- I'm a Jew in USA, and served in the military for more than a decade.
- I used to get annoyed by the Palestinian protests I'd see in the years before this, and generally sided with Israel, and the operations its military performed in counter-Shia-militia operations etc in the region, and was outraged at the Oct 7 attacks.
This is large-scale, continued, intentional CIVCAS.
This Haaretz article is very troubling. To the extent it's accurate, there's not much question that it reflects war crimes.
A few thoughts:
1. The article itself says there is an ongoing investigation into some of these accusations. I hope that, to whatever extent this is happening, it's not widespread, and anyone committing war crimes is very visibly and publicly tried in court.
2. There is clearly something broken with the GHF and the new aid delivery - dozens dead every day for weeks. We really need some answers on what's going on.
3. From Haaretz today:
> The U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on Saturday urged Israel to investigate reports that soldiers opened fire towards unarmed Palestinians near aid distribution sites, detailed in a Haaretz expose, calling the allegations "too grave to ignore," while denying that any such incidents occurred within its facilities.
> GHF Interim Director John Acree stated, "There have been no incidents or fatalities at or in the immediate vicinity of any of our distribution sites."
All information presented is mostly unverified testimony printed verbatim by the press from untrustworthy sources on both sides. It's difficult to tell what is fact and what is not. A lot of early reports in this war turned out to be false information and the rush to immediate news notification rather than quality journalism means that the headline changes context very quickly from the first cut to what people read and remember. (I wrote an extensive suite of software to track this)
Wait and see. Do not judge too early. Take nothing as verbatim from anyone without evidence.
Don't be unknowing partisans of an information war. Veracity takes time.
The story told by the data is that these journalists are overwhelmingly killed by Israeli forces, in some cases with prior notice of the press being where it was.
So if the IDF wants the press to tell the true story on the ground maybe let them do their work without killing them? The quesrion is: at which point do we have to stop assuming incompetence and start to assume malice (at least in parts)? For me personally that point has been months in the past.
This will be a stain on Israel for the rest of history.
This information didn't just appear out of nowhere. It took time to collate, source and verify.
Could you try to rely less on using vague innuendo on HN? If you have reasonable doubt in a theory and/or additional/missing information that isn't purely anecdotal that lead you to your statement consider sharing it on here. If you don't have any information consider the option that your opiniom might not be as much supported by the ground truth as you probably like it to be.
Journalists like these are professionals that are paid to work in a conflict zone, if they are killed, of course their death will be noted. It works like this in literally every conflict on earth and there are international organizations that monitor violence against journalists because they are an fundamentally important pillar of any free society.
The question is why the technologically advanced IDF kills journalists at rates higher than in any other conflict zone on earth. This isn't a statistical anomaly that can be simply hand-waved away. It describes the nature of this conflict with numbers that are written with blood.
Anybody who defends the killing of journalists in a war zone is on the wrong side of history, period.
I hope you realize that this would be genocidal rhetoric. The kind of thinking that lead to the worst atrocities humanity has ever committed. But hey as long as it is happening to the dehumanized subhumans it is okay, right?
Shooting starving people should be one of those moments of clarity that cuts through the narrative.
One of those facts might be intent or misheard orders. It might just be that this actually happened (as a war crime) but it is probably too early to tell.
Regardless of what happened, it helps to wait until more info comes out.
It's a cop out and putting one's head in the sand to the real atrocities of zionistic ambitions of usurping Palestinian land.
In America, if someone trespasses into one's home and the home owner kills the trespasser, the vast majority of the time, the owner is justified and there are numerous court cases we can point to. Recently, it has become clear to me that Palestinians are simply trying to defend their own property/land/humanity.
Israel's trespasses are finally seeing the light in the latest set of conflicts and folks reading this comment that are unsure should spend 30 minutes looking up the videos of the conflict.
Israel blocking aid, murdering medical personnel with impunity, the before/after of Gaza, the list of crimes perpetuated by the government is undeniable at this point.
"Look, children may be dying and maybe we're killing them but we need to verify and we need more time. Because first of all what were they even doing there? Oh and also this is our Land anyways and there were no deaths nobody died there aren't even any children in gaza!"
Every case needs to be investigated thoroughly and punished accordingly.
Which is the exact reason you should be concerned. Israel has zero accountability for their actions, many of which are documented war crimes.
And who exactly do you propose should do that? The Israeli govt?
ICC would be nice but the geopolitical gorilla in the room knocked them down.
My understanding of "actively killed" is thy have been the explicit target of an attack and not casualties in general.
Given the unconscionable number of journalists who died at the IDF's hands, it seems like Israel is indeed using the transparency info from journalists to locate and target them with airstrikes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...
The context is a protest: "Haruf says he was attacked without cause after leaving a prayer protest broken up by Israeli security forces in the Wadi Joz neighborhood." not the journalistic activities.
I'm not justifying this FWIW, just that it doesn't prove what you're trying to prove. If anything the publication of this article in Israel shows Israel has freedom of press.
also: "The Border Police later announced that it had suspended the two officers involved in the incident and that the Department of Internal Police Investigations has opened a probe into the matter."
There is also followup (again in Israeli press): https://www.timesofisrael.com/border-police-said-to-reinstat...
"The Union of Journalists in Israel condemned the incident and said it was “shocked by the violent attack” on Haruf.
The union said the incident was “the 37th attack on Arab journalists since the beginning of the war” on October 7, when Hamas-led terrorists launched their murderous assault on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking some 240 hostages of all ages.
The union, in a December 15 statement, said “most of the attacks [were] carried out by the security forces. This is a reality that dramatically harms freedom of the press and the ability of journalists to perform their duties.”"
Is this perfect? no. Is Israeli press generally free, attacks/criticizes the government, brings to light bad things that happen, and follow up on them? yes.
Israel is the side with Datalink, in case this chart doesn't make it clear.
And this is how we know Israel does not believe in democracy and is not a democracy itself, since a free press is a requirement of democracy.
Democracy isn't just having elections. Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Russia has elections, too.
Why do you say its "unverified" ? The commander in question: Brigadier General Yehuda Vach is formally under investigation for several crimes already: https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-said-to-launch-probe-into-...
This nutcase general has faced consistent accusations from soldiers under his own command over the last year for over a dozen incidents alone. What is your holy threshold for evidence ? How can you "wait and see" if the press is not allowed at the food distribution site ? Basically, you are saying "wait and sweep it under the carpet".
Haaretz is a (far?) left, anti-current-government newspaper. It's not outside the mainstream or anything - it is considered largely credible, and its articles are taken seriously - but most people in Israel would find it funny that you assume it wouldn't be biased against Israel. Lots of Netanyahu supporters routinely consider it a "traitorous" publication.
I think its articles should be taken seriously, but you can't simply assume it's automatically right and not "biased". Think of it the way an American Democrat would think of Fox or something - the news org definitely has a viewpoint.
The bias of a mainstream publication that's considered "traitorous" by genocidal authoritarian ethnonationalists is, given historical consideration, likely to be toward justice.
I.e. your claim that it is leftist requires some justification.
Yeah, sure, if you are a Nazi, everything to the left of you is going to look "left", and likewise if you are a Communist, everything to the right is going to look "right", that doesn't make your viewpoint reality, however.
I'm a leftist - I identify far more with what Haaretz is doing than most other news orgs. I'm personally very angry that other orgs, even ones that are "centrist" or "anti-current-government", are not covering the stories that Haaretz is covering, and barely covering the tragedies happening in Gaza. It's common in most countries during wartime, but it's deeply wrong IMO.
That all said, saying Haaretz is on the left is like saying Fox News is on the right. It's common knowledge.
And here, I just looked it up, this is from Haaretz's own About section:
"Haaretz has built a reputation for in-depth reporting, insightful analysis, and a liberal and progressive editorial stance on domestic issues and international affairs."
So they are framing themselves as liberal and progressive.
Since October 7th sources from within Palestine have been accurate regarding deaths and actions. Often being attacked first and then quietly acknowledged later.
There is no reason to doubt the reporting of Israel’s paper of record, which though considered left wing writhing Israel, supports Netanyahu’s attacks on Gaza and applies rigorous journalistic standards.
Interesting. . . do you have a page for the project or anything?
1. If by "verified" you simply mean that the Israelis are admitting to what they did then you're right they're still lying about what they're doing everyday. Only verification are the videos, photos and dead bodies themselves of course.
2. The Israelis are out in force on these message boards, IDF. Personally I'm at the point where if I'm seeing any illogical support for the murderous regime of Israel I assume it's the IDF at this point, most real humans no matter what their political beliefs can at least agree that murdering innocent children is not good, only the Israelis struggle away with the way to justify it.
3. Lol, "wait and see..." This was the same attitude of the Nazis in world war II! "Just more time.. we just need more time so we can verify..." Amazing that the IDF is now using the same playbook that was used against them in world war II, I guess you guys figure if it works once you can work again!
By avoiding to admit this you are indeed defending the attacker.
And how dare you make accusations along those lines. Your attitude contributes to the problem.
Oh you can't answer that easily without trivializing these deaths yourself. Accusing others, that are suspicious of all of this, of "attitude" is easier.
As for enforcement and prosecution the ICC warrants were justified and the situation that remains is tragic. You can thank the US for throwing a spanner in those works.
I’m not sure why you keep trying to put words in my mouth. Perhaps to justify your partisan position rather than my entirely neutral one? Sure feels like it.
"There is ample evidence and this is not a new accusation, so your request to wait and see rings hollow and appears to be a de facto request to not pass judgement on Israeli crimes" is neither morally nor intellectually dishonest.
The source is one of the biggest Israeli newspapers, by the way.
I think that's a bit misleading. Per Wikipedia, it has a ~5% readership, as opposed to the bigger papers that have a ~22% readership. It is one of the older and most established papers though, that is true.
Anecdotally, I don't think Haaretz is very widely read among the "average" populace, though I think it has a lot of cachet in intellectual (and of course Leftist) circles.
Anyway, some more history to consider: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-11-17/ty-article/.p...
Credulity is boundless, even (especially) in this world of open information warfare. Messages that require side-channels and discrimination with intentionally limited information are guaranteed to be misperceived and likely to have harmful memetic impact.
Agreed though, earnestness is one of our most urgent shortages.
The world has been watching for over 2 years the atrocities occurring in Gaza and Israel and its people have has lost its credibility to its victimhood on the world stage.
This article is simply 1 extra reporting on a million of Israel’s offenses in the name of terrorism.
Isn't there a video of dismembered body parts after the mortar shell hit and killed a few dozen?
It sounds like if he is making such a clear statement as this, there should be an investigation, and, if it turns out there were such fatalities, then Acree (and many others) should be tried for covering up war crimes.
> 1. The article itself says there is an ongoing investigation into some of these accusations. I hope that, to whatever extent this is happening, it's not widespread, and anyone committing war crimes is very visibly and publicly tried in court.
There is zero chance that happens as long as Netanyahu, Likud, Trump, or the Reupublicans are in power. Trump would immediately offer asylum in the US to anybody accused of such a thing.
Even if Israel did investigate, there's nothing more classic than Israel going "we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong".
So if you want accountability, drive that internally with your politicians and get Netanyahu/Likud out of office
This is untrue - Israel has investigated war crimes, e.g. famously things like what happened at the Sde Teiman prison.
> So if you want accountability, drive that internally with your politicians and get Netanyahu/Likud out of office
Many have been trying for years. It's not trivial. (About half of Americans dislike {current_president}, whomever that is, but there's very little they can do about it in between elections.)
As a random bystander with no real skin in this conflict, other than being American, what I can say is that for a while, it did seem that Israel the country had to unfairly deal with hate and war and it seemed quite unfortunate.
Most of the horrifying stories that would occasionally rise up seemed unbelievable, if not overblown.
Though in recent weeks, social media & news has provided another perspective.
1. Numerous Israeli citizens mocking Palestinians and having the gall to upload it to social media.
2. Numerous classrooms and children being taught that non-Israeli's do no deserve the same human rights as Israelis, and the children from a young age reveling in their superiority.
3. Videos showing citizens in normal cars being a nuisance to Palestinian medical vehicles.
4. Videos showing the absolute decimation of Gaza.
5. Israeli news articles reporting 70% and more of the population supporting certain war actions.
6. Ex-IDF soldiers whistleblowing the atrocious acts they needed to commit.
7. Citizens barbequing and hanging out right along the Gaza's border as Palestinian folks on the other side starve.
8. The video of Palestinian medics getting murdered on the side of the highway.
9. Pictures of the logos on IDF uniforms showing "our promised land" with a map showing borders that claim the land of Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon.
I don't think there is something "broken" in aid delivery. It appears that there is a systemic and concerted effort by the bulk of the government and citizens (100% of who have to serve in the IDF) to colonize and usurp Palestinian land and beyond.
And it seems that the latest set of conflicts have pulled back the curtain on the attitudes held by both the Israeli citizens and government.
These events are hard to believe, not because of the cruelty, but because they now happen without a shred of deniability.
I do want you to consider the context here on Hacker News though. You and me have context, we understand the history, we understand at least something about wars and how they are fought. Most people here do not.
The problem isn't whether firing on civilians with no reason when they come to get food is wrong or right. We all know it's wrong. The soldiers in Gaza know it's wrong. We all know this is a war crime.
Most cases of war crimes during war are not prosecuted at all and not visibly. This is true for US wars in the middle east. It's true for the war the West wages against ISIS. It's true for Ukraine and Russia. It's a sad but unfortunate reality of our world. The current political climate and government in Israel are also not the best for the kind of outcome you are describing.
Iran and Hamas firing missiles and rockets into population centers is a war crime too. So is their embedding and use of civilians. The entire strategy of Israel's opponents in the middle east is to engage in war crimes.
Where do we place Israel on that scale? Is there more attention on Israel vs. other similar world events? Why? Do we see similar public debate and discussion of the morality of those wars in other countries? Again, where is Israel on that scale (not of idealistic fantasy world of justice but in the real world)?
That is, I think, an excellent and pertinent question.
For starters may I suggest applying straightforward quantification on a linear scale and observing the results? See the following two wiki articles / subsections:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_co... (see chart preceding the Gaza war (follow anchor))
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war (Gaza war; see top table (and subsequent charts for more detailed breakdown if interested))
Based on this quantitative data where would you place Israel on that aforementioned scale?
Can you present one counterexample as regards quantities / proportions of figures please? One source. (More of course if you'd like)
(My implicit point is that the proportions are so one-sided (orders of magnitude in difference; yes plural) that you will not find one; but please do find one (with actual quantities) and we can all check veracity of your source)
P.S. edit here is one of the sources the first wiki article lists (of multiple):
Lappin, Yaakov (2009). "IDF releases Cast Lead casualty numbers". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on 26 March 2013. Retrieved 5 January 2024. =>
- https://www.jpost.com/israel/idf-releases-cast-lead-casualty...
- https://web.archive.org/web/20130326192603/http://www.jpost....
I’d flip that around: why shouldn’t we expect Israel to be better than a terrorist group like Hamas or the deeply evil Iranian government? When some Americans complained that they were being held to a higher standard than Al-Qaeda or ISIL, they were rightly criticized for betraying our national aspiration to leading rather than trailing the world, and the same is happening here. Israel has rightly set its standards higher than its neighbors when it comes to democracy and civil rights, but that entails criticism where it fails to live up to that self-selected standard.
I feel like you're moving the target now. Those are your words above.
But yes, if your scale is that of the western world then harsh criticism of Israel's war crimes should be expected and welcome.
I don't mean to put words in your mouth, maybe you did mean something along those lines and I'm misinterpreting.
Let's get some scale here. - Probably more than 160K killed in this war. Maybe half civilians. - Siege and constant bombardment/destruction of cities like Mosul. - Millions of civilians displaced. - Many war crimes by western powers.
This was in response to what? A few westerners beheaded? Terrorist attacks killing a few dozen people?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_against_the_Islamic_State
Can you really say honestly that the amount of criticism Israel is attracting due to its war in Gaza and the circumstances are comparable? This might just be me but I don't recall huge rallies against the war. I don't recall much negative media coverage. I don't recall anyone held accountable for war crimes. I don't recall the ICC being involved.
Yes, the US bombings of random weddings in Afghanistan with Predator drones and air to surface missiles, or bombing hospitals has occasionally drawn some weak protest. Nothing at the scale of the anti-Israeli sentiment.
This isn't what-about-ism. It's not ok to bomb a wedding and it's not ok to fire into a crowd of people trying to get food. But there is no comparison of the sentiment and focus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_the...
Yes, everything can be litigated to the beginning of time, WW-2, WW-1, the Romans. But the fact still stands that all those "moral" countries didn't hesitate to lay siege, starve people, bomb civilians, for tbh little reason. I don't recall hearing even crickets protest.
Why can't the "Islamic State" have their own country? Sure their culture of beheading and kidnapping Yazidi as slaves is a bit weird but come on.
For most of the period since 2005, it has been a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade, not an exclusively Israeli one. That has recently changed now that Israel has militarily occupied the Gaza side of the Egypt-Gaza border
But I do find it interesting how Israel gets exclusively blamed for something which Egypt also had a hand in - and they weren’t doing it because “Israel made us”, they had their own security reasons - they feared Hamas would support Islamist rebels in Egypt.
It does seem to support the claim that Israel gets “picked on”, when a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade gets presented as an exclusively Israeli one
From the very first paragraph in your own link:
> Since then, the United Nations, many other international humanitarian and legal organizations, and most academic commentators have continued to regard the Gaza Strip as being under Israeli occupation ...
"Full control" - except over their border, their imports, their airspace, their electromagnetic frequencies, their coastline, their construction industry, etc etc.
> WW-2, WW-1, the Romans. But the fact still stands that all those "moral" countries didn't hesitate to lay siege, starve people, bomb civilians, for tbh little reason.
... If you're taking the Romans and WW-2 as your baseline for morality, that would start to explain things.
This anti-Israeli argument that somehow Israel dismantled its settlements and left but yet still "occupied" Gaza is nonsense. It does not stand any minimal scrutiny.
Yes, as a result of Gazans making a choice to engage in war with Israel there was a blockade over that territory. That's about it. Do you expect Israel to allow them to import tanks and jets?
So yeah. I think we can say they had control.
The "tightening of the screws" is a result of Palestinians deciding to wage war against Israel, build rockets, fire them into civilian populations.
It's really pretty simple. Palestinians want to destroy Israel. They have and had no interest having a "Singapore" in Gaza.
I'm not sure how you get to the 90's. We are talking about the disengagement in 2005.
I lived in Israel during this time and I know very well what the mood was. I've also seen interviews with people who were in the loop who say Ariel Sharon (who architected the withdrawal) sincerely wanted to see Palestinians succeed and use this as a blue print to also end the conflict in the west bank. International donors even bought equipment from Israel (like greenhouses) so they can leave it for the Palestinians who promptly proceeded to destroy them.
The latter happened as recently as this month; the IDF commandeered a boat delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza and arrested its passengers in international waters. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/06/israeli-forces-commandeer-aid...
> The movement, founded in 2006 by activists during Israel’s war on Lebanon, went on to launch 31 boats between 2008 and 2016, five of which reached Gaza despite heavy Israeli restrictions.
> Since 2010, all flotillas attempting to break the Gaza blockade have been intercepted or attacked by Israel in international waters.
That doesn't imply much about aid; it's not a total blockade and there are mechanisms for importing aid. One can argue that the aid distribution mechanisms are bad, and it might be reasonable to propose various changes (different aid mechanisms, a relaxation of the blockade, etc), but it wouldn't really make sense for Israel to make exceptions and allow certain unauthorized ships to just circumvent its blockade.
I don't see a need to engage with you further, especially as you increasingly use dog whistles to tacitly support the actions of Israel while repeating clear propaganda. Your arguments are not helping as much as you think, and only increasingly turning people against Israel as their actions become more and more obvious.
All I hear is twisting of the truth, not surprising from an apartheid genocidal regime.
Let's look at the statistics before Oct 7-th, for the years 2008-2020:
https://www.statista.com/chart/16516/israeli-palestinian-cas...
- 5590 dead Palestinians
- 250 dead Israeli
And, the most recent ones:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war
- 56772 Palestinians
- 1706 Israeli
What else is there to say? Your genocidal government is:
- Withholding humanitarian aid (war crime): https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-attacks-ki...
- Shooting at civilians and children (war crime): https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_forces_fatally_shoot_1...
- Bombing hospitals (war crime): https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2jvx3yjg3o
- Yoav Gallant called the Palestinians "human animals", which, ironically, is similar to what the Nazis were calling the Jews during WW2: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ReZEJPwrM1k
- Using starvation as a weapon (war crime): https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0k3d1y10pzo.
> Israeli soldiers, attacks Israeli civilians (there are still occasional rockets fired out of Gaza).
Maybe don't use your civilians as human shields then. Why is your military next to your civilians? See how that works?
> Israel does not "annex territories" not belonging to them. Israel e.g. returned Sinai to Egypt. Israel gave Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005. Israel in negotiations with Palestinians created the Palestinian Authority and gave it control of large swaths of territory.
They do, illegally occupying and expanding on land that doesn't belong to them https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1j5954edlno
So, everything you said is a lie, which is 100% expected from a supporter of a genocidal state
Russia doesn't target civilian population to the extent Israel does. There is a reason only Israel is charged with genocide, and not Russia. Don't get me wrong, both the countries' governments are run by bunch of homicidal dictators, but only Isreal systematically does enough war crimes and human rights violations to fit the criteria of genocide.
> instead of just saying random stuff like a coward.
You can't comment like this on HN, no matter what you're replying to.
You've posted many comments in this thread that are inflammatory and risk breaking the guidelines. On a topic like this one, this guideline is especially important:
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
You've been asked before to make an effort to observe the guidelines. Please remind yourself of them and keep them in mind when commenting here.
Attacking the Qirya, Israel's HQ, with some sort of accuracy is a legitimate military target. It's a pretty large target. Soldiers wear uniform. There are no civilians mixed into that camp.
This is very different than lobbing rockets at Beer-Sheba, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ramat Gan. The casualties from Iran's attacks, minus one off-duty soldier, were all civilians and the targets were nowhere near anything military. The intentionally aim at population centers.
I think war crimes are a lot more acceptable/understandable if they’re the only way you even potentially have a chance to get back at your agressors. Nobody blames the resistance during the Nazi occupation for what they did.
Israel is very much not in a position they need to perpetrate war crimes to win the war. They have already won. It’s like a cat playing with the mouse it killed.
Because the Nazis lost. Had the Nazis won, alternative history and all that, the argument would probably be the other way around, how, faced with overwhelmingly strong enemies, they "had to" create death camps to "get back" at their aggressors.
Not a great argument, I think.
Are you really sure about that? Maybe now, but while it was happening, I'm not so sure everyone was on board. Quite the opposite.
Would you consider ethno-nationalists of other nations (far) left, based on (speculating) their economic/women's rights/LGBT/other social stances?
(Orthogonally, I can certainly empathize with being pro-something, but not pro-everything-that-something-does. There's certainly nothing intrinsic to a Jewish state that would require firing at unarmed crowds.)
If your implication is that I'm an ethno-nationalist, I don't think that characterizes Israel or my thoughts about it, however much "ethnostate" is a favorite slur of people to use against Israel.
(A basic law in Israel is roughly like a constitutional amendment in the US.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law%3A_Israel_as_the_Nat...
I ran the question by AI, and it seems to think that somewhere between 30-50 since WWII have done so explicitly.
Edit: I asked ChatGPT "How many nations have declared themselves to be the Nation-State of a people?" earlier and got the same answer as you. I asked again just now and got "Israel is the only nation in the world that has legally declared itself the “Nation‑State of the Jewish People.”" [I didn't specify Jewish]
Can't rely on AI.
In the 2022 census, only 76.5% of people in Ireland were ethnically Irish. Over 20% of the population are foreign-born, with the most common countries of foreign birth being Poland, the UK, India, Romania and Lithuania.
So Ireland is far less homogeneous than you perceive it to be.
But the real issue here isn’t how diverse the state’s population is in practice, it is how the state defines itself in its own founding documents (such as the constitution) - as a state for all its citizens, or as a state for a people (ethnos) which is only a subset of the state’s citizens? Israel is (2) but essentially all Western nations nowadays are (1).
Even though the French and German constitutions still express the idea of a “national people” for whom the state exists, they consider anyone who is naturalised as a citizen as joining that people (“ethnos”). By contrast, a non-Jew can immigrate to Israel and become an Israeli citizen-but the state will still not consider them a member of the people for whom the state exists-only conversion to Judaism does that, and only if their conversion is accepted as valid by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate-non-Orthodox conversions will not be accepted, but they sometimes even reject conversions by overseas Orthodox Rabbis whom they don’t consider “rigorous” enough.
So Israel is actually unique in this regard - no Western nation makes becoming “not just a citizen of the state, but a member of the people for whom it exists” contingent on religious conversion. If you want a parallel, you’d have to look at the Islamic world, where non-Muslims are sometimes (not always) permitted citizenship, but are denied membership in the category of “nation for whose sake the state exists”
And there is alot of tension right now because of that. Not just in Ireland, but much of the West.
