All: if you're going to post in this thread, please make sure you're up on the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and that your comment is strictly within them.
That especially means two things here: being kind, and not using the thread to do battle. If you're not able to stick to that, that's fine, but in that case please don't post.
What does be kind mean in a context like this? Many things, but here's one in my view: it means finding a place in your heart for the humanity of the other—whoever the other happens to be for you.
That isn't easy but it's the spirit we want here. If you can't find it in yourself, that's understandable, but on this topic, please only post if you can.
Dissents etc can be found in the case page: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192
- in particular the opinion of Judge Aharon Barak, the Israeli ad-hoc Judge (a peculiarity of the ICJ is that each side gets to add a judge, but it doesn't have much effect since there are 17 other judges). But interestingly Judge Barak ruled against Israel in the case of two measures, enforcement against Incitement and ensuring humanitarian aid.
I believe it's also available in French, for those more familiar with that language.
Since the comment that I replied to was flagged, I'm posting this here because it is simply a statement of facts.
- Judge Barak's numbers on civilian deaths on 7th october are simply wrong and could've been easily checked. 766 civilians were killed, 1200 was the total number of deaths (including armed forces).
- Israel's own numbers say "2 civilians killed for every one militant"[1], that's 66% in the Gaza offensive.
- 766 / 1200 = 63.8%
- 63.8% and 66% are indeed close numbers, don't see why would it be flagged.
Of course, the numbers claimed by other NGOs / UN make it worse. But Israel's numbers are sufficient to make that claim.
Regarding the people that died on October 7, one important detail is evidence surfaced it appears a sizeable fraction was killed due to Israeli military attacking militants and hostages without distinction, to avoid capture, following the so called Hannibal directive:
Why is this flagged/down voted? Its just a plain statement of fact, supported by credible sources and references. Here's some more references if people think this didn't happen. The IDF attacked and fired on the Nova festival goers with Apache helicopters [1], an Israeli tank fired shells at Kibbutz Be'eri killing hostages and children, and stories of eight babies killed at the kibbutz have been proven to be false, among other things [3], [4]
The report that I saw said that there were 70 vehicles completely destroyed by RPG or Helicopter and the Israeli military did not go into specifics(although they undoubtedly have more data about the event than they have released)
IDF says “immense quantity” of friendly fire, that doesn’t sound like your “a few”:
Israel’s army on Tuesday admitted that an “immense and complex quantity” of what it calls “friendly fire” incidents took place on 7 October.
The key declaration was buried in the penultimate paragraph of an article by Yoav Zitun, the military correspondent of Israeli outlet Ynet.
It is the first known official army admission that a significant number of the hundreds of Israelis who died on 7 October were killed by Israel itself, and not by Hamas or other Palestinian resistance factions.
Citing new data released by the Israeli military, Zitun wrote that: “Casualties fell as a result of friendly fire on October 7, but the IDF [Israeli military] believes that … it would not be morally sound to investigate” them.
"While this is not a conclusive finding, it is currently considered the likeliest explanation based on the evidence gathered in investigations conducted by the Associated Press, CNN, The Economist, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal.[7]"
No official investigations made (only statements made by pro-israel media eraly in conflict), no proof thefore. Yet israel has track of bombing the Gaza hospitals, which makes aposteriori a more plausible explanation for the incident.
Regardless a failed rocket launch is a different matter from the Hannibal Directive which is deliberate lethal attack on their own hostages. The official directive was retired in recent years but is still practiced per Israeli reporting.
> The Hannibal Directive (Hebrew: נוהל חניבעל; also Hannibal Procedure or Hannibal Protocol) is the name of a controversial procedure that was used by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) until 2016 to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers by enemy forces. According to one version, it says that "the kidnapping must be stopped by all means, even at the price of striking and harming our own forces."
> Israeli newspapers have reported that the IDF was issued orders echoing the wording of the Hannibal Directive during the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel. The IDF was ordered to prevent "at all costs" the abduction of Israeli civilians or soldiers, possibly leading to the death of a large number of Israeli hostages.
There's lots of proofs of misfires, hospital incident aside Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets are in many cases low quality and disintegrate in the air or just miss completely and land in Gaza. I'm sure you can find articles about it if you wanted to look.
As far as has been credibly reported, it wasn't a "sizeable fraction", it was a very small number. There's only one incident I know of that is verified.
I'm sure more will surface - such is war. Therefore I want to make it very clear - it is not an important detail, despite you calling it such. Hamas are the ones that attacked - if in the process of trying to stop these attacks, the IDF inadvertantly killed Israeli civilians, that is tragic - but is completely the fault of Hamas. This is true both legally and morally.
It is absolutely not "true both legally and morally." It all depends on scale and purpose of the operation. If israeli military acted with disregard to the lives of non combatants, that would account to war crimes, against their own population. They have history of war crimes against their own forces, called Hannibal doctrine, so I won't surprised if they have same directives against civilians.
> It is absolutely not "true both legally and morally." It all depends on scale and purpose of the operation.
Well I wasn't making a general statement - I was talking in this specific case.
Let's give an analogy - if a bunch of bank robbers have taken hostages and are threatening to kill them, and if the police is reasonably certain there is no way of actually getting them out - the police is morally justified in sending in SWAT to try and rescue as many hostages as possible. Even if they know that many hostages will die.
The moral fault is with the bank robbers, not the police.
> If [I]sraeli military acted with disregard to the lives of non combatants, that would account to war crimes, against their own population.
I think that's a totally valid internal matter for debate within Israel. Should this kind of doctrine be the rule? Is it appropriate to attempt to stop militants by any means necessary, including possibly at the cost of your own population? This is in the same vein as "we don't negotiate with terrorists", a principled position that theoretically cuts down on terror, but that has brutal immediate ramaficiations in specific cases.
That all said, I don't think this doctrine amounts to war crimes (I'm not sure how it possibly could amount to war crimes). And I think it's an internal matter for debate inside the country, but don't really see how it matters to anyone else.
In fact, it kind of proves the opposite of what many people think - that the IDF is specifically trying to kill Gazan civilians. I'm often asked "what would the IDF do if the innocent civilians around a Hamas militant were Jews, not Palestinians, would you still bomb them even though it might cause collateral damage?". And while I think that question has a lot of answers, I think the "Hannibal directive", if implemented on October 7th (as appears likely), is actually proof that the IDF acts consistently, if terribly brutally - civilians are sometimes collateral damage, even if they're Israelis.
I have a question about your analogy: How is the police so certain that the bank robbers won’t release the hostages with negotiations? Should we trust the judgement of the police?
I think the answer to these questions are: “We don’t known” and “No”. We should indeed scrutinize the police judgement, and if the SWAT team goes in guns blazing killing some of the hostages in the cross fire, we should question that decision. As is often done in countries with free press.
I don’t think that “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” is an actual policy by any country. Even the USA frequently negotiates the release of hostages of terrorists. In fact not negotiating seems like a horrible policy which only serves to maximize unnecessary suffering. It may be a good policy if you believe that the lives of the hostages is worth less then the blood of terrorists, or if you are actively trying to spew hatred towards terrorists among your electorate.
I think the latter reason is true of Israel’s government. They are actively trying to maximize the perceived threat of Hamas, and don’t mind Palestinians as a group being dehumanized in the process. In the eyes of the Israeli government, the lives of the hostages are worth the cost as long as the perceived threat level increases. Their end goal is to justify annexation in the best case scenario or ethnic cleansing or genocide in the worst.
> We should indeed scrutinize the police judgement, and if the SWAT team goes in guns blazing killing some of the hostages in the cross fire, we should question that decision. As is often done in countries with free press.
Absolutely. I'm not against scrutinizing anything. Like I said about this specific case - the people most aggrieved and most understanding of the situation is Israelis themselves, since we're talking about cases where Israeli citizens were killed while trying to kill militants. It's absolutely something the Israeli press should explore and something that the Israeli public should and will hold the military accountable for.
It is not, however, something that should be used to "score points against the IDF" or whatever- if the affected citizens themselves are not against the way this was handled, a third party using it as some kind of way to show that "the IDF is evil" or whatever is a bit silly (and, btw, insulting).
Nor is this something that should be used to conclude that "actually, Hamas didn't really kill so many people" - which is clearly false based on vast troves of reports of people killed by Hamas, much of them filmed.
---
In this case, bitter experience shows that Hamas doesn't release captured citizens without horrible costs - last time, for one soldier, Israel released 1,027 prisoners, including the person who just masterminded the October 7th attack. This time, 100 hostages were eventually released for a much more favorable-to-Israel exchange, and in exchange for a pause in the fighting - which some people take as a sign that the fighting pressured Hamas into accepting this deal.
> I don’t think that “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” is an actual policy by any country.
It is - though it's complicated, many European countries do in fact negotiate, the US less often. I've heard reports that it isn't clear which policy is actually better in terms of number of captured civilians.
> On June 18, 2013, G8 leaders signed an agreement against paying ransoms to terrorists.[1] However, most Western states have violated this policy on certain occasions [...] These payments were made almost exclusively by European governments, which funneled the money through a network of proxies, sometimes masking it as development aid
> Some Western countries, such as the United States, Canada, and Britain, tend to not negotiate or pay ransoms to terrorists. Others, such as France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland are more open to negotiation. This is a source of tension between governments with opposing policies.
> In fact not negotiating seems like a horrible policy which only serves to maximize unnecessary suffering. It may be a good policy if you believe that the lives of the hostages is worth less then the blood of terrorists, or if you are actively trying to spew hatred towards terrorists among your electorate.
That's not the point at all! The point is to make it so that capturing hostages is meaningless - disincentivizing doing it in the future.
Many people in Israel warned, when deciding about that 1k-priosners-for-1-Israeli-soldier deal, that it would cause Hamas to really put effort into kidnapping more Israelis. Well - it happened - and a lot of people consider this proof that that previous deal was a "mistake".
> [Israel's government is] actively trying to maximize the perceived threat of Hamas, and don’t mind Palestinians as a group being dehumanized in the process. In the eyes of the Israeli government, the lives of the hostages are worth the cost as long as the perceived threat level increases. Their end goal is to justify annexation in the best case scenario or ethnic cleansing or genocide in the worst.
You're talking about this as if it were a coherent response calculated to benefit the government. The decision to shoot at fleeing terrorists was probably made under incredible duress, possibly by field commanders and not the government (I'm not sure), while Israel was experiencing the worst attack in 50 years, possibly since its founding. There was no way of knowing if this was the opening salvo of a much broader attack that would've strained Israel much farther than ended up happening.
Whatever you think of this government aside, these specific decisions were almost certainly not made in a calculated way to "justify annexation". (And I very much dislike this government, to put it mildly.)
It is a complete misunderstanding of the situation to think that the government needed to make the threat of Hamas seem larger at the expense of Israeli citizens.
IDF's own reporting calls the amount of friendly fire casualties on Oct 7 "immense". Your interpretation is more conservative than IDF's own analysis and reporting on their own evidence - that's suspicious.
Furthermore there is Israeli reporting on the practical use of Hannibal Directive during Oct 7, which is deliberate killing of military and civilian hostages. Israeli reporting claims that the use of this directive may have been responsible for a "large" amount of hostage casualties.
Despite official recognition of the "immense friendly fire", IDF also reports that they refuse further investigation because they believe it would be "immoral", so there is deliberate obfuscation at play.
>Israel’s army on Tuesday admitted that an “immense and complex quantity” of what it calls “friendly fire” incidents took place on 7 October.
>The key declaration was buried in the penultimate paragraph of an article by Yoav Zitun, the military correspondent of Israeli outlet Ynet.
>It is the first known official army admission that a significant number of the hundreds of Israelis who died on 7 October were killed by Israel itself, and not by Hamas or other Palestinian resistance factions.
>Citing new data released by the Israeli military, Zitun wrote that: “Casualties fell as a result of friendly fire on October 7, but the IDF [Israeli military] believes that … it would not be morally sound to investigate” them.
EDIT: Mis-wrote something, see further comments for details.
I went down the rabbit-hole trying to find out exactly what was said and meant. I don't consider Electronic Intifada a credible source (I mean, the bias is in the name!), but they are citing specific statements made by an Israeli army reporter.
That said, I think they (and you) are making things seem very different by the way in which you're quoting the statements. I wrote there are only a few known cases of friendly fire on civilians, and you wrote that the army thinks the number is "immense", which contradicts what I said.
Except, if you look at the context of that statement from the article, I think it doesn't actually contradict it. Here's the whole paragraph:
> Casualties fell as a result of friendly fire on October 7, but the IDF believes that beyond the operational investigations of the events, it would not be morally sound to investigate these incidents due to the immense and complex quantity of them that took place in the kibbutzim and southern Israeli communities due to the challenging situations the soldiers were in at the time.
The "immense and complex quantity" statement here refers to why the army says it's not morally sound to investigate the incidents. There could've been 100 incidents - e.g. 100 cases of cars bombed trying to cross back into Gaza, which may or may not have had hostages in them (which is I believe where the IDF supposedly invoked the "Hannibal doctrine").
A hundred potential incidents to investigate could absolutely qualify as someone saying there are an "immense number", while still only representing a tiny fraction of victims compared to the numbers we know for certain were killed by Hamas.
I honestly think that if your case hinges on the specific phrasing used to describe what someone from the IDF said, and which doesn't even necessarily prove anything - then your case is incredibly weak. This could've been a translation error (I couldn't find the original Hebrew version of this article), this could've been the reporter slightly exaggerating what they heard (even unknowingly), etc.
Do you have any other sources except for this? I'd love to see them.
Though again, let's be clear - there are already hundreds (possibly over a thousand?) known victims of Hamas that are verified. There might be some friendly-fire incidents too, but there are an incredibly large number that are absolutely known to have been killed by Hamas, many of which were captured on video by Hamas itself!
Trying to claim otherwise is just completely ignoring all real evidence in favor of conspiracy.
EDIT: More Israeli-source/Israeli-reported evidence below (excluding any non-Israeli analysis of evidence)
I just want to note one detail
> The "immense and complex quantity" statement here refers to why the army says it's morally sound to investigate the incidents.
The IDF says it is *not* morally sound to investigate the incidents
They have released their own data (without allowing third party investigation) on friendly fire for invasions after Oct 7, which they claim is 20% of casualties. They have not released evidence and refuse investigation of the casualties resulting from the "immense quantity" of "friendly fire" incidents on Oct 7.
> Almost a fifth of Israeli soldiers who died in Gaza were killed due to friendly fire, according to data released by the Israeli military, Israeli Ynet News reported on 12 December.
There is also IDF reporting on the use of helicopters:
> “The pilots realized that there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian … The frequency of fire at the thousands of terrorists was enormous at the start, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow their attacks and carefully choose the targets,” Israel’s Ynet reported last month, citing an Israeli air force investigation.
> “Shoot at everything,” one squadron leader reportedly told his men.
> A separate report published in Haaretz noted that the Israeli military was “compelled to request an aerial strike” against its own facility inside the Erez Crossing to Gaza “in order to repulse the terrorists” who had seized control. That base was filled with Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers at the time.
> According to Haaretz, the army was only able to restore control over Be’eri after admittedly “shelling” the homes of Israelis who had been taken captive. “The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri residents were killed,” the paper chronicled.
> Pilots have told Israeli media they scrambled to the battlefield without any intelligence, unable to differentiate between Hamas fighters and Israeli noncombatants, and yet determined to “empty the belly” of their war machines. “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at, because there are so many of them,” one Apache pilot commented.
And some Israeli witness accounts:
> An Israeli woman named Yasmin Porat confirmed in an interview with Israel Radio that the military “undoubtedly” killed numerous Israeli noncombatants during gun battles with Hamas militants on October 7. “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” she stated, referring to Israeli special forces.
> The IDF says it is not morally sound to investigate the incidents
Yes, sorry, of course, I miswrote that. (I edited the comment.)
> They have released their own data (without allowing third party investigation) on friendly fire for invasions after Oct 7, which they claim is 20% of casualties. They have not released evidence and refuse investigation of the casualties resulting from the "immense quantity" of "friendly fire" incidents on Oct 7.
Again, I can understand that - since people have been insisting on propping up insane conspiracy theories that Hamas didn't actually do anything bad on October 7th. Ultimately I think it's a mistake, and not one that will be relevant anyway - investigations can happen one way or another. (Again, free press, free speech and all that.)
They’ve by policy excluded press access to these environments to an unusual degree, besides murdering at least 83 journalists within Gaza, so I’m less certain that resulting press coverage will result in establishing real consensus truth
I added more of the Israeli-reported evidence above that you're welcome to dig into
This idea stems from lack of familiarity with Israeli society.
Israel is a small country with very few degrees of separation between people.
The communities attacked are highly organized, hate the current government,somewhat critical of the establishment, and closely connected to the highest ranks in the IDF. Including some generals. And also connected to many of the fighters who were there on the ground.
There is absolutely zero chance that the army would kill many people and that it would be kept hidden from the families and the public in large.
Also, Hamas was not merely taking hostages, but spraying people with bullets and setting houses on fire with families in them. So your SWAT team dillema means nothing, as the army had no other option other then engaging with the enemy as fast as possible.
The fact that in many places special forces were indeed sent to carefuly deal with hostage situations is being criticised as it may have wasted time in which the Hamas was killing more people, and people who were trapped in their homes got choked or burned.
The better strategy may have been to charge at the terrorists, as their numbers and whereabouts were unknown and while some were holding hostages others were still moving around in cars or by foot looking for hostages to take or victims to kill.
The only confirmed friendly fire case during October 7 that I personally read about was a tank that entered into a fire exchange with Hamas hostage takers.
40 terrorists and 15 hostages were surrounded in a house at Be'eri,
Firing at IDF and police forces that surrounded the house.
After a failed negotiation in which the Hamas commander alone surrenderd with one hostage, fighting resumed.
The Hamas members were firing with guns and RPGs at the tank and nearby forces.
The Tank fired two shells at the house killing the terrorists and all but 1 of the remaining hostages.
When Brits were firebombing German cities, that had very little to do with freeing anyone from anything. Even at the time it was recognized by many as an act of revenge, and it's hard to not take the same impression from how Israel is conducting itself in Gaza, especially given some telling remarks from Israeli leadership.
> at the time it was recognized by many as an act of revenge
In part. Air power was new at the time, and there was legitimate strategic ambiguity around the military value of removing war factories’ workforces. (This is why Germany and Britain bombed by night while America bombed by day.)
The book Terror from the Sky: The Bombing of German Cities in World War II covers most of the major issues.
The key point of distinction between the American and British approach emerged through what the British euphemistically referred to as "dehousing" - the idea that destroying German housing stock would disrupt the operation of manufacturing, divert materials and labour away from military use and demoralise the population. On this premise, civilian casualties were merely the incidental consequence of destroying houses.
Was it not? The war was not over and so no-one was freed, yet.
Regarding Dresden, from wikipedia...
> United States Air Force reports, declassified decades later, noted as a major rail transport and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers in support of the continued Nazi German war effort
It's interesting that we keep quite a critical view of modern politicians, yet when discussing on the field interactions we assume that armies of people, all like one, follow the bloodthirsty orders from commanders above.
> Big difference is that Israel is not targeting civilians on purpose
I think this is not a justified statement. Keeping in mind hat israeli government is clearly very far right, and on multiple occasions have brought up deranged things about Amalek, about "no innocents in Gaza", I think one can establish a reasonable doubt about the true intent of idf actions.
Israel is not targeting civilians, thats a fact.
It gains nothing from hitting them, and trying it best to evacuate them to safe zones. Why would they try to hit civilians? and if they did, why they didnt try to fire into the safe zones? (whom Hamas have fired rockets into Israel from multiple times, yet Israel didnt attack in order to not hit civilians, while risking its own civilians)
The people making decisions right now are not far-right, the far-right have been moved to the side line when it comes to the war decision making.Instead Gants and Eizenkot joined, whom both are moderate right.
All the sentence you quoted are out of context and were said just after a few days that Israel suffered the biggest massacre, the entire country was in trauma and in emotions.
Look, I live in remote corner of ex-USSR, do not care about intricacies of israel politics, all I can see is the top leaders of the country (minister of security, president, defence ministers) keep saying these weird stuff at all phases of he conflict; every other day some mad shit israeli army did again gets posted on X.
All israeli govt is far far right. Likud won't fly in anywhere in civilise world. Just seeing freaks like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir being actually employed in israel says a lot about israel. I am not good at these pilpul games of who slightly less crazy right wing who is more, what was the context of bibis deranged rants, so yeah. IMO israel as well may be targeting civilians. W#hich what ICJ had found that day.
You words are worthless to me, my friend. I make jusdgemjents from what I see, and I think that israel does target civilians in Gaza.
According to recent polls, if Israel had elections today - Smotrich and Ben Gvir will be out of the government, and Likud will get only 1/3 of the votes it got now, but we cant go to elections while in the middle of the war, thats a catch 22 for Israel.
Relying on X for your info is not a good idea, so much fake news, only thing worse is TikTok, for example the famous "500 dead from Israel hitting hospital" that turned out was a caused by the PIJ and there barely anyone hit.
In the mean time the government of Gaza (Hamas) is killing hostages.
Barak is no fan of the current Israeli government. And they often attacked him publicly and organized demonstrations around his home. They truly sent the best international law expert the country has to offer
This is more nuanced. Some people in the government respect Barak. I don't know that Barak is active in politics (I haven't really heard him opine on the current government, but one can imagine he's not a fan). The more extreme parties in the government resent/oppose Barak. The "government" doesn't attack Barak or protest against him but certainly some (extreme/right-wing) political factions in Israel blame him for many things. I don't think he was sent because he's necessarily the best international law expert, but he's a very sharp and widely respected. His being sent while the government is trying to undermine the practices Barak established in the supreme court is a bit weird. Politics.
Not exactly. They sent the guy who controls the local judiciary because not doing so would be impossible due to his immense political power. The Israeli judiciary is unique in nominating itself and having given itself the power to cancel any law or demand any changes to laws/policy on any arbitrary basis; since this state of affairs is backed up by a sufficient number of powerful institutions, it is effectively impossible to challenge.
Barak ruling to resupply the enemy (it is widely documented that "humanitarian aid" goes first and foremost to Hamas) in an international court is entirely consistent with his lifelong tendency to gradually reduce Israeli independence and voters' impact on policy and to increase Israeli compliance to the policy of outside parties, first and foremost the US. (Resupplying the enemy was required by the US from the start. It is interesting to see other examples where civilians are prevented by the international community to leave the area of hostilities and instead they are supposed to be provided with resources in this area where the monopoly on the use of force belongs to one of the sides in the conflict.)
While the exact requirements placed on Israel by larger powers are somewhat unique, having highly influential people in the country effectively work in the interest of larger powers is a common condition for smaller powers. In this Barak is similar to many other high-profile people and organizations in many other countries enjoying limited sovereignty at best.
> The Israeli judiciary is unique in nominating itself
this is at most lie and at least misconception. Supreme Court Judges are appointed by the President of Israel, from names submitted by the Judicial Selection Committee, which is composed of nine members: three Supreme Court Judges (including the President of the Supreme Court), two cabinet ministers (one of them being the Minister of Justice), two Knesset members, and two representatives of the Israel Bar Association. Appointing Supreme Court Judges requires a majority of 7 of the 9 committee members, or two less than the number present at the meeting.
In practice, the 3 Supreme Court Judges, the two representatives of the Israel Bar Association, and the 1 Knesset member "traditionally" representing one of the two major political camps [the one aligned with most Supreme Court Judges] always vote together, so most of the judiciary is appointed according to the wishes of the Supreme Court Judges. The veto on appointing Supreme Court Judges adds a modicum of balance, but given that the country can be set on fire at will by the Supreme Court like we've seen in 2023, I don't believe that this veto is that effective at changing appointments (if an appointee is declared illegitimate by the Supreme Court, the country will be paralyzed by protests; and more prosaically, you promote to the highest court from lower courts and everyone appointed to these was appointed by a simple majority without the 7-out-of-9 veto.)
The idea that 5 out 9 people nominating judges aren't elected, directly or indirectly, is AFAIK a fairly unique Israeli invention. This is taught in schools as a good thing because there's "a majority of professionals rather than politicians." I presume that this idea is so effective and consistent with the principles of democracy that it should also work for nominating governments and lawmakers.
>The idea that 5 out 9 people nominating judges aren't elected, directly or indirectly, is AFAIK a fairly unique Israeli invention.
Judges in England and Wales (including supreme court judges) are selected entirely by unelected officials; The government is explicitly prohibited from interfering with their decision. Given the influential nature of English law, I would be very surprised if this was unique.
In the Netherlands the Dutch Supreme Court provides parliament with a shortlist of 6 people.
The Dutch parliament then makes a short list of 3 people based on that list. Traditionally the first three people on the 6 person list by the Dutch Supreme Court.
This 3 person list is then offered to the Dutch government who then appointments one of them, traditionally the first one on the list, as a Supreme Court judge.
In the entire history only once did the Dutch parliament deviate from the Supreme Court’s 6 person shortlist and only once did the Dutch government deviate from the parliament’s 3 person shortlist.
So in practice it’s the Supreme Court who chooses who should join them, none of the judges are elected officials.
Lower court judges aren’t elected either, like say, in the US.
Neither are prosecutors for that matter.
In general these are all merit based appointments, not unlike your average job application, just with more ceremony.
Most of the judiciary are his loyalists. An example of his ongoing influence is the ridiculous legal doctrine invented just this year where the Israeli declaration of independence was retroactively declared to be the supreme law of the land, akin to a "meta-constitution"; his opinion on the matter was published after many months of campaigns where people would declare their "allegiance to the declaration of independence."
I feel like this is an over-simplification that's not going to be well understood by people not familiar with Israel's judicial history and systems.
He has some influence but I don't think "loyalists" (or the other terminology used in your earlier comment) is that accurate. The supreme court justices today have a range of opinions and are largely independent and interpret law (and some other universal principles, like human rights, is really what Barak brought to the table).
The interesting bit to me here is this signals that if those cases were brought in front of Israel's supreme court the outcome would likely be similar to the ICJ (except Israel's supreme court's rulings must be followed, it's not optional or requires security council approval). I think that was partly the intent in sending Barak and really the main argument that people that oppose the government initiatives to restrict the Israeli Supreme Court have. And so there's really no need to take Israel to the ICJ since its independent supreme court would e.g. enforce the same standards anyways.
> The Israeli judiciary is unique in nominating itself and having given itself the power to cancel any law or demand any changes to laws/policy on any arbitrary basis;
1. Not completely. There are quite a few countries with fully independent judiciary, with judges appointing judges.
2. Courts with power to initiate, and prosecute a case by themselves also exist in other countries.
An important part of Barak’s involvement is the complete recognition of ICJ’s jurisdiction over the matter, which it found (and Barak didn’t disagree) it had.
Notably also voted against telling Israel to follow the raw key prohibitions of Genocide convention as written in the convention, something Israel agreed to in the past. Curious.
Also voted against asking Israel to preserve evidence of the crimes. Interesting perspective for a former judge.
Hmm, the relevant meat appears in paragraph 43. One one point, he votes against because it’s redundant to the Convention. Fair enough. On the other, a question of “plausibility,” comes up, which seems a term of art I wasn’t able to quickly decipher.
Please don't post like this. It's against the intention of this site and especially against the intended spirit I tried to describe at the top of the thread.
I've been posting similar admonishments to commenters on all sides of this argument when they cross the line into flamewar. Your comments in this thread have clearly been doing that, and not only the comment I replied to.
It's common for people with strong feelings on a topic to feel like the mods must be biased against them and secretly in favor of the other side (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Meanwhile the other side(s) feel exactly the same way. These perceptions feel convincing, but you can't trust them—they're a product of some kind of hard-wiring that we all seem to share, especially when our emotions get engaged.
Any fair minded person who slogs their way through my moderation posts in this thread, and any similar thread, is going to see how hard we try to be even-handed, apply HN's rules fairly, and so on. Not that we always get it right, of course.
By the way, if you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. There is far too much content on HN, or even in a large thread like this one, for us to see it all. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.
The civilian death toll in Gaza has been tragically high but there hasn't been any independent verification. Regardless of what's on Wikipedia, we can't trust specific numbers.
Hamas can't go toe-to-toe with the IDF. They are hiding in tunnels and among civilians, so these ratios aren't surprising.
To some extent, you can't blame Hamas for these tactics. They would quickly lose a conventional war. At the same time, if you have zero chance of winning a military victory, perhaps you shouldn't use violence to pursue your political goals...
Yes right, if israel is unable to fight conventional war, without massive disproportional amount of civil casualties, they should not probably engage in one.
As if we know how many Hamas fighters have been killed at the first place.
According to the official stats there is like 259 IDF casualties during the land operation. Which means that death ratio is 30:1 wrt to supposed 8000 Hamas death.Laughable.
Even then, military necessity of killing combatants, not actively particpating in the war is not justified. Yes, you can kill those, who is shooting the rockets at Tel-Aviv, but bombing willy-nilly all of Gaza just because there might be tunnels, where potential combatants might be hiding,. is not acceptable, although not am not an international law lawer.
Then they shouldn’t. That’s the simple answer of it. If they want to get rid of Hamas they will need to find another way. This level of civilian casualty is unacceptable. And as proven by the ICJ decision, it is not accepted.
While their statistics are regarded as an accurate account of the total death toll, they make no distinction between civilian and combatant deaths. This is obviously a crucial shortcoming if we are trying to ascertain whether the number of civilian deaths are disproportionate to the military objectives.
If we go all 19th century and assert that all men over the age of 18 are combatants. Then we get 70% of the deaths are civilian, and 30% are combatants. However we know a large number of adult men killed in Gaza or not combatants, e.g. they are journalists, UN workers, poets, university professors, etc. So 66% civilians seems very likely to be a huge underestimate.
What are you implying? That Samer Abu Daqqa, cameraman for al Jazeera killed in an Israeli strike on december 15th is a Hamas combatant? This is some serious accusation which requires some serious proofs.
Here is a list of the 88 (and growing) journalists so far killed in Gaza [1]. I would be impressed if you could find any shred of evidence that any one of them was an active duty combatant when they were murdered.
> Mustafa Thuria, identified in a document found by IDF troops in Gaza, was a member of Hamas' Gaza City Brigade, serving as Squad Deputy Commander in the al-Qadisiyyah Battalion.
> Hamza Wael al-Dahdouh, is an Islamic Jihad terrorist, and was involved in the organization’s terrorist activities. Documents found by IDF troops in the Gaza Strip reveal his role in the Islamic Jihad's electronic engineering unit and his previous role as a deputy commander in the Zeitun Battalion's Rocket Array.
I think others have been shown wielding rifles or taking part in Oct 7, but I'll need to dig up the links when I have more time.
Edit: See e.g. https://www.instagram.com/p/C17sCXPMKqW/?img_index=3. I don't think it should come as a surprise that some journalists participate in combat on the side; there are many examples throughout history of desperate defenders handing out weapons to civilians. Kyiv was a recent example.
Hamza al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya were not active combatants when they were killed:
> According to Al Jazeera correspondent Hisham Zaqout, Hamza al-Dahdouh and a group of journalists were en route to the Moraj area north-east of Rafah - which was designated a "humanitarian zone" by the Israeli army - but which had reportedly experienced recent bombings.
They were fleeing an area in Khan Younis being bombed to a designated safe zone in Rafah when their car was hit by an Israeli missile.
Even if we take the IDF at their words—which we shouldn’t—this is still not a shred of evidence they were active combatants when they were killed.
But we shouldn’t take IDF at their words, they have been proven to lie consistently when they target journalist. A high profile case was when they murdered Shireen Abu Akleh, changing their story multiple times until, finally, when the evidence against their story was so overwhelming, they finally admitted to targeting her.
As for the instagram thread. We really need a name to go with this. Who is this person? Is he on the list of the 88 which the Israel has murdered so far? ~The second photo doesn’t even look like it is the same person, and the third photo even looks photoshopped (and fails to show other results in a reverse google image search)~ [wrong, see edit].
His name was Muhyiddin Muhammad Muhammad al-Sadoudi and was a 24 year old fighter for the al-Qassam brigade, who died during active training in July last year, not by the Israeli army, and not in the current war. Only claimed to be a fighter, and never claimed to be a photojournalist by Hamas’s armed wing. He is not on the list of the 88 journalists in Gaza murdered by the Israeli army.
When you say they were not active combatants, what do you mean by that? If they were retired (which seems unlikely) that's one thing, but if they were just not on the frontlines, that wouldn't make them them illegitimate targets under the Geneva Conventions.
Thanks for getting to the bottom of those photos which admittedly lacked context. I didn't meant to suggest that he was in the list of journalists killed by the IDF; I didn't even know he was deceased. I think the point stands that both freelance photojournalism and guerilla fighting can be done in a part-time and/or non-professional capacity.
I mean if they are in an active combat mission posing a threat to Israeli solders or civilians. But reading more about this case it turns out I was wrong if we take the IDF at their words—which we shouldn’t to:
> “Prior to the strike, the two operated drones, posing an imminent threat to IDF troops.”
If this is true then they were indeed legitimate targets. However if what Al Jazeera says is true, then they were not.
> When asked on Jan 10 by AFP about what kind of drones were used by the two men and the nature of the threat the drones posed to Israeli troops, the army said it was “checking”.
> It said Mr Thuria was identified in a document found by troops in Gaza to be a member of Hamas’ Gaza City Brigade, while Mr Dahdouh was identified as a terrorist belonging to Islamic Jihad.
> The army statement included a copy of a document it said was a list of “operatives from an electronic engineering unit of the Islamic Jihad, including Dahdouh and his military number”.
So we pretty much have Israel says so, which is not good evidence, or any evidence for that matter. However the Al Jazeera story has witnesses:
> He [Mr Thuria] and Mr Dahdouh had been tasked with filming the aftermath of a strike on a house in Rafah, and their car was hit while they were on their way back, AFP correspondents said at the time.
And from talking to families and people on the ground there there are some reports that IDF killed many Isreali civilians on that day [1]. The extent is not obvious without independent investigation of course.
kinda different comparing a state with an organization that was caught lying about death statistics numerous times in the past [1] and including in this war (such as the ali ahli hospital incident).
it should raise some questions how the casualty count went to 500 in a few hours, where everywhere else in the world it takes days to get a body count after any disaster
It is beyond me how someone can believe that an organization capable of kidnapping babies to advance its political goals is beyond lying to do the same
There are lies and errors. From both sides. But the 26000 figure is generally accepted by the UN and aid agencies. Figures from Hamas in previous conflicts have been confirmed.
it is accepted by the UN because there is no other figure. they have no other way of estimating, also the UN is far from a neutral element in this conflict
The UN is a political body composed of the political interests of its members, which are mostly authoritarian states, and it hasn’t shown much support for Israel due to the vast membership of Islamic countries. Parody case in point, Iran being Human Rights commission seat
UNRWA, the UN agency on the ground was shown again and again to be in the very least in the mercy of Hamas therefore cooperative, at most its infrastructure and staff was used by the organizations for attacks against Israel and to hold hostages.
The ICJ in this case heavily quoted UNRWA as a source while it is an extremely problematic one.
The hospital bombing I quoted above is an example case where many experts tried to estimate casualties based on evidence, they arrived to figures that range from tenth to fifth of what Hamas published.
This together with the fact they control the casualty figure and have a clear interest at inflating it in order to stop Israel from attacking, is pretty obvious to me what’s going on.
Leaving the fact that this figure also includes Hamas members, and therefore is useless at estimating if there is excessive collateral damage
the fact there isn’t a better source does not make the only source reliable.
This is going to be a major issue when the actual court case will have to rely upon it.
the numbers will always be ‘too high’ as they are the number of civilian deaths in a war.
However, if they are much lower relative to similar conflicts than that changes a lot. Currently we have no way of knowing that, yet still people attribute these numbers some magical properties
> Weird how only disputing the Hamas numbers as biased is a talking point.
Why are you surprised that people trust Israel more than Hamas? Israel is a country that's ranked 29 of 167 on the Democracy Index[1], right _above_ the US. Hamas is literally a terrorist organization recognized in many countries, probably yours too.
My views on the situation aside, the clearest I saw anyone communicate the issues from a global angle was the former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin
Viewed from the angle of the West, I think the message it needs to avoid isolating itself from the world is very unusual for Western media and important.
Quote:
"Westerners must open their eyes to the extent of the historical drama unfolding before us to find the right answers."
And
"This Palestinian question will not fade. And so we must address it and find an answer. This is where we need courage. The use of force is a dead end. The moral condemnation of what Hamas did - and there's no "but" in my words regarding the moral condemnation of this horror - must not prevent us from moving forward politically and diplomatically in an enlightened manner. The law of retaliation is a never-ending cycle."
All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then?
Spend tons of money on iron dome to shoot down the rockets and hope that Hamas won't manage to conduct another massacre, even if "only" half the scope of October 7?
This mess features not one but two parties who currently reject the concept of a cease fire.
>All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then?
And then everyone who wants peace invests lots of money and expertise over a long time to build a modern, prosperous, stable Palestinian society, despite whatever setbacks, attacks, and sabotage occur from within and without.
The only way to have peace is to give people a better option than becoming terrorists.
This is not the approach the West took with ISIS, which involved similarly one-sided fights against terrorist forces [1], nor do I think it's an approach that would have worked. When "everyone who wants peace" doesn't include the people in control of the guns and rockets, who instead want to kill their enemies by any means necessary (and themselves do not respect international law), you can't simply dialogue your way out of it any more than Ukraine could have dialogued their way out of getting invaded by Russia.
The ICJ ruled that Hamas return the hostages unconditionally, but everyone knows that won't happen — Hamas is simply unaccountable. "Everyone who wants peace" can't even get the Red Cross access to the hostages, let alone get them returned. Vague calls for diplomacy with terrorist groups doesn't solve much, which is why people are asking you for specific solutions — it's easy to say Israel should stop fighting, but then: what should it do? How would you actually ensure it doesn't keep getting attacked, repeatedly, as Hamas continues to insist they plan to do?
A major problem is that the Gazan people have very legitimate problems with Israel, and this leads to a situation in which enough of them become militant to cause serious problems. Solving that seems like it needs a more wholistic approach than simply trying to get rid of the militants at the cost of causing everyone else to have an even bigger beef with Israel.
I fully accept that many Palestinians are motivated to take up arms against the Israelis by a justifiable sense of grievance, but the issue of anti-Semitism long pre-dates the establishment of Israel and exists far beyond the Palestinian Territories. I really don't want to understate this point - from an outside perspective, it is almost impossible to comprehend the depth of hatred against Jews that exists across the Middle East.
Improving the living conditions of Palestinians is almost certainly a necessary precondition to lasting peace, but it is far from sufficient. Unfortunately, we are now stuck in a very stubborn vicious cycle - the Israel-Palestine conflict perpetuates anti-Semitism, which perpetuates the conflict.
>the issue of anti-Semitism long pre-dates the establishment of Israel
From your second source that seems to not be the case, at least not in serious degree. "Traditionally, Jews in the Muslim world were considered to be People of the Book and were subjected to dhimmi status. They were afforded relative security against persecution, provided they did not contest the varying inferior social and legal status imposed on them under Islamic rule. While there were antisemitic incidents before the 20th century, during this time antisemitism in the Arab world increased greatly." And later, "The situation of Jews was comparatively better than their European counterparts, though they still suffered persecution." There is more detail at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Musl...
Anecdotally, I've heard that before the establishment of Israel, relations between the two groups were much less hostile. Muslims and Jews would, for example, have their Jewish or Muslim neighbors watch over their kids during holy days when they'd have to go to mosque/temple. There is also a long history of Jews being treated fairly well in the Arab/Muslim world - better indeed than they were in Christian lands where pogroms were much more common (it's astonishing how many times Germany, in a state of high fervor, decided that the most appropriate thing to do would be to massacre the Jews again). Again, anecdotally, the "depth of hatred against Jews" in the Arabs I've spoken with has little to do with Jews and much to do with the actions of the state of Israel and what it does in the name of Jews.
Jews were legal second class citizens and were treated terribly, e.g. being banned from wearing shoes in Morocco, and when the ban was overturned, so many Jews were murdered in riots that the community asked for shoes to be banned again.
And it's not just Morocco; Yemen for example had official state policy of kidnapping Jewish orphans to forcibly convert them to Islam. Baghdad massacred Jews starting in the 1820s, long before Israel existed. The Damascus affair was in 1840: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_affair
Dhimmi status is bad! It's not as bad as being pagan in Muslim countries historically, where you could just legally be killed if you didn't convert to Islam. And at times it was better than Europe, which more-frequently murdered its Jews. But it was bad, and it was bad long, long before Israel. There's a reason Mizrahi Jews form the right-wing base in Israel — it's not because it was good.
Except that doesn't seem to the be the case in the context of the time for specifically the Jewish communities living in Muslim-controlled regions? Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi - "Generally, the Jewish people were allowed to practice their religion and live according to the laws and scriptures of their community. Furthermore, the restrictions to which they were subject were social and symbolic rather than tangible and practical in character. That is to say, these regulations served to define the relationship between the two communities, and not to oppress the Jewish population." There's a section on Jews on that page that seems unanimous in the view that while dhimmi status was not as good as being a muslim citizen, it was a better than what they had either before the Muslims took over or what they had available elsewhere. It's weird to label what is generally an improvement in living conditions/social regard as stemming from deep-seated discrimination.
Per atrocities - of course there were atrocities committed against Jews. Just as there were atrocities committed by basically every long-lived group against every long-lived group in their territories. No one is stupid enough to say that Muslims have never persecuted Jews, just as they wouldn't say that Christians have never persecuted Jews, or that Muslims never persecuted Christians, or that Christians never persecuted Muslims, or that those groups never persecuted themselves in schisms and internicine warfare. But the impression that Islam is fundamentally and necessarily opposed to the practice of the Jewish faith is fairly contradicted by even the history of dhimma. As the first paragraph of that Wikipedia page states; 'Dhimmī... is a historical term for non-Muslims living in an Islamic state with legal protection. The word literally means "protected person", referring to the state's obligation under sharia to protect the individual's life, property, as well as freedom of religion, in exchange for loyalty to the state and payment of the jizya tax, in contrast to the zakat, or obligatory alms, paid by the Muslim subjects. Dhimmi were exempt from certain duties assigned specifically to Muslims if they paid the poll tax (jizya) but were otherwise equal under the laws of property, contract, and obligation.'
On the other hand, look at how the Jews were treated during the Islamic Golden Age in Spain; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age_of_Jewish_culture_i... ("The golden age of Jewish culture in Spain, which coincided with the Middle Ages in Europe, was a period of Muslim rule during which, intermittently, Jews were generally accepted in society and Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life flourished."). It's hard to square that with the idea that there is this deep-seated hatred among Muslims towards Jews as the GP stated.
My point is that conflict between the two sides is not inevitable, nor is this idea of extreme latent anti-Jewish sentiment in the Muslim world really true. Purges and persecution that people bring up are probably not caused by ancestral hatred, but rather the same thing that causes every society to suddenly fall into itself in violence and accusation; uncertain economic conditions, unstable political environments, natural disaster, epidemics, war, idiotic rulership, etc.
Except that doesn't seem to the be the case in the context of the time
I think not being allowed to wear shoes and being murdered in mass riots when the Sultan allows you to wear shoes is bad. To my eyes there is very little difference between the level of hatred then and now, it's just that the power dynamic has changed, so I think blaming the Muslim world's anti-Semitism on Israel's existence (like the OP did) isn't really based in historical fact. There was anti-Semitism long before Israel existed, and it's not like it was getting better prior to its establishment — the stuff in Yemen was happening through the 20th century, under Ottoman rule (and plenty of other bad stuff, e.g. "Dung Gatherer" laws requiring Jews to perform latrine servicing for Muslims).
This does not address any of the points I raised. You're just reiterating what you already wrote. Here's an abbreviated summary of the history;
1. Jews exist in a region.
2. Muslims take over. Conditions improve for the Jews.
3. Time passes.
4. Muslim civilization declines.
5. Internal strife and conflict. Among others, Jews are blamed.
6. Commenters 1000 years later; "This was caused by incipient hatred of Jews by Muslims."
This does not explain why conditions improved when Muslims originally rose to power in various regions. Again, the persecution of minority population is an expected result of the decline of civilizations. From the Wikipedia article your Twitter source is quoting, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Moroccan_Jews: "Morocco's instability and divisions also fueled conflicts, for which Jews were frequent scapegoats. The First Franco-Moroccan War in 1844 brought new misery and ill treatment upon the Moroccan Jews, especially upon those of Mogador (known as Essaouira). When the Hispano-Moroccan War broke out on September 22, 1859, the Mellah of Tetuan was sacked, and many Jews fled to Cadiz and Gibraltar for refuge. Upon the 1860 Spanish seizure of Tetouan in the Hispano-Moroccan War, the pogrom-stricken Jewish community, who spoke archaic Spanish, welcomed the invading Spanish troops as liberators, and collaborated with the Spanish authorities as brokers and translators during the 27-month-long occupation of the city." This is a nation in decline, lashing out at every perceived cause of trouble, like plague-stricken Europeans slaying cats and dogs and flagellating themselves.
Here are some other quotes from that article;
"The golden age of the Jewish community in Fez lasted for almost three hundred years, from the 9th to 11th centuries. Its yeshivot (religious schools) attracted brilliant scholars, poets and grammarians. This period was marred by a pogrom in 1033, which is described by the Jewish Virtual Library as an isolated event primarily due to political conflict between the Maghrawa and Ifrenid tribes."
"The position of the Jews under Almoravid domination was apparently free of major abuses, though there are reports of increasing social hostility against them – particularly in Fes. Unlike the problems encountered by the Jews during the rule of the Almohads (the Almoravids' successor dynasty), there are not many factual complaints of excesses, coercion, or malice on the part of the authorities toward the Jewish communities."
"During Marinid rule, Jews were able to return to their religion and practices, once again outwardly professing their Judaism under the protection of the dhimmi status. They were able to re-establish their lives and communities, returning to some sense of normalcy and security. They also established strong vertical relations with the Marinid sultans. When the still-fanatic mobs attacked them in 1275{note; no source for this on the Wikipedia page, no link; unable to find what this is referring to}, the Merinid sultan Abu Yusuf Yaqub ibn Abd Al-Haqq intervened personally to save them. The sovereigns of this dynasty benevolently received the Jewish ambassadors of the Christian kings of Spain and admitted Jews among their closest courtiers."
This is not what I would expect of a civilization that is fundamentally racist towards Jews. I would not expect, for example, a Louisiana governor in the 18th century to appoint a black man to be his advisor, yet we see Jews in the position of vizier in Morocco. This does not square.
