does not respect international law, and should be sanctioned.
>I'm not sure if you're equating Islam with hatred of the USA
I don't know where people are getting this. I'm equating Islam and Judaism with hatred of each other. It's what religions do. We have two effective countries, each one basically a theocracy (less so on the Israeli side, but the fact is, it was founded to be a Jewish state), and their religions are incompatible.
>And out of these horrors came international agreement on what actions are allowed during wartime, with the aim of ensuring such atrocities weren't repeated.
Sure, and the nation-building successes that came after those horrors have never been repeated.
> Japan, Germany, and Italy's people didn't practice a religion that required them to hate Americans.
I mean historically Jews were treated much better by Islam than they were by Christians, so I'm not sure that argument holds up.
Now, given that Israel has been occupying the land of the Palestinians for over fifty years now, there's definitely gonna be a lot of anger there. But flattening Gaza is definitely not gonna help with that.
Palestine has been under de facto Israeli control for more than 50 years. Israel won this war a long, long time ago.
And instead of helping to build a place for Palestinians to live, they kept them under direct military occupation until 2005, then under blockade plus air raids (in retaliation for Palestinian attacks, but usually ending up with a 10:1 ratio of dead Palestinians for each killed Israeli citizen).
What they're seeing now is exactly what the French and British discovered after WW1: if you try to humiliate and subjugate a whole country, even after you have just decisively won a war against them, you'll only radicalize them, ending in a bigger war (thankfully, Palestine doesn't have the resources to become Nazi Germany even if they want to).
The only solutions to have long lasting peace are either (a) investment and openness, or (b) complete annihilation or something close to it. I'm advocating as much as I can for (a).
> And instead of helping to build a place for Palestinians to live, they kept them under direct military occupation until 2005, then under blockade plus air raids (in retaliation for Palestinian attacks, but usually ending up with a 10:1 ratio of dead Palestinians for each killed Israeli citizen).
Gaza got billions of aid since 2005. Water pipes were built, material was delivered. What happened with it? They built one of the biggest underground tunnel systems in the world (as we can see right now), they dug out the pipes to use them for rockets, same with the material. And all the time they attacked Israel and then said "we cannot live in peace, Israel blockades us", leaving the 'after we attacked them again and again' part out.
Palestinians had all the help in the world to live a peaceful life in the Gaza strip with more freedoms over time if they can show that that freedoms don't lead to more dead Israelis. Each time they chose violence instead.
Seriously speaking, what they got is subsistence level help, essentially. The Marshall plan was about building up businesses, industry, banks - everything. Not some token support to just about prevent them from dying.
And, with the 30 years of military occupation and the 20 years of blockade, no real commerce could be made, so Gaza was kept entirely dependent on foreign aid.
> What would be useful is a historic example where another approach has worked. I don't approve of Israel's methods. I'd prefer an egalitarian solution. But, I'm all out of ideas. Find me an instance of 2 co-habiting or neighboring groups that hate each other, have huge disputes and ended up in relative peace.
I mean, they're basically gangs now, rather than terrorists. I remember growing up in the 80s/90s in the south and every single weekend there was either bombings or killings. That's almost entirely ended now.
Another method would be the IDF accepting their responsibility for failing to protect the kibbutzim on 7 October, and making damn sure that this doesn't happen again on their watch. Stop killing the Arabs and start defending the jews.
And I don't mean that they should make sure there's no more Palestinians left to attack them, because that is a horror that the world must never see again (but still sees all too often).
Note that what I'm describing is essentially the status quo before 7 October, including the periodic "mowings of the lawn" by Israel to keep Gaza uprisings in check.
Alternatively of course, Israel could choose to make peace. And that's an option that is available only to Israel, who is the occupying power, and the overwhelmingly more militarily powerful party, not to the Palestinians who can only keep growing resistance groups as long as they are occupied. Israel can choose to end the atrocities and the bloodshed tomorrow. But I guess that would be too much loss of face for all the belligerent fascist assholes in its government.
Serious question: Do you think that Isreal would cease to be attacked by Palestinians tomorrow if they stopped military operations, left Palestine, lifted all blockades, and only operated a no-cross policy for the shared border?
My hypothesis is that without a blockade, external munitions would be shipped in and used to try and obliterate Isreal.
I see no evidence of a stop-and-immediate-peace outcome.
You are probably right. I think it will certainly take a very long time for the feelings of hatred and vengeance to subside, on both sides, after all the horror, death and destruction. But I think that the majority of the Palestinians, even many who have lost people in all the wars in Gaza in the last 17 years, would prefer peace to war. They have gained nothing from war and have lost way too much. Why wouldn't they want it to stop, at last?
Within Hamas itself there are moderates, that were sidelined in 2007, after the attempted coup by a US-armed Fatah faction that led to Hamas taking control of Gaza. These moderates have been severely weakened in the wars that followed, but Hamas has made a few entreaties for peace with Israel (all rebuffed) so they are still there and still have some influence. If Israel shows that it is serious about peace, these moderates will be empowered and will find support in the population, I believe.
I believe peace is possible. I'm Greek. After the Catastrophe of 1922 (you'll find information about it on Wikipedia), we have had 102 years of peace with the Turkish, our blood enemies for many centuries. A peace troubled, at times, but a peace nonetheless, that has endured. Like the Jewish, we too have lost the land where our ancestors lived for thousands of years, lost our greatest city, lost our greatest temple that was turned into a mosque by the Turkish. If we and the Turkish can make it work, the Israelis and the Palestinians can make it work. Not immediately, like you suggest. But someone has to make the first step. The Palestinians can't, because they're the weakest side and they cannot negotiate from a position of power. The Israelis must make the first move. And endure through any turbulence that follows.
>> My hypothesis is that without a blockade, external munitions would be shipped in and used to try and obliterate Isreal.
That doesn't have to happen but I think 7 October was the worst Hamas will ever be able to do. It's not like they'll suddenly grow a modern army with F-16s and armor. The IDF will always be able to deal with whatever Hamas manage to throw at them, there is no question about that in my mind.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I'm with you in that I want the same peaceful outcome to stabilize. It's just that I think Isreal is unwilling to allow even a lesser version of Oct 7 to happen in the future, and therefore I'm suspect that Isreal will let Hamas continue to exist, even if it flipped to majority-moderate led.
We will see how this plays out, but I hope Palestine can use this as an opportunity to rebuild and find some industry, such as tourism, to boost them economically and allow them to thrive.
They didn't 'rob them of their land.' The word "Palestinian" used to refer to jews.
Obviously it's all a bit complicated but a lot of people seem to have the idea that Israel was created out of whole cloth. They were pushed out of literally every other country in the region - https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fh... - so they're clearly hated for reasons other than what you stated.
Jewish people take on no special moral obligations by being victims of the Holocaust. I can't tell if you were implying that they were, but just for clarity's sake.
Because then you let people committing literal war crimes murder you while doing little to nothing to stop it (IIRC, using human shields is a war crime).
Israel uses AI to detect targets with all of their intelligence gathering. It uses precision weaponry. It drops pamphlets (which the US did in Iraq), calls apartments before bombing, has 4 hours of quiet the same time each day for civilian evacuations -- these are Israeli innovations.
Meanwhile Hamas hides in tunnels that are under hospitals, schools, mosques, residences making them military targets. They don't wear uniforms. They captured hostages.
Rooting terrorists out of tunnels is a very complicated task. Most cases of Urban combat such as Mosul don't involve tunnels, yet have much greater civilian to combatant ratio of casualties (3:1 in the case of Mosul).
Hamas never built bomb shelters for its civilians, unlike Israel. They had plenty of concrete to build tunnels for themselves.
The war would have been over by now except other nations have been slowing Israel down. These nations claim that they want the conflict to end but it won't unless Hamas surrenders or Israel finishes the job.