But really, why do you think states exist if not to protect the interests of its underlying culture/ethnicty/group. If not, why Canada refuse to join USA as a 51st state? From an economic perspective it would be logical, fron a political perspective they would have decisive power due to their relative population. What is the fundamental reasoning behind the refusal to join?
Trump’s idea of Canada as a US state is constitutionally ludicrous, because it ignores the fact that Canada is already a federation of provinces - which are essentially equivalent to states, choosing a different name was fundamentally a branding exercise not a difference of substance-indeed, when Britain’s colonies in Australia federated, they decided to be called “states” not “provinces”, because their greater physical distance from the US made them feel less of a need to distinguish themselves from the US. So Canada as a 51st state would create the globally near-unprecedented scenario of a federation within a federation, states within a state. [0] Why would anyone wish to experience such a constitutional novelty?
If you were serious about merging the US and Canada, a more sensible way to do it would be to admit Canada’s provinces as US states. But the problem with that proposal, is not only do most Canadians not want that, I doubt most Americans would either. Sure, Republicans might seem open to the idea as long as it remains a Trump thought bubble with zero chance of ever being implemented - but actually adding Canada’s provinces as US states would fundamentally upset the balance between Republicans and Democrats in the US, most of Canada’s provinces would act like blue states in the US-even many conservatives in Canada are closer to conservative Democrats than liberal Republicans-and would probably shift US politics as a whole in a more “progressive” direction. I think if it actually started to seem like a realistic prospect, Republicans would turn against it out of their own political self-interest and block it.
I think the most realistic scenario in the long-run, is a sort of “exchange” in which Canada loses some provinces to the US (most likely Alberta) but then progressive-leaning areas of the US secede to join Canada. North America might end up reorganised along ideological lines, “Blue-America+Canada” vs “Red-America+Alberta”. Not happening any time soon, but over a century or two I don’t think the possibility can be ruled out.
[0] not totally unprecedented, in that Soviet-era Russia was a federation within the larger federation of the USSR-but the Soviet Union’s authoritarian political system made its federalism more nominal than real, nobody knows how a federation-within-a-federation would work in practice in combination with a genuinely democratic political system
And it isn't "essentially limited to Western Europe". The same is true of the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand – naturalisation as a citizen automatically makes you an official member of the "nation for whom the state exists". I believe it is true for most or all Latin American nations as well.
Now, Israel is not unique globally speaking – I think Malaysia's bumiputera status is a rather close parallel. But I doubt that's a comparison most Zionists are keen to draw attention to.
> "civic" nation-states) and non-nation-states
If you are going to argue that "Germany is a civic nation state, the US is a non-nation-state", that is a false and arbitrary distinction. Because American nationalism is an entirely real thing – but in its mainstream contemporary manifestation it is civic nationalist, not ethnic nationalist, just like how mainstream contemporary German nationalism is civic nationalist not ethnic nationalist. Now, historically America was arguably racial nationalist – America was a nation, not necessarily for any particular White ethnicity, but for White people [0] – but it has evolved from racial nationalism into civic nationalism
[0] The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited US citizenship by naturalization to "free white persons". The Naturalization Act of 1870 made people of African descent eligible for citizenship by naturalization, but people who were categorised as neither "white" nor "African" remained ineligible for citizenship by naturalisation until the The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (the McCarran-Walter Act) removed all racial restrictions on naturalisation. So US nationality law arguably was explicitly racially nationalist from 1790 to 1870, and remained so in a somewhat watered down sense from 1870 to 1952.
It doesn't really take away from my main point. Yes, Western Europe and pretty much all New World countries are "civic" oriented. No Western state, Israel included I am pretty sure, has in their constitution or equivalent that a subset of citizens has legal rights other citizens do not. The closest I can think of to what you asked for is actually the Baltics - not a citizen-subgroup distinction, but where there is a complex situation due to not having granted most non-ethnic residents at the time of independence automatic citizenship. Otherwise, we are primarily talking about symbolism in the legal documents and cultural norms in the population. Japan is pretty clearly an ethnic nation-state. Eastern European states were generally ethnic nation-states at the time of independence, but some are moving closer to civic nation-states now.
But that's defining the word "nation" in a sense which deliberately skews it towards "ethnic nationalism" and away from "civic nationalism". If you are going to insist on defining it in that narrow way, then arguably France and Germany aren't "nation states" any more either, even though they used to be.
And while contemporary mainstream American self-definition is predominantly civic, 19th century Americans commonly viewed their nation in racial terms, as a state for the white race – so, if France and Germany have become "non-nation states" by transforming ethnic nationalism into civic nationalism, then in fundamentally the same way, America has become a "non-nation state" by transforming racial nationalism into civic nationalism
> No Western state, Israel included I am pretty sure, has in their constitution or equivalent that a subset of citizens has legal rights other citizens do not
Israel's constitution insists that all citizens are formally equal in the rights of citizenship, but at the same time officially relegates non-Jewish citizens to the symbolic status of "second class citizens" – what Western state has a constitution that does that? And, the reality on the ground is – there are complaints of real discrimination in practice against non-Jewish citizens of Israel, and unless you are going to argue that none of those complaints are valid, the idea that official symbolic discrimination in the constitution has no causal role to play in sustaining practical discrimination on the ground is rather implausible
> The closest I can think of to what you asked for is actually the Baltics - not a citizen-subgroup distinction, but where there is a complex situation due to not having granted most non-ethnic residents at the time of independence automatic citizenship
The Baltics do not have any legally recognised category of "citizens of the state but not members of the nation for whom it exists"; Israel does. The complex issue of long-term residents who lack citizenship you point to is real, but it isn't the same thing as what Israel does
> Japan is pretty clearly an ethnic nation-state
De jure, it isn't. Japanese law and court decisions are very clear: naturalised Japanese citizens are officially just as Japanese as anyone else. Membership in Japan's historical ethnic supermajority (the Yamato people) has no formal constitutional significance
Now, no denying the social reality that there is a lot of informal discrimination against non-Yamato Japanese citizens. But that social reality has no constitutional basis.
So you are comparing a state which officially declares in its constitution that some of its citizens are "not members of the nation for whom it exists", to a state whose constitution and laws never officially say that, even though it arguably remains a widespread informal belief/attitude amongst its population. Both de jure and de facto "second class citizenship" are bad, but there is an important sense in which the former is a lot worse
The answer is - no, I wouldn't want Jews being a minority in Israel; I think Jews need at least one homeland where they are a majority, especially given how Jews have been treated throughout history. But also, it's complicated, and really depends on how we get there.
France, US, England etc allow immigration. But all of them put caps and conditions on immigration. All of them also have fierce internal debates around the topic of immigration, because of the fear of a fundamental change in the character of the country.
Both those points apply to most nations, not just the Jewish one. (This reply may seem curt, but I'm not disagreeing)
The Zionist movement started because early Jewish leaders saw this phenomenon gaining traction, and understood that as these national identities were created and states started being created for them, many wouldn't consider Jews part of their "nationality", therefore Jews also needed a national homeland. This was, in retrospect, the exactly correct analysis, given the pogroms that happened in the 19th century and given the Holocaust.
Despite so many people claiming otherwise, there's not much different about Israel than many other European nations.
"ethnonationalism" is a redundancy, ethne and natio are just the Greek and Latin words for the same concept
This is sophistic equivocating. Stratification based on ethnicity is neither a necessary nor essential component of nationalism.
Sorry but you’re either dishonest or totally delusional. Tens of thousands of children murdered, nobody even thinks of putting a stop on this, and you say « it’s not widespread ». What?
There has been so so many atrocities, even before Oct 7th committed by both the Israeli army and armed settlers in the West Bank. There is never, NEVER, anyone being held accountable. Snipers shoot kids on the beach? All good. Torture and rape in your prisons? Fine.
Dude, you should fix your society. You are simply heading towards your own destruction, morally, on the side of public sympathy, and merely as people capable of living with other people peacefully.
edit: minor typo.
why israel is arming gangs in gaza
The GHF undermines Hamas and UNWRA like nothing else has. It terrifies them and they are pulling all the propoganda stops to delegitimise them.
And yes, the IDF has been relying on abhorrent & violently escalatory tactics since at least 1982 (Lebanon invasion).
On that note, I recently picked up an excellent book (“Our American Israel”) that dives pretty deep into the US-Israel relationship, and spends a good chunk of time on how the invasion of Lebanon was received by the West.
There are definitely some parallels between 1982 and the ongoing Gaza genocide with regards to the use of violence. But the most salient point to me is that it is quite clear that Israel learned a ton on how to ensure its image in the West does not easily get tarnished going forward.
100k dead, more injured, highest number of child casualties in any modern conflict, countless statements of genocidal intent at the highest levels. But population growth is the metric we need focus on at this point, because that’s the Hasbara talking point du jour.
Unfortunately the Israeli lobby has so much money and power they would silence anyone who says that publicly by accusing them of being antisemitic.
You see, whataboutism is really only worth calling out in super low risk environments, because the potential future consequences are irrelevant. When we’re talking about putting the world powers on trial, the future consequences are now worth considering. Get off reddit, it’s poisoning your ability to reason.
At this point people should really take a look in the mirror.
too late, m8
anybody with unfavorable opinions against Israeli government is a "leftist stereotype"
any unfavorable opinions and facts against Israeli government gets you pinned as a "anti-semite" these days
What is this discourse? “Sharpen the fractal of demographics and opinions until you get some rare alignment between them, and you find a supposedly irrefutable and most valid position.” Can you see why winning Internet arguments and getting upvotes doesn’t translate to your goals?
Of course you should share these thoughts and forums like these should publish them. But as much as I hate the Intellectual Dark Web and its philosophies, which are as ridiculous as, “you can gain power by thinking about things differently,” I think they are right that popularity contests are not the end all be all of conflict resolution.
The October terror attack is not to be defended, but the response is disgusting behavior by the state of Israel. There’s nothing proportionate about this. Rather Israel sees this as an opportunity to strengthen its position and wipe out its enemies - and innocent men, women, and children.
In the United States, we talk about Israel as if it must be protected because it’s the Middle East’s only democracy. It is not a liberal democracy. It exists only to protect the rights of one type of people with one particular type of ethnicity. In America, we wouldn’t recognize this as a democracy.
For our part, it’s important to protect our own interests in the region and so yes, strange bedfellows. But given Netanyahu’s comfort with war crime, given Israel’s weak and distorted democratic institution, and given what nationalism can do to a country, we should be very careful to balance and diversify our interests.
Israel in another 10 years might not be recognizable. It’s cause for alarm.
The strange thing is, this statement held true before October 7th. Hopefully not everyone has forgotten that there were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets before the war, protesting what Netanyahu was doing to the Israeli government.
If you mean in terms of the personal safety of the Israeli protesters, it's not dangerous or anything. Certainly nothing like the very brave people in Gaza protesting Hamas, who are actually living through hell, and who risk their lives by protesting.
Of course not comparable to Gaza.
Arab citizens of Israel are systematically and legally discriminated against to an extent with no parallel in the US, and Arabs in the occupied territories (West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza) have effectively no rights at all.
It’s not even about being shameful about Israel support at that point. It’s going to be a black stain on both countries forever.
The article generally describes the IDF being asked to do crowd control with lethal weapons. For the most part it also described casualties (number unclear/unknown) as unintentional consequences.
I agree this does not look good but it's also not a matter of fact either. We don't know the facts, we don't know the scale, we don't know the intentions, we don't know who is making the allegations, we don't know the details.
War crimes in this war should be dealt with. Nuremberg trials is really not the right analogy.
War crimes for firing into a crowd of civilians, for both the one that ordered it, and those that executed it, should definitely be at the same levels as the nuremberg trials.
The fact that it will never happen doesn’t detract from that. Happily, the ICC seems to already know so, which is why there’s warrants out for all these Isrealian leaders, no?
Even if Israel was a signatory the ICC should only intervene after Israel has done its own investigation and if it failed to hold the relevant standards.
If there were war crimes committed then people need to be held accountable.
The scale of the alleged war crimes is totally different than the crimes persecuted in Nuremberg.
We have investigated our highest leaders, and have found them absolutely blameless. Netanyahu is often found on the same golden cloud that Putin is often seen floating around on.
There’s a reason we have a police force instead of allowing the criminals to investigate themselves.
The League of Nations had no jurisdiction over the Germans (that I'm aware of).
The matter of countries doing their own investigation is fundamental to the ICC and so is the matter of its jurisdiction being restricted to member countries. That is part of the convention that established it.
The police in contrast, in a certain country, has jurisdiction and the power to arrest criminals. The ICCs powers come from the countries that are members of it extending their powers to this body via mutual agreement.
The more proper analogy would be that me and a bunch of friends will issue an arrest warrant and put you in jail because we feel like it.
EDIT: This is known as the principle of complementarity: https://www.icc-cpi.int/about/how-the-court-works
"The ICC is intended to complement, not to replace, national criminal systems; it prosecutes cases only when States do not are unwilling or unable to do so genuinely."
Re: Jurisdiction: "In the absence of a UNSC referral of an act of aggression, the Prosecutor may initiate an investigation on his own initiative or upon request from a State Party. The Prosecutor shall first ascertain whether the Security Council has made a determination of an act of aggression committed by the State concerned. Where no such determination has been made within six months after the date of notification to the UNSC by the Prosecutor of the situation, the Prosecutor may nonetheless proceed with the investigation, provided that the Pre-Trial Division has authorized the commencement of the investigation. Also, under these circumstances, the Court shall not exercise its jurisdiction regarding a crime of aggression when committed by a national or on the territory of a State Party that has not ratified or accepted these amendments."
The Palestinians and Gaza are not a state party. Israel is not a state party. and the UNSC has not referred this to the ICC. Therefore the ICC has no jurisdiction.
It is the position of both the ICC itself and the United Nations General Assembly that Palestine is a state and ergo entitled to be a member of the ICC. Whether Israel (or you) accept this definition of Palestine is largely irrelevant.
Moreover, whether Israel is or is not a state party to the ICC is completely without bearing on the ICC investigation in question, since Gaza is not part of Israel's territory under any definition, including Israel's own. To my knowledge, no state recognises Gaza as part of Israel, including Israel itself.
TLDR: It is Palestine's membership of ICC that results in the ICC lawfully exercising its jurisdiction on the territory of Gaza.
You are free to assert that you have fact on your side, that there is no dispute, that it's "not a matter of 'position'" all you want, but none of it matters. Your position on whether Palestine is a state (or mine, for that matter) is about as relevant to the membership of the ICC as our respective positions on the planethood of Pluto.
It's fascinating that Israel thinks it can dictate the membership of a body that it refuses to recognise, let alone join. The ICC decides who is a member of the ICC, and the ICC - consistent with widespread state practice in every continent on Earth - considers Palestine a state.
https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/icc-pre-trial-chamber-i-issues-...
"In today's decision, Pre-Trial Chamber I recalled that the ICC is not constitutionally competent to determine matters of statehood that would bind the international community. By ruling on the territorial scope of its jurisdiction, the Chamber is neither adjudicating a border dispute under international law nor prejudging the question of any future borders. The Chamber's ruling is for the sole purpose of defining the Court's territorial jurisdiction. "
And yes, who am I to argue with China, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Yemen, Afghanistan, Egypt, Belarus, Syria, Sudan, and their friends. Clearly Palestine is a state.
EDIT: for a more coherent argument: https://www.drake.edu/media/departmentsoffices/dussj/2006-20...
EDIT2: Asking the various AIs supports my position. Despite the recognition of various countries Palestine is not legally a state as it does not meet the criteria for being one. I do agree that the Palestinians have been very effective in fighting Israel in the diplomatic arena but unless they actually negotiate in good faith with Israel I wouldn't count on their future prospects to actually have their own country. Palestinians in general also oppose the two state solution anyways.
I'm sorry but you're the one who is not engaging.
I just used AI at the end of this conversation as a sanity check. I looked at my own arguments and said hey, maybe I am wrong. It wouldn't hurt you to consider this to. I think LLMs are a good tool for this.
Maybe you should consider why many well-meaning rational people take a different position than you on this issue as well. This "state" was formed out of thin air, without meeting any normal criteria for statehood, as a legal weapon against Israel. It does not meet any requirement for an actual state, it does not look like a state, it is not a state. Maybe you should give me your definition of a state.
Ask yourself how come there's no Kurdish state? How come there's no Baloch state? How come there's no state for the Sikhs? What makes Palestinians more deserving? The ethnic minorities in Iran would also love statehood...
EDIT: I'm always open to the possibility of being wrong. I.e. I'm open to look at facts that contradict my theories. Right now my theory is that Israel is being unjustly targeted as a result of antisemitism and world politics. There is a massive, well funded, PR campaign against Israel (primarily by Qatar but also with interests from China and Russia). There is a clear pattern of propaganda messaging here, including the one you're echoing. This doesn't mean Israel is always right. It doesn't mean there aren't war crimes (there are in any war). But it should be clear if you dig deeper there are different standards applied and there is a concerted effort to e.g. equate Jews/Israelis to Nazis, strip Israel of its legitimacy, not allow it to defend itself to the level that other countries are allowed to, excuse Hamas (and Iran e.g.) genocidal attempts and war crimes towards Israel, rewrite history, redefine language. Excuse and normalize human rights violations. This campaign is decades long. Again, I would really love to see Israel behave better but that campaign doesn't need or care about Israel's behavior here. This campaign isn't strictly against Israel, it's also against the west and western values. This campaign also directly translates into higher rates of antisemitism and violence against Jewish people worldwide.
The UN as a body, and the adjacent entities, mostly represents oppressive non-democratic regimes where people do not enjoy the freedoms we enjoy in the west. Ignoring the various outright lies, leveraging what the UN says or doesn't say as a way of supporting a moral, or factual, argument is problematic. UN (UNRWA) workers are documented to have participated in the Oct 7th attack on Israeli civilians. You would have a higher chance of making me change my mind by addressing the question of Palestinian statehood from first principles. Do they control territory? Do they control their borders? Do they have their own currency? Passports? What is the history of their state? What exactly makes them a state other than the political scheming to try and force Israel to accept a two state solution that Palestinians themselves reject today, rejected numerous times in the past, going back to the partition plan, and everyone knows has no chance in hell of succeeding. It's true that international recognition is an important part of being a state, but one can't make a state out of thin air solely with international recognition. Historical precedence is that a state needs to exist and then be recognized, not the other way around.
https://libertascouncil.org/only-20-percent-of-people-live-i...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatari_involvement_in_US_highe...
https://forward.com/opinion/574346/freepalestine-tiktok-isra...
Palestinians deserve what every other human being deserves. This is not it. This is not the way. This is regression in freedom and norms. This is a post-truth world.
In that context you’re correct, that Palestinian statehood doesn’t look like others’. Recognition of statehood by any entities is a strategic choice to attempt to break the stranglehold the Zionist narrative has on global politics.
One of the major goals of Israel’s anti-statehood work is to provide people like you the internal cover needed to continue to avoid looking at Israel’s war crimes and genocidal actions. It helps mend the cognitive dissonance between what Israel does and what Israel claims to be.
I hope someday you have the capacity to let go of that narrative and heal what’s broken inside of you.
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
But it's still a total lie and misrepresentation overall. This fracture was created and maintained primarily by Palestinians and reflect the division in the Palestinian public between the Jihadists and those that prefer other methods to eliminate Israel and the Jews. There is also a backdrop of the PA refusing to engage in dialogue. Israel did hand over Gaza to the PA and Israel did and still supports the PA to date. Without Israel's support the PA would not exist.
https://www.cija.ca/palestinians_have_never_had_the_opportun...
The Oslo peace process failed due to Hamas suicide bombing attacks on Israel that made it impossible to make any progress. Gaza failed due to Hamas taking over and using it as a platform to attack Israel. But more fundamentally Palestinians (enough or most of them) don't want peace, they want Israel destroyed. The Oct 7th attack wasn't called "stop the occupation of Gaza", it was called the "Al Aqsa flood". The intent was to murder all Jews in Israel.
But yes, once Hamas was a fact in Gaza, and there was zero chance of getting the PA to retake control, the Israeli government in its foolishness thought that stability with Hamas was better with chaos and maybe some benefit from that political split. There was also a ton of international pressure on Israel to let money and aid flow into Gaza under Hamas. There was really no obvious alternative other than the IDF retaking Gaza (which would look more or less like it's looking now, maybe slightly less worse, but not something the Israelis wanted to pursue).
There's nothing broken inside me. I would love to see peace. You should take a pause yourself and ask why you're joining the antisemitic mob here and aligning yourself with people who share none of your values. You should ask yourself for an example of when did Palestinians try to actually have peaceful coexistence and denounce terrorism and violence. I mean that would surely counter Israel's narrative here? The answer is never. Gaza launched rockets into Israeli population center and Palestinians in the West Bank keep murdering Israeli civilians. You got cause and effect completely reversed.
There is no cognitive dissonance between what Israel does and what it claims to be. There is a very logical and clear story about how we got here if you viewpoint is Israel's right to exist and to defend its citizens and you look at facts and history and not fairy tales or lies.
"the stanglehold the Zionist narrative has" is blatant antisemitism. This is the same old story of the Zionists (Jews) controlling the world. The truth is it's the anti-Israeli narrative has a hold on global politics and Israel despite mostly being in the good side barely gets by.
It didn't happen. We didn't do it. If it happened Hamas did it. If we did it they deserved it. Oh it's on video, our bad, we did an oopsie.
Countless of cases like this.
So yes, an Israeli ambush in Gaza that opened fire on a civilian vehicle is something that should be looked at. But they get a lot of leeway because it's a war and in a war mistakes can happen. In order for this to be a crime you need to show beyond doubt the soldiers knew these were civilians and intentionally wanted to kill them. There were other civilians that passed unharmed through the same forces and so proving intent is pretty difficult.
Whether it's on video or not doesn't matter. In a war soldiers will potentially kill civilians. The bar is different from peacetime operations. The war was started, and is continued, by Hamas. Yes it looks bad. Yes the IDF should do whatever it can to minimize it. Yes there are whackos.
I realize I'm not going to convince you but I believe that if the Palestinians stopped using violence you wouldn't see any incidents of Palestinians getting killed by security forces. The stories they are telling you about resistance and occupation are false. I am painting a broad brush here- Some Palestinians just want to live in peace. But too many do not. Pressure on Israel is misguided. Pressure should be on Hamas to surrender. Pressure on Israel emboldens Hamas, makes the war go on longer, and is not helping Palestinians. Even if you believe Israelis are evil you should still pressure the Palestinians because they are the ones who need to end this war. After the war is over we can talk about what to do next. Israelis can't and won't be pressured into letting Hamas remain in power.
I do not endorse any behavior that constitutes war crimes. You- are. Hamas use of hospitals, schools and mosques, is a war crime. Hamas combatants not wearing uniform is a war crime. Hamas targets civilians as a matter of policy, it's not an exception it's the rule. Taking civilian hostages is a war crime. Firing rockets into population centers is a war crime.
Hamas is very clear about its genocidal intents and acts in line with its intentions.
They did this long before Oct 7th and never stopped:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_suicide_attacks
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg58zqgle9ro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avera_Mengistu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_...
Hamas' patrons, Iran, and their proxies, also intentionally commits war crimes and targets population centers. They don't even pretend to be trying to get at military targets. They target hospitals:
This is strategy, e.g. check this out (Iranian forces in Syria): https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjw4egp7lwno
"As we pass through Khan Shaykhun, we come across a street painted in the colours of the Iranian flag. It leads to a school building that was being used as an Iranian headquarters."
Are you including Palestinians that are Israeli citizens? The West Bank? Those living outside the region?
Word choice matters here.
Is Israel executing a plan to kill all Gazans?
I am 100% convinced Israel is not actually committing a genocide against Palestinians. That claim has no factual support. Do I agree with everything Israel is doing? No. Are there war crimes being committed by the IDF? Possibly yes, not necessarily different than any other modern war waged ever.
What would you suggest, based on Jewish ideology, should have been the proper response to Oct 7th? Would you go to war? Would you wage it differently? How would you deal with the realities on the ground?
Firing on people seeking food is not right.
The use of the word genocide, coined to describe the systemic murder of 6 million Jews for no reason, in this context, is very clearly meant as a form of diminishing/denying the Holocaust. There is just no other way to look at it. If Hamas was to surrender and return the hostages would Israel be sending all Palestinians to gas chambers?
"The word "genocide" was coined in 1944 by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin. He combined the Greek word "genos" (meaning race or tribe) with the Latin word "cide" (meaning killing) to create the term. Lemkin used the word to describe the systematic destruction of groups of people, specifically referencing the Nazi's actions during the Holocaust"
https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Ele...
Israel has been killing Palestinian civilians. Israel has been restricting food and medical supplies going to Palestinian civilians. All of that was beyond reasonable in regard to military objectives (e.g., bombing hospitals to take out a weapons stash). Israel's political and military leaders have expressed their opinions that Palestinians (not just Hamas or militants) are an ethnicity deserving punishment.
Note that, in the ICC's definitions, genocide does not require intent to eliminate the entirety of a group. It only requires targeting people based on their belonging to a protected group with the intent to diminish that group.
"Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people."
Stop the Israeli genocide on Palestinian people.
An article from October in the NY Times detailing some well-documented atrocities ("44 health care workers saw multiple cases of preteen children who had been shot in the head or chest in Gaza") was published as an opinion piece, in spite of the fact that it consisted of dozens of eyewitness accounts. [0][1]
The incomparable sway that Israel holds in American media and American politics prevents pressure to hold those responsible accountable on an international level. When there's enough pressure within Israel to demand accountability for something terrible (and that's rare enough, outside of their peace movement) the conclusion drawn is typically that the soldiers are just careless, but not acting with malice. [2] If there's a single instance of an IDF soldier being held accountable for a civilian killing in this conflict, someone could make me feel a little better by sharing it.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/09/opinion/gaza-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yotam...
(Btw, I don't necessarily agree that that article proves the IDF is firing on children, there's actually no evidence of that presented in the article. But I want to forestall a common "pro-Israeli" objection that is not true in this case.)
I think the appropriate term is "circumstantial evidence." A doctor wouldn't be in the position to actually witness the cause of a gunshot wound (hey, maybe all these well-placed gunshot wounds are the result of Palestinians shooting their own kids, I guess would be the alternate explanation...), but let's not pretend that these reports are not evidence of crimes, evidence worthy of investigation.
It doesn't matter whether it happens in Israeli-occupied territory or an American middle school. It's absolutely reprehensible. "stop killing children you dislike" or "stop targeting journalists" should not be a controversial demand in the 21st century. Certainly not to a modernized military.
Thousands of kilometers away.
The IDF can be highly sophisticated in their plans and methods when they want to.
Calling it sophisticated does not change that fact.
That they chose to level infrastructure across Gaza instead is indicative.
And it'd be real stretch to assume they did so even for military-economic reasons.
They knew the world community would give them some leeway after Oct 7th, so exploited it as far as possible to militarily achieve their geo-political goals.
To wit, the elimination of anything resembling a Palestinian state: politically, economically, and demographically.
Which is cynical and evil as fuck, given they're smart enough to realize they eventually either have to (a) kill every Palestinian or (b) make a deal.
Instead, they decided killing 50,000+ Palestinians was worth improving their negotiation position and kicking the can down the road.
That’s my read as well. I was strongly pro-Israel for decades and while I was never comfortable with the plight of Palestinians Hamas had a lot of the blame, too, but the last year really moved me over to thinking that the people who said most of the “accidents” over the years were intentional were correct. They can pull off these amazingly accurate strikes when they want to, it’s implausible that they suddenly have the precision of a drunken 18th century musketeer around aid workers and civilians. Their leadership clearly do not care and collective punishment is a war crime no matter who does it.
HN readers can recognize the tactic in other parts of our world too. It’s the strategy of people in power who believe they can control the chaos. When chaos in one group is a benefit to the other, chaos becomes a worthy status quo. When your military is infinitely more powerful, any uprising can eventually be exhausted, and you get automatic casus belli. The Cold War was full of this destabilizing politics, where superpowers tried their best to turn functioning socities into hellholes, in the hopes that it would spread in the enemy’s region. The same works for Israel. The less legitimacy Gaza and the West Bank Palestinians have, the longer they can keep building settlements. If they ever gain independence, it will cause another war, which has been planned for, because settlements have been overwhelmingly built on higher ground. Illegal settlers will not give up easily, and will likely gain military assistance.
A better analog might be Hezbollah. Surgically dispatched. Resolved with minimal follow-on nonsense from both sides.
No, it’s war. Targeted killing of a military scientist is war. Gunning down civilians trying to get food is a war crime. If we start labelling all war as criminal, the term loses all meaning.
This claim is not proved. In Europe there is no capital punishment for mass murders but Israel can kill anyone they want with their family without trial or even conclusive evidence and no one can condemn it.
If you do it with a crude hand made bomb it is called terrorism but if you do it with F35 it is called self-defense.
Eh, there is a broad consensus on what constitutes a war crime. But there is also broad precedent for these rules not applying to major powers. (China annexed Tibet in 1951.)
I’d also argue that recent history has almost rendered the term worthless, as activists label practically every civilian death as a war crime.
All of this does not apply to the conflict with Hamas. With them muddling the lines, it’s extremely hard to fight a “clean“ war. You’re between a rock and a hard place - either you lose but with your head held high and your moral compass intact, or you stoop to their level thereby slowly losing your values but win in the end. If that win is worth it or not, is heavily debated in the rest of the world, but only debated in the fringes of Israeli society. But no military expert is able to suggest a real alternative of fighting Hamas without inflicting heavy losses on one’s own army.
I find the committed war crimes abhorrent and wish they’d be heavily prosecuted at least.
This isn’t just a matter of vague speculation as there are historical cases outside of Israel on which to see how things like this develop and what the consequences are both for the victims and the soldiers. These historical accounts also indicate soldiers committing these sorts of actions become victims themselves with catastrophic mental health disorders.
Israel got in trouble with ICJ court, because of quotes from top government officials. Government of Israel was very specific what they will do to Gaza! This was even full scale bombing started!
Trying to reinterpret this as a problem of "military discipline", and "soldiers are victim as well" is just another level of cynicism!
It's happened, many times. Usually this doesn't make front-page news, but soldiers that break the law are sometimes held accountable. Not nearly enough, and I think it should be far more publicized as a deterrent effect (the fact that it isn't is a pretty big indictment of the current government). But it's certainly not laughable.
"prompting the military prosecution to call for a review into possible war crimes".
A part of what the Isareli opposition has been pushing for in the last few years has been removing Netanyahu from power and presumably jailing him because of the corruption charges.
That said the soldiers pulling the trigger are committing crimes. These are patently illegal actions to a common person standard which eliminates any defense of following military orders. That being said the soldiers, at least, are committing crimes. Accountability starts at the source of the crime.
If the government is ordering these actions then those are illegal orders, according to international standards of military conduct. The soldiers on the ground must ignore those orders on the basis of patently illegal conduct according to a common person standard and the officials facilitating those orders can be investigated for issuing war crimes.
As an example read about Slobodan Milošević
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87
As far as I can tell Israel doesn't particularly care for even looking like it's trying to behave responsibly. I don't think they've held anyone responsible for even some of the most obvious war crimes we have evidence of being committed.
Because that is what keeps the ICC off of their backs. The ICC only has authority to step in in cases where national jurisdiction is unable or unwilling to prevent and prosecute war crimes.
In functioning democracies in general, sure, you have to be careful not to tar everyone with the same brush. But in the specific case of Israel in 2015, it's not realistic to argue that the government isn't a single entity, so some parts of it may not be responsible (or even in favour of) crimes against humanity.
When it comes to the list of things that Israelis fear, being sentenced to a firing squad is very low down.
If Israel had regime change, new regime and majority of voters would be pro Arab... New government could actually enforce existing laws!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_war_crimes_in_the_Gaza...
https://web.archive.org/web/20240104213949/https://www.middl...
https://web.archive.org/web/20240424005326/https://news.un.o...
https://web.archive.org/web/20240409122432/https://thehill.c...
For that to happen, the government, and the overall population, would need to consider what's being done in Gaza and on the West Bank to actually be a genocide. I don't think popular support for that actually exists in Israel. Last time I checked, most of the population supported the annexation of Gaza and the forced eviction of the local population to neighboring countries.
I don't think I'll live to see a two-state solution.
AI being whitewashing for IP is disruptive and troubling.
It being whitewashing for war crimes is a much more serious problem.
If Israel/IDF put in place a automated system that gave effectively caused war crimes to be committed, some humans in positions of power need to be held responsible and face consequences.
The world should not allow cases where (a) it's undisputed that war crimes occurred but (b) authority was interwoven in an automated system in such a way that humans escape consequences.
Sadly, it'll probably take the fall of right-wing Israeli and current Russian governments to have a hope of passing through.
Human culpability for crimes committed by large human systems isn't ever going to happen. I wouldn't hold my breath for the automated ones.
I expect with the first first-world drone war on a third-world country, there might be pressure at the UN to put something in place. At least for the automating genocide case.
But yes. I’ll speak without snarkiness.
Thank you for maintaining this community.
> Haaretz has learned that the Military Advocate General has instructed the IDF General Staff's Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism – a body tasked with reviewing incidents involving potential violations of the laws of war – to investigate suspected war crimes at these sites.
Now what will come from this (a proper investigation, etc.), who knows.
I have distaste for Trump but something I appreciate about him is his abilities to stage a theatre with his "fake" bombings. The more mainstream politicians have much more sociopathic tendencies.
If you think about it, %100 of modern wars are about who is going to be the administrator and doesn't feel like can win an election. We live in a world of abundance, there's no reason for a group of people to kill other group for their resources. If it wasn't for the careers of some people with huge egos all this can be sorted out through civil matters. After the wars it gets sorted out anyway, we don't see mass exterminations anymore.
When this Gaza conflict started, I saw how the Israeli protested against their government and demanded peace, so I thought there is a semblance of an excuse for glimpses of abhorrence being reported - "it's a small number of people in power, not the Israeli nation doing it, and also there are always 2 sides to the story".
Since then, there have been unfathomable horrors and crimes against humanity done from the Israel side, with extreme intensity and one-sidedness, and it's now been going for so long. I can find no excuse of any kind anymore, for what has been and is being done in Gaza. I don't think any normal person could. The weight of these things, in my mind at least, is such that if the Israeli people really wanted anything different, it was their human duty and utmost responsibility to stop this by now, in whatever way needed. They didn't... It's sad that people who have suffered so much as well, let themselves become the villains to this depth and extent.
As horrible as the Israeli mindset is, their subjective viewpoint is at least somewhat relatable: An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else, just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead - and will with very high likelihood experience terror attacks themselves. That this upbringing doesn't exactly make you want to engage with the other side is psychologically understandable.
(I'm imaging this as the universal experience of all Jewish Israelis, religious or secular, left or right. I'm excluding the religious and Zionist-ideological angles here, because those are a whole different matter once again)
What I absolutely cannot understand is the behavior of our states. We're pretending to be neutral mediators who want nothing more than to end the conflict, yet in reality, we're doing everything to keep the conflict going. We're fully subscribed to Zionist narrative of an exclusive Israeli right to the land (the justifications ranging from ostensibly antifascist to openly religious) and we're even throwing our own values about universal human rights and national sovereignty under the bus to follow the narrative.
If the messianic and dehumanizing tendencies of Israelis are answered by nothing else than full support and encouragement of their allies, I don't find it exactly surprising that they will grow.
But yeah, in practice, we seem to want it to end with full Israeli dominance, and the Palestinians either emigrating to Egypt and Jordan or vanishing into thin air, I suppose.
No, the majority of the West strongly wants a two-state solution (on the 1967 border, roughly). So did many Israelis, who voted people into office intent on achieving that goal many times.
The problem is, Israel and Palestine never managed to sign an agreement leading to a two-state solution. And in parallel to the peace process, some Palestinians launched the second intifada, a terror campaign which killed many hundreds of Israelis. This eventually lead most Israelis to think that a two-state solution is impossible.
1. You call it "The Israeli PM who pushed for a two state solution" (referring to Rabin), but actually there were other PMs who were negotiating a two state solution with the Palestinians and were elected after - Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert (Ehud Olmert was ten years after the assasination of Rabin).
2. The PM the succeeded Rabin, Ariel Sharon, a long-time right-wing hawk, didn't negotiate with the Palestinians, but did shift Israeli policy to simply leaving the territory without a negotiated settlement. He's the one who pulled Israel out of Gaza, and by all counts, he was poised to do the same and leave the West Bank before he had a stroke.
Olmert, also a historic right-wing hawk, succeeded Sharon, and campaigned openly on the idea of starting to pull settlements out of the West Bank. And he won, with this campaign.
Olmert, btw, to this day is a big peace-advocate, working together with Palestinian partners on trying to bring about a two-state solution. He's also a big critic of the current Israeli government (and famously wrote a piece saying that Israel was committing war crimes in Gaza).
3. Funny enough, another way in which you're technically wrong is that Rabin himself didn't directly advocate for a two-state solution, at least not officially. That was probably his direction, but both Barak and Olmert went much further than him in what they were offering the Palestinian leadership in terms of a deal.
Bonus 4th point: Worth mentioning that calling the person who assassinated Rabin a "right wing Israeli" is pretty wrong too. He was a member of a very extremist right-wing group that did not and does not have any broad support in Israel, as opposed to standard "right wing" positions which do have broad support.
What exactly ARE the goals / demands of every side. Both what they say in public, and what's generally accepted as the rational real goals each side requests / demands / etc via peace talks as well as through violence.
The breakdown could even focus on factions within the nebulous term of 'sides'. An average citizen is likely to have looser criteria than a government / terrorist.
Israel stated goals of war:
1. Return the hostages
2. Remove Hamas regime from Gaza
3. (arguably done) bring north-Israel communities safely back home
Unstated goals:
1. Open Egypt-Gaza border. This had failed.
2. Create safe zone on the Gaza-Israeli border. This is mostly done in practice. This goal cannot be stated (though it'll save many lives)
Hamas goals:
Read Hamas chapter, or see interviews with captured Hamas militants post 7/10 attack (if you believe it's not scripted)
Gazan who are not part of Hamas regime goals: survive
Half the cabinet of the current Israeli government has made public statements to the effect of wanting to starve everyone or kill all the kids.
We've seen the videos and, with !gt, we can read the translations.
It found that 82% of Israelis want to expel Gazans, and 47% of support killing all Palestinians in Gaza.
Article was featured in Haaretz - linked to here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/poll-82-of-israelis-wan...
There's a database tracking those: https://law4palestine.org/law-for-palestine-releases-databas...
If not a genocide, at the very least an ethnocide.
Next step: Riviera Gaza!
All those jew death camps in Gaza must be closed down, for sure.
All those Gaza tanks and those Gaza fighter jets must be taken down.
And don't forget the Gaza navy patrolling the sea, preventing the israelis from fishing for their subsistence.
Totally agree with you.
Now... back to reality...
There are a lot of atrocities being committed in this conflict. But bombing a school that was used as a missile launch site really isn’t one of them.
Mostly Israel due to a firepower disadvantage. But Hamas seems to be about as into committing war crimes as Netanyahu.
In terms of indifference to suffering, the people dying are in Gaza. Not Israel. Hamas should be suing for peace, not posturing because some fucks in Doha would prefer to punt the question. (Palestine unilaterally turning over its hostages would rob Israel of a tremendous amount of leverage.)
And no British person was pubished as war criminal for the war crime of attacking Dresden. :-(
Also, the Germans sent untrained 15 year olds to fight Soviet tanks. That's as close to total battlefield defeat as has ever happened in history.
I say this as someone whose family endured 6 years of Nazi German and Soviet crimes, including genocide, violence, rape, large scale looting and destruction of cultural heritage, and mass destruction of cities (85% of Warsaw alone was reduced to rubble, intentionally and systematically).
Why do I mention that? I mention that to underscore that just war is not utilitarian. You cannot justify Dresden or Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It doesn't mean you can't take strong measures, or that circumstances don't make a difference, only that the circumstances did not morally justify these acts. And it seems that the behavior of the Allies in Dresden and Hiroshima serve as precedent that is used to justify crimes like the leveling of Gaza and treating its civilians like cattle.
They also murdered the Gazan opposition after they were voted into power and have not really allowed voting since. They are pretty much not interested in increasing the situation for the people in Gaza. That's also why they are a terror organization.
The individual Gazans almost certainly have one in mind, likely some variant of the two state solution. But Hamas is in charge, and there is nobody else to talk to about it. Ordinary Gazans don't much like Hamas but they are the only thing standing between them and Israel, who as you know is attacking with impunity.
Israel's nominal goal is to remove Hamas and engage such a negotiation, though there is significant doubt that this tactic is going to lead there. And they know that.
Israelis are roughly equally divided on what they want. About half want to wipe out Gaza and have control of (but not responsibility for) the West Bank. They are the ones in government.
The other half is much more amenable to a two state solution, but they are extremely skeptical of finding it. Long before the October 7 attacks, Israelis routinely have to shelter from rocket attacks. We hear little about them because they are largely ineffective, but it does not give Israelis a lot of confidence in any kind of negotiated settlement. That side is also happy to have Gaza walled off.
And all of these sides are backed by powerful outside forces for whom the conflict itself is their goal.
That is an extremely high level breakdown, as neutral as I can be.
Let's not forget Israel's domestic orthodox/right-wing Jewish terrorism and Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.
Ergo, there's even more incentive for leaders to continually espouse positions they know will never happen, but which play well at home.
As a violence in poli sci professor of mine once quipped, this is a 'the only solution is killing the grandmothers' conflict. Because generational narratives of victimization are so ingrained in large parts of both societies that there is no room for compromise.
Silence extremist voices forcefully, wait a generation, and then there might be a path to peace. :(
Maybe there are some parallels in this situation and late 1800’s-mid 1900’s Western Europe. The civil war on the European continent between Germanic states on one hand and French/British ended when two powerful outsiders (US and Soviet Russia) invaded and split the continent. During this occupation west Europeans nations learned how to live with themselves and to atone for their mistakes and to not repeat these mistakes. But they only learned this because they were under military occupation.
This scenario will most likely not happen in the Middle East and so I think there will not be peace there for generations.
As a colleague from Bahrain once quipped, 'the countries of the Arab world love to use Palestinians as propaganda for domestic purposes, but none of them actually give enough of a shit to make hard choices to solve the problem.'
As long as there are outside forces, such as Iran, willing to embed & fund militants among the Gazan population, the -only- practical solution towards peace is assimilation: have Gazans broken up & spread out through Israel until law enforcement can be practically achieved.
Now assimilation sucks & will likely result in all sorts of social injustice, but I consider it a better alternative to the current ethnic cleansing.
EDIT: @casspipe suggested the option of subsidized resettlement and I agree that is another option that should be explored.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_insurgency_in_Sout...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinai_insurgency#Gaza_Strip_sp...
In general, Arab states and Palestinian leadership argue that naturalizing refugees would undermine their right to return to their original homes. You can interpret this cynically: because many Arab states are not too friendly with Israel, having a massive class of refugees putting political pressure on them could be advantageous, and is probably one of the only ways to "defeat" Israel as a jewish state (because if all of those refugees had the right to live in Israel, jews might become a minority.) But it is true that removing refugee status without a just solution would erase Palestinian claims and rights under international law.
Why not?
Seriously though, if you look back far enough, all land is stolen. I think it's more prudent to focus on the present day.
Still a dick move, but much less so than wiping out an entire group of people.
Sure.
But if you go over to where a stranger lives and build a wall around them. You are responsible if they then starve to death.
If another stranger is delivering food to a different stranger and you kill the food deliverer. You are responsible for that mans death.
These analogies are much more relevant to the discussion. Isreal is disallowing people from delivering food and has even killed people that do (leading to organizations like word food kitchen to leave).
You do realize that a significant fraction of Israel's military budget comes from the US?
The degree to which France and the UK have dodged the question of reparations in this debate is frankly surprising to me.
I agree that subsidized resettlement should be another option explored by middle east nations.
The Arab states seized properties from Mizrahi Jews fleeing to Israel decades ago, land that adds up to multiple times the size of Israel. They have plenty of space to resettle refugees without asking Israel to "buy" their own stolen land back!
I don't like the prospect of hospitals being attacked, but if Hamas houses combatants or arms inside a hospital, attacking Hamas therein does not appear to be a war crime, provided Israel has issued a warning and allowed a reasonable time for Hamas to vacate the hospital.
The Geneva Convention does not provide "One Weird Trick to Avoid Combatants Being Attacked"
And you know what? You can document the torture, sexual assault and murder of innocent prisoners without getting a proper investigation from the ICC. Many US citizens will remember that from Abu Ghraib! Lord only knows how much the CIA is shielding Israel from the fallout of SAVAK. You might as well drop the moralizing pretenses and admit that you don't think a fair trial would be desirable.
Let's say in order to return the hostages (considered popular amongst the Zionists).
Now what is the practical way to execute the war without the abovementioned consequences?
However, war crimes are not a solution.
As far as I'm aware, the citizens of Israel are free to leave that country* (free to enter another country is another issue, but they're also free to move about). It's terrorism and illegal military action to knowingly fire upon civilians. I agree with that for all sides of a conflict. The issue with the other side(s) in this conflict is that they do not present as a clearly identified military force. IMO the most proper solution is the same as evaporatively purifying water. Issue sufficient (<< heavy lifting here) warnings for civilians to leave an area, with an area for them to move to. Then any who remain in the military action area are combatants. Probably just like in the anime episode that showcases this circumstance. (war is hell, that's one of the hells.)
>> In each strike, the order said, officers had the authority to risk killing up to 20 civilians. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/world/middleeast/israel-h...
The very existence of guidance change on civilian casualties should constitute a war crime, because to put it another way, the IDF decided that Palestinian civilian lives were worth less after the terror attacks.
In other metrics, the October attacks killed 1,200 Israelis, plus 1,700 killed in the war. Versus 50,000+ Palestinian fatalities.
So we're at ~1:17 Israeli: Palestinian killed.
I feel like any human can agree there should be an ethical ceiling to that number. Maybe it's lower or higher than the current number, but it being unlimited is genocide.
Ergo, the majority of those casualties could be attributed to military:military.
Given the nature of the Gaza conflict, trying to sub-classify casualties leads inevitably to the 'military aged male' problem.
Civilian casualty ratios are more relevant to ethics, but we don't know that number since Hamas doesn't report their losses.
When one military force blends in with the civilian populace, actual civilian casualties will fall somewhere inbetween extremes (100% of those killed and 0%).
Ergo, excessive casualty ratios indicate that either (a) the enemy military force is larger, (b) the IDF is exceedingly good at killing only enemy combatants without taking casualties, or (c) a large number of civilians are being killed.
I don't think anyone would argue that Hamas has as many fighters as the IDF?
When Hamas fighters repeatedly, strategically, and intentionally fail to do so, I think they bear significant (and even the majority) responsibility for the resulting increase in what you call "actual civilian casualties".
Just because the enemy is harder to find doesn't give blanket license to level apartment blocks because it's easier.
Surely a change in tactics by Hamas could lead to a legitimate reason to change the proportion of civilian risks.
Imagine if Hamas were scrupulously avoiding all civilians and civilian structures by 200 meters before date X and changed tactics on date X to freely intermingle with civilians and occupy civilian structures with military units and arms.
I'd expect before date X for Israel to have minimal civilian casualties be considered acceptable and proportional, but after that change in tactics I would see justification for a change in the math to justify a higher figure as being the lowest reasonable amount of civilian risk.
Furthermore, even if Israel has a justification for large numbers of civilian casualties, there are other portions of the Geneva Convention it's obviously breaching:
>> ART. 53. — Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or co-operative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.
>> ART. 55. — To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.
>> ART. 56. — To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the co-operation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties.
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-...
One is that Hamas governs Gaza and Israel is not occupying Gaza via a sustained and continuous military control of the territory and population, but rather has intermittent military operations and is otherwise more akin to an embargo. (The US was not "occupying Cuba" at the height of the Cuban embargo, for example.)
The other is that Israel is occupying Gaza, notwithstanding Hamas' claim to be independently governing the territory and the lack of continuous occupying military forces holding territory on the ground.
Whether Israel or Hamas has effective control over the territory and its population does not appear to me to have a bright-line/clear-cut answer. I don't think either side has less than 10% control, but I don't think they have more than 90% control either.
Iff they are an Occupying Power, then they have those obligations. Many of those obligations presume an effective control by an on-the-ground occupying force.
Israel certainly has the military capability to control aid, ergo they have the responsibility to facilitate it.
You've earned it.
This argument betrays your bias: that the land is yours (Jewish I mean), and "Arabs" stole it and want to steal it again.
Of course, the other side sees it differently. They see a half a century of immigration to their land culminating in a partition that was imposed from the outside in Western colonialist fashion without the consent of the people living there. They saw massacres and expulsions and ethnic cleansing. That is the root of the conflict.
Of course now 80 years and many complications have passed; both sides have legitimate complaints about the other and many people have been born in both territories making them natives and not part of either colonisation or expulsion. It's difficult.
> All of the death toll coming out of Gaza are from Hamas and they revised the numbers back in April to show 72% of the deaths are military aged males.
This betrays it even more. Not only do you cite a non-credible source going against the consensus, but your argument is literally "Palestinian males between 16 and 45 are fair game for extermination". Not sure what to reply to that.
in this sense Jews are in a much better position because their presence in specifically that area many hundreds of years before Muslim conquest is archeologically documented. Unlike presence of Europeans in Americas or Australia.
What I say does not justify war atrocities. Just that "you are wrong to call it your land" is not a good working logic
Maybe somebody would if they could? Or how about not kicked out but just made subordinate to government by native original owners, how would you like that?
I guess somebody else can say but Americans developed land, built infrastructure and democracy and did good more. But then the same can be said about Israel. And unlike Americans Jews did not invade somewhere new because they were there in BC era
I don't defend bad stuff done by Israel gov but I suggest condemning specifically bad stuff instead of suggesting "bias" that you did. It's a bit more complicated.