Racism is not the most useful lens to view this relationship through. The culture of the Middle East is low-trust compared to post-Enlightenment Western societies. There remain sharp social divisions based on old tribal allegiances in even developed nations there (unsurprising, perhaps; there remain living people who remember that this tribe used to be slavers and that tribe killed our uncle and so on). Lashing out at neighbors who one thinks are being treated too favorably has little to do with race or religion, in my experience, and more to do with envy. It is the narcissism of small differences writ large and exacerbated by actual stakes.
“In 638, Palestine came under Muslim rule with the Muslim conquest of the Levant. One estimate placed the Jewish population of Palestine at between 300,000 and 400,000 at the time.[87] However, this is contrary to other estimates which place it at 150,000 to 200,000 at the time of the revolt against Heraclius.[88][89] According to historian Moshe Gil, the majority of the population was Jewish or Samaritan.[90] The land gradually came to have an Arab majority as Arab tribes migrated there. Jewish communities initially grew and flourished. Umar allowed and encouraged Jews to settle in Jerusalem. It was the first time in about 500 years that Jews were allowed to freely enter and worship in their holiest city. In 717, new restrictions were imposed against non-Muslims that negatively affected the Jews. Heavy taxes on agricultural land forced many Jews to migrate from rural areas to towns. Social and economic discrimination caused significant Jewish emigration from Palestine, and Muslim civil wars in the 8th and 9th centuries pushed many Jews out of the country. By the end of the 11th century the Jewish population of Palestine had declined substantially.”
You make it sound like they were treated like equals and then only discriminated against many centuries later in a decline. But really, history shows us that they were initially treated well for a few years as they had just been conquered (a classic historical power solidification move) but were then treated terribly the entire rest of the time under Muslim conquest.
"On 15 July 1099, the crusaders made their way into the city through the tower of David and began massacring large numbers of the inhabitants, Muslims and Jews alike. The Fatimid governor of the city, Iftikhar Ad-Daulah, managed to escape.[16] According to eyewitness accounts the streets of Jerusalem were filled with blood. How many people were killed is a matter of debate, with the figure of 70,000 given by the Muslim historian Ibn al-Athir (writing c.1200) considered to be a significant exaggeration; 40,000 is plausible, given the city's population had been swollen by refugees fleeing the advance of the crusading army.[17]
The aftermath of the siege led to the mass slaughter of thousands of Muslims and Jews which contemporaneous sources suggest was savage and widespread and to the conversion of Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount into Christian shrines.[18][19]
Atrocities committed against the inhabitants of cities taken by storm after a siege were normal in ancient[20] and medieval warfare by both Christians and Muslims. The crusaders had already done so at Antioch, and Fatimids had done so themselves at Taormina, at Rometta, and at Tyre. However, it is speculated that the massacre of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, both Muslims and Jews, may have exceeded even these standards."
And yes, the various Muslim powers at the time were in steep decline; if they weren't, they should easily have been able to defeat an army as poorly organized as the First Crusade was. The fact that just before the crusaders arrived, every powerful leader in the region died is basically the closest they came to actual divine intervention.
I don't think you can excuse anti-Semitism in the last 200 years because 1000 years ago there was less anti-Semitism, or conclude that because 1000 years ago was less anti-Semitic that "racism is not the most useful lens to view this relationship through;" after all, European anti-Black racism was much better 1000 years ago, too (a Black military commander was not even particularly unusual in the 1600s, as evidenced by Shakespeare!), and your Louisiana example is from the same time period that the Muslim world's anti-Semitism was running rampant, too. Your theory of economic decline being the reason for anti-Semitism doesn't hold water for the examples I gave of the Ottoman Empire, whose precipitous decline came in the 20th century, yet whose anti-Semitism arose in the 19th century. [1] Scholars don't blame the Ottoman anti-Semitism on economic malaise, but instead point to it being imported by Christian Arabs from Europe:
Historian Martin Gilbert writes that it was in the 19th century that the position of Jews worsened in Muslim countries.[38] According to Mark Cohen in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, most scholars conclude that Arab anti-Semitism in the modern world arose in the nineteenth century, against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab nationalism, and was imported into the Arab world primarily by nationalistically minded Christian Arabs (and only subsequently was it "Islamized").
You realize that the evidence you bring up actually proves the argument I've been making, don't you?
>Scholars don't blame the Ottoman anti-Semitism on economic malaise, but instead point to it being imported by Christian Arabs from Europe
So this was not a latent feature of Islam or Muslim culture, but an import from a more anti-Semitic culture (of course, the word Semitic here is not quite correct, given that Arabs are also Semites - I don't know why that word is preferred when the actual meaning being conveyed is anti-Jewish). The original poster I was responding to said this;
>the issue of anti-Semitism long pre-dates the establishment of Israel
Perhaps that poster only meant that anti-Jewish sentiment rose in the region a few decades previous, but the most common way I have heard of that belief, it comes from a "clash of civilizations" mindset that holds that the region has been rabidly anti-Jewish for many centuries.
Also, to your point that the Ottoman Empire only began declining in the 20th century, see https://www.britannica.com/topic/decline-of-the-Ottoman-Empi...: "But the grandeur of the Ottoman Empire did not last, and Süleyman’s rule was followed by a slow and arduous decline that spanned nearly four centuries."
Anti-Semitic refers specifically to anti-Jewish racism [1], "Arabs are also Semites so..." isn't an accurate understanding. English isn't Latin, combining roots can form a word with new meaning.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say things about "latent feature of Islam or Muslim culture." I do not think cultures are predetermined by hidden latent variables unique to them and are unrelated to their environments, and so that if something was introduced to the culture environmentally it somehow doesn't count. Similarly, European culture was once much less anti-Black a thousand years ago, and so anti-Black racism isn't a "latent feature" by the same standard. Nonetheless we can look at how cultures are
1. today, and
2. in the recent past
And see that anti-Black racism is now endemic. Similarly, anti-Semitism has been common for hundreds of years in Muslim societies, and blaming it on Israeli statehood is a non-sequitur since it has existed for less than a hundred.
If you insist on searching for hidden variables that are independent, I will point out that the Quran says that Jews are majority treacherous and "you will always find deceit on their part, except for a few" [2]. But of course, much of the Quran is simply a reference to the Christian Bible (e.g. references to the Jews killing Jesus [3], who Islam considers a prophet), so is it truly "latent" or is it an import from Christianity? Ultimately cultures are not machine learning models trained independently from each other on separate hardware; everyone steals from everyone else, so I think the distinction isn't meaningful. There has been significant anti-Semitism in the Muslim world for a long time, and it was endemic long before Israel existed. I reject victim-blaming the Jews for Muslim anti-Semitism due to the Jews creating Israel.
And this is exactly why the point about Semites comes into play; Arabs and (Middle-Eastern) Jews are functionally the same race. A Jewish person who converted to Islam would no longer be dhimmi, and would no longer pay the jizya or any other tax levied against non-Muslim populations. None of the discrimination noted would legally apply to him or her. It is not a status built on the race of the individual, but on their religion. Hence, it is literally not racist in the most basic way imaginable - it is not based on race! It's like calling ancient Spartan oppression of helots racism, or the British discrimination against the Irish sexism, or South African apartheid transphobia; it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what those words mean. This is why I said that racism is not the most useful lens to view the relationship between the groups through. They are the same race, with differing religions.
I mean, racism is a fairly fuzzy term and not based on hard science; plenty of people refer to the condition of Palestinians in Israel as "racism" (or in fact do use the word "apartheid"), but to invert what you're saying here — they can just convert to Judaism [1], so should the term apply? Anyway, regardless of whether we want to call it racism, Muslim societies were definitely anti-Semitic.
Sure, and the people of Iraq had very legitimate problems with NATO. Nonetheless the West dismantled ISIS. People can have legitimate grievances without committing mass murder and rape, and in fact I think the mass murder and rape committed by Hamas have been very counterproductive for the lives of Gazans.
What would you have Israel do, that you think would result in it not getting continually attacked by Hamas? Recall that when Israel dismantled its Gazan settlements and withdrew its own citizens at gunpoint nearly 20 years ago — in the hope that would help solve the problem — that's when Hamas took power...
ISIS-K just carried out the worst terrorist attack in Iran (and it was primarily Iran's Q Solemani who dismantled ISIS; later killed by the US Army). Taliban rules Afghanistan again.
> What would you have Israel do, that you think would result in it not getting continually attacked by Hamas?
Negotiate, like they did with PLO before?
> withdrew its own citizens at gunpoint
Yeah, cause settlements are a clear breach of International Law. It was no charity.
> that's when Hamas took power...
Democratically elected, then subsequently undermined and later blockaded.
IDK what your point is with the Taliban, since they're a different group in a different country that isn't allied with ISIS. (And are unrelated to Israel and Gaza.)
Negotiate, like they did with the PLO before?
The PLO was willing to negotiate and Hamas is not. Hamas has repeatedly said they are not willing to agree to a permanent peace deal with Israel, and have said that they intend to carry out these attacks repeatedly until Israel is destroyed. In this situation, not a hypothetical one where Hamas wants peace, what exactly do you think Israel can do to prevent being attacked?
Democratically elected...
They won the legislative elections but not the prime ministership and subsequently started a massive civil war with the rest of the PA, which ended up in the PA maintaining control of the West Bank and Hamas controlling Gaza. Which is why Israel and Gaza have gone to war many times, but Israel and Ramallah have not — Israel and the PA mutually recognize each other, albeit with a fair amount of mutual enmity.
> ISIS was defeated in Iraq by a U.S.-led coalition
Yeah and who defeated them in Syria? There were two coalitions. French/US led and Syria/Iran led.
> The PLO was willing to negotiate and Hamas is not.
In 2014, in a meeting in the UAE post war, Hamas encouraged PLO to reach a political arrangement with Israel on 67 borders. Then in 2017, ratified their charter again to make that point clear. In 2021, Hamas offered to join the PLO and conduct elections, which almost happened only for Israel to not let East Jerusalem residents vote.
> subsequently started a massive civil war
US and Israel encouraged a coup by Fatah by arming and training the Presidential Guard in opposition to Hamas.
> Israel and Ramallah have not
Israel has razed Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nablus just this past month with over 50+ dead.
> Israel and the PA mutually recognize each other
PA is a puppet with bare minimum control over economy, trade, and security of its own people.
>Hamas encouraged PLO to reach a political arrangement with Israel on 67 borders
And then to continue the war from these borders. Duh.
> ratified their charter again to make that point clear.
The one which opposes recognition of Israel and promises to continue the war?
>which almost happened only for Israel to not let East Jerusalem residents vote.
This isn't true at all. Israeli opposes PA polling stations there. There are other ways to vote (like having the stations inside the EU consulates, or by mail). Which they already used in 2006, so PA is actually fine with this. It's that Abbas will lose to Hamas and everyone knows it, so he needs an lie that uninformed people would swallow.
>Israel has razed Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nablus
These cities aren't razed by any normal definition of 'razed'. Some people wanted to start another front and got crushed.
> The entire article is about how nobody buys Abbas...
You read it?
Egypt & Jordan:
The heads of the Egyptian and Jordanian intelligence services, Abbas Kamel and Ahmad Hosni, visited the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority to meet with Abbas in mid-January. The two officials hoped to dissuade Abbas from proceeding to elections...
Israel:
Meanwhile, Israel strongly opposes any potential Hamas victory in Palestinian elections. In March, the Israeli government dispatched Nadav Argaman, head of the Shin Bet security service, to meet Abbas in his headquarters in Ramallah. Seeing data predicting a huge victory for Hamas and resounding loss for Fatah, Israel made a final effort to persuade Abbas to backtrack on the election move.
> the other link is similarly not relevant
For almost a year, Jenin refugee camp has been at the centre of Israel's escalating military crackdown... its residents continue to be subjected to relentless military raids which amount to collective punishment.
Israel continues to enjoy total impunity for the system of apartheid it imposes on Palestinians – a system which is partly maintained through violations like unlawful killings.
Abbas declared he would postpone elections on the basis of Israel’s refusal to allow them to be held in East Jerusalem. Palestinians overwhelmingly denounced Abbas’ decision. Voters argue other options for timely elections — without a full postponement — exist, and the postponement is merely an excuse to extend Abbas’ hold on power.
Furthermore, Israel declared that it never notified the Palestinian Authority of its refusal to hold elections in Jerusalem. The European Union, the mediator for this election dispute, also rejected Abbas’ postponement rationale on the same basis. On the procedural level, representatives of the Palestinian Central Elections Committee were reportedly aware of alternative election sites in East Jerusalem. The options are said to have included polling stations in United Nations facilities or European embassies in Jerusalem or facilitating electronic voting for Jerusalemite voters. But despite the array of options to encourage timely elections, the Palestinian Authority — under Abbas’ leadership — rejected all offers.
As we can see, this has nothing to do with E.Jerusalem voting, and a lot with Abbas - and everyone else - not wanting Hamas to win.
I'm really not sure why it matters who gets to claim credit in Syria. The point is that the US and its allies used the same tactics as Israel is using in Gaza to defeat ISIS, and I think it's silly to say that the U.S. or Iran or whoever should've just tried dialogue with ISIS. The same is true for Hamas.
In 2014, in a meeting in the UAE post war, Hamas encouraged PLO to reach a political arrangement with Israel on 67 borders. Then in 2017, ratified their charter again to make that point clear. In 2021, Hamas offered to join the PLO and conduct elections, which almost happened only for Israel to not let East Jerusalem residents vote.
None of these things are Hamas willing to make a permanent peace deal with Israel, which they have repeatedly stated they are not willing to do. After being frustrated by your off-topic or entirely inaccurate responses, I realized I remembered your username, and you have previously tried to claim to me that Hamas was willing to make peace deals and continually failed to back up your claims, along with similar unsourced claims and irrelevant debate points as I'm noticing in this back-and-forth. I am not really interested in having this "discussion" again!
Just as then, it is still the case that Abbas cancelled the elections, not Israel, even according to Hamas. I cited Hamas's own public statements, Wikipedia, etc and you are still making this same unsourced assertion that somehow Israel did it. But that's not even relevant! Hamas is very clear that they do not want a permanent peace deal with Israel!
By the way, the "PLO" stopped existing a long time before 2014. It's the PA now.
Israel has razed Jenin...
No, it didn't "raze" Jenin or any other city in the West Bank in "the past month," nor has it razed any city in the West Bank since the end of the Second Intifadah other than its own settlements. It fought a small group of Hamas-aligned terrorists with minimal casualties, agreed upon with the PA.
PA is a puppet with bare minimum control over economy, trade, and security of its own people
The PA is just the reformed PLO, that you were just saying should supposedly be emulated by Israel and Hamas. And objectively it is doing far better on literally all of those axes — economy, trade, and security — for its own people than Hamas.
Anyway, once again I point out: you are unable to say what Israel can actually do to prevent Hamas from repeatedly attacking it, given that Hamas does not want a permanent peace deal with Israel.
And their 2017 charter didn't say they were willing to make peace with Israel; in fact it only stated that it was justified to continue fighting Israel as it claims it's an occupying power. Hamas views all of Israel to be "occupied," not just 1967 borders, so that is a call for permanent war. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Hamas_charter
Running in PA elections doesn't mean anything about their "peace" plans; they ran in 2006 and certainly had no peace plans then either: they had a charter that literally called for the genocide of the Jews (not Israelis! Not "Zionists." Jews).
Brooklyn doesn't get to decide that
I am not from Brooklyn, nor is any government involved here based in Brooklyn, so I can only assume you're being rabidly antisemitic here.
You said Palestinians in the West Bank were objectively "far better", which is completely disregarding their plight against anti-Arab far-right Kahanists (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meir_Kahane originally from Brooklyn) that control those lands.
> so I can only assume you're being rabidly antisemitic here
Yeah, if you ctrl-f "peace" on that page, you'll see it doesn't appear in the charter at all, not sure why you're copy-pasting the link and saying "ctrl-f" as if it were a gotcha. Similarly, posting random articles about Jewish settlers supposedly stealing someone's home is not an argument for why your very weird "Brooklyn" statement wasn't just rabid antisemitism.
Good luck; not going to keep responding to you.
Edit: I see you have now stealth-edited your comment and are pretending that "Brooklyn doesn't get to decide that" as a response to me saying that the PA is doing better economically and in terms of the security of its people, is supposedly referencing Kahanists. I am not a Kahanist, and am not from Brooklyn, and this is literally the first time you've brought up Kahanists in this discussion (and no, Kahanists do not control the PA, or Ramallah, or Jenin, or whatever), so nice try but not especially convincing.
Stealth edited? That literally was the point I was making and since it flew over your head, I had to make it explicit. Anyways, good luck with the advocacy and/or intimidation. Need plenty of it given the blowback: https://archive.is/blQkz
> The PLO was willing to negotiate and Hamas is not.
The last negotiations between thr PA and Israel were broken off by Israel because the the PA and Hamas both agreed that Hamas should be involved.
And then Israel specifically targeted and assassinated Hamas leaders that were leading the internal support for negotiations.
> Which is why Israel and Gaza have gone to war many times, but Israel and Ramallah have not
This is false; Israel is waging a significant campaign in the West Bank now as well as Gaza, and has essentially every time they have engaged in active combat in Gaza.
It’s not “against Ramallah" in the same way as it is “against Gaza” because Gaza is essentially a single administrative zone where, when Israel is “withdrawn”, is continguous and able to be centrally administered, and can effectively be controlled by someone during that time. The West Bank has parts administered directly by Israel, while the parts nominally administered by the PA are divided into 79 tiny noncontiguous areas separated by Israeli-administered areas. The PA innthe West Bank is sructurally impotent, but that doesn't stop Israel from going to war against the Palestinians there as well as in Gaza.
Israel is waging a significant campaign in the West Bank now as well as Gaza
Israel is not launching airstrikes or displacing millions or doing anything remotely similar in the West Bank. There is targeted fighting as there often is with tens of Hamas-aligned militants dead. Every time there has been a major war in Gaza for like the past 20 years there has been nothing similar happening in the West Bank, and that's because Hamas does not control the West Bank and Israel is fighting Hamas. Ramallah does not look like Mosul right now and it hasn't in any of these repeated conflicts with Hamas, and Gaza has and does.
The last negotiations between the PA and Israel were broken off by Israel because the the PA and Hamas both agreed that Hamas should be involved.
No, Hamas never agreed to be part of peace negotiations. Israel broke off talks when Fatah and Hamas talked about merging governments in 2014 — not Hamas agreeing to be part of peace talks, which they never have — while the Hamas charter still included explicit calls for genocide of the Jews. Hamas has never stated that they are willing to make a permanent peace deal with Israel, and if they had, I would love to see one of you provide a source from Hamas saying that they are willing to make a permanent peace deal: I've been very willing to provide sources for Hamas official's frequent calls for the total destruction of Israel, e.g. https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-official-says-group-aims...
> The PLO was willing to negotiate and Hamas is not.
The last negotiations between thr PA and Israel were broken off by Israel because the the PA and Hamas both agreed that Hamas should be involved.
And then Israel specifically targeted and assassinated Hamas leaders that were leading the internal support for negotiations.
> Which is why Israel and Gaza have gone to war many times, but Israel and Ramallah have not
This is false; Israel is waging a significant campaign in the West Bank now as well as Gaza, and has essentially every time they have engaged in active combat in Gaza.
It’s not “against Ramallah" in the same way as it is “against Gaza” because Gaza is essentially a single administrative zone where, when Israel is “withdrawn”, is continguous and able to be centrally administered. The West Bank has parts administered dirextly by Israel, while the parts nominally administered by the PA are divided into 79 tiny noncontiguous areas separated by Israeli-administered areas. The PA innthe West Bank is sructurally impotent, but that doesn't stop Israel from going to war against the Palestinians there as well as in Gaza.
A supermajority of all Gazans are too ever to have voted (in part because Hamas, which won the 2006 election by throwing PA supporters off rooftops, hasn't allowed another election since). It is not reasonable to say that Gazans elected Hamas.
If Hamas held new elections, they'd likely win easily, because they are so popular with Palestinians in Gaza. From the perspective of the average Gazan, Hamas massacres the hated Israeli oppressor, Fatah collaborates with them. Even Gazans who dislike certain aspects of Hamas rule - the corruption and the ultra-rigid interpretations of Islam – mostly still approve of the October 7 atrocity [0]. I suppose, if Israeli soldiers had killed my father or mother or sister or brother or son or daughter – whatever the rights or wrongs of that military action in the abstract – I might also find it hard to resist that temptation.
The PA refuses to hold new elections in the West Bank, because they know if they do, Hamas will very likely win. The US makes some noises every now and again about demanding the PA to hold new elections, but it is questionable if they really mean it, because they also know what the outcome of any fair election is likely to be, and it is not an outcome they would welcome.
Israel needs to treat Palestinians as equals. This should start with not blockading Gaza, rolling back settlements in the West Bank, and so on.
Furthermore, supporting those who oppose Hamas instead of playing the dangerous game that now cost tens of thousands of lives.
Also, it's important to note that there are no guarantees. Even if Israel (famous hive mind, of course) did everything right there could have been provocation from/via Iran and whatnot.
Israel dismantled all of its Gazan settlements in 2005 and there had never been a blockade at that point, which is exactly what I just referenced in the post you were responding to. Then Hamas took over Gaza, and Israel and Egypt jointly started blockading it. You can't place the blame for Hamas's rule on the blockade — the blockade (and the settlements) didn't exist when they took power.
Hamas' rule is the result of many factors over decades. Obviously the blockade and every other security measure was, at best, short-term responses to Hamas' radicalization, but overall simply one more blow to the fragile illusion of peace, and simply more heat under the pressure cooker of Gaza.
It is reasonable for adjoining countries to control their borders, e.g. Egypt and Israel's borders with Palestine. Countries get to control their borders.
Israel takes it a step further and blockades Palestinian access to Palestinian sea routes, something which isn't just a declaration of war, it's an act of war.
> Solving that seems like it needs a more wholistic approach than simply trying to get rid of the militants at the cost of causing everyone else to have an even bigger beef with Israel.
Like giving NGOs money which get funneled into overt terrorists groups by the corrupt politicians planted by the same terrorists? Aka the status quo for multiple decades well before Netanyahu was ever prime minister.
It’s notable none of the surrounding Muslim countries want anything to do with being the neutral power brokers to temporarily help run the state because they know as well as everyone else it’s a never ending hornets nest, that they’ll have as little control of it as Fatah and the various other iterations of “stable” Palestinian governance, who had little ability or interest to quell the extreme violent fringes. Which in every other country in history means control via police, courts, or worst case military… not tacit appeasement and turning a blind eye.
Their legitimate problems with Israel stem from their illegitimate problem with Israel: that Arabs rejected a two-state solution at inception and repeatedly tried to wipe Israel off the map. More fundamentally, the whole problem stems from Arabs refusing to want to give up any of the territory they acquired during their wars of conquest in the 700s. Palestine is always going to be a proxy for that. (Which is why Qatar is hosting Hamas leadership.)
Even ignoring whether you’re right or whether you are simplifying in a fair or unfair manner, I think it’s unhelpful to treat people as though they are mere continuations of their predecessors.
All living Gazans were born after the 700s. The vast majority were born after 1948. Most were born after 1967.
Telling people that their very real problems may stem from the misbehavior of dead, long dead, and extremely long dead people, even if those people are their ancestors, doesn’t change the fact that actual living Gazans have very real problems.
> I think it’s unhelpful to treat people as though they are mere continuations of their predecessors.
Those groups exist, and see themselves as continuations of their predecessors. When October 7 happened, my cousin posted a picture of the Dome of the Rock with the caption that it was the first step in retaking Jerusalem. An aunt posted about the Ummah. They aren’t even Arabs—just wannabes. Zooming out, Arabs who are happy to bomb the shit out of fellow Arabs (like Saudi does to Yemen) lend political and monetary support to the idea of an undivided Palestine (from the river to the sea—without Israel), and to Hamas, because they cling to a notion of territorial integrity of the lands considered by their ancestors in the 700s. In 1947, the Arab League and leaders of the Arab states opposed the UN partition plan and went to war with Israel precisely because of that idea.
You can’t hope to understand what’s actually happening in the Middle East by viewing people as individuals. The grievance of the people of Gaza, as a group, isn’t just that their life sucks materially, which is something you could fix. That may be the case for some individuals, but that’s not the case for the group and what the group does collectively. The group’s grievance is that Israel exists on what should be Arab land from the river to the sea.
For every Israeli Jewish civilian, there is an equivalent Palestine refugee living in a camp (~7mil). Israeli can only exist as a Jewish majority state as long as the original inhabitants remain displaced. So the Gazans are probably not going to be pro-Israeli any time soon.
I find this argument to be problematic. The world contains an enormous number of descendants of displaced people. I imagine that most of the US population is in this category, for example. (Most people of Native American heritage. The descendants of the Puritans. Most American Jews (displaced from different places, even). The Palestinian-Americans. Descendants of slaves. Many others.)
Yet most of these people do not consider themselves to still be displaced! I certainly feel no particular desire to reconquer the (multiple!) places from which my ancestors were displaced. (There’s a lot of nuance here. Plenty of people, for example, think that Native Americans and their descendants should have better treatment, especially in land that remains Native American.)
But somehow Palestinian refugees, in particular, have unusual, highly politicized issues. The UN agency involved is a different agency than the one that nominally handles every other refugee situation worldwide. There are multigenerational Palestinian refugee camps in countries that do not grant citizenship to the refugees, and there are people who argue that granting citizenship would do them a disservice. (I don’t know whether the people arguing this are doing so in good faith.)
Also…
> Israeli can only exist as a Jewish majority state as long as the original inhabitants remain displaced.
Stories and written records about the Israel go back a long time. If the stories are all true, essentially all Jews worldwide are the descendants of those displaced from Israel. Control of Jerusalem in particular has changed quite a few times, and there are surely plenty of people around, Jews and otherwise, whose ancestors have been displaced multiple times, hundreds of years apart, from the area. (It’s not just Jews and Arabs. Jesus was killed in Jerusalem. Wars have been fought there repeatedly: the Muslim Conquest of the Levant, the Crusades, etc.)
Trying to keep score of the number of living descendants of the various groups who have been displaced from Israel seems unlikely to give any sensible moral answer for who ought to control what part of it, except insofar as maybe the entire place would be better off with a genuine non-religious government, along the lines of how the US nominally works. Good luck!
Note: ISIS was a bunch of European guys who got radicalized and then travelled to the middle east; Hamas is homegrown and was democratically elected by the people of the region.
Democratically elected by plurality, where the only competition was incompetent, and still only won by plurality… and hasnt had an election in 18 years, which means 50% of the population has never had a democratically exercised opinion because they werent born yet, and of the other 50% not even 50% of the ones that voted had voted for Hamas
Marauding terrorist force that lays claim to an area != the people who inhabit that area*
* I understand that they also recruited locally; that doesn't change the fact that there were thousands of Europeans in ISIS' ranks, along with fighters from many other nationalities.
> Why did you start off with such strong statements but then retreat to this one after you're challenged?
There's no retreating in my comment -- it's a fact that they sourced people from everywhere. I threw an asterisk on there at the last second because I wanted to show good faith; there's nothing nefarious about it.
> Is ISIS a bunch of European guys or not?
It was definitely a bunch of European guys, and Asian guys, and American guys, etc... my point was that ISIS was a group of people from around the globe and not an ideology endemic to the region.
ISIS is 95% of people of African and Middle-Eastern origins. Then maybe a bit of crazies from Indonesia, Chechnya, etc. As well, ISIS was founded in Iraq itself. How is it a "bunch of European"?
Your 95% figure is incorrect -- approximately 45% of fighters hailed from Africa and the Middle East, with ~31% originating from Europe (East and West combined).
That's not what the article says at all. It says 45% of the foreign fighters hailed from Africa and the Middle East. The foreign fighters numbered ~42k total. It's unknown how many total fighters ISIS had, but estimates range into 200k total, which would imply that the vast majority of ISIS was native; more conservative estimates are that half of the fighters were "foreign fighters," which would mean that ~75% of the fighters were MENA-native (since the foreign fighters were about half MENA-native). [1] The strongest claim you could make regarding European contributions is that ISIS was around 16% European, including fighters from Chechnya. (The weakest country-of-origin claim is it was about 7% European including Chechnya, although given that Chechen ISIS fighters nearly outnumbered all other European ISIS fighters combined — and that Chechnya is a majority-Sunni-Muslim semi-autonomous region of Russia, and ISIS was attempting to form a Sunni Muslim caliphate — I think the least-European claim might point out that trying to bundle that into a pan-European identity group is probably mistaken, and the most-accurate depiction is "ISIS was a bunch of radicalized Sunni Muslims, mostly from the Middle East and North Africa.")
TL;DR: ISIS was not "a bunch of European guys who got radicalized." It was mostly people from the Middle East and North Africa: somewhere between 75-93%. 95% MENA is probably not correct either, but it's much closer to correct than your original claim.
>with ~31% originating from Europe (East and West combined).
I think the parent comment was referring to the idea that the overwhelmingy majority of those "Europeans" we're rather people of MENA/Turkish immigrant background, not "ethnically" European.
Even if that's what the parent comment was implying it still wouldn't be correct; much more than 5% of ISIS' fighters were "crazies" from "Indonesia, Chechnya, etc".
They were trying to present a certain image, I would imagine they put the German terrorists in front of the German TV cameras, the French in front of the French cameras etc.
We could have said this about Germany and Japan after WWII.
Every human no matter their race and religion cares about having food, water, safety, opportunity, live in a law abiding society where their rights are respected and they get “some” choice to vote for their future.
Germany and Japan were conquered and unconditionally surrendered, after massive civilian casualties. Nazis were tried and executed. If Israel is should model itself on those examples, it's doing the right and moral thing in waging war until Hamas is destroyed, or unconditionally surrenders.
The point is that it’s possible for relations to improve over time even when previous generations were bitter enemies. There are plenty of other examples in history apart from WW2.
Investing heavily in Palestine is likely Israel’s cheapest option for stability in the long term. They certainly aren’t going to bomb their way to stability.
If they had gone after Hamas leadership specifically with targeted operations while increasing humanitarian aid, rather than terrorizing the entire population of Gaza, they would have had the world and likely a decent percentage of Palestinians on their side. Instead they have utterly and completely botched it and put themselves in a terrible situation strategically.
> gone after Hamas leadership specifically with targeted operations while increasing humanitarian aid, rather than terrorizing the entire population of Gaza
The aid was going first to fighters, then to stockpiles, then to the people. To the extent it could be traded for weapons it was. Now we’re seeing allegations UNRWA employees participated in the October 7th attacks [1].
> Investing heavily in Palestine is likely Israel’s cheapest option for stability in the long term. They certainly aren’t going to bomb their way to stability.
Even that is non trivial. Money going into Gaza first goes through Hamas. After buying arms and building expensive tunnels, and paying its men, the leftovers go to the rest of the population.
> Germany and Japan were conquered and unconditionally surrendered
Israel has already done that to Palestine, many decades ago, but they failed to do anything like the Marshall Plan to invest in the occupied lands and create a lasting peace.
If we hope to learn from WW2, we should consider the postwar history of Eastern Europe. Like Israel, the Soviets also failed to invest in the lands they occupied, instead trying to suppress rebellions with violence. Now all of those nations are Russia's enemies.
Please omit swipes from your comments here, as the guidelines ask. If you know more than someone else, you're welcome to provide correct information, but please don't post putdowns.
This myth that Hamas can be destroyed and that if they are, everything will be alright, is completely disproven by the fact that there is no Hamas in the West Bank and Israeli extremists continue to perpetrate crimes there.
Where are you getting the idea that tbere is no Hamas in the West Bank? There are very much Hamas militants there that would love nothing more than to commit another Oct. 7th.
There are two ways to get peace. One is for one side to completely dominate the other at massive cost, and with risk of blowback even after domination. The other is for cooler heads to prevail. Plenty of examples from history of both. And supposedly we had, as a modern world, decided that we prefer the latter path to peace over the former. Hence the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions, etc.
Hamas's stated aim and goal is to destroy Israel and ethnically cleanse Palestine of the jews "from the river to the sea".
When somebody tells you they want to destroy you, over and over for years, and then builds up terror factories and uses it to intentionally target women, children and elderly civilians on Oct 7, maybe -- just maybe, Israel has no choice other than to deal with Hamas as they are.
<< Israel has no choice other than to deal with Hamas as they are.
Maybe. Recent drone strike in Lebanon suggests that Israel is rather capable to strike surgically if it is so desires. In Gaza, it does not appear to strike surgically suggesting it made that choice for a reason.
There is always a choice and few would fault just plain self-defense. Based on the existing rubble, current situation is closer to overkill, which does not win Israel support.
Germany was reduced to rubble, their population submitted to complete and total surrender, and their leaders were all executed. Japan was firebombed into oblivion and then had two atomic bombs dropped on their civilian population. And both were then completely occupied and had their government dismantled and replaced by their conquerors.
What Israel is doing right now seems to be far closer to what happened in Germany and Japan after WW2 than whatever diplomatic solution you are proposing.
And the world decided we didn't want to have wars like that ever again, and gave the defeated countries a path to prosper. Sadly, Palestinians have no such path.
Hamas are active in the West Bank and have significant support and influence. If an election were called (there hasn't been one for more than 18 years) it is overwhelmingly likely that Hamas would win.
Fatah are somewhat less politically extreme than Hamas, but they are scarcely any less corrupt; within the West Bank, the PA is widely viewed as illegitimate.
They support Hamas because they can't see any other potential path to prosperity.
If you want to quell extremism in a country, you have to give them a genuine alternative to extremism. If all of the moderate options get them nowhere, they will reject them.
This is a vital lesson we learned from WWII. Incentives matter.
> They support Hamas because they can't see any other potential path to prosperity.
Prosperity through Hamas? Only for a select few who live in other countries. With the amount of aid and money thrown at Gaza, any third rate politician could have achieved prosperity if only they were genuinely in it for the good of the people.
Hamas didn't, because their priority doesn't lie in the welfare of the Palestinian people but in the eradication of Israel.
(and potentially not even that: there are more billions to amass while living in the safety and comfort of some emirate when the situation on the ground remains volatile and the Palestinian people miserable. In that case, Palestinians don't even have a "way out" of their misery by completing Hamas' mission, because their misery _is_ Hamas' mission.)
But from the perspective of someone living in the West Bank, Hamas is the least horrible of the options. It is the only organization that looks like it might eventually push back Israeli settlements and give West Bank Palestinians back their homes.
If we want don't want people on the West Bank to support Hamas, give them a better alternative. The PA is utterly failing to resist the encroaching settlements. Of course they're going to turn to Hamas!
If there was a third option that wasn't a corrupt terrorist organization, but had the teeth to remove Israeli settlements from the West Bank, you would see support for Hamas fall.
I think the allies (largely the US) were able to effect massive cultural changes in Japan and Germany after WWII from aggressive, totalitarian, racist societies committed to military victory by any means necessary to relatively peaceful, even pacifist societies only via:
1) Forcing unconditional surrender on Germany and Japan, whereby virtually every citizen of those countries was convinced that they had lost the war and that resorting to armed struggle for their goals was a complete failure for Germany and Japan, and,
2) A lengthy occupation in those countries that accomplished many things, including the "de-nazification" of educational system.
People are saying that what Israel is doing right now is a genocide. You have seen nothing yet: With either of them at the helm, there would either be an unconditional surrender by Hamas or no Palestinian alive anymore - and by November 15, last year.
We don't do such things anymore, and for good reason, but that means that these past situations are unsuitable as example for the present.
What Israel is doing right now should be viewed from the point of view of the goal of removing the Hamas threat as such. The logic here is "Hamas should go - what's the best way to make that happen?" and from this POV the situation is not too grim. It's obviously best to avoid casualties as much as possible, but we are far from perfect wars.
Germany and japan returned to their pre war borders after the war. Gaza does not have the land or resources to sustain its population. It literally needs to expand to have any amount of stability.
No they didn't. Germany lost a large chunk of its eastern lands that was "given" to Poland (but in reality conytrolled by the Soviets) and Japan's large prewar empire in northern China and Korea (since the early 1930s) was taken away from the Japanese leaving them only the home islands. A bit of basic historical knowledge is good if one is going to argue.
As for Gaza not being able to sustain its population, i'm doubtful. It's a tiny territory almost devoid of material/natural resources, but then there are many places and enclave countries in the world that are similar in size, heavily populated and with good standards of living. The reason why: They're not unremittingly belligerent with their neighbors, run by a government explicitly dedicated to the erasure of one of those neighbors, and overall allowed to exchange with the rest of the world fully.
With that said, the hardline stance of Netenyahou and those who support him is doing little favors to Israel either, if a path to peace is what Israel wants.
I think the WWII example is really useful here - completion of hostilities and post-war work. Expansion of Gaza may be not necessary at all, looking at Singapore example, not to mention West Bank.
It is unimaginable to me for Gaza to ever resemble singapore. Singapore had massive advantages that took hundreds of years to create and its biggest continues to be its position along the straight of malacca. If singapore was not along the straight theres no doubt in my mind that it would be in a much much worse position today. Singapore actually has long standing hostilities with Malaysia. The only reason it exists today in its current form is the economic advantage given by its location.
Lack of imagination can prevent us from seeing solutions. Gaza certainly has advantages - location, population size and age, attention of the world in XXI century among them.
Except where they weren't. The German borders after 1945 or after 1990 are unlike any other shape of any German nation (or collection of German states) before.
The notion that the problem is religious fundamentalists is itself propaganda. The people are just people; the problem is a brutal racist occupation that has gone on for far too long.
The "people are just people" argument is rarely (if ever) applied to domestic politics. Democrats and Republicans may often loathe each other, but at least they have enough respect to recognise that their differences in opinion are meaningful and sincerely held.
Many Palestinians are just ordinary people who want to get on with their lives, but some are fanatics. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it is the fanatics who are in charge. Of course, the same could be justifiably argued about the current Israeli government; the crucial difference is that Netanyahu and Smotrich can (and likely will) be removed at the next election.
I don't think it's too Western-centric to imagine that Palestinians want freedom, which is a universal human desire. Freedom means statehood and self-governance.
Oppression is fertile soil for religious fundamentalists, and radicals of every stripe.
Worth pointing out that both sides have extreme religious fundamentalists.
Also worth pointing out that peace was achieved between Egypt/Israel but it took leaders like Carter, Sadat, Begin to transcend the conflict. Sadly, Biden is no Carter. And there are no Sadats or Begins anymore.
Carter's approach tells us what he would think. Carter was willing to give the Israelis and the Egyptians massive amounts of aid, conditioned on peace. That is very different than offering one side unconditional support despite that side allowing extremists to formulate and shape plans.
That's rather similar to what we have or going to have. Both Israel and Gaza may receive - keep receiving - external aid. The difference is that peace around Gaza, today's and tomorrow's, is going to be enforced more elaborately.
I think the Gaza war doesn't fit you hypothesis for a start. The Gaza residents could have made it into another Dubai but they prefered to follow a route that resulted in the current situation.
Such a statement seems, at best, a controversial view. For example, I’m pretty sure that the religious aspects of the crusades are generally accepted as the primary cause.
> And then everyone who wants peace invests lots of money and expertise over a long time to build a modern, prosperous, stable Palestinian society
When Israel left Gaza in 2005 it had no blockade and an airport. Israel blockaded them and bombed their airport because they kept using everything to attack Israel.
If Gaza and the West Bank were given complete independence with no interference, what makes you think it will turn out different and they won't use the open borders to bring in weapons to attack Israel?
That certainly will happen. It's part of the "despite whatever setbacks, attacks, and sabotage occur from within and without" aspect. Israelis need to be able to turn the other cheek in order to break the cycle of violence.
I realize that this goes against human nature and may be impossible.
Only for Israel to bomb it all away after one setback? What a waste. The Oct 7 attacks were horrible but the response was not proportionate or productive.
Over 47% of Palestinians are under the age of 18, meaning they have grown up only knowing the post-2005 situation. Which can rightly be described as an open air prison with no hope of the opportunities all humans deserve.
Israel - and the rest of the complicit world - allowed a generation of prisoners to be born under Hamas and is now massacring them like fish in a barrel. You can call that a naive view too, but I doubt history will look kindly on all the justifications.
Doesn't matter how much people who want peace invest when terrorists who want to continue fighting are in charge. There is no "modern, prosperous, stable Palestinian society" when terrorists are in charge.
They have had better options... and still choose the path they are on.
47% of Gaza's population is under the age of 18, meaning they have lived completely under the blockade and Hamas. Politically they only "want" what they have been indoctrinated to want.
Give them school, art, romance, the option to travel the world, choose their career... and they probably won't care as much about their parent's grievances. Give them no such options and you are guaranteed to have more combatants.
No one said it would be quick or easy. This will take multiple generations. It requires the Israelis to make a bet on the Palestinian youth.
> And then everyone who wants peace invests lots of money and expertise over a long time to build a modern, prosperous, stable Palestinian society
What makes you think that’s even possible? Name any other Arab country you could plunk down next to Israel that wouldn’t constantly be trying to destroy Israel?
People said Apartheid South Africa couldn't end without a bloodbath. People said peace in Northern Ireland was impossible. People thought the Cold War would never end.
Impossible things are impossible until they aren't. I'm not saying that any of these things are easy - they clearly are not. But history shows us again and again that change is possible when people work towards it in good faith.
From a practical point of view, I think that the international community needs to be allowed to help - both to maintain the peace and broker a way forward.
The status quo will not reach peace. Israel will never have peace and security until Palestine has peace and security.
The ethno-religious conflict in Northern Ireland dates back to the seventeenth century and the question of Irish sovereignty dates all the way back to the twelfth century!
It does seem like a lot of people have given up on the first two, but if it's not one of those then it's the third one. So we have to work towards making it one of the first two.
Apartheid started in 1948. It was around for quite a long time. And the roots of the division in Northern Ireland went back centuries. But yes, long running divisions are harder to solve. Harder != impossible. And look at history - stuff changes.
“Peace while continuing to seize land” is a peculiar-enough type of peace to not really qualify for simply “wants to live in peace” by many people’s definition.
It's tricky but there have been attempts at a normal peace deal like the Camp David Summit. But then the Palestinians say no. So instead you get the other stuff you mention.
Yeah, the “but first X did Y! But before that P did Q!” goes back thousands of years. All that to say it’s not as simple as “one side wants peace and the other doesn’t.” It’s very messy.
Yeah but ignoring history a bit if A and B say ok lets sign an agreement, do our own thing and not attack each other you get a kind of peace. If B says no A must be destroyed then you don't. It's not really a moral question of who's right and wrong so much as a practical agreement to move on.
If I knew the answer to that question I would be a high ranked politician. But for me it's important to keep in mind what he is saying here and also in another part explicitly: a diplomatic solution is possible and history proves that. So what I can do is reject the notion that what is happening is unavoidable.
How does history prove any such thing? That's neither how history or proof work. Most of the wars that have been resolved to everyone's benefit have done so by the unconditional surrender of the aggressors, followed by amicable reconstruction.
Are there Jews in Germany today because of diplomacy? Or because those who tried annihilating and enslaving most German Jews were removed from power by force?
Box is not checked yet, otherwise IDF wouldn't have any resistance.
We should try diplomacy all the time, but right now the offer of Israel is unconditional surrender or continuation of hostilities. Maybe - maybe - less atrocious to civilians than what it was during March 1945 in Germany. Diplomats will keep their work; of course everybody's abilities are limited.
I'm not convinced by the examples that you have listed (a conspicuously empty list at that), and examples are only evidence by analogy anyway. The reactivity of hydrogen is not proof of the reactivity of helium.
The list is empty if you haven't read what I originally posted and linked. Obviously you haven't. Politics is neither chemistry nor physics, it is what is referred to as the art of the impossible. Many nasty situations in the past seemed impossible to solve diplomatically, but it was made possible. No matter how bleak it might have looked. Again, refer to the link I posted that kicked off this discussion.
I assure you that I read the tweet, and the list remains utterly null.
In a broader sense, I don't fault you for looking at war and thinking, or rather hoping, that in a just world, this wouldn't be the solution to any problem.
It is unsettled whether or not humanity can create such a just world, but we certainly haven't done it yet. Requiring the unconditional surrender of Hamas through force is very much a reasonable and acceptable way forward.
"And that's the cunning of history; when you're at the bottom, something can happen that gives hope. After the 1973 war, who would have thought that before the end of the decade, Egypt would sign a peace treaty with Israel?"
so at least the list is obviously > 0. That's a good starting point for you to reconsider where else you've made a mistake.
Alliances are not the same as peace. Egypt's tepid alliance with Israel has also served to anger the rest of the islamic world, and Gaza in particular is much more isolated as a result. This is one of those apples to oranges comparisons that you assured me weren't relevant.
The Nakba, you mean when all neighboring Arab countries said "hey Palestinians, step out of the way, we'll kill the Jews real quick and then you can have all the land"?
And then lost the war they've started?
Yes, that's a catastrophe for Arabs, just like losing WW2 was a catastrophe for certain Germans. And also for those in Germany who were exiled from their (sometimes extensive) land, no matter what they thought of the war and its outcome.
Eastern Prussian didn't then go and tried to kill the Western German president when the FRG took them in, though. Besides some whining by a few select bunch, that chapter is closed.
Not so for the Arabs for whom the "Nakba" was and is that the military campaign failed and not that Palestinians now live in misery.
"During the foundational events of the Nakba in 1948, dozens of massacres targeting Arabs were conducted and about 400 Arab-majority towns and villages were depopulated;[3] with many of these being either completely destroyed or repopulated by Jewish residents and given new Hebrew names. Approximately 750,000[4] Palestinian Arabs (about half of Palestine's Arab population) fled from their homes or were expelled by Zionist militias and later the Israeli army"
This did happen and I don't think there's a lot of prevarication to be done about how bad it was, but if we're talking about it as a way of imputing original sin to the citizens of Israel, it's worth keeping in mind that most of them are descendants of Arab Jewish people who were counter-Nakba'd --- chased from their homes across the Middle East and North Africa by pogroms.
I get why you'd respond to the previous comment, though, which reads as if it's an attempt to deny the events of the Palestinian Nakba. You're right to do that. All I'm here to say is that the 20th century history of that region is complicated and no simple narrative will get anybody to where we are today.
In many ways I agree with you. I'm not promoting any original sin.I'm simply responding the narrative that "Hamas started all this on October 7th, so as conclusion, all of what Israel is doing is justified."
Sure. It's easy to accept both arguments though: Hamas must be destroyed, but no matter how diabolical Hamas' tactics are, you still can't fight them primarily through an air war that kills tens of thousands of innocent Gazans.
Either way, my only stake in this little subthread is to stick up for the complexity of the history of the region, which both sides of the argument have a tendency to flatten to the point of unrecognizability.
You can’t really describe the events like this and leave out the massacres and the number of refugees storming into neighboring countries as a result. This kind of narrative would have Britain start World War 2 as we can easily omit all the Nazi atrocities and powergrabs in Czechia and Poland, just like we can omit the atrocities and land grabs committed by Zionists prior to the Arab invasion.