Funny thing is, since this all kicked off I've seen several photos and videos clearly showing Israeli soldiers using civilians, including children, as human shields. I haven't seen any evidence of Hamas doing anything like this; it seems Hamas are mostly accused of this by Israel, simply because Hamas exists in a dense, urban environment.
If your using other wars as a comparison like this what was the journalist per capita and have you adjusted for the prewar ratio per capita also. This seems like ham fisted attempts at statistics otherwise
It's going to take decades just to unwind this one statement.
Look at the history of Al Shifa hospital and who has been in control of it at what times. It is storied, and messy.
This conflict has added to it in a major way, and may represent the second largest intelligence failure of the IDF in this whole mess (the first being missing the attack all together).
The build up to them taking the hospital, was impressive. Like it was going to be some major turning point in the conflict. They told everyone that there was a base under the hospital, that it was a command center under there for Hamas.
The actual taking of the hospital had some reporters embedded, who were oddly silent about what was found... We did get some good photo opportunities of IDF soldiers standing next to boxes of aid.
Days later the videos come out. We're talking now about the 'hospital complex'. They bulldozed a wall, and then dug a hole to get to a tunnel entrance. The "tunnels" and a rooms went under and were "attached" to a pharmacy next door.
Was this a massive intel failure for the US and the IDF? Did Hamas pull off one of the greatest dis and mis information campaigns of the last 100 years? Did the IDF outright lie to the US? What really happened here is going to be one for the history books and I hope I live long enough to see it unravel.
It's not just al-Shifa, but also other hospitals such as al-Rantisi [1] or Nasser [2] that have at least substantial claims of Hamas activity, and there have been statements by arrested Hamas operatives that support these claims [3].
I agree that the facts are still nebulous (it's an active war after all), but there is IMHO enough indications for Hamas violating international law at scale.
The framing of Gazans as a whole as "Hamas's people" is at best problematic; Hamas is an accelerationist and revolutionary movement that believes that dead Gazans advance their aims.
Israel seems pretty happy to help Hamas out with proving out their theory right now, but it's important to note that a Gazan could've been born and raised literally to the age of majority without getting a chance to vote on whether they think Hamas is doing right by them.
It is always true that governments don't fully represent their people. Some do more than others, but i am not sure how it matters. The fact is that hamas was in control of gaza and taking military action on its behalf. Whether ordinary Gazans approve is besides the point other than perhaps making it more tragic.
As an example, we don't say ukraine shouldn't defend themselves from russia because russian elections were rigged even though they clearly are.
If Ukraine, in response to Russia’s invasion, did something remotely equivalent to Israel’s actions so far, they’d rightly be condemned by most people.
It matters whether gazans approve because people use their approval as pretext for bombing them.
> The framing of Gazans as a whole as "Hamas's people" is at best problematic
I fully agree with you on everything you said. Doesn't change the fact though that the blame for all the Palestinian casualties cannot be laid on Israel, not even by international law - as Hamas, the (more or less) legitimate government of Gaza, abused civilian infrastructure, they stripped it from the legal protection against military action.
I mean... what's the alternative? Let Hamas continue to exist, only to have them regroup and announce the next intifada in a few years? There's no way Israel can (or will) accept that - even if the USA and EU completely withdraw any support, for any Israeli government the first priority is the survival of the nation.
Look, I am both ideologically and morally more aligned with Israel (or the pre-Otzma-Yehudit-getting-an-ounce-of-power Israel anyway) than I ever could be with regards to Hamas. But "what's the alternative to doing an ethnic cleansing?" is "not doing a ethnic cleansing". Yes, that's harder. It involves more work, it involves more risk, and when the book closes, you don't get every last inch of what you want. It also means not fairly blithely killing and displacing civilians 'cause you can't nail down the people you have an actual problem with. Skill issue.
And let's be honest: it's more and more obvious that the people that Ben-Gvir and that crew have a problem with are not merely Hamas, but "everyone in Israel who isn't Jewish." (Israeli Arabs are absolutely next in line for that guy.)
Like, fuck Hamas, to be clear--I know, what a bold position, I'm so brave. But the thing is, it seems obvious that what Israel is doing won't even achieve their stated aims about Hamas in the first place; Ismail Haniyeh is not going to get creased by a bomb dropped on Gaza, you know? But what Israel is doing may, however, move most of an ethnic population out of their homes and leave it conveniently empty. And we just plain have expectations of ostensibly-liberal countries...and one of them is to not do that. Ethnic cleansing's a war crime even if you think free-firing a hospital because Hamas might be there isn't.
Because Israel has herded Gazans to the border and is steadfastly refusing to guarantee that they may return to their homes if refugee placement and aid becomes available in Egypt.
It’s almost as if they want those Gazans, and not merely Hamas, gone. One of those things is a war crime.
> What's happening in Gaza is by all means not a genocide.
You are correct, which is why (I assume as you were replying) I was editing my post. It is absolutely an attempt at ethnic cleansing, where they are herding Gazans towards the south in hopes that they just fuck off to Egypt.
> There's no other way to fight urban warfare in reality, that's the point.
That's an unfortunate situation for a member of the liberal order to be in, and I sympathize. I also don't think that changes the calculus. Civilians don't stop mattering because you want to (justifiably!) neutralize the authoritarians hiding amongst them.
It’s not a genocide yet I suppose, if you define such a thing purely by percentage dead, but it certainly seems like Israel would like to do a nice big genocide, and like what they’re doing shares many characteristics with the actions of a country engaging in a genocide.
In agreement with the other commenter, the loss of life implicit in depriving so many people of homes, food, clean water, and medical care can’t be justified even if it results in the elimination of hamas after a long process of starving them out. I’m no expert, but I’d advocate a response that ensures Israel cannot be hurt by further attacks, cuts hamas off from arms or reinforcements, then negotiates the release of hostages. What they’re doing instead is needlessly murdering tens of thousands of innocents, and I can’t imagine that number remains in the double digits by the end of this.
>> There's no other way to fight urban warfare in reality, that's the point.
In that case the IDF should not fight an urban war. There is no strategic
objective that can reasonably be achieved that justifies the carnage. What the
IDF is waging in Gaza is clearly not any kind of defensive war: it is a
retaliatory operation motivated by the humiliation suffered by the IDF and the
Israeli government who failed, miserably, in their responsibility to defend
their people. Hamas could never have perpetrated the 7 October atrocity, if
the IDF was not asleep at the wheel, or rather off to defend the fascist
settlers, and leaving the "socialist" kibbutzim to defend themselves. If the
IDF really wanted to avoid a repeat of 7 October, the way to do that is very
easy and does not require any Palestinians to be bombed at all: just don't
fuck up again. The IDF had one job. They failed, and now the Gazans are paying
for their failure. "Urban warfare" my ass, this is just shooting fish in a
barrel.
And as everyone and their little sister has pointed out, including plenty in
Israel, even if, when, Hamas is destroyed, the only way to avoid a new
resistance organisation emerging is to exterminate the Palestinians (not just
in Gaza, everywhere, and that includes Syria and Lebanon) and so perpetrate
the genocide you claim Israel does not want to. Failing that, you think
"Hamas-ISIS" are Nazis? Wait 'till you see the monsters that will rise from
their ashes, the maggots bursting from the corpse of Gaza.
As to the hostages, there's no doubt that if Israel wants to get them back,
then it should keep bombing and razing Gaza; but if it wants to get them back
alive, then it should stop now.
>> But the thing is, it seems obvious that what Israel is doing won't even achieve their stated aims about Hamas in the first place; Ismail Haniyeh is not going to get creased by a bomb dropped on Gaza, you know?
People keep saying this but I don't know why. For me it's obvious that if the IDF keep besieging Gaza, Hamas will eventually have to come out of their holes, and die.