Pro-Palestinian commenters usually start with the Balfour Declaration or Theodor Herzl's books, I believe.
I found 1881/1882 a good starting point, because this was the first time there was organized immigration that explicitly followed Zionist plans and ideology - I.e. people were not abstractly thinking about "returning to Jerusalem" and they weren't immigrating into the Ottoman empire for other reasons, but they were deliberately immigrating with the intention of (re-)establishing a "Jewish homeland" in the biblical Land of Israel.
Do I call it sexist? Stereotyping? What? It entirely denies the existence of males as anything other than enemies, and these are still children we’re talking about.
In early 2024, I was chatting with a German colleague of mine. Great guy, politically we were the most aligned out of anyone in our team. The genocide in Gaza was already well under way, so the topic came up. He told me, as if it was incredibly obvious "Well of course as Germany we couldn't possibly say anything about Gaza, given our history." For the rest of my life I will remember exactly that moment, where we were stood, the scene, because it came as a shock; this belief that I'd had since childhood turned out to be entirely wrong. It was the exact opposite - Germany had learnt nothing, in fact they'd learnt even less than the countries they had occupied. It was all a complete ruse, and I really lost all respect I had for how Germany has dealt with it all. A country like Japan at least doesn't even pretend to have learnt anything, and I'm not convinced that's the worse option.
I should've known the second news started flowing out of Germany such as "Award ceremony set to honor novel by Palestinian author at the Frankfurt Book Fair canceled “due to the war in Israel,", along with stuff like designating B.D.S as "antisemitic" but I wanted to believe that was just a tiny minority of ignorant people.
Yes, I know that now "the narrative inside Germany has been turning around" but imo it's far too late, and can't possibly be sincere, being entirely fuelled by external pressure rather than any kind of actual realization.
Fully agreeing with your post - and also, it's not. Maybe for parts of the population (though even there, many are extremely conflicted) but definitely not for the current (conservative) leadership. What worries them is that they find the country increasingly isolated and there is a growing risk they could become personally liable - this forces them to make some concerned noises if the atrocities become undeniable.
But they never stopped practically supporting Israel wherever they can, be it with military aid or preventing EU actions that might put pressure on it. They will also snap back into the unequivocally pro-Israel narrative as soon as they can get away with it.
There's 8 billion people in the world who aren't German. If there's one topic that Germans don't chip in on, it won't move the needle.
Whatever we as Germans say on Israel/Palestine will be taken the wrong way by someone. Critical of Israel? Still an antisemite! Supportive of Israel? Pathological guilt!
It super sucks, but I too will leave it to others to voice strong opinions in this matter. And there's no shortage of that.
So this is actually a super-nice position to be in, you can support your ally no matter what they do, while still looking contrite and morally superior by pulling the "we are Germany, we are not allowed to have a say in the matter" card.
I'm not sure why you think that any of this makes Germany look morally superior. I certainly don't feel that way.
Also, Israel is a trade partner, which is important because the non-western countries are hesitant to trade with them. Israel is culturally integrated into certain European institutions, in part due to German support (soccer, Eurovision, other sports).
I think what grates me is the dishonesty: We want to do both at the same time: A neutral mediator that advocates for the two state solution and the world's (second-)closest ally of Israel. That's like wanting to be both the coach and the referee. At some point it just becomes an insult to everyone's intelligence.
(The US does the same spiel)
How does that distinguish Israel/Palestine from any other issue?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre_denial https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gb94m1/why_...
I was under the impression that Japanese people don't so much deny war crimes, as they just don't talk/learn about the uglier parts of what happened during the first half of the 20th century. Is the Rape of Nanking a well known event in Japan? Are the significant battles and general tactics of the war(s) talked about? Do they talk about the Japanese Army's general treatment of foreign civilians?
I guess, what I'm wondering is if I asked the average person on the street these questions, would they know at all what I'm talking about? Would they have the knowledge to talk about it in more detail?
Is this like in the US where most people have no idea about American intervention in Cuba, and the rest of the meddling that the US was involved in in Latin America?
They would, yes, but mostly because South Korea won’t shut up about it nearly a century and several ‘final’ sets of reparations later. It seems to be about as popular a political crutch in SK as it is to kill Palestinians in Israel.
I don’t know. It is about as relevant to current Japanese as the Dutch colonial past is to me. I’m sure we did plenty of bad stuff, but feeling remorse for it now is just bizarre. People several generations before me committed those crimes.
Also if you care about national interest, it would be counterproductive to "shut up" or forget about past failures for an ego boost. That would make the country detached from reality, isolated from the rest of the world, and prone to the same failures.
Last but not least, it's very insensitive and inconsiderate of you to label South Korean trauma as a mere "political crutch" or the Dutch colonial past as no longer "relevant." Historical injustices can carry on to today's injustices much more than you think. You should try to see the perspective from the other side more before dismissing these things.
It isn't that long ago.
There are still women alive who were used as sex slaves by the Japanese Army. I can see why their (SK) government is unwilling to let the issue be forgotten. Paying reparations does not mean that you can now forget the attrocity. Should the US not teach about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because it was our grandfathers who did it, and we feel like we have made it up by rebuilding Japan? Should we tell the Hibakusha that its time for them to shut-up, and there is no point in talking about what happened since the people who made those attacks are all dead?
The point of this knowledge, at least in the west, isn't to make you feel badly, or remorseful. The point is to remember that there are monsters lurking beneath the surface, even in the modern era. The Banality of Evil (the book) is about demonstrating that even a mediocre, non-fanatical, reluctant Nazi bureaucrat like Eichmann can be a pivotal figure in a genocide. We remember so that we don't repeat. Should we not learn from experiences?
If it’s before my lifetime it’s not something I’m going to feel responsible for.
I completely agree we should ‘learn’ from history. Even teach what happened in school, but we shouldn’t harp on it forever, or manufacture grudges based on it.
At least, not in the way that’s currently happening in Japan anyway. The crux of the issue seems to be they don’t think people that were never involved aren’t sorry enough.
It's true that the far right, disproportionately loud in online circles, tries to downplay all of this like in the sibling comment. It's concerning how social media amplifies these voices, but it's still not mainstream opinion.
Japan obviously learn nothing.
The United States - who made the constitution that banned the military - does exercises with and supports the JDF. Idk if that fits unconstitutional anymore.
Their denial of horrid events and their attempts to suppress the fact that comfort women happened is undeniably awful though and shows many did not learn.
I was under the impression that they had a lot to say about how WWII taught them the virtues of pacifism?
To be children of ethnic cleansing (obviously I’m describing the Holocaust lightly here) and still commit the same crime in Gaza is profound.
It’s a great point you bring up, that being, what have we learned?
Can I ask why you think that American Jews are any more responsible for the crimes of Israel in Gaza than non-Jews, or Jews elsewhere in the world? Do you think that Judaism is a monolith, or that American Jews are the same as all Jews?
I ask because blaming Jews elsewhere for the acts of Israel, and conflating all of Jewry with Israel is a common tactic of anti-Semitic movements. I can't tell if you are doing that intentionally, or if you have just made your point poorly.
Assuming you are acting in good faith, you should look at the history of Black/Jewish relations in the civil rights eras. There was a disproportionate amount of support from American Jews (compared to the population at large) towards the civil rights movement.
MLK himself was outspoken about the support from American Jews:
"How could there be anti-Semitism among Negroes when our Jewish friends have demonstrated their commitment to the principle of tolerance and brotherhood not only in the form of sizable contributions, but in many other tangible ways, and often at great personal sacrifice. Can we ever express our appreciation to the rabbis who chose to give moral witness with us in St. Augustine during our recent protest against segregation in that unhappy city? Need I remind anyone of the awful beating suffered by Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld of Cleveland when he joined the civil rights workers there in Hattiesburg, Mississippi? And who can ever forget the sacrifice of two Jewish lives, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, in the swamps of Mississippi? It would be impossible to record the contribution that the Jewish people have made toward the Negro's struggle for freedom—it has been so great."
It does not matter that someone claims to represent a population, if in obvious fact, they do not.
Germany has indeed still have a ‘vaccination’. How well it works, and whether it is not exploited by politics, is another matter.
Lastly, the conflict in the Middle East is one of the most complex conflicts in recent human history - and there is no easy way out. That also applies to the situation in Gaza.
A friend of mine even ended up talking to a German diplomat in Israel, who said much the same thing: they could cosign other nations' condemnations of Israeli actions when they happened, but they couldn't condemn Israeli actions unilaterally. Obviously that was just his opinion and not an official viewpoint of the German government, but I found it fascinating that Germany still felt this sense of needing to make things right to Israel specifically.
Further, they’re going to lengths no other European country is going to in pursuit of this goal of covering for a genocide, all out of national guilt? It is a delusional position to take.
Now, if they actually were holding their tongue on this instead of providing unconditional support and cover, no one would be bringing up that these are the grandchildren of Nazis lecturing us about the right thing to do here :)
What a bad take. Germany, if it learned its lessons from the Holocaust, which was a genocide they did on the Jewish population, is absolutely the FIRST country in the world to teach Israel that what it's doing is absolutely abhorrent. Don't repeat my mistakes, so to say.
It clearly did not, because it is actively supporting a genocide right now.
Anyhow, I can’t be bothered to spend too much time expanding on this position - so you’ll have to either get it or not. I don’t care either way tbh.
Yes, because they haven't learned shit from their past.
The late Michael Brooks shared a small thought experiment that might help elucidate this: https://youtu.be/7ebPj_FqM5Q
Usually when people call something complex they mean that the solution is complex.
It’s prioritisation. There are multiple horrible civil wars, rebellions and displacements happening around the world right now. Every person doesn’t need to have a position on each one; there is an argument that’s counterproductive. (Exhibit A: the Columbia protests.)
Fewer than you’d think [1]. (We send aid to Sudan and are practically uninvolved in Myanmar.)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_confli...
So it makes sense that there would be more attention and pushback on this one versus others.
(It’s interesting because it requires disentangling anti-American sentiments from the equation.)
Just because I can’t do anything to improve the situation does not mean that I am in favour of the status quo. That does not make me evil either.
It does. The Germans who stood aside when the Nazis rose to power and the soldiers just "executing orders" were as much to blame for the rise of Hitler as the ones supporting it. Not taking a side against evil is taking evil's side. And you of all peoples should have learned from your history. Genocide is bad.
> How does Germany end apartheid in the West Bank?
By applying pressure on the international community to boycott Israel. Same way Germany is applying pressure on the international community to boycott Russia.
How do you think apartheid South Africa ended? How does any country pressure another?
In a supposedly democratic nation like Germany, how would citizens pressure their government to stop supporting & providing diplomatic cover for another to commit a genocide & maintain apartheid?
Those lands were the property of Jordan and Egypt...
Instead, please make your substantive points thoughtfully, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
I don’t see any rules against profanity in general, or the use of profanity to respond to an argument. I also took the time to clarify why the argument is “bullshit”. But maybe I am missing something.
To the best of my knowledge, they are the only Western country in which there are far left groups that proactively support Israel specifically wrt what it's doing in Gaza. And by "support" I mean e.g. posters encouraging to drop more bombs on "Hamas Nazis".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Germans_(political_curren...
That worked when Germany was occupied, or split in half, or broke.
Now that a unified Germany is in a position of leadership, rethinking history in terms of absolute right and wrong is probably a good idea.
They know perfectly well that their settlers are conducting daily pogroms against Palestinian villages in the West Bank, protected by their own army. They know perfectly well that thousands of Palestinians are detained for years without due process, trialled by military courts, kept in a state of apartheid.
They just don't care.
You have to look at the other side too. Palestinian's are born knowing that Israeli's have taken lots of their land through violent force. And they want to take more of it. And while the Israeli's live in a well developed wealthy nation they are condemned to poverty.
Consider the King David Hotel Bombing[1]. Israeli terrorists murdered nearly 100 people. In 2006 Netanyahu presided over the unveiling of a memorial plaque, alongside some of the terrorists involved in it, with the plaque specifically remembering the terrorist who died in the attack. So Israeli terrorism is fine, even worthy of praise.
And while the Israelis may grow up scared that the Palestinian's want them dead, 10's of thousands of Palestinian children won't grow up at all.
>> I'm German and I really see a lot of the blame for this on our states as well
I agree. It seems that all over Europe at least, the governments are largely going against public opinion on this issue. But it's not the first time we've seen this (Iraq being a recent example).
I found it a remarkable detail that from the shore of Gaza, you see the port of and industrial zone of Ashdod, only a few kilometers away. It seems almost like a permanent reminder that the entire area is in fact well-developed - the wasteland only exists where they live.
Anti-terrorism rhetorics has indeed previously led to terrible crimes, but I wouldn't suppose that's a reason to support pro-terrorism rhetorics. It's probably best to look at the content instead of the type of rhetorics.
And if we're talking about terrorism, IDF and Mossad are very much known to deploy terror tactics across a lot of their historical engagements. The definition of the word doesn't hinge on designation by a Western organization. And the vast majority of "pro-palestine" people in the world are not Iran proxies and secret anti-semites. They're actually, for the most part, young people that are working from a place of empathy and horror. The most blatant and harmful propganda in this whole mess is the attempt to designate pro-palestine protestors anti-semites and secretly in support of Iran and Hamas policies. What a terrible cheapening of the word. Point is, the ones using the most pro-terror rhetoric are those trying to defend the IDF right now.
To Zionists, Zionism means that Jews have the right to have a homeland, free of persecution. To non-Zionists, it means that Zionists think that they have the right to a specific area of land (Israel) and that that land is their god-given right, and that they are free to use violence to obtain it. To a secular person, the idea of someone having a "god-given" right to a piece of land is insanity.
"From the river to the sea" has been used to mean "Palestinians will be free everywhere" and also "the Jews that are violently occupying Palestine will be killed from the river to the sea".
I can't speak for specific protestors you encountered, but the majority of people I know that are anti-Israel don't want "all Jews to die" or even any of them. They just want the genocide to stop, for people to stop dying. It's really that simple. Protestors are protesting violence.
I respect that very much, but I think that the problem is exactly that it _isn't_ that simple. If they don't want any of the Jews to die, they should be saying also, alongside "stop the war", how can it be assured that Jews won't die later.
Jews have disproportionate levels of soft power in the US. Israel receives billions in support every year. Anti Muslim propaganda is pushed out every year in Hollywood. The medias coverage of Gaza is essentially one big lie by omission. Many states pass laws aimed to deter criticism of Israel.
I don’t see any other group in America that receives this level of support.
I'm not an expert on US politics and the reasoning for why the US supports Israel. I do however think that it's sensible to see Israel, with its relatively free elections, women rights, entrepreneurship etc as a more natural ally to the US than other countries in the Middle East, regardless of the "soft-power" you're referring to. The fact that some of its enemies also threaten the US probably plays a role too.
Opposing genocide is not supporting terrorism. Labelling support for basic human rights as being pro-terrorism is, well, part of the genocide.
The parent comment was dismissing anti-terrorism rhetorics because previously they were used to committing crimes. That sounds illogical to me, and that's what I was commenting on.
I understand that you are talking about the recent era, but I wonder if you could speak to the history of the creation of Israel, and the German perception of that. Is there any discussion about the European role in the creation of Israel? After the end of the war, it isn’t as if there was a movement to return property and homes to European Jews. If anything, the powers in Europe after the war (and, in the case of Eichmann, pre war as well) saw Zionism as a solution for what to do with the Jews.
Is there any sympathy or responsibility felt in European communities for essentially using Zionism as a solution?
Sometimes discussion goes back a bit further about how the area was a "League of Nations Mandatory Area" before, that was for some reason was administered by the British.
That's usually it.
An interesting detail is that the legitimacy of Israel here is usually explained with the UN (the Partition Plan resolutions and the accepted membership) - not with any kind of divine right. I think that's quite different from how (right wing) Israelis see the source of legitimacy themselves.
I was basically getting at how does Europe see its role in the fact that a big part of what made Israel possible was the more or less complete displacement of European jewry during the war, and the complete lack of will to create a place in post-war europe for their own Jewish community.
This perspective comes from my own family history where a few relatives managed to survive the war in Nazi custody, but then spent longer in Western European refugee camps postwar than they spent in the concentration and death camps during the war. The entire family ended up outside of Europe (USA and Israel) since it was the most viable path out of the camps.
Basically the success of Zionism is due in no small part to the active support from Europe in the years after the war, and my question is, do Europeans see that in as self-interested terms as it can look. More succinctly, does the Western European community realize that creating Israel was a solution to the post-war "Jewish Problem" that conveniently did not require those nations to create a hospitable place for jewish communities within their own borders.
I can't really say.
From what I see here, there is not a lot of discussion in that area. (That was the first time I heard about those refugee camps, but that may just be me)
From what I understand, the discussion for a long time was more about whether Jews would even want to come back to.Germany, after all the other Germans did to them.
German reflection on the Nazi period also happened in multiple stages. From what I know, the initial phase, right after the war, was quite inadequate. Yes, there were the Nuremberg Trials, but both Allies and Germans were interested in quickly getting back to some kind of "normal" and rebuilding the country - the US and the Soviets in particular in preparation for the imminent conflict between them. So a lot of Nazi personnel stayed in office.
I believe, support of Israel in that time was seen as a sort of reparation that conveniently made it unnecessary to engage with the Nazi past on a deeper level. (I did wonder when learning more about the conflict recently, why the Allies didn't designate some are inside former Germany as a Jewish state - let's say the Rhineland. That would have been entirely justified IMO. But of course the question of Israel was already settled at that time.)
There was a sort of "second stage" a generation later, during the Civil Rights movement, where students forced a revisit of the Nazi past. I believe, a lot of the currently known details of the Holocaust are coming from that phase. But I think they didn't say a lot about Israel and just saw it as an emancipatory, left-wing project.
Today, people here are enormously proud that Jewish communities exist again in Germany, though it's understood that it's still a lot less than before the war.
It would be an interesting question how the sentiment of German leadership towards Jews was in the 50s and 60s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displaced_persons_camps_in_pos...
From a recent review in the LRB of a book (Lost Souls) about those camps and their inhabitants. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n10/susan-pedersen/owner...
Europeans were eager to see Jews gone, one way or another. “Pogroms and hatred” sounds pretty violent.
The Arab states clearly owe Israelis more reparations than the other way around.
Do you have some life experience you would be willing to share that could help me understand why my desire to help people in the ways that I can elicits such a response?
I would like to understand.
Now you are saying that I offered something that wasn’t mine to give. And that I should be condemned for it. I promise you, my living room is mine, and it is open to those who need it.
I really feel that you are not understanding me (hopefully), or that alternatively you are misinterpreting my words intentionally.
I didn’t volunteer anyone else’s home. I volunteered mine.
I’m not talking about moving an entire continents worth of genocide survivors to occupied land that I don’t control because I wasn’t asked about that. I wasn’t asked about what o would do if those people set up a system that perpetuated a new human tragedy. That seems to be what you want to engage on, but I haven’t said anything about that, I have only had related statements extended in ways that simply do not represent me or anything I have said to you.
I wanted to have an honest and open discussion, but that doesn’t seem to align with your actions and words. The world is better when we assume good intent instead of ill (it’s the only reason I keep engaging with you to be honest). If you want to do that, please engage with the words I have spoken, not the words or intent I haven’t expressed. Alternatively, if you want to keep attributing to me things I haven’t said and breaking the rules of discourse for HN, please stop.
That was certainly the topic of discussion.
Formerly: South Lebanon, the entire Sinai peninsula.
New and improved: Mt. Hermon, UN buffer zone in the Eastern Golan Heights.
This "entirety of the surrounding population want them dead" language is both dehumanizing, false, and (perhaps not intended by you) genocidal.
The "surrounding population" is not a monolith. I imagine only a very small minority of people want all Jewish Israelis dead. I do Palestinian liberation work with many non-Jewish people from the middle east (I'm Jewish) and have yet to meet a single one who wants me dead.
They all want an end to Zionism.
Some may want it replaced with an Islamic government (which at its best is not different from the ideal "Zionism" you may hear defended by liberal Zionists, and at its worst is no different from the Zionism instituted by the modern state of Israel today)
Most want it replaced with a secular state where everyone has equal rights.
If your intent was to explain the mindset of an "ordinary Israeli citizen" who supports Zionism, then I agree with you, but it's dangerous to say something like this without distinguishing why this is a flawed mindset which can only exist due to an extensive system of propaganda.
I believe that this is true of most of the people you've worked with. However, polling in the West Bank and Gaza finds that to be a fairly unpopular position. Quoting https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/what-do-... :
> These numbers are not the same as popular support for a single state “from the river to the sea” with equal rights accorded to Arab and Jewish citizens, as in recent international proposals. In 2020 polls, only about 10 percent of West Bank and Gazan respondents favored this option over either a Palestinian state or two states. Notably, a theological premise underpins the one-state preference: A majority of the Palestinian respondents believe that “eventually, the Palestinians will control almost all of Palestine, because God is on their side”—that is, not because Palestinian control will flow from demographic changes or from a joint arrangement with Israel.
I agree with you that it's not accurate to say that the entirety of Jordan or Egypt want Israelis dead. However, if we're trading anecdote for anecdote: I know someone who grew up in Saudi, and he told me that when he was growing up it was completely normal to insult someone by calling them a jew (especially someone you perceive as being stingy, scammy, or reneging on a deal). He said it was so normalized that when he came to North America, he had an awkward adjustment period before he realized that was considered unacceptable here.
Now, there's a big difference between calling someone a jew as an insult and wanting all jews dead, but I have no trouble believing that antisemitism is very common within the middle east. Don't forget that it wasn't so long ago that there was a mass exodus of jews from the Middle East and North Africa to Israel, which can only be explained by some degree of "push factor" pushing them away from those countries. So while "wants them dead" is probably an exaggeration, you have to empathize a bit with the fact that almost every other middle eastern country was quite hostile towards jews in the past 100 years, and there's not an especially good guarantee that they would not be hostile again.
Late response on my part, but it sounds like we're mostly in agreement.
I will add that I think what people would accept is different from what they will tell interviewers they want.
I agree that there will be antisemitism everywhere, and as a Jewish person doing organizing work with Jewish groups, there will certainly selection/sampling bias among the Palestinians I interact with.
I'll also say that the prejudice of the oppressed shouldn't be seen the same as the prejudice of the oppressor.
If a slave in the U.S. in 1840 believed white people were inherently incapable of empathy, I imagine that the only people focusing on their "anti-white racism" would be doing so to defend the status quo of slavery.
When Palestinians living under occupation talk about "Jews" it's likely that the only interactions they've had with Jewish people were with IDF soldiers enforcing their occupation, perhaps shooting at them during peaceful protests, killing their friends, their family members, and so on.
The focus should be on liberation, even if people with problematic beliefs are among the oppressed.
Even if it's the case that most people in Gaza and/or in the West Bank are antisemitic (and even if it was the case that most of them "wanted all Jews dead", which I think is a gross mischaracterization of the situation) that doesn't mean they would turn down a justice-oriented plan which would allow them to participate with full equality under the political systems that dictates their freedoms.
I understand the circumstances that lead Palestinians to be antisemitic. That said fair, the person you responded to said this:
> the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead
I admit that it's a ridiculously hyperbolic comment, but most of Israel's surrounding countries do have an environment that's extremely inhospitable to jews and that can't really be attributed to Israel oppressing them all. They were ethnically cleansed from nearly every other country in the middle east - I think that just as we can understand why Palestinians ended up antisemitic, we can understand why jews in Israel ended up being uncomfortable with the idea of Israel not being an explicitly jewish state. Two wrongs don't make a right, but to make any progress towards a single state solution with equal rights for everyone, Israelis will need to be convinced that it won't result in a "two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner" situation.
The reasoning for this is action about nuclear weapons programs. Israel gets to have nukes, developed by sending US expertise to Israel, while Israel has not been subject to nuclear investigation programs.
If things ever got bad, the US doesn't want to nuke the world, then face retribution, they want Israel to shoulder that burden.
So naturally, the logical response is to wish that on others. Seriously, wat?
Or is it the leader class in most western countries have no sense of duty , are effectively cowards, and are in it just to have a profitable, white-collar career ?
People are just numb to the whole area.
The most difficult part is the fact Israel is wealthy and aggressive while (both) Palestine government has been the definition of dysfunction and tribalism for decades, even during peace times. Diplomatic solutions have became harder and harder since the 90s.
You can read the history the political bodies in West Bank and even they seem to not care to fix anything either. They have their own leadership issues (like never electing new leaders).
There’s a major gap between a western savior wanting something bad to stop and actually going there and accomplishing something.
They are cowards who are just in it to enrich themselves by bribery, theft, and extortion.
You are looking in the right direction and not seeing just how far our society has gone.
It's not Russia or terrorism they are afraid of.
What is the unpopular, necessary decision? GP is commenting on the US/EUs continual campaigns to arm and fund Israel's efforts in Gaza without pushback. I don't wish to misinterpret you, but this read to me, that funding/aiding human rights violations and genocide in Gaza is a "necessary" act.