Not sure how that easily Google-able question has anything to do with the discussion. Name one famous Israeli from more than 100 years ago. Name one famous American from more than 250 years ago. What am I proving by asking these questions?
Well, the alternative to diplomatic solution is total annihilation of palestinians in west bank, be it by forcing them off the land which is impossible since they have nowhere to run and other islamic states refuse them (so much for inter-muslim brotherhood, I guess Iran should take them), or murdering them one by one which seems to be going on now. Or what we had till now, which led to what we have now. It doesnt matter that the other side plays dirty, all sides eventually do. It just doesn't matter for statement above.
It doesn't matter a nanofraction of a bit what government(s) publicly say, those are farts in the wind to be polite, I don't understand why people even care about such PR, its like what Putin says, what does it matter when its clearly said for a specific purpose and truth is optional?
I honestly dont understand the resistance to their own state. Yes they will hate Israel, just like till now they did, just like every single its neighbor since its creation. So what? How did we/they move from this utter hate of neighbors to cca peace? Well certainly not by following the path of trying to eradicate the other, history is pretty clear there. Yes its a bit easier to invade and kill if you want compared to invading a foreign state, but preventing it should be a good thing. Also, US is effectively giving them a blank check, just empty words flying around, I really expected a bit more. A room for Russia or China to step up.
Its like counting some destroyed tunnels or killing few brainwashed young guys mattered in long run, in same vein as say counting Vietcong losses and comparing them to US ones didn't matter. That's whats happening now. What's the plan for rest of existence? I dont see that part, I mean 0. But maybe current Israel government likes this situation, I mean the top guy is former special forces guy, so this is not unusual situation and a bit of blood doesn't matter to them and if there is war people don't focus so much on how effectively he erodes democracy.
So what is this, state-sponsored genocide? Because 100% this is not how Hamas disappears for longer than few months (in same vein al qaeda didn't) and I think literally everybody involved realizes that, this will actually make it much stronger long term, think about all those eager volunteers from places like Saudi arabia. Soviet war was what created Osama. US invasion of Iraq is what pointed him to US.
Suffice to say, when doing grocery shopping I don't buy products from Israel these days, we don't need more wars in middle east and massive refugees waves in Europe. Tiny wallet, but its all I have (apart from vacations but for that Israel was very low in the list anyway).
I wanted to let you know that I agree with all your comments. Nothing you have said is out of line. Sometimes it is really hard interacting with the HN crowd, when they get things wrong, it hurts, because they should be able to use their big brains to see through the chaos. Take care.
Because it's a normal outcome of war for territory to shift. It's especially justified if you try to invade another country and then lose spectacularly.
People use the word "war" to describe this, but it is a stretch in this case. The outcome is predetermined. Israel will kill as many people as it chooses and destroy as much infrastructure as it chooses. They will stop when they decide to stop. There is no threat that in this "war," Israel will lose. People in Israel right now are living their best lives (for the most part) while Palestinians are digging their kids out of the rubble and eating dog food to stay alive.
Because there's an anti-terrorism operation turned to city war going on, and to be in the middle of hostilities is dangerous.
It's really, really hard for palestinians today, yet just remain in place and ignore all calls to leave doesn't look like a good approach. Maybe we don't know something big, it's possible, but from all information from the region leaving still looks like a better option.
The Palestinian people can oust Hamas, reject Islamic extremism without exception and reform their society to be compatible with a peaceful relationship with their neighbours.
How? They lack the organization and military capability to do so.
And while Hamas hasn't done them any favors, with the way Israel has been behaving, I'm not surprised your average Palestinian in Gaza isn't feeling like helping the Israeli objective, even if it likely would be in their long-term interests as well.
I addressed that in my very short comment; not sure where I wasn't clear. With Israel itself admitting that they are killing roughly 2 civilians for every Hamas fighter they kill, why would you think any civilian in Palestine would trust Israel or be interested in working with them?
The fact that it might make logical sense to you or I that they should is entirely irrelevant. We're not there, and if we were, I doubt we'd be much driven by logic at this point. Not to mention we wouldn't have had access to the internet or regular communications with anyone for months now, and only see the death and devastation.
<< why would you think any civilian in Palestine would trust Israel or be interested in working with them?
It is not the same, but in a sense this odd naivety was a similar surprised reaction to US withdrawal and quick rollover of 'local' army in Afghanistan.
<< We're not there, and if we were, I doubt we'd be much driven by logic
I think this is worth highlighting. edit: The reason to avoid war is because it is horrific and can remove all sense from a man.
It's not just their optics. It looks that way to the rest of the world as well.
When the IDF kills (at least) two civilians to every combatant, and then drives many others out of their homes and into starvation, it really does make it look like Hamas is the only organization that will fight for them. And Hamas barely even does that (seeing as they are a terrorist organization that uses Palestinian civilians like sacrificial pawns), but they come far closer to it than any other organization in a position to do anything.
If we want Gazans to support an alternative to Hamas, then we need to come up with an alternative to Hamas that supports Gazans better than Hamas does. That should be pretty easy; it's a very low bar.
The average age in Palestine before Oct 7th was 19. You’re asking a nation of kids to be more mature and organized than the Israeli government who is killing them and their families
> Well, the alternative to diplomatic solution is total annihilation of palestinians in west bank, be it by forcing them off the land
What makes you so certain it's the Palestinians and not the Jews this will happen to?
It's the stated goal of the Palestinians and much of the extreme Muslim world surrounding Israel to drive away the Jews and it's not far fetched to see them eventually succeed.
The West isn't the one avoiding the solution. If it were up to us, two state would have been sorted decades ago, as evidenced by the repeated peace summits the US has hosted.
Israel believe they can't integrate the bulk of the Palestinian population, and there to afraid of attack to live next to an independent Palestinian state.
If you continually provide missiles and prevent a ceasefire in the UN (a rather unauthoritative body anyways) I would describe you as "avoiding" the solution of not settling/attacking Palestine.
The "We were afraid of the people, they might attack us, we have to do this" line wasn't believable in the 30's and isn't now.
The Israelis would continue the war with Hamas with no US support and a ceasefire in the UN. The US won't sacrifice it's relationship with Israel to try to force a resolution on an intractable issue that doesn't really concern the US, and it's interesting that they would be expected to.
>The "We were afraid of the people, they might attack us, we have to do this" line wasn't believable in the 30's and isn't now.
Haven't the Israelis have come under attack from Palestinians since that time for moving on to the land in numbers that made the Palestinians uncomfortable.
Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, and especially not to this thread. It's against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and strongly against the intended spirit that I tried to describe in the comment that's pinned to the top.
I don't think the situation is particularly inscrutable. Israel receives a greater degree of US support and benefits from it to a greater degree. Other ME states are aligned with the US out of convenience, the sale of western weapons plays a part in that.
they've tried. I saw this youtube video awhile back about a man from gaza who built an inland fish farm to raise food to feed people because the fishermen were forbidden by isreal fro boing to the areas where the fish were.
Israel is the one who's going to build it. See, the approach is the following: eliminate Hamas, then start a sort of deprogramming the society, similar to what was happening in Germany, with local specifics of course. Such an approach will take years, but the goal is to have the same effects as in Germany.
It's possible to provide food, water, services while keeping a close eye on the Gaza population and ensuring the idea of peaceful cohabitation is dominant. The economy will slowly - or even not so slowly - rebuild, and that's a part of the demonstration of possible and beneficial, from some positions, approach.
It could be argued that Israelis need "deprogramming" - look at the scenes we've seen over the past few days, with hordes of Israeli civilians blocking aid from entering Gaza. Look at the torrent of vileness spewed forth online by many Israelis. Look at the Israeli Telegram groups where they share and laugh at images of dead Palestinian children (actually, don't look; it's just too much).
If Israel really wanted to wipe the Palestinians off the map they have the resources to do it. But they don't. Based on claims Hamas have made, in their founding charter and other public statements, if they had the resources to wipe the Jews off the map they would do it, without hesitation.
As I'm sure you know, the Hamas charter no longer says anything like that - it explicitly says their beef is with Zionists and their treatment of Palestinians, not Jewish people or the Jewish faith.
The only people we see killing day after day after day, without hesitation, are the IDF.
It's quite clear that Israel has been doing everything they can to render Gaza uninhabitable - senior officials have even publicly said that's their aim. Furthermore, it's clear the aim is a revenge-fueled massacre of civilians, followed by ethnic cleansing - senior officials regularly call for Gazans to be shipped out to other countries.
The Israelis might not have the appetite to administer Gaza themselves. They would want an Arab state to take it but no one wants that headache and they prefer using the Palestinian issue to bash Israel. UN, maybe?
Do you believe that people in Gaza will accept that Israel rebuilds it? And for how long? Because I already foresee a minority craving for independence against the old invaders that "enslaved us with money, first took our land, then they tried to buy us out...".
Etc.
The comparison with Germany doesn't stand. Two completely different situations, different histories, different people, different mindsets, different economies. You can't just let them rebuild it and hope that people in Gaza don't plan your destruction again and again.
They have to be religious fanatics because that’s all they have to cling to. If I’m going to fight a losing battle against a grossly superior enemy I also want to believe that I’ll end up in paradise for it.
You might note that that brand of fanaticism goes down rapidly in countries that have high standards of living.
Israel must face the reality that is an apartheid state that exists on occupied land. There is no solution until that happens. Just like apartheid South Africa was dismantled, Israel has to face the same fate or forever be locked into warfare and oppressing Palestinians.
Isn't that exactly the view of reality that the Israeli right wing holds? They would agree that the choices are either dismantling the state of Israel, or eternal warfare. Since they don't want to dismantle the state of Israel, they elect for eternal warfare.
It's funny how on some questions, the most extreme people on both sides agree on the answer. Hamas and the Israeli right wing both agree that the only viable solution is for one ethnic group to control all the land from the river to the sea.
No. The Israeli right wing is trying (and succeeding at) making all of the land between the river and the sea exclusive property of the Jewish people. A quick glance at how the borders have evolved since 1948 makes this evident.
Most Palestinians (and thankfully also a good number of Israeli citizens) want a pluralistic solution, without checkpoints and borders, with equal rights and equal representation for all.
A two-state solution was possible 20 years ago, but with the current settlements in the West Bank with 450k or so Settlers and Gaza's total dependence on Israel for water, internet, electricity and many other of life's necessities, all paths towards a two-state solution have been severed.
Now that Gaza has been bombed and bulldozed what possibility is there for a Palestinian state? All records have been destroyed. The courts are gone. The universities are gone. It's all gone.
Israel will accept neither a one-state or two-state solution. By systematically destroying everything Palestinian the question resolves itself. That seems to be the strategy. And if we can take Israeli politicians at their word, this seems to have been the strategy for the past 20 years at least.
I don't think it makes sense to talk about what the extremists in a conflict want when one side is a regional superpower and the other side has no army to speak of (that's why Hamas hides in tunnels).
It's about what the parties can actually accomplish. Hamas gambles on international sympathy because they cannot do anything militarily. They have no bargaining leverage either during possible peace talks. I don't approve of antisemitic slogans wishing for the destruction of Israel but the world will never allow it to happen. Never. Zero chance of that happening.
So while extremists on both sides are the same in the abstract, only one side is facing possible extermination.
it makes total sense to discuss this: because in effect by tipping the balance of power you don't really change anything.
If you made Israel as small as Palestine tomorrow, and Palestine as large as Israel: the same (or, some would argue: worse) situation would exist and the same sentiments from the same sorts of extremists.
Thats what we are talking about, power doesn't matter, only sentiment and perspective has been discussed here.
A two state solution is still possible. Why do people assume Palestinians want a state of only Palestinians. Palestine had Jews living in it before and a hypothetical future state of Palestine can too. They are not committed to an ethnostate they just want freedom.
I feel like you’re assuming that everyone thinks the same way you do. I don’t really think the evidence or history bears out “they just want freedom”. There were many obvious opportunities for this in the past.
I know that there are significant numbers who don't think like I do. I am stating a possibility that is ignored as an option. "they just want freedom" is based on every conversation I've ever had with a Palestinian. Did you ask any of them?
I don’t live in Gaza, nor do any of the Palestinians that I’ve known. I don’t think it’s fair to assume that the opinion sample is going to be representative for many reasons.
An interesting current data point for me is that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians support the actions of Hamas on October 7th specifically. If someone “just wants freedom” but doesn’t support the slaughter and kidnap of innocent Israeli citizens, they would actually be in the minority — so I don’t think your characterization is broadly correct. This isn’t even considering other historical events and opportunities for independent statehood.
Many black Americans chose to stay in the USA rather than emigrate to Liberia in the 1800s when given the opportunity. What can you conclude about the situation for black people in America based on that historical fact?
Seems like a weird comparison given that arab israelis are citizens with equal rights and most likely have much more information as opposed to people in the 1800s.
Not the mention that in the long term living in the USA was the right "bet", and pretty sure that if you ask black americans today if they'd like to emigrate to Liberia i assume 99.9% would say no.
> And if we can take Israeli politicians at their word, this seems to have been the strategy for the past 20 years at least.
Do you also take Palestinian leaders at their word? Because if so their strategy is to drive out Jews by whatever means necessary. None of them are talking about equal rights and representations, that's just not how their society works and they definitely don't want that together with Jews.
Mexico has better chances of winning against the US and driving out the Americans than Hamas has against Israel. Hamas has no advanced military capability.
Palestinians have over the years engaged in many good faith peace talks. Honored their side of many cease-fire agreements. And this is exactly what you would expect. After all, Palestinians stand to gain much more by a sustained peace than Israel does. The status quo (before Oct 7) was pretty great for Israel and terrible for the Palestinians. When actions, words, and incentives all point in the same direction I'm inclined to believe the words. Israel doesn't want a Palestinian state with state rights nor does it want millions of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Palestinians will gladly take any serious peace deal, even if that deal strongly favors Israeli interests, because the status quo is unbearable. But none of this matters because Israel has refused to engage in peace talks ever since Hamas got elected.
History teaches us that peace is possible between bitter enemies when both parties want peace and stand to gain by it. When one party desperately needs peace and the other party doesn't, there won't be peace.
> Mexico has better chances of winning against the US and driving out the Americans than Hamas has against Israel. Hamas has no advanced military capability.
I disagree.
This isn't Hamas alone, Hamas is backed by Iran. Big proxy armies have been built by Iran and are surrounding Israel - mostly in Lebanon and Syria and now also Yemen. Hundreds of thousands of different kinds of rockets - many of them accurate with big warheads.
As for moral support - significant parts of the Muslim world and the Western liberal elites are promoting and supporting the idea that Israel should be dismantled (The Muslims mostly see this done by force. The liberal left by sanctions, but are sympathetic to the idea of violent struggle because of 'oppression').
As for the chances of this working out - I don't think it's low at all. With a patient strategy like this it can eventually happen. They've been at it for around 100 years why can't they go on for another 100?
But whatever I think about the chances, I'm positive most Palestinians themselves and the resistance axis supporting them are quite confident in their chances and feel religiously compelled to keep it up.
> After all, Palestinians stand to gain much more by a sustained peace than Israel does
This is a Western approach, not how Palestinians think. You either don't read what the Palestinians are saying or you don't believe them. When they say from the river to the sea - they mean it. It's a big part of their national and religious identity, not something they can give up for a small 1967 border state. Sure, they would have had better GDP and lives had they taken a 67 state with no occupation etc, but that would break their dreams and passions and identities and somewhat their religious beliefs. Those things are more important to them them than safety and GDP, as irrational as it may seem to you.
I wish I was wrong about all this but nothing I've seen over the years led me to feel like I'm wrong.
The belief that “the other” is fundamentally unreasonable can be used to justify arbitrary amounts of violence. Lets not forget that Hamas is pretty unpopular in Gaza and that most people just want to live their lives and not see their children get blown up. This is not my biased western perspective.
We have very clear instances from history where the opposite is true. The amount of senseless wars and violence is staggering.
Arguably more often than not. I don't think this is different, we are going to disagree on that.
It turns out being the group who sent suicide bombers to restaurants, nightclubs, and busses, and who call for genocide of the jews regularly, are not a credible partner for peace.
And when israel does work with them, people say "See, bibi was supporting hamas!"
You're correct that the Israeli right wing would really like the entire land to be ruled by the Jewish people. Their "success" since 1967 has really been driven by the Arab countries and the Palestinians. The political violence and the wars they waged pushed the Israeli public to become more extreme and unable to imagine a future where it's possible for everyone to live in peace on the same land. I think this is pretty much fact. Rabin who was trying to make peace was assassinated as a direct result of the heated atmosphere in the wake of Hamas' suicide bombing campaign against Israel, which had the goal of sabotaging the peace process.
I don't think it's correct that most Palestinians want what you say they want (surveys?). And even if it's true, the majority of Palestinians has no means of getting what they want. In areas under their control it's certainly hasn't been "pluralistic with equal rights and representation", it's been more like "I have a gun do what I say or else".
I think the two state solution is impossible but not for the reasons you mention. I don't think we need Gaza's courts or universities. It's also not the dependency on electricity etc. It's impossible for other reasons. On the Israeli side nobody is willing to live with an aggressive entity that wants to destroy it having their own state 5 minute driving distance from all their major cities. Gaza (the withdrawal of Israel and the rise of Hamas and their militarization) to them is proof there's no way that can work. There is no trust that the Palestinians will respect any agreement. On the Palestinian side there's no body that actually represents the Palestinians and there are armed factions that have already said they'll reject any agreement and keep on fighting.
Israel has dismantled settlements in Sinai and in Gaza. I don't think the settlements are the problem. If there was a viable option for real peace Israel would dismantle the settlements (+/- maybe some land exchange around major blocks). Ofcourse the settlements don't help because their existence creates friction and hate and they're sort of illegal.
Maybe external parties will somehow enforce a two state solution. It's kind of hard to see now. Maybe we need enough time to pass so we get social processes that take us somewhere better. Also kind of hard to see right now. Maybe Israel will expel all Arabs from the region eventually (or enough of them that they can annex the occupied territories). Also hard to see. Maybe the Palestinians will unite and reject violence as means of making political progress and that will convince Israelis to let them in as equal citizens. Also hard to see. I.e. no solution. Partly has to do with broader geo-political processes, namely China and Russia's conflict with the west. If that's resolved (also hard to see) maybe progress can be made in the middle east as well.
> Maybe external parties will somehow enforce a two state solution.
IMO, this should've always been the solution. What has happened is akin to parents letting teenage brothers bloodily beat each other up for many many decades without properly dictating a peaceful intervention assured by a much more powerful force. The world needs to acknowledge that these two parties have shown they are unable to form a peaceful equilibrium, and it's just enabling killing to continually be hands off. Get all the world powers positions on the floor, split the difference, tell Israel and Palestine these are the borders and security arrangement, guaranteed for X decades. No more lives will be lost as long as support for upsetting that agreement (intifada/nakba/etc.) is severed. Letting two extremist right wing sides religiously duke it out over "the holy land" isn't acceptable in the 21st century.
I'm not sure why we have to bring the Ethiopian Jews into this discussion. I think a lot has changed in this regard since 1993 when this paper was published. Ethiopian jews are much more integrated into Israeli society. But yes, this statement is more complicated than meets the eye, but I don't think this particular topic is current or relevant. I.e. I don't think your typical religious right-wing settler has a problem with including an Ethiopian Jew into their definition of who they think should control the "god given land of Israel". They're probably happier with them than e.g. with some more "modern" Jewish people from the US.
> They just want Palestinians to have full human rights on their land, from the river to the sea
This is presumably a one-state solution?
The problem here being the Jews would be a minority in this state. Which leads to existential concerns regarding their survival. That can’t be easily brushed aside. Particularly when members of Iran’s Axis sport “death to Israel, a curse upon Jews” [1]. (Hamas and the Houthis sharing a backer isn’t insignificant.)
The charter of Hamas explicitly calls for the eradication of the state of Israel, the death of presumably all Jews, Muslim rule of all of Palestine, the explicit rejection of peace or any negotiated settlement (with explicit condemnation of the Camp David Accords), and Jihad as individual duty in order to achieve the aforementioned goals.
They killed 1200 people, most of them civilians, raped dozens (at least), filmed murders and posted those videos to the victims Facebook pages. I am, in this one instance, comfortable with the application of Cancel Culture.
There is no advocacy one can pursue more antithetical to the cause of Palestinian human rights than to cheerlead for Hamas.
This comment is in bad faith, it is attempting to paint my retort as cheerleading for Hamas despite the actual content of my comment. You can do better than this, maybe.
I think it's a pair of relatively straightforward and banal observations and you have a choice about how personally you want to take them. You can simply say nothing, and reasonable people might reasonably assume that you of course repudiate Hamas wholesale. I'm happy to do so as well.
At the point in which I entered the thread, there was some dispute as to the intent and good faith of Hamas itself. All I care about is that we establish that no such good faith exists. Your own personal beliefs are not something I feel the need to litigate.
> They just want Palestinians to have full human rights
Hamas certainly doesn't want Palestinians to have full human rights. Regardless of how unjustifiable some Israel's actions are or what one might think about them Hamas is a fundamentalist terrorist organization and they certainly were/are/would be unwilling to extend "full human rights" to Palestinians or anyone living in Gaza or anywhere else.
I feel that's an extremely naive view. How many Jews live peacefully and enjoy human rights under Arab rule in the middle east? Zero. How many in Gaza under Hamas? Zero. How many live in the west bank in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority? Zero.
So "Hamas" only wants Tel-Aviv "returned", Jersualem "returned", Haifa "returned", from the river to the sea, but somehow in that vision all the Jewish population lives peacefully and enjoys human rights that don't exist anywhere in the middle east?
This just isn't true. There are even (a few thousand) Jews living in Iran, and the Ayatollahs have come out in defence of Judaism proper.
The main problem for Jews in the region is the fact that the certain Israeli factions aggressively conflates Judaism with Israeli nationalism/Zionism, sacrificing the former to protect the latter. Above all else, that makes it dangerous to be Jewish outside Israel or one of its Western sponsors. And even inside. Because uninformed people, and actual antisemites, buy into that cynical framing.
There were definitely persecutions and ethnic cleansing campaigns following 1948 in the neighboring Arab countries, especially in Iraq, Syria, and following 1967 in Lebanon, which drove a lot of Arab speaking Jews to Israel. Israel’s immigration policy was also very aggressive in inviting Jews from Arabic countries into Israel. Some even believe Israel went as far as stealing people from Ethiopia. So a lot of Jewish communities that once existed outside of Israel have now been absorbed into Israel.
That said, I think it is a mistake—and honestly a bit racist—to claim that Jewish people can’t live and prosper in smaller communities among certain ethno-religous majorities today.
> That said, I think it is a mistake—and honestly a bit racist—to claim that Jewish people can’t live and prosper in smaller communities among certain ethno-religous majorities today
How is it racist ? There are indeed entire areas where Jews can't really live normally due to harassment. Even in Europe.
It is racist to zero in on a specific ethno-religous group and say that they in particular are unable to maintain a functioning democracy accommodating of certain minorities. It is the sort of crap that colonial Europe did to justify the horrors of the colonial period.
There are many places in the world that are not maintaining a functioning democracy, that includes not respecting minorities to Western standards. Blows my mind this is a racist statement to you, but we'll have to disagree then.
I don't know if you missed my point below but can Jews in Iran live in a democracy? Do they enjoy human rights and freedoms similar to what Jews enjoy in Israel?
"For example, if a Jew were to kill a Muslim, the family of the victim would have the right to ask that the death penalty be imposed, but if a Muslim kills a Jew, the penalty would be left to the discretion of the judges with the wishes of the victim's family carrying no legal weight" - I mean only fair, right?
"There were two waves of confiscation of homes, farmlands and factories of Jews in Iran. In the first wave, the authorities seized the properties of a small group of Jews who were accused of helping Zionism financially. In the second wave, authorities confiscated the properties of Jews who had to leave the country after the Revolution. They left everything in fear for their lives and the Islamic Republic confiscated their properties using their absence as an excuse"
So no, it's is not reasonable to ask Jews in Israel to live under similar conditions that Jews are subjected to in Iran (and really it's much worse than you're painting it). I stand by my original statement.
I think your last statement really tells it all. "makes it dangerous to be Jewish" tells us that the problem really is antisemitism. Israels' critics are the ones "conflating" things and the treatment of Israel by its haters is primarily coming from a place of hating Jews (and sorry, I'm going to put "uninformed" in the same bucket, because if you hate Jews because you're uninformed you're still an antisemite). As a Jewish person living out of Israel I see this in play. Israel is saying that much of the criticism against it is antisemitism and I think that's not way off the reality. It's also true that there's plenty of criticism that's not antisemitic but the bulk of it is. Saying Israel is somehow responsible for this is just victim blaming. If we were more aggressive about antisemitism not being ok/acceptable then we'd just be left with the valid criticism (of which there's plenty) and Israel wouldn't be able to hide behind the antisemitism defense. It's not that hard to tell whether criticism is valid or not, just s/Israel/Non-Jewish country/g and see if it still rings reasonable. That's the test Israel tries to get its critics to apply. Then it's either accused of whataboutism or colonialism or something else by people who don't want to apply this test.
EDIT: another by the way is that Iran is not an Arab country.
> I think your last statement really tells it all. "makes it dangerous to be Jewish" tells us that the problem really is antisemitism. Israels' critics are the ones "conflating" things
The cynical conflation of Judaism/Jewish ethnicity with Israeli Zionism is absolutely driven by the Zionist regime and their hasbara appendages like ADL. Do you know what the "ADL definition of antisemitism" is and why that is significant? It explicitly equates "criticism of Israel/Zionism" with antisemitism. They have literally legalized this conflation in many respects.
It is totally disingenuous to imply that antisemites are the ones driving this confusion. They certainly benefit from it, but so does the Zionist regime, both at the expense of Jewish people of all backgrounds.
You can read HN threads about this issue and see the kernel of truth on both sides of the argument of whether antisemitism is "weaponized" by supporters of Israel, but you do your side of the argument no favors throwing around phrases like "their hasbara appendages like ADL". I'm well aware of the criticisms leveled against the ADL, and they may well be valid, but you're obliged to introduce them more seriously and carefully if you don't want to come across sounding like you believe any Jewish advocacy group is definitionally politically Zionist and thus ineligible to charge antisemitism.
The West Bank holds the forth largest Jewish population in the world, after France. Now the West Bank is occupied territory, controlled by Israel, so perhaps that doesn’t count.
According to this Wikipedia article[1] there are around 2-3000 jewish people living in Morocco, 1-2000 in Tunisia, and about 100 in Syria and Lebanon (not including the Golan Heights).
I am aware that there were persecutions in the past in many Arabic countries, but the same is true of Europe. Beirut even restored one of their last Synagogues in 2010 after it was damaged, ironically, in an Israeli airstrike.
My point was specific to Palestinian Authority controlled areas of the west bank.
My second point (maybe not so obvious) was about human rights situations in the Arab world and under Palestinian rule. e.g. the Jews living in Morocco can't elect their government because Morocco is a dictatorship ("Monarchy"), ruled by a king.
I.e. there's no Jews living under Arab rule while meeting those two conditions. Being able to live in a democratic, free, country with human rights, and under Arab or Palestinian rule. I was well aware there is some (tiny) Jewish population in some Arab countries.
Sure. We can say the same about the middle ages and prehistoric societies. It's entirely possible that one day Palestine (or we can call it Israel who cares what the country is named) can become a country where all these people that want to kill each other today and lay their claims to the land can be more like Switzerland. The likelihood of that happening in the immediate future is pretty slim. These are long term processes. If we want to experiment let's pick another location in the region that's less complicated, like Syria, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt- pick one. when those become like the UK or Switzerland or France or Germany, i.e. prosperous, free, democratic countries, then we can try this in "Palestine"/"Israel". And really, if we turned the entire middle east into the EU then the tiny little piece of land people are fighting over becomes less of a problem anyways because there's not the same shortage of land/resources. I'm sure many Jewish people would prefer to live and work in Beirut for example or live in some remote area in Syria or Iraq and grow weed. "A wolf will reside with a lamb, and a leopard will lie down with a young goat; an ox and a young lion will graze together, as a small child leads them along." - beautiful.
The US tried to bring democracy to Iraq ... and Russia. That didn't quite end up as expected.
Seriously though, I think it could become. One day. It's been going the opposite direction. These are processes that are measured in generations. There are some major issues that would need to be addressed (like being a safe haven for Jews from persecution) even if the middle east emerges from it's "dark ages". Also I don't think the parties here really want this sort of solution right now (i.e. they wouldn't even be willing to work towards it and they're actively working against it).
Sorry, but describing an entire region of the Earth as “emerging from its ‘dark ages’” comes a cross as a bit racist.
The ‘Dark Ages’ is a rejected term in historiography and kind of only serves to demonstrate the author’s disrespect for the time period which they are describing. Describing a current regions as being in the ‘dark ages’ does the same to my ears. The fact that you talk this way about the Middle East shows me that you may not respect this region and the people that live there.
> The US tried to bring democracy to Iraq
The US (and allies) invaded and occupied Iraq. That is (a) not a way to bring democracy, and (b) a proven way of hampering many economical and governmental prospects. It ended up exactly as expected—and vocally predicted by experts at the time—in a complete travesty.
Finally (and this is kind of an aside) turning the Middle East into the EU is a very colonial way of thinking. The Middle East deserves their own democracy. The EU holds a legacy, and owes much of its wealth, to colonialism. Some EU members even hold colonies to this day, others exploit cheaper labor markets (including in the Middle East) in what has been described as Neo-colonialism (a misnomer IMO as it cheapens the horrors of the actual colonial period). I certainly hope the Middle East won’t copy this from the EU and start prospering off of exploiting a different region of for its resources.
Would it be democratic if it became independent, though?
Hamas specifically came to power via elections, but hasn't held any elections since then under various excuses, so they clearly aren't champions of democracy.
They have tried to hold election. Last attempt was in 2021. Israel prevented occupied East Jerusalem from participating which was a noop for Abbas who cancelled them. Also notable was that EU asked to observe the election, but Israel did not allow that. There have also been local elections on the West Bank, last one in 2021.
Holding elections with two distinct governments and a third one occupying both is not easy. Even Ukraine has difficulty holding a general election with only a portion of its territory occupied and a single government.
But yeah, I think, and I think most would agree, that an independent Palestine would defiantly be democratic.
defiantly? So you really think that the Hamas would abide by a democratic result that removes it from power? After it took power in Gaza by force, killing many Palestinians (hundreds!) that belonged to Fatah? I think there's little indication that Palestinians in power are interested in democracy, human rights, personal freedoms etc. Neither Fatah/PA nor Hamas. If Israel withdrew unilaterally from the entirety of the west bank it'd be a carbon copy of Gaza. Militarized, dug up with tunnels, rockets aimed at Israel, Jihadi antisemitic education system, zero human rights, rule by force, corruption. The only reason the PA is able to keep existing is because the IDF is supporting it, otherwise the Hamas would already be ruling the west bank cities (and/or Israel would retake them and re-establish the military rule over them).
There's a path to Israeli citizenship for Arabs living in east Jerusalem and Israel has de-facto annexed it. But Israel did allow the 2006 elections to happen there. I wasn't really aware of the details about 2021 but I think you forgot to mention that Hamas refused to allow the elections to take place in Gaza (and participate at all?). At the end of the day this is just another political battle tool. I think it would make sense for the Palestinians to have elections in the areas under their control, by insisting on extending those to areas not in their control they are making a political statement and trying to push towards the outcome they want to see. It's only fair that Israel pushes the opposite direction towards the outcome it prefers to see. There is still a dispute and the sides do not agree. If Palestinians were truly concerned about democracy they would restrict the process to the areas they control ("A" territory in the west bank and Gaza) which would make sense, i.e. give the people that live in areas under Palestinian control a say in who runs those areas, and wouldn't really make a statement as to what the eventual agreement would look like.
> At the end of the day this is just another political battle tool.
Show me a democracy where elections aren’t just another political battle tool. In anarchist circles there is even a saying: “If elections changed anything, they would abolish it.”
Of course the Palestinian governments are no different. Hamas wanted general elections because they thought they could gain more power. Fatah didn’t because they thought they would loose power. The game of politics happened and they had elections which were boycotted by Hamas and everybody (already in power) wins.
The onset of the Palestinian civil war is a whole lot more complected than to blame it on Hamas. Remember that the Irish also had a civil war after the 1921 treaty, and today both the North and the Republic are thriving democracies. The reality is that it is a whole lot easier to hold power in the modern world via elections (unless you are occupied, or otherwise exploited by a colonial power), and you have no reasons to believe that Hamas or Fatah or any governing body in a future free Palestine wouldn’t see that.
>They just want Palestinians to have full human rights on their land, from the river to the sea.
What about the rights to elections? Free speech? To be gay and not be thrown off a building? They don't even support these basic human rights in the land they rule, for the people they claim as their own.
> They just want Palestinians to have full human rights on their land, from the river to the sea.
What's the word for word translation of the original slogan again? "From the river to the sea, all land shall be Arab" if my dictionary doesn't fail me...
The likud is not far right, it’s just a right wing party.
There are other far right parties.
Can you link me to that part of the likud charter? Because the one I’ve read mentions none of that.
This is a good summary of Islamic radicalization propaganda that seeks to use Palestinian civilians as pawns, with no regard for them. It is this narrative that keeps the Palestinains in prison.
The counterpoint is that you "must" face the reality that this is never going to happen, and that asserting that it will or should is equivalent to damning the Palestinians to the existence that they currently occupy.
Greater Islam does not have an army that can stand against the West, let alone do the Palestinians. All that they have are manipulated terrorists whose actions always cause much more destruction on their side than the inverse.
So I say again, the only realistic and humane view is to take your oppopsite position, recognize the immovable force, and actually attempt to save Palestinian lives via deradicalization and a relocation campaign.
> that is an apartheid state that exists on occupied land
I’ve heard this line from people who say the West Bank and Gaza are the occupied land, to those who say all of Israel is occupied land. The former makes sense. The latter is extreme.
> like apartheid South Africa was dismantled
South Africa wasn’t as militarised as the Levant has become, unfortunately. As long as Iran seeks the destruction of Israel, itself and through its proxies, any Mandela-type accounting is probably fruitless. (I am open to being convinced otherwise.)
I specifically think the mixed use of the word "occupation" to imply that the state of Palestine should include all of the current state of Israel one of the largest trust busting tricks in the modern discourse. I think it is natural to think that the Gaza and West Bank situation is bad and I suspect the majority of even slightly western views would agree.
What shocked me, is that there are some on the far left that fully think all of Israel is an occupation of Palestine. More, they got rather upset when I pointed out that that line of thinking is, ironically, in support of people that have shown genocidal intent.
Curious if you have numbers on how many intentionally refer to all of Israel in this way? (Also curious if my take on that is unfair to folks?)
> to those who say all of Israel is occupied land. The former makes sense. The latter is extreme.
In what way is it not? The state was created by western powers less than 100 years ago and has aggressively pursued European and US immigration since then.
The current state of things is an entirely manufactured situation and it's becoming more and more farcical. There's only so many times you can interview a guy with a British or New York accent talking about his ancestral right to the desert before things start looking a little bit weird.
> The state was created by western powers less than 100 years ago
That's not entirely accurate at all.
There was indeed a UN decision to partition the land and to acknowledge Israel, but no one was enforcing it. The Arabs and Jews were left to battle it out in a horrible war. Jews were facing the real possibility of a second extermination only 3 years after the holocaust (I don't think I'm exaggerating the consequences of what defeat would have looked like had the Jews lost that war).
The British policy towards Jews in Palestine was not consistent at all, and at a certain point they sided with the Arabs and banned Jewish immigration to Palestine - even at the height of the holocaust.
It's fair to say that it wasn't directly created by them but their actions in the years prior did lead to the end result. The UK administered the region and had committed to making it a "national home" for the Jewish people. That doesn't necessarily mean a state, but the result was a rapid shift in demographics.
It didn't help that the UK had also made promises of independence to other groups in the region.
> There was indeed a UN decision to partition the land and to acknowledge Israel, but no one was enforcing it. The Arabs and Jews were left to battle it out in a horrible war. Jews were facing the real possibility of a second extermination only 3 years after the holocaust (I don't think I'm exaggerating the consequences of what defeat would have looked like).
I entirely agree with you on the situation that Jews in the region were faced with at the time. One of the depressing things is that despite the proximity to the holocaust, antisemites in allied countries saw the situation as a way to encourage Jews to leave.
I can see how things might have turned out better if there hadn't been so much migration in such a short period of time.
> I can see how things might have turned out better if there hadn't been so much migration in such a short period of time.
Not enough migration if you asked me, millions of Jews could have been saved from the holocaust. If not in Palestine a real effort should have been made to take them in other places, yet no one was doing it - not in Palestine or anywhere else.
I was referring to the period after the war. To be clear, I don't think that having escaped the holocaust is a negative.
> If not in Palestine a real effort should have been made to take them in other places, yet no one was doing it - not in Palestine or anywhere else.
Agreed, the scale of the migration to palestine, even prior to 1945, indicates an abdication of duty by western countries. At the time Palestine was primarily under the control of the UK.
When you mentioned rapid demographic shift, I was assuming you meant the Jewish immigration in the early 20th century that brought bigger numbers of Jews into Palestine and the beginning of the Palestinian rejection of Zionism. There is a popular view that this (or basically Zionism altogether) should have never been allowed to take place because it eventually led to Palestinian displacement.
The early immigration certainly caused issues between two groups and I do think that the decision to support the zionists of the time was incorrect. For many, the purpose seems to have been to reduce their own Jewish populations.
While still a cause of tension, immigration was much lower before the war. The result was just as you said, European Jews were faced with an existential threat a few years after the holocaust.
One of the things I found quite interesting was that Palestine wasn't the only option considered by early Zionists. At some point places like Argentina and Uganda were potential candidates.
> For many, the purpose seems to have been to reduce their own Jewish populations.
I'm not really aware of much European support for Zionism outside the Balfour declaration in those years. The declaration remained a declaration and pretty soon the Brits flipped their policy and banned Jewish immigration. You had tiny movements of Christians Zionists (Churchill was a Zionist for instance) but I'm not aware of any substantial support they gave.
After the war the big immigration waves were actually from Middle Eastern Jews, not from Europe. Jews from Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Syria etc etc whose lives became increasingly dangerous.
So my main point is its quite unclear if there was any major support for Zionism in the West in those years. Only after the holocaust could you find a majority that supported establishing Israel in the UN.
Anyone can go on Google Earth, look at the official UN borders of Israel, then do a search in Hebrew or "synagogue" (obviously not every synagogue is Israeli) or "checkpoint" and very clearly see the Israeli settlements outside Israel's legal borders. Search "Hizma" for a good example [1].
To make it even more obvious, toggle the "street view" layer over one of these areas and see what gets highlighted.
There is a clear apartness between the neatly-planned Israeli settlements, often built on demolished Palestinian villages, and the organic scattering of indigenous, primarily Arab Palestinian villages. With militarized checkpoints in between. Anyone can see it, if they have the will and a web browser.
I'm not sure what point are you trying to make here.
Nobody, including Israelis, will argue about the status of Palestinians living outside of Israel's border, in areas that are occupied (a terminology of international law that Israel also agrees to, https://casebook.icrc.org/a_to_z/glossary/occupation ) do not enjoy equal rights to Israelis (Arabs, Jews, Christians and other) living within Israel's borders. During the US occupation of Japan or Germany post WW-II could the Japanese or Germans travel freely to the US? Vote in the US elections? It's true that Americans didn't settle those regions (they built military bases they still maintain so maybe a little).
"often built on demolished Palestinian villages" - I think this isn't generally true in the west bank, if that was what this statement was about. There are certainly demolished villages within Israel's borders (going back to the 1948 war).
> During the US occupation of Japan or Germany post WW-II could
Which was a temporary state and certainly didn't last for 50 years.
> It's true that Americans didn't settle those regions (they built military bases they still maintain so maybe a little).
There are no countries in Europe where US is maintaining military bases without full consent of their governments.
> could the Japanese or Germans travel freely to the US? Vote in the US elections?
How is this relevant? The people living in the occupied territories do not enjoy equal rights with the illegal Israeli settlers who have taken parts of them over. It's basically colonialism.
If Jordan took back the west bank and Egypt took Gaza back then this also wouldn't last for 50 years. This is a unique situation where the party the land was occupied from doesn't want it back and the party that occupied it doesn't want it and the people living on this occupied land also don't really want it (or at least not willing to make peace in exchange for getting it). Because it's so hard to solve we've been stuck for 50 years. Still the legal status of this territory is the same as occupied Japan or Germany. It's a "temporary state", just a very long one.
In terms of "colonialism" I don't think it quite fits the strict definition of the word. Again it's a bit of a unique situation. If we compare to Europe many of the borders were drawn as a result of war, and this would be no different. The difference is that in Europe the population might have been expelled (e.g. like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Germans_from_Czec... ) and the area annexed. Another interesting history to look at is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_border_change...
The people living on this land wasn't ever offered a credible "this is your land & we leave you alone on it" deal, though. No sovereign country would tolerate a complete blockade of its borders, yet that is seemingly what Israel expected from Palestinians when "giving" them Gaza.
EDIT: Just want to add that the reality is more nuanced. Naturally Israel affects control over its border with Gaza and Egypt affected control over its border. Israel has definitely refused to let Gaza operate an airport or a sea port and so it maintained some amount of control together with Egypt. That said a lot of how this evolved was around choices made by Palestinians and the rise of Hamas led to the official blockade being imposed. I do think this was an opportunity for Palestinians to demonstrate how they can govern territory controlled by them and be peaceful neighbors which ofcourse did not happen.
> people living on this land wasn't ever offered a credible "this is your land & we leave you alone on it" deal, though
Nobody in the former Ottoman Empire did.
> No sovereign country would tolerate a complete blockade of its borders
Plenty of enclave countries exist. The blockade clamped shut when Hamas took power [1]. A coup, mind you, which overthrew Gaza’s fledgling (and flawed) democracy.
That's not that obvious considering all the illegal settlements. I'm sure they want the land just not the people living there.
But yes, no clear solution especially considering that the only (non-Hamas) option for self government, the Palestinian Authority/Fatah is thoroughly incompetent and corrupt.
> Which was a temporary state and certainly didn't last for 50 years.
Because the population in neither one enacted a serious of terror campaigns or "Intifadas" against them. If they did it's almost certain that the allies would still occupy Germany and the US Japan.
edit: Also, until the 2+4 treaty, formally known as the "Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany" was signed in 1990 the allies still held part of their occupational rights over Germany. Not 50 years, but 45 at least.
apartheid is a loaded term of opinion, not of fact. comparing israel to other true apartheid regimes, such as south africa, is hyperbolic. there exist discriminatory policies that ought to be reformed but i do not believe that word is appropriate.
israel does, in fact, exist on some occupied land that she should return, including many west bank settlements. however, there is something to be said for keeping parts as a bargaining chip against those motivated largely by religious and nationalistic fervor mixed with some basic hatred. other parts of her land were obtained legitimately, going all the way back to the first aliyah after the kiev pogroms in which tens of thousands of jews were massacred. many immigrated legally, though the ottoman empire later threw up some barriers to immigration with hopes to limit their numbers. many were later moved legitimately under the authority of the british in mandatory palestine.
legal immigrants are not necessarily "occupiers". there is also a period past which land becomes naturalized, just like most of the world has been taken and settled by force at some point or another. most of the people who are descendants of those ancient conquerors are just as indigenous as those who were there before. i'd venture to say much of israel, while it ought to be shared better, is populated with naturalized inhabitants.
All metaphors are wrong, some metaphors are useful. The word "burn" applies to both first and third degree burns.
Characteristics of apartheid can exist even if it is not at the severity experienced by black south Africans. The analogy here has utility, and racism towards Palestinians is unfortunately a huge problem in Israeli society.
"burn" is commonly applied to a range of conditions. "apartheid" is applied with exceptional rarity, and in common parlance, people associate it with the south african regime. in your analogy, this is equivalent to calling a first-degree burn third-degree
> Calling for the destruction of the only Jewish state is hate speech
I’m generally pro-Israel, but I don’t agree with this at all. Israel is a theocracy, and an increasingly right-wing one at that. Arguing against even theocracies in principal would technically argue for dissolving Israel as a Jewish state; I would hardly call that hate speech.
There are at least 5 parties in the ruling coalition that have specific religious orthodoxy as primary parts of their platform.
I agree that the traditional definition of theocracy is probably overkill when describing the Israeli government but specific religious beliefs drive politics there well out of proportion to the beliefs of the constituents.
In a way that feels out of line with secular western democracy at times.
Israel likes to say this, but it is not true. The hasidic jews especially enjoy rights that other Israelis just dont have, and they have a large amount of control over the government.
It is true… that is literally their governmental type. There are religious parties in Israel (just like the religious are largely in the GOP in the USA) but that doesn’t make it theocratic… unless you bend the definition of theocracy beyond all meaning.
That is all not to mention my second point which is that Israel isn’t even a particularly religious country compared to the west.
Theres no reason democracies cant be theocracies. You can come up with a pained definition to make it so, but if everyone votes for the religious party I think most would agree that thats a theocracy.
That just plainly isn’t what a theocracy is though- by your definition the US could easily be called a theocracy for most of its history and even today. Beyond that you continue to ignore my other point - the people in Israel are less religious than the US/Canada and much of Europe. They are a less religious democracy than the US and yet you continue to call it what it just patently isn’t?
"Everybody else in the region" is mostly descendants of various Semitic peoples who lived in that area for just as long. Palestinians in particular seem to be related to Canaanites, which - if you take the Torah at face value - would actually make them the indigenous people that were a target of genocidal conquest by the original Jewish settlers in the area (although archeologists say that this was more likely intra-ethnic warfare between different groups, and the whole notion of Canaanites as distinct peoples was created to justify the conquest of neighbors).
Actually, if you believe that the bible is true, they killed the indigenous people there first
More historically certain is that there was a stream of people living and moving through that area during waves of human immigration outside of Africa (look up the Sahara pump theory).
But calling them "the indigenous" is not correct. DNA studies done by Israeli scientists on Palestinian subjects show that they descend from indigenous groups including Judea.
So are there 6 million Stateside Puerto Ricans living in one of the 50 United States who have equal rights to other US citizens. Puerto Rico is still a colony of the United States. Mind you that the Puerto Ricans living on the island of Puerto Rico have infinitely more rights then Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank or occupied East Jerusalem.
Hamas controls Gaza, where Israel withdrew nearly 20 years ago. First thing Hamas did: destroy all the infrastructure set up by Israelis. Or maybe Hamas murdered the Fatah officials first. In any case, there was little Israeli left in all that time, and there's a border with a supposedly friendly neighbor, tons of money and expertise by the global community invested in that area, and they squandered it all in favor of raping and pillaging the hippie communities of the Israeli peace movement.