I suspect this already happens a lot except we don't get to find out because there's no reporting from the locations where IDF and Hamas fighters exchange fire. But, reports from the few hostages that have been released, or freed, make it clear that Hamas is subject to the same deprivation of food and water as the rest of Gaza (the hostages tell stories about the poor quality and amount of meals they shared with their guards) and they're stuck in their bunkers to boot, which can't be great for their overall physical and mental stamina.
This is not a war that Hamas can win, not even survive. Not in the long run. Their best chance is to keep their heads down and wait it out. But if I understand that, IDF commanders certainly understand that and they're not going to go away until Hamas all come out of their holes exhausted and starved waving little white flags.
I think the mistake people make is to think of Hamas a bit like the partisans who took to the maquis in WWII, or maybe the Taliban against the US. It's not the same situation. Hamas has nowhere to go. They are trapped, like rats in a maze. They're not getting out of that alive, unless the IDF is forced to withdraw by political pressure, which so far is not happening.
Besides which, if the IDF keeps at it like it is, it won't really matter because there won't be any Gaza, or Gazans, left for Hamas to control.
Hamas (and I mean the Al Qassam brigades) are toast. The only question is how much Gaza will bleed until they pop out of the toaster.
I'm not sure if the continued existence of Haniyeh and his band at Qatar is of any consequence. IDF are clearly keeping the Al Qassam brigades and Yahya Sinwar in their sites, for now. Maybe when they're done with them they'll turn to Haniyeh, but he'll probably won't matter at all by then.
Haniyeh and the others in Qatar are not the leadership. Sinwar and the commanders of Al Qassam in Gaza are the leadership. They're the ones who organised "operation Al Aqsa flood", notably without informing Haniyeh, they're the ones holding the line in Gaza, instead of being entertained by the Qataris while their people die by the hundreds daily. That's why Israel is after them and tolerating Haniyeh, who is more useful to them as an intermediary to Sinwar, than anything else.
Once the war is over and Sinwar is dead or captured then they will probably turn to Haniyeh, but until then his role is reduced to that of a senior negotiator and nothing more.
All fine, even if I don't buy it. Also, Israel actively, and openly, supported Hamas as a counter to Hizbollah (just a side note).
Still doesn't justify the conduct of war in Gaza we see, because so far nil on taking out the Hamas leadership you mentioned. And going by public statement of senior Israeli government officials (which by no means is representative of all Israelis nor all jews), the goal is more a depopulation of Gaza, with a asecond priority on Hamas leadership. One could even say, Hamas needs to be kept alive and active in order to serve as an excuse for continued war, one could say ethnic cleansing, in Gaza.
It's possible, there was an article in the NYT and reports elsewhere in the press a couple months ago on how Netanyahu directly funded Hamas because he though they were the best foil to a two-state solution. That guy is such an idiot.
Yeah, on Netanyahu we agree. He is also dangerous, as his attempt (?) of dismantling the judiciary branch of government showed. He absolutely is part of the group of wannabe authocrats in Western-style democracies: Trump, Le Pen, the AfD, Meloni, Erdogan, Modi... The list is quite long, unfortunately.
What is striking about these casualties, is many of the reported deaths also include large numbers of family members of the deceased, killed at the same time.
So what is it then? The plausible deliberate targeting of the journalists mentioned? Or just, plain old indiscriminate bombing? Either ways, shame.
Suppose I am a country at war with the United States. Do I have the right to kill every American journalist? Also, it is not clear what "working in Hamas" means since they formed the government of the Gaza strip, so people "working in Hamas" would include all public officials, civil servants, etc. Does Israel have the right to kill all the sanitation workers of the Gaza strip since they also "work in Hamas"?
>Suppose I am a country at war with the United States. Do I have the right to kill every American journalist?
This something people say from 5000 miles from the conflict. "Rules" go out the window when you're the one holding the gun and being shot at. The people on the ground are just trying to survive.
The rules of war are completely out the door when one side routinely pretends to be civilian, which is a war crime.
Which is not to say it’s just to go committing whichever crimes you want, but discussing legal rights is largely pointless because it is immediately a lawless war.
It is not the first war in which the "good guys" as posthumously determined by us, were disguising themselves as civilians, out of necessity. Multiple resistance groups in WWII to draw inspiration from.
I don't know of anyone who would look at the SS/Wehrmacht retaliatory punishment of the nearby civilian population and think, "oh well, that's totally justified due to those pesky resistance groups".
There’s no good guys here. But the broader contextual framing is Iran vs the west imo.
Hiding among civilians may be a necessity to their military objectives. But it does mean that many civilians will be killed. And the reality is that most of this is driven by offensive Iranian geopolitical aims.
Not ignore, no. But the bar for holding one accountable for collateral damage changes. Considering, for example, the staggering scale of tunnels that have been built to funnel military supplies through civilians areas; clearing operations to destroy these areas entirely feels defensible. When a hospital is used as an arms hub, it is incredibly complex and costly to try and seize it by encirclement and small arms siege versus just blowing it up. This is a very difficult situation.
> the staggering scale of tunnels that have been built to funnel military supplies through civilians areas; clearing operations to destroy these areas entirely feels defensible
"clearing operations" for tunnels involves heavy bombing above ground, which will kill civilians and destroy civilian homes and infrastructure - there is nothing "defensible" about that. Also, many tunnels are supposedly used for civilian smuggling of foods, medicines, luxuries etc - and only exist because of Israel's blockade.
> When a hospital is used as an arms hub, it is incredibly complex and costly to try and seize it by encirclement and small arms siege versus just blowing it up
Right, but that's a strawman argument, as there has been no evidence of Hamas using hospitals as an "arms hub".
> Also, many tunnels are supposedly used for civilian smuggling of foods, medicines, luxuries etc - and only exist because of Israel's blockade
I wanted to add a bit more about this, to illustrate how punitive Israel's blockade is. Israel inspects everything entering Gaza, prohibiting much of it. Some of the things Israel has banned from entering Gaza include:
This helps to illustrate the level of control and punitive authoritaranism that Israel has exerted over Gaza, prior to Oct 7th - it's all about collective punishment of Gazans, with the aim of forcing them to leave.
Clearing operations have largely been bulldozers, not leveling an area with bombs. Yes, it does suck for the civilians. Yes there is immense collateral damage. What would you do differently when you know terrorists funded by a hostile third party have an extensive tunnel network though? I’m sorry but you cannot allow it to exist. You have to destroy it.
There exact purposes of the hospital lairs used by Hamas are unclear but they’re indisputably there and indisputably connected to these tunnels.
Not knowingly massacre civilians? If they supposedly have 10 million miles of tunnels (or whatever the IDF claims), then the very idea of taking out tunnels is pointless anyway.
Hamas aren't some random terrorists, they are a resistance to occupation with a clear goal - if I was Israel, I would respect international law, remove myself from occupied territories, and recognise an independant Palestinian state. Alongside, I'd be figuring out how to deradicalise my population.
> There exact purposes of the hospital lairs used by Hamas are unclear but they’re indisputably there
No, there is much to dispute! For starters, I haven't seen any evidence whatsoever that Hamas have "hospital lairs". Except of course for the preposterous IDF 3D rendering of Al Shifa.
Ok great, so you’re going to roll over while Iran increases military pressure into your borders and you’re just asking the same question from a weaker position a few years later.
You cannot frame this conflict merely Israel and poor Palestine. Because look, I agree, Israel’s treatment of Palestine is dogshit. But you cannot achieve a peaceful outcome while Iran is right there as a militaristic hostile nation that condones funding terrorism.
By that same logic, fighting crime should not be bound by any laws. After all, criminals break the law by definition so it's perfectly ok to not respect the law when you're fighting them, right?
This actually varies on the control of the situation. If it’s an active battleground due to ongoing hostilities this does not apply and it is considered invaded rather than occupied with different standards.
The game of propaganda - the side with the best funded and most sophisticated and networked censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus - manufactures consent for what people believe, from what scope and narrowed context and angle they're perceive a situation at; and when the truth is becoming too clear the clarity is fogged with emotion and outrage.