For a long time, that made some sense - it's starting to shift into quite horrific territory though, if leaders and communities interpret this obligation as some sort of absolute fealty towards the Israeli government, at the exclusion of everything else - even if that government itself is repeating the path of Nazi Germany. Yet this seems to be how a lot of German politicians interpret it.
I found the distinction exemplified in the "Never again" vs "Never again for anyone" slogans.
I don't understand what exactly is going on in the US, but there seems to have been a similar taboo, though maybe stemming from different sources (like that Evangelical end-of-days prophecy that sees Israel literally as part of a divine plan that trumps everything else).
I find it notable that part of Trump's voter support in the election were actually pro-Palestinian groups - because they saw Trump as the only alternative to a complicit Harris administration. Of course, Trump turned out to be even more complicit and openly embracing the Evangelical narrative.
So as far as US voters were concerned, there was no pro-Palestinian or even neutral options to vote for. There was just secular pro-Israel and religious pro-Israel. (Well, there was also Jill Stein, but she had no realistic chance of winning)
Of course there are other voices saying that all those justifications - Holocaust, biblical prophecy, etc - are just show and the real reason for the unconditional support is just ordinary geopolitics. The image of Israel as the "unsinkable aircraft carrier" that guarantees US dominance in the region.
It's also that the American mythos that they were the saviors of WWII requires there to be villains and innocent damsels. If you acknowledge that those damsels are themselves capable of being villains then it makes the whole thing much more "complicated".
That and simply the fact that lots of Jews hold positions of power in the US.
> "unsinkable aircraft carrier" [...] in the region
The IDF might disagree.
American Evangelical Protestants believe that the continued existence of Israel is a prophesied necessary prerequisite for the resurrection of Jesus, who will then start the Apocalypse. They think they can force prophecy by defending Israel. It doesn't matter how badly Israel behaves, they think the ends justify all of it.
That's simply not true. Israel never gave up control over airspace, land and sea borders after the disengagement and effectively put the strip under siege after Hamas came to power.
The west bank is cut up into hundreds of small Palestinian enclaves that are separated and controlled by the IDF. There is also a policy of systematically denying Palestinians in the West Bank resources and on the other hand priorizing the settlers.
Both areas have been under siege for decades, just with different intensity.
When the current government was elected - a year before Oct.7 - it made speeding up the land grabs and eventual full annexation of the West Bank a priority. Look at the ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich: Both have deep connections to the settlers and have made deeply dehumanizing statements towards the Palestinians. (Smotrich officially published his "Decisive Plan" in 2017 about his proposal for a "permanent solution": Either "encourage emigration", allow them to live as non-citizens with restricted rights in isolated enclaves or "let the army deal with them". Both ministers are fully on board with the current starvation policy - or rather, it's still too lenient for them)
Ben Gvir is now head of the Israeli police. Smotrich is finance minister and "Minister in the defense ministry", a special role that gives him the ultimate authority about anything that concerns the West Bank.
All that happened before Oct.7.
When westerners and people like Bill Clinton have got involved they have mostly proposed having a Palestinian state with their own land but the Palestinians have mostly objected to Israel existing so we have the current stuff.
It was not the Palestinians who killed Rabin.
Yes, there was an exchange of job seekers, however even that was among a deliberately resource-constrained Gaza, with no hope of the situation improving.
Hamas was definitely not helping in those regards and Oct.7 cannot be excused. But Israel also never did anything to support an alternative to Hamas.
The Anti-Israeli crowd is throwing universal human rights under the bus. That crowd doesn't care about human rights under Arab and Muslim rule. It wants to see some imaginary "justice" at the cost of murdering the Jewish people. It promotes antisemitism including justification of the Holocaust.
I'm Israeli and your "relatable" is nonsense. Israelis engaged with the other side in good faith many times. We made peace with Jordan and Egypt. We negotiated with the Palestinians during the Oslo process. What we got in return was a suicide bombing campaign in the late 1990's early 2000's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_at... and then we got Oct 7th. Israelis would be happy with a solution that leaves the with those human rights that you appear to be championing, such as the right not to be murdered.
Modern anti-zionism is just another incarnation of antisemitism. There is really no other way to look at it or explain it. The selectivity and the images used are 1:1 with antisemitism throughout the ages. This is not about whether you can critique Israel or its government. This is purely Jew hatred and racism under the mask of anti-Israeli.
EDIT: And for people who are reading this comment who think antisemitism isn't a reasonable argument here I would recommend the book: https://www.amazon.ca/People-Love-Dead-Jews-Reports/dp/03935... ... Once you read this you will have a better understanding of the different forms antisemitism takes and learn a bit of interesting history too.
I don't think it's just propaganda. These folks know they'll materially benefit from Palestinians being dispossessed of their remaining land.
Why do you think the Israelis want to keep their tanks in Gaza even after all the hostages come back? Why won’t they offer a full and permanent ceasefire? I think this hostage justification is just Israelis buying time so they can keep on doing what they actually always wanted, full ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
If they wanted to ethnically cleanse gaza they would have done so long before October 7. You don't seem to understand the reality of war and the consequences of being on the losing side. Nor of the constraints Israel would be forced to work with if they had total control of Gaza.
Is this a “reality of war”? Complete destruction of infrastructure? Perhaps every uninhabited house is actually Hamas.
If this isn’t ethnic cleansing, what is it?
>Israel's campaign has four stated goals: to destroy Hamas, to free the hostages, to ensure Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel, and to return displaced residents of Northern Israel.
Pretty clear and i never suggested otherwise. I'm not sure where you got that idea from
“And the fact is that the people of Gaza could end the conflict whenever they want. All they need to do is surrender and hand over the hostages”
So no, Israel decides how and when the killing ends and apparently that’s when “Gaza no longer poses a threat”. Who knows what that means but apparently it involves mass starvation, firing tank rounds into crowds, and destroying every hospital.
Gaza was a pretty enormous threat, so neutralising it takes an enormous amount of effort. If you cared about the death and destruction of gaza you would be calling for the end of Hamas. It's not like Israel wants to be stuck in an endless conflict in Gaza i think it has shown many times in the recent past that it is prefers peace to war.
The word surrender is carrying quite a lot of meaning but it's still good faith on my part.
Olmert, who was the 12th prime minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, wrote in an opinion piece for the Israeli newspaper and website Haaretz that “the government of Israel is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning and with no chances of success”.
He added: “Never since its establishment has the state of Israel waged such a war … The criminal gang headed by Benjamin Netanyahu has set a precedent without equal in Israel’s history in this area, too.
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-05-27/ty-article-opinio...
“The people of Gaza” have about as much chance of doing this as the ICC has of arresting and putting Netanyahu on trial.
... You have evidence of this? Or, are you making things up without any evidence at all to smear the UN; as we've seen Israel do countless times during this holocaust?
They say, “just surrender and it will all be over.” Are you going to trust that?
It’s not exactly that they consciously want cover to commit atrocities. It’s more that they can’t really conceive of people they don’t identify with as people. They’ll fiercely defend people they know, and they’ll side with people like them, but everyone else is a sort of vague abstract mass.
We see this in the US today with people who support harsh measures against illegal immigrants while they themselves have friends or family who are the targets (or they are themselves). Then they get very confused when their friends or family get arrested and deported, because “illegal immigrants” is this amorphous mass of bad people, not Jose and Clara down the street. You see it with racists who defend themselves with “I’m not racist, I have black friends.”
Such a person doesn’t automatically think ill of the “other,” but it doesn’t take too much to convince them that the “other” is evil and dangerous and must be dealt with harshly.
And if that view is manipulated by people way more powerful than you...
I'm all for personal responsibility but we have laws against certain practices because companies can hack brains so well. You don't think states can do it just as well if not better?
Edit: where do you draw the line? Is an immigrant from a 'bad' country a bad person? Why didn't we try more Germans if what you say about support is true?
You're either being disingenuous or have never experienced real dictatorship. I lived under theocracy in IRAN for more than half my life and I promise you that the Westerns screaming from the back "just revolt!" have no clue what they are talking about.
These regimes control communication, the media, intact laws that punishes any kind of dissent and often has multi layered of security forces to keep the population in check (not including the regular army and police).
It's easy to shout this when it's not your life, your sibling, your child or significant other's life on the line. These regimes will not hesitate to murder their own citizens to stay in power.
I don't know enough about Israel's internal politics and their society to make an assertive comment but what I _can_ say, is that from my interactions with them, they seem like ordinary and kind people who have no intention of harming me or my family.
Unless you are psychopath, you are not going to wake up one day and decide to murder people.
In most cases the only thing standing between you and the target is inconvenience of obtaining a descent firearm.
The same has been true for Iran, only up until now (and probably still) we have always had a more nuanced discussion - its the Iranian government, not the people of Iran.
Come on, the government of many countries does not necessarily represent the people.
I'm also baffled by the suggestion that democracy truly represents a majority and the apparent belief that dissent is quickly processed and rectified by democracy. Which country do you think shows this is working well?
Democracy need not represent the majority, but if it works against the majority without any repercussions then who is to blame? Will the leadership be held accountable?
This war was started because the government knew they can get away with it. Every citizen is complicit in every crime committed by their government. Don't the citizens enjoy the fruits of crime even after claiming to oppose the actions of their government?
Israelis are protesting, for better or worse this is what democracy looks like.
Another question to ask, does every Russian support the war in Ukraine? What can they do about it?
Only when a crime is acknowledge, we can talk about punishments. Will Israeli people not profit from this war? Protests will have some teeth if steps be taken so this will not repeat itself. I don't see this happening.
Look at USA, war after war. Presidents are blamed but not punished and the population enjoys the economical hegemony that is the fruit of war.
In a similar vein, I'm ethnically Russian and a Russian citizen. I don't support the Russian invasion of Ukraine in any way, shape, or form, and I don't think that I am responsible for it as a Russian. However, it is also clear to me that the majority of Russians do support it (or at least think that it's fine), and on that basis I don't consider myself to be a part of that nation anymore, regardless of ethnicity.
Funny you say this because you don’t have to look far for people saying that “Gazans deserve what’s happening” because the average Gazan should fight back against Hamas.
* The majority of the Palestinian population are minors (< 18)
* The last nationwide election in Palestine was 2006
In other words, the last time an election was held, the majority of Palestinians weren't yet born, let alone old enough to vote in it. So, it's difficult to hold the Palestinian people en masse responsible for Hamas in the same way we'd hold Israelis responsible for their current government, who held their last election in 2022.
Well anyway, it is still crazy to me that somebody is making a decision about the entire population of a country based on the governments actions in 2025.
It’s no different with the American military.
Today, we see Israelis who are taught to perceive Palestinians as enemies. They see the Palestinian flag during birthrights and are taught by the IDF to hate it. And they are also taught that the west bank is dangerous and they are not to go there. Then we see IDF operations in West Bank and we see silence. We know Gaza is in a plight caused by Israel and we see silence and ignorance. Israel is bad. Israelis are bad too. And the polls have shown that 80% wish for Gaza to be cleansed, 56% support the forced expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel, 47% want the IDF to act according to the Biblical war against Jericho. That is effectively 47% want murder while 33% want expulsion (equivalent of the ghettos+concentration camps). The benefit of doubt is disappearing rapidly fast.
And the west has been supporting Israel for decades in this campaign. This is the second millenial crusade of Europe (aka the west).
It’s wrong to single out Israel. The US is funding this mass murder of children and blocking attempts to stop it. It should correctly be called the US-Israeli genocide of Gaza.
For my part, as an American and a nobody, I feel helpless to stop the atrocities my government is participating in.
But I’ve found, for myself, the reason to fight the genocide - however I can - isn’t because I expect to stop it. I am powerless to do that. For me it’s to maintain a sense of human dignity in the face of evil.
Knowing my country’s role in the mass murder of children, shrugging my shoulders would feel like I’m surrendering something precious.
With the continued persecution of Palestinians, whether its the illegal occupation of the west bank or the siege of Gaza which was essentially a concentration camp, that was "mowed" like grass every few years in terrorist bombing campaigns by Israel, its no surprise that organisations like Hamas, originally a humanitarian charity, exist.
Israelis want peace through domination, just like the French in Algeria. Be aware that Jews are not native to Palestine, except those that had been living there before the state was founded. They are living as colonialists on stolen land, and are continually denying the native Palestinians the right to return, which is part of the definition ethnic cleansing.
I say this as Jewish person originally born in Palestine (or Israel) and who had grandparents that survivide the Holocaust. Once I read about what really happened in 1948, that it was zionist terrorist militias that started the conflict and that Palestinians did not "simply leave", I became an anti zionist. I don't think Israel has the right to exist. People have the right to exist and they have the right to fight back against jewish supremacism.
Although the book was published back in 2020 prior to the current conflict, he correctly labeled the many years siege on Gaza by Israel as the act of war against Palestinian people, and it turn out to be manifested in the all out war in 2024.
1] The Hundred Years' War on Palestine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hundred_Years%27_War_on_Pa...
[2] A new abyss’: Gaza and the hundred years’ war on Palestine (2024):
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/11/a-new-abyss-ga...
Not true, many Semitic Jews who fled from those lands due to persecution went to Europe and North Africa, that includes Ashkenazi and Sephardim Jews.
The difficulty I have with your statement is akin to denying a white, blue eyed aboriginal in Australia their heritage to the land just because one of their ancestors slept with a European colonialist - its fundamentally racist. White skinned blue eyed Australian aboriginals exist.
The state of Israel is just another example of euro white colonialism.
Thank you for pointing this fact, if this is true it makes the Israel govt as self-hating Jews, and is very sad and ironic at the same time. The Israel govt should perform thorough DNA test on the Palestinian people. Potentially many Palestinians can have higher Jews ancestors percentage than the emigrants themselves.
Judaism is an ethno-religion, so while some people may have no connection to semitic people, others will have a closer connection and its discriminatory to simply say “they are not native” which my original post was critical of.
Heritage that is so remote that it doesn't matter anymore. Most of their ancestors left centuries ago.
It is like me claiming the land of any country between Ethiopia and Botswana, installing a government and colonies, seizing lands and forcing their inhabitants to flee in a small strip of land along a rontier because modern human is claimed to come from this area so I declare it my home.
Im not talking about claiming land - I’m talking about culture, racial identity and their heritage to lands. You keep bringing this as a talking point, but I already said heritage does not equate to or justify nationalism.
> Heritage that is so remote that it doesn't matter anymore. Most of their ancestors left centuries ago.
It doesn't matter? Obviously it does matter. I wonder if you think the same of African Americans and your willingness to deny them of African heritage.
What about eastern european Jews that actually look semitic, that have middle eastern features? Do you also negate them of heritage, or just white skinned Jews?
Your bias is palpable.
Having heritage is one thing, migrating there as well. But landing somewhere, installing a new flag and government and pushing people out of their land through force is completely out of line.
> What about eastern european Jews that actually look semitic, that have middle eastern features? Do you also negate them of heritage, or just white skinned Jews?
I am not negating heritage, I am negating the appropriation of a land at the expense of others.
Nobody is debating that.
Not sure if you can read, so I’ll reiterate - the debate here is the willingness of people to use sweeping and discriminatory terminology to categorise all the different types of Jew's as being “non-native” which is categorically false and frankly offensive.
Jews outside of Palestine are not uniquely descended from Jews that lived there 2000 years ago. Also the idea of Jews as a homogeneous people is a fairly recent phenomenon, people married into Jewish families, converted etc...
Even having mixed parentage can make you an oppressor. During slavery, mixed race people were often used in Brazil to hunt escaped slaves. At the end of the day its not about people's parentage but to what group they get put into and whether they choose to use any privilege they have to fight against oppression.
I don't make a claim that they should or should not be allowed to live there. My statement isnt about rights to land, oppressing others or national zionism.
My statement is about heritage and what it means to be “native”, obviously what that means for people and genetic links to semitic peoples varies greatly, and as such, you cannot make blanket statements that “jews are not native” just because you disagree with the nationalist movement.
Unfortunately religious zionism isn't limited to Jews. Christian evangelicals also support it, and they make up a huge percentage of voting americans (and even worse, elected officials).
https://theconversation.com/in-israel-calls-for-genocide-hav...
https://theconversation.com/christian-zionism-hasnt-always-b...
Do you apply the same standard to Palestinians for not overthrowing Hamas, to Americans for the US being the key enabler of Israel's military operations, to the citizens of any Western country for not adding Israel next to Russia in all their sanction laws? If not, why?
Or maybe we should be careful with assigning collective guilt and not throw stones in glass house?
In 2025 USA is supporting russian dictator more than Ukrainian democratic government.
Are they? I see USA still supplying Ukraine with weapons, how many weapons have Russia gotten from USA? None, USA is not selling any weapons to Russia still.
In late 1947, their militias begun a campaign of massacring and expelling Palestinians from mostly defenseless villages. These refuges pouring into neighboring Arab countries is what prompted the 1948 war. When the war ended, they murdered any civilians trying to return to their homes.
Gaza was originally a refugee camp created for receiving these expelled people.
The ethnic cleansing and denial of rights has continued ever since. The current Gaza war is not when the crimes against humanity started. Israel has been commiting crimes against humanity throughout its entire existence.
Including a sizeable Jewish minority.
The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region. But it’s a continuation of outsiders (in particular Westerners, though the Iranians also bought this settler-colonialist nonsense which led to their recent miscalculations) with no connection to the land drawing up broad moral claims for how the Middle East should be divided up.
There was a Jewish community in Palestine (mostly centered around Jerusalem) but they did not come up with the Zionist project. Actually, many were opposed and some of their descendants still do so to this day.
> The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region
The (European) architects of the Zionist project literally called it colonialism.
"You are being invited to help make history. It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews … How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial." -Theodor Herzl
Ze'ev Jabotinsky literally compared the Zionist project to other colonial projects when arguing the people living there would fight back against their colonizers and the need for numbers and strength to counter them.
The Zionist Project is comparable to colonialism. That doesn’t make it settler-colonialism. (And Jabotinsky isn’t the final word on anything other than himself.)
… fuck I hate politics :(
Always good to remember that most Jews aren't religious crazies- although the crazies breed faster unfortunately.
I mean we know you guys run the media, control the money, run the US government, and fire space lasers from Mars. It's all fun and game until they burn your house and worse.
I'm also worried about Israel in many ways (re: ultra-orthodox ethno state) but if you think that living in Christian states or states of other ethnicity is somehow safer I'm not too sure about that. Even the European Jews that thought they were just Europeans found out they're not. And that story has repeated throughout history. To me a successful, democratic, moral, and Jewish, Israel is important part of the future of the Jewish people. And I'm not going to join the mob that wants it destroyed.
"Outsiders" like the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association that funded Zionist settlement in Palestine? The problem with folks who try to claim that this is ahistorical is that contemporary Zionists talked all the time about colonizing Palestine.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Jewish_Colonizatio...
I’m not. I’m arguing that one can oppose what’s happening in Gaza without careening into counterproductiveness and calling for the destruction of Israel.
That's not my take from 2000 years of Jewish prosecution, in muslim countries or europe
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/iran/2025-06-27/ty-... (archive: https://archive.is/0qEg9)
One could blame this crackdown on Israel, sure. But that absolves the countries perpetuating persecution of Jews from their own share of responsibility in it. After all, when the American Government interned all those Japanese-Americans - did we blame Japan for it, or did we rightfully blame the American government?
I do not seek to defend Israel's actions against the Palestinian people, but to say that the Jews live "peacefully and with dignity" in places where they often are scapegoated, persecuted, and killed out of hand is not the way. Look at what happened to the Jewish populations of the region between the 40s and now, and you will see a grim picture of persecution, killings, and exodus.
" In July 2007, Iran's Jewish community rejected financial emigration incentives to leave Iran. Offers ranging from 5,000 to 30,000 British pounds, financed by a wealthy expatriate Jew with the support of the Israeli government, were turned down by Iran's Jewish leaders.[90][106][107] To place the incentives in perspective, the sums offered were up to 3 times or more than the average annual income for an Iranian.[108] However, in late 2007 at least forty Iranian Jews accepted financial incentives offered by Jewish charities for immigrating to Israel.[109]"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950%E2%80%931951_Baghdad_bo...
You’re stating a supposition as a fact.
Sort of irrelevant. The state of Israel exists. Israelis who call that land their home exist.
Those calling for the destruction of Israel are advocating for a holy war in the Levant. A war that would lead to hundreds of thousands if not millions of casualties.
Whatever else you think, this is some massive misunderstanding of history.
Historically, the lack of a state for Jews was one of the main reasons Jews experienced the Holocaust, which originated the term Genocide. Half of the Jewish population, making up (iirc) 90% of the population of Europe, died, because they had nowhere else to go.
And of the ones that survived, they still had nowhere else to go, no one wanted to take them in. The only place they could go, and what was agreed to worldwide, was to go to then-Palestine. Then, the hundreds of thousands of Jews "living peacefully" in Arab countries were ethnically cleansed from their countries, which they'd lived in for generations, and also largely had nowhere to go except Palestine.
“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country.” - Theodore Herzl , Father of Zionism in 1895.
"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement]. I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." - David Ben Gurion, Father of Israel.
"the world has become accustomed to the idea of mass migrations and has become fond of them. … Hitler – as odious as he is to us – has given this idea a good name in the world." - Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Founder of Revisionist Zionism, 1940.
Zionism is textbook settler-colonialism. I dont see it worth even arguing the point.
Given how every group claims it is a holy place, I'd expect each group would want it held in a state of peace, prosperity, and reverence for the benefits of creation. Instead they all seem bent on holding their holy lands in states of violence, discord, and waste.
You're not wrong that there is deep external interference but wouldn't holy peoples rise above any of that to do better from every side?
And the ambivalence and opposition of the Jews of Palestine to the Zionist project is fairly well-documented.
Rabbi Yakov Shapiro talks a lot about that, I think Gabor Mate does to some extent as well.
Isn't that just history repeating itself? Even in the old testament, they had to clear the current inhabitants of their promised land after wander the desert for 40 years.
(excuse me for ignoring the history trolling)
Westerners with no connection to the Middle East deciding they know best for the people actually there has been a popular opinion for a long time.
Annexing one's neighbors sure fosters some queer international consequences.
So what? I don't get your point.
Israel has continuously been oppressing the Palestinians for almost 80 years. That is immoral. Israel is in the wrong.
> They are widely considered to posses a right of existence, and even expected to defend their citizens.
You are just jumping to a different topic. I said nothing about its right to exist.
Have the Palestinians been ethnically cleansed? Yes or no? Have they been oppressed for almost 80 years? Yes or no?
What Palestinians need is what Israelis got: a state. To the extent there is an argument maximally antithetical to that cause, it’s arguing that Israel shouldn’t exist.
Palestinians had several opportunities to get that, especially with Oslo agreements, but their leadership refused that everytime.
I don’t think it’s fair to extend that to “Palestinians had several opportunities.”
Unfortunately Palestinians have an huge responsibility on the actual situation.
That was a generation ago.
> as we saw immediately after 7/11, most of them was cheering for the slaughterings and the rapes
One, it’s unclear how widespread this was. But also two, you see similar dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israelis today. That’s just how human psychology works in a war footing—I think we and chimpanzees are the only species that will go out of our way to exterminate a threat.
> Palestinians have an huge responsibility on the actual situation
Oh sure. And I think whether a future Palestinian state could exist peacefully bordering Israel is a real question. But I would push back on the notion that a plebiscite today requiring recognition of Israel as a sovereign state within its current borders in exchange for a Palestinian state (with West Bank settlements transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction) wouldn’t pass.
Some surveys estimated that Hamas consensus was more than 60% before the 7/11. And this is the main reason why there is no other elections in West Bank since than: Fatah leadership is scared to lose elections.
> you see similar dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israelis today
I have many colleagues and friends in Israel and nobody of them is cheering about the civilian killings. At the opposite, they just demand peace and freedom for hostages. This is the main difference: while in Israel a large part of population is against war and atrocity, Hamas is still supported by an huge part of Palestinian population.
> But I would push back on the notion that a plebiscite today requiring recognition of Israel as a sovereign state within its current borders in exchange for a Palestinian state (with West Bank settlements transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction) wouldn’t pass.
This was mostly the proposal of Oslo agreements and Arafat, as Palestinian representative, refused that. Do you really think that a public opinion supporting Hamas() , will accept that now?
() Hamas wrote in his statuta that any sionistic state must be unacceptable and Israel must be erased from the heart.
I think it’s worth a shot. (I wouldn’t put much worth in any polling in Gaza, let alone recent polling.)
One could even throw in a reparation fund for the lands Israel conquered since ‘48 as well as those which the French and British gave away. (Hell, eminent domain the West Bank settlers and pay them out, too.)
Even if it will win, having a state, means also to have an army. And guess what will happens immediately? The problem is also the education: in Gaza, the school system (also the one by ONU/UNWRA paid by us) is completely rotten: they are not preparing people to improve their country, they are preparing people to become martyr and hate Israel.
> One could even throw in a reparation fund for the lands Israel conquered since ‘48 as well as those which the French and British gave away.
Do you have any idea about how many money the Western country put in Gaza for humanitarian and development projects? Well, a big part of those funds are spent on building tunnels, buying weapons and building rockets. There is no any way to change the situation until Hamas would be there.