> All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then?
It remains a mess, but less of a mess? Look, it's all bad guys running the show in that hell hole of a desert. There are no trusted entities anywhere able to run a government that isn't somewhere between actively antagonistic and actively genocidal toward half the local population.
Nonetheless a status quo with less shooting and death is better than a status quo with more. Hamas killed fewer people than Israel did/is, so... yeah, I guess. An occasional October 7th is a better choice than levelling Gaza is. Incrementally. But none of this is going to get better, likely within our lifetimes.
Hamas directly and intentionally targeted civilians. Israel is doing what it can to limit civilian casualties while destroying Hamas. Hamas is making that very difficult by blending in with the population, putting command centers under major hospitals and so on.
> Hamas is making that very difficult by blending in with the population, putting command centers under major hospitals and so on.
If there's a command center under a hospital, then you don't bomb the hospital. The fact that your enemy is using "human shields" doesn't mean that it's justified to bomb and kill everyone, including the shields. Now every relative and friend of the innocent people you killed has a reason to pick up a gun against you.
Obviously this puts you at a disadvantage. Instead of bombing targets on a screen from the comfort of an air-conditioned office in Tel Aviv, you'll have to send special forces in on the ground and probably take a lot of casualties. But you demonstrate to the civilians that you're not just killing them indiscriminately.
> Israel is doing what it can to limit civilian casualties while destroying Hamas.
You should really read the parent article at the top of the page. It doesn't support this statement and the court ruling was created from a mountain of evidence.
They hunted down, shot, and killed multiple of their own, underwear-clad civilian citizens who were all the while waving white flags and loudly surrendering in hebrew [0]
Imagine the sort of intentional targeting we don't get to see, because the journalists are killed [1] or the internet is cut [2] or the power is cut [3] or because everyone hiding is terrified to even move, knowing anything moving will be shot on sight [4], even surrendering Israeli hostages [0]. What a nightmare.
Known (indeed, willing) indiscriminate killing of civilians (especially in civilian areas, yikes) is as much a war crime [5] as "intentionally targeting civilians", even if one shouts "get out of there!" or "human shields!" or "terrorists!" or "it's comin' right for us!" in a Calvinball-style declaration whilst doing it.
For more detailed analysis of how Israel seems to be ignoring their obligation to protect Palestinian civilians, I recommend consulting the full ruling [6] from the ICJ, the literal judges of this matter.
Not picking a side or trying to punish anyone, I'm just highlighting that the difference in the number of victims is quite significant. It would be quite a different situation if Israel had killed only sightly more Palestinian civilians than Hamas' did in their attack. Actually, I suspect that this ICJ order would not have occurred, and that there wouldn't be such widespread accusations of genocide.
I think you are reading mmuch more into that reply than is warranted.
It’s simple fact more people have now died due to Israel’s actions.
That doesn’t mean they necessarily need to be punished for it. The international community doesn’t really need to.
If this is anything like the other 10 times Israel did one of their “Let’s provision some extra terrorists” exercises, they’ve already guaranteed that they’ll deal with two or three more decades of the palestinian population hating their guts.
I mean, sure, you can retreat to arguments about whether it's a personal accusation or just an abstract idea, or whether I can substantiate use of the combined pharse "genocidal colonizer" (which of course I can't). But we both know that's hairsplitting.
The point I was trying to make is that there is a large population of people[1] out there who AGREE with you on virtually every practical, relevant point of public policy or international relations.... but who will never make common cause with you if they perceive your goals as the invalidation of the nationality of nine million people. There's no solution here that doesn't involve Zionists, just as there's no solution that rejects Islam.[2]
[1] And in particular people with significant influence over the Israeli policy you want to see changed!
[2] Realistically there's just no solution, and it would do well for everyone involved to recognize that and resign ourselves to the policy of just reducing immediate harm as what amounts to a BATNA.
Both those accusations are colorable and have non-inflammatory interpretations.
For example, sociologically speaking, Israel is a settler-colonialist state. What activists don't acknowledge is that the concept of "settler-colonialism" was invented to describe the distinction between extractive colonialism, of the King Leopold of Belgium type, and the long-term sustainable kind, of the New Zealand type. It was a way of working out why some human migration seems to "work" and others don't. Later --- I think probably in part due to the abuses of "settlers" within Israel, in the West Bank --- the term became an epithet. I suspect it's used largely by people who don't know the meaning.
Similarly, there's a colloquial meaning to the word "genocide" that doesn't intersect with the legal meaning. It's any campaign of mass violence directed at a race or creed. That meaning is dilutive of the original concept of genocide, which really did mean an effort to erase (through murder, sterilization, or kidnapping) an entire ethnicity. But it has meaning nonetheless.
However justified the military operation of Gaza might be, it would be difficult for a supporter of the IDF to argue that it doesn't consistute mass violence targeting Palestinians, even if it pretty clearly doesn't have either the intention or the potential to erase the Palestinian identity (I feel like if you asked an activist selected at random for a percentage of Palestinians killed in Gaza, you'd get a double-digit number from most of them, which of course not even close).
This is like the arsonist talking about "a burning house". Whose flagged sub-thread is it? Why is it flagged?
> whether I can substantiate use of the combined pharse "genocidal colonizer" (which of course I can't).
Hold on. That is quite the lift and shift. You asserted the existence of "many" non-genocidal non-colonizers who are being repeatedly called genocidal colonizers by left-leaning Americans. When pressed to name one (1) of those many, you said that you "of course" can't substantiate the use of that phrase. (Whether that prevents you from naming one is debatable.)
Now you are asserting the existence of "a large population of people". How should we expect you to respond if I challenge you to name one (1) of that large population? I don't love chasing goalposts.
Please stop. I really don't know what you're arguing about or why. It feels like you want to argue with me as a proxy for the violence you can't affect?
Really I think I substantiated the issue pretty well. If you feel really strongly that there are not any accusations of genocide or colonization being made against jews in current discourse, maybe go correct the wikipedia articles I linked?
You really, truly don't see how people might be alienated by the kind of rhetoric, though? I mean, just look at your own tone in this subthread. Does that sound to you like a way to move me to your side of the argument? Ultimately that's really my point: people want to be angry. You want to be angry. But in this situation that just perpetuates the damage! Both sides are deserving of anger!
The best we can do is cool things down enough so people stop dying. And... you're making things worse, not better.
> An occasional October 7th is a better choice than levelling Gaza is
Better for who? For Hamas yes, killing Israelis with impunity would be a boost. But for Israel - I don't know of any democracy that can keep going with an 'occasional' October 7th. A country can't sustain that without collapsing at some point. Think about 9-11 but with 80k killed instead of 3000, and around 10000 kidnapped. And the entity responsible is just around the corner and gonna keep doing it on occasion.
Those are the proportions. How many of these would the U.S be able to endure before its economy and society collapsed?
Then we'll deal with that "at some point" I guess? Again, Israel is a bad guy too. It's all bad guys. All options suck. So pick the one with less death and just shuffle along until some unknown event in the far future acts to break the stalemate and produce a peaceful region (or, more realistically, acts to break the equilibrium and we get a genuine demographic disaster that returns the area to a "single ethnicity" state, which sucks even more, but may be unavoidable).
Tough love: Israel can't expect to continue to act as it has in the decades since the fall of the PA. It ultimately depends on international support and that support will eventually run out, c.f. the linked article. It won't happen soon, or all at once, but it will happen and there needs to be a plan for regional coexistence, and as you'd surely agree there really isn't one beyond an imagined (and largely impossible) total military victory.
While I'm not a military expert, I think it would be reasonable to rule out the possibility of a similar massacre any time soon, for decades at least. It seems unlikely that Hamas would get away with it a second time? They put everything into a one-day surprise attack. The Israeli defense was caught unprepared despite being warned, but they have much more power and they can learn.
What happens in the wider conflict (with other Iran-backed militias) is another question.
> While I'm not a military expert, I think it would be reasonable to rule out the possibility of a similar massacre any time soon
I'm not sure its reasonable. No one in Israel is thinking that way at least, and for good reason imo.
The motivation to kill is there, so you have to assume there's a lack of ability. OK maybe for a couple of years Hamas will have to regroup, but how much time does it take to get a couple thousands more guns and grenades and bombs when Iran is giving them for free?
It doesn't have to be another attack of this magnitude, even killing "only" 100 Israelis would be a huge blow.
You prevent this type of shit from happening again by being dead serious about countering terror, about deploying sufficient defense and not assuming too much about what the enemy can do because you might not have an accurate picture. Israel has been doing none of that in Gaza in the last decade or more.
Seems like I'm assuming the Israeli defense will learn enough from this attack to prevent anything similar, and you're assuming they won't. Either way it's a guess; we don't know the future.
> Seems like I'm assuming the Israeli defense will learn enough from this attack to prevent anything similar, and you're assuming they won't
I see what you mean now, I was under the impression you think Hamas lost all motivation or means to even try it in the future.
Yes if Israel does all the right things the chances of this happening again soon are low.
Hamas has quite a bit of leadership outside Gaza, and as far as I know, most of them are doing fine. They may even have more political capital than before the attacks. I’m not convinced they didn’t get away with it.
The plan right now could be to deny any remaining Hamas influence to anything in Gaza. Yes, some Hamas members may survive, even politically, outside, but they aren't going to affect anybody in Gaza.
Yes, that is exactly what Israel should do. The "dont let gazans interact with Israelis" strategy was icnredibly effective until Israel got soft on border security. Israel easily is capable of ensuring no Gazans ever escape again. The iron dome is largely succesful at keeping Israelis safe, certainly more so than a long term gazan invasion which would open up the Israelis in gaza to terrorist attacks.
"dont let gazans interact with Israelis" is exactly the definition of apartheid though, unless you're advocating recognising Palestine, and giving them autonomy wrt water, electricity and so on. However the comment "ensuring no Gazans ever escape again." Is rather telling, it implies a recognition that Gaza is effectively a prison - dehumanisation like that fosters this sort of conflict, so really this sort of attitude is far less helpful than say learning from lessons in Japan and Germany post WW2, South Africa post-apartheid and so on.
Gaza absolutely is a prison. Keeping Gazans there is the only way to ensure Israelis safety. Is that unfair? Absolutely, but I dont think Israelis are especially interested in fairness here, theyre interested in their security. You cant compare Gaza to post ww2 countries. Gaza has no economy, and a vastly different culture. There is no path toward peace between gaza and Israel. Not even on the 1000 year time span, because that would require gazan quality of life to improve, and they just dont have the land or resources for that to happen.
Im concerned with realistic solutions. Israel has all the power here, the reality is that any solution will be one that benefits them, and hopefully palestinians are willing to go along with.
Israel can be forced into concessions just as South Africa was, if external actors - most notably, US - stop bankrolling them, and start applying sanctions instead. It only has all the power because others let it have that power, and even contribute directly to increasing said power.
I disagree. Israel is self sufficient and has a much stronger economy than SA ever did. Israel also now has substantial oil reserves which makes sanctions difficult. Israels military is completely sufficient and would be able to oppress palestine just fine without international support. In my estimation the only thing sanctions would do is push Israel toward its final solution to the palestinian problem as they no longer see a downside to ending the issue once and for all.
Israel has nuclear weapons, its not possible to actually force them to do anything.
We don't have much oil, we do have gas reserves.
Whatever you fill up your car with - we don't have. Last I heard we import our oil from Azerbijan - a friendly Muslim country with common enemies.
Also most calories e.g food are imported. Most agricultural fertilizers, chips and electronics for missiles, cars etc etc. There is talk now in Israel of becoming more independent - especially in regards to arms, but it's going to take a long time and I'm not positive how well Israel can make it. It's a very small country after all. Israel needs to deal with Iran who is supported by Russia and to a lesser extent by China. How long can Israel make it alone against the world's biggest superpowers without the U.S on its side?
And even if Israel can make it like North Korea, I don't think most Israelis would want that kind of life of being completely isolated from the world. If Israeli existence is reduced to isolation and extreme poverty - most would give up I think.
> don't think most Israelis would want that kind of life of being completely isolated from the world.
I've never been to Israel but have friends there. I disagree with 'most', they are very resilient and will not leave their home. I offered my home to one mother with a newborn while they were living in a bunker. They would rather stay at home with rockets hitting them than flee.
Interesting take.
We're just speculating here, it's a very extreme scenario so hard to say. The reason I'm skeptic about it is that most Israelis got used to quite high standards of living - comparable to say France or UK (gdp wise).
Complete isolation would bring Israel to the standards of living it had in the 50s.
But your point is important - some Israelis will certainly not give up no matter what.
>In my estimation the only thing sanctions would do is push Israel toward its final solution to the palestinian problem as they no longer see a downside to ending the issue once and for all.
Now that's an interesting thought, I hadn't considered that as a consequence of the US pushing too hard.
I have spent days researching the history of this. The problem in its entirety is Zionism. The only way for Zionism to remain, is for Israel to be permanently at war. Research Likud, read about Netanyahu, Zionism is the contagion and a Forever War is their answer.
Should the Palestinians have agency and self determination?
> Should the Palestinians have agency and self determination?
It doesnt matter what they "should" have. Israel wont give it to them while they think it would undermine their security, and no one has the ability to force them to.
Sure it does! If we can't agree on what should be, we can never make anything happen. And we all do have agency on how the Palestinians are treated. To deny that is to be complicit.
Of course West has the power. The generational shift in US is very clear - GenZ openly does not want to have anyrhing to do with israel. It will carry on and increase with everry next generation. How are you gonna sustain israel in this kind of enviromnent?
I don't know, it's a good question and it might be unsustainable.
Another question is how do you dismantle a country threatened by war and genocidal intentions on all borders , a country that's a nuclear power? What's the end game here - let Israel die and hope the population makes it out OK and that Palestinians happily co exist with Israelis? While some use South Africa as an example where this happened peacefully, there are many more examples where this ended up in a huge massacres - Yugoslavia, Syria, Iraq etc.
The realistic best case scenario for Israel is Israel collapsing and the vast majority of the Jews fleeing alive to wherever they can. Other scenarios are Jews getting massacred in huge numbers and even nuclear war.
The way things are going, the earlier West understands/accepts insustainability of current israel, the less bloody will be the end result. israel could even survive as a Jewish state, but that would require massive diplomatic effort of many forces.
I think better plans need to be made for dismantling a country (that's what you're aiming at right?) in such a volatile part of the world. It can already be extremely bloody, as I said there are genocidal threats against Israel on all borders and Israel as a nuclear power can become genocidal too if it feels its own people are at risk of a second holocaust.
Simply crippling Israel's economy so it collapses and hoping for the best sounds like a very bad idea to me.
Israel is already genocidal. I am not in fact aiming at dismantling israel. What I am saying this will happen anyway, if West won't change its approach.
The first casualty of war is the truth. Many of the atrocious events by Hamas are not as clear cut as originally reported. It looks like the primary goal of Hamas was to capture hostages for a large scale prisoner exchange. The IDF over reacted and to suppress the capture of hostages, killing both Hamas fighters and Israeli citizens. I am describing the situation, not absolving anything or anyone.
Even if your claims are true, he has valuable insights and connects things in ways that others do not. The phrase "wouldn't share" is an interesting way to suppress a viewpoint.
I still watch mainstream news even though it is compromised financially, ethically and politically.
I agree, any solution that is unpopular to Israelis will be opposed by their democratically elected government that happens to have the military power to prevent it. Even if people elsewhere don't like it
Because the Palestinian government in Gaza kidnaps babies. And they claimed they would do it again and again until all of Israel is Palestine.
You haven’t heard anything even remotely as dangerous from Israeli official statements, let alone action.
I think you have a slight misconception about living under Iron Dome.
It's not 100% effective and you still have to run to the nearest shelter. In some areas close to Gaza, you have less than 10 seconds to run to the shelter.
So I wouldn't consider that "normal life" by any standards
There are no 100% effective solutions here. Ive spent a considerable amount of time in Israeli and realize living under the iron dome isnt ideal, but it is the best Israel can do. Long term occupation would lead to more Israeli deaths than a return to the pre october 7th status quo. The only other solution for israel is a legitimate genocide of all Palestinians, and I just dont see that happening in the next century.
Israel will never give Palestinians full rights, theyre too scared of palestinian terrorism. And for good reason, there is every reason to believe that palestinians will never accept peace with israel. And thats before we even get to the Israeli government believing they have a god given right to the west bank.
Israel stole almost all of the palestinians land. I just cant believe palestinians would ever forget that, I know that I sure wouldnt.
> And for good reason, there is every reason to believe that palestinians will never accept peace with israel.
Not with that attitude they won’t. I’m convinced most people in the region would be happy with peace, whatever form it takes, because they just want to live their lives. Of course that’s contingent on not being oppressed
> most people in the region would be happy with peace
Unfortunately that's not good enough for Israel. If they give Palestinians sovereignty and give up their security control it would only take a small group to commit terrorist attacks against Israel, so they wont do it unless theyre very confident that no one is Palestine will want to do that.
It always takes only a small group to commit terrorist acts. That’s true everywhere across the world. Most countries accept that difficulty as the price of freedom.
You said the only other solution is genocide (which you thankfully say you don't see happening this century). Relenting from their occupation is another solution. I agree with your assessment of their state of mind though.
"Today we are faced with an Islamist cause, led by Hamas. Obviously, this kind of cause is absolute and allows no form of negotiation."
Lost me there, because this is not the framing that matches reality. There were several instances where Hamas was willing to form unity government with Fatah/PLO, to share power, negotiate, to do things like that. It's first and foremost a national liberation movement. The movement itself would not even exist had not been for the occupation.
I didn't read further, because assuming lack of negotiation, lack of pragmatism, of being able to participate in politics semi-normally, etc. is just a crucial point.
Especially while not recognizing intense pressure by the West for this political process to not exist, to suppress it, for it to fail. If you suppress politics, you get violent conflict eventually.
Edit: My this comment is being downvoted despite stating just a plain fact. Hopefully the downvoters can do everyone a service by explaining what's wrong with it.
Like you said, HAMAS exists solely for the sake of resisting Jewish occupation [0], from the river to the sea, which also means the extermination of Israel and Jews [1]. And their conviction stems from their religion, Islam, which allows them to persist despite all the opposition on earth because they are hoping for a reward in heaven[2].
And of course Israel won't allow itself to be exterminated ( hopefully this point is clear enough, no citation needed). So how can there be negotiation?
How come? I don't know, but HAMAS clearly negotiates and does pragmatic things. It's a group of people with moderate and more radical elements like any other largish group.
> Like you said, HAMAS exists solely for the sake of resisting Jewish occupation [0], from the river to the sea, which also means the extermination of Israel and Jews [1].
HAMAS pragmatism serves one purpose, the destruction of Israel, as outlined in their charter.
In 2017 they updated their charter to recognize the 1967 border but still not recognize Israel ( apparently anyone can be on other side of the fence except Israel). And lest you harbor any normalization fantasy, they kept up the aggression by fire rocket into Israel from time to time, which finally accumulated in the 10/7 attack.
He says exactly the same. There were in the past, but not today. He says the same thing for Israel - switched from secular to biblical and thus unable to compromise.
I think why Israel's current government will not compromise is very pragmatic. It failed too badly in preventing this escalation, and has little support. Look at those numbers:
Netanyahu is basically done and gone. His only hold on power is continuing the extermination campaign against Hamas and their families, until some miracle reversal in the polling numbers. His only mandate currently is for the "war".
Additionally, Israel doesn't need to compromise, due to large amount of outside support (in the form of material and political (vetoes in UN SC, etc.) support for its extermination campaign, and the sanctions against Hamas), and due to the massive power difference between it and Hamas.
Biblical stuff is largely a smokescreen/justification for pragmatic matters as far as government/politics goes. And maybe some ideological food for non-secular reserve soldiers to be more willing to go get maimed in Gaza.
How did it turn biblical, with 45% of Israeli Jews being secular, and 27% of population not being Jewish?
The ideology of Islamic Fundamentlism is responsible for these terrorists. If Israel deserves any blame, its for listening to The West's constant demands for appeasement.
When I was in high school - many years ago - I had embraced more of the pro Palestine views espoused here. But as I’ve watched these events unfold over the last 40 years, I now see the errors in my thinking.
No. The fundamental flaw in this reasoning is the assumption that overwhelming victory is what established the current world order.
Rebuilding Europe via the Marshall plan, which involved humanization of individuals who fought on behalf of evil, is why there is peace in Europe. Likewise, the US reconstruction of Japan is why the US and Japan are at peace.
The US held the position of power and chose not to exercise it tyrannically. That is why there is peace.
The native American case is much closer to supporting your argument because genoicdal efforts were made against them and they were forced to submit, and then tyrannical power was exercised over them, maybe even to this day. However again, Native Americans participate in American civil society, there have been (probably insufficient) efforts for reparations, they do have land where they administer their own laws. In some locations native American heritage is celebrated and native American culture is promoted.
There is relative peace with native Americans because we are not particularly tyrannical, and I would say for the most part, modern Americans see Native Americans as humans not "savages."
Seeing your enemies as equally valid humans, who might have done things you would do if you grew up under their conditions, is what creates peace.
Peace is a function of humanization, not a function of victory. Victory without humanization does not end the cycle of violence.
The Marshall plan was only enacted after Germany and Japan had been reduced to rubble, had millions of their civilian population killed through indiscriminate bombing, including the use of two atom bombs, occupied, submit to total surrender, the entirety of their command structure executed, and their governments dismantled and replaced by the Allies.
I think you are skipping over quite a bit of human bloodshed and strife to get to the Marshall Plan.
But overwhelming victory and unconditional surrender were the foundations for that reconstruction. There is really no way that peace could have been achieved with WWII Germany and Japan through giving money or diplomacy (Neville Chamberlain says hi). Once there was overwhelming victory resulting in unconditional surrender, then the rebuilding process started.
EDIT:
In addition, there was no equivalent of the Marshall Plan between the Soviet Union and East Germany, yet there were not wars between them after WWII.
Germany and Japan's peaceful modern history are less due to a clear, overwhelming victory than they were due to the recognition of an absolutely horrific chapter in their country's respective histories and a major cultural movement against the possibility of those kinds of atrocities happening again. Either country could easily come up with more than enough military might to win a war if they chose, but the horrors that they perpetrated live on as cultural scar tissue.
The last example is just... horrific. I don't have more to say on it except that we shouldn't use it as a positive example of anything.
To say it more succinctly, Axis countries clearly had a lot to gain from peace (namely stable happy lives again) and nothing to gain from further violence.
Whereas you might say that many Palestinians (specifically the ones who joined Hamas) had little to gain from the status quo, and little to lose from violence. When you are born locked in the world's largest prison, becoming a terrorist might seem appealing.
Once their WW2 militaries were utterly defeated and their leadership was forced into unconditional surrender, followed by Allied occupation and rebuilding.
> chapter in their country's respective histories and a major cultural movement against the possibility of those kinds of atrocities happening again
It's true that that's the case today. But it took a while for this transition to occur. Basically, the entire wartime generation had to retire/die out. In the 50s and 60s Germans were still very keen about downplaying the atrocities (even if they of course recognized that they occurred) and especially being very lenient towards war criminal and even protecting them from foreign governments (e.g. Heinrich Boere).
That's exactly the point, at least how I'm reading it. Between the US and Japan peace and diplomacy was allowed to rule instead of constant violent retaliation. With France and Germany the same - the two countries have, in a pretty meaningful way, simply merged into a single country along with a lot of the rest of Europe.
When it comes to the US Government and Native Americans it's a far less good example - there have been militarized Native resistance groups at times since the 1900s and there has been open violence (see, for instance, Leonard Peltier and AIM)... in a large way America succeeded with erasing native peoples from their lands - and ditto with Canada - to the point where the groups are too fragmented to form any serious claims at independence. I also think Nixon (yes that Nixon) helped cool things off pretty seriously by, essentially, starting reparation programs to help reinject economic health into reservations - while those have had very underwhelming success at fully solving the problem America has been trying to uplift instead of suppress those communities.
All this stuff is really, really complicated - what defines a culture and a nation is extremely nebulous and subject to heavy revision as time passes. But we're all people and we need to be able to talk about peace even if we have deep historical wounds.
> That's exactly the point, at least how I'm reading it. Between the US and Japan peace and diplomacy was allowed to rule instead of constant violent retaliation.
What diplomacy? The US destroyed Japan's military, bombed Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki (the latter two with nuclear weapons), killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. The Japanese surrendered unconditionally.
Then the US occupied Japan while directing the construction of a new Japanese government.
The diplomacy consists of the fact the Japanese were allowed to rebuild their own country. They weren’t forcibly relocated to Hokkaido to make room for US settlers.
And the diplomacy also consisted of the fact that in revenge for their defeat the Japanese didn't launch a long campaign of violent resistance. The cycle of violence continues as long as people seek revenge and at some point somebody has to be the kinder soul and concede or compromise on the horrors of the past. It's an action that requires participation from both sides but will always place stronger demands on one of them.
This is why I have hope in the middle east - Hamas are fueled by revenge and (IMO) the current Israeli government is also driven by revenge... but the majority of people on both sides have had enough. On the Palestinian side the populace has been denied an election for decades and on the Israeli side there is strong opposition to Netanyahu but terror remains a strong motivator.
Japan was not allowed to have a military for decades after the US occupation ended in 1952. The constitution of Japan, written during US occupation, explicitly makes war illegal! Japan still depends on the US for defense and hosts US military bases.
If Japan isn't an example of brutal war solving problems then nothing is.
> The majority of people on both sides have had enough. On the Palestinian side the populace has been denied an election for decades and on the Israeli side there is strong opposition to Netanyahu but terror remains a strong motivator.
Complete nonsense. The majority of Palestinians support Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and prefer escalation. There hasn't been an election in the West Bank since 2021. Do you know why? Everyone knows Hamas would win! So Abbas, the moderate, indefinitely postponed elections.
The US has fought many wars since WW2 and has basically failed to win any of them. Again from the interview:
The second thing is a targeted response. Let's define realistic political objectives. And the third thing is a combined response. Because there is no effective use of force without a political strategy. We are not in 1973 or in 1967. There are things no army in the world knows how to do, which is to win in an asymmetrical battle against terrorists. The war on terror has never been won anywhere. And it instead triggers extremely dramatic misdeeds, cycles, and escalations. If America lost in Afghanistan, if America lost in Iraq, if we lost in the Sahel, it's because it's a battle that can't be won simply, it's not like you have a hammer that strikes a nail and the problem is solved. So we need to mobilize the international community, get out of this Western entrapment in which we are.
Yea, I think it's pretty odd how little awareness of tribal councils, discussions of self-governance, and resistance from Native Americans there is in the modern America but it feels like the US almost wants to forget it has reservations.
This is intentional. It is a piece of a type of cultural warfare that extends from residential schools to the naming of sports teams. It is the reason the US military uses names of tribal groups for machines of war. It is the reason popular media refers to indigenous people exclusively in the past tense.
There are a variety of examples but the most recent ones relate to high profile pipeline protests. These protests have by and large been about and on land that was illegally annexed. These lands are by and large guaranteed by treaties that have since been illegally broken. Militarized forces from private security forces to federal agencies have been involved in the suppression.
Less recent examples include the violence surrounding the AIM movement in the early 60s and 70s. Protesters have been unjustly imprisoned for decades. There was violence from federal agencies on multiple occasions throughout the time period when AIM was most unified and active.
There are more examples but these are the most documented and high profile.
It is a social war more than a material one. Residential school policy is an example of this. You may have heard the phrase "kill the indian, save the man". This is a policy of longterm cultural genocide and erasure.
Edit: I also forgot to mention another example which is the passive acceptance of the very high rates of missing and murdered indigenous women. The lack of investigation from federal authorities who are supposed to have jurisdiction over these things implies tacit acceptance of the systematic murder of vulnerable indigenous people.
Arguably Canada is worse about it than the US but I didnt feel like it was germane to the specific context of the current conversation. Regardless, the brutality and militant nature of the numerous blockade-busting and protest crushing actions undertaken by the RCMP and other groups in Canada cannot be understated.
> That France and Germany are now good neighbors is a miracle.
It was not because of wise humans as if humans suddenly learned wisdom. It was because they both realized instead of being empires acquiring territory, they had instead been turned into players between the US and the Soviet Union who were both much stronger than either of them and that war would end up completely devastating both of them without any benefits.
Cynicism may sometimes seem smart, in this case it leads you to stupid conclusions.
While another war between France and Germany would have been unlikely for the reasons you state, it absolutely wasn't a given that the countries would develop cordial relations given their shared history. I call that a miracle. It's something we owe to de Gaulle, Giscard d'Estaing, Helmut Schmidt, François Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl and others -- others in their place may very well have chosen a different path.
History is full of examples of countries being hostile to each other even though cooperation might be beneficial in the long run. In fact, it's probably true for the Israel/Palestine war as well.
The Marshall Plan and favorable trade agreements the allies gave Japan would never be extended by Israel the way it is and acts now, so there has to be another solution. Destruction didn't turn Germany and Japan around, the ability to uplift themselves did. The very thing which has been denied to Gaza since 2005 at least (and likely much longer)
In this situation I disagree. The world is overwhelmingly pro Palestine, and the Arab world obviously. They will not go away. Israel will not go away either.
That's arguable, certainly in the west at least. Even if most people oppose the current war/atrocities that doesn't mean that they generally favour Palestine (or especially Hamas..) over Israel (.e.g. like you didn't have to be pro-Sadam to oppose the war in Iraq).
The world is pro-justice. At the moment, Israel's genocide and the long-term brutal occupation have caused anyone to pay attention to support Palestine.
The world includes a lot of people and a lot of countries. Many of them strongly disagree with your characterization of what is happening as a genocide, including many of the world's democracies. You can think whatever you want about the conflict - but it is undeniablely wrong to say that "anyone paying attention" is supporting Palestine.
(I also strongly disagree with calling it a genocide, btw.)
It's remarks by the plaintiff's attorney meant to elicit emotion. It includes zero context. Who died - were they militants with guns? Were they civilian casualties of war? No one knows. Just a bizarre connection between Bethlehem and Gaza. Bethlehem is not in Gaza.
I am not sure what facts I am supposed to gather from this.
But, I think its reasonable to assert that the Arab world desperately needs to become more secularized. Most of the Arab world is deeply anti-semitic, deeply tribal (even amongst themselves), and deeply backwards in their orientation to what makes a free society possible.
In that sense, the palestinians need a big cultural change.
These are all op-eds. Opinions, not facts. That's one. Secondly, for some of the links, if you follow the logic, they are suggesting that Israel should have gone to war with Hamas earlier and eliminated it. Thirdly, what exactly are you suggesting Israel should have done earlier in relation to Gaza and Hamas?
You probably don't know. Neither do I. If we did, other smarter people would have too and it would have probably been implemented already.
Benjamin Netanyahu encouraging the funding of Hamas via Qatar is not an opinion, it's a fact. The situation Israel is dealing with right now is entirely of their own making; it's called blowback.
See...you are taking something that did happen and twisting it to fit your bias.
The money from Qatar had humanitarian goals like paying government salaries in Gaza and buying fuel to keep a power plant running. Obviously, the money was misused and spent on building rockets and missiles. But also a portion was spent on what Qatar intended.
The rationale at the time (this was not a secret deal or anything like that) was that Qatar money is going to make it to Gaza one way or another anyway - it's better if Israel knows about it.
And somehow throwing Netanyahu into the mix is just meant to have some people see red. He was out of power for a year and a half. Surely if it was his personal agenda, the govt that took over after him would stop the payments. They didn't.
But I agree with you that no matter how you twist it, it's definitely a blowback.
Where are you getting this information? Arab don't "need to become secularized" -- why? To make you happy? Being Muslim doesn't make a person anti-Jewish. It is extremely bizarre that you are calling for an entire group of millions of people to change their culture.
Those who want to know the proper history and context of the current conflict, you really owe it to yourself to read this well researched book by Prof Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine [1]. In his latest book he even mentioned Israel - Palestinian latest major war (fifth war in chronological order) in the form of many years of blockade on the people of Gaza. The fact that this book was published several years (2017) before the event happened kind of foretelling that now we have an on-going all out war between one of mightiest army of the modern world against people without a country and no official army to its defense.
Imagine trying to extend and justify every land conflict way further before the Roman Empire, hence the Italian can claim back their ruling over most of England, and the Moroccan over most of Spain.
The Israel situation is unusual in that the jews came from there, got dispersed a couple of thousand years ago, never really had a homeland elsewhere and then some of them decided to come back. There's not much else like that. It's not like the Italians were driven from Italy and have waited centuries to return.
Are you literally judging a book by its title? I don't think dismissing books out of hand without actually engaging with anything they say, but rather by engaging with imagined arguments based on their titles, is not a good way of arriving at knowledge and truth.
> > The court ruled that Israel must do all it can to prevent genocide, including refraining from killing Palestinians or causing harm to them
> Sounds like a ceasefire to me. How else would they do this? Definitely not with any of the military tactics Israel is currently using.
Reading the actual icj ruling it seems like it only forbid it when done with genocidial intent. The court did not forbid collateral damage.
The specific wording included the line "...take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II..."
Earlier in paragraph 78 they said "The Court recalls that these acts fall within the scope of Article II of the Convention when they are committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a group as such (see paragraph 44 above)."
So basically it is only forbidden if the intent is specificly to kill Palestinians and not if it is collateral damage to some other military objective.
I don't think this order will affect anything israel is doing.
I agree the ruling is politically ambiguous like pretty much all things political - but it does pretty clearly signal that the international community has soured on the IDF's actions. This feels like a great opportunity for the Isreali government to say "Oh, my bad" and start serious de-escalation issues while losing less face because they're complying with "genuine humanitarian concerns".
Diplomacy isn't about hard rules - the ICJ can't say "We impose a cease-fire" and demand that the GM of the world step in an immediately cease hostilities. Everything in diplomacy is about posturing and implications - it's why the US has managed to maintain the frankly insanely incoherent "Strategic Ambiguity" of trying to appease the PRC and Taiwan simultaneously, and it works - both countries are happy that the US winks after every statement about the PRC or Taiwan and gives local politicians room to favorably interpret the US statements to their base and reinforce that "Actually they're on our side".
Except SA specifically asked the court to require a ceasefire, which would have immediate consequences via security council vote and no more munitions landing in Israel. And the judges voted it down
This isn't a read between the lines situation, because SA's request was specifically for the court to temporarily rule for a full immediate ceasefire until the larger case could be heard
What is interesting here is that by mis-reading the verdict like yourself, and Israel assuming the worst, both sides immediately came out saying today was a huge win. So at least we have that, everyone (but the Palestinians, who aren't a side in this case) is happy
From what i understand, the ceasefire was an extreme long shot by south africa and nobody really expected the icj to grant it. Particularly because the court cant order hamas to do anything and a one sided cease fire seems kind of unreasonable, but also the right to self defense is pretty fundamental in international law.
Is ICJ even able to order a ceasefire? ICJ did not recognize the activities of Israel as the right to self defense. ICJ would have recognized the activities of rebel force against the genocide as the right to self defense, but I don't think that is a question that came up.
Yes, the ICJ can order a ceasefire. It ordered Russia to stop its invasion of Ukraine, for example. In this case it decided not to, but it did order other measures (which hopefully will save lives, but time will tell).
There is some nuance there because russia's justification for the war was that ukraine is comitting genocide. It is less clear that the icj can order it for a war of self-defense.
The argument goes that the ICJ derives its authority from the UN charter, where article 51 states "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security..."
So just because icj can tell someone to knock it off if they (falsely) claim the reason for the war is to prevent genocide, it is unclear they can do so when the reason is self-defense after an attack
> So just because icj can tell someone to knock it off if they (falsely) claim the reason for the war is to prevent genocide, it is unclear they can do so when the reason is self-defense after an attack
In this matter, they are the judge of whether the actions are self defense, and they are the judge of whether the actions are genocidal. Otherwise, even the most monstrous and illegal acts could be excused by unilaterally declaring "self defense!". Russia, for example, also claimed all their actions were "self-defense", and continues to do so, to this day.
The similarities don't end there: Much like russia claims Ukraine isn't a real country, and should be demilitarized, and Ukrainians should be controlled by Russia; Israel claims Palestine isn't a real country, and should be demilitarized, and Palestinians should be controlled by Israel. Both Israel and russia attack civilian buildings full of civilians (!), and justify it by unconvincingly claiming there was a military target somewhere around there, plotting to harm them. russia usually doesn't level the entire block like Israel does, but not for want of trying. All in the name of "self-defense".
russia: goal is removing the government of Ukrainians by force and dominating Ukrainians. Israel: goal is removing the government of Palestinians by force and dominating Palestinians. russia: 'we must deprogram Ukrainians to remove their extremist, anti-russian feelings and get them to accept our domination of them'. Israel: 'we must deprogram Palestinians to remove their extremist, anti-Israel feelings and get them to accept our domination of them'. That last bit of abuser gaslighting is particularly gross and scary to me. All in the name of "self-defense".
With that in mind, the reasons claimed by each side for each action may inform the judges, who then judge what the actual reasons are, and rule accordingly. Indeed, Israel sought to have the case dismissed, claiming a jurisdictional issue like the one you suggested. The judges heard the arguments and evidence for and against such a claim, and judged that they had jurisdiction under the law.
Israel's participation in these proceedings, in front of the judges who judge such matters, on both jurisdiction and merit, seems to only further legitimize the judges and their judgement on such matters. Could Israel be cynical enough to join russia in doing an about-face on their recognition of the judges' legitimacy, simply for being ruled against?
Honestly I'm not trying to mis-read the verdict which is why I asked the question. I think all of Israel's strategies to date include the death of Palestinians. Since that's explicitly forbidden with that ruling, how will they continue to fight? Will they just ignore the ruling or change tactics?
You are allowed under international law to lead war with significant amounts of civilian casualties. The issue being judged is claims of Israel committing a genocide. This is just a preliminary order while the full case is considered, and it might be bad PR to disregard it, but nothing else will come of it.
When hearing 'genocide', most people immediately jump to the Holocaust, but the definition used by the ICC and IL in general is far more permissible:
Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in
whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
A to E are horrible acts by themselves, but what makes a genocide is intent, and intent is very hard to prove. Personally, I think SA brought a very strong case forward, the genocidal tendencies of key Israeli decision makers and exeters are well published. In the US and Europe, the political class and general public just ignore the evidence currently, and a ruling of the ICC might help people 'wake up', but not much tangible consequences will result from it otherwise.
You might find this to be an interesting read, even if it may not change your mind.
“What Did Top Israeli War Officials Really Say About Gaza?
Journalists and jurists point to damning quotes from Israel’s war cabinet as evidence of genocidal intent. But the citations are not what they seem.”
The measures ordered by the UN court are in references to Article II of the Genocide Convention [0], which limits the scope to “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”, where the court identifies the group as “Palestinians in Gaza”. So it’s the intent of genocide towards that group which is the deciding factor. As long as the actions do not carry that intent (and are plausible as such), they are not prohibited.
My reading is that the court is basically saying “You are presently running the risk of committing genocide, please take all measures in your power to prevent that.”
They will claim they are attempting to kill Hamas militants and any non-Hamas Palestinians deaths are incidental. You can do anything with this excuse. Did the court close this loophole?
Any accusation of genocide will be for the relevant courts to decide. False pretexts (excuses) can be identified as such. The present court order is a shot across the bow. The court is explicitly saying that the intent of genocide appears plausible at this time, and explains the reasons for that assessment. Meaning that Israel will have to show with their actions if they want to turn it implausible.
I don't think it's really a loophole. For example, the Nazis could not possibly claim that the people they killed in death camps were merely collateral damage.
> They just asked Israel to try hard to minimize damage, which they already demonstrated they do.
Where, other than with mere hand waving? How did they explain away blowing courts and universities with rigged explosives? Soldiers bragging about "occupation, expulsion, settlement, annexiation"? All the talk about how there are no civilians in Gaza? How many people who said that has Israel prosecuted so far?
You've been using HN primarily* to conduct political battle on this topic for a long time now. You've already taken to doing this again, repeatedly, in this thread.
That's not in the intended spirit of what we want on HN, and especially not the spirit which I attempted to describe in my pinned comment at the top. Therefore, please stop.
* In fact, it looks like you've been doing nothing but that. I've already explained to you repeatedly and at length why that's not ok on HN. If you keep it up, we're going to have to ban you. (And lest anyone worry: no, this has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing with your views. You're plainly breaking both HN's rules and intended spirit, that is all.)
Please don't post flamewar comments to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
I'm sure that you have legitimate reasons to feel the way you do, but you're posting to this thread in a way that is against the intended spirit, as I tried to explain it in the pinned comment at the top. Please don't do that. If you can't post in the intended spirit, that's understandable, but in that case please don't post until you can.
Do you mean from page 2? Because that is the court just saying what each side requested. The actual order that the court gave is much later in the document.
Generally the proportion of civilians in a hospital vastly outweighs any fighters. Bombing a hospital does in no way count as reasonable steps to prevent collateral damage.
Shooting people queueing for food aid similarly does not count.
The source for that is Gazan eye witnesses, Same one that argues that Israel killed 500 people bombing Al Ahli hospital, that was eventually found out to be from a failed Hamas rocket.
Even if what they claim is true, as you can see from multiple sources, al Shifa hospital still stands and operational.
The article has multiple inaccuracies. It glosses over the fact that many weapons were found inside the hospital (https://www.npr.org/2023/11/15/1213145028/israel-hamas-gaza-...),
It ignores the fact that there was armed Hamas forces fighting Israeli military on hospital grounds (https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/13/hospital-gaz...).
And just plain inaccuracy telling that the solar panels were the only source of electricity for the hospital, since the hospital was operating from the start of the war, up until today, with generators.
Whether or not weapons were found is not the point here, this is evidence. We can debate credibility such as whether days of the week are terrorists but again, that's not the point. The ICJ found enough evidence of merit to show the plausibility of genocide, I'm displaying evidence here that says eyewitness accounts of attacks.
I don't believe this and the court found reason to further investigate genocide. The statements from Israeli leadership alone contradict what you're saying.
Regarding starving, they are getting aid but Hamas steals it for their own us (fighters and black market), so it’s Hamas that starves the Palestinians, not Israel.
The previous poster said the Palestinian dead are collateral while targeting Hamas terrorists. Not from direct action of Israel trying to kill uninvolved.
He didn’t say there are no dead civilians. Any war has civilian casualties
I believe the court reaffirmed Israel's right to defend itself. Presumably, the "all it can to prevent" wording is meant to work around things we expect a nation must do, such as defending itself from attack.
The court referenced article II of the Genocide Convention here, which includes "Killing members of the group." Any country that commits genocide in the way outlined by the convention would be in violation, not just Israel.
Unfortunately for the Palestinians, that is not what was ruled. They were hoping for a full ceasefire like what you have interpreted, but they are very disappointed in the ruling because it does not say that.
What it does say is
1. Israel must do more to prevent the possibility of genocide. Genocide is killing a people with the intent of killing them for the sake of destroying them, and not as collateral damage, so it does not mean stopping all death. Collateral damage, unfortunately, remains on the table.
2. Israel must report back in a month with how they are doing that. For example, they could show lower amounts of collateral damage, an increase in aid, punishments for officials that make statements that could be construed as genocidal, and so forth.
That is better than nothing, to be certain, but it is far from a ceasefire, unfortunately.
So Israel can't enjoy the same right to self defense that any other state would? They can't conduct a war in an urban environment with an actual intentionally genocidal enemy, and must resort to targeted assassinations? That standard is absurd. Surely you can admit some middle ground ,if you're discussing in good faith.
> Correct, it's very likely that Israel is committing genocide and the court ordered them to stop while they do a full investigation.
I think there was a miscommunication. You said that the provisional measures said that Israel must stop killing Palestinians, and so there is no way to have a ceasefire. I was saying that what's actually in the provisional measures is a reiteration of the Genocide Convention, of which all countries must already abide, including Israel. Whether or not it's likely a country is commiting genocide or it's self defense, they haven't ruled on. I deliberately avoided any speculation with my comments.
> Leading propaganda machine and former Member of Knesset Einat Wilf suggests that the Israeli government should allow aid into Gaza officially, but unofficially let "protesters" to block all aid from entering the Strip. I think that's actually kinda what happened today.
> The Gaon Rabbi Dov Lior Shalita in a halachic ruling: Citizens must prevent the entry of Hamas trucks even on Shabbat, because equipping and supplying the enemy is a war act that must be stopped from the point of view of human control.
Yesterday, 0 trucks could enter Gaza, the day before that 9 out of 60, don't know about today. Note that under the convention against genocide, Israel is required to prosecute genocidal speech, much less such genocidal acts (apart from not committing them of course). Instead, as Yoav Gallant just posted this on Twitter:
> The State of Israel does not need need to be lectured on morality in order to distinguish between terrorists and the civilian population in Gaza. The ICJ went above and beyond, when it granted South Africa's antisemitic request to discuss the claim of genocide in Gaza.
... which is as good a summary as any for what you find at every corner with this: not just the unwillingness to learn, but the inability to even comprehend any of this. When Gideon Levy talks about the incredible depth of Israeli indoctrination, he isn't kidding, and he's not exaggerating.
"brainwashing" is a term that's going to unavoidably turn this conversation in a bad direction, it might be best not to use it here. There are less inflammatory ways to describe what's happening in that tweet.
I changed it to "indoctrination". Which is a more polite word that doesn't really do it justice, but it's not really important because the result, the inability to even meaningfully interact with the charges, is a constant.
As George Orwell put it, from the totalitarian perspective history is something to be created, rather than learned. Or as Robert Antelme described a concentration camp guard: "trapped in the machinery of his own myth". I just cannot find a flattering way to describe these things, there just is no material to work with for that.
International law regulates war, but does not entirely prohibit it (that would be futile; wars of aggression are specifically prohibited by Briand-Kellogg pact, but nowadays even aggressors try to dress the situation as justified defense and often get away with it; few wars since 1945 were tried by a competent tribunal and judged unlawful).
It isn't unlawful per se to cause civilian casualties during military operations; any demand that the warring parties limit themselves to killing combatants only would be unrealistic, especially in urban settings.
It is unlawful to target civilians intentionally or to cause wanton damage to civilian infrastructure, though.
Quite the contrary - they have all the power, they are just choosing not to use it in this case. If the court ordered a ceasefire all weapon shipments to Israel would have to stop the same day.
What does "have to" mean in this context? If the US were to sell another batch of weapons would other countries try to shoot the plane out of the air? Would they try to unilaterally sanction 30% of the world economy?
Isn't this collateral damage of waging war with a terrorist organisation embedded in civilian population? I don't this this counts for genocide, as sad as the results are...