Israel actively promotes illegal, violent settlements that kill Palestinians under IDF protection. [1] / [2]
---
Israel has on a number of occasions provoked border disputes and then claimed that IDF soldiers killed in those disputes were civilians.
[2]
> On that very day, however, a high-level decision was taken by the IDF to send a patrol of soldiers dressed up as policemen to al-Hamma at the farthest end of the southern DMZ. The patrol was intended to show the flag in an area that was under complete Syrian domination. The Syrian army responded violently, by shooting and killing seven members of the patrol and hampering the evacuation of the rest.
> [...]
> The cabinet met on 5 April and, in the absence of the foreign minister, accepted the prime minister’s recommendations to destroy three Arab villages inside the DMZ, bomb from the air the Syrian post and police station in al-Hamma, boycott the MAC, and lodge a complaint with the UN Security Council on the murder of the seven “policemen.”
[2]
> To achieve the first aim, Israel purchased land from the Arab villagers, developed Jewish settlements, established new agricultural settlements, built fortifications around them, and introduced soldiers disguised as civilians or policemen. To achieve the second aim, Israel seized an opportunity in March 1951 to move forcibly several hundred Bedouins who refused to accept Israeli identity cards from the central DMZ to Arab villages in northern Israel. In pursuit of the third aim, Israel refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the UN over civilian activities and even placed roadblocks to stop the UN men from entering the DMZs. Both Syria and the UN observers felt deceived and were disturbed by the direction of Israeli policy.
[2]
> Dayan did not like the compromise with the UN and pressed for extending Israel’s control over the DMZ through the introduction of additional soldiers masquerading as farmers. Ben-Gurion was persuaded to ask the cabinet to authorize the construction of two new “civilian” settlements in the DMZ.
---
Israel executed disabled noncombatants inside of a hospital while disguised as civilians. [3]
Even if this was true, it would not make them a legitimate target unless they were directly engaged in fighting. Journalists are even protected when engaging in explicit propaganda for example.
Journalists aren't typified as soldiers in any conflict by any civilized society or international law. They are civils, and the deliberate serial assasination of civils is an war crime. Period. No amount of critical thinking or creative word twisting can change this.
Bombing civil homes, refugee camps and hospitals are also war crimes
Killing children by famine by deliberately blocking the access to food is just a new level of rotten. We had seen the same pallid walking skeletons in the recent past of Europe. Everybody promised to learn and not to repeat this
But... here we go again, walking the same path, learning from the same manuals, and basically expressing that maybe the historical crimes that packs of seriously insane people commit, weren't so bad after all. No sane Jewish with a minimum sense of pride should accept to be linked with that people, or identified as a sprout of the poisoned tree.
So what the hell were they thinking?
From an European point of view to see Israel commit or tolerate this crimes for months is not only concerning, but also extremely disappointing.
The sheer amount of times that Israel's [1] lies [2] have been exposed [3] again and again [4], in the current conflict and from before, leads to the only conclusion that IOF's claims that benefit their narrative must be assumed false until proven true by independent investigation. Their own investigations frequently prove their own initial claims are false.
Moreover, "murky definition of a journalist" is a weasel word if I've ever seen one. It matters not if someone is a seasoned journalist (many of which have been killed as well) or new. In some cases, these new journalists are the only ones revealing the horror of the genocide Israel is conducting inside of Gaza right now.
The scale of war crimes and targeting of noncombatants by Israel in this genocide is unprecedented.
I generally think that militaries and governments in international relations, and especially regarding warfare, are not trustworthy; they will lie if it helps them. Israel in particular focuses on information for the Western public (which I'm sure they would agree to; they even have a word for it, and especially in this war (they are well-organized and there is plenty of recent journalism about it). I don't think Israeli - or Hamas - claims are credible on their own.
Twitter/X, especially for an issue like this one, is not at all a credible source IMHO. Disinformation and misinformation on Twitter is a cliche; it's overwhelming.
That doesn't tell us whether the photos are actually from the IDF, whether they were modified, where and when they were taken, what the context for the photos is, whether the narrative added to the photos (the one you are asserting and apparently someone else originally put forward) is accurate. It's just two collections of bits that someone posted online.
People are easily misled by those things, including you and me. We don't have time or skill or resources to do the verification. But one efficient solution is for someone to develop those skills and resources professionally, and to spend the time to use them. Those people are called journalists, among other things.
Stop reading X, which we can't interpret accurately (as is extremely well demonstrated billions of times) and start reading something professionally verified. That's my advice, at least.
If you are pro-Israeli, realize that Hamas uses X to mislead and influence public opinion. If you believe there is truth to Israel's position, then X - probably the world's leading mechanism for disinformation and misinformation - is a threat to Israel.
These are official IDF accounts, the photos are said by the IDF to be found on the journalist laptop and have backing articles published by journalist who received the same information from the IDF.
Psychological warfare campaigns are usually done under false flag, so I doubt this is the case
This was honestly the first I heard of it, so no opinion yet. That said, OP put forward evidence and the comment I responded to basically put forward that governments lie.
> the comment I responded to basically put forward that governments lie
I appreciate you seeking something substantive, but in this case, doesn't that simplistic assertion still effectively discredit government claims?
I remember reading US government claims re Afghanistan and Iraq - where they were under much less pressure than the Israeli government today: Did that strike kill civilians? The answer was always 'no' until someone could prove 'yes' - you learn that the 'no' didn't mean anything.
I never understand how people will make the case that the other side is evil without showing that their side isn't also evil.
Yes, sure, Israel is committing war crimes. This whole thing started because Hamas attempted to commit textbook genocide and has 80% support along the West Bank population.
The US set half a million Japanese on fire for less. There is not a country in the world that wouldn't be doing what Israel is doing in Israels position.
> not a country in the world that wouldn't be doing what Israel is doing in Israels position
Many would do it better. To my knowledge, there have been zero prosecutions of misbehaving soldiers on the Israeli side. Netanyahu should be removed from power—his chaos created the opening for Hamas, and he’s tainted as a partisan in America. And insisting on a permanent military occupation of Gaza is such a stupid thing to commit to ex ante.
Find me a list of countries which have suffered a proportional death toll in civilians to a terrorist attack and have a response as measured as what you're describing.
In terms of dead per total population this would be the equivalent of 13 9/11s.
Find me a list of countries that ethnically cleansed a population of millions and put them under occupation and treat them like less than humans. You know that history of human being did not start in 2023.
Israel is not in a normal conflict. It is an occupation force and their government seeks to prevent Palestinians from having their state and some elements want to destroy them once and for all.
Edit: sorry I thought that you did not want to go in pointless discussion. Cannot delete that now.
Closer and dearer to Palestine one only need to look at how the Copts are treated in Egypt, the Kurds in Turkey and the Marsh Arabs in Iraq.
>You know that history of human being did not start in 2023.
Very good, so you should remember that the Palestinians are under occupation because of the failed pan-arabic genocide against the Jews of 1948 and the many attempted rematches since.
>Israel is not in a normal conflict. It is an occupation force and their government seeks to prevent Palestinians from having their state and some elements want to destroy them once and for all.
Which state? Hamas has been in open rebellion against the Palestinian authority for 20 years.
Another thing worth noting, some of the casualties mentioned in this site is of Palestinians journalists dying on October 7 and the following days, which only show how problematic their claims are.
As the airstrikes didn't start yet in Gaza, these obviously died inside Israeli territory after they crossed a border, so they can film a massacre among other horrifying acts inflicted upon civilians such as rapes and mutilations.
I don't think these are the same journalists that people think about when they imagine journalists, but rather the same kind of 'journalists' that filmed the isis decapitation videos
i've yet to see reporting on this that is not sourced directly from the IDF - who are accusing dead men based on "intel" that they've found after a bombing
What about journalists from before, even completely outside Gaza, like Shireen Abu Akleh, the American-palestinian journalist who was sniped while reporting?