> Hell, eminent domain the West Bank settlers and pay them out, too
Israeli settlers are a big obstacle to peace and should be stopped and repressed with force. Unfortunately it will not happen until Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are part of the government
Sure. Hence why having such a referendum is important. Also, Lebanon has an army as does Egypt, and both are fine neighbours to Israel now.
> Do you have any idea about how many money the Western country put in Gaza for humanitarian and development projects?
Reparations would have to be distributed directly to individuals and be contingent on such a plebescite recognising Israel passing. If Palestinians decide to squander it again, yes, we’ll see another war, but at that point we can begin treating it like we did Nazi Germany versus the non-state with mixed attribution it has today.
> it will not happen until Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are part of the government
If Palestine gave up its hostages and sued for peace, I don’t think these fucks would have a say anymore.
It does: UN resolution, 1967.
That you do not recognize an entire state to exist is an admission to preparing a genocide. The fact that 4 countries around Israel are preparing genocide justifies Israel’s measures are reasonable to maintain peace.
What is reasonable?
Well it’s not like Gaza didn’t start the shooting with 7000 rockets pre-October festival (I was myself surprised that Israel didn’t respond pre-October). Those rockets were indiscriminate against population centers, each of them were a war crime. So it’s reasonable to reduce the neighbor’s ability to wage war to dust.
Are the Gazans exempt from responsibility of their state’s actions?
To answer, we need to check whether the Hamas was imposed to the Gazans or whether they voted for it and, in a broader sense, whether the Gazans wish the genocide of Israel. It turns out the 2006 elections were almost the last ones in Gaza, and that’s when the Hamas was elected (and the opponents were not better). So the Gazans are aligned with the actions performed by the collective group of their nation, it’s not a small group of extremists, it represents the will of the nation, and therefore the facilities and support network of the Hamas are part of the war logistics, and deserves to be reduced to dust.
Did Israel act with restraint?
Israel has the nuclear bomb and has enough power to genocide if they want. The fact that they perform spot actions instead of sweeping actions is proof that Israel tries to discriminate the military, its support network with genocide intent against Israel (=pretty much everyone) and tries to spare the innocents, is proof that Israel is not committing a genocide.
> What is reasonable?
Not instituting so many decrees ("militaty orders") that even the military authority responsible for 'ruling' the area can't produce an accurate or complete list of all of said decrees. Decrees which, I might add, forbid planting flowers, raising a flag, operating a farm tractor, going to school, or making a bank account withdrawal without the permission of the Israeli military: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Order
Let that sink in: if you're a Palestianian you can't go to the bank and take out your own money without permission of the Israeli military.
Another military order allows the Israeli military to seize your business if you don't open during regular business hours.
Those decrees also allow Jews to "buy" (seize) land from Palestinians who refuse to sell to them, merely by asserting "power of attorney"
Not having snipers executing children. Not conducting missile and gun attacks on ambulances and independent worldwide-recognized medical aid organizations, and then attacking rescuers who show up to render aid. Not slaughtering an entire hospital's worth of patients and burying them in mass graves. Not slaughtering people lined up to get food aid. Not purposefully starving millions of people.
Not using a black-box AI to decide who is a "terrorist" and then blowing up their entire house, thus killing not only the supposed terrorist, but the entire family, or possibly the neighbor - because a "smart" bomb would be too expensive.
An UN agreement is still the highest rank of agreements for whether a state exists.
UN is shock-full of anti-Israeli militants, so it is also unsurprising that Israel doesn’t respect all of it.
> Let that sink in: if you're a Palestianian you can't go to the bank and take out your own money without permission of the Israeli military.
Is this money used for the war against Israel? If yes, it can be legitimately seized. If Palestinians didn’t swear the death of Israel, that would be another story.
Both parties wage a war to death. If Israel gets feable, it gets genocide.
The only way out is peace, but you are actively arguing for the entire eradication of Israel, with the entire weight of the Western Civilization behind you, so… oh man that doesn’t help at all.
> Not having snipers executing children
Depends what the children are doing. Without context, it seems horrible, and yet every time we’re filled in on the context that was conveniently forgotten by “journalists” (who are a certain socio demographic of Western youths, surprisingly), then we notice there’s more to it than “Israel kills blindly”.
If Israel killed blindly, they wouldn’t take so many precautions.
And the funny thing is, I’m not even pro-Israel. I’m just here to show the balance that you have forgotten.
Israel doesn't recognise Palestine as a state, so by your own definition Israel is preparing a genocide.
Please name some other countries post-WW2 that were "founded by ethnic cleansing" and embraced by the international community and educate the rest of us. And please don't include previously warring peoples whose leaders agreed on a population exchange and imposed that mandatory trauma on their own people.
Palestine, Cyprus, and India had the unenviable luck of being long-term victims of a last gasp British empire's farewell divide-and-conquer gambit.
(and excuse me for ignoring the deflection trolling)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Greeks_from_Istan...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_German...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_of_Turks_from_Bulgaria_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istrian%E2%80%93Dalmatian_exod...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_expulsion_of_Italians_fro...
It was quite common and very accepted method in the 1940s, hell, expelling 15 million germans, some living there for hundreds of years, was proposed by Churchill.
The reason you never heard about the rest of these is because the people were resettled, not kept in a state of permanent inheritable refugee state financed by the UN with financial incentives to be kept that way.
(proceeds to list examples of countries which were already founded before the ethnic cleansing events they mention or events I already alluded to)
It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to list Libyans expelling italians as a comparable example, when Libya was a colony of Italy. Ditto Germans, a people of belonging to the aggressor country. Bulgaria declared independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1908. And you have to explain why you included the pakistan link, as I already mentioned it in my post.
The idea that people of different ethnicities live, unmixed, divided by neat borders of nation-states is pretty recent. This was the case neither in Europe, nor in Middle East for a very long time before the advent of state-based nationalism in the 19th century. It was quite normal for people of different ethnicities, languages, and even faiths to live intermixed in certain regions, especially areas of intense trade, which the entire Mediterranean coast used to be. Borders were more about economic and political control than ethnic identity.
(The ethnic unity purportedly achieved by nation-states formed in 19th and early 20th centuries is also often more by fiat: look at the variety of German or Italian languages prior to unification of Germany or Italy, for instance, to say nothing about India.)
Most germans were living in their respected newly founded Communist Poland and Czechoslovakia for hundreds of years if not more when expelled.
Italians, even if they were colonialists, were expelled from their homes, by people who previously have been colonialists themselves, some when arriving with the arab conquests.
Bulgaria expelled the turks in the 1950s, and the partition of india, forming pakistan and india, were two newly formed countries around the time of israel and palestine, included ethnic cleansing from both sides
Do you think that these examples of ethnic cleansing post ww2 are irrelevant when no new country was formed?
Violent conflicts between Jewish settlers and local Arab populations have started long before that, pretty much as soon as the initial settlement began in the 19th century. Nor was it some kind of isolated incidents - Jabotinsky wrote https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-iron-wall-quot in 1923, and he wasn't alone in such views:
> There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority. ... Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the "Land of Israel."
You seem to quote him to prove the Palestinians had no choice but to do what the laws of history has ordained for them. But even though you don't quote the extreme or moderate Palestinians of the time, there were both views and as humans capable of agency they had a choice, and they repeatedly chose war until they had created a Jewish force much more capable than they were
Regarding court, there is a very valid defense in court called selective enforcement, and this is exactly for situations when someone is scape goated
I think it makes a lot of sense to be more incensed about the genocide in Palestine vs. the Myanmar civil war if you're an American citizen. Americans are struggling and the government is sending billions of our tax dollars to war criminals overseas.
There's a reason that your example includes mass civilian executions, rapes, ethnic cleansing and burning villages, largely hamas' tactics, rather than precision bombs and evacuation calls in different channels.
Because Israeli tactics are extremely counterproductive for a genocide. There's reasons why genocide is usually done by concentrating populations rather than dispersing, and why aerial bombing can't be used, as victims would flee, or why the victims aren't forewarned..
It seems this entire popular argument rests solely on propaganda and redefining words without any shred of critical thinking
What's going on now IS a genocide and it's not being done by bombs but by starvation, which tracks exactly with what you said about "concentrating" people.
There were 3 days of idf bombing in gaza in september 2023.
Bringing up “hostages” as a reason for anything is a lie, a distortion, and a laundering of genocide.
One siding a war between Netanyahu and Hamas is a lie, distortion and laundering of atrocities.
Netanyahu is not supported by all israelis, no question. But israeli isn’t a dictatorship - the actions of the state have been varying degrees of genocide and ethnic cleansing for 75+ years, and pinning that all on one man is bonkers. Do you also consider the war in Iraq a war between Bush and the Ba’ath?
Calling what I said “one siding” is similarly bonkers. My point is just to be consistent with the actions of both sides: israel had hostages before oct 7th - if hamas hostages are justification for mass murder of palestinian civilians, then israeli hostages before oct 7th justify the oct 7th attacks. To say otherwise is to one-side the situation.
To be clear: i don’t believe that hostages justify killing civilians. Doesn’t matter who’s hostages they are.
It is, however, casus belli. And I don’t know how one fights a guerilla force without significant collateral damage.(This order, to be clear, wouldn’t count as collateral damage if accurately presented.)
If you cannot conduct war against a guerilla force without murdering hundreds of thousands, destroying every piece of peaceful infrastructure, and blockading aid - then the truth is it’s wrong to conduct that war.
> If you cannot conduct war against a guerilla force without murdering hundreds of thousands, destroying every piece of peaceful infrastructure, and blockading aid - then the truth is it’s wrong to conduct that war
If that force is conducting operations in your borders and against your citizens it’s no longer that clear cut. (This goes both ways in this case.)
Both Hamas and Israel have grounds for war. Both of them have conducted it badly. But in both cases, it’s not easy to see how they could have managed it that much better. (Well, actually, for Palestine it is. They should be suing for peace and handing over their hostages. Neither side looks smart when it takes innocent hostages.)
These are your opinions. They have no legitimacy except in the eyes of people who share your opinions.
> If that force is conducting operations in your borders
If you build your borders on other people’s homes, it’s pretty clear cut actually.
The indifference shown to the fate of the hostages could have fooled me. But yes, Hamas and PJ treat their civilian population expendably in a way Tel Aviv does not.
You nicely sidestepped the case of US where Native people are still fighting for their rights and would be killed the same way if they try to perpetrate against Non-Native Americans the things like October 7.
Palestinians perpetrated October 7, Native Americans don't do such things, thus no surprise that the situation is different.
>Maybe because it happened 1000 years ago
So, how old or recent it should be for you to dismiss or not an ethnic cleansing?
The "founded on ethnic cleansing" is not the most important bit from the previous post. It's the "ethnic cleansing and denial of rights has continued ever since" that's the most important bit.
While the Palestinian population in Israel proper is around 25% with full rights, while those under the control of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have rights in their respective political entity.
Again there are other examples of countries where the population lost all rights and were expelled like germans in czechoslovakia and poland or greeks from turkey
That's simply not true. It's very obviously not true. Are you denying that Māoris and Native Americans exist today? I cannot phantom why you would say such obvious nonsense.
I no longer believe you are engaging in good faith. Good day.
People don't leave their homes voluntarily. They leave because of violence or fear of violence. The fact is there were Palestinians living all over the map at the "before" stage. Settlers came to form an ethno-state. The orders given to the Zionist militia commanders were literally "cleanse" this or that village. In the "after" stage, all these people are gone from most of the map and the ones trying to return to their homes are shot dead.
That is ethnic cleansing period. The goal was to create an ethno-state in a place where people already lived. These people have been getting confined to smaller and smaller areas ever since. And the oppression continues to this day.
> Regarding the "State founded on ethnic cleaning", in recent times this includes entire South America, parts of Africa, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
So what? What's your point?
Well the same applies to the Mizrahi Jews who fled Arab countries to Israel.
The Arab countries then seized their properties, which are estimated to add up to multiple times the size of Israel itself.
So on the larger ledger of who owes who reparations, the Arab states clearly owe Israelis more than the other way around.
Zionists like most national movement of the same time goal was to form an ethnostate, just like the palestinian national movement goal was to form an ethnostate, or the czech, polish, ukraine, etc that's pretty obvious
> People don't leave their homes voluntarily
People flee war torn zones, that's not the same thing as ethnic cleansing.
> The orders given to the Zionist militia commanders were literally to "cleanse" that village
Yes, that happened, that doesn't change the fact that most of the population fled on their own accord, that a very sizeable part of the palestinian population remains in Israel to this day, and that the Palestinians were trying to cleanse the Israel population as well (and were successful in a few instances)
> So what? what's your point?
My point is that the horrors you cite are nothing compared to what your very own country was founded on (and that's an educated guess on where you are from, or all countries of the world founding story really)
Have you been to Hebron? I'd highly encourage it because you will see literally the most vile state sponsored racists in the western world.
The ethnic cleansing is not as violent as the gazan genocide but it ought to make any person with a conscience sick to the stomach. You walk around looking up at the settlement guards (more of them than there are settlers) pointing guns at you from guard towers as the racist settlers living above literally throw trash down on the Palestinian untermensch living below them.
Every year they squeeze Palestinians who live and work there further and further out.
It's also the home of the venerated terrorist Baruch Goldstein (10% of Israelis consider him a hero because he shot up a mosque), his shrine and Itamir ben Gvir - the national security minister who idolized him.
After seeing that place I became convinced that if anywhere was going to commit a nazi style genocide it would be israel. 8 years later thats exactly what happened.
You don't have to have sympathy for them. Their religion literally tells them to kill children to steal their land:
"However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you." - Deuteronomy 20:16-17
And now they are literally doing it.
I wondered how an entire ethnic group could be so depraved and removed from humanity, where literally hundreds of thousands of their members in Hebrew Telegram channels cheer on children being burned alive. And now I know that, it was always their religion that caused their depraved behavior. From a philosophy of racial superiority to literally commands to kill children to steal their land. It was always going to come to this genocidal conclusion.
It's perfectly fine to say Judaism should be canceled, given how Jews are behaving publicly and without shame in their desire to steal land and kill children. They literally don't know that they're not supposed to steal land and kill children. They believe that's completely fine.
Losing a war you started doesn't make you a victim.
It was apparently 2 VCs and not the military that came up with GHF (and if I recall, there even was a brief flare up between the ruling Cabinet and the Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, who did not want the IDF to be responsible for aid).
Even though the early planning was led by the Israeli military, two Israeli technology investors played an influential role in shaping discussions as they progressed, according to six Israeli and American individuals familiar with the GHF’s origins. One was Liran Tancman, an entrepreneur and reservist in the IDF’s 8200 signals intelligence unit, who called for using biometric identification systems outside the distribution hubs to vet Palestinian civilians. Another was Michael Eisenberg, an American Israeli venture capitalist who argued that existing U.N. aid distribution networks were sustaining Hamas and needed to be overhauled.
Gives the feeling of the serial number tattoos the Germans used, with tech "fixing" the bad optics of doing that, but the biometric ID serves as one.
Worse, we are helping them when they need it, and closing our eyes when they don't want us to watch.
The bodies of burnt children. The reports of doctors who document multiple sniper rounds found in the bodies of small children and toddlers?
I've been seeing reports about internet connectivity being very touch and go in Gaza the last few weeks.
Is it not unreasonable to think, those who are starving the most might not have internet/electricity to charge a device/care to document when they're starving?
Some of it may be real but you really need to pay attention about who posted it originally, who reposted it etc, even people you wouldn't expect sometimes retweeted recycled Syrian footage...
From first-hand accounts, a lot of it is in-fact real. Including the babies who were left to die in the NICU. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/09/opinion/gaza-...
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/28/nx-s1-5449587/israel-gaza-haa...
Okay but this is just another claim that seems to require evidence. Why should I believe this?
Haaretz’s English edition claims that IDF soldiers were ordered to fire at unarmed Palestinians waiting for food in Gaza, but the original Hebrew version? It states they were told to fire towards crowds to keep them away from the aid sites. This represents a significant difference in intent, legality, and moral implications
https://mrandrewfox.substack.com/p/haaretz-the-lies-continue
> fire towards crowds to keep them away from the aid sites
I am struggling to understand the distinction.
I'd be upset if this happened too, but there's no evidence of that. My guess is that warning shots were fired.
Did I miss something from the article? I did read it.
There's no disagreement about contents of the article being a war crime, if it is true.
Haaretz is not a reliable source, they often publish hearsay and seldom verify the testimonies. We have reports of seemingly daily massacres around food distribution sites mostly originating from one single "journalist" with direct self described sympathy towards Hamas and source always being "locals told me", yet somehow it ends up being published in Reuters et all on a semi-daily basis.
Not to mention that Israel is openly using starvation as a weapon of war.
The Israeli tradition of giving their Gaza operations names of children's games also continues, after "Operation Cast Lead".
(Not sure if they wanted to make a reference to Squid Games as well...)
Red light: 10 minutes later they send out another notification saying no aid is being distributed there today and start shooting anyone in the area
Within days: “Israeli bombing of southern Gaza intensifies 80%”.
If you take those words "kind" and "curious" in a large sense—larger than usual—I think there's enough room there to talk about even this topic without breaking the guidelines.
How to do this? That is something we have to work out together. You're right that it's difficult.
From a moderation point of view, I can tell you that just avoiding garden-variety flamewar and internet tropes already gets us a lot of the way there. You'd be surprised at how many users who think they're taking a grand moral stand against conventional politeness are simply repeating those. Conventional impoliteness isn't any answer either.
I've posted about this quite a bit, since it inevitably comes up every time this topic appears on HN's front page. Here's another part of the current thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403458.
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
There are reasonable discussions to be had, but the submissions which might catalyze them are quickly flagged (as opposed to defended, like this one).
Examples:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44409805
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44409708
If you're going to defend how this inflammatory post is some kind of exception to your policies, you're going to have to do a better job.
People with strong passions on a topic always feel like the moderators are against them. (As you see, I'm not immune to "always" perceptions either!)
I wish we could do something about that—I don't enjoy having so many people, from all sides of every divisive topic, feeling like we're against them when we're not. However, after years of observing this and thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it's inevitable. The cognitive bias underlying it is just ironclad. We all share this bias, which is why your complaint and the complaint of someone on the opposite side are basically the same.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
It's true that HN has hosted several major threads about Israel/Gaza, but it's also true that many (perhaps a hundred times as many) submissions on the topic have ended up flagged and we haven't turned off the flags. I don't see an "always" in there.
As for Saturdays—that factor is so far from affecting how we moderate HN that I had to puzzle for a bit over what you might mean. Nor does this discussion strike me as one-sided. People wouldn't be disagreeing with each other if it were.
It's some people, but a minority, I'm fairly certain.
Online, pretty much any time Israel is discussed, the majority of commenters (or articles) are anti-Israel. Regardless of why you think that is, it's just a fact. You can't blame dang for that.
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
I believe the majority of stories are voted on, and flagged, by the community. If the community decides these are stories worth discussing, I think they fit within the guidelines of HN. Stories about the Russia/Ukraine war also appear. So do stories about US politics. In all of these threads some people complain that they're off-scope, but apparently enough of the community wants to talk about them that they sometimes get upvoted.
The vast majority barely make the global news.
I'd also suggest this (impassioned) video about the event: https://youtu.be/sCW-ARvywto?t=5020
Compare this reporting from a year ago with the Wikipedia page now. How has this reporting from a year ago held up?
In this sense, hackernews gives me hope that online culture is not lost yet.
I have no doubt whatsoever that dang is the biggest reason that HN comment sections are so high quality compared to the rest of the web.
Also note that dang is already pretty active here banning people.
It is a topic where deep emotions come up and where fanatism is widespread. Also among educated people. Also not sure if you have not noticed before, but HN is part of a profit orientated venture capitalist company. Still, I also do enjoy this Oasis here. But I don't see how it can scale in any way you seem to imagine.
I don't have any delusions about ycombinator seeing some of the things it has supported recently, but in this laughably dumbed down world you take what you can get.
As for new communities I believe in being selective and restrictive- based on location, education, or interest and think it's the only way we can get smart communities again. Think how the tech barrier and slow adoption in the 90s/2000s resulted in a smart bubble online, and how covid was the death knell for distinct non homogenous smart online spaces because it brought everyone further online. It's discriminatory but look what we've become.
These types of topics pull themselves apart VERY fast, as the homogenity of discussion norms / definitions, shared by users decreases.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_twent...
After moderate partners abandoned Netanyahu, his only source of support was more right-wing partners, which steadily pushed government policy to the ultra-right.
It might superficially appear ironic because us in the west confuse being a democracy with being moderate. But that's not the case if a large fraction of your population are religious fundamentalists, which goes to my point. In Israel, the problem isn't just the government, it's also the culture of the majority of the population.
It's non-negligible, but the reasons ultra-right parties like Otzma Yehudit [0] have a voice in politics has more to do with election calculus by Netanyahu.
The ideal 2+ party parliamentary system seems to be >2 but <6.
Below that, you get bad outcomes (US). Above that, you get bad outcomes (Israel, India).
Somewhere in the middle, it forces the right amount of coerced cooperation... most of the time (Germany).
You mean < 50% (strictly less than 50%) right? Otherwise the opposition would form a government
I am normally fairly well accustomed to the reliability and credibility of newspapers, but I have never read this newspaper.
There multiple EU signatory countries of the Rome Statute (pledging to cooperate with ICC) that have welcomed these war criminals... who have warrants out by the ICC.
And the same war criminals are invited to give a speech at the U.S Congress to near unanimous applause. It really makes you wonder if we're the "good guys".
-- edit -- If you're curious how much your congressperson receives from AIPAC (Israeli lobby) this website is a great resource: https://www.trackaipac.com/congress
Hearing democrats decry Russian foreign influence was also something I was on board with, but much like Nancy Pelosi saying it's not corrupt when she trades on stock with private information, apparently it's not corrupt when the democratic party accepts foreign aid in the form of AIPAC donations, or just as likely threats of the use of Pegasus against them.
It is quite sad to be an American of good conscience right now. It's hard to respect our country in any way when it shows such little moral fiber and such little backbone.
Your comment would be fine without that bit.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...
As mentioned, you don't have to agree with them, however, it has to be acknowledged that not everyone thinks like you, and that 'rules based order' means different things to different people.
Incidentally, the global majority are not blue and yellow fanatics. China, India, Africa and South America are not on team blue and yellow.
You have your truth, they have theirs.
Blatant falsehood. In 2014 it was about 65% (ethnicity) and 80% (language).
In addition the referendum happened after the invasion and de-facto annexation, without the option of "keep the current situation with Ukraine". If you ask me "do you want to be punched or stabbed?" then I'll choose a punch. Doesn't mean I want to be punched.
My point is that the 'rules based order' means different things to different people. In the West it means one thing and in the rest of the world it means something else.
My point still stands and must be acknowledged even if you are waving the blue and yellow flag, the rainbow flag and the stars and stripes. In any country that the West has brought war to, they know exactly what 'rules based order' means. You don't have to agree with them, they are just on a different team to you.
Hasn't humanity already decided on the worth(lessness) of the people living there? That their suffering and death is worth the cause? Why is their treatment bothering people now? Is it because of the manner it was done? Or maybe, just maybe, its people are starting to realize that everyone's worth is intrinsically the same and when you willingly let others devalue the worth of human beings, you inadvertently let them devalue the worth of yourself and the ones your care about too. Watch, this is the fate that likely awaits most of us, including you.
I was going to ask if people really fall for this, but it seems like they do.
Yeah it’s not aryan but israelian race that is superior to the Arabians, what’s the difference ?
They don’t send them in camp, they just destroy completely their land, demolish and populate with israelian. What’s the difference ? A family without home and earning is as good as dead.
There is still some democracy in Israel and a small part of the population opposed to that racism but for how long ? War always push people more and more to extremism.
What do you do?
> For Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth, the colonizer's presence in Algeria is based on sheer military strength. Any resistance to this strength must also be of a violent nature because it is the only "language" the colonizer speaks. [1]
In contrast, if the actions look closer to those of literal Nazi collaborators, then there is only depravity in that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khatyn_massacre
Both Russia and Gaza are ruled by criminal autocracy. In russia it's mafia style autocracy, in Gaza - terrorism and religious fanaticism.
Both Russia and Gaza have their population under control, influence and brainrot.
Both Israel and Ukraine where there long before Gaza and Russia even existed.
Both Russia and Hamas invaded and tried to commit genocide on Ukraine and Israel respectively.
Both Russia and Hamas failed their goals spectacularly and now are playing the victims (for the same target audience, albeit split on political axis).
Neanderthals aren’t going to become oppressors.
Just think of any powerful nation (or group of people, or whatever), and try to think of somebody they have oppressed, or are still oppressing. It's typically not hard to come up with examples.
Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire, then became conquerors of the world.
Russians were oppressed by the Mongols, then became conquerors of Eurasia.
Communists were oppressed by Tsarists, then became ruthless oppressors themselves.
Protestants were oppressed in Europe, so they set sail to America and became oppressors of the natives.
The better explanation is simple and banal - power concentration makes people abuse it.