The technicality I see here is that the ICJ can call a ceasefire in an armed conflict, this would carry the implicit message that the civilian casualties are collateral damage. Instead they are asking to stop the genocidal acts. In a genocide the civilians are the target. It’s bad for the Palestinians in the short term, and bad for Israel in the long
The primary problem was always that there are too many parties who have an interest in the existence of Hamas.
Put differently, there are too many parties with an interest in using the Palestinians as pawns. Leaving aside the views of any specific Palestinian. As no serious person can dispute the ease of radicalizing destitute people without educations and with PTSD.
As long as this is the case, the Palestinians, on the whole, will present as radicalized.
The continued goal can't be to use them as pawns. The goal has to be to peacefully save every last remaning Palestinian life, at all costs. In spite of the interests of any of the people who use them.
Accomplishing that goal, at all peaceful costs, will be distasteful to both the people who want to sacrifice the Palestinians for Islamic land interests as well as to the people who see them as, at minimum, legitimate collateral damage.
But that is what will be required to take Palestinian civilians out of the middle of this endless nightmare.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” - Benjamin Netanyahu
The problem is tribalism. The primary goal is exclusive dominion, but a distant secondary goal of political and militaristic domination will suffice in the meantime. These aren’t my thoughts or conclusions but the stated goals of several of Israel’s most senior politicians, saying something to the effect of removing the inhabitants so that they can make the desert blossom.
The problems here can be solved peacefully and permanently if the dominant faction so wished. The most durable solution is to tear down the walls, annex the occupied territories, and make the Palestinian residents full and equal citizens of Israel. Israel has stated as much directly but refuses that solution because they fear their tribal identity will not longer be a numerical majority. Another less durable solution is a two state solution in opposition to military dominance, but Israel does not want that either. Tribalism. The parallels to the conflict in the Balkans, which was ruled a genocide, are many.
Your solution is to make Jews a minority in their own country?
The entire reason Israel was created is to have a safe place for Jews to exist and having the power to defend themselves.
Imagining that just “tearing down the walls”, and “why can’t we all just gel along” will work is pretty naive, especially considering history .
Tribalism is human nature. You simply can’t end it. And pointing it as a solution for the Palestinian problem is just as likely as “saying let’s colonize mars”, both are very nice ideas, but only feasible in movies.
What’s your solution? Domination does not appear to be working on any level and has severely eroded Israel’s credibility with its allies.
Qualifying apartheid and sadist acts as human nature or that solving problems is too tough to bother trying sounds pretty weak. These are positions guilty people take to excuse bad behavior.
Same solution that was offered to Germany and Japan after WW2.
Demilitarize, deradicalize, erect a technocratic regime, supported by western nations. And after a few years they can have their own sovereignty.
Right now the hate is far too great and the capabilities are far too extreme to just let the Palestinians enter freely into Israeli territory
Think about it in reverse. If Palestinians and their land are emancipated into Israel then those illegal settlements in the West Bank will no longer be illegal.
That imbalance is a prime example why so much of the world believes the current situation, or even just comments to equivalent effect by senior Israeli leaders, is apartheid. If most of the world believes the current situation to be apartheid then its no stretch of the imagination to condemn words or action to remove, destabilize, or eradicate Palestinian prosperity as potential acts of genocide. The same qualifiers and equivocations were used by the aggressors to qualify genocidal acts that occurred in the Balkans in the '90s.
If Israel and Hamas leaders really wanted greater security then they would have already solved for these imbalances. Security is not the primary motivation though, domination is.
> Same solution that was offered to Germany and Japan after WW2. Demilitarize, deradicalize, erect a technocratic regime, supported by western nations.
In which borders would this demilitarised state exist?
This is more or less what Biden is currently trying to do. The Israelis aren't interested.
I can understand the need for a Jewish state. (Though wouldn't the same apply to other disenfranchised groups? Why not a Roma or a Native American state?)
What I don't understand is why that state had to be erected in a land where people were already living, against the explicit wishes of that population, and in the end pushed through with military force.
Or rather, I do understand: This was how the world powers of the late 19th century were thinking and operating. They thought they had the god-given right to redraw the world map as they saw fit, in Africa in the 19th, and in the middle east in the early 20th century. But this mindset is what everywhere else we renounce as colonialism today - except for some reason here.
I think present-day Israelis do have a valid claim to the land, because they were born there and spent their entire life in that land. Forcing them to move away would amount just as much to expulsion than demanding the same from Palestinians. (Not even speaking of things that would amount to not just expulsion but genocide)
What I don't understand is what would give them the exclusive claim to the land or the right to drive others off it.
Its not Naive, précisely regarding history. Look at how wars stopped in Europe beween or even within countries. People just started to get along after being tired of destroying each other.
The problem that prevents it in this case is religious extremists in both sides. For example there will never be peace as long as the israeli gov support west bank settlements toward the goal of a "great Israel". They are all extremely explicit about it and its not a conspiracy theory.
> dispute the ease of radicalizing destitute people without educations and with PTSD
Using the same broad stroke generalization and similarly de-humanizing moral compass; how do you judge the society these people celebrating child murder, arson, death, riots, mass executions, hateful incitement belong to: https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17237393892624344...
> But that is what will be required to take Palestinian civilians out of the middle of this endless nightmare
One might say, the chief among requirements is for the occupation of a people who have rejected it every step of the way to end. Everything else is a distraction.
What's the ICJ's actual ability to enforce this? "Orders" sounds like they have some sort of weight to throw around if Israel doesn't comply, but I'm not familiar with the ICJ or what possible consequences could arise if Israel simply decided it was going to do what it wanted.
In theory i think they are supposed to ask the security council to step in if the order is ignored. Which would be unlikely to do anything, so nothing.
I think its likely israel will comply. The order is pretty weak and mostly stuff israel already claims to be doing. It wouldn't be worth the PR hassle to ignore it.
Comply with "Don't genocide"? At best, they'll argue semantics while they keep doing what they've always done.
Nevermind. I read the article:
> Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the fact that the court was willing to discuss the genocide charges was a “mark of shame that will not be erased for generations.” He vowed to press ahead with the war.
Well yes. They claim they are not genociding and that they have no intention to genocide, so they aren't going to change that.
Its also not like this is a totally unreasonable conclusion either. Lots of international law scholars think israel is likely to win the case overall unless some bombshell happens.
Israel's government doesn't care about PR hassle from the usual suspect. We may notice that they've had plenty of that lately and it did not stop them at all.
Even if doing what the ICJ wants is easy, there's a strong reason not to (from their perspective) - it implies the ICJ should be obeyed and legitimizes them. But why should Israel do that? It's just another leftie NGO from Netenyahu's perspective. Start following what those guys want and soon they will have to do nothing even as Hamas attacks again and again.
Considering how reliant Netenyahu's political career was/is on Hamas continuing to exist it's likely that's going to happen anyway. An actual long-term solution would be a huge blow to all of the right.
Israel is going to balance the pr risk vs other risks and goals. They might care about pr less than other countries, but they aren't going to take a PR loss if there is no corresponding benefit.
If israel wanted to deligetimize the ICJ they wouldn't have participated in the case in the first place. Now that they have sent lawyers, appointed an ad hoc judge, its too late tobpretend they think it is illigetiment.
> What's the ICJ's actual ability to enforce this?
Zero, the same as most courts.
Enforcement is a matter for (ordinarily) the Security Council, or, in the case of deadlock, potentially the GA acting under Uniting for Peace. Well, decisions on enforcement; actual enforcement is left to individual UN members, acting on direction of those UN bodies.
Note that enforcement in practice is often a problem, as with the provisional measures adopted against Russia in the Ukraine v. Russia genocide case.
Well, Israel is a treaty signatory. That means an ICJ ruling is executable under Israeli law.
That means jack shit right now. But every action taken hereonforth, by leadership or command or individual soldiers, carries with it the burden of future prosecution.
> Am I to understand then that a member of the UN could decide that intervene?
Unilateral intervention against genocide is possible and arguably legal even without an ICJ ruling, but ordinarily the preferred method would be sanction from the UN via a Security Council resolution, or by a General Assembly resolution from an emergency special session called to address a Security Council deadlock.
The ruling also ordered Hamas to release all hostages, and Hamas has previously claimed they would abide by any ruling of the court. I find it unlikely though that they will comply.
> Hamas has previously claimed they would abide by any ruling of the court
No, Hamas previously claimed that they would observe a ceasefire if the court imposed one on Israel, conditioned on Israeli compliance with the same. They didn't say they would do anything related to anything other than an ceasefire order.
Hamas is not a state. ICJ is a tribunal that adjudicates disputes between states. ICJ has no jurisdiction to rule in regards to Hamas. Neither can Hamas bring a case against Israel, as it has no standing, considering it is not a party to the international treaty.
If you had an inkling of a genocide going on and a chance to act, obviously you'd immediately do anything in your power to stop it? Despite the judges being appointed by their own countries*, I'm sure they have humanity. So this is an acquittal in all but name.
Oh, they'll keep monitoring and the case will take years, but the result is obvious even now.
* e.g. It's obvious the Russian judge has strong incentives to vote as Putin tells them to, otherwise they'd have to move to a windowless basement where the only access is by an elevator...
> If you had an inkling of a genocide going on and a chance to act, obviously you'd immediately do anything in your power to stop it?
Doesn’t seem people care about what’s going in Africa. People care here because this is a war of religion. And by that, I mean whether Western countries remain increasingly supreme (in terms of the world order).
Realistically this war is being fought politically in the worlds media. The fight is for public opinion.
So the orders of the IJC are about war.
The hair splitters may want to change the nature of war to "genocide" by one side rather than condemn BOTH sides in the conflict.
"but we can only take evidence from XYZ and only on matters ABC"
It seems to me to be a case of the UN wanting to have a seat at the table. They have become more & more irrelevant in matters of real importance or conflict. This ruling is pretty meaningless regardless of what your beliefs are. Its just more media circus.
We can argue about statistics and false testimony who is right and which side is credible but we are just adding to the noise.
Most terrorist organizations & actions are the direct result of one group having no political power. It ceases when that group obtains political power.
It seems to me the original attack by HAMAS was simply to ensure that there is more war and that war can be fought in the worlds media. This ruling and the whole procedure is just more of the same.
Wars usually continue to be prosecuted till one (or both) side loses the political will to continue. Does anyone here really believe Israel will lose that political will, regardless of world opinion? Hasn't in the past.
Just like Russia.
Here is an Israel Times article from the 28th that seems to prove that to be untrue for electricity (but true for water although severely reduced). Could you source that statement?
ICJ didn't reach any conclusions or positions except that IDF needs to be careful. No call for a ceasefire.
I'm curious what people in Tel Aviv see in media. In America, it's wall-to-wall "police say"-like IDF clips and Bill Maher condemnation, dehumanization, and equivocating Palestine supporters with Hamas terrorists. The talking heads cheerfully greet Netanyahu.
> In America, it's wall-to-wall "police say"-like IDF clips and Bill Maher condemnation, dehumanization, and equivocating Palestine supporters with Hamas terrorists. The talking heads cheerfully greet Netanyahu.
As someone who also consumes US news, this does not describe what I’ve seen.
Written, a combination of New York Times, Washington Post, and what Google News aggregates (frequently includes Fox and a mix of websites of local news websites)
I have found the exact opposite. NPR, for example, spends a lot of time humanizing Gazans and showing that Israel is terrorizing them, quite literally.
NPR also frequently talked about the right wing/nationalist power seizures leading up to this.
Before the war, I think a good number of Americans saw Israel blowing up the Associated Press offices. It hardly matters what the excuse was.
I feel like every week I've heard a story about Israel telling Gazans where to go, and then bombing that location.
I'm not sure I saw any news outlet that didn't report 70% women and children casualties, which pretty much speaks for itself.
Nobody I went to college with supports Israel at all. Genocide Joe is not just used by his oponents. That name didn't come out of nowhere. Many of the people who voted for him agree his genocidal support of Israel is unacceptable.
Fox, CNN and NYT are boomer news. I am sure many people still get their opinions and ideologies from those sources but I think its pretty evident that they are waning in popularity
It's kind of funny reading HN comments comparing this to WWII. Israel was given the land after WWII as some sort of weird hand washing by western governments. People already lived there. The claims that Hamas is like "Germany" trying to eliminate Jews are laughably absurd. These are people without a military fighting with AK-47s and rocket launchers against one of the most sophisticated armies on the planet -- F-35 jets and laser guided munitions. How can we blame Hamas when it is Israel that is stealing Palestinian homes to add Jewish settlers? Imagine someone coming to your house with a bulldozer kicking you out and placing new people there. This is literally what a settlement is and it is condemned by most of the UN outside of the United States.
It is also important to remember that Israel did not exist before 1948. There was a lot of violence that occurred against Palestinians during it's formation -- within 2 generations of the current generation -- rapes, murders, displacement. I recommend watching the documentary film Tantura which outlines some of this. There is some pretty horrific stuff... 70 year old Israeli men laughing about old stories of raping women. Feeding men their own cut-off genitals etc. There is a reason the "Nakba" is not allowed to be mentioned in Israel.
There also seems to be only a very basic understanding of the political realities behind why Hamas exists in this forum. "Big bad boogeyman Islamic terrorists" vs "Secular free modernity" is a stupid way to look at this. The Israeli government does not want a Palestinian state. Hamas was very much uplifted by the Israeli government since as early as the 80s because they delegitimize the idea of a free Palestine in the international sphere. They are easy to negotiate against because they are extremists. Even given their extremism, Hamas does not want to "genocide Jews" -- this is another absurd claim that is propagated but has no basis.
Hamas is also not ISIS. They are a resistance movement against an occupying power that uses violent means to influence political realities. This is dirty dirty work and many horrible things happen when you give 20 year olds AK-47s. I don't support it. But the existence of Hamas is very much an expected outcome of military occupation. It is interesting to note that the founder of Hamas was 8 year old when he saw 15 Palestinian men executed at point blank range by Israeli soldiers. He is also a pediatrician and a geneticist.
In general, I think people on this forum view terrorism through a very childish lens. It's a bit like calling everything a "programming language" ... well yeah maybe C++ has some similarities to Typescript ... but they are very different beasts. Osama bin laden and Hamas may have shared political objectives and ideals but they are not completely equivalent.
To summarize my feelings: Israel has definitively built a great civilization -- but we musn't equate that with some sort of moral cleanliness. Hamas is a terrorist organization -- but we musn't equate that with a lack of real grievances.
The statistics don't lie: Israel has killed more women and children in 100 days than any other recent modern military conflict. It has used more munitions than the US did for the entirety of the Iraq war. It's a ridiculous response that, given the context above, is nothing short of genocide.
An important point that I don't think most people realize is that the Kibbutz that Hamas attacked on October 7th actually used to be Palestinian towns that they were expelled from during Nakba:
I do think that their future Feb ruling is going to call for a ceasefire. If they called for one now, Israel & especially the US were just going to ignore it and reduce the power of the court.
Israel has created a beast that I don't think they can control themselves. I do think that the court is going to get more legitimacy after they explicitly tell Israel to __chill__, for Israel not to chill, and then get the ceasefire ruling against them & potentially an intensification of the genocide case.
Meanwhile, unfortunately, real people are suffering so these political games can be played.
I am so deeply disappointed in the Biden administration here. They're throwing away a lot of the good work they've done, and are actively getting Trump elected. People, naturally, do not want to participate in an election that is giving them a choice between ${person_currently_helping_a_genocide} and ${person_that_will_intensify_genocide}. You're just going to get voter apathy, and the consequences from that.
> I am so deeply disappointed in the Biden administration here.
What do you expect him to do? With or without any assistance, Israel has more than enough weapons completely annihilate Gaza. Don't forget that they likely have nuclear capabilities. Israel believes they are demonstrating restraint and this restraint is the first thing to go if Israel feels like it's being backed into a corner.
I am not so sure. I believe Israel only exists by the mercy of support from their Allies. The minute they lose that support Israel is doomed. The country is surrounded by enemies on all sides. Sure their military could win a conventional war with their nukes against any of their neighbors. But on the long term a small country with a small population and limited natural resources needs friends to run an economy big enough to support the huge military it needs to defend itself. And Israel is running out of friends fast. Sympathy for Israel in the West is surely declining at lightning speed with the current situation, I would not be surprised if this conflict is the start of the end of the country
What is nuts is that the Zionists have convinced everyone that that they speak for all Jews. I have so much respect for the activists in Israel that must face immense social and political pressure.
All the US has to do is: nothing. Stop sending over tank shells [1], Fighter jets and attack helicopters [2], deploying aircraft carriers [3] and stop vetoing UN Security Council resolutions trying to impose a ceasefire [4]
From everything I’ve studied all super bombs (hydrogen fusion bombs) are also fission bombs. Since it is a chain of different kind of explosion stages that finally get the fusion reaction started.
First convention explosives then fission then fusion.
If they put it on Hamas, the radiation fallout would hit Israel pretty hard depending on winds.
It would fuck up Middle East in an awful way. Pretty much guarantee the Middle East Muslim countries ganging together to wipe out Israel completely.
I think that the statement by the head of the military that Israel is acting without any restraints is incompatible with the idea that Israel believes it is demonstrating restraint.
My point is to make it clear that it was obviously a rhetorical speech rather than some ongoing military policy during the war. You know perfectly well what I meant by restraint.
If they cared about the hostages, they wouldn't be bombing them to death on a daily basis, shooting those that escape, or gassing them in tunnels. The hostages are nothing more than political pawns to Netanyahu.
Keep in mind that Hamas reiterated their ceasefire deal recently, which includes the release of all hostages, and Israel rejected it.
It also included the release of the thousands of terrorists that were captured in Israeli borders in oct 7th. People with actual blood on their hands, and a guarantee for hamas to stay in power.
Moreover, Israel offered hamas a ceasefire if they release all the hostages and exile their top 6 leaders. That offer was rejected by hamas.
> Moreover, Israel offered hamas a ceasefire if they release all the hostages and exile their top 6 leaders. That offer was rejected by hamas.
That wasn't a serious ceasefire offer, and you've left out the reasons why: it was a pause of 2 months, not a ceasefire offer at all! Furthermore, Israel wouldn't release the hostages they are holding. Why would anyone agree to release the hostages in exchange for nothing but a brief pause of genocide?
Netanyahu knew Hamas wouldn't agree to it; he only even made the offer because he'd turned down the Hamas offer first, and so needed a different story for the media to run with. Which worked just fine of course - MSM ran with "Hamas reject ceasefire" without even mentioning the Hamas offer.
"thousands of killers" is just rhetoric; Hamas could argue that the IDF hostages they hold were "killers".
Meanwhile, many of the hostages held by Israel are held without even being charged. From what I've seen, it's quite obvious that many are innocent civilians, and hundreds of them are children.
We've also seen evidence that Israel tortures its prisoners, and that rape is endemic - which is probably why Israel won't let the Red Cross near them (something else it complains Hamas won't do).
1 year old baby can be argued as a killer?
Meanwhile the actual killers were caught live while killing Israelis in their homes in oct 7, they even filmed themselves and bragged about it. Pretty damning evidence.
Conflating the hostages to the Israeli prisoners is terrorist rhetoric, not genuine rhetoric.
Palestinian prisoners had access to the Red Cross up until oct 7, at which point the Red Cross was pretty useless and one sided against Israel.
Do you have any proof of rape accusations being endemic?
Strawman - I explicitly referred to those hostages that were members of the IDF.
> Conflating the hostages to the Israeli prisoners is terrorist rhetoric
Ah, so anyone who disagrees with you is a terrorist? I see you.
You're also implying that all hostages held by Israel were involved in the attack on 7/10 - blatantly untrue. Several Israeli soldiers are on camera saying they take Palestinians hostage purely so they have something to exchange with Hamas - this has been going on for years.
> Red Cross was pretty useless and one sided against Israel.
I'm sorry, but this is the kind of nonsense that spokespeople (like Eylon Levy) and career racists (like David Colier) like to espouse - everyone who disagrees with Israel's genocidal actions is an antisemite and/or Hamas lover. "The Red Cross are Hamas". "The UN are Hamas". Honestly, it's pretty pathetic.
Hostages are undesireable for Israel, as earlier they die/be killed the lesser leverage hamas will have. Besides, they will all be dangerous to official narrative, as they seem to have been treated ok by the militants.
Meanwhile, Josh Paul, a former US State Department official, detailed how a 13 year old kid was raped in an Israeli prison and “The State Department's inquiry into the case resulted in Israeli officials shutting down the charity involved in bringing the case to light.”
These have not independently confirmed. There is a history of passing by israel of Mexican cartel videos and photos of military women perished in other Middle Eastern conflicts as atrocities commited by Hamas .
I am not saying that Hamas did not (or did) commit the crimes on videos, it just the source is so reliably untrustworthy, so the videos cannot be taken seriously.
So what I shared, a well thought out article by Johnathan Cook and others, is propaganda but you telling me to watch unverified, often debunked videos that are actually from cartels or ISIS, isn’t propaganda? What’s next, should I search 4chan?
Are you talking about the Netanyahu quote at the end of the article only?
Otherwise there isn't a direct rape claim in there, but a witnessed missed period which they say could be due to rape or the witness also says it could be due to the harsh conditions (malnutrition is a real cause of it in some cases; Washington Post has reported on worries of refeeding syndrome in some of the released hostages so some were severely malnurished). I found an article with longer excerpts of the testimony and the dolls on a string quote was about inappropriate clothing provided and claims of abuse but the testimony excerpts there also didn't directly allege rape. Is the full transcript of the hearing out there somewhere?
While that's technically true, they were elected in 2006 and since then no elections have been held. Not only that, members of the Hamas murdered Fatah rivals in the years that followed. Not to mention that most of the population today in Gaza are so young that they didn't even vote Hamas in.
So while they have majority support, it's not like they've had any real alternative.
It doesn't matter. Hamas is not a member of the ICJ. The state of palestine is a member but hamas aren't recognized as the representive of the state of palestine.
Additionally, the state of palestine is not a party to this case.
So no, the icj cannot tell hamas to do anything. The only people it can give orders to in this case are israel and south africa.
Hamas is the elected body of Gaza. It also has over 75% support according to several polls post 10/7. By all means it represents the interest of Gaza’s people whether anyone wants to admit that or not.
Not entirely true. Yes, they were elected in 2007 but they have not allowed the Fatah after that. The last election may have been 2012. So considering the amount of time elapsed I wouldn’t consider them legitimately elected.
You only have to believe what you want to believe. I'm just answering the GP's question in the most direct possible way, by referencing the answer of a primary party.
Is that even possible procedurally? the preliminary hearing is done. They are meeting in feb to discuss the report on the things ordered, but i dont think they can just randomly make more orders at that point that aren't related to the granted orders.
From my understanding, if Israel doesn't show that they're able to reduce civilian deaths, they can grant South Africa's ask on the case which (from my understanding) is effectively ordering Israel to stop the attacks, and asking the world to help enforce it.
The court didn't even order them to reduce civilian deaths.
They do have to submit a report on their implementation of the orders, but reducing civilian deaths wasn't on the list of things they had to report on.
I don’t love Trump, but there’s no denying there was far less war, and especially US-funded war, when he was in office. Ukraine-Russia massively escalated as soon as someone in the pocket of the military industrial complex got put in power, as Putin knew it would, and Israel followed suit soon after.
I find it hard to believe there’s correlation between the beginnings of Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas and who the US president is.
If anything, Russia and Hamas are each less likely to spark each conflict (in the specific sense of invading Ukraine and 7 October, not the preconditions) knowing that the US is more likely to provide arms to Ukraine and Israel.
Considering Hamas' plan all along was to martyrize the Gaza population by feeding it to the lions, subsequently sabotaging Israel's relations with its neighbors and the global community, it does make sense they decided to provoke a war during Biden's term, a very outspoken zionist.
But Israel is far more likely to want conflict to occur. Evidence of such desire would take the form of ignoring intel from international community stating that an attack was planned, and allowing human-sized slow moving targets to pass through the air defense systems unassailed.
I'm not sure what I will do, but I'm not voting for Trump either way.
There is a lot written about civil disobedience through not partaking in electoral politics, and that's _likely_ the direction I'm going to go if Biden does not change his tone (and hopefully actually do a proper apology for his actions so far).
This sucks, and I'll participate in local and even congressional elections, but for president I can not really find myself voting for Biden. I do not expect myself to agree 100% with any candidate, but there are certain red-lines that a candidate can not cross. I have a few of those, being anti-abortion is not something I can tolerate in any candidate. Being pro-mass-killing-looking-like-genocide is also one. I suspect this feeling is not unique to me.
Personally regardless of any other stance I will always vote along the abortion lines. I would hope others would be able to prioritize that as well. I dont want to see the US turn into a theocratic dictatorship.
Abortion is probably one of the leading causes of the demographic destruction (and by extension, destruction of political influence) of the black American community.
Far and away the greatest opposition to abortion is religious in nature. Certainly other groups might oppose it for varying reasons but they are an extreme minority.
I would even venture to say that those other groups oppose it in part because of cultural effects of religious ethics infecting the rest of society.
Biden apparently wants to lose. Watch every single campaign event be protested (many protesters are Jews). Yeah, that's definitely going to lower turnout on the DEM side.
Biden is not only going to lose, Trump might even get a trifecta.
I'm not sure the protestors will be a net negative, lots of people protested trump in 2016 and them getting thrown out only encouraged his base. If you watch the videos of the Biden interruptions the crowd stays firmly on Biden's side.
Biden's issues at the moment are that economic sentiment is a lagging indicator of some variables that have only recently recovered to their normal values (inflation etc.). If these issues fix themselves we will have a better sense of whether Israel-Hamas War has meaningfully impacted him.
Calling it a Muslim ban is pretty disingenuous, and always was. The ban left out some very large Muslim countries, such as Indonesia and Pakistan for example.
He campaigned on banning Muslims. He then tried three different times to ban a large amount of Muslims. He regularly denigrates Muslims and blames them for our problems. According to his own people, he wanted to ban Muslims and wanted a fig-leaf to do it legally [1].
This kinda comes down to a case of who are you going to believe, a notorious fraudster and conman or your own lying eyes?
Trump wouldn't intensify the genocide. Not just because Israel currently has carte blanche to do what it wants, but also because of personal animosity with Netanyahu.
The US, under whichever administration, is in a very difficult position here. If the US stops all support immediately, this could be the end of Israel. Would that be just? I see a president carefully dancing on the thin line of supporting the Israel state while using the US leverage to stop the war (latest example: sending the CIA chief to the negotiating table). But this needs to be done without enabling Israel's biggest adversaries that support a Jihad against the people of Israel.
Some of those countries are more friendly now, but loss of USA support would be huge. Such a removal of support would IMO be extremely unlikely due to how USA internal politics looks like from outside.
American foreign policy wasn't parodied as "world police" for nothing.
> I certainly think we could stop funding their military while still pledging to support them if someone actually tries to invade.
Subtly and nuance? Oh how I wish any politics cared about that.
I'm assuming, from the PoV of Israel and the Jewish diaspora in the USA, that because the specific attack that set this in motion was much much worse (proportionally speaking) than the 9/11 attacks were to the USA, anything less than 100% uncritical total support will look like "a betrayal" or "giving in to terrorism", to enough of the Jewish electorate in the USA, as to make that kind of talk unviable for at least a decade.
Real people aren't Vulcans. Emotions are raw, and will remain that way for a long time. And so the cycle will continue until either one side or the other is dead, or some absolute negotiating genius steps in and manages something even more impressive than the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland.
(Makes me wish for Mo Mowlam to be reincarnated; good luck to you if she was an inspiration!)
I agree with your major point, but just point of fact that 20% of Israel's military budget is from foreign military aid-- nearly all of that paid by US tax payers (although it was France that likely supplied Israel with the technology for their nuclear arsenal).
A US official stated that at the rate Israel is bombing Gaza, Israel would have run out of munitions in 3 days without US aid. An Israeli official said the same, but he said their arsenal would only have lasted one day. Even if either/both were engaging in a degree of hyperbole, the gist is, that the bombing continues at the will of the Biden administration.
Yes, Israel would not cease to exist if the US withdrew support for genocidal murder and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, but it would halt this most recent massacre of Palestinians by Israelis.
And, if the US stopped running cover for Israel in the UN Security Council, Israel would find it untenable to continue its belligerent disregard of international humanitarian law and past UN resolutions-- it might actually become the democratic state it claims to be, but to do so it will necessarily no longer be an ethno-religious state.
It's a common fallacy that money equates to purchasing power. That is only true so long as there continues to be a market with stable supply and stable prices. After COVID-19, many people had plenty of money, but you simply could not buy masks or vaccines at any price if there simply were no longer any to be sold.
Militaries are just as interconnected as anybody else. They depend on supplies of weapons and munitions. If the supply is gone, the size of the budget doesn't matter.
Iran was pretty miffed when some weapons of unspecified origin recently hit Iraq and Syria because they happened to land on the heads of Iranian operatives.
The concept of nations and borders in the middle east is a bit... different from the western variant.
Israel has nuclear weapons. By the logic of even developing them, there's no reason not to deploy them if it faces conquest. Any existential crisis facing Israel will not come from outside.
Israel can face defeat without everybody dying (which is what would happen if they tried to use nuclear weapons). The US has enough control over Israel to make sure that never happens. We are a far greater military power than Israel.
If they were being successfully invaded, and facing defeat, the US would not be able to stop them from using nukes. What is the US going to do otherwise? End its support of a country that no longer exists?
The US has a military with deep intelligence ties. They would stop Israel from using nuclear weapons even if that meant invading Israel and taking out all of the leaders. There's no way the US would allow Israel to use a nuclear weapon.
You're gonna just guess that's true? That they will have perfect intelligence and a perfect capability to prevent a determined decision? What we do have some evidence for is Israel's ignoring the US calls for moderation.
I’m not a fan of Trump’s domestic policies, but I’m absolutely sure that he has the moral high-ground over Biden right now. Trump used to be a supporter of Israel and to some extent still is, but he did during his presidency see that the Palestinians want peace more than the other side. I can’t imagine Trump going behind Congress’ back to arm Israel as Biden has done.
> I can’t imagine Trump going behind Congress’ back to arm Israel as Biden has done.
I absolutely 100% can imagine it. I would go so far as to characterise him as:
1) Pro-Israel:
> On December 6, 2017, the United States of America officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital city of the State of Israel. American president Donald Trump, who signed the presidential proclamation, also ordered the relocation of the American diplomatic mission to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv [...]. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the decision and praised the announcement by the Trump administration.
> Trump's decision was rejected by the vast majority of world leaders; the United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting on December 7, where 14 out of 15 members condemned it, but the motion was overturned by U.S. veto power.
2) Non-cooperative with Congress:
> The United States federal government shutdown from midnight EST on December 22, 2018, until January 25, 2019 (35 days) was the longest government shutdown in history.
> The shutdown stemmed from an impasse over Trump's demand for $5.7 billion in federal funds for a U.S.–Mexico border wall.
3) Loving to go behind backs:
> Trump reportedly keeps finding a way to meet the Russian leader privately.
It's worth noting that the ICJ like pretty much all international bodies has no enforcement power and countries will routinely ingore the rulings they don't like.
Still, things like this matter. It adds to public pressure.
Another thing is that how judges rule will often align with national interests rather than any facts in any case. So in a case against Israel you might expect the US to side with Israel regardless of the facts. Likewise, China might side against a genocide case because it doesn't want to set a precedent given the history with the Uyghurs. Likewise, Turkey will be aware of how any precedent may affect their treatment of Kurds, and so on.
So what do you do if you're one of these countries and the facts are against you? You go through this dance of trying to bypass the facts and get your desired outcome on procedural grounds.
I mention this because regular courts (eg in the US) do the exact same thing. The Supreme Court may grant standing on tenuous grounds for a case they want to rule on or deny standing on procedural grounds to avoid making a ruling when the facts are "against" them. Likewise, they may make a narrow ruling to avoid a broad precedent or seek a broad precedent if it's the desired outcome.
"Standing" here means you're an affected party who is allowed to bring an action to court. There are lots of rules depending on the action to decide if you have standing. There's also historical tradition. For example, SCOTUS will tend to favor granting standing in First Amendment cases because government restraint on speech is viewed as having a chilling effect on freedom of expression.
Courts are political. They have always been political. The idea that judges are impartial scholars isolated from the world is a myth. This is what I want people to understand. I'm not even agreeing with or dismissing the ICJ's conclusions here. I'm talking about the judicial process.
The US judge seemed to go with the majority here. The Israeli judge concurred on some of the charges plausibility but not all. Only one judge disagreed with the court on all charges.
I don't think the judges had the kind of bias alleged by your comment (it's certainly possible they could have but their opinions don't seem to reflect that)
The US’s motivations are to maximize its power and profits, to think it is to keep the peace is naive. There are other, more economically valuable regions with conflicts in the world whose situations have higher probability of clean resolution than the Palestine conflict, so the US will focus on those instead until it is forced not to.
Anyway, there is no resolution to Israel/Palestine that won’t involve the probable demise of one of the two’s futures. Bloods being spilled and it will continue to be spilled.
Giving weapons to Ukraine wasn’t about helping Ukraine; it was about opposing Russia.
Israel is a strategic ally in the Middle East that also happens to have many high profile supporters in the US. There’s likely enormous pressure from within to do just about nothing and just let it play out.
Peace, unfortunately, is a conveniently flexible concept employed to conceal one’s motives and justify frivolous wars.
Have you read through their case? It's pretty weak in my opinion. They seem to think that any war with a high number of casualties and insufficient humanitarian aid counts as genocide. By their standard the US committed "genocide" against Japan in WW2, arguably Germany too.
The person isn’t saying that Germany committed genocide during WW2, which is obviously true, but pointing out that by the above definition of genocide, the US committed genocide against Germany and Japan during WW2.
I’m also not sure why SA would want to “gain brownie points from the people who support Hamas”. Wouldn’t they want to earn brownie points from those who support Israel, like the US, who they’d benefit more from?
> SA does not really present itself as an earnest or true actor in the sphere oh human rights.
Well, who does?
Among the major players in world politics I can't see any country with a clean reputation on human rights.
Disclaimer: I am Brazilian, a country with an horrible record of police brutality, of farmers killing indigenous people and environmental activists and an hypocritical ambivalence towards Putin's crimes. And that goes to the previous right-wing and current left-wing governments.
I mean, sure. Personally, I’m a relativist. It’s just weird to see the country that recently bent itself backwards—like no other country—to let Vladimir Putin into its territory (it was reported they even considering leaving the ICC), is now bringing suit in the ICC for arguably less worse crimes than Putin. SA was not just apathetic to the genocide/domicide in Ukraine, it basically went out of its way to be party to it. Now it’s taking Israel to court. strange. Sure, many countries are still dealing with Russia, but only SA is dealing with Russia _and_ bringing countries to The Hague at the same time.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed in Ukraine.
Putin is explicitly aiming to destroy Ukrainian national identity, which is genocide. He has disappeared countless people in the occupied territories… literally, countless, no one knows how many because rights orgs don’t operate there. He’s indicted by the ICC for stealing children from occupied territories to solve the Russian “demographic crisis,” and to remove the future generation of Ukrainians. There’s nothing frivolous about this, ask a Ukrainian. See Putin’s many speeches, including from February 24, to this effect, he doesn’t believe Ukrainians or Ukraine has a right to exist, and believed that Ukrainians can be dispensed with like subhumans.
"Mortality reporting is a crucial indicator of the severity of a conflict setting, but it can also be inflated or under-reported for political purposes. Amidst the ongoing conflict in Gaza, some political parties have indicated scepticism about the reporting of fatalities by the Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH).
The Gaza MoH has historically reported accurate mortality data, with discrepancies between MoH reporting and independent United Nations analyses ranging from 1·5% to 3·8% in previous conflicts. A comparison between the Gaza MoH and Israeli Foreign Ministry mortality figures for the 2014 war yielded an 8·0% discrepancy.
Public scepticism of the current reports by the Gaza MoH might undermine the efforts to reduce civilian harm and provide life-saving assistance." [0]
SA is dealing with Russia, so it might want to help Russia’s allies, and one of them is Iran who incidentally dreams of nothing less than, well, wiping Israel off the map with wiping out Jews as a cherry on top. Oops.
It’s all a tangled mess and I wouldn’t haste to take everything diplomats say at face value.
Arresting a head of a nuclear-armed state ? One that does not subscribe to the ICC ? How moronic would one have to be ?
Amusingly, the Biden govt had no issues officially supporting the ICC to deliver a ruling against Russia despite the US not being a party to the ICC themselves. That's like having your cake and eating it too.
None of China, India, Russia, and the United States are parties to the ICC.
> South Africa asks ICC to exempt it from Putin arrest
"to avoid war with Russia" was how the rest of that headline went, along with two quotes about how Russia said such an arrest would be considered an act of war.
While I would welcome Putin's arrest, I can't exactly fault South Africa for saying they'd rather not go to war.
> SA does not really present itself as an earnest or true actor in the sphere oh human rights.
Adversarial justice systems are an approach to dealing with the fact that individual actors in a system (including states in the international system) tend to be self-interested rather than earnest or true consistent advocates of the notional rules of the system.
> SA does not really present itself as an earnest or true actor in the sphere oh human rights.
If Putin is arrested in a foreign country, you'll have the largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world staring down at the very existence of that nation. No country would do this, however earnest they may be about human rights. Neither will it be fair to expect anyone to do this.
> If Putin is arrested in a foreign country, you'll have the largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world staring down at the very existence of that nation
Eh, or not. Putin isn’t Russia. Depending on timing, it might be a convenient time for a change in government. They could then demand his remittance, where he would no doubt get lost along the way or have a change of heart about his place in public policy.
That said, the prudent thing to do is that which was done. Barring Putin from entering South Africa.
If I were South African, I'd want my government to not risk nuclear annihilation (or even blackmail) - however small the risk may be.
And if you aren't South African, and especially if you live in a country under NATO's nuclear umbrella, you have no business telling them they should risk their lives (for whatever reason).
From a narrow, legalistic perspective Iraq was in material breach of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 in 2003 and so the invasion was justified on that basis. I am not arguing that the invasion was right (or even remotely a good idea), just that it was never firmly established as illegal under any treaty in force at the time. By contrast, there was never even a fig leaf of a legal justification for Russia's invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.
Bullshit. There was nothing in the resolution that called for war. The most it had said was in tune of - you must comply and if you don't we will report you. No particular enforcement.
> The outrage from the USA at the invasion of Ukraine, when the invasion of Iraq is a crime of the same magnitude.
I was certainly against it in 2003. The WMDs were bullshit. A war on "terror" is farcical. The profiteering and the industrial military complex, etc.
But I did later come around to the idea of getting Saddam and his government to stop genociding the Kurds.
Of course you should always assume a country like the US to be self-serving in its actions, but it's not as if it was taking additional land as its own, as is the case with Russia and Israel. Iraq was never going to be the 51st state.
Well, we could conclude with this logic that all countries are politically motivated. After all, the countries that condemned the Russia's invasion of Ukraine were also the countries that abstained from supporting the South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.
Moreover, it should not be forgotten that there is a much bigger number of civilians deaths in Gaza than Ukraine. In one month the number of deaths surpassed civilian casualties in Ukraine war. There is a more serious problem there than in Ukraine.
This is the same government that was just months prior going to quit the ICC so they could host Putin. They have no credibility, and frankly, no fucking power for most of the day. Utterly failed state.
Hard for them not to when there were missiles fired at them the day of this ruling. It would be difficult for them to not pursuit the removal of Hamas. Although, I agree that they have been heavy-handed in their operations.
> Spin this any way you like but The International Court of Justice said there is no genocide
No, it didn't, that’s simply a lie.
It said that the pleadings were sufficient plausible and that conditions present a sufficient risk of irreparable harm to warrant provisional measures against Israel. It didn't say that there is no genocide, and it didn't say that there is a genocide.
The application for provisional measures it ruled on is analogous in the US system to a preliminary injunction, it enables the court to order measures judged necessary to prevent irreparable harm while a case is pending on the merits, and is not a ruling on the merits.
The case continues on the merits, which it would not if the court were already able to determine that no genocide took place. (And it wouldn't, in that case, order provisional measures.)
> and didn't demand a ceasefire or that Israel ends the war
This, OTOH, is true; the ICJ did not include in its provisional measures against Israel a demand for Israel to cease all military operations.
> It didn't say that there is no genocide, and it didn't say that there is a genocide.
It may change, but CURRENTLY, it does not think there's sufficient evidence to rule in favour of provisional measures, i.e., it does not think there is a genocide.
> It may change, but CURRENTLY, it does not think there's sufficient evidence to rule in favour of provisional measures
False, it ruled that provisional measures against Israel were warranted and adopted four provisional measures against Israel by 15-2 vote, and two by 16-1 vote (the latter including the Israeli judge ad hoc in the majority.)
It really matters what are the provisional measures that were voted -
South Africa asked several measures that would stop the the war, allow independent parties to enter Gaza and arrest Israeli officials.
They got none of that.
What was asked from Israel is to continue its commitment to the genocide charter, update the court on aid Israel is letting into Gaza, and prosecute in Israeli courts people that call for genocide.
> It really matters what are the provisional measures that were voted - South Africa asked several measures that would stop the the war, allow independent parties to enter Gaza and arrest Israeli officials. They got none of that.
They didn't ask for anything about anyone arresting Israeli officials (who mostly would be in Israel, not Gaza), they asked for non-interference with international agencies entering Gaza for fact-finding and evidence preservation. Specifically, they asked:
The State of Israel shall take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; to that end, the State of Israel shall not act to deny or otherwise restrict access by fact-finding missions, international mandates and other bodies to Gaza to assist in ensuring the preservation and retention of said evidence.
But on that topic the court ordered:
The State of Israel shall take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of Article II and Article III of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide against members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip;
Yes, and we won't let HN turn into a current affairs site, but this site has always had a certain amount of political content, and that's why this particular thread is happening. For more information, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146184 and the links there.
I haven't gone back to check this, but I assume users flagged the posts and moderators didn't turn off the flags.
We only turn off flags when it seems like there's some basis and at least some chance for a reflective, substantive discussion. That isn't possible in the immediate aftermath of a shocking event like the atrocities of Oct 7—the reactions are necessarily going to be reflexive rather than reflective; completely understandably so—but the odds of any thoughtful conversation in that state of shock are basically zero.
Not that this thread or the related ones have been anything close to what I would wish for on HN, in terms of thoughtful conversation, but unfortunately we don't have the ability to make that happen, and not discussing the topic at all seems out of the question as well, so here we are with no good position and no solution.
Ok, I checked and the only moderator intervention I found was that we prevented flags from killing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37800508. That's not the same thing as turning the flags off, but it prevented the story from being marked [flagged][dead] instead of [flagged].
> Would 9/11 not be covered because it would be too "reflexive"?
Probably? I'd prefer not to discuss counterfactuals because it's impossible to know.
I know it's unsatisfying, but moderation of these things is never going to be (and certainly never going to feel) completely consistent. We try our best, but it's not possible, and especially not in hindsight, because moderation is guesswork.
>> We only turn off flags when it seems like there's some basis and at least some chance for a reflective, substantive discussion.
Mokay, but then can I grumble? I've posted several articles on the subject of the alleged genocide of the Palestinians by Israel's IDF, here on HN I mean, and they all got flagged and not unflagged. I took care to post opinions on both sides of the subject, e.g. this public statement by "over 800 scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies" warning of potential genocide [1], and this NYT article by historian of genocide Omer Bartov, saying that genocide is not in evidence ("yet") [2].
Those are articles by scholars who discuss the subject in the most dispassionate manner imaginable (Bartov is particularly a pleasure to read for his level-headed and erudite analysis, although it's obvious he'll find it very hard to admit genocide by his country which he clearly loves) and I'm pretty sure that means they satisfy the "curious conversation" goal you, dang, hold sacred (and it's good that you do).
So what's up? I've been posting this stuff for months and now the subject has exploded in mainstream discourse with the ICJ case, which makes it even more emotionally charged than before. Wouldn't it have been better to get a chance to discuss this before it got to this point?
And while I appreciate there's not one side that HN favours, the ability to flag anything anyone dislikes shapes the discourse in the way vocal minorities prefer.
Sorry for grumbling. I hope you know I respect and admire the work you've done to keep HN on the straight and narrow.
I'm afraid the answer is boringly straightforward: users flagged those articles, and either we didn't see them or we chose not to turn off the flags. Most likely we didn't see them.
The usual pattern is that flags come from a 'coalition' of users: some because they hold opposing views, while others just think the story doesn't belong on HN. Maybe they think it's off-topic or otherwise against the site guidelines, or they think the story has already been covered a lot recently, or who knows what.
I took a look at the flags on your two submissions. They followed this pattern. I saw one user whose flagging history looked primarily political, but only one—less than I expected to see. Among the others, here's a sample of other stories that at least one of those same users has flagged:
As you can see, there's a range of topics there (all the way to outright spam) and possible motives for flagging. The last one is interesting because unless I'm mistaken, it has opposite politics to the articles you posted. This is a sign of what I mean when I say that not all flaggers are politically motivated.
So that's the flagging side; now for the admin side:
First, we can't moderate anything we don't see and we don't come close to seeing everything. There's just too much. If there's an article you (or anyone) think particularly deserves consideration, I can always be reached at hn@ycombinator.com and I'm happy to take a look.
When deciding whether to turn off flags, one thing we consider is whether a story is substantive enough to provide a foundation for a thoughtful discussion rather than a flamewar. (On a topic like the OP, the odds are sadly awful no matter what the article is, but it is still an important consideration.) I hear you that you think your posts met this condition—I haven't read them, but let's say that's correct. The thing is, it's a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. There are other concerns.
For example, we have to consider how much the topic has been covered recently, and how much coverage of it HN can 'take' without showing signs of breaking under the strain.
People have wildly diverging views about how much is too much. For some users with strong feelings on a topic, no coverage can ever be too much; any limitation at all must be proof that the mods are biased against it. For other users, any coverage is already too much and proves the mods are biased against them. So it goes.
It's trickiest when there's a major ongoing topic that goes on for months and generates a series of stories. We can't just say "no, HN covered that a couple months ago" if there has been a significant state change; but we also have to be careful not to let many follow-up articles onto the front page (e.g. articles that repeat what has already been discussed, perhaps adding some minor twist or opinion take, or media outlets circulating their own version of the same story), because they'll use up the community's 'attention budget' for that story, leaving nothing for later.
For example in 2013, the Snowden saga dominated HN's front page—there were so many follow-up articles that when something important did happen (e.g. when he finally left Hong Kong or whatever), it got drowned out, or bogged down in the "I'm so sick of all these posts" complaint that repetition inevitably generates on HN.