There seems to be a long history of Israel targeting journalists exclusively and even their funerals
The fact that journalists in war zones died doesn't mean these were "targeted exclusively"
is there any evidence that Israel has targeted journalists intentionally that weren't involved in the fighting?
> is there any evidence that Israel has targeted journalists intentionally that weren't involved in the fighting?
Yes my dear, there's plenty. Many journalists had an airstrike called on their homes. Some were not in it at the time, others were killd with their families while not involved in the fighting or on the frontline. Many journalists also received direct threats from Israeli intelligence agencies pushing them to leave the country.
Airstrikes also happen in the context of attacking an entire building or called during a firefight
I am not saying journalists weren’t targeted when they were involved in the fighting or part of Hamas.
I am saying whether you have evidence that journalists were targeted for being journalists like you are implying, and that is evidence i don’t think you have
You're the one claiming
that journalists weren't targeted for being a journalist based on what? your hunch? Are you listening to yourself?
I'm not interested in your personal opinion and what you think. Maybe this and maybe that happened. If I wanted fiction, there are better options. I provided evidence of multiple documented cases and there are many more. If you can't refute them, you're blind just following your bias. Just be open about it.
I'm not interested in the stories your mind made up to feel better about murdering more civilians. I need reality.
The reality, like documented here and elsewhere, is that many journalists were targeted with airstrikes and received direct threats.
You're the one with the ridiculous claim here, that all these journalists that got blown up weren't targeted. Can you support that claim?
"Intentionally depriving people of food is clearly a war crime. Israel has announced its intention to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian. In my view as a UN human rights expert, this is now a situation of genocide."
The word has been diminished by deranged activists in the US, but in international law it is clearly defined.
The problem Israel has is it has either satisfied all of the criterion for a genocide, or it has satisfied all of the criterion for being apartheid state. There is no inbetween or alternative at this point, so which is it.
The ICJ said no such thing. Read the ruling. It said something along the lines of the "rights of the Palestinian people to be protected from genocide and the rights of South Africa to seek this protection are plausible".
The use of the word genocide in this context is just pure propaganda. There are plenty of conflicts with significantly higher human toil where this word is not used.
And if over 30,000 dead Palestinians so far isn't enough for you, the intent is the central issue of genocide, though the Palestinian casualties will undoubtably rise.
It did not. Find me that language in the ruling. Some media said that, but not the ICJ. If the ICJ thought this was really plausible they would have ordered Israel to stop. They did not.
30,000 dead is way too much for me. Not for the Hamas apparently? For Israel going after all 40,000 Hamas combatants, is probably legitimate, as long as Hamas keeps fighting. I would so much prefer that all of the Israelis that have been killed and all of the Palestinians that have been killed still be alive.
Are you suggesting Israel shoots journalists on sight? I get that Hamas is trying their best to muddy the waters, but that still doesn't seem like a reasonable response...
At the beginning of the war, Hamas combatants used that vest as a means of protection and to allow safe movement, which caused IDF snipers to pay extra attention to PRESS and most likely send them off. If you pay close attention to reports from Gaza, barely anyone is using a PRESS vest now (that's like holding an AK-47), beginning of the war everyone was using it.
No, this is propaganda - every MSM outlets appends that biased "disclaimer" to every story they run on Gaza. Do they append "according to US-backed Israel" when parroting Israeli propaganda verbatim? No.
And still, the UN says the Hamas' numbers are realistic, and the Lancet says they are realistic[0].
Meanwhile, some parts of the IDF claim every death of a military-age male was the death of a "terrorist".
You could address the accusation directly rather than diverting with labels of "bias" and "propaganda". Tell us all how Hamas, as an incorruptible bastion of truth and honor, has neither incentive nor opportunity to inflate civilian deaths.
Though it's certainly sensible to question the accuracy of the numbers, considering Israel is making it impossible for anyone besides Hamas to verify those numbers and considering that the Netanyahu gov has actively given aid, comfort, and power to Hamas to crush any rival in Gaza [0][1], this then is also true:
Israel currently has no standing to dispute those numbers.
>Any article or media organization that does not point this out instantly loses credibility.
by that logic, any article or media organization that fails to point out the information in the references below also instantly loses credibility.
Do you have even a glimpse of evidance? or are we speculating now? They deaths are published by full name and national number. Regardless, the masscare is ongoing and the exact number doesn't change anything. It's not like there's a certain threshold they aimed for.
It's disgusting that your first response to reading 30,000 people were killed was to speculate and try to undertone it.
You would be correct were the war about retaliation. It is not retaliation. It is a military operation. It is a military operation to remove an implacable enemy who deliberately positions military hardware such as rocket launchers in and around civilians and civilian infrastructure. This is an enemy who would kill more than 30,000 Israeli citizens if it could. Hamas would kill every single Israeli if it acquired the weapons to do so. We know this because they frequently fire rockets at civilian targets. They are doing so even now as you read this. Hamas would kill every single Israeli even if it meant killing thousands of Palestinians. We know this is true because Hamas leadership has been saying this for decades.
Further, when you compare civilian casualties to other wars, even other wars in neighboring countries, the casualty rate is extremely low.
It would be no more ethical to reap precisely the same number of innocent lives as Hamas took; in fact, it would arguably be less ethical, since you'd be laying bare your motivation of vengeance and reprisal. The judgement of whether a military operation is defensible is its objective and necessity, not the ratio of casualties inflicted on both sides.
I think much of what's been done in Gaza is indefensible (the culpability is shared, but it's an enormous amount of culpability, there's plenty for Netanyahu to account for). But the logic of X Israelis to Y Palestinians doesn't hold and doesn't illuminate.
Perhaps I learn something new, of which I was not previously aware. Or, in articulating it, you do? It's possible we each have information the other does not.
On any other topic maybe, but here the risks seem to outweigh the rewards. By all means, if I said something you disagree with, say so, and I'll read and maybe respond. Maybe I'll be persuaded, and maybe I won't. But for what I think are obvious reasons I am reluctant to expand the scope of this discussion.
I'm not trying to provoke trouble. Just trying to understand what you meant. I do not believe that Israel is actually committing war crimes. I've seen no credible evidence for it. I have seen lots of evidence of war crime by Hamas by contrast.
I'm not pro Israel because they are my "favorite team" or "preferred fandom". If Israel or any batik. I am pro Israel because, of the two competing narratives, theirs makes the most rational sense, and I do not ever hear rational rebuttals. Like never. If you have one, that'd be great. I mean, it would suck, but I wouldn't dismiss it. But you would be unique. I only ever hear debunked accusations rotated with diversion, whatabouts, non-sequitur, threats and counter accusations.
Never, for instance, a rational answer to why people just accept Hamas' death toll without any skepticism. In fact, apparently the thread has been flagged. Still no direct response, though.
Why does this, relatively speaking, extremely low rate of civilian casualties concern you so? Honest question.
Have you been similarly concerned by the extremely high rates of ongoing civilian casualties in Syria, Sudan, and Yemen? Those of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Of course, generally speaking. If that Palestinian is Hamas or Islamic Jihad or other terrorist, no.
My question was genuine. Are you as outraged over the deaths of the collective over 1M Syrians, Yemeni and Sudanese civilians as you are about the 10-30k Gazans?
> This is an enemy who would kill more than 10,000 if it could
And yet, it's Israel that has killed 30-50k... so far.
> who deliberately positions military hardware such as rocket launchers in and around civilians and civilian infrastructure
Gaza is a very dense, urban area, so it's kind of unavoidable. And you know as well as I do that these "rockets" are barely more than overgrown fireworks - they are mostly symbolic. That said, I do feel like Hamas are fools for continuing to fire them - I understand they need to resist blockade, occupation and dehumanisation, but I just can't see how this could possibly help.