You don't need to go that far forward, though. It took Christians <400 years to promulgate the Edict of Thessalonica that made Christianity (and of a very particular kind at that!) to be the only legal religion. And one can argue that it's no coincidence that it happened pretty much as soon as they have gained the political upper hand in the Roman Empire.
> Same for Russians and Mongols, there's a pretty large gap with a ton of events in between
Not really. Muscovy was still paying tribute to the Golden Horde and recognizing their supreme authority under Ivan III. His grandson Ivan IV ("the Terrible") conquered the Tatar state, making its lands such as Kazan part of his empire, and sent an expedition to start the conquest of Siberia.
The inaccuracies here are not so much with timing, more so with lack of precision wrt the groups involved. In general, though, I think it's fair to say that, for most part of human history, the oppressed become the oppressors pretty much as soon as they are capable of it.
>In general, though, I think it's fair to say that, for most part of human history, the oppressed become the oppressors pretty much as soon as they are capable of it.
Doesn't this also hold for non-oppressed that have the opportunity? Although I suppose it'd be hard to find any examples of non-oppressed groups. Pillaging or conquering neighbors was pretty much the norm throughout the history. Rus' was converted to Christianity in part to stop raids such as Siege of Constantinople of 860.
My list of examples is very similar to this one and the ven diagram here is "was oppressed became oppressor"... in most cases it appears that only if the oppressed are destroyed or I would argue in the case of America- controlled at the margins... then they don't circle back around to abuse their newly acquired power.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: yikes—quite apart from the current topic, you've been breaking the site guidelines a lot with flamewar posts and personal attacks. We ban accounts that post like this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604429 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604394 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596070 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596065 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43593235 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43593219 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322414 (March 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43251495 (March 2025)
I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also posted good things, but if you want to keep participating in this community, it would be good to review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on.
Edit: I did end up banning you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403629. We simply can't have people posting like that to HN.
It's not the case that "for each post that doesn't break the guidelines, you're allowed one that does", and that's not what I was doing. When I said HN moderation has worked the same way for over a decade, I didn't mean that the description you gave was accurate—it isn't. (Nor, I assume, did you mean it to be, since you were being sarcastic.)
I meant that what I was doing in the GP comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403362) was standard practice. As you can see from https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que..., it goes back a long time.
We try to persuade users to follow the site guidelines, and tend to give warnings and make requests before banning accounts, especially if they are active participants who have been around for a while. We don't rush to banning such users; we try to explain the intended use of the site and convince them to honor it. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.
I am absolutely no one, but I'd like to highlight that this kind of policy is (indirectly) why I don't use HN. Tolerating intolerance to the extent you do (which isn't 100% but still a lot) allows people like the one you responded to originally to drive hackers like me, my loved ones, my colleagues and my students away, while attracting other hateful people, as they see that they are tolerated here. In a possibly too extreme comparison, this the same dynamic as the "nazi bar problem" (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nazi_bar). I hope you know what kind of community these policies has made of HN.
It's easy to invoke strong pejoratives like "hateful" when describing people who have opposing viewpoints and passions to one's own—in fact, it's hard not to. But it leads to a rapid escalation. A bad comment turns into a "hateful view", "hateful view" turns into "a hateful person", and soon that leaps to "how can you tolerate hateful people on your site". (The next logical step would be to suspect the mods of being "hateful people" themselves.) This escalation is, in my view, bad for community. It leads to uniformity within one's own group and rage and enmity towards difference.
Having banned countless accounts for breaking the site guidelines over the years, I can't accept that "hateful people" are tolerated here for very long. When accounts are posting abusively, we may give them more warnings than you (or a lot of other users) would prefer, but we ban them in the end. A good example is this very subthread. I ended up banning that account (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403629). (Not, I should probably add, because of this or any other conversation about moderation, but just out of standard practice.)
p.s. You are not no one! I appreciate your comments and I wish I could write a better reply—I know a better one is possible, that expresses more precisely how I think about this. Alas it would take me hours, so I'm making do with one I don't much care for.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 is one time that I got closer to it, and maybe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31812293. I still like the phrase "supported communication across differences". Unsupported communication across differences just leads to Hobbesian flamewar.
But anyway, this is only one case and we should not base our thinking just on it. The problem is the policy (or the way it's systematically enforced) and its broader results. I don't know the details of how the moderation works here nor have I any statistics. I only know that I saw too much racism and hate towards whole groups of people because of their identity here in the past, and that when I occasionally stumble across a HN link, I usually can still see that hate being a lot more represented than in other spaces I frequent, and that the kind of policy you described to me has never worked at building diverse and interesting communities.
I’ll ask again: What is the alternative?
Hamas's ideology is certainly opposed to Israel existing, but they are not the only Palestinians, and other ideologies can take hold and be supported by the populace (I hope). The Palestinian Authority has been working together with Israel since its founding, after all, and with all the problems it has, it still represents a model that could work, in theory, and they pursue largely diplomatic ways to gain recognition.
Ideologies aren't platonic solids. They must be constantly refurbished in the minds of the avowed. Every moment of every day informs them—reinforces or depletes them. Changes their character.
It's guaranteed that these minds will, eventually, change. Who survives to bare this change remains to be seen.
Keep in mind, also, that Israel vs. Gaza is in some ways just a proxy war between US/Europe and Iran/Russia who support Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Ideological differences, frankly, are only a surface patina on the same old economic games.
Lastly, consider a third framing: that Israel/Gaza is only the hottest segment of a conflict that encircles the globe: the border between imperial powers and colonized peoples, like US/Mexico etc. Borders, passports, and citizenship are a worldwide system of privileges and protections that Westphalian Nationstates collude to maintain.
I'm not sure what ideologies you refer to. Islam and Judaism? Not really relevant to the discussion, I don't think.
Tell that to the victims of gleeful brutality under the guidance of fundamentalist ideology, like that engrained in Islamist governance and extremist militant groups.
Your post reads like the come-down from intellectual pill-popping. Your attempt to dilute a serious problem in the world to "patinas" and reduce the problem to imperial vs colonized peoples, sounds like a manifesto from the lawns of a university activist encampment.
Consider the framing, you ask. I considered it and reject it, The subjugation of "infidels" under expansionist oppressive religious groups with the intent to bring "peace" is an imperialism all of its own, but much worse. Peace... at the cost of freedom, autonomy, expression, equality.
Or that engrained in the joint Israeli/American coup that overthrew Iran's last democratically-elected leader. The one that installed a secret police that tortured and disappeared tens of thousands of citizens under the training of CIA and Mossad operatives: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/legal-and-political-mag...
If you think his comment reads like revisionism, imagine how ridiculous you sound to an educated audience. C'mon now.
Ideological differences are gigantic valleys between nations in conflict, that's the point.
When one side shouts God's name as they butcher & jihad whoever's in their way who isn't a fanatic like them, the ideological differences can't be mended with "c'mon now". When one side thrives on martyrdom and human rights violations for breakfast, it's not a time to say "maybe we should look at what they're trying to say, are we just not listening?"
Are you arguing for or against Israel?
Wars generally don't end with genocide.
Conquered people don't cease to exist. Worst case they are subjugated, but these days they just assimilated/absorbed.
The alternative is perpetual war, or some sort of compromise.
If Hamas surrendered unconditionally tomorrow, what would Israel do?
I agree with you that this is not actually the nature of War. However, it's also true that it depends on the type of war being fought.
It's not uncommon to see in history that when a country/village/group of people can't/doesn't want to be subjugated or it's strategically difficult to "keep" them, it gets wiped off.
In the Ancient Rome entire Celtic tribes wiped off, while during Charlemagne's empire it was the Saxons, and more recently during the the Ottoman Empire it was the Greeks, Armenians, and today the Curds.
Unfortunately such things do happen and sadly enough will always happen. Not justifying in any way, I am just saying that we're so used to believe that this is something new, when it actually it isn't, and we also believe we are better than back then, while we actually aren't. :(
Really? The > 750,000 Palestinians pushed out of their homes in 1948, when "Israelis" showed up for the first time, backed up by guns, were Hamas? News to me.
Is the only wrong thing Hitler did is to not make a few false flag attacks on the Germans before announcing the 'Final solution'?
1) Give them their own state. This is difficult for quite many reasons, and Israel (by which I mean the current government) doesn't want that
2) Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation, and let them participate in the regular political processes. The current government certainly doesn't want that, and I have no idea what part of the Palestinians would want that.
3) Continue to treat them as sub-human, and deal with the consequences of the hatred that fosters. That seems to have been the "strategy" before October last year.
4) Try to exterminate or exile them, or at least decimating them to such an extend that the problem becomes smaller.
Since 1) and 2) are (again, from the perspective of Isreal's government) undesirable, and 3) has stopped working, 4) seems to be their current strategy.
As the Palestinians are the majority, the Jewish Israelis would become a minority in terms of citizens and votes. This is very much akin to Apartheid South Africa, where a minority ethnic group rules over the rest of the population.
Although there remains the case of 700,000 Palestinian refugees who (in the hypothetical scenario of a unified state) would tilt the balance further if allowed to return to their/their parents homes or given property as compensation for repossessed homes.
For a commonplace example, look at a soccer match, fans screaming at the referee whenever a decision doesn't go their team's way.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-iron-wall-quot
> There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority. ...
> The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage. ... Every native population, civilised or not, regards its lands as its national home, of which it is the sole master, and it wants to retain that mastery always; it will refuse to admit not only new masters but, even new partners or collaborators. This is equally true of the Arabs. Our Peace-mongers are trying to persuade us that the Arabs are either fools, whom we can deceive by masking our real aims, or that they are corrupt and can be bribed to abandon to us their claim to priority in Palestine , in return for cultural and economic advantages. ...
> We may tell them whatever we like about the innocence of our aims, watering them down and sweetening them with honeyed words to make them palatable, but they know what we want, as well as we know what they do not want. Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the "Land of Israel." ... Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim.
> We cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for Palestine. And therefore, there is no likelihood of any voluntary agreement being reached.
Now, Jabotinsky was arguably naive in that he thought that after the inevitable forcing of the Arabs to accept Jewish colonization of their homeland, once they have "given up on all hopes", they could be negotiated with on the terms of settlement:
> In the second place, this does not mean that there cannot be any agreement with the Palestine Arabs. What is impossible is a voluntary agreement. As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall. Not till then will they drop their extremist leaders, whose watchword is "Never!" And the leadership will pass to the moderate groups, who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions. Then we may expect them to discuss honestly practical questions, such as a guarantee against Arab displacement, or equal rights for Arab citizen, or Arab national integrity.
The problem, of course, is that once you have that amount of upper hand over someone, you don't actually have to negotiate. You can just keep taking everything you want, by force. And that is exactly where Israel found itself in the long term.
Speaking for experience from some relatives, the immigration laws for people of jewish faith and ancestry were nigh insurmountable if you came from african, arab or middle east countries and pretty much just nominal even in recent times for those who had even a remote connection but came from the US and the UK.
I have the feeling they are jewish the same way Henry IV was a Catholic when he said "Paris is well worth a Mass".
I fear their plan is to expand military operations into additional countries until they can get back into a pseudo-stalemate scenario. That'd explain the bombings in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran.
Why is it Israel’s problem? There was a legal agreement in 1948. It could have been so simple.
But it is also obvious, historically, why Arab countries aren’t welcoming masses of Palestinians into their countries even in these dire moments.
The problem with understanding this situation is that it probably has more to do with Israel's internal politics than what the situation looks like on the ground in Gaza and elsewhere. Just a quick read from the wikipedia page should give an idea just how corrupt the situation really is.
There's also the fact that Palestinians aren't a homogenous group in any sense of the word. That makes it hard for them to unite under any political flag. It also doesn't help that the borders are all closed, from both sides, and no neighboring country are willing to accept them.
From the outside the situation certainly looks very bleak.
The Israeli govt and people would be very supportive of (2). After all, there are more Arabs living in Israel than in Palestine. The Palestineans, on the other hand, overwhelmingly reject this option.
All 4 bullet points are either completely false or misleading.
Certainly it’s the stated position and goal of the current government, which is what the initial post said.
> citing security concerns
If your neighbour keeps throwing stones at you and you agree to not throw stones, they continue to throw stones. You would probably not support any of their wishes.
Garbage. Gaza had its only airport bombed to oblivion 20 years ago and was told any attempt to repair it would result in the same. Its port has been blockaded by the Israeli navy for 15 years. Its only land exits have been heavily locked down.
Israel will routinely turn electricity off to the country for days to punish for something, be it a rocket attack, or teens throwing stones. They’ve even turned off water for days too.
That’s treating people as subhuman, imprison them and do things like that to them for decades.
Given the circumstances, Gaza's neighbors blockade it to keep it from building an even bigger fighting force.
> Israel will routinely turn electricity off to the country for days to punish for something, be it a rocket attack,
You mean, when occasionally Hamas will try to kill random Israeli civilians using rocket fire? Which is basically a declaration of war and causes Israel to fight back?
> or teens throwing stones.
I don't think that's actually true.
> That’s treating people as subhuman,
Israel is treating Hamas-controlled Gaza as a hostile enemy that is intent on destroying it. Given that Hamas, even under the blockade and with all the restrictions in place, still managed to invade Israel and kill a thousand citizens, while kidnapping and holding hostage 250 civilians, and still, a year and a half later, is holding these people hostage and torturing them daily... given that, I think it's hard to say blockading them was a bad idea.
If you think the blockade is the reason for their actions, then you're quite simply wrong - they were founded many years before and always had the same goal of destroying Israel, including working hard against the peace process that was forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority.
Changing the goalposts, are we?
Yes, that happens.
How is Israel turning off electricity and fresh water to the entire country as a result not considered treating the population as sub-human (as in not deserving of basic human needs), the original point of this discussion ?
> If you think the blockade is the reason for their actions, then you're quite simply wrong - they were founded many years before and always had the same goal of destroying Israel, including working hard against the peace process that was forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority.
Oh, you're so close to the point! "The peace process forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority" is exactly why Netanyuhu and his ilk started supporting Hamas. Because when your explicitly stated goal is to evict Palestinians (and Netanyuhu has said as much, in as many words), global sympathy starts to wane when the PLA is looking for peaceful solutions (yes, admittedly, after periods of violence and terrorism) and now Israel looks like the bad guy. So let's prop up Hamas, because they are more extremist, and make a more convenient bad guy.
I think that temporarily not supplying a semi-state with electricity while fighting a war they started, does not fit the definition most people would have of "treating them as sub-human". If you do - fine.
> Oh, you're so close to the point! "The peace process forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority" is exactly why Netanyuhu and his ilk started supporting Hamas.
No, you're getting the chronology very wrong here.
Hamas was founded in the 1980s ('88 I think). The main peace talks started in the 1990s, with Oslo getting signed in '93. The terror campaign Hamas started to wage was around that time, trying to derail the peace talks.
In '95, Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli right-wing extremist, and Netanyahu was elected for the first time as opposed to Rabin's "successor" Peres. A major Hamas terror attack right around that election is largely attributed to tipping the election in favor of Netanahu, who won by the thinnest majority in Israeli history to this day (iirc around 10k votes).
Another PM, Barak, was elected to pursue peace and had talks with the PA in 2000 and 2001. This is when the second intifada was launched, unclear how much from Hamas and how much from the PA. Later, a different PM (Sharon), actually considered a right-wing hawk, was elected and initiated the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005. Olmert, his successor, was elected on a platform of disengaging from the West Bank. In the meantime, Hamas was elected to rule Gaza, the blockade was started, and Hamas began shooting rockets at Israel. Peace negotiations were again held in 2008/2009 between Olmert and Abbas.
Only in 2009 did Netanyahu even get back into power.
So the idea that Netanyahu somehow started supporting Hamas - which is a somewhat of a mischaractirization in any case - is only really relevant several years after the blockade started and rockets were fired, which is many years after Hamas worked to shut down the peace process.
And water. For days or more. And well, most of the world considers it a war crime, but hey, if you think it's NBD...
You make it seem like these things all happen like clockwork, with concrete black and white dates.
And well:
> The Hamas movement was founded by Palestinian Islamic scholar Ahmed Yassin in 1987, after the outbreak of the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation. It emerged from his 1973 Mujama al-Islamiya Islamic charity affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Initially, Hamas was discreetly supported by Israel, as a counter-balance to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Netanyahu was formative in Likud. That whole statement used to "prove" Hamas (look, since we're talking about Hamas - let me be unequivocally clear - is a terrorist organization who do despicable things) has goals of excision/extermination... "From the River (Jordan) to the (Red) Sea"... misses the irony that that was Likud's election slogan for a decade or more.
Yes, I do think it had an effect, but less of one than their governing body did, hence my saying so.
Either way, unless you think the blockade itself is "Israel treating Gazans as sub-human", then my point still stands.
That's why Israel has systematically taken out every hospital in Gaza: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdd25d9vp2qo
Has blocked and sabotaged aid at every turn, including bombing UN food trucks: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/01/1158746
And when allied countries got too uneasy about them just blocking all aid trucks at the border, they set up their own aid organization to trickle out nominal amounts of food while they take pot shots at people desperate enough to show up: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74ne108e4vo
They didn't just make this up as they go, presumably the plans have been sitting around for a long time waiting for a suitable moment.
Only if you have enough bombs, which they need to constantly purchase from the US using aid money given to them by the US.
They don't have the stockpiles to eradicate without using their (not so) secret nukes. If they were to do that, there'd be a lot worse follow on effects for Israel. If they simply trickle the deaths over time, people get tired of the horror and need to look away for their own sanity.
That is definitely not true.
I have no idea what crowd composition at European protests looks like, but the vast majority of the people upset about the ongoing genocide are not antisemetic.
There is a propaganda campaign in the US trying to conflate being against genocide with being antisemetic. I'm sure similar tactics are being used in Europe.
If you think it's nonsense, try to go into a anti-war protest with a t-shirt saying that Jews too should be able to live in Middle East. If this thought makes you slightly concerned, you got my point.
Try the same, but opposite argument.
Something like: Would you wear a t-shirt saying “Palestine is treated unfairly” to oct7 memorial or airport/border crossing?
There is war in Gaza in the simple sense that rockets from Gaza still shoot into Israel, that Israeli hostages are still being held, and that Hamas itself (the elected goverenement) says it would attack again. It's a very unbalanced conflict, and in it terrible crimes are committed that you can call genocidal. But Jews in the ghettos weren't bombing Berlin - not during WW2 and not after it.
Jews in the Ghetto didn't get the chance to shoot rockets at Berlin but had they been able to fight back, I'd have given them the same understanding that I currently extends to Palestinians that grew up in the concentration camp that is Gaza. Hamas is the direct results of Israeli policies of the past decades. Even if the IDF manages to somehow invent some purity test for Gazans that it can use to confirm there are no longer any Hamas members left and it finally declares it's operations concluded, you'll have people shooting rockets at Israel if they keep their policies with the Gaza strip and the West Bank. But long term solutions come later, right now, Israelis need to wake up and say no to what is unfolding in the name of their security.
Your comment about Jews in Ghetto is wrong at every possible level. Jews were killed in the Holocaust _without_ a conflict, _without_ attempting to kill Germans, _without_ fighting with anyone over the land and _without_ having any aspirations to control the other. That is an example of a situation where there is no war, and no, it has nothing to do with the situation between Israelis and Palestinians.
Also, stop using the Holocaust as a propaganda tool. My grandfather happened to be a Buchenwald concentration camp survival. It didn't give him or anybody else any right to violate Geneva convention.
1. Genocidal actions can take place in a war, and no definition of a war ever said that the parties have to be of equal strength. Every war that was ever won by one side or another had some sort of power supremacy. Go read the legal definition for genocide and you'll learn that the question of imbalance of power plays absolutely no role in it.
2. I haven't used it as a propaganda tool, and in fact it wasn't me who brought it up at all. I was only commenting that the current situation in Gaza is not comparable to the Holocaust, and I fully stand behind it. To make it clear, I am very happy that it isn't comparable, and I wouldn't want to see any Palestinian suffering like my ancestors did. Not once in my life have I used it to justify crimes committed by Jews, so please learn to read before commenting on my posts. If anything, I always believed that what Jews went through should serve as a reminder for us to never allow things like that from happening again, and I still see the Holocaust as perhaps one of the main driving forces in my opposition to this war.
Shooting at mothers trying to get humanitarian aid for their starving children does not fulfil any definition of war I am aware of.
Read history books yourself. Once one side of a war becomes dominant, it just ends.
Unless it is not really a war but a hideous genocide campaign cynically carried out by Israeli government under the pretext of self-defensive war.
Sorry for being pedanto, but other side must stop resisting for war to end. Guerrilla warfare is quite usual when there is great power imbalance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_resistance_in_German-oc...
Going through your criteria in order: Of course they defended themselves, including attempts to kill Nazis. They also attempted to keep their homes, and certainly would have rather Germany have different leadership
Does that somehow mean the concentration camps were a "war"?
I.e. there was not even a possibility that nazis were defending. While somebody from Palestine side did fire the opening salvo on oct7.
Now, that's a re-writing of history if I've ever seen one.
> Israeli and Palestinian deaths preceding the 2023 Gaza war. Of the Palestinian deaths 5,360 were in Gaza, 1,007 in the West Bank, 37 in Israel. Most were civilians on both sides.
Quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Israeli%E2%80%...
See the chart on the top right with the orange bars
And that blockading policy and financing of anything but fatah and bunch of other stuff influenced today situation.
But you must admit that oct 7 was unusual escalation. Which now are used as the reason for current idf actions.
Not only I do not belittler their suffering, I personally helped some of them out. I also ran an organization that provided thousands of Gazan with electricity, and I was arrested by the Israeli police when encouraging Palestinians in Israel to vote. At the same time I have family members who were killed (and kidnapped) on the first day of this war. Life isn't black and white.
I completely agree that life isn’t always black and white. But right now it is, just like it was in countless other situations in the past. You can think it’s “complicated” all you like, but the evidence is overwhelmingly against such a framing, which is where the conditioning comes into the picture.
It is great that you volunteered in Gaza, but it’s also tragic that you fail to see what is happening even after directly interacting with Gazans.
Some day in the future, when free Palestinians can build museums and monuments and make movies to mourn those lost in this genocide, everyone will always have been against this.
Why? Because Netanyahu and a good chunk of the Israeli population want the Palestinians to cease to exist and its territory to be part of Israel. An opponent that wants to achieve its goals through political action and appeals to the international community meant that there was a risk of Israel being dragged into a two-state commitment. A terrorist group attacking civilians gives those hardliners a perpetual excuse to go to war.
In short: the answer is yes, that appears to be precisely the point: to prevent any possibility of peaceful reconciliation and drive the Palestinians to eventual expulsion or eradication.
This seems like a feasible goal.
> and drive the Palestinians to eventual expulsion or eradication.
That strategy haven't worked for what 50 years, what makes anyone think it'll work anytime ever?
The Palestinians don't exactly have anywhere to go.
If Israel wanted them to leave, wouldn't they seek cooperation with a nation that is willing to have them, and organize mass transports there?
At least I haven't heard of any such thing.
There is no such nation. Iirc Israeli politicians have more than once responded to critique with "you take them, then". But there aren't any takers.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Other commenters are doing it too, but it's a matter of degree, and the rhetoric in your post here is a degree worse. You can make your substantive points without resorting to "cult", "stamped out", "criminal ideology" and so on. Fortunately it doesn't look like your account has a habit of doing this, so it should be easy to fix.
So sure, workers at Haarez probably don't, but when the extermination feeling is widespread enough that 47% feel they can openly agree to a question proscribing the killing women and children, then insisting on the insistence on precision comes across mostly as an attempt at distraction.
[1] https://theconversation.com/in-israel-calls-for-genocide-hav...
Fortunately many Israelis are against the ongoing genocide, but powerless to stop it.
All this to say you're right, but the government is indocrinating more and more people for these views.
It is indeed sickening. They straight out tell you how they want all Palestinian children to die.
And if you disagree with the guy, go dislike his videos.
That's a wild phrase to use in the context of killing indiscriminate civilians after luring them to the food they're desperate for.
And it’s all so casual and self righteous.
Every country has a percentage of right wing psychopaths. Unfortunately, they seem to be running the government in Israel.
Israel's intended end game seem to be to make Gaza completely uninhabitable, so that the Palestinians are forced to leave, then Israel can grab the land. A bit like they are doing in the West Bank, but on turbo mode. However, the Palestinians don't want to leave their land (why should they?) and no other state wants to take them. So we are left with enormous human misery, with no end in sight.
Most baffling of all, many Western states are not just turning a blind eye, but actively supporting Israel. Shame on them.
In a context where hamas declared (multiple times) that they will repeat October 7 forever, how is this a bad outcome for Israel? Why it doesn't make sense to you that Western states are supporting Israel? It would be baffling (for me at least) if any state in the world would deal with terrorists by capitulating to them.
Because they are supporting the destruction and displacement of an entire people. Only a tiny percentage of whom were involved in the Hamas atrocity. I don't want my country supplying bombs that are going to be dropped on Palestinian hospitals, universities and residential areas.
I would have expected HN readers at least check on some context before starting beating their drums. Haaretz is a propaganda outlet that has been stocking the fire under everything related to Israel, for decades now.