The principle we ended up settling on was the Significant New Information (SNI) one: does the new submission count as SNI in the sequence of threads that have already happened? SNI can mean some objective new development in the story; or it can mean something with enough of a diff from previous related submissions to count as a somewhat different topic.
There are other considerations too, for example about HN as a whole, which is a different scope than a particular topic. But this comment is already too long, so I'll skip those, and anyway I wouldn't be able to remember them all.
Putting all of the above together, your submissions got flagged by regular users for regular reasons, and we either didn't see them or decided not to turn off the flags, probably not because the articles weren't substantive enough, but rather because either (1) the topic had had a major thread recently; or (2) we didn't think they cleared the bar for SNI. I'm just speaking generally because I don't have any memory of those posts.
I'm afraid I've given a false impression that this is all somehow orderly or co-ordinated. It isn't. It's random and ad hoc, and various random factors (like whether we see something at all) are at least as significant as all this stuff. It's not a repeatable process. Moreover, we just make bad calls sometimes—especially in hindsight. Some of it is accidents of timing. People are far too quick to infer general patterns from specific data points they observe. That's true about everything on HN, but it gets more true as the emotions are more engaged.
I have one last thing to respond to in your comment:
> I've been posting this stuff for months and now the subject has exploded in mainstream discourse with the ICJ case, which makes it even more emotionally charged than before. Wouldn't it have been better to get a chance to discuss this before it got to this point?
I don't think that's right. It was just as emotionally charged before, and threads about those articles you posted would have ended up in the same place that this thread did, as did the earlier threads in this sequence. So no, I don't think it would have been better to discuss before it got to this point; I think it's the other way around—by waiting till this point, we at least had clear grounds for having a thread, since there's no question that this was SNI.
St. Spyridon and all the saints, dude, where do you find the energy to write that much and read everything everyone else writes? I guess you use writing as a form of thinking, of course, but in any case you must really care about HN.
I had a disagreement a while ago with a user here and they said something that irked me so I asked them "is that the internet that you want?". And they seem to be taken aback by that because obviously there was some kind of internet that they wanted and that included a frank, but productive, exchange of views, and they seemed to agree their style of commenting wasn't conducive to that. So the conversation went a lot better afterwards. I have convinced myself that you, too, want a certain kind of internet -one where "curious conversation" can be had- and you're doing what you can to make HN, at least, that kind of internet. And I think it's working: the amount of flames and slagging matches on HN is near-zero and you still get to hear different opinions on everything (in fact, a few too many of those but, eh).
Which is to say, I didn't grumble for the flags to imply your moderation is one-sided, just to be clear. I was a bit surprised that the flags stood for two reasons: one, because I assumed when something gets flagged, it is brought to the attention of the moderation team and that makes it less likely that it will stay flagged if the flags are one-sided; and two, the reason I pointed out above, the scholarly credentials of the authors of the articles I posted.
Well you've answered both of those I guess. In particular:
>> It's not a repeatable process.
I understand that, but I tend to forget it. My bad.
I accept also that the ICJ case is "SNI". But the articles I posted were among the first to raise the issue in a scholarly manner, so I thought they were salient.
Btw- Bartov's text was really top-notch (I kind of disagree with him, though I have to defer to his obvious expertise). It's a bit dated now that so much time has passed and he's updated his opinion a bit (still not genocide) but anyway, for anyone interested in this subject and having an urgent need for a voice of reason amid the madness, for now at least he will do.
I don't come close to reading everything, that's for sure. I took time to write the above because I know people are particularly sensitive on this question about this topic.
> the amount of flames and slagging matches on HN is near-zero
I wish. But I guess if anyone has this perception at all, that's a sign of something working.
> I assumed when something gets flagged, it is brought to the attention of the moderation team
That's mostly true, but not as true as it used to be. There are a lot of flagged stories. While at least one moderator does note them all, it has to be done quickly and it's easy to miss salient details.
A agree about this topic, but "technical"-politics (=tech related) should still belong here (eg. EU vs Apple, EU vs encryption, etc.). After all, who else than us nerds can understand the topic, and discuss it without the "only pedos need e2e encryption, if you are not a pedo, what are you hiding?".
It's common for people with strong feelings on a topic to leap to the conclusion that the mods are biased against their side and secretly supporting the opposite. This happens from every perspective on every divisive topic.
You are right, it's unfair because there is no strong evidence to make that assertion.
I don't mind about what are your personal political affiliations or sympathies, however, I still maintain that this topic is textbook against the guidelines, and because of that I'm still afraid we will see post against candidate X in the front page in a few months. Time will tell.
I'm not saying we always make the right call—we don't, and anyhow people always disagree about what the right call is. But the underlying principles are at least pretty clear.
I complained a few months ago that HN was the other way about an article that was 'disappeared' from HN on the atrocities in Gaza at the hands of Israel, it had scholarly backing.
Your comment doesn't stand to any reason and discussion here on HN are highly moderated, in my opinion at times it's balanced towards Israel as the term 'anti-semitim' is thrown around to stop any discussion and valid criticism about the Gaza war.
You can't appease everyone and 'anti-Semitism' has been weaponised very successfully by people who know exactly what they're doing.
If you think dang is trying to steer the conversation in an anti-israel direction, you are completely removed from reality. I've never seen dang operate in any controversial or bad faith way on this site. He's just trying to maintain the quality of the discourse.
Are we allowed to discuss the objective facts on the ground in Gaza or are those facts anti-semitic?
Please don't post flamewar comments to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
I'm sure that you have legitimate reasons to feel the way you do, but you're posting to this thread in a way that is against the intended spirit, as I tried to explain it in the pinned comment at the top. Please don't do that. If you can't post in the intended spirit, that's understandable, but in that case please don't post until you can.
> Any rational person of western ideology, that isn’t myopically viewing this as some oppressed/oppressor academic generalization, gets why Israel must act the way they are acting.
Why must Israel act in a way that includes indiscriminate bombing? Those aren't just my words, by the way, but President Biden's [0], who's a self-proclaimed Zionist. [1]
Isn't it (A) not effective at eliminating Hamas and (B) likely to increase anti-Israel sentiment and radicalize the Gazan population, which is harmful to Israel's long-term security?
Perhaps I am unlearned in this area but I am unclear why the Jewish state, after its people experienced the atrocities of World War II, would act in this manner toward the Palestinians. Can anyone shed light on this? I understand completely the need to rid the world of Hamas terrorists, but in the process they have shown a reckless disregard (to put it mildly) for Palestinian people and their wellbeing.
> ... the Jewish state... its people experienced...
This is your error. States and peoples are not unitary entities with a single coherent outlook and will. The vast majority of the Israeli population is far too young to have directly experienced the Holocaust, which ended 80 years ago. There are plenty of people in Israel who do not want to commit atrocities against Palestinians. There are also people who feel that they have a (literally) god-given right to occupy the territories where Palestinians currently live. If you think of Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet as being basically the same people who survived Nazi concentration camps in World War 2, then nothing Israel is doing in 2024 will make much sense.
To my mind, Israel's actions toward Palestinians (both in Gaza and the West Bank) are powerful evidence that nationalism inherently leads to atrocity no matter who's involved. If the cultural memory of being targeted by the Holocaust won't stop an ethno-state from setting up an apartheid regime, what will?
It's under-remarked on, but for a majority of Israeli Jewish people, the nakba era might have more immediate salience than the Holocaust. That's because they're not, as the popular imagination has it, all colonists from Europe; they're the Jewish people of the Middle East and North Africa, all of whom were forcefully expelled from their own homes after 1948.
There's no question that the Holocaust has enormous salience to Israeli Jewish people. But if you trace your roots to rural Arab Jewish families from Yemen or Iraq, your more immediate concern would be your own family's immediate viability in a world without Israel. A new rise of European fascism wouldn't be your problem; the fact that you'd have literally no place to go would be. You're sure as shit not moving back to Yemen.
I feel like I haven't written anything that would give the impression that I'm unaware of the crimes Israel inflicted on Arabs during the capital-n Nakba.
The problem is: it doesn't matter. The point is that Arab Jewish people are in Israel now, by the millions. The issue isn't that they've won some kind of trauma competition; it's the simple practical fact of their presence and the history that brought them there.
Your second point, about MENA "nations" expelling Jewish people "in a vacuum", is deeply concerning. No matter what Israel did in Palestine, Arab Jewish people had no culpability. Arguments like this are why the distinction between criticism of Israel and outright antisemitism are so slippery. I too think that distinction is weaponized, but it's hard to press the point when you're making facially antisemitic arguments.
Clearly it does matter to significant portions of the people who either directly experienced it or are the children of those who did. I would argue it was a major driving factor for violent opposition to the Israeli state, now since replaced by Israel's current actions (current as in last 30 years) as the impetus.
> No matter what Israel did in Palestine, Arab Jewish people had no culpability.
I'm glad this discussion has forced me to do some research. I actually wonder how many of the early immigrant waves were even "expelled" in the first place, rather than moving of their own volition. Here's the example from Yemen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Magic_Carpet_(Yemen)...
And in Iraq's case:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ezra_and_Nehemiah
"Like most Arab League states, Iraq initially forbade the emigration of its Jews after the 1948 war on the grounds that allowing them to go to Israel would strengthen that state; however, by 1949 the Iraqi Zionist underground was smuggling Jews out of the country to Iran at about a rate of 1,000 a month, from where they were flown to Israel.[23] At the time, the British believed that the Zionist underground was agitating in Iraq in order to assist US fund-raising and to "offset the bad impression caused by the Jewish attitudes to Arab refugees".
> That the MENA nations who expelled their minority Jewish populations did so in a vacuum
How does something occurring in Palestine justify this? Tying the actions of Jewish militias to your local Jewish population is antisemitic… if they expelled them to protest the creation of Israel, then that isn’t anti-Zionist. That they mostly all ended up going to Israel is ironically supporting the Zionist cause
No, there were no reports of a pogrom against Jews in Egypt in 1956. However, during the Suez Crisis in the same year, some Jewish individuals faced increased tensions and discrimination. Many Jews eventually left Egypt, but it wasn't a pogrom in the traditional sense.
In the context of a discussion about potential crimes against humanity, an argument that ethnic cleansing is sometimes ok feels particularly unconvincing.
> How does something occurring in Palestine justify this?
The real question is, would that have happened if it were not for:
-demonstrated brutality against the Palestinian population
-explicit creation of the Israeli state tied to a particular ethno-religious identity
If there had been no violence, and if Israel had just been a newly-independent country with the creation led by but not defined by the culture of the Jewish immigrants, would there have been a purge across the region? Personally I think not.
I'm trying to highlight that there is significantly more nuance to the creation of Israel beyond "we just showed up one day and everyone was mean to us for no reason" which, IMO, has surprisingly crept into numerous comments even on HN where you would expect such an educated demographic to know better...
This is again a frankly antisemitic argument. Arab Jewish people in Tunisia bore no responsibility whatsoever for what happened 1800 miles away from them. Racism isn't nuance, it's just racism.
This is both false and irrelevant. Anti-Jewish pograms in MENA following the Arab-Israeli war are well documented. Israel had a variety of motivations for ensuring they could comfortably resettle in Israeli territory, but that doesn't change the crisis Arab Jewish people faced in their home countries: they were forcibly expelled.
Further, it doesn't matter. Most stats I've seen suggest that the Mizrahim are at least a plurality of Israelis, and none of those people can return to their "colonialist home countries". By way of example, long before the current Gaza war, the literal first "official" action Ansar Allah took when it established control of territory in Yemen was to expel the very few remaining Jewish families.
People can say it matters until they're blue in the face, but the legitimacy of Israeli popular sovereignty within its 1967 borders is so difficult to argue with that we might as well accept it as complete. We're talking about millions of people, well armed, with a series of powerful historical arguments, and, of course, a nuclear arsenal. Their self-conception is immensely material in ways I don't feel like online Palestinian activists understand.
One reasonable way to think about Israel: their moral claim to Tel Aviv is much stronger than our claim to Dallas. And yet, for all the "turtle island" talk, no serious person entertains the idea of rolling back American sovereignty.
None of this legitimizes the ongoing military strategy in Gaza, or, for that matter, the West Bank crisis or the management of the 2-state process, something that the Israeli right has successfully and for decades worked to derail.
I only bring this up because I feel like there's a tendency in message board discussions to center Israel's legitimacy on the Holocaust, as if that's the sum total of what binds Israeli Jewish people to the land. No, it's much more complicated and deep than that.
I don't believe that might makes right and just because Israel is armed and backed by the West does not give them impunity to steal land. 1948 was not hundreds of years ago, there are people who are still alive who were ethnically cleansed from their land and forced into Gaza. Palestinians have a much stronger right of return than anyone who wasn't living in Palestine prior to 1948.
I think you might believe might makes right more than you realize, because, as I've laid out, it's easier to make a moral case for Israeli sovereignty over Tel Aviv than for American control of Texas --- you advocate against Israel because it seems like a plausible cause, and that plausibility is denominated in international military might. You don't advocate for the return of Texas to the people of Mexico because you viscerally understand it's never going to happen.
That being the case (maybe it isn't!), there are two big problems with your strategy:
1. It isn't possible. They're not going anywhere.
2. It's incoherent. There are very few countries in the world with a morally-hygienic claim to their land. Certainly, with the possible exception of Egypt, none of Israel's neighbors can! They're all of them creations of France and the UK.
You're making a lot of assumptions about my position. I most certainly do think we owe both indigenous people and Black people massive amounts of land reparations in the US.
Israel can be disbanded just like South Africa was disbanded. It has less support than ever before politically.
Several additional problems with your argument past what D.C. just said:
1. Israel has in fact immense support, far more than the South African government ever had.
2. Apartheid South Africa was a system of minoritarian rule, which does not exist within the 1967 borders of Israel (further, Arab Israelis have nominally full citizenship rights, and in fact fight for the IDF; they are a minority, unlike the victims of Apartheid, but they're also not living under an apartheid system).
3. For a majority of Israeli Jewish people, there is no other place in the world for them to go. There is no prospect of a negotiated settlement that forecloses on a Jewish state. Their BATNA is war. That wasn't the case with the Boers.
In these kinds of discussions I feel like people conflate the situation in Gaza and the West Bank with that of Israel proper. Continued Israeli occupation of Gaza probably is untenable! That occupation will eventually be disbanded, the way South African Apartheid was. But here we're talking about the entire state of Israel. Like I said, start with Texas, because that'll happen first.
> Apartheid... which does not exist within the 1967 borders of Israel
It isn't formal, but Arabs are marginalized and discriminated against. In West Bank, E Jerusalem, and Hebron, all that supremacy is dialed upto 11.
> Israel has in fact immense support
Fear and intimidation isn't support. Besides, I don't see this support lasting long outside of the US and Germany if the Oslo-process continues, which it will because for the Israeli right Judea and Samaria are too good to give up.
> talking about the entire state of Israel
I think folks mean the one-state reality but not total exodus of the Jews, though, it might come to pass if they let their guard down, now that there's genuine animosity to fuel a feud for another century.
I'm assuming you just missed the previous comments where I agreed that the Palestinians have a powerful moral argument about Gaza and the West Bank. If you read the thread, I think you'll see we might not have much to disagree about.
> Israel can be disbanded just like South Africa was disbanded.
South Africa wasn't disbanded, not even close. Apartheid ended more-or-less peacefully; non-whites were given the vote; and more-or-less democratic elections have been held ever since.
It's not self-evident that "the cultural memory of being targeted by the Holocaust [should] stop an ethno-state from setting up an apartheid regime". In Liberia, where the freed American slaves were sent to, they essentially enslaved the native population.
You've been posting flamewar comments to this thread, which is against HN's rules and particularly against the intended spirit that I tried to express at the top of the thread. Please stop doing this. The thread is hellish enough as it is, and posts like these put it on the fast track to far worse.
Then kindly please eliminate racist and antisemitic comments so people don't have to respond to them. Especially the ones that spread false information and hatred like the comment I was responding to.
I'm trying to make the moderation calls as even-handed as possible and have scolded many accounts (and banned some) who are taking the opposite position from yours—including the commenter who was just arguing with you here.
That doesn't change the fact that you (I don't mean you personally, but everyone commenting) need to follow the rules and post in the intended spirit regardless of what others are doing.
Everyone always feels like the other started it and did worse; if you take that as a basis, all we end up with is a downward spiral, and that's what we're trying to avoid here.
You've been posting flamewar comments to this thread, which is against HN's rules and particularly against the intended spirit that I tried to express at the top of the thread. Please stop doing this. The thread is hellish enough as it is, and posts like these put it on the fast track to far worse.
> after its people experienced the atrocities of World War II, would act in this manner toward the Palestinians.
That's part of why they're acting this way. Security fears. I'm telling you, the median Israeli isn't motivated by bloodlust or a desire for land, they're motivated by a high level of fear that they will one day be killed by Hamas/Hezbollah/etc. That fear causes them to demand complete "security control" of the West Bank and Gaza. That fear explains why they would not budge on allowing Palestinians an army as part of previous two-state negotiations. That fear explains why they would give back the Sinai but not the geographical high ground of the Golan Heights. That fear explains why the Israeli Left completely collapsed after the Second Intifada. They're happy to give part of the West Bank back in two state negotiations, but they would never, ever, allow Palestine an army. Because of security fears. The Palestine-Israeli conflict is this positive feedback loop caused by a desire for security conflicting with a desire for freedom. We're in the terminal doom spiral phase of this feedback loop right now.
(@dang doesn't work - I saw this by accident but the only guaranteed message delivery is hn@ycombinator.com)
I wouldn't use the term propaganda account for several reasons, one of which is that on any divisive topic, no one agrees about what counts as 'propaganda'. People mostly use that word to refer to points they strongly disagree with. In that way, it's a lot like the word censorship. For moderation purposes, it's better to use different words so we don't get tangled in definitional arguments.
But it's against HN's rules to use the site primarily for political battle (among other things), and when an account does that repeatedly and ignores our requests to stop, we usually end up banning it. I did that a while ago in this case.
If the lesson is "Everybody wants to kill us and the only solution to safety is to have a nation state and defend at all costs against any other group", well it just all make sense.
Of course this is not the conclusion of every jew in the world but I fully expect it to be the conclusion of post WWII zionists, even though it was not the case for a lot of them that were influenced by socialist ideas but lost influence and power with time.
Of course the strategy of always planning for aggression in order to come up on top is somewhat self realizing in that defending your dominant position will necessarily mean abuses of power and resistance to it.
So the lesson is "Better safe than sorry" although it's not that simple because there is actually a safety cost to pay to maintain such a strategy.
The problem with October 7th massacre was Israeli government with Netanyahu at the top ignored their own rules of "Better safe than sorry" and that led to a monster growing at their borders (both Hamas and Hizbollah). Well, now it's "better be late than never".
> ignored ... and that led to a monster growing at their borders
Ignored? No, most of that administration actively encouraged and fostered Hamas for years and years. To their mind, it was better for their aims to build Hamas into a hardline organization, and more appealing than the alternative, which was a Palestine which was (slowly) becoming more open to compromise, more diplomatic (around the end of Arafat).
It pushed their nationalist agenda further to have a boogeyman in the form of Hamas, than to have to answer awkward questions like "Palestine is being very reasonable and open, so why isn't Israel?"
This is not quite true. The late Hamas rhetoric was that they are opposed two-state solution, but quietly, somewhere in 2010-s they began agreeing to 1967 borders.
Israel's tactic has always been deterrence: I will inflict you so much pain that you will think twice before doing this again. Despite being proven wrong, a "realist politician' will automatically think of adding more (and then some) deterrence as the only solution.
I remember 20 years ago, during the first bombing of Gaza, they hit just ONE building and felt pressured enough to apologize for the handful of civilian deaths. Unfortunately, faced with larger threats (real or imaginary) and weak international pressure, Israel has been able to escalate the level of deterrence through the years to what we are witnessing now.
That is why any ruling to curb that "automatic" escalation (like today) is wholeheartedly welcomed.
IMO there are also subtler layers of racism coloring these policies. It's not as blatant as the far-right rhetoric, but a persistent undertone within elements of Israeli society justifies severe deterrence tactics and totally overide any empathy learnt from historical lessons.
Yes. That is why I said: faced with larger threats
What I can add is that this is indeed not just a "larger" threat for them. It "activated" a millennium-deep Jewish trauma (through pogroms up to the Holocaust). Deep, very deep.
Maybe. However, the situation itself is so special, I'm not sure how you would "generalize it" to others. And there is really nothing esoteric about the deep trauma. It is widely documented.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
No essentially it is as simple as how any abuser bully behaves. They will continue their behavior as long as they are allowed to. Look at US for enabling them.
You've been posting repeatedly to this thread in a way that has been crossing into flamewar and breaking the intended spirit that I tried to express in my pinned comment at the top. Could you please stop doing this? It leads to hellish flamewar, and we don't want that here.
I am certain that you have very legitimate reasons for feeling strongly. Whatever your reasons may be, I respect them. At the same time, posting in a thread like this has to do with how one manages one's feelings: do they express themselves in (let's call it) a weaponized way? if so, that's against the intended spirit here. Or can you post in a way that is somehow larger than that? No one can be asked to do the latter, but I do think we can ask commenters to refrain from posting if they can't get there.
You've been posting repeatedly to this thread in a way that has been crossing into flamewar and breaking the intended spirit that I tried to express in my pinned comment at the top. Could you please stop doing this? It leads to hellish flamewar, and we don't want that here.
I am certain that you have very legitimate reasons for feeling strongly. Whatever your reasons may be, I respect them. At the same time, posting in a thread like this has to do with how one manages one's feelings: do they express themselves in (let's call it) a weaponized way? if so, that's against the intended spirit here. Or can you post in a way that is somehow larger than that? No one can be asked to do the latter, but I do think we can ask commenters to refrain from posting if they can't get there.
Dang, I think it would be better if you just didn't take sides on this and stopped policing vigorously. Both comments here are nowhere flame war territory.
The moderation issue here is not those two comments but the repeated pattern in each case.
Past experience has unfortunately made it clear that moderation needs to be relatively active on topics that are as divisive as this one. I wish it weren't so.
If you look at the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention's statement [1], they call both the Hamas attack and the current Israeli action Genocidal. They characterise genocidal attacks in terms of not just their factual effect, but the intentional psychological effect of an "massacre of symbols of group life", in which the genocidaires deliberately try to symbolically erase the other group, in ways which are hugely traumatic: "inversion rituals, such as the killing of children in front of their family members; and desecration rituals, such as the massacre of entire families, the setting fire to homes with families still inside them, and the desecration of dead bodies", which they see evidence of in the Hamas attack. This is all magnified by the existing trauma of the Jewish people, in the holocaust but also events since, in living memory of more people - such as 9/11 (an attack on the city with the largest Jewish population).
So you have to realise that Israelis are not thinking normally right now. Even though the Hamas attack has in military terms "culminated", and Israel's military is many times more powerful, their trauma leads them to believe that there is a real, present threat of extinction of the Israeli state and their own nation and families. Under such conditions, it is very hard for them to see the suffering of 'the enemy' as relevent.
It also doesn't help that basically everyone else is just piling responsibility for a solution on the Israelis, despite the US, UK and Europe having enormous historic responsibility for setting up the situation.
[please note, this is explanation, not justification]
> So you have to realise that Israelis are not thinking normally right now. Even though the Hamas attack has in military terms "culminated", and Israel's military is many times more powerful, their trauma leads them to believe that there is a real, present threat of extinction of the Israeli state and their own nation and families.
I think that they think there is a real, persistent threat of Hamas continuing to make this kind of attack. Hamas has consistently said so, so Israel has reasonable grounds for thinking so. Hamas has even said that they won't settle for a two-state solution - they demand the destruction of Israel.
So if you're an Israeli, that leaves you very few choices: stay and accept being massacred every so often, shut down the country and leave, or destroy Hamas. Unsurprisingly, they choose the third option.
Here we run into the difficulties of the current media environment. With the Ukraine war, everyone and his dog is offering their tactical and strategic analysis. Here, not so much - just moral statements and talking points. So, while it doesn't seem plausible to me that Hamas would be able to repeat its attack again and again - it managed to create such a large attack because the IDF (or its political masters) f*cked up - I don't really have the analysis to back that up. What actually were Israel's military options? What could Hamas plausibly do under various scenarios?
I don't think the attack could be repeated as successfully even if Israel withdrew. And Israel clearly had justification doing something - but without an analysis of their options, it's hard to know what's justified - which is the heart of this case.
I agree that Israel's options are limited - in the absence of outside assistance. In fact, I don't see how Israel can solve the situation in the absence of a neutral outside security force. Here's why:
For a peaceful settlement, both populations need to be given hope.
- Israelis need hope of long term safety and security
- Palestinians need hope of self-determination and civil rights.
No deployment of Israeli forces satisfies both conditions. If Israel occupies Gaza, they deny the Palestinian hope. If they withdraw, they give up their own (which they won't do). Even if Hamas is destroyed, the PA is too weak to guarantee security for either Palestinians or Israelis, and Israel won't trust them enough to allow them to grow strong. Ergo, a neutral force is needed. But, that would require US co-operation, if not actual US forces, and I don't think Biden will risk it in an election year.
Maybe not the US. In fact, probably not the US - the Palestinians would (perhaps rightly) view them as likely biased.
This sounds like the perfect task for a UN peacekeeping force. (Of course, after various "resolutions" over the years, the Israelis may view the UN as biased...)
not only resolutions, and the UN's obsession with israel, but also the complete failure of UN peacekeepers between lebanon and israel as well. Israel won't hand their security to the UN over in any way - the UN has demonstrated they aren't fair to israel and aren't capable of acting as peacekeepers.
It would likely have to be some kind of ad-hoc force, maybe authorised by the UN security council or general assembly for legal reasons, but where the composition was agreed by Israel and the PA. And not under the management of the UN.
which UN force will enter gaza, fight door to door against booby traps and AT teams, the way Israel is doing currently, when the next round of rockets go off?
The problem is that right now, Israelis feel like anything other than obliterating Gaza is a fantasy that cannot work. But see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39152982
There are only three ways it can end, two involve both sides showing some trust, and the third involves war crimes. Given the carnage to both sides means trusting each other is unlikely, that takes us down to the "fantasy" of trusting a third party, or war crimes. Take your pick.
It's not about religion, it's about occupation. Zionists got permission to occupy the land from the British with The Balfour Declaration then started the invasion in full in 1948 with Nakba. When you occupy someone's land, there can never be peace until they get their land back or are fully exterminated or controlled militarily. This is why colonization most often leads to genocide or permanent apartheid.
>Zionists got permission to occupy the land from the British with The Balfour Declaration
This is not an accurate representation. Jewish people were given the legal ability to purchase land in Mandatory Palestine. The vast majority of Palestinian Arabs were tenant farmers or landless labourers. Jewish land purchases inevitably led to the displacement of these tenants, but this was the lawful outcome of a lawful land sale.
The issues surrounding occupation of land after the 1948 and 1967 wars are significantly more complex and arguably do involve violations of international law by Israel.
So what if that's true (and it's not entirely true - there was forced takeovers of land, and there continues to be land theft in the West Bank today).
If I sell you my land, does that make it right for you to form a separate state with it? Perhaps I would rethink that decision with the advance knowledge of your intentions.
When Israel declared independence, that land was not governed by any state due to the withdrawal of the British Mandate. The Palestinians had previously been offered statehood through the 1947 UN Partition Plan, but had rejected it. They did not take steps to establish their own state in anticipation of the British withdrawal.
If I understand what's happened elsewhere correctly, then we have an example of this elsewhere at the world stage -- the separation of Kosovo from Serbia is in a large part due to land purchases from Albanians, who then vied for independence when their population grew enough.
Zionists were living in the area long before British Mandatory Palestine or the Balfour Declaration - they bought land and legitimately immigrated there while it was under control of the Ottoman Empire. The UN chose to partition the region in 1947 due to ongoing violence on both sides - and the British actually voted against it I believe. The Arab states then chose to go to war against the newly formed Israel - not the other way around, as your comment implies.
I have read a bit about this and I understand the explanation but I still don’t understand how a group of people subject to genocide can turn around and a few generations later be behaving in many (obviously not all) of the same ways toward another group. I would think that if anything the Israeli people would have some empathy and try to find a two state solution that exists in peace.
Because propaganda works everywhere. Teach people that “the other” seeks their destruction and then reframe any violence as tragically necessary self-defense.
The history books don’t mention the Nakba and civilian casualty statistics in Gaza are dismissed as Hamas propaganda.
And I don’t mean to suggest Israel is unique in this. There are many parallels for instance with American “world police” patriotism.
Reminds the cases of child abuse that run in families, with former child victims becoming perpetrators against their own children[1]. But on on a whole society level.
There are many Jewish people, born in Israel and outside of Israel, who do long for a two-state solution or a one-state solution where everyone lives as equals. But sadly those are not the people who hold political or military power.
The Palestinians have been offered a two-state solution on more-or-less reasonable terms on at least two occasions. It isn't for me to say whether they were right to reject those offers, but the human cost of continued conflict has obviously been borne disproportionately by the Palestinians, particularly Palestinian civilians. Sadly, the actions of extremists on both sides have made the possibility of a two state solution increasingly remote.
You're right. It's incomprehensible. In such a situation I can recommend resolving the impasse by broadening what you consider to be the possibly solution space. More specifically, consider the possibility that what you think is happening is not an accurate reflection of what is actually happening.
I refer in my comment to the impact to non-Hamas Palestinians. Eliminating the terrorist organization of Hamas is not controversial (at least in my mind), but the civilian casualties to regular Palestinians seems to be indefensible (again, at least in my mind)
Problem is no one will take refugees from Gaza even temporarily. If countries would the death toll would be much less. The reason Egypt doesn't is because Hamas has links to and provides support for Islamic terrorists groups involved the Sinai Insurgency. I think that hope had been that over time since 2007 Hamas would moderate and act more rationally. Instead the opposite has happened.
So the combination having to destroy Hamas and the unwillingness of other countries to take refugees is terrible for hapless civilians.
> Problem is no one will take refugees from Gaza even temporarily.
Problem is history shows "temporary" displacement tend to become permanent displacement (AKA Ethnic cleansing) under the current settler-apartheid regime ruling Israel, so other countries understandably refrain to abet ethnic cleansing.
I agree the worst thing that could happen is displaced Palestinians from Gaza refusing to go back to where other people have decided they have to live because otherwise it'd be ethnic cleansing.
> Problem is no one will take refugees from Gaza even temporarily. If countries would the death toll would be much less.
Why should other countries bear the burden and costs for a problem that is overwhelmingly a consequence of the actions of the Israeli state in general, and the current far-right government in particular?
The UN does not corroborate the accusations you levy against Hamas. Israel has (documented) killed hundreds of UN or general aid workers; to my knowledge, Hamas has killed none.
Please don't cross into flamewar and please review my comment at the top of this thread. If you can't post within that spirit, please don't post. If this thread turns conflictual the descent into hell will be sharp and steep. We don't want that here.
Having naive trust in political entities is frankly bellying a level of willful ignorance that humanity should have evolved from by now. Good luck on your journey.
I’m not even sure what accusation you deny. Quote the accusation I made you have a problem with.
Please don't cross into flamewar and please review my comment at the top of this thread. If you can't post within that spirit, please don't post. If this thread turns conflictual the descent into hell will be sharp and steep. We don't want that here.
> When you occupy someone's land, there can never be peace until they get their land back or are fully exterminated or controlled militarily.
I can certainly think of some other ethnicity in that region who had their land occupied and was cleansed from the region. They even somehow managed to survive an attempt to fully exterminate them! Surely there will be peace once they get all of their land back :)
> I can certainly think of some other ethnicity in that region who had their land occupied and was cleansed from the region.
And I can certainly think of some other ethnicity in that region who that ethnicity cleansed from the region according to their own holy book. :)
Deuteronomy 20:16-17 (God telling Joshua, leader of the Israelites, to go to war)
> 16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.
Well, it was a joke (hence the :)) showing that the quoted statement also applies in reverse and to continue with that joke it certainly seems like this case satisfies the "or are fully exterminated" criteria, so point taken :)
Slightly more seriously (Though only very slightly more seriously :)), IIRC our current understanding of history is that the jews are Canaanites. Quoting from Wikipedia "Ancestors of the Israelites are thought to have included ancient Semitic-speaking peoples native to this area.[59]: 78–79 Modern archaeological accounts suggest that the Israelites and their culture branched out of the Canaanite peoples through the development of a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion centered on Yahweh.", so at the very least one of those peoples survived until today :)
> When you occupy someone's land, there can never be peace until they get their land back or are fully exterminated or controlled militarily
I don’t understand why people think this is a good argument. Lots and lots of places shifted in control since 1948. Poland moved half a country to the left, world empires got decolonized, India and Pakistan split and then the latter split once more, all with enormous population movements, the list is nearly endless. “All of that should revert to how it was before, even if at the cost of kicking out or killing everybody who live there” is a pretty extreme revisionist take.
In all these countries, “we should restore our borders to $maximumSizeEver” is widely understood to be a far right take (the Russians want Ukraine, the Greater Hungary people want Transylvania, the Greek neonazis want Trabzon (!), everybody wants Kashmir, etc etc etc). It’s a far right talking point. But for Palestine it’s somehow a mainstream opinion. I don’t get it.
I mean, there’s lots of good arguments to be made for the Palestinian case IMO but I don’t find “they once had more land and therefore they should get it all back no matter the consequences” very compelling.
Forcing people off of their land is the definition of ethnic cleansing and I don't think that's ever ok nor generally accepted in the world. I think Israel is a lot like apartheid South Africa. You can end the apartheid government and start making reparations, including land back to the native inhabitants.
Yeah it's never OK but do you also think Finland should get Viipuri back? That was the second-largest city of Finland, the Soviets took it in WWII and kicked out all the Finns and that was that. It's now Vyborg, a sleepy Russian town of little importance. That was a catastrophe too.
Do you also think Lviv should be Polish? And Wrocław German? And Trabzon Greek? No wait I mean Armenian, which do we even pick, seriously everybody wants Trabzon! Should the entire Arabian peninsula be Turkish again?
Where does it stop? Why should Palestine be restored to its one-time borders but not the rest? All this happened in a time when moving populations around at the whim of a few imperialist rulers was considered a super normal thing to do. That doesn't make it right, but the Nakba isn't a particularly unique historical event. Get over it, and focus on the actual current events that are also bad, such as the settlements, decades of effective imprisonment of everybody in Gaza, and so on. There's plenty of good arguments! But "from the river to the sea" is a far right revisionist talking point and in my opinion it does an enormous disservice to the Palestinian case.
The issue is that after the Winter war there was still a Finland, after WWII there was still a Poland, and a Germany and a Turkey and a Greece and an Armenia.
There is now no real Palestine state and no realistic prospect of one. Somewhere between 5 and 8 million Palestinians are now condemned to be extremely unwilling subjects of an endless military occupation by a hostile state and reduced to second class status in their own homeland.
I don't think that's a crucial enough difference to be in favour of destroying an entire country and deporting or killing the people in it. You can totally be in favour of freedom for Palestine, for a one or two state solution, in all kinds of configurations, without supporting the "kill or deport the Jews" argument.
It's really not very nuanced at all - if you want to kill or deport all the Jews, even when formulated in fluffy terms like "give those poor Palestinians their homeland back", you're not really trying to make the world a better place are you? You'd be just like those far right Israelis who seem to want to kill or deport all the Palestinians. It's the exact same vibe, just aimed in the other direction. They're both the baddies. Don't be like them.
> to be in favour of destroying an entire country and deporting or killing the people in it.
woah! dial it back there. I advocated no such thing
please take a few deep breaths and read slowly over the thread making note of who said what. then please reconsider slinging accusations like that around.
I'm in favour of a two state solution.
My main point is that the long term actions of the Israeli state, especially in the West Bank, have made the viability of a Palestinian state (i.e. one in coexistence with Israel) completely impossible.
This thread is about this sentence from another commenter:
> When you occupy someone's land, there can never be peace until they get their land back or are fully exterminated or controlled militarily
This is advocating for destroying an entire country and deporting or killing the people in it. This is the context in which I read your comment, because you came to their defense. I read your comment as explaining why you thought their comment was a perfectly OK one.
I'm happy to read you don't actually agree on this with them, and I think we pretty much agree.
You're misreading what I said (might be my fault for not being clear enough!). I mean that the occupier would have to genocide all of the occupied to have peace. Essentially there will be permanent resistance unless the occupied are given full rights or completely oppressed. Clearly the former is desirable and the latter very undesirable.
Right! I did indeed misunderstand that. And I agree with @biorach's point in response to yours: of course there are compromises and middle grounds and ways forward that hurt for everybody (but less than perpetual war would). It's how this stuff usually goes.
I think that's a honest rebuttal to my point even if I don't agree. I don't though because I think Nakba was egregious, asymmetric and recent enough that I believe the damage can be undone.
Yeah indeed, and in fact I just edited that out because I realized I had it wrong. EDIT: turns out I edited the next thing out, the "defense" thing is still in. Keeping it on because otherwise this gets even more messy.
ANYWAY I think you made your point clear and we agree, sorry for messy edit commenting here :)
FWIW I clicked "vouch" on your response to them, I have no idea why it got flagged into oblivion, it's the kind of nice concise nuanced point that I wish I could make :D
What you forget to mention is that, in many cases, a lot of those moves are indeed still contested.
And in fact, the Zionist argument is exactly that one: "because there were some Jews here 2000 years ago, this land must be a Jewish ethnostate". Why is that argument ok, but "there were Arabs here 80 years ago" is not?
Because, in reality, both arguments are stupid and tribal to a level rarely seen after 1950. Both should join modernity and move to a shared state - not based on XIX century racism, but on XXI century respect for democracy, religious equality, etc etc.
Unfortunately, the side with (atomic) power refuses to even countenance the possibility, because of a tribalistic ideology that shames some of their magnificent ancestors. And so we continue with an eye for an eye, like in the darkest of times.
> there can never be peace until they get their land back or are fully exterminated or controlled militarily.
I think you could add assimilation to this list. In this particular instance though, it looks almost entirely unlikely (due to Israel being fundamentally defined as a Jewish state).
I think this is rooted in a strangely common misconception that Israelis actually want any of this violence. There's a minority who does, but it's no where near as being as common as on the Palestinian side (around 60-70% of Palestinians support the October 7 massacre)
Urban warfare is an ugly and complicated thing. Many of the Israeli soldiers serving in Gaza are moderates risking their life to defend their home and bring back their people.
When individual cases of reckless disregard are discovered (like in videos shared by Israeli soldiers on groups that get leaked out), those soldiers are disciplined.
But globally, it's just not true that the IDF has complete disregard for Palestinians.
What you just saying, is pardon, BS. 50% of respondents of JPost poll said that Israel is not violent enough.
> When individual cases of reckless disregard are discovered (like in videos shared by Israeli soldiers on groups that get leaked out), those soldiers are disciplined.
Cultural and religious belief that the land belongs to them by divine right, and was stolen. WWII enabled them to resettle in their "home", but the principle of ownership didn't come out of WWII. The treatment of the Jewish people in WWII doesn't mitigate these beliefs, and may even strengthen them (ie, persistence and survival are further evidence of divine right)
(These aren't necessarily my opinions, and I am not Jewish. However I'm very closely connected to people who are, and I'm sharing the perspective I've been given)
In order to qualify for the protection of the rules of war, you must typically abide by them. This means that you don't get to prosecute when people kill your human shields or when they block humanitarian aid that you are stealing.
This is a question you need to ask Jewish people, not HN. The response you'll get here obviously won't answer this question, because the people responding are either not Jewish, or the format doesn't lend itself to a genuine answer.
But, a mistake you make in asking the question is two-fold, one - the Holocaust was not a lesson taught to Jews so they'll learn empathy. It was something horrible and traumatic that was done to them. Two - comparing the Holocaust to what happens in Gaza means you're not aware of what the Holocaust was. Maybe you know highlights such as gas chambers etc, but not what it really was (through no fault of your own I'm sure).
But, to attempt some semblance of an answer. In the same way you wouldn't ask Haitians why their gov did terrible things to the DR and their population - didn't they learn from slavery? Or about India/Pakistan, didn't they learn from the raj? Or any of the African states in conflict - didn't they learn from colonialism? Or Turkey and Syria, Iraq/Iran etc. Then why ask this from Israelis? I hope you get my rhetorical point.
> the Holocaust was not a lesson taught to Jews so they'll learn empathy. It was something horrible and traumatic that was done to them.
Well of course I am not suggesting that it was a lesson to teach empathy. My comment was merely that people who suffer traumas tend to have empathy for other people suffering similar traumas. I don’t think this is a particularly controversial observation.
> Two - comparing the Holocaust to what happens in Gaza means you're not aware of what the Holocaust was. Maybe you know highlights such as gas chambers etc, but not what it really was (through no fault of your own I'm sure).
Well I suppose you might be right. I’ve seen a number of the major films and documentaries and read Viktor Frankl, Eli Weisel and Anne Frank and visited Auschwitz, and I’ll be the first to admit this is merely a very basic overview of the atrocities rather than any form of academic investigation. But from this overview it seems like there are common threads of severe oppression based on immutable racial characteristics, no?
On your final paragraph, I probably would ask the same question!
The question we're discussing is about the attitudes of people of "the Jewish state", by which they clearly mean Israel. Almost half of the world's Jewish People are Americans, not Israelis. I think you'll get interesting answers about Palestine from Jewish Americans (I've sure learned a whole lot these past few months), but a casual reading of your comment suggests that those people have a responsibility to account for Israeli policy, and they don't. This is an extraordinarily common complaint about the Israeli/Palestine debate --- that charges of "antisemitism" are weaponized against those who criticize Israel --- and it seems that there may be a kernel of truth on both sides of that complaint.
I wrote a much more strident and knee-jerk response to this at first (I'm sorry about that, and I should have read through the whole comment instead of snagging at the first sentence), but that first sentence is quite a snag! It seemed to upset other people who replied, and I can't really blame them too much for that.
For what it's worth, I'm jewish and there are many jews who would disagree with my answer to the question you're responding to - just keep in mind how much diversity in thought exists. Though, the sentiment of your answer I do tend to agree with.
One more small point - people here mention how long ago the Holocaust was and far removed from memory. That's not really true. If you look at Pew 2013 poll of American Jews [0] they found:
> About three-quarters (73%) of American Jews say remembering the Holocaust is an essential part of being Jewish
This is something literally I and other jews I know have had to put up with for the last several months. The strongest plausible interpretation is the one I've lived through, which is that people decide to politically test their jewish friends and acquintances.
Please don't let people on hacker news say things like what questions should be asked of jewish people not in israel etc.
I certainly don't mean to deny your experience and I understand how it would be frustrating. In fact I know someone who has personally described something similar. But I do think you most likely misread the GP (probably precisely because you've been having these experiences; that would make sense).
They weren't recommending randomly accosting anybody. If the comment had been limited to its first 10 words, I could imagine understanding it that way, but the more important part was what they said right after that: "not HN. The response you'll get here obviously won't answer this question" — in other words, a question like that can't be answered by people who have no experience with it. It doesn't follow that one should indiscriminately harass everyone who does. I know some people are jumping to that, but it's not the strongest plausible interpretation of the GP.
If you had begun your reply with "Unfortunately some people are using this line of thinking to" instead of "Please don't tell people to", it would have been fine; and still more so if you had added some of the information that you included in your reply to me.
I was in my 20s and remember the feeling in the air after Al Qaeda members hijacked commercial planes and flew them into WTC in 2001. Fear, Anger, A bit of revenge.
Many of Americans, including soviet immigrants, enlisted in the army driven by that feeling.
Israelis lost significantly more of their population percentage-wise during October 7 attack perpetrated by the official government of Gaza AND as we know now, some Gazan civilians. Over 200 Israelis were taken hostage.
With that in mind, its fairly simple for me to empathize with the Israeli public who are angry at the death of their fellow citizens and want Hamas to be punished.
Hamas barely scraped into victory in a power sharing agreement it then broke. Gazan at that time did not want this government. Half of Gaza's present population wasn't even born at the time of the last election. To blame Palestinians generally (including in the West Bank who are effectively being punished too) for this is exceedingly unfair.
Compare culpability with Israel's, which IS a functioning democracy, has had regular elections, a free press, a large population participating in the war and actively in favour of it - and blaming the average Gazan is even less fair.
Seeing how they literally took hostages, in addition to targeting and killing civilians, I'm honestly not sure how you can argue it wasn't a terrorist attack.
75% of a population indoctrinated for years by a violent group of thugs (partially supported by the current Israeli PM). But that still doesn't justify slaughtering them in a fit of vengeance. Check the numbers for a gloves off response within Israel and we see the cycle of vengeance you seem fond of.
>But that still doesn't justify slaughtering them in a fit of vengeance.
I didn't say it did, I just wanted to show that the population of Gaza does seem to condone terrorism as a whole, and it's not a small minority as you were making it sound.
Also if Israel wanted to slaughter everyone in Gaza they could do it almost over night. And it wouldn't require nuclear weapons, they possess more than enough conventional weapons to do so. Hamas has been shown to keep and fire their weapons in population centers, it makes it incredibly difficult to truly minimize casualties. If Israel wanted to maximize civilian casualties, they easily could.
>cycle of vengeance you seem fond of.
Seriously my comment was simple, not sure why you think I condoned 'vengeance'.
Apologies. I misattributed the vengeance comment to you.
When did I dispute the 75% figure? I said you'll find bloodlust in the general Israeli population too.
Wanting to slaughter everyone in Gaza isn't the standard to apply. It has shown it doesn't care if it does if that means killing the small fraction of that population responsible for October 7. It's shockingly callous, disproportionate and can never justify heavy bombing a populated urban area.
Yeah it's understandable why though from your own article:
>The PCPSR poll found that 44% of Gazans say they have enough food and water for a day or two, and 56% say that they do not. Almost two-thirds of Gazan respondents - 64% - said a member of their family had been killed or injured in the war.
>Fifty-two percent of Gazans and 85% of West Bank respondents - or 72% of Palestinian respondents overall - voiced satisfaction with the role of Hamas in the war. Only 11% of Palestinian voiced satisfaction with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
I would wager that actually means they're satisfied that there's "someone fighting for their rights" rather than they're satisfied with terrorism.
From another article[1]:
"Israelis reject U.S. pressure to shift the war in Gaza to a phase with less heavy bombing in populated areas by a ratio of 2-1...Only 23 percent answered that Israel should agree to the U.S. demand "that Israel shifts to a different phase of the war in Gaza, with an emphasis on reducing the heavy bombing of densely populated areas...A full 75 percent of Jewish respondents said Israel should ignore the U.S. pressure"
So it seems the same number of Jewish respondents are ok with the genocide occurring right now. Like I said in another comment, both Hamas and Israel seem to have genocidal intentions but only one side is actively pursuing it at the moment.