> We know this is true because Hamas leadership has been saying this for decades
Except, thats not really true, is it? Hamas have been openly saying for several years now that they have no beef with people of the Jewish faith, they just want their homes back.
That is not at all what I said - are you commenting in good faith? We've also seen no credible evidence that Hamas hides weapons inside of schools, mosques or hospitals.
>> "who deliberately positions military hardware such as rocket launchers in and around civilians and civilian infrastructure"
You said:
> "Gaza is a very dense, urban area, so it's kind of unavoidable."
But ok, if you really are commenting in good faith then also explain why Hamas puts military hardware inside of schools, mosques and hospitals.
Are you one of those people who insist that Israel must have everything signed in triplicate and verified by 20 credible sources while Hamas just has to gesture vaguely?
United Nations Report on Schools: A report from the United Nations confirmed that Hamas stored weapons in UNRWA schools during the conflict in Gaza. Notably, weapons were found in the UNRWA Jabalia Elementary “C” and Ayyobiya Boys School. The report highlighted that it was highly likely that Palestinian armed groups used these premises to hide weapons and, in some cases, to launch attacks. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned these actions as unacceptable, stating that such conduct put UN schools at risk
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Evidence: The IDF has released photos showing that terrorist groups placed rocket launchers next to schools in Gaza. This action aligns with long-standing charges against Hamas for using civilian infrastructure for military purposes
White House Intelligence on Al Shifa Hospital: The White House disclosed that it had intelligence indicating Hamas was using Gaza's largest hospital, Al Shifa, to run military operations and likely to store weapons. This information suggested that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were using some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al Shifa, to support their military operations and possibly to hold hostages. The actions at Al Shifa hospital were described as constituting a war crime
Not literally, no. My comment was in response to the general case of "in and around civilians and civilian infrastructure" - that truly is unavoidable. You then stretched that to the inside of schools, mosques and hospitals.
I don't have time to go through the first two links, but if the first is from UN I'll certainly take it at face value. As for the second link, I'm sorry, but when the IDF has told so very many lies, and been caught in them so many times - the IDF simply cannot be trusted.
> White House Intelligence on Al Shifa Hospital
Who later admitted that their intel came from... the IDF! And Al Shifa!... the hospital where the IDF produced that ridiculous 3D rendering to show the hospital as some kind of high-tech "terror HQ - all designed to manufacture consent for attacking the hospital. And of course, it all turned out to be BS.
> The actions at Al Shifa hospital were described as constituting a war crime
If Hamas was using Al Shifa as a base for military opertions, those actions would arguably have constituted a war crime, yes. But as it turned out, there was no evidence.
I do have to say, it's kind of odd for proponents of Israel's ethnic cleansing/genocide to bring up war crimes. Especially since Israel has contravened 62 UN resolutions, and Netenyahu has publicly stated he will ignore international law.
> ...when the IDF has told so very many lies, and been caught in them so many times - the IDF simply cannot be trusted.
Not a thing that happened, but it has a become a truism in certain circles that Jews lie, which naturally transforms to "IDF lies".
> it's kind of odd for proponents of Israel's ethnic cleansing/genocide to bring up war crimes
Your poison pill aside, it's not odd for proponents of Israel to bring up war crimes because Israel is a civilized, democratic nation who values the rule of law. Her opponents, however, do not, and will accuse in a mirror.
You broke the site guidelines badly and repeatedly in this thread. We have to ban accounts that do that. Regardless of how right you are or feel you are, please don't do this again.
Others have been breaking the site guidelines too, of course, and I'm posting moderation replies to a few of them—it's not possible to respond to them all. I just mention this to make clear that the moderation in this case has nothing to do with which side you're arguing for or against. It has to do with your obviously breaking HN's rules, which is not ok.
> Except, thats not really true, is it? Hamas have been openly saying for several years now that they have no beef with people of the Jewish faith, they just want their homes back.
No, that is not what they have been saying. That's what you have been hearing, but they have been saying they want the area to be under Muslim control. They could have had their homes back decades ago if they accepted Israeli rule. No. When they say "Free Palestine" you hear Western ideas of freedom, democracy, sovereignty, dignity. They mean "Free Palestine of Jews". We know this because they say it and act on it, repeatedly.
> They could have had their homes back decades ago if they accepted Israeli rule
"accepted Israeli rule?!". If Russia decides to occupy your country, would you be so accepting?!
Never mind the fact that the West Bank shows exactly what happens when you "accept Israeli rule" - living under a brutal, dehumanising apartheid regime.
Did you know that Israel tried to give Gaza back to Egypt and West Bank back to Jordan? They refused. Palestinians are endless trouble. This is known throughout the Arab world. It's hardly an "occupation". Israel doesn't want it.
> Did you know that Israel tried to give Gaza back to Egypt and West Bank back to Jordan?
This is revisionist history - Gaza was never even part of Egypt! [0] Netanyahu's plans for "Greater Israel" (which includes the West Bank and Gaza) also run contrary to this claim.
> Israel doesn't want it
Israel's actions say otherwise. And let's not forget that Israel continues to illegally occupy land in Lebanon and Syria - they absolutetly want more land, and Gaza would be perfect for a port, some nice beachfront properties etc.
Also, why have they built a road bisecting Gaza? Why are many Israelis discussing the occupation of northern Gaza like it's a done deal? Why are Israelis holding meetings to plan building settlements in Gaza, attended by gov ministers? Why has Israel given out deals to oil companies for fields off the north coast of Gaza?
> This is revisionist history - Gaza was never even part of Egypt
So confident and yet so wrong. This is literally history. Are you pro-Hamas because you don't know the history of the region, or do you not know the history region because you're motivated to ignore it where it contradicts your pro-Hamas narrative?
From whom did Israel seize control of Gaza in 1967?
I appreciate your more substantive contributions to the thread, but you've also broken the site guidelines a lot, such as with snark and personal attacks. Can you please edit that sort of thing out of your HN posts in the future? I know it's not easy in the heat of the moment, but it's critical to the survival of this site, and it will also make your own posts a lot more persuasive.
Eventually we have no choice but to ban accounts that keep breaking HN's rules like this and ignore our requests to stop. I don't want to ban you, so if you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, that would be good. You broke a great many of them here, including:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
When you say "a lot" in this thread I honestly don't know what you mean. "So confident and yet so wrong" was admittedly prickly, but my follow up question was earnest, not a personal attack. Direct, but not snarky.
I cannot find other examples of snark or personal attacks in this thread.
I appreciate your more substantive contributions to the thread, but you've also broken the site guidelines a lot, such as by accusing others of not commenting in good faith. Can you please edit that sort of thing out of your HN posts in the future? I know it's not easy in the heat of the moment, but it's critical to the survival of this site, and it will also make your own posts a lot more persuasive.
So confused. From whom did Israel seize control of Gaza in 1967? From the Palestinian Authority or what?
Edit: So, for those of you inclined to believe that "both sides probably have a point" but are otherwise not clear. No. This is the best you will ever get from the "pro Palestinian" side. It is not a side that is pro Palestinian people. Pro Palestinian people would like the war to end and Palestinians to live peacefully in their own state. A 2-state solution. No, "pro Palestinians" don't care about history or the truth. They are only anti Jew. When you try to bring up evidence or facts, they will reject anything that comes from Israel and accept anything from anti-Israel sources.
Genocide:The systematic and widespread extermination or attempted extermination of a national, racial, religious, or ethnic group.
Explain how the country that does roof-knocks[1], phone calls[2], and has literally driven its own people out of Gaza[3] in an attempt for peace is attempting to exterminate Palestinians. Learn what words mean before using them.
> Why do you think it asked Israel to prevent acts of Genocide instead of asking both sides of preventing acts of Genocide?
Hamas explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel and Jews. Nobody has any doubts around what they would do if they had military supremacy.
The ICJ won’t order them to not commit acts of genocide because they aren’t the object of South Africa’s complaint. (I also don’t believe they fall under ICJ jurisdiction, being a non-state actor.)