Both. And also trolls, and these days GenAI.
Some say "Never again means now", with the flag of Israel, and no sense of irony or hypocrisy. I wonder if any say the same words with the flag of Palestine? Hamas is still also genocidal, with their leaders giving similar comments about all Jews as the current Israel coalition members give about Palestinians.
When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers. The IDF and Hamas are the elephants, and there are many innocent civilians (metaphorically grass) suffering because of it. The supremely dominant power of the IDF means the suffering grass is overwhelmingly on one side of a border that Israel doesn't recognise, but there are innocents everywhere.
I don't have any answers. I have learned to recognise this kind of mindset, but I cannot find words to act as levers to change those minds.
Whatever the historical record that brought us here, the fact is, Israel's standing army (not some personal goons of some dictator, the standing army of a moden democratic nation), appear to be practically all in on executing a systemic genocide. And I don't think there's anyway you can justify or underplay that.
Maybe the answer you're looking for is that good people anywhere shouldn't let anyone sell them a holocaust no matter the deal.
I do not divide either my criticism or sympathy by nationality, I divide it by victimising and victimhood — and even then with the humility to know that I cannot see through the fog of all the propaganda I'm being shown.
No, I don't blame all Jews at all and I've seen a lot of Jewish people actively work to stop the genocide. But I definitely blame this narrative of Hamas is what's been used to sell to genocide to what are otherwise normal and compassionate people. I believe the only people who can stop this are the Israeli citizens saying no and the time was way too long ago.
Everyone knows, none is doing anything about it, coz Zionists own many goverments and overall world finances.
“Judge my ppl by the content of their hearts” - so ppl did in the past and now we all can see they were in fact “correct”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/jun/26...
They’re deliberately creating martyrs so they can prolong this pointless war into the next generation.
I can’t imagine there’s anyone left in Gaza that wouldn’t happily gun down any Israelian just for a chance to get back at them.
Anyone who knows they are raising an assault rifle to a crowd of civilians and pulls the trigger is a mass murderer and a psychopath
Which actually holds up quite well for everybody who loves to bring up that quote: realism aka "we shouldn't face the consequences of our actions" is the obvious rallying cry for people facing the consequences of their actions.
If neither side can agree on peace, if neither side has objectives which the other will accept, if neither side is willing to compromise; What other outcome is possible in terms of realpolitik?
It is upsetting to observe. We all want better for humanity.
Of course it is understandable to be outraged by the violence and atrocities. The human suffering is real, but arguments focusing on these points can miss the larger picture. The underlying incentives dictate outcomes. Atrocities are often marketed as rationalizations for further violence.
We want to prescribe an outcome without atrocities. Yet discussions fall into recrimination before they can describe the conflict coherently.
And after the Israeli opposition leader exposed the whole charade and Netanyahu defended it saying “On the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas. What’s wrong with that? It only saves the lives of Israeli solders, and publicising this only benefits Hamas.”
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/06/netanyahu-defe...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Abu_Shabab
[3] - https://archive.is/20250606144357/https://www.ynetnews.com/a...
"The basis for Lieberman’s allegation of ties to IS was unclear."
It is easy to throw dirt and hope something sticks, but the main thing speaking against his group seems Netanjahu's support in my opinion. But otherwise I don't see the scandal so much here. Especially not compared to the scandal of intentionally targeting civilian population and indiscriminate killing of starving people like the article states.
Edit: But I just read
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerem_Shalom_aid_convoy_loot...
And well, that is indeed better to show who we are dealing with, ruthless criminals who loot and shoot a UN aid convoy for profit.
Netanyahu prefers Hamas, he was propping them up prior to the current battles, according to the New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...
Also, if, as in the recent New York City mayoral debate, US politicians are supposed to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which it recognizes itself as, then I don't see the big deal over Palestine as an Islamic state. I myself would prefer to see a secular PFLP state, but the Zionist entity, US, Canada etc. fight against the PFLP, proscribe them as "terrorists" etc.
Those words indicate something different, than allowing quatari money to reach the civilian part of Hamas government as part of a temporary peace deal. Because that sounds actually reasonable to me.
Now there is indeed more, like this:
"Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who is now Mr. Netanyahu’s finance minister, put it bluntly in 2015, the year he was elected to Parliament.
“The Palestinian Authority is a burden,” he said. “Hamas is an asset.”"
But those words came without context (just a youtube video, that I won't watch right now).
A simple dealer vs an armed wing of a religious theocracy who think people like me are the devil incarnate, I'd pick the dealer.
An organised armed drug network that necessarily has to be at least comparable strength to an existing network of religious theocrats who are obviously getting external support owing to the ability to continue fighting despite the evidence of systematic destruction of their civil environment that satellite imagery shows has been in aggregate comparable in scope and depth to a nuke going off…
I don't want either of them anywhere near anyone I care about. Even if the latter wasn't associated with a different group of religious zealots.
Even before the current siege/semi-siege, the standard response to calls from aid orgs had been essentially "Look, it's not us. We're letting in aid, but it's not our fault if Palestinian armed gangs themselves are looting it after we let it in. Palestinians are just too stupid to organize their own survival."
Of course that response was already ridiculous back then: The 1000s of aid trucks stuck at the Egypt-Gazan border are definitely not kept there by Hamas or armed gangs. Even the looting attacks themselves were suspicions: Aid orgs kept reporting they were happening in areas under full control of the IDF - and IDF was forbidding using any other route[1]:
> Israel is doing the opposite of ensuring aid can be delivered to Palestinians in need. For example, a U.N. memo recently obtained by the Washington Post concluded that the armed gangs looting aid convoys could be “benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence” and “protection” from Israel’s military, and that a gang leader had a military-like compound in an area “restricted, controlled and patrolled” by the Israeli military.
The gangs operate in areas under Israeli control, often within eyeshot of Israeli forces. When convoys are looted, Israeli forces watch and do nothing, even when aid workers request assistance. Israeli forces refer to one area about a kilometer from its Kerem Shalom border checkpoint as “the looting zone.” The IDF-designated looting zone might be the only place in Gaza that Israeli forces won’t shoot an armed Palestinian.
But there was still at least some benefit of the doubt that the armed gangs were just some ordinary criminals exploiting the situation. Claims that the gangs themselves were operating under Israeli orders were conspiracy theories.
Netanyahu now confirmed those theories as reality.
Comments like this coming from an audience currently not being genocided is going to haunt our history forever.
Because it kind of reads like an attack towards me for not caring about genocide. If you are curious about my point of view, it is that both Hamas and Israeli leadership belongs in prison and the US and EU should stop supporting them immediately. But that doesn't mean I support anyone who wants to erease Israel. Do you support Hamas?
> I guess the Israeli government's original plan to arm and support drug gangs and literally ISIS (euphemistically called 'clans') as "aid security" wasn't working out? Especially after it was revealed said "security" was stealing and reselling the food aid under the protection of IDF while the Israeli govt. and media blamed the looting on Hamas.
To which he responded his opinions about drug and faith dealers.
But you gave a response, but avoided the question. Together with your comment history and wording I do conclude now that you do.
Unless, of course, delivering aid is not actually your intent.
Israel is the one actually committing a genocide though.
> the claim that Mossad funded ISIS is antisemitic propaganda, on the face of it.
Is that why ISIS apologised after accidentally attacking IDF? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-is...
A subset of them indeed engages with dark methods like mixing highly addictive drugs into harmless ones and turf war, but the majority just sells things.
Before weed was legal in germany I engaged with quite some of them and they were mostly decent people all in all. Not the greatest and often messed up themself a bit, but otherwise no danger to me or anyone else. My choice if I damaged myself with their products.
A islamist on the other hand is buisy by definition with spreading the rule of Islam over everyone, everywhere.
Dangerous to any non muslim.
Both Hamas and the clans are cancers to society, and it's abhorrent that the IDF is dealing with them to distribute aid, instead of being directly involved (which they can easily commit to).
Now as my edit above hopefully made clear, apparently they ain't just "drug dealers", but ruthless criminals who loot and shoot a UN aid convoy for profit.
And abhorrent are indeed many things about the whole situation.
> In one incident, the soldier was instructed to fire a shell toward a crowd gathered near the coastline. "Technically, it's supposed to be warning fire – either to push people back or stop them from advancing," he said. "But lately, firing shells has just become standard practice. Every time we fire, there are casualties and deaths, and when someone asks why a shell is necessary, there's never a good answer. Sometimes, merely asking the question annoys the commanders."
I am not optimistic at all and I am very afraid for Gazans.
Not saying it's right or wrong, or that this sort of article is or isn't interesting to HN readers. But a reasonable reason for flagging an article is a belief that the topic at hand doesn't lend itself to thoughtful, interesting discussion.
C'mon, you can't just go around implying that the Jews only "claimed" to have a genocide against them.
And this shit is happening now.
That said it's the kind of topic I don't expect HN to be able to particularly handle in an interesting or insightful way. It's mostly just going to be a mix of horrified people and then users trying to gaslight others into how this is a good thing.
IMO Netanyahu changing won’t make this go away.
> “The Gaza Strip should be flattened, and for all of them there is but one sentence, and that is death,” Yitzhak Kroizer, a member of national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said in a radio interview.
Yitzhak is a current sitting member of the Knesset.
2 points:
1. A number of them, especially by more moderate voices, were made in the immediate days after Oct 7 when there was a tremendous amount of anger as a reaction to what happened.
2. The above comment and others like this were made by the extreme of the extreme right in Israel. I don't think that even Ben Gvir would utter such a thing.
Nobody with decision making powers is making any attempt to exterminate a people.
> Once again, we are faced with the suggestion that not only are the IDF murderous maniacs, but they also have the worst aim on the planet. The monstrous IDF are such terrible shots that they fire heavy machine guns, mortars, and grenade launchers at crowds of tens of thousands, yet manage to wound no more than 1 to 5 Gazans at a time.
The following quote seems consistent with much of the journalism I’ve read about the conflict for years. It makes you become a bit cynical of the news outlets when you repeatedly see things like this https://x.com/washingtonpost/status/1929961283593367559 Peoples first impressions often last the longest.
> Later, Haaretz quotes an officer saying the intent behind the live fire was crowd control, not carnage. However, it buries this clarification so deeply that it becomes effectively irrelevant. The reader has already been presented with the moral horror headline, and that’s what will endure.
> The author admits they don’t know who is shooting at civilians near these aid distribution centres. Still, rather than consider the possibility that, for example, Hamas might be involved, the article shifts with the loaded line:
"both the English and Hebrew are the only usage-standard constructions for when the verb is shooting and the object is a crowd"
"you can read the Hebrew Wikipedia page about, like, 2017 Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock and see that is says Paddock 'ירה לעבר' the crowd"
Moreover, your account has been using HN primarily for political/nationalistic battle, which is also a line at which we ban accounts, quite separately from individual violations.
If you keep doing this, we're going to ban you. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use this site as intended going forward, we'd appreciate it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42177567 (Nov 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39151611 (Jan 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36472783 (June 2023)
Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. It only makes things worse.
Your comment would be just fine without those bits.
From a moderation point of view, it's a question of the effect that these bits have on other people in the community, and therefore the quality of the discussion. It's obviously near-impossible to have a thoughtful conversation about a topic like this across the vast differences (ideological, national, emotional) that separate people. In such a context, even provocations that feel small and justified can set the neighborhood on fire.
If the discussion devolves into just another internet screaming match where people hurl pre-existing talking points and just get even more riled up in rage, then the HN thread is a failure. Maybe it's too much to hope for anything better on this topic, which is probably the most divisive and emotional one we've ever seen, but I think we have to try. That's we allow the topic to appear on the HN front page from time to time. Not to allow it would be easier, at least in the short term, but inconsistent with the intended spirit of the site.
The bulk of your post wasn't doing anything like flamewar at all, so the swipey bits were particularly unfortunate.
p.s. I don't mean to pile on, but "please stop pretending" is also a swipe. You can't know whether someone else is pretending, and there's no reason to suppose that people aren't sincere in their convictions about a highly-charged topic (separately from whether their beliefs are true or false). If you lead by denying that, the rest of what you have to say will have little chance of being heard.
I don't agree that it isn't relevant to HN. The central value of this site is intellectual curiosity, construed broadly (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
If you try to define that in a way that detaches from larger human concerns, you make it smaller. Curiosity doesn't benefit from that.
I agree with you that there are many reasons to be unhappy with threads like this and how the topic lands on HN generally. I am by no means happy with it—I just don't think that the alternative is better. Curiosity ultimately has to do with relating to what's real and what's true. You can't impose a narrow view of on- and off-topcicness on that.
The problem of how to run a site like HN in accordance with a value like that is subject to a thousand constraints, some obvious, many not. That makes the problem interesting, but also means that it can never be solved—not to everyone's satisfaction, nor even to anyone's satisfaction. Therefore we all have a certain amount of dissatisfaction to tolerate.
Sorry but I think you made the wrong call here.
The comments are actually better than expected given the sensitivity of the topic at hand.
That is far from the case, as you can see for yourself if you look more closely.
People (I don't mean you personally, but all of us—it seems to be basic human bias) are far too quick to jump to "always". I call this the notice-dislike bias (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), which is a terrible name I'm hoping someone can improve on.
It seems to be very similar to Baader-Meinhoff. I guess it’s called “frequency illusion” now, which is much more descriptive.
Thanks for the reply though—I hope someday someone will come up with a good name for it; or better, still, point out that it's a known bias in the standard repertoire and tell me what it's called.
"If you want food today, pose for the video."
See how easy that was?
anybody who watches that video can clearly see that you are wrong
“Israeli Soldiers Killed at Least 410 People at Food Aid Sites in Gaza This Month” —https://theintercept.com/2025/06/27/israel-killed-palestinia...
Looking forward to the next goalpost.
Israel's official policy is that "Hamas must not get aid". If that were successful, there'd be no food for the hostages either.
> The majority have never been convicted of a crime, including more than 2,000 of them being held in administrative detention, in which the Israeli military detains a person without charge or trial. Such detention can be renewed indefinitely based on secret information, which the detainee is not allowed to see. Administrative detainees are held on the presumption that they might commit an offense at some point in the future. Israeli authorities have held children, human rights defenders and Palestinian political activists, among others, in administrative detention, often for prolonged periods.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/29/why-does-israel-have-so-...
I am glad it is visible. And hope for some more civic debate about the topic.
Notice how israel (the country currently committing the genocide) is not even mentioned in your reply.
I also still need to work almost every day to pay the bills and care for my family, otherwise I'd be happy to go camp out and peacefully protest in support of change on the daily. What's the best option for the majority who share my situation? Because I do care a lot, and feel stuck.
Laughable spin.
I think that's also what they said on Bloody Sunday: not firing "at Catholic protestors", but firing "towards the masses".
I also don't see why this kind of article is at the top. It's clearly political and is not related to the site's mainstream.
Anti-Israeli content is continuously promoted here along with anti-Israel commentary while flagging and down-voting of any discussion to the contrary.
Israel can do no right. If it allows food into Gaza Hamas steals it. If it tries to set up a different food distribution scheme and Hamas comes up with various schemes to attack that (including shooting its own people) then that's also a war crime.
There is zero consideration in this discussion to Israel's position. To the hostages. To the realities of war.
That's not to say Israel can't and shouldn't be criticized but this is more of an obsession and a hate fest than any of that. Valid criticism is not cherry picking and piling on, it's a more thorough consideration of the nuanced reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudanese_civil_war_(2023%E2%80...
Israel is not evil and doesn't need your funding. Your ally is not slaughtering children, your ally is defending itself against an enemy hiding behind children that's trying to get as many civilians killed as they can and get the most shocking images and figures, whether fabricated or not, in front of your eyes.
Hamas was also taking your tax dollars. The US funds Palestinians too, where do you think that money funneled into Gaza ended up?
The US also supports dictatorial regimes like Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (and Turkey, semi-dictatorial). US weapons used by Saudis were slaughtering civilians in Yemen. Not to mention what western powers did in the middle east directly (and other places).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_involvement_in_the_Yem...
I think you're being manipulated. Israel is far from perfect but it's also far from evil. Any other country in its position would be doing more or less the same thing. If its enemies stopped trying to murder its citizens then there would be no more violence. War crimes, if/when they occur are not ok but Israel has the right to defend its citizens and not too many options.
EDIT: I should also add that not everyone here is American. In general the singling out of Israel and the PR machinery to paint Israel as evil is happening across the world. Many countries and people that provide no aid to Israel are attacking it. So clearly the amount of aid provided is not a factor in anti-Israel sentiments and singling it out. You can do this sort of PR when you have a lot of money (Qatar).
> No Jews no news
You got that right!
They must train them differently these days. Multiple IDF soldiers have reported being asked to fire on their own comrades circumstantially: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive
I suppose that's the sort of trouble you should expect staffing an army with hardline theocratic officers and conscripted civilian infantry.
This is no different thank French people in Algeria who committed a genocide during all the way up to the liberation.
Its the same standard that should be upheld with South Africa and the Nazi regime
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/state-of-pale...
Your argument is a typical claim of racists and zionist colonialists.
2nd: “Zionist colonialists” is what you call the people that want to have their home in the tiny piece of desert where they where expelled from. By contrast you don’t seem to have any qualms about the Arab colonialists that took all the Middle East and north of Africa. In fact, you support they should even get to keep the tiny piece of desert that belongs to the Jew people. Your problem clearly has to lie in the ethnicity of the people doing the so called colonialism (you even go as far as calling colonialism to people taking hold of their homeland).
"the Arab colonialists that took all the Middle East and north of Africa.": that sentence is misleading. Arabs conquered the other kingdoms, just like the Romands or Greeks did. In no way did they establish an ethnostate.
While there is some desert in Palestine in the south, the north sees heavy rainfall rainfall in upper gallilee of over a metre per year.
Why does it belong to the "Jew people"? On what basis? If its a religious argument then that is not a valid basis for expelling the native Palestinians.
If its based on ancestry, there is little basis for that either. Jewish people like myself cannot claim that all there ancestors were from Palestine. In fact it is probably that Palestinians can claim more descendance from the Jewish people than people who identify as Jewish (excluding existing Palestinian Jews). Zionist colonialists where like myself, European jews, with mostly European ancestry. They were not reclaiming their land, they replicated the European white supremacy ideology in order to "transfer", as they said, the native population that they saw as inferior.
Therefore your argument is very similar to white supremacists who justify their twisted ideology with a very superficial and wrong view of history.
Also, the only ethno state in this conflict is Palestine, where they persecuted or even eliminated every single Christian and Jew.
Israel, on the contrary, has a Muslim community that even has elected representatives in the Knesset.
Whether the population increases or not is irrelevant.
"Also, the only ethno state in this conflict is Palestine, where they persecuted or even eliminated every single Christian and Jew."
This is a blatant lie. Christians, jews and muslims were coexisting peacefully before Israel was created. Israel is murdering Christians in Gaza and the west bank and discriminating against them.
Palestinian community in Israel is also discriminated against with laws that give Jews preferential treatment. They also face systemic racism. This is part of an apartheid system as documented here https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra...
Their representation in the Knesset is tokenistic at best. As they are always a minority (since rest of Palestinians have no rights in the west bank and the ones in gaza are not even considered humans by Israel), they can never have any meaningful opposition to the fascist policies of the extreme settlers.
I see that you are also denying the fact that there is a genocide, reminds me of the neo nazis that were telling me that the Holocaust didn't happen, even though my own grandmother went through it.
I agree a two state solution has been derailed by attacks. Full implementation of the Oslo accords were derailed by the assassination of the Prime Minister of Israel. He was assassinated by a right wing Kahanist Jewish Israeli! And now the Israeli cabinet has Kahanist MPs. That's history.
Enshrining it in your military doctrine probably doesn't help the international response: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive
Just curious, are there similar sites recording the repeated terrorist attacks against Israel? The rapes? Information is only good when it contains enough context to intelligently weigh the facts. I don't suppose you could link those as well could you?
From your parent comment:
> I've spent my life watching news reports of bombings at their border, bus stops, public squares, their fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, and children picked off.
There has never been a time in the last 30 years where attacks against Israel were insufficiently covered.
Idea or reality?
> don't suppose you could link those as well could you?
I can, but that's not what is under any scrutiny or question by you.
I don't know what to do. I give money to non-profits and progressive political candidates, but I still feel like it's hopeless.
How do we stop Israel doing this when the US is run by evangelical christian zionists.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/28/nx-s1-5449587/israel-gaza-haa...
The most obvious problems are that the food distribution centers are placed deep inside military red zones (which is not common practice), and that Israeli soldiers have been ordered to fire at civilians in those zones, even if they obviously pose no threat (which is clearly a war crime).
The sections "Troops describe firing at crowds of aid seekers" and "Aid workers and medics call for end to GHF distribution plan" explain in more detail.
The Haaretz article states it is unclear how many died from IDF fire vs the Abu Shabab group. Husain was not at the aid site and so can't state how they were wounded.
It is also the case that doctors without borders is far from a non-partisan group and has harbored terrorists in the past (e.g. https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-slain-gazan-named-as-docto...)
If the soldiers truly fired on those who were only running away, not advancing, this should be investigated and charged as a war crime. However, at this point the evidence is not clear aside from a handful of anonymous sources from a single press release.
Then they run out of food and their families are starving.
Then you distribute a limited amount of food that will run out long before most get any food.
If your family is starving to death, you can't leave the area and someone is dangling food in front of your face, are you saying you wouldn't risk it for your family and try to get SOME food regardless of the threat of death?
And this line of reasoning:
> If you don't shoot them they will take a sack by force, and then everybody will take a sack by force. Usually they coordinate themselves into bands or gangs to steal the food.
is just dehumanising and morally abject.
Edited to correct syntactical error.
The article has multiple IDF officers say that this isn't, in fact, normal warzone procedure for distributing food. That they witnessed crowds being dispersed with artillery fire, which isn't normal procedure anywhere.
Like, I don't know what world you live in, but I don't know any other conflict where dozens of civilians get fired upon during food aid distribution every day.
Once you understand the motive, you understand why these deliberately concentrated, artificially limited aid delivery systems are used. They make remaining in Gaza the worst option.
This is genocide. It's unforgivable.
What would stop them from deliberately drawing fire under this scenario?
Aside from meeting the Israeli demands, what other options remain for Hamas?
Agreed.
>Are you suggesting that it is right...
Thank you for the opportunity to further clarify my comment. If this is happening I believe that it is deeply immoral.
My comment posed a hypothetical about the incentives which may be driving these events. As you observed above, it does fit with existing knowledge of Hamas strategy. Examples would include pop-up rocket attacks near schools or hospitals.
Here is a source which some have alleged to be sympathetic to Hamas. I have selected this source not because I prefer it, but to avoid allegations of bias.
https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/unrwa-condemns...
>UNRWA condemns placement of rockets, for a second time, in one of its schools
>UNRWA strongly and unequivocally condemns the group or groups responsible for this flagrant violation of the inviolability of its premises under international law
Atrocities against unarmed civilians are not excused by 'but they started it', who did? The old woman, the 10 year old boy? Justifying collective punishment like this takes a huge degree of racism and heartlessness.
"once started (wars) are sometimes impossible to stop". How convenient then that land (belonging to people who also have nothing to do with 'the first punch') continues to be stolen as long as the war drags out.
Even the stance that such claims must be valid because the reporters are Israeli, is itself derivative of the Jewish conspiracy trope. Is it more likely there is a large conspiracy afoot and Israeli officers are engaging in war crimes at large scale as many in this thread have concluded (even before this report), or that these are isolated and undesirable events playing out in the fog of war and representative of poor decision making in circumstances of which we have only partial knowledge?
My bias, if I have one, is to believe that the Israeli military, or really any competently run military anywhere, is interested in not committing war crimes when avoidable.
Reporting is one way they are brought to light. Commenters are allowed to discuss the validity of the claims, whatever their reasoning. You have decided to believe the Israeli military, others have the right to conclude otherwise.
But that the reporters and sources are Israeli means your knee-jerk claims of their anti-semitism or conspiracy are absurd. Nor does that mean the claims must be valid, just that they shouldn't be dismissed out of hand by hair-triggered, wild accusations of anti-semitism. You do know they aren't doing anyone any favours, right?
Without a sense of proportionate response, if Hitler did some false flag attacks, do you expect the whole world to be okay with the Holocaust?
> Without a sense of proportionate response, if Hitler did some false flag attacks, do you expect the whole world to be okay with the Holocaust?
Can you explain this point? I don't think I quite understand.
If Hitler bombed a some Germans and blamed it on the Jewish people, should rest of the world be okay with the Holocaust?
The reality is a fortified Israel was born of Jewish trauma and while the citizens of the world continue to propel antisemitic nonesense, despot nationalists like Netanyahu will have excuses to justify horrific actions
China (and Turkey, Arab states) is more or less content to sit and watch USA destroy itself domestically and internationally over the failed Zionist project. "Do nothing, win."
Thought experiment: if the Israel/Gaza conflict didn't pop off, would the US presidency be the same right now? How did that change affect the Russia/Ukraine conflict? Etc.