> its fairly simple for me to empathize with the Israeli public who are angry at the death of their fellow citizens and want Hamas to be punished
Definitely. Conversely, it should also be fairly simple to empathize with the Palestinian public in the (just picking one fairly recent example) Operation Cast Iron aftermath.
A bit of a strange take considering every one of your points applies much more to Palestine than Israel.
>I was in my 20s and remember the feeling in the air after Al Qaeda members hijacked commercial planes and flew them into WTC in 2001. Fear, Anger, A bit of revenge
Yeah the people in Gaza feel that pretty much every day
>Many of Americans, including soviet immigrants, enlisted in the army driven by that feeling.
They also feel this, which leads to them joining Hamas and is part of the reason there are normal Palestinians who support Hamas. Terrorists don't come out of no where.
>Israelis lost significantly more of their population percentage-wise during October 7 attack perpetrated by the official government of Gaza AND as we know now, some Gazan civilians.
Yeah I mean again just flip that and the people in Gaza experience that at a much higher rate
>With that in mind, its fairly simple for me to empathize with the Israeli public who are angry at the death of their fellow citizens and want Hamas to be punished.
Same but I also empathize with all the Palestinians just trying to live their lives in an open air prison and want revenge. I think both Hamas and Israel have genocidal intent, but one has much more power and is actually carrying it out right now.
The human mind isn't rational. Don't expect just because they very well know what genocide is, that they can't convince themselves they aren't committing genocide.
You need to replace "after" with "because". Having experienced a mass genocide easily justifies committing one yourself in the name of self preservation.
Internally, denying humanitarian aid is seen as the legitimate and time-honoured strategy of "sieging the enemy state" though not all agree on how legitimate that is (I'm sure you can see the strangeness of sending food and medicine to enemy soldiers). Certainly supplying the enemy with fuel to use in their rockets, vehicles and armaments is seen as foolish (even if that would also provide fuel for the hospitals whose fuel was stolen by Hamas). There is zero desire in killing non-militants (outside of few extremists), but given the extremely horrible inhumane atrocities committed by Hamas (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_and_gender-based_violen... ), the acceptance of collateral casualties is higher than usual (and Israel already went extremely out of its way to minimize civilian casualties before the Oct 7 attack). Hamas' tactics that intend to maximize the deaths of their own civilians are also a contributing factor to that acceptance. If you believe there is genuine desire or action specifically to kill civilians outside of that then you believe in fake news.
In terms of non-homicidal genocide (i.e. genocide in the sense of dismantling the group without killing its members), certainly a lot more people are fine with something like a Transfer plan (for example, I've heard a proposal that Egypt will take Gazan Palestinians as refugees/civilians and similarly have Jordan absorb the Palestinians in Yehuda and Shomron) and don't see it as much of an atrocity, merely taking back the land those Arabs conquered and colonized starting at around 640AD, without actual harm to those individuals (in fact, their lives could be much improved!). There's also the fact that Israel is very tiny; Even from just the southern part of Gaza, Hamas already fires rockets at Israel's most populated cities, giving them the mountains of Shomron (incidentally, the capital of the Israeli kingdom), simple mortars could rain down on Israeli civilians without warning and could easily lead to an actual genocide of all Israeli Jews, so moving the people a few tens of kilometers east sounds like a peaceful resolution in comparison.
Naturally, there's also the element of a long conflict. Arabs have been killing Jews in Israel during the British Mandate as well as the Ottoman rule of the region (in fact the IDF traces its roots to what are essentially local militias the Jews had to create to defend themselves). Israel's scroll of independence (a document that is considered that closest thing Israel has to a constitution) actually includes two paragraphs calling for the Arab nations surrounding Israel to work together in peaceful cooperation, so literally the very first action Israel took as a state was to call for peace, and literally the first thing that happened in response was an attempt to destroy Israel. After 76 years of war, certainly there's lowered sympathy for the enemy, especially one that elected Hamas (see above) and rejected peace (I've somewhat recently learned that outside of Israel almost no one knows that the Annapolis Conference very nearly resulted in peace via a two-state solution that was refused by Mahmoud Abbas [which I've heard he has later come to regret, not sure how reliable that is]).
Rising anti-semitism around the world (especially how popular it is to call for a genocide against Israeli Jews is in the form of the "From the river to the sea" phrase) also creates a backlash - Israel must act strongly to defend itself since it is the only place in the world where Jews can be in charge of their own fate and their own defense. If the BBC publishes lies about what happens in Israel, and protesters in England are calling for a genocide unopposed, not only should we not listen to what the English want us to do, we should prioritize ourselves even further. This is why IMO something like BDS is counter-productive, it only causes further resentment and defiance in Israelis; If you want peace between Israel and Palestine you should instead work to make sure Israel feels safe enough to be able to relinquish territory to the Palestinians without having another October 7th instead of working to undermine Israel (unless your goal is the destruction of Israel of course).
I’ve been told stories of the German occupation of my grandparent’s village. My grandfather has been a slave worker on the German farm.
The thing is, I personally can’t relate to any of that. It’s just like reading a book or watching a movie. It’s just so far removed from my reality. I think you greatly overestimate the impact of the holocaust on modern day Jews.
First you need to understand that there's no genocide here. Genocide actually means "the murder of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group."[1] There is no question that the Israelis are not trying to kill everyone in Gaza and definitely not specifically because they are a part of an ethnic group.
Additionally, they have not shown "a reckless disregard for Palestinian people" and they would argue that unlike other conflicts in the region (Syria, Yemen, Kurdistan) they've been incredibly efficient in trying to avoid or limit civilian death.
Still, Gazan's have been dealt a pretty raw deal in that they have been ruled by a terrorist organization which has repeatedly stolen their aid to push their own agenda, and living amongst neighboring countries Egypt, Jordan, that are afraid to take them in lest they bring instability to those governments. Note that in the beginning of this conflict the Egyptians wouldn't open the Rafah border to allow refugees.
Rather, many of the holocaust survivors would instead say that the Israelis are being too nice and not defending the people living in the country from a government in Gaza that has the following in it's charter:
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" and "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees."(https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp)
Millenia of oppression have taught the jewish people that the only way to be treated with respect is through military strength. Theyre applying that lesson here.
My understanding is that the colossal tradegy of Holocaust made Jews realise that not fighting back is an existential threat for them.
When Israel was established then Arabs did not accept its existence nor the existence of Jews in the region. What followed was a genocidal war to exterminate Jews in Palestine and destroy Israel. We know this war today as Israel war of independence.
The Arabs who participated against Jews in this war fleed in fear of retribution and were not allowed by Israel to return. We know these people and their descendants today as Palestinian refugees (they have special inheritable status given by UN).
After the war Israel was established nearly within the borders of UN assigned Jewish territories and UN assigned Arab territories were annexed by Egypt (Gaza) and Jordan (West Bank). But it was still not tolerable for the Arabs who again in 1967 attempted to exterminate Jewish state with the war.
After the failure Isreal took control over larger territory that was then inhabited largely by Palestinian refugees (Palestinians) - West Bank and Gaza and also part of Egypt over the Suez canal and part of Syria called Golan Heights. The reasons where twofold. First the UN assigned territory was clearly not realistically defendable and second the large part of the previously not controlled territories like Bethlehem or Jerusalem were believed to be Jewish lands (historically Jewish lands were between Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea). Territories belonging to Egypt were later returned by bilateral treatis (but Israel kept control over Gaza).
Fast forward to today and it appears that Palestinians have not abolished the idea of genocide against Jews. It has been clearly established that the 7th October attack was a genocidal act to eliminate as many Jews as possible. Around 3000 Palestinian men took part in it, Hamas had around 40000 fighters. This demonstrates that they had wide support among Palestinians.
This leads us back to Holocaust. Jews promised to themselves that they will not let the genocide happen against themselves ever again. Yet it happened.
What is going on in Gaza is a systematic work to eliminate this threat.
They do this with minimal risk to their soldiers who are mainly reservist e.g. common people with military training. They can't afford to lose thousands of people. Palestinians in contrast value martyrdom and are willing to take very high risks (like attacking an armored vehicle with a RGP within a group of civilians next to the hospital entrance (this has been documented by the video evidence)).
It is not a police operation. It is a military operation against heavily armed and trained opponent. The weapons are chosen accordingly. The urban landscape makes it especially difficult and destructive. Regardless as far I have observed then Jewish military has made great efforts to systemically minimise civilian casualties.
What they did not realise first was that in addition to the military operation on the ground there is also sizeable information war against them and when the enemy can find many willing sympathisers then the enemy can produce what ever claims they please regardless of the truth as was demonstrated by the al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion.
I haven't observed the situation closely for months but by then Jewish armed forces evolved to be more open in their communication and to communicate more clearly the threats they had to fight against.
I can do my best to explain it, and I will do so with the assumption that people will approach any ensuing discussion in good faith. I'm not going to try and be wikipedia here, rather to just give a high level explanation of *why* a group of people, who were nearly exterminated, are acting this way. It will be very difficult to find the right words that can satisfy people who are very into this, but I will do my best, especially because I don't see a realistic geopolitical view being represented in the comments.
The question is "Why would Israel act like this?"
Israel has offered many times a two state solution. I think in '47, several times in the 90s, and the 2000s. They have all been rejected. The reason is that the Palestinian leadership wants more. How much do they want? They want all of it. "From the river to the sea" is the expression. They have said it over and over again that this is the only thing that matters to them, and they will sacrifice everything to get it.
That is more or less why Israel is doing this. For some, that is enough to explanation and a fair summary, but if you want to understand more details then read on.
The Israelis, obviously, are not going to just leave their country, and so that leaves the Palestinians with war as the only option. And war has happened, like 4-5 times, and each time the invading forces were defeated. Rather than deciding that the welfare of their people is what matters, Palestinian Leadership values complete, total restoration as the only goal and everything they do is to that end.
So, it can be debated from that point of view whether Israel should exist as a country or not. If you however think that Israel should be a country, even a little bit, then you are basically against the Palestinian leadership's raison d'être.
Even then though, I think most Israelis had a hard time believing that this is how it would be forever. Time after time, war after war, they have tried to 'do the right thing' short of just leaving Israel or dying. For example, they were invaded, the fought, the won, and the controlled Sinai, which was part of Egypt. Then they gave it back, and the Egyptians were reasonable and they signed a peace treaty.
The problem is the Palestinian leadership will never do this, and that is what the point of October 7 was. The point of it was to make peace impossible. Remember, just before the October 7th, there were the Abraham Accords. Basically, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel were take the first step in establishing a new direction for the Middle East, with those countries at the center of it. Boom, then you have the October 7th attack.
Let me take a step back and and try to address some things.
It's important to say that in 2005, Israel already militarily occupied Gaza. The corridor that has been used to smuggle in weapons for the terrorist was locked down. Then, due to international pressure, Israel withdrew from that region, and they removed any Israeli settlements. What happened? Immediately after, Hamas took over and there has not been an election since. Now, there is no governance, all of the money is stolen and funneled into weapons, and they're backed by Iran, along with Hezbollah, the Houthi, etc... and it is Iran who has a strategic interest in dividing influence in the Middle East.
So let me be clear. They don't want peace.
It's a very difficult situation because Israel would 100% prefer peace. The trouble is that they have a neighbor, who controls millions of people, that would rather be destitute and keep fighting than to govern responsibly.
A good analogy would be something along the lines of North Korea, but with a very different military strategy. Hamas uses guerrilla warfare, whereas North Korea is going for the long shot of a nuclear weapon.
The Palestinian Authority is not that different, other than strategy. They're also incompetent and they also want to see Israel eliminated. However, their strategy is to pretend to want peace, so they can negotiate territory, in anticipation of an invasion. How do I know this? Because every time that a two state solution has come on the table, they would only accept borders that were militarily impossibly for Israel to defend.
So there you have it. That is why this is happening. Because the Palestinians have these people as their leadership, and it's such a sunk cost at this point that they have nothing left but to fight for the total eradication of Israel. This is what happens when you lose 5 wars and still don't get the hint.
To add to this, OP if you want to learn more about why Israel is so callous to Palestinian life you need to learn about the Israeli right wing and how it came to power. I mean, this whole thing goes back further than that but for understanding today it really helps to understand the movement of ultra nationalism in Israel from the fringe into the majority.
Fascism does not "just stop". You can already hear the far right wingers claiming that Israel also has a right to expand into Lebanon and the Transjordan. Ironically looking at how Germany was radicalized is really useful for understanding how Fascism has taken hold in Israel.
Imagine you have a Gaza like area where you live. You want to live in peace but the other folk want to wipe out your state on the basis that Islam must rule your area and destroy its current government. Also they occasionally fire rockets at your schools and get out and murder and rape people. Do you not think you might get annoyed with them?
Zionism is an ideology that took inspiration from the British empire. It was intended to be "something colonial" and pre-dated the atrocities of WW2. The fascist atrocities in WW2 can be interpreted as colonial tactics applied to Europeans, after all the British had been doing extremely bloody concentration camps in Africa and starved India during WW2. For some reason, Africa doesn't get the same play. I wonder why.
So people that engage in colonialism end up doing similar crimes. Israel remains probably the only old school colonial project in the present day with present day technology, backed by the U.S. empire to secure geopolitical interests in the oil-rich region among other things.
Something to think about: America is also a genocidal settler-colonial project and is one of the only nations to back Israel in the UN. Our genocide is still ongoing: visit a native american reservation and witness the immense poverty. Similarly to Gaza, the US state will simply say that despite being an occupying power, these are autonomous zones and we have little responsibility.
Modern-day Zionism to me and many others means that Israel has the right to exist.
It does not absolve many, including self-proclaimed Zionists, from criticizing some of Israel policies.
On other hand, my interpretation of people who are self-proclaimed anti-Zionists logically flows from above statement that they believe that the present state of Israel DOES NOT have a right to exist. Which implies deportation of extermination of 6 million Jewish Israelis
In my opinion, the word Zionism has been hijacked by activists who know that being anti-Jewish is not good optics, but anti-Zionizm is still something that can be sold to the masses.
> Modern-day Zionism to me and many others means that Israel has the right to exist.
I think the framing of this argument is so tricky, because states don't have any rights. States aren't human beings. There is so much to unpack in the statement "X state has a right to exist".
> On other hand, my interpretation of people who are self-proclaimed anti-Zionists logically flows from above statement that they believe that the present state of Israel DOES NOT have a right to exist. Which implies deportation of extermination of 6 million Jewish Israelis
I am not saying that Israel's borders should be dissolved, but if Israel and Palestine were integrated into a single state where Jews and Arabs had equal rights, would this not still be a home for Jews?
Destruction of the state of Israel is not equivalent with the genocide of all Israeli Jews, unless your definition of genocide is the same as the one used by white supremacists in the US, who believe that letting non-whites into the country is genocide.
The point I am trying to make is that is Zionism, by your definition, exclusionary? If so then what you are describing is an ethnostate, which many would argue is a fascist idea.
Jews, Roma, Kurds, and all ethnic minorities deserve human rights. However, they are not entitled to statehood and their states are not entitled to any rights themselves.
Also, I do agree there are antisemites who say "zionism" as a dogwhistle for "jews".
Do you really think this is possible? Can you name a single state in the world with a majority muslim population that hasn't adopted any laws based on religion or passed any laws that discriminate against non-muslims?
Do you think it's realistic that if Israel is replaced by a new state tomorrow that has a majority arab muslim population it won't quickly become somewhat theocratic and enforce some degree of religious law against people of other religions? I think this outside view of a one state solution pretends the entire population of Israel believes in some sort of Western Democratic values and will provide a strong foundation of individual rights. I just don't see good evidence for that.
> Can you name a single state in the world with a majority muslim population that hasn't adopted any laws based on religion or passed any laws that discriminate against non-muslims?
I don't know that Turkey has zero discriminatory laws against non-muslims, but they managed to operate as a secular state for almost 100 years before Erdogan.
> Do you think it's realistic that if Israel is replaced by a new state tomorrow that has a majority arab muslim population it won't quickly become somewhat theocratic and enforce some degree of religious law against people of other religions?
I have no way of knowing this.
> I think this outside view of a one state solution pretends the entire population of Israel believes in some sort of Western Democratic values and will provide a strong foundation of individual rights. I just don't see good evidence for that.
Noam Chomsky and Norm Finkelstein both agree with you on this point, and I tend to agree with them. My argument was not that a one-state solution was viable, but I was trying to get the OP to say if their idea of Zionism was exclusionary or not.
Personally I do not think that a one-state solution would be possible unless mass de-radicalization took place, because Israeli ethno-nationalists see coexistence as genocide. I think the most viable option is a two-state solution, where a competent Palestinian standing army could hopefully force some sort of detente.
> Can you name a single state in the world with a majority muslim population that hasn't adopted any laws based on religion or passed any laws that discriminate against non-muslims?
Ironically this can be applied on isreal which declare itself Jewish state and have law of return [1] which allow any Jewish a right to "come" to isreal but does not extend the same to arab who were kicked during establishment of isreal
I'm not arguing there shouldn't be two states. I see the best path forward as likely Israel existing as a Jewish state and Palestine existing as a Muslim state. I don't think either side has a majority population willing to exist in a state with absolute freedom of religion and no religious policies. Far fewer people live as oppressed minorities if there are two states than if there is one.
I'm Jewish and I believe that Palestine should be a single democratic state that guarantees rights to all. No one has a right to an ethnostate, not even us. You see directly where this thinking leads — genocide.
As a westerner, I have never heard a single person in the western sphere mention a peaceful, non-occupational one state solution. How common is the idea of a democratic single state solution in Israeli politics? Do the advocates for it have a plan for dealing with the backlash from extremists on both sides? I'd like to read more about it. Now in the west it seems like even the two-state solution isn't up for discussion post-Trump.
The idea is common, but is rejected by the Israeli mainstream because they fear demographic changes - Palestinians are poor, so they have bigger families, hence eventually they would outnumber ethnic Jews and <insert fear here>.
If this sounds very similar to "great replacement" fears in US and Europe, it's because it is based on the exact same principles: the concept that a state's ethnic composition should be fundamentally immutable, and it's legitimate to fight against any threat to this immutability with discriminatory laws (or worse).
Unsurprisingly, that means that the European right, these days, have largely dropped their traditional antisemitism, and will happily share a platform with the Israeli government. The fact that a purposely Jewish state now cooperates with the heirs of Hitler and Mussolini should surely appear revolting to Israeli citizens. Alas, it does not.
Funnily enough, these arguments also deliberately ignore second generations, which by virtue of living in the country, they form a more cohesive identity based on the country itself, so diluting this ethnic composition in usually a positive fashion.
Jewish people have been murdered & driven out of almost every other middle-eastern country (where they used to be substantial parts of the population). What are their chances of surviving in an Arab-dominated Palestine? Note that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian authority is particularly keen on democracy.
Israel is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the western world. In particular, it is more ethnically diverse than almost every single country in Europe. What ethnostate?
Israel has a 20% Arab population who have the same rights as non-Arab citizens. They work in schools, hospitals, government, including the supreme court.
On other hand, Palestinians living in Gaza have elected a terrorist group[1] to govern them nearly two decades ago and have been subject to UN-sponsored education that teaches kids to hate Jews[2] for decades.
A single democratic state of Palestine with Palestinians and Israelis co-existing is impossible with current Palestinian leadership and the generations taught hatred.
Last time the Palestinians in Gaza got a vote, they voted Hamas, which has a charter based on eradication of the Jews. Are you sure you want them voting in the same state as you?
You must recognize that Hamas was elected after the continuous failure of the PLO to win concessions after Oslo, which abandoned the guiding principles of International Law in favor of "trusting the parties", but Israel, the more powerful party was able to dictate terms. A return to root cause analysis combined with the just principles of international law will see a fair deal. Arabs do not want to fight, they just want to be able to go home.
The fascist behavior I see coming from Israelis is completely repulsive and against everything I thought my religion stood for.
From the Hamas charter (2017).
"6. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity."
This is a very convenient interpretation. Lots of people acknowledge Israel as having that right without identifying as Zionists. Lots of anti-Zionists are just anti-colonialists.
This argument is used to shutdown legitimate criticism of a multi-generational occupation, land theft and discrimination. Those things are not inherent to being Jewish. So the distinction holds.
Respectfully, would you have made the same comment about 'finding a place in your heart for the humanity of the other' if we lived during the holocaust, where 'one side' was being maimed and killed by the other, more powerful side?
Would you have made the same comment if we were talking about apartheid in South Africa?
How about if we were talking about how slavery ought to be stopped prior to 1865?
Should we _always_ be looking to find the humanity in the other side, or is there something fundamentally different here?
Not trying to disrespect anyone here, but sometimes we need to ask ourselves tough questions.
I think you're missing the point. The battle of gaza is not fought on HN. We can only comment on the situation, and we can do this with equanimity and compassion even if we disagree.
Shouldn't we all be opposed to Nazism? Shouldn't we all be against slavery? Of course. But in the present discussion, I can be opposed to the atrocities of October 7th, while being sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians, just as I can be opposed to the destruction of Gaza while having compassion for the Israelis.
Being critical of either side doesn't mean I'm against them.
> Being critical of either side doesn't mean I'm against them.
The side that's now being maimed and killed in the tens of thousands with no recourse, had nothing to do with October 7. The sides that are relevant here in the context of this ICJ case are the civilians of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the Government of Israel.
Edit: I guess my basic response is that I'm skeptical of approaching these questions from that level of abstraction. None of us can say what we would have done in those horrible situations. We can only answer out of our own imagination about ourselves, which is likely to be completely unreliable.
What I do think is that on this site, we can and should be working with our own responses in a way that is more than just venting them onto a perceived other. That's in keeping with what HN is supposed to be for.
> Respectfully, would you have made the same comment about 'finding a place in your heart for the humanity of the other' if we lived during the holocaust, where 'one side' was being maimed and killed by the other, more powerful side?
Yes..
> Should we _always_ be looking to find the humanity in the other side, or is there something fundamentally different here?
Under the Rome Statute that set up the international criminal court, apartheid is defined as a crime where:
>inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them".
Netanyahu's approach to the Palestinians likely fits into this definition.
Important to understand that Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute and rejects the ICC’s jurisdiction (neither is the USA). On the other hand, the Geneva Convention is about as “universal” a treaty as you can find, Israel itself ratified the GV without any reservations, all UN members (US and Israel included) are subject to the authority of the ICJ/World Court, and there’s even a fsir consensus that the GC applies to everyone, even if a state weren’t a UN member and signatory.
(While the USA and Israel have shown immense disdain for the ICC and the USA has levied sanctions against it, its chief prosecutor, and The Hague in the past, the US officially sponsored Khan’s nomination for the post of chief prosecutor this past round and Israel has been extremely chummy with him and the ICC compared to under Bensouda. The ICC under Khan hasn’t done anything about Gaza.)
It's worth noting that system does not apply to 2 million Israeli Arabs (nearly all of whom self-identify as "Palestinian" from an ethnic/national perspective) of the exact same race as the Palestinians in the occupied territories.
The overt driver of the system - and the one that is agreed to across the whole Jewish-Israeli population - is the security issue of a Palestinian population that has held since 1948 that they are still at war with Israel, will never accept a Jewish state in the region, and will one day drive the Jews into the sea. This belief is propped up by constant propaganda from other Arab states and UNRWA (which has defined itself to exist because of a Right of Return that applies to 750k Palestinians and their descendants in perpetuity, but doesn't apply to the 14 millions Indians & Pakistanis, 12 million Germans, or 2-3 million Poles & Ukrainians who were also displaced by ethnic partitions established in 1947-1948).
Israel shows every day that they are willing and able to live closely with the Palestinians who accept their right to exist and aren't trying to murder their families, without using apartheid-like systems of control. Israeli Arabs certainly face suspicion and unofficial day-to-day discrimination, but if you asked Israelis how they would feel about an equal two-state system where West Bank and Gaza were a sovereign nation populated by Palestinians who were like the Israeli Arabs, they would largely be on board. There would be friction for a while, but it would be tolerable for both states to survive and thrive without the security apparatus that needs to be in place right now.
There is no doubt that Netanyahu's current governing coalition is made up of racists and religious extremists who would NOT be okay with that. Many of those secretaries want to use security issues as a pretext to fully take over "greater Israel," and use the border wall as much to keep their actions there hidden from the Israeli public as they use it to keep Hamas and IJ terror attacks to a minimum. But the PA - for all its collaboration and security partnership with the IDF - still pays bounties to the families of suicide bombers. And the reason more moderate Palestinian leaders have never been able to really negotiate a settlement is that they would be immediately overthrown by a populace who never accepted 1948 as the end of a decades-long attempt to throw the Jews out of Palestine.
This has not been adjudicated in court, but I think it's difficult to claim that the current system is primarily an ethnic or racial one when it doesn't apply to the millions of Palestinians who are accepting of their neighbors. Even if it is often abused by racists.
> Israel shows every day that they are willing and able to live closely with the Palestinians who accept their right to exist and aren't trying to murder their families, without using apartheid-like systems of control
This is very much not the case in the West Bank where expropriation and colonisation of Palestinian land by Israeli settlers continue, under the watchful eye of the Israeli army.
The Israeli state has done it's best to ensure that there can be no viable Palestinian state, condemning millions of Palestinians to eternal military occupation and second class status in their own homeland.
Any claim that Israel is acting in good faith towards Palestinians is very much undermined by these facts.
West Bank settlers are overtly funded by right-wing christian evangelists from the U.S.
The Likud turns a blind eye because its basically a free military. Moreover, it provides a military buffer between Israel's mainland population and much of the radicalized West Bank population.
I agree that the actions in the occupied territories are oppressive and terrible. I was referring to the actions within Israel itself, towards Israeli Arab Citizens. Which shows that the oppressive actions is not based on ethnicity or religion, it's based on fear.
Thing is, that fear is taught in schools, a large part if not most of the Israeli population are too young to remember the holocaust, so this is propagation of fear on a national scale, and to what end?
> is the security issue of a Palestinian population that has held since 1948 that they are still at war with Israel, will never accept a Jewish state in the region
Will Israelis accept a sovereign Palestinian state in the region? A clear NO.
Even the 1990s / 2000s two-state solutions were never meant from Israeli side as recognizing full sovereignty of Palestine - it was meant to be more like an Israeli protectorate with its own administration but without its own armed forces, no control over air space etc.
> and will one day drive the Jews into the sea
While many Israelis are eager to drive Palestinians to the sea. (check Daniela Weiss as a somewhat prominent example)
The current government seems to want to ethnically cleanse Gaza. The West Bank has to expect a similar fate, just way slower with expanding settlements.
> but I think it's difficult to claim that the current system is primarily an ethnic or racial one when it doesn't apply to the millions of Palestinians who are accepting of their neighbors
Still apartheid. You can't explain it away so easily.
> not a single country will accept a soverein Palestenian state, because they're ruled by terrorists.
You yourself say that Palestinians can live completely peacefully, why can't they have a sovereign state with a better government? I hope that after years of Israeli government / Netanyahu supporting Hamas [1], they will change the strategy.
Murder/attempted murder of adversary citizens in neutral territory is just one of a legion of examples of behavior the West constantly criticizes Russia for, by the way.
The Russian government kills unarmed civilians outside of Russia. Usually Russians, but not always. The Israeli government also kills unarmed civilians outside of Israel. So yes, in the category of "nation states that covertly murder people globally with negligible consequences", both are present. Hell even India is in that group lately...
They made baseless and not properly confirmed accusations about minor incidents against Ukraine in 2022 while ignoring Russian atrocities allowing Russia to execute considerable information war operations against Ukraine.
In 2023 they were caught on multiple occasions to propagate very serious and harming Hamas propaganda. In one case they participated in an infowar attack that resulted in clear danger to the United States citizens and army personnel.
The value that Amnesty like organisations provide is incredibly important but I can't see how Amnesty itself in the current state can be trusted.
The current title "ICJ genocide case: World court demands Israel limit deaths " isn't very accurate. I'd suggest reverting to the original "Top UN court orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza but stops short of ordering cease-fire"
Huh, firefox no longer displays that! I didn't realize that before.
Well, there is already discussion of the meaning of Measure 1) "take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this Convention, in particular" part a) "killing members of the group", at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39143094, so perhaps the confusion can be worked out there. I don't think it's as simple as "limit deaths" but perhaps I'm wrong, not being a lawyer.
Isn't there a rule about modifying inflamatory titles? The article title "Top UN court orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza but stops short of ordering cease-fire" is less inflamatory, and will help prevent comments from going sideways.
Because the ceasefire was the number one demand by the South Africa. And they lost that, but the current title completely ignores that part, and instead highlights only the part that Israel lost.
That's like exactly the definition of the opposite of neutral: ignoring the part Israel won and only focusing on the part they lost.
And the fact that it ignores the major part of the case and focuses only on the minor part, only makes it more egregious.
Even the actual news source themselves changed the title, and for some reason you consider the HTML title more important?
If you read some of those past explanations and still have a question about our general approach, let me know what it is. As for this particular story, I turned off the flags on it because it clearly counts as SNI (significant new information - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).
Thanks, I guess Hackernews generally is my 'safe haven' from politics. Really not intending to bite or insult, just a lot happier reading about Dijkstra being a pedantic nano-Dijkstrahole or someone dumping a GBA rom through audio. The stuff from OP I read everywhere else. My heart cries for the for the world and HN generally is one of my tissues. Much love anyways.
How is anything? One could argue that real estate occupancy in San Francisco isn't hackernews.
I think there's an intellectual interest here, but the line is very blurry with politics. It's probably as blurry as the articles posted about US being a surveillance state, cryptocurrency articles unrelated to the technology itself, etc.
Can you please stop posting in the flamewar style? It's against HN's rules, and especially against the intended spirit that I tried to describe at the top of this thread.
Obviously most of what gets discussed on HN is relatively unimportant in the world. If that weren't the case, HN would simply be a current affairs site, which it isn't. At the same time, that doesn't mean every political story is off topic here—the guidelines already make that clear by their use of the word "most": https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
There's a long and pretty consistent history to how HN handles the question of political topics.
(I detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146010 - not that you did anything wrong by posting there, but I don't want the top of the thread to get too off topic. I'll try to come back in a little while and say something in response.)
Edit: sorry this took me so long. Here are my thoughts based on past experience:
It's not helpful to look at other accounts as "propagandists", "trolls", "bots" (or "shills", "astroturfers" or all the other similar terms internet commenters use), because there's no reliable way to distinguish between someone who is arguing for views they earnestly hold vs. someone who might be engaged in a propaganda campaign. The majority of commenters are sincerely arguing for what they sincerely think. A few may be doing something more sinister—but most people don't do such things, and there's no way to pick out the ones who are. Trying to pick them out will drive you crazy. Moreover, it doesn't matter in the end, because everyone is ultimately working with the same tool: arguing things in comments. Even the propagandists can't do more than that.
When people feel like someone else is a troll, propagandist, or bad faith actor, it's usually because that person's views are so distant from your own that it seems like nobody could possibly hold them in good faith. In reality, what's usually going on is that people on the internet underestimate how different each other's backgrounds are. It feels like you're talking to someone who is either insane or lying, but most likely you're talking to someone whose background is so different from yours that it's hard for the two of you to relate to each other. I wrote about this last year, if anyone is interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932851.
I think the only way to handle this is by responding to bad arguments with better arguments and to false information with correct information—and to do this as neutrally as possible. Focus on clear information, and try not to let your feelings turn into aggression toward the other person. This is not easy, but it's in your interest to do it, because when commenters get aggressive with each other, fair-minded readers recoil.
For extra influence, if you can manage it: look for a way to connect with the other person, acknowledge some aspect of what they're saying, and implicitly make it clear that you're not trying to defeat or destroy them, but rather to understand. This is a big multiplier on how persuasive your comments become.
As for leaving bullshit unchallenged, I know it's hard to walk away from a thread that one feels is dominated by falsehood and distortion, but walking away is sometimes the most effective thing you can do. Here are a few thoughts which I try to remember in such situations:
(1) The internet is wrong about approximately everything. You can't change that, and you'll burn out trying.
(2) The one who walks away first usually comes across as stronger.
(3) Other people are not that different from you. When someone seems crazily wrong, they're most likely not bad or evil, but ignorant: they don't know what you know because they haven't experienced what you've experienced. For this reason, sharing your personal experience is probably the most effective thing you can do.
(4) When other people say things that produce strong feelings, try to let the feelings run their course in you before coming back to react. This is painful and hard, but it's in your interest.
Another point to consider is the old "don't feed the troll". Even if the other person is not really a troll (which I agree they usually aren't, they're just not thinking like you do) if you keep coming back for more you're just giving them the chance to argue their case for longer. So sometimes, if you want to promote your view, the best strategy is to let it drop and pick it up in another thread.
That's... not 100% honest, I guess, but at least it makes for easier to read and easier to handle conversations.
Conversely, arguing on HN has definitely helped me find the words to explain my own thinking to myself, so there's something in flogging a dead horse, sometimes.
It can be quite hard to be kind when it comes to a highly inflammatory topic such as Palestine–Israel. However, IMHO it’s not really a topic suited for HN. I find it hard to believe that whatever we say here on this topic will have any meaningful impact on the war.
Normally for political stuff I would agree, but the VCs have made this an issue that founders, engineers and everyone else in tech has to deal with because they've taken a hardline pro-Israel stance including firing people who so much as publicly state well known information. The battle between PG and the rest of the industry has ramifications for all of us. Even Paul Graham is barely powerful enough to offer a pro-Palestinian stance publicly.
It doesn't have to. One comment refuting a contention with clear references to support the refutation is enough to make one's point. There is no stronger position than the truth, as one understands it. And if one is wrong after all, because they misunderstand the facts or they are missing some facts, it's not a loss, but a win, to find out through a, ahem, Frank Exchange of Views.
yea I tried that. I posted links to all my sources as well as opinions from credible human rights organizations. they just play the game of being obtuse to the very end and then gaslight you about needing to backup my opinions as if there weren't at least 2-3 inks for every assertion I make.
one side of this debate is very much NOT acting in good faith because they rely on the status quo being maintained to continue what they are doing
I think that's in part because the sources that were once credible, i.e. NGOs, universities, media, and other cultural institutions, have taken a hit to their own reputation as a result of their institutional capture over the years.
For every article you can find in support of one camp, one could find a counter piece from other credible sources as well (i.e. NYT vs The Economist and The Atlantic). For every NGO one can quote, someone else can quote from someone who've resigned, or once run/founded the very NGO that they're now criticizing (i.e. Danielle Haas, Ira Glasser, Nadine Strossen, Bob Bernstein). You can even pitch the NGOs against one another, such as HRW and Amnesty against the ADL.
Ultimately, bad faith actors are indeed the root cause of the problem. However, I think the bigger problem here is the inability of these bad faith actors to recognize that belong to the very group they're criticizing. If facts were all that mattered, I would expect to see more people expressing more nuanced takes, or express more uncertainty. After all, it would be rather surprising for a consumer of news to hold their view with that much confidence when even the mainstream sources they are relying on is in dispute with one another.
> Ultimately, bad faith actors are indeed the root cause of the problem. However, I think the bigger problem here is the inability of these bad faith actors to recognize that belong to the very group they're criticizing. If facts were all that mattered, I would expect to see more people expressing more nuanced takes, or express more uncertainty.
I don't think it is due to "bad faith actors" at all. I think it is better explained by (1) Israel/Palestine is a really hard problem, one where both sides have done wrong, and the "side" one is on often comes down with which wrong angers you more (which is more a question of subjective emotions than objective reasons), (2) the increasing tribalism and political polarisation of Western (and especially US) society, which gets overlaid on the Israel/Palestine conflict, however roughly (right-leaning people nowadays skew pro-Israel and left-leaning pro-Palestine, although there are an ever-shrinking number of exceptions to both generalisations)
The "bad faith actors" explanation is attractive precisely because it paints the problem as simpler and less intractable than it actually is
The solution to that is to not take sides. International Humanitarian Law doesn't take sides: for example, you can't target civilians, no matter who they are or what they or their homies have done, or who they support or don't support. There's no need to take any side on that.
As I (think I) said in another comment, the strongest possible position one can adopt is the one supported by the facts. The Palestinian issue is so hard because there is an overwhelming amount of facts and only a few people are really in possession of all the facts. That's what skews the debate.
So e.g. when you go on the internet (I mean the-site-formerly-known-as-Twitter) you see a veritable fire hose of facts taken out of context. It's like people, humans, don't have a memory, they can only remember what's been posted on Twitter in the last week or so. The videos of Israel's atrocities circulate freely, but no videos of Hamas' atrocities circulate and even if they did, that was three months ago. So people kind of organically are shunted into one side, or the other, like sheep to slaughter, and there's no way to form an opinion that is really on the side of peace, huanitarian law, and human life.
So the solution is to not take sides and not try to form an opinion, even. Support peace, support IHL, support whoever is not talking about killing people, or taking over land, or waving flags, or saying who's right and who's wrong. In a war, to take sides is to perpetuate the war. To help people find peace we must stop taking sides.
Sooner or later, governments (and sometimes even other institutions) have to make binary choices – e.g. whether or not to vote for some UN resolution, whether or not to recognise the State of Palestine, etc. Of course, if one is just a private individual, not one of those leaders, one has the luxury of not choosing.
> for example, you can't target civilians, no matter who they are or what they or their homies have done, or who they support or don't support
You can't tell from footage of the aftermath of an airstrike whether it was illegitimate targeting of civilians or not. A big part of what it was depends on the intentions and knowledge of the military commander ordering the strike, which a video of its aftermath couldn't possibly convey.
> The Palestinian issue is so hard because there is an overwhelming amount of facts and only a few people are really in possession of all the facts
There is also a lot of interpretation of limited evidence – e.g. is event X an isolated incident or the norm? A video on social media can't tell you that. And even if a video is showing accurate footage of an incident, it usually can't convey the broader context of that incident.
>> I think that's in part because the sources that were once credible, i.e. NGOs, universities, media, and other cultural institutions, have taken a hit to their own reputation as a result of their institutional capture over the years.
The part about "institutional capture" is obviously right, but the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) NGOs exist exactly in order to support and promote IHL. And it's a standard that when an IHL NGO speaks out against Israel's actions, Israel's or its supporters' response is to say that the NGOs are Hamas. That's where the main "hit" to those NGOs' reputation has come from.
You can see this tactic also in the defense Israel mounted to South Africa's case at the ICJ, where they basically accused South Africa of being in cahoots with Hamas [1]. In the most extreme form of this "defense", everyone is Hamas. I was watching this interview with Alan Dershowitz [2] where he says Doctors Without Borders have been recruited by Hamas, Unicef and Unesco have become voices for Hamas, and even the climate movement and Greta Thunberg is a mouthpiece for Hamas:
And you know who is not Hamas, and therefore has credibility, according to Alan Dershowitz in the same video? The US State Dept., the UK, "some" of the other European countries, and Germany, and an academic who's a friend of Alan Dershowitz (although he disagrees with him). So, everyone who agrees with Israel's positions has credibility, everyone who disagrees is Hamas.
That is not NGOs lacking credibility because they adopt, say, a left-learning position, it's Israel and Israel's supporters doing their damnedest best to claim that those organisations have no credibility because they speak out against violations of IHL, which is what they exist to do, when it's Israel that violates those.
Well, the same NGOs have no hesitation to condemn Hamas' atrocities and violations of IHL, or the violations of IHL of any other nation-state or non nation-state actor [4]. That's what they constantly do. To quote Andrew Stroehlein, of Human Rights Watch, "If you only care about war crimes when your enemies commit them, then you don't really care about war crimes." [5]
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[1] Ask me if you need a reference to that, I don't have one at hand.
[2] The interviewer in that clip is also extremely partisan, no question about that. Also, it's a vile smear to identify Dershowitz as "Ex-Trump and Epstein lawyer", as if that's all he is.
The trick is to realize that if you've made a good point, readers will be smart enough to notice that the other person is just coming back with new bullshit. You don't need the last word to win an argument; being first to walk away actually adds power to your argument. If you've said what needs to be said, no "whatabout" can cancel it, and you'll weaken your case if you chase after it.
I still suck at this in practice but I'm sure of it in theory!
(I'm working on a longer reply to you at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39158911, but I can't resist replying here too because I feel like I figured this one out after 15+ years of frustration.)
Agreed on both the advice and the difficulty of engaging in practice.
What I'll frequently do where a counterparty has looped back to an earlier position is to simply link directly to my earlier response to that point, with the implicit statement "we've already covered this ground, I'm not going to repeat myself".
Walking away from such discussions is still challenging as there's always a temptation to respond. This is where employing HN's thread-collapse feature is useful. I'll typically do this at some point above my final response. The threads remain closed until the post is about two weeks old per earlier discussions with dang.
thats a good indicator that you should stop commenting in online message boards. This (and a litany of other reasons) is why "internet comments" have a terrible reputation. Comment boards have been around 20+ years and no one has yet been able to create a system that doesn't encourage degeneracy.
3. More generally, all informational channels become battlegrounds, as noted by von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, numerous evolutionary biologists, and others. I've been slowly making my way through Jeremy Campbell's The Liar's Tale which is a big-picture look at this.
4. HN really isn't optimised around truth but conversation, and more specifically sustainable conversation, grounded in intellectual curiosity. There are numerous topics on which HN really is unable to have meaningful discussion (perennial ethnic conflicts are amongst these, as are other political hot topics), and its general tone-policing and penalisation of high-tension topics tends strongly to a status quo bias. (I've criticised HN for this often, despite an increasing awareness and appreciation of why those rules exist, see e.g., thread here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39023516>.)
5. Reporting blatant trolling and suspect motivations to HN mods does often work. Email to hn@ycombinator.com and link directly to the offending content and/or user, with a clear but succinct description of the problem.
6. Voting (up or down) and flagging also have their place. For sufficiently contentious threads this may well lead to something of a high-attrition zone, but often the really egregious crud does sink to the bottom. I find that higher-rated comments tend to be more anodyne than insightful, though occasionally truth does out.
7. I've found that rather than direct engagement, either supporting a counterthread, or writing your own well-reasoned and well-supported counter-thread, is often suprisingly effective. Remember that yours is always the last comment when you write it, though a thread may well have additional life. Sometimes my late efforts prove far more successful than I'd expected, and often I'll see that others have succeeded where I've either failed or failed to try. And again, supporting others' salient and productive engagement even where you don't have time or energy to contribute is highly underappreciated.
8. You don't have to attend every fight you're invited to.
9. Truth is not a popularity contest. Voting systems ultimately don't select for truth or importance, and expecting that from sites such as HN or Reddit will prove disappointing.
10. The meaningful audience is typically not who you're responding to directly, but the overwhelmingly silent majority reading rather than contributing to discussion.
I really hoped that a submission on ICJ ruling will pass the aggressive flagging. At least hoped that dang will keep his promise about allowing a submission about the case. This one could be it. I understand that once allowed there will be trove of hard liners will make it hell to moderate. But being difficult doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss a potential genocide in a making in front of our eyes.
EDIT: The title has been changed since and the discussion has been unflagged
The problem is that this is such a partisan issue than partisanship can be perceived in the smallest of details.
As someone who was staunchly pro-palestinian but as of recently came to have a more informed and I hope a more nuanced view of the whole situation, I can't help to see the title as potentially misleading :
Is the ICJ saying to prevent the Genocide (i.e recognizes that a genocide is happening) or to prevent a potential genocide (that is it believes the situation could escalate towards a genocide) ?
From what I have read this is the second option, so I believe the title could be misleading.
The more a topic has a loaded emotional and symbolic value, the more careful the wording must be.
Also I remember how annoying it was that people did not share my indignation and how I perceived such carefulness as a form of voluntary blindness.
I definitely think this is a discussion we should have and I am actually pleasantly surprised by the kind of comments I have read so far in that they are not unhinged even though I may disagree with some of them.
I have not flagged it personally but I understand why someone would.
I was just responding on "Couldn't this be the one discussion ?" and I think it's not, for the reasons above.
I find this topic relative to both tech and business because so many venture capitalists have taken a very vocal and militantly pro-Israel position. People have been fired from our industry for speaking out for Palestinians and the guy who first created this site has taken immense heat for his pro-Palestine statements. I don't know that any other geo-political situations have quite had the impact to tech that this has, mostly driven by the VCs.
Ages ago I had a job working in online advertising. My comment a the time was this "Advertising is worse than porn, but working here I can go home to my feminist girlfriend and not get shit for it."
Technology and politics have always had an intersection but unless it was part of your job, it was somewhat avoidable.
This is no longer the case. The simple word "alignment" means that these sorts of classical political issues have direct impact on tech, platforms and what they do. We, as a group, who has a unique view of what freedom means (speech, software and that intersectioN) should be acutely aware of the chilling effect we're living under on this topic. Even here where the discourse remains (mostly) civil there are those who will attempt to just shut it down.
I would be keenly interested to see how heavily this gets flagged and how that compares to other topics. I doubt dag would tell us but I could hope!
It doesn't. Mosul's civilian population were Iraqi citizens, the conflict was much larger, lasted a lot longer, used smaller munitions, resulted in a lot more military deaths and significantly less civilian deaths. This is despite the enemy being significantly better trained, better equipped, better logistics, years of preparation and less intelligence by the anti-ISIL coalition.
"Better" is hard to judge, but mosul was about ten months and resulted in 10k civilian deaths. This one is already several times that count in a much shorter time span.
Historical comparisons aren't relevant when evaluating whether conduct today is acceptable, especially when we're talking about the deaths of innocents.
Every day is an opportunity to be better than our ancestors.
Looks very relevant to compare. Or in more practical terms, it's worth comparing to something as a reference that's similar in complexity of urban warfare but was handled better.
Peace is usually a product of avoiding "whataboutism". Humans of all shades and beliefs and origins have proven time and time again how barbaric we can be. True "justice" can probably only happen with the extinction of our species; to avoid that, someone has to say "enough" even if there are those who believe it isn't.
This is complete nonsense. Israel isn't pursuing genocide. They've killed less than 100,000 Palestinians out of several million. That's obvious restraint compared to what they could do if they really wanted to.
You may not like Israel but the word 'genocide' is being abused here, and this whole ICJ ruling is theater.
I would argue there has been massive condemnation of Russia by much of the west. The west is lobbing missiles at Russia. It's giving missiles to Israel to lob at Gaza.
Are they represented in any way in the Knesset? Are they treated the same is Jewish Israeli citizens when travelling? What about the Arabs in East Jerusalem? Are non Jewish citizens actually afforded equal protections under the Basic Laws? Does the "Law of Return" apply to non-Jewish Israelis? Economically, how are the Arabs doing compared to the Jews?
Yes, Israeli Arabs are fairly represented in the Knesset, and in the courts, and everywhere. They carry an Israeli passport and are treated the same way and have the same travel rights.