I apologize for my tone, this is something i am passionate about.
Hamas has always been pretty open about their intent for genocide[1]. The ICJ had a specific case brought by a specific country on specific charges against Israel. The ICJ ruled against them.
Israel is in the middle of a bloody war in an urban environment filled with civilians. Of course Israel should follow the rules of war and try to limit civilian casualties, which is what the preventing acts of genocide was about.
You’re being unfairly downvoted. The word genocide has been overused in this conflict. Genocide means an intent to erase a people, which is a hard point to argue when Gaza’s population has doubled in the last two decades under this supposed “erasure”.
If Israel wanted to systematically murder civilians there would be a lot more dead.
What you are seeing is the result of a terrorist organization hiding among civilians (human shields) while waging a war dressed as civilians (a war crime).
Their capability to kill more does not imply that they would use it or there could not be systematic murder if they don’t use the full firepower. What I see is not just Hamas hiding among civilians (this is true and this is a war crime), but also what you conveniently ignore: systematic disregard of human life by Israel and ignorance of the duty to protect innocent lives. Some token actions to show for the press (all those „phone calls“) do not qualify as such.
What Israel should have done but did not: evacuate the entire population of Gaza to its own territory, ensure protection of human rights, guarantee access to food, healthcare and education.
Does disregard of human life qualify as genocide? Did the US disregard the human lives of Japanese people in the Japanese war or the Vietnamese people in the Vietnam war and if so Were those acts genocide?
I do not know and I do not care. Two comments above I explicitly said that.
Which legal term will be used to qualify Israel actions is less important than stopping this nightmare now and approaching the strategic goals differently.
Again, words have meanings even if you don't like them. There is nothing indiscriminate about Israel's actions, which somehow have not been able to match Hamas's one day total of slaughtered and raped civilians. War is awful and I hope that Hamas surrenders soon to end it.
"which somehow have not been able to match Hamas's one day total of slaughtered and raped civilians" — what do you mean by this? Over 1,000 civilians were killed by Hamas, whereas around 30,000 people (including many innocents) have been killed in Gaza — almost two orders of magnitude more. As you say, words have meanings.
Israel, which you claim is indiscriminately bombing civilians, has not been able to match Hamas in killing 1,200 civilians in a single day of this war despite dropping thousands of bombs.
You can use buzzwords to try and distort reality but this is clearly a highly targeted military campaign where Hamas is sacrificing it's own civilians as human shields. That sucks and Hamas should surrender, but Israel should do what it needs to defeat Hamas.
If Hamas refuses to surrender until the bitter end — which is likely given their extremism — then what should Israel do? If Gaza gets squeezed until 90% of the population is blown up or starved, would you care?
This is why the world (and people like yourself) should pressure Egypt to take in civilian refugees.
Here's the thing - Israel is totally justified in utterly destroying Hamas and returning the hostages they hold. If Hamas wants to add their own civilians to the hostages they're holding, then the world should team up to destroy them, just like we did with ISIS, which like Hamas is a jihadist Islamic supremacist group. They don't get to rape and murder and then hide behind civilians to prevent people from stopping them from simply repeating this.
You're correct, Jewish national self-determination started several thousand years ago and Israel is currently the most successful indigenous people's movement in the world.
I think it is something like "the wisdom of the crowd is the collective opinion of a diverse independent group of individuals rather than that of a single expert." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd
> That doesn't answer my question? A lot of things are bad, most don't make it to the HackerNews front page...
Most likely because of the current events and the indiscriminate and out of proportion reaction by Israel towards Gazans. Was just reading some news today that Israel approved more Israeli settlements in West Bank. It seems that this conflict will only end when Israel will have killed/deported all Palestinians. Now how come only bad news are coming from Israel? Is there anything else interesting happening in Israel to take steam away from this conflict? They do have a tech scene with startups and all that. I've read some stuff like that on HN but nothing interesting or out of the ordinary is happening in that area at the moment...
I wanted to point out that I think the HN community collectively believe that journalism as a whole is very important for society. But that only explains why this story has been upvoted.
Do you notice any other themes in the stories that you see being upvoted?
What other main themes do you see in the other upvoted stories that worry you.
Is it possible that there are fewer stories about the Hamas atrocities because there are fewer and there isn't much to discuss? I think they are unquestionably evil and should be imprisoned or killed. And that is an absolute belief that doesn't waver even if I also think Israel are doing a bad job of
It seems your trying to build a false narrative to equate HN = too many posts about Israel. To justify some of your other questions in this thread.
Israel is commiting genocidal acts that are illegal according to International law. They are starving a population of almost 2 million, collective punishment and indiscriminately killing families.
Sorry it bothers you when you see fellow HN Humans act on compassion for other Humans and spread awareness about this. By your post history I get the feeling you'd rather see it swept under the rug and discussion silenced. Israel has a professional well funded misinformation arm. PSA.
Either HN is politics free or it is not. As heavily moderated as it is, it is either neutral or it is not.
> Israel is commiting genocidal acts that are illegal according to International law.
If you read my other comments, you know words have meaning. Genocide is very specific. There are multiple countries delivering aid into Gaza, which is wild since Israel is apparently trying to starve them. I wonder if Israel knows about the 100s of tons of food going through the Rafa border every day. Weird that Israel would miss that.
> collective punishment and indiscriminately killing families
Indiscriminately killing families looks like shooting rockets you can't control at a civilian cities, which is a war crime. This is what Hamas has been doing since the start of the war.
Living in a war zone generally means people die. War is bad. Having an army fighting without uniforms (a war crime) among a densely populated civilian city is really bad. Any collateral damage is the fault of the terrorist group that started the war and is still holding civilian hostages (also a war crime).
> Numerous members of Al-Dahdouh's family have been killed by the Israeli military during the Israel–Hamas war. His wife, seven-year old daughter, and 15-year old son were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp on 28 October 2023, in addition to eight of his other relatives. On 15 December 2023, while Al-Dahdouh and his cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa were covering the Haifa School airstrike in Khan Yunis, they were hit by an Israeli missile, injuring Dahdouh and fatally wounding Abu Daqqa. Despite the death of many family members and his injury, he quickly returned to reporting on the war after both incidents.[3] His son, journalist Hamza al-Dahdouh, was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis on 7 January 2024,[4] and two of his nephews were killed in an airstrike the following day.[5]
Is there irrefutable proof of it in the current conflict? Unless something leaks from the IDF, we'll never know. But there are well-respected news orgs and NGOs identifying patterns of it.
“CPJ is deeply alarmed by the pattern of journalists in Gaza reporting receiving threats, and subsequently, their family members being killed,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour. “The killing of the family members of journalists in Gaza is making it almost impossible for the journalists to continue reporting, as the risk now extends beyond them also to include their beloved ones.”
Thank you, even Betselem (israeli human rights org) claims that israel is an apartheid state.
People will also use the holocaust to justify this somehow. Americans are brainwashed since theyre in elementary school by “learning about the holocaust” literally year after year. All this has led to justify any wrongdoings israel has done.
At the end of the day, israel is a colonial entity, its not welcome in the region and will never will be. Hopefully I can live long enough to see its demise, but I know I will die knowing that it will no longer exist in the lifetimes following me.
It’s unnatural and is held up by excessive funding from the West. hopefully they can transition peacefully but until then I view every violent action against them as justified.
They occupied all of south lebanon for 20 years (after the PLO was completely expelled to Algeria). Only violent resistance was able to expel them.
You might identify as a fact vending machine, but don't count on others buying your processed snacks.
> Fact: This began in 1948...
Let's add a breakpoint there. You haven't defined "this", and everyone knows any measure of "this" goes back before 1948. Speaking of 1948, just 3 years after WW2 ended, the Jews who suffered some of the worst death and despair of WW2, were attacked again in 1948 from all sides in the Arab Israel war. Yes we all know the crimes on both sides at that time. But still... Welcome to the neighborhood!
When a country needs an "iron dome" to protect itself from neighbors, the problem is the neighbors, not the ones who built the iron dome.
Wherever you have humans, there's conflict. This pattern repeats in varying degrees everywhere. The idea is to move towards peace, resolution, compromise, and a way out of misery. Pointing fingers at Israel and blaming everything on them is not an exercise in fact-finding.
Oct7 was probably the worst strategic blunder ever. "Look over there, a music festival! Let's gleefully kill, rape and torture! What could go wrong?!"
The rape allegations have not been debunked. The UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict just yesterday announced convincing evidence not just of organized sexual violence on October 7th, but of sexual violence against the hostages themselves, including evidence that such abuse is ongoing. It's been a Twitter talking point for the last 2 weeks that the rape accusations are hoaxes; some of that is the New York Times fault for mishandling a story, and some of it is a credulous alternative media that platforms Syrian genocide deniers, but at any rate: the consensus among serious people seems to be that the sexual violence narrative is substantiated.
This is one of those things that you can probably reasonably debate, if you're extraordinarily careful how you write about it (is it worth it? it's not as if it changes the calculus of how horrible Hamas is), but you can't reasonably claim is "debunked".
(The comment you were replying to was dismissive and uncivil; I'm just taking issue with a specific point you raised.)
While the allegations are credible (off course they are, these are a bunch of violent men brutalizing civilians) they have been far from proven. But what has been pretty much debunked at this point is Hamas using sexual violence as a weapon of war.
We know what using sexual violence as a weapon of war looks like as we have plenty of evidence the Israel army doing exactly that and we have no evidence of Hamas doing it.
> some of that is the New York Times fault for mishandling a story
This is putting it mildly. The NYT propagandized these allegations to support a pro-Israeli narrative. What they did was not only lie about Hamas’ true crimes, but also use a horrible crime—which no doubt some victims of oct. 7 experienced—as a way to justify other horrible crimes, including other sexual violence committed by the IDF in the aftermath.
Nothing about this story has been debunked. Past that, there's no chance we're going to have a useful discussion resolving the issue. The bar we need to clear is simply civility and good faith; the term "debunk", like "misinformation", applied to anything other than things completely discredited, flunks both those tests. When the UN is going out of its way to say that Hamas has and continues to use sexual violence, you may retain the ability to keep debating the issue, but you've lost the use of the word "debunk".
> "The comment you were replying to was dismissive and uncivil"
Fascinating. The person you replied to unleashed a barrage of toxic misinformation, including absurd claims about nobody being tortured on Oct7, and that Israel killed the music festival attendees, among other propaganda nuggets.
They also frame Oct7 as a strategic positive, based on the "killing" of normalized relations between Israel and Arab countries. You replied to a pro-Hamas supporter, basically. I don't want to debate it now, but you were doing well countering the misinformation about the rape allegations, and about "debunking" in general. Then you added an unnecessary evaluation of my post.
Is "more right" even possible? I don't want to be "more right"!
Static charge emerges from the process of disagreement on these and other crisis subjects. Calm diplomacy is main goal but occasionally something unexpectedly ferocious latches to your ankle, and calmly ushering the threat from your ankle becomes the lesser option of a more animated response.
Is your theory that Hamas allows journalists free reign to report on anything in Gaza no matter how unflattering, without shooting the reporters who do so, just so that when Israel bombs the journalists will report the bombing? I doubt that.
Really? I think they’re terrorists AND stupid.
Why else would they use funds from charity to build tunnels? Why else wouldn’t they build a local economy instead of investing in the daily rain of rockets on their neighbours? Why else would they launch a horrific attack against civilians at a “love and peace” festival next to the Gaza Strip in a country that’s a military powerhouse?
Other than complete delusion, it’s because they’re stupid… OR they don’t care about the well-being of their citizens and value the death of their opponents more than the live of their own
> Why else wouldn’t they build a local economy instead of investing in the daily rain of rockets on their neighbours?
Seriously? If you’re trying to build an economy, one of the first things you’d want to do is establish free trade with other countries. If you can’t do that your economic prospects are basically zero.
If someone just wanted to be a "propagandist" they wouldn't need to be in Gaza and risk their lives to report from first hand. And we are talking about journalists who have citizenship from many parts of the world.
Wow, that is a mighty slippery slope you are on. You do realise that with the same rationale, all Western media outlets are propagandists in the eyes of nations like Russia, Iran & China? Do we really want the precedent to be that it is okay to kill journalists as long as they disagree with you?
To be clear, I did not say that I support the murder of anyone.
What I'm stating here is that it is not a list of "deaths" or war deaths, but a list of "journalist killed". This can easily be used as a "propaganda tool" regarding the fact that in a lot of places, anyone can claim to be a journalist whatever its actions.
My point is that if you are killed doing the coverage of an event, while you were a kind of neutral third party, that is a shame.
At the opposite, if you are journalist working for producing content affiliated with a party, and you are yourself involved, like sometimes you are holding a gun yourself, it is not the same thing.
But a lot of persons can abuse of the ambiguities for political purpose.
It think it was your point, but to be clear since there seem to be some confusion among some, any trial is also unnessecary, since there is no crime commited.
All Hamas has to do is issue uniforms for fighters. Israel would probably even voluntarily foot the cost. But Hamas won't do it because of how much leverage civilians getting killed gets them.
I don’t know why so many people defend the Israel genocide. Everyone I meet offline including Israel born Jews are accusing their own government of genocide.
30k dead (from Hamas source) including at least 10k terrorists over a population of 2.2M is nowhere close to a genocide. Only hamas supporters are claiming it's a genocide.
Hamas (elected government of Palestine) started a war on October 7. Did they expected no retaliation? Jews should just die silently? Not really going to happen. As anywhere else in the world, response to this kind of attack Is a war.
When terrorists use shelters or any civilian infrastructure to launch rockets they are turning them In legitimate targets according to laws of wars.
My understanding is that Hamas candidates won a plurality of seats in an election in 2006, then Hamas essentially started a civil war in which it rejected the legitimacy of Fatah (and, by extension, the internationally-recognized leadership of the Palestinian Authority) and seized control of the Gaza Strip for itself. It does not rule the West Bank, where the majority of Palestinians live. I would not describe that as the "elected government of Palestine". Am I misunderstanding something?
> In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole *or in part*, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
such:
> (a) Killing members of the group;
> (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
> (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or *in part*;
> (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
> (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
So all the points in your list are qualifying October 7 attack from Hamas on Israel as a genocide attempt. I agree with you. Response to that is a war.
Please Justify at least 2 points:
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Seriously, think about what "just" war and multiple % civilian deaths mean, then for people who believe in New World Order / Great Replacement, why isn't this justification for the holocaust rather than the defense of Israel? I get the anger, but not the rationale.
I don't see what that has to do with hamas fighters properly identifying themselves.
However I can't help but feel that it would dramatically lower collateral damage as regular civilians would also know who is a target and who is a civilian.
You can see videos with the pattern of "civilians" grabbing an RPG, firing it, and dropping it. One minute they're civilians, the next 2 they're not, then they're civilians again. They don't have rifles when they're doing this.
HN's approach to this kind of story has been stable for many years. There's no long-term drift [1], but there are random fluctuations, which often raise fears of a long-term drift [2].
If you want more explanation, see my post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39618973 earlier in this thread, and the links back from there. If you read some of those and have a question I haven't already answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
[1] I say that because we're conscious of what the principles governing this are, and it's possible to apply them fairly consistently.
There's thousands upon thousands of discussions on here about Russia, Ukraine, China, North Korea, Iran, USA/NSA, etc. Why is discussions about Israel suddenly "totally off-topic and inappropriate?"
One possible explanation is that journalists have a much higher probability of being close to where the fighting is, than healthcare workers.