The people not treated the same are people that live in the occupied territories. The status of those territories has not been settled since 1967. I.e. the West Bank and Gaza. Israel accepts that those are occupied territories (it has not annexed them). The parties they were taken from (Jordan and Egypt) do not wish to take them back. So "Israel" proper does not discriminate against Arabs (broadly speaking) but the status of the occupied territories, that are under military rule, according to international law, is different.
No idea about the rest of your questions, although the latter two are irrelevant (find any country where every group is doing just as well - it doesn't exist).
(That’s not to say they’re not infringed implicitly in the same ways a minority group in the US or Europe is, but the law gives Israeli citizens generally the same rights whether they’re Arab or not.)
A girl I know (Jewish) told me about the time she and her boyfriend visited Gaza like it was a trip to the zoo (her words). To her it was so strange how she could come and go as she wished, but they couldn't leave, ever.
Think about that for a moment. What would you call such a place? How would you feel being born on the wrong side of the fence?
She did, they needed a permit (work for example) and not everyone was able to get one. I don't have any numbers but they did not have the same rights as she and her boyfriend did. Foreign nationals might've had an easier time crossing.
Israel also controls the lives of all Palestinians, so the total % of Arabs out of controlled citizens by the Israeli government is over 50%, but most Arabs are disenfranchised by Israel, that's the fundamental root of why it is an apartheid state
Fully agreed. That the ICJ didn't order a ceasefire in this matter is honestly disgusting and just shows who's lives they value more.
As an American Jew (non-religious), I cannot express enough how sad this entire situation has made me. I grew up learning about the Holocaust and learning how important it is for people to stand up when a government turns in that direction. Those morals meant I always knew that Israel was wrong in the situation with Palestine but this conflict has definitely lifted any clouds that remained on the situation.
If you don't think Israel is a pure and simple apartheid state, I would very much recommend looking up the word in a dictionary. It's horrible that anyone has died on either side, but the imbalance at the current time in lives lost is just.. saddening. When it comes to genocide, it's one of those things where you know it when you see it and if you don't see it I say open your eyes.
Israel and the west can continue to label millions of people as terrorists to justify their acts, but history will hopefully look at this event with more understanding and empathy for those people Israel have shoved into small corners and starved of resources for decades. October 7 was terrible and should not have happened, but do you blame the oppressed people or do you blame the powerful government that has oppressed them?
I don't usually reply to meta posts, but I can't help but agree with this.
As much as I appreciate the work moderators do here any other day of the year, it was disappointing that there was no discussion allowed on October 7th - indeed, every thread was nuked - when 0.1% of the Jews in the world were murdered in a single day.
When Russia attacked Ukraine that was very much allowed to be discussed, and rightly so.
I had not realized submissions on 7 Oct were banned. Thank you for drawing attention to that. I threw the term "7 Oct" and "7 October" and there's pretty clearly no major threads about it, especially not in October. Even "Hamas" didn't reveal anything.
I don't think it's at all helpful to say "Every" thread in this conversation is "idiotic" alongside this, though. That just gives people room to dismiss your comment
> Every thread in this conversation is A+ idiotic. … Reddit crowd
I am not sure how this elitism is justified - when it comes to military or international law, there is no difference between asking on HN and a Joe off the street.
Add in the fact that many software developers are, my, how to put this, emotionally challenged, and of course each thread will be idiotic.
It's not elitism, it's conservatism. The people who will signup are the same ones who upvote every "Trump got slammed by XX" threads on reddit. Once they know that another and a more genuine reddit exists, they'll starting shovel that stuff here too.
Since you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly and egregiously and have ignored our request to stop, I've banned the account.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
A common sentiment I have heard in the US is that "TikTok causes antisemitism".
What I believe is actually happening is that TikTok debunks a lot of Hasbara talking points about the Israeli occupation of palestine (because people can see the violence with their own eyes), but then people are not educated further about the nuances of Zionism and Judaism, the different political movements within Israel like Gush Emunim and how they are not related to Judaism at large.
Because Israel has so successfully conflated Zionism (a political movement) with Judaism (a religious one), it increases the possibility that when westerners stop supporting Israel they can adopt antisemitic viewpoints.
> when westerners stop supporting Israel they adopt antisemitic viewpoints.
That is very definately not a given. There are many, a majority I hope, of "westerners" who oppose the actions of the state of Israel without becoming anti semetic
Not all, sorry I should have qualified that statement. I was just trying to point out that when Israel claims that it stands for all jews, it can backfire and actually end up causing more antisemitism. I have added some qualifying statements.
There is disinformation on TikTok. There are white supremacists and antisemites that take every Israeli conflict as an opportunity to spread their hate. This is true.
What is also true is that you can clearly see Israel conducting a genocide live, while every news outlet in the west denies it or justifies it.
I am not talking about fake news, I am talking about citizen journalists, footage of children who have been pulled out of rubble. Footage of leaflets dropped on a column of refugees. The civilian death tolls that the US confirms themselves. The harder Israel denies their atrocities, the stronger the backlash becomes when people see the truth with their own eyes.
Israel's far right and Netanyahu bear a huge amount of blame for the rise of antisemitism, because they point to these atrocities and say "this is what Jewish people globally stand for".
Are you sure you can see this genocide? Remember when there was footage of Israeli bulldozers crushing people and it turned out to be footage of Egypt from 2014? Just because some social media account says what you’re seeing is the truth doesn’t make it so.
Yes, I make sure that I have verified that what I am seeing is real. I immediately do a fact check. I read Haaretz because if Israeli media is confirming it then it is undoubtedly real.
So many people ask "how could people have just let this happen" with respect to the Holocaust. This is how. They didn't want to believe it. Or they justified it. Or they were more worried about other things.
extremely pedantic take. there is no actual leadership (as we know it in the rest of the world) in palestine/gaza.
this is all playing house. a real entity (like the US, UK, Australia, Urugay etc do) is participating in stuff like this... would you still hold the Taliban to the same standard? They are running Afghanistan but ... are they the real deal? No, lol.
> when one side gives up.
> disproportionality of this conflict
Why is disproportionality meaningful at all? Clearly Israel is under attack. They have full right to subdue those attacks through all means necessary. I would hope every government provides the same for their people (and it is so easy to criticize Israel with all of us coming from countries that do protect our safety). Unfortunately Hamas has no regard for Palestinian lives, the best possible outcome for the Palestinians is Hamas giving up.
Why is disproportionality meaningful ? Why is 695 dead Israeli civilians against 15-20000 dead Palestinian civilians meaningful? Because it goes to the hypocritical heart of what a life is worth to a tribesman.
And no they DO NOT have full right to subdue those attacks through all means necessary. There are laws to warfare. Dropping large bombs on a densely populated area of civilians is a breach of those laws. Find another way to get rid of Hamas but show respect civilian life.
I think in the history of warfare - especially when looking at wars that successfully and positively changed the course of history - winning usually requires one to "take it to the people" - especially when its a populace that at a minimum passively supports the regime that produces continuous warfare.
I specifically think of Japan and Germany in World War II. To a lesser extent, I think of the American South in the American Civil War.
My thinking here is greatly influenced by this fascinating book.
I don't believe that this would end if Hamas released their hostages. Ultimately, it would put Palestine back to where they were before October 7th except civilians would be much worse off. Still living under Israeli occupation with limited freedom of movement, limited external assistance, etc. Except now, they'd have no hospitals, no infrastructure, housing, etc. How can a place live Gaza possibly rebuild from that?
A lack of presence does not equal a lack of control. Israel still controls Palestinian air and maritime space, telecommunications, water, electricity, and border crossings.
While Israel may not have had a military presence since 2006, their control over the region did not do the same.
Goalpost moving aside, that statement is definitively untrue.
For one, Israel does not control the Gaza border with Egypt (which shocker... Egypt does). Israel has provided a ton of humanitarian aid to Gaza over the years including water and electricity but they do not control their water or electricity (kinda hard to do that or even claim that is being done since they don't have a presence in the country).
>Israel does not control the Gaza border with Egypt.
You're correct. But Palestine has no Egyptian consulate, so Palestinians are not able to secure a Visa of any kind to travel to Egypt. Israel does have an Egyptian consulate though, but Palestinians need permission from Israel to enter.
>Israel has provided...water and electricity but they do not control their water or electricity.
The Coastal Aquifer is the only groundwater source of water in the Gaza Strip. Gaza is at the end of the basin, however, Israel has built multiple deep wells and, essentially, extracts all water from the aquifer before it reaches Gaza's border. Israel then sells that water to Gaza. As well, Israel does not allow the West Bank to transport water to Gaza.
While Israel does not entirely control electricity within Gaza, Israel does supply Gaza with around 20% or so of their power and restricts fuel entry into Gaza which powers Gaza's only power station. At the start of this recent war, Israel has turned off their supply of power to Gaza and has not allowed fuel to be delivered to Gaza. Effectively turning off all power in Gaza. What power remains is usually through generators or solar power.
While the actions Israel has taken regarding power supplies to Gaza can be taken as a military decision to cut power to Hamas, we cannot overlook how this affects the 2 million civilians that also live in Gaza who have no say in this war.
> they do not control their water or electricity (kinda hard to do that or even claim that is being done since they don't have a presence in the country).
This is a stunningly false statement. I honestly don't know how anyone could believe it.
I guess you are just ignorant of the facts then. Israel only provides a portion as part of their humanitarian aid (but it isn't their responsibility to power Gaza.. just as no country is held responsible for anothers electricity?). I'd start with this wikipedia article:
You’re right, it isn’t Israel’s responsibility to power Gaza. But then why does Israel restrict and control Gaza’s import of fuel for their only power plant?
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t claim Israel is providing humanitarian aid while it is also restricting their ability to find solutions that no longer require their aid.
> All of this would end in an instant if Hamas would give up hostages and surrender.
No, it would not. There would still be 400,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Palestinians in the West Bank would still live under occupation. Do you think that situation will not also reach a boiling point and end in ethnic cleansing as fascist rhetoric in Israel increases?
Hamas is a terrorist organization deeply embedded in a dense area of 2m people. They also don't seem to care much about their people or even their own lives. If they decide to never surrender, shall Israel burn Gaza to the ground? Are those 2m people just going to become "collateral damage"?
Well thank god you'll be spared having colleagues from Gaza since Israel usually cuts off the internet there, because otherwise you'd have seen much worse than someone yelling rockets lol.
Also, I'm sure the Ukraine war would've ended if Ukraine would've just surrendered, what's your point? You realize that you could say that for basically every war ever, and that the enemy not surrendering doesn't allow you to commit war crimes? That's... literally the point.
Your comments in this thread have been crossing into flamewar and are particularly against the intended spirit that I tried to explain in the comment at the top. Please don't post more comments of this sort.
Okay sorry about that. I agree that I was 100% veering into sneering. I didn't see the top comment. I'll stop commenting and won't comment like that on a future thread!
Your comments in this thread have been crossing into flamewar and are particularly against the intended spirit that I tried to explain in the comment at the top. Please don't post more comments of this sort.
Why are many respectful yet pro-israel posts being flagged and removed, while there are vile pro-hamas posts being flagged and left here? Why was discussion not allowed on Oct 7 but is now?
I know you are trying but it does not seem even handed. I'm screenshotting a whole collection of them examples if seeing them together would be helpful.
I'd need to see links to specific comments, but certainly the flags aren't working any differently than they usually do. The only difference between [flagged][dead] and just [flagged] is the number of flags relative to upvotes; in the former case it would be higher than in the latter case.
Your several comments in this thread seem to be coming from a place of battling for one side against the other. I'm sure you have very good reasons for it, but it's not the intended spirit of discussion here, as I tried to explain at the top of the thread. In such cases, where people have (legitimately) strong feelings on a topic, the temptation to see the mods as biased in favor of the opposite side is almost irresistible. It happens from every perspective on every divisive topic, and this topic is one of the most divisive we've ever seen.
Personally I'd rather non-tech world news stay off HN completely but I'm calling it out because as someone who is up on world news I see quite a double standard unraveling here and that seems unfortunate.
Users flagged that story. We didn't touch it or even see it. I've turned off the flags now.
I just wrote a long explanation of how we approach the question of flags on stories like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39161344. If you read that and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to hear it.
If you do read it, you'll notice that one factor is whether there has been a major thread about the topic recently. That's important here because the current enormous thread isn't even 2 days old. HN can't handle a major discussion about this topic very often. So while I've turned off the flags, I don't think another story about this topic should be on the front page yet.
If it helps at all, before I saw your comment I was just responding (by email) to someone asking why https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39160743 was flagged, and I answered the same way: that is, (1) I turned off the flags, but also (2) explained why HN can't have another frontpage thread about this two days after the last one.
I know a pair of cases is a small sample but I hope it can count as a sign of how we try to be even-handed. I've learned the hard way that it's simply impossible to avoid perceptions and accusations of bias on divisive topics; even the most neutral moderation is going to generate such perceptions (actually it's worse than that—it's going to generate more). I'm not claiming to be at that level but I can tell you for sure that we do work hard at being even-handed.
We've had to warn you before not to post religious flamewar comments to HN (and also nationalistic and ideological flamewar comments). We end up having to ban accounts that do this repeatedly, because it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. I don't want to ban you! So pleae don't do this on HN.
Argh! I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to start a flamewar. And we have discussed this before, probably. (I have a 2 year old toddler. Sleep is... affected, I will just say that. And consequently, memory.)
I guess I do not yet understand the framework within which I can discuss this rationally (if at all), especially given this topic. If there is no such framework on HN, especially given the topic... That's what I'd like to understand.
I will try to remember this time :/ Sorry Dang!! Don't want to be an unnecessary burden!!
Question: If my comment had ONLY consisted of quotes from the Quran/Hadith, would that also be flagged?
I did my homework here (regarding the muslim thing) and the one unifying thing I found is the specific religious beliefs in Islam, which literally every terrorist quotes (here is one of many examples I found: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1481T5/). The difficulty I seem to be having here is me not understanding why this rational endeavour I undertook is somehow wrong. I feel like simply researching this was a mistake at this point, which is weird (and seemingly only applicable to this one topic- I have NOT found this to be the case with ANY other topic I've researched... but that is perhaps the nature and the danger with religious beliefs) https://newrepublic.com/article/81178/the-invention-islamoph...
Admittedly, some of my language was probably a bit edgy.
why this rational endeavour I undertook is somehow wrong.
The fact that something is bad for a nerd messageboard is not some absolute judgement on its wrongness or rightness. 'This or that religion is better or worse than some other religion' is not a discussion that works on HN and, as you know, is not allowed here. There's no 'rational' or 'good faith' variant you can come up that would work so just don't do it on this forum.
Both of these numbers pale in comparison to the civilian losses of Germany in WWII, and the Allies are not generally considered to have performed a genocide.
Clearly the absolute number of casualties (not even civilian casualties in this case, that is allegedly more like 15k) is not sufficient on its own to define a genocide.
The raw number of people killed isn't indicative of a genocide, it's intent and actions against a specific population. Over 1.5 million (out of 2 million) Gaza residents are displaced and facing starvation. Almost all of the hospitals in Gaza have been destroyed. Many would say Israel is committing genocide and the court today said they will continue the investigation because it's plausible.
- They’re displaced because there was active fighting in their homes.
- Hospitals were destroyed because they were being used as military outposts.
Neither of those violates the rules of war, though Hamas using hospitals as outposts is a war crime.
I think it’s a tragedy the government of Gaza brought this disaster down upon them by committing war crimes against their stronger neighbor and then further war crimes using their own population as human shields.
But that’s not a genocide.
Gaza can surrender any time and the collateral damage isn’t out of line with modern urban conflicts. Eg, US in Iraq.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the Allies did ethnically cleanse parts of Eastern Europe to remove as many Germans as possible into German borders or internment camps, and they weren't too fussed if they died as a result.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_German...
For example, look at the section for Czechoslovakia (selecting it since it's inarguable Germans had lived in the country formerly known as Bohemia for centuries) alone:
> Between 700,000 and 800,000 Germans were affected by irregular expulsions between May and August 1945.[108] The expulsions were encouraged by Czechoslovak politicians and were generally executed by order of local authorities, mostly by groups of armed volunteers and the army.[109] [...] Transfers of population under the Potsdam agreements lasted from January until October 1946. 1.9 million ethnic Germans were expelled to the American zone, part of what would become West Germany. [...] More than 1 million were expelled to the Soviet zone, which later became East Germany.[110] The West German government estimated the expulsion death toll at 273,000 civilians,[115] and this figure is cited in historical literature.[116] However, in 1995, research by a joint German and Czech commission of historians found that the previous demographic estimates of 220,000 to 270,000 deaths to be overstated and based on faulty information. They concluded that the death toll was between 15,000 and 30,000 dead, assuming that not all deaths were reported.[117][118][119][120]
It's just that 'forced population transfers' were historically considered not outside the bounds of propriety.
Don’t forget that these international laws and treaties were born out of a desire to prevent the horrors of WWII from occurring again. Lots of actors in that war including the Allies did terrible things that are prohibited by those laws. The genocide laws, as I understand, came about as a result of the Holocaust, but the use of WMDs against civilian targets (eg destroying a city with nuclear weapons) would not be legal either.
Given this historical context, we don’t need to “whatabout” with the Allies. Surely we can agree that we do not want a repeat of WWII.
In terms of whether Israel’s actions constitute genocide, we have yet to find out. Are they grossly disproportionate compared to Oct 7, and appalling in terms of their destruction of civilian life and property? I believe yes, and whether or not that is “genocide” is, to me, somewhat besides the point. Making it stop NOW is the point!
About the 25000 Gaza figure, Many places in the media ,it mentions the figure from the Health Ministry includes Hamas fighters. Elsewhere in media reports this is said to be several 1000, I've seen figures 7000-9000 quoted as number of Hamas fighters deaths. (FROM WSJ The Palestinian health ministry’s figures don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. )
You've been breaking the site guidelines badly in this thread and your comments are very much not in the intended spirit, as I tried to explain it at the top. Please stop posting like this. (In case anyone is worried: yes, the exact same thing applies to the commenters you disagree with.)
If this keeps up, we'll end up having to ban your account. (In case anyone is worried: yes, that this would work exactly the same way even if you were arguing for the opposite position.) We're not interested in enforcing views on this or any other divisive topic; only in protecting this site for its intended purpose.
Perhaps your comment would be more constructive if you could say how my comments break the rules. Help me grow and help me follow the rules by being specific.
- - -
You say that you’d equally critique the opposite viewpoint, but that’s been factually untrue before:
You censored people for pointing out in purely neutral terms, using videos of the people themselves giving interviews, that BLM was a Marxist organization — on the basis that it’s an “inherent flame war” to say true things the community is upset by.
- - -
Again, my comment doesn’t seem any different than many others here you didn’t feel the need to critique.
To me, that seems like the antisemitism we witnessed from Harvard et al — who censor speech on campus, then cry “free speech” when making calls for genocide.
> Perhaps your comment would be more constructive if you could say how my comments break the rules. Help me grow and help me follow the rules by being specific.
That would of course be best; the problem is that it takes far more time and energy to produce such explanations, if not more, than it does to write the ordinary sort of moderation reply. I don't have nearly enough cycles to be able to do that, so most of the time I have to rely on linking to the rules and trusting users to figure out how they broke them.
There's another aspect too: offering a detailed explanation frequently backfires, in the sense that the commenter comes back with a counterargument that's 2x or 5x as long, rejecting the explanation and making complex demands for further clarification. This doesn't always happen, but it's common. It's physically impossible to continue all such conversations to a satisfactory conclusion, but leaving them incomplete often leaves things in a worse state than not having tried.
That said, I'll try and give you a few details:
It ought to be obvious that beginning a comment with "Yawn." breaks HN's rule "Don't be snarky", and given the nature of this topic, also this rule: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Beyond that, several of your comments in this thread were full of flamewar rhetoric, by which I mean sensational/indignant language that escalates the hostility level in a discussion and comes across as aggressive to the other side, if not the other person. Not only is that not the curious conversation that HN is supposed to be for, it actively destroys it.
An example is your comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39148777. The first part ("Yawn.") was egregiously against HN's rules; you should never be posting that way, least of all on a topic this flameprone. The second sentence ("Opening a genocide trial is an implicit condemnation [etc.]") was fine from a guidelines point of view—it may be factually wrong, as some argued in response, but it isn't against HN's rules to be wrong in good faith, and I wouldn't have made a moderation reply to just that. If you had limited your comment to that sentence, it would have been fine.
The sentence after that, though ("Trying to score cheap rhetorical “gotchas” while avoiding the substance of the point is trite.") is an informationless putdown and name-calling of precisely the sort the HN guidelines ask people to omit. Moreover, it crosses into personal attack. You should never be posting that way to HN, least of all on a topic this divisive. And the final sentence ("Especially when you’re technically wrong.") does more of the same: it's a swipe, and unduly personal.
You're going to produce flamewars when you post like this to a large public internet forum (like HN) on the best of days. To do it in the context of the most inflammatory topic that exists right now is not ok at all. I realize that the comment you were replying to also was being provocative and also broke the site guidelines (by implying you hadn't read an article), but that doesn't make it ok to reply the way you did. Commenters need to follow the rules regardless of what others are doing; otherwise we just end up in a downward spiral.
> my comment doesn’t seem any different than many others here you didn’t feel the need to critique
There are far too many posts for us to read them all. I spent the entire day in this thread yesterday, reading comments and posting moderation replies when I saw commenters breaking HN's rules regardless of their views on the underlying topic, and still didn't come close to seeing them all.
If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. It's a mistake to assume that I saw a comment and just "didn't feel the need to critique". Worse, if you go from that to assuming that the mods must be biased against your viewpoint, that's more or less guaranteed to be a non sequitur. Everyone with strong feelings on a topic, on every side of every position, feels that way (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
HN Search is run by Algolia so it would be their page. I thought they had some documentation there but at present all I can find is https://hn.algolia.com/settings, which isn't much. Can you say what you're trying to understand?
Despite the name, HN has never been constrained to stories about IT, tech and startups.
It's the first sentence of the guidelines:
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
There's some good links to additional resources here. There is a "hide" option for the story if you don't want to see it. Personally I think if all we ever see is tech here we will lose sight of the bigger picture.
Huh? How would you accomplish this? Why wouldn’t the terrorists hide amongst the non-terrorists? Where would you take the non-terrorists? What about people who are terrorist-supporting non-terrorists, aren’t they a source of potential issues?
I think it's extremely sad that the measured and helpful comment that you are replying to was flagged. It suggests that the preponderance of HN commentors skews heavily one way on this issue (whether that skew is correct or not is another matter). To respond to your comment specifically: I'm proud to count myself in the overwhelming minority.
I agree, I would love to get @dang answer on why my comment is flagged and hidden, while massive misinformation is allowed to stay up here.
and people here wonder why Israel put resource into showing the truth to the world.
At the end of the day, the ICJ does not matter because it has no military, and the only major military power in the world, the United States of America, doesn't recognize its jurisdiction at all. Next time, they should try the Supreme Court if they actually want to make a difference (not that it'd work)
>
For example, the United States had previously accepted the court's compulsory jurisdiction upon its creation in 1946 but in 1984, after Nicaragua v. United States, withdrew its acceptance following the court's judgment that called on the US to "cease and to refrain" from the "unlawful use of force" against the government of Nicaragua. The court ruled (with only the American judge dissenting) that the United States was "in breach of its obligation under the Treaty of Friendship with Nicaragua not to use force against Nicaragua" and ordered the United States to pay war reparations.[21]
It still does. Just not unconditionally (as in https://icj-cij.org/declarations). There are several cases pending concerning the US, and there were cases concerning US since 1984.
There is another player. China is interested in resolving the Gaza conflict.[1]
China's position is that, since the existing world order, the International Court of Justice and the United States, can't resolve this, China should become involved. Chinese container shipping lines COSCO and OOCL have suspended trade with Israel. China has already provided some aid to Gaza.[2]
Gaza has a sizable coastline, and China has a large number of amphibious assault ships available. They can defend themselves against Israel air attacks. If China decides to send humanitarian relief to Gaza, China can do it, and Israel can't stop them.[3] China would look like the good guys. Which their leadership knows.
This seems far fetched given China's traditional insistence that countries' internal affairs should not be subject to external overview, it's undeclared stance that subject populations should be suppressed by whatever means necessary and the still marginal effect of the conflict on its trade.
I believe parent was referring to the Uyghur genocide[1] not the Territorial disputes in the South China Sea[2].
The line of thinking is that if Israel is subject to international courts/laws regarding genocide for its action, then China will be too. China's participation in judging Israel opens itself to the same judgement.
That line of thinking doesn't make sense since Xinjiang is part of China while Gaza isn't part of Israel. One is a domestic question, the other isn't (going by the international recognition).
I don't see folks buying that, sorry. In international realpolitik you play the cards you have and if your rival opens themselves up for criticism you play it.
The notion that Gaza's more than some variety of closely-held protectorate is either aspirational or a convenient fiction, depending on who's stating it. They aren't even close to having a level of control over their own territory and affairs to be considered a sovereign state. Hell, the West Bank also can't credibly be called a sovereign state, taking into account only facts on the ground and observed behavior, and not what officials say. In some respects US tribal nations have more actual sovereignty, in ways that matter, even though they definitely aren't sovereign states, from an international relations perspective, and functionally nobody treats their tribal territory as meaningfully distinct from that of the US as a whole, in these contexts.
However, situations like this, in which rhetoric and de jure policy conflict with de facto reality, open one up to others taking the fiction at face value. And what do you do then? Can't deny it without causing other problems. So now this may be regarded as an international matter because Gaza "isn't part of Israel".
Heh—that, for fuckin' sure. The fiction there runs the opposite direction, where China pretends (and encourages others to pretend) that Taiwan's less independent than it is, meanwhile just about everyone acts like Taiwan's in fact very much distinct and independent from China, even if they say otherwise.
It adjudicates the actions taken by all Israelis. Its jurisdiction should stop at the border it recognises. But it continues however to award land outside Israeli territory to Israeli citizens by ruling on the status of settlements. That is extra-territoriality.
Amphibious landings are highly vulnerable, and almost impossible to pull off without air superiority. What gives the impression that China's amphibious landing ships are resistant to anti-shipping missiles? Every article on modern naval combat I've read highlights just how vulnerable surface vessels are to attack, and how crucial it is to keep them out of range. I am incredibly dubious that China would land military ships in Gaza.
I was with you until chinese contested amphibious landing in occupied gaza. China’s big picture strategy is to grow while not being drained by small conflicts the way the US is. This would be totally against that strategy.
> Gaza has a sizable coastline, and China has a large number of amphibious assault ships available. They can defend themselves against Israel air attacks
Sorry but this is goofy fan-fiction. No, China does not have the ability to forcibly land in Gaza without huge losses, and then being completely trapped there with no hope of resupply. That's an incredibly long supply line.
I think its extremely unlikely that china will go to war with israel. That would be an extremely bloody conflict for almost no benefit to china.
Additionally china's military currently has big corruption problems (e.g. the missle fuel water controversy). I doubt china really wants to put their reputation on the line until they sort that out, especially given what happened to russia in ukraine.
They might look like "the good guys" by doing that, but they'd also be dragging themselves into an open war Israel (and its allies). I'm not sure that would be a smart move.
I'm also unsure if this move would be seen well domestically. They have enough problems right now, and focusing resources on this doesn't sound like it would be met with high praise.
I think the idea is that they'd genuinely be providing humanitarian aid, with military presence genuinely being there for self-defense.
They would simply be stepping into the role on the world stage the US and other Western countries have fulfilled for the last few decades. Israel probably wouldn't be foolish enough to attack them, and their allies definitely wouldn't aid them.
And in the unlikely event Israel does attack their humanitarian convoy, it would only give China an opportunity to do some live-fire practice and score extra points on the world stage as the innocent defender.
China may not even provide a military presence. First, because providing military presence could invite conflict since Israel would have the ability to claim the Chinese fired first, even if untrue. Second, because Chinese leadership is absolutely willing to treat the people as sacrificial pawns for a geopolitical goal. Trading the lives of couple hundred people on aid ships would be worthwhile in their eyes for an outcome that benefits China as a whole.
Which other international conflicts has China resolved? The current Chinese state seems to be much better at fostering conflict (I.e. the ongoing Korean War) than resolving it.
So far, not much. Gaza is a good place to start. China wants more influence in the Middle East, and already owns or operates a large number of ports outside China.[1] Israel blockades the existing ports of Gaza. A China-run port in Gaza, protected by the PLAN, is a possibility.
It also assumes that the _US_ would allow a China-run port in Israel, which is so unlikely it might as well be impossible. Israel is a nuclear weapons state and such a close US ally that they basically have their own F-35 fighter jet variant.
"At least two-thirds of the world’s top 50 container ports are owned by the Chinese or supported by Chinese investments, up from roughly 20% a decade ago."[1]
> Gaza has a sizable coastline, and China has a large number of amphibious assault ships available. They can defend themselves against Israel air attacks.
Chinese warships will never be allowed anywhere near the Mediterranean in the first place - if there is one thing that even the split US Congress will agree on, it is that China already has too much influence and that they need to be stopped.
Additionally, China's army hasn't seen actual combat in a loooong time. It's likely that their army is in just as bad of a shape as Russia's is, and getting that demonstrated on the world stage before they have a chance to snack a piece or the whole of Taiwan would be pretty foolish.
While what you are saying is technically true, Chinese ships would be allowed to exercise their right of Transit Passage under UNCLOS through the Strait of Gibraltar.
To my knowledge, China is a signatory to UNCLOS, but has disputes around it's "islands" in the South China Sea and their relation to the EEZ. I acknowledge that China's relationship to UNCLOS, as a minimum, is complicated and rapidly evolving, but I dispute that they do not have a right to transit passage. Or to be more specific, I would put forward that they would have a plausible argument to claim transit passage.
The United States has not ratified UNCLOS, and regularly claims the right of Transit Passage. In fact, this fact is one of the reasons why Iran claims that the United States cannot enter into Iranian TTW while making a Strait of Hormuz transit - because the US has not ratified UNCLOS, their claim is that the US cannot claim transit passage. For the United States (or any Western Nation) to make the claim that China cannot claim Transit Passage would lend weight to Iran's argument, which you can imagine, they would not want to do.
I do not want to make any assumptions around your specific views on this matter - you may hold the opinion that China could not claim transit passage, however I wanted to interject some perspective that:
1. That may not be universally agreed upon
2. Specifically, the United States and it's allies may not make that argument because it would put them in a negative position for other international disputes.
China believes in soft power. So I doubt they'd come in guns blazing to rescue Gaza.
However, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by brokering some kind of peace using their supply chain supremacy.
Meanwhile US looks more and more like a paper tiger because they can't stop Yemen from blockading Israeli shipments and also refusing to do the one thing that would resolve the shipping issues: force Israel to the table for a ceasefire.
China has no ability to project much outside of its own territory. They might be able to invade taiwan, sure, but anything farther off is still out of reach for them (even if they wanted to, which I highly doubt). They really couldn't stage much from their one support base in Djibouti.
China would only get involved to extend their influence. China is very much tit-for-tat. But who will grant them anything in return? None of the neighboring countries likes the Palestinians. Egypt even holds the border closed.
Israel could (and probably would) prevent the fleet from delivering the aid even without help from the US.
In support of your "If China decides to send humanitarian relief to Gaza, China can do it, and Israel can't stop them," you link to a description of a ship designed for an invasion of an island 85 miles off China's coast, an invasion which China (correctly IMO) calculates would probably end in failure (or else it would've invaded by now).
Israel can't challenge China militarily in, e.g., the Pacific, but it is a wealthy competent state that takes security seriously.
You really think China wants to create a precedent where a foreign power comes and helps a smaller region to deter a bigger aggressor, with military force? I find that highly unlikely.
How is the Chinese Navy getting there? Gotta go through Gibraltar or Suez, and then there is the NATO naval base at Souda Bay. Only way their ships get close is with US consent.
i don't think china wants having anything to do with hamas. For a first experience as a military-humanitarian adventure, the chances of appearing as a support for hostage-taking muslim terrorist is way too high.
Stop using unguided bombs in densely populated areas. Stop using poison gas. Stop killing people waving a white flag. Stop sniping people outside of a church. Stop planning and executing demolitions on universities. Stop starving people. Stop cutting water supplies.
Dang, everything I listed is widely reported on. I think I have the right to express this even on HN on an article about a genocide case.
Like the parent says, these have all been widely reported on. I think we have to come into this conversation with a base level of the events that are going on before commenting.
It's ~20k women and children killed/missing(presumed killed) at this point. There's no shortage of any kind of attrocities against civilians to be found online.
You can find anything from driving tanks over families with children, crushing them to death, and surviving children describing the ordeal, to videos of 9 year old being executed by a shot to the head in the street, to teenagers throwing fireworks and being shot and then finished off while laying on the ground. (in the west bank, even)
As for shooting people holding white flags, even CNN did a feature on that.
And there's an interview with the son somewhere (the person that is seen running to the woman in the end). I lost the link already, since there's a constant stream of new attrocities on Telegram, and there's no point keeping up.
"After October 7, the Israeli government shut off the pipes that supply Gaza with water. It has since only resumed piping water to some parts of southern Gaza while some water has entered via Egypt, but it’s not reaching everyone and is not nearly enough to meet the needs of Gaza’s population, requiring many to rely on the local water supply."
Israel controls all water in the West Bank. Palestinians in the West Bank are not allowed to even collect rainwater because all water infra must be approved by Israel, and they don't approve much.
I assume this is fresh water pumped into Gaza. What of the desalination plants? Cutting off all fuel surely ensures that that water source is also cut off. I would not be surprised to learn that this infrastructure has been targeted for destruction.
Hi All, I am a combat soldier and commander in the IDF currently fighting in Gaza.
We are not committing any genocide. The give away for Genocide is that there are mass graves, which in Gaza there are not.
Yes there is collateral damage because Hamas uses civilians as human shields, so we have no choice but to kill them too, but we do not specifically target them.
We risk ourselves and our soldiers to ensure that the fewest number of non-combatants get killed. We have lost many of our own soldiers because of this. It would be much easier for us to just bomb everything from the air but we dont, because it's less precise than going in on foot.
Personally, as a commander, I would like to say that I have no ill feelings towards the Palestinian people, but we need to get as many of the hostages back as possible, and we cannot allow Hamas to continue ruling Gaza and attacking our civilians as they did on October 7th.
We will continue the fight with them until our military objectives are met, and we will also engage Hizbollah on the northern border for exactly the same reasons (Hamas actually stole their plan and used it on October 7th - Hezbollah had planned to do it in the north but much worse).
Israel is the canary in the coal mine. What happens to us today will happen to you tomorrow, so before you give your full throated support to Hamas, let me ask you, would you want October 7th to happen to your family and friends? If Hamas aren't stopped, that same attack will happen around the world.
Please support us and help rid the world of violent terrorism, and maybe one day, we can all live in peace.
>> The give away for Genocide is that there are mass graves, which in Gaza there are not.
According to Omer Bartov, scholar of genocide, the criterion for genocide is that there is intent to commit genocide:
The crime of genocide was defined in 1948 by the United Nations as “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”
> but we need to get as many of the hostages back as possible
And how many hostages has the war gotten back so far?
> we cannot allow Hamas to continue ruling Gaza
There is no realistic plan for ending Hamas. The more Hamas fighters you kill the more Gazans join. You can take temporary control of the government, but Isarelis in Gaza and anyone who works with them will be targeted by terrorists until the end of time. Eventually israel will get sick of the attacks and pull out, and Hamas will immediately regain control of the government.
The obvious end game here is a return to the pre october 7th status quo with increased border security to ensure oct. 7th doesnt happen again. When will we admit that the hostages can not be saved and move to that end game?
>Personally, as a commander, I would like to say that I have no ill feelings towards the Palestinian people, but we need to get as many of the hostages back as possible, and we cannot allow Hamas to continue ruling Gaza and attacking our civilians as they did on October 7th.
I'm curious about this - the idea that both goals are achievable is a fiction. You either get the hostages, or you eliminate Hamas. Do y'all talk about this?
Why can't we do both? We talk about it a lot. Until now, we have not succeeded, but maybe we can pressure Hamas to let them go, and then eliminate Hamas in a future round of fighting?
Hi there, I personally admire the work you do, I fully support Israel in it's war against evil, I hope you eradicate Hamas (ideally they would all surrender, but that's unlikely, so the other option is they get killed) as soon as you can. If you doubt any of these words, check out my tweets/likes (@tomprimozic)
However, there's 3 "contentious" points that I want to ask (my go-to Jewish (& very pro-Israel) close friend is currently very far away and has his own issues - not that you don't, but since you posted here...)
1. What's your comment on "Hamas headquarters below Al Shifa hospital"?
2. Why do IDF soldiers shoot (and post) videos of them "mocking"/"disrespecting" Palestinian homes/mosques/schools?
3. What's the steelman argument of why Israel is "occupying" the West Bank? The best I can come up with is "they didn't occupy Gaza and look what happened", but (a) that wasn't known before Oct7, and (b) they would have IMO gained a lot of goodwill abroad if they had given it more autonomy...
Thank you for the kind words. Will reach out when I get home next. Been a long day - we did a big mission today and I'm wiped so please excuse the short answers.
1. Hamas was located in a significant want under Al-shifa. Israel released video of our commando unit raiding it. You can find that video online. Hard to watch.
2. Because they're angry and they're being stupid and reacting emotionally. Please understand, they raped our women, tortured them and then murdered them. They did the same to our men, old people and children. Imagine for a second if a specific group did all that to lots of people that you loved and cared for. How would you feel? What would you post as you took your revenge? Israel is a tiny country. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone is related to everyone, or is at least friends with them on some way. So the disrespect is because they are furious with our enemy, and our enemy identifies specifically as religious muslims and arabs. Hard stuff.
3. Oh wow that's a hard one. It's complicated. We're in a war to claim territory with the Palestinians. I mean, you could reverse the question and ask "why are the Palestinians occupying Israeli land". The Palestinians arent a people, per se. They are the random groups of different arab families that were living in the area at the time of the creation of the state of israel. Some are from iran, some from
Syria, some from Jordan, egypt, etc. so we are not "occupying" their land because there is no "them".
Really what needs to happen is that we need to be separated. We can't continue to live in an intermingled fashion like this because it's too messy and unsustainable.
But.... that's a problem for another day. For today we just need to deal with Hamas and Hezbollah.
>> Hamas was located in a significant want under Al-shifa. Israel released video of our commando unit raiding it. You can find that video online. Hard to watch.
I can't find that video online. I can find a video that shows a tunnel, allegedly under Al Shifa, and ending in a blast door.
IDF publishes footage of what it says is Hamas tunnel at al-Shifa hospital
I cannot find any "hard to watch" video of "commando units raiding" the tunnel. Do you have a direct link to such a video?
Note that the claim was not that there was a "significant [ward?]" under the Al-Shifa hospital. The claim was that Hamas had its headquarters under Al-Shifa.
For example, this claim was made by Isaac Herzog, the President of Israel, in an interview with Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC, where Isaac Herzog claimed IDF is not actually attacking Al-Shifa:
[my transcript]: Undrerneath Shifa there is a huge huge terror base, actually the headquarters, the headquarters of Hamas Isis operations is right there under Shifa.
1. and 2. make sense, thank you for your reply, especially given you've more important things to worry about!
regarding 3: I don't want to get into the "who's land it is" debate (I generally agree with your description from a historical perspective, but I also think that historical perspective is largely irrelevant).
But mostly a practical issue: why wasn't it (with the exception of Jerusalem and some other Jewish "holy" sites) treated more like Gaza (i.e. withdrawal, as opposed to building of more settlements)?
Obviously that wouldn't satisfy everyone everywhere (especially not the "open air prison" crowd) but I think it would have given Israel much more legitimacy - one of the crucial criticisms in the past few years was "taking Palestinian land to build Israeli settlements".
What I'm trying to understand, is why they did that? Probably not for the lack of land. Nationalist reasons? Maybe, but I don't see the potential massive gain there, to offset the (IMO) massive loss in internaional reputation from "occupying West Bank".
And in addition it would defuse at least a part of Hamas's justification for the Oct7 attack (the other, the Al Aqsa issue, obviously being fake, and of course that old "hate Jews" motivation wouldn't go away...).
Anyways I completely understand if you'd rather not have this discussion, I still hope you win soon!
>Because they're angry and they're being stupid and reacting emotionally. Please understand, they raped our women, tortured them and then murdered them. They did the same to our men, old people and children.
I have to point out that you are holding soldiers of a wealthy country to the same standards as a terrorist organization in one of the poorest parts of the world. It contradicts the claim that Israel is a bastion of civilization in the region. The behavior of the Israeli soldiers is despicable and your explanation seems to downplay and rationalize it.
> "I mean, you could reverse the question and ask "why are the Palestinians occupying Israeli land".
How? The West Bank, Golan. This is not the State of Israel's land. Never was. But it's being taken regardless. Israel's security justification might be taken seriously if it wasn't simultaneously supporting settlers who steal land. Stop them and you will find more international support.
> The Palestinians arent a people, per se. They are the random groups of different arab families that were living in the area at the time of the creation of the state of israel. Some are from iran, some from Syria, some from Jordan, egypt, etc. so we are not "occupying" their land because there is no "them".
This borders on racism and it still doesn't make the land they occupy yours. You need a stronger clam than conquest or an old book.
Just put this right on the shelf, "The Palestinians arent a people, per se."
I can't even. Genocide isn't just killing a people, it is also de-peopling them. So many in the entire comment section don't even know they are saying the quiet part.
Nope. The definition of genocide is: "the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group." We are not doing that. You can see it by the fact that we arent bombing the places that the innocent civilians are escaping to. We only bomb positions where hamas is or is attacking from. They are using human shields, while we are trying to protect palestinian lives even at the expense of our own
My country has given Israel billions upon billions of dollars and transferred advanced weapon systems and yet you guys were overrun by some dudes wearing slides flying second hand paragliders. Now after killing tens of thousands of civilians in retaliation, bombing hospitals and refugee camps with US made weapons (as it seems that the only part of the IDF that actually works is the US supplied part) you're here explaining why what you're doing technically isn't genocide.
There's no need to guess like that. Just search for "mass graves gaza", there are plenty of reports of actual mass graves, from Reuters, NYT, SkyNews, The Guardian, etc etc, with pictures and all. See my other comments in this theread for links.
Nope. Those are just buildings. Without people, they are just structures. Again, if Hamas was firing at us from behind civilians (which they do a lot), then we had no choice. You can't just call anything a mass grave for the sake of convenience.
You can’t just call it “collateral damage” for the sake of avoiding the label of genocide while you’re murdering, starving, and barbarically destroying a society of millions of innocent people.
Good question, I’m fairly certain that doing exactly nothing, while of course politically untenable, would be preferable to this.
Kind of a “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” kind of deal.
Find the kidnappers and then surgically take them out. If you’ve no clue how to do that get your single big ally to help you out with that, as they have about 20 years of experience doing exactly that thing.
Even better if your lack of response causes a rift/break in the ranks of your opponents, and half of the hostages get released without conflict.
Of course you’ll eventually have to resign and apologize to the public because it’s much easier for them to be bloodthirsty.
And then, Israel’s PM is bloodthirsty themselves, so it’s all an exercise in futility anyway.
Sorry, but that won't work. Hamas still have 130 hostages, and they shoot mortars, missiles and kamikaze drones into Israel with increasing technology and firepower. They have 20,000 combat soldiers left, so unless we leave several division on their border (which would be insane), they're just break through the fence and slaughter us again. I appreciate your attempt to come up with a solution, but it is not at all connected to reality. Hamas will not just sit in Gaza and wait. They showed us that on October 7th. Either we wipe them out or they will slaughter us again.
We tried. They weren't interested in peace. Plus there's a difference between Gazans (Hamas) and West Bank arabs (Fatah). We are not committing genocide, but Hamas definitely are trying to.
You should feel bad for people whose humanity was stolen from them.
"A Journalist asked him"
"how many children, how many people could be killed, to justify this operation? Is there an upper limit, where you think this is just to much this does not compute this does not add up?
"That congressman, couldn't give a number. And I thought to myself, -that man has been corrupted. That man has lost himself. He's lost himself in humiliation. He's lost himself in vengeance. He has lost himself in violence.
I keep hearing this term repeated over and over again "the right to self defense"
What about the right to dignity?
What about the right to morality?
What about the right to be able to sleep at night?
Because I know that If I was complicit, and I am complicit, in dropping bombs on children. In dropping bombs on refugee camps. No matter who is there. It would give me trouble sleeping at night, and I worry for the souls of people who can do this, and can sleep at night."
-Ta-Nehisi Coates
> there is collateral damage because Hamas uses civilians as human shields
When you say things like this, I know that you are either spreading IDF propaganda or have been wired to believe IDF propaganda. Either way it is telling what soldiers are experiencing.
None of the things you stated are any different than what IDF associated press has stated. This makes your post incredibly suspect.
As this is HN, and we welcome on-the-ground views, we are not finding too much info about what is actually happening from the ground view in your post.
> We are not committing any genocide. The give away for Genocide is that there are mass graves, which in Gaza there are not.
How many Hamas terrorists have you killed compared to the now over 10 000 children?
The fact that there is no one to bury them doesn't mean it's not a genocide, come on..
> so we have no choice but to kill them too
When you fire at children playing in the streets, you had a choice. If you can't see that, you've lost all humanity..
> but we do not specifically target them
Hundreds of videoes proves otherwise. Where fleeing civilians are gunned down.
> Personally, as a commander, I would like to say that I have no ill feelings towards the Palestinian people
But your leaders have. And your peers, judging by videoes they posts about the cruelty they do.
> but we need to get as many of the hostages back as possible
You say that, but then you bomb every structure you find, and even shoot the fleeing hostages yourself. It doesn't really seem you care too much for them, they're merely a convenient excuse to do your horrors.
> Please support us and help rid the world of violent terrorism
You can start by laying down your weapon. What you're doing to Palestinian civilians is terrorism.
>> Yes there is collateral damage because Hamas uses civilians as human shields, so we have no choice but to kill them too, but we do not specifically target them.
I struggle to believe this is really a comment by a "commander in the IDF". Such a person should know that the use of civilians as human shields by one side does not absolve the other side from taking every precaution to minimise harm coming to those civilians.
Risk to civilians does not bar military action, but the principle of proportionality requires that precautions be taken to minimize the harm to these protected persons. This analysis includes considerations like whether circumstances permit the attacker to time a military action to minimize the presence of civilians at the location.[16]
Specifically, saying the IDF doesn't target them, they're just in the way, is a cynical denial of that responsibility.
Further, a commander of the IDF would remember the proverb about throwing stones when living in a glass house: there is extensive documentation of the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields by the IDF. See for example the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead (2009):
10. The use of Palestinian civilians as human shields
55. The Mission investigated four incidents in which Israeli forces coerced Palestinian civilian
men at gun point to take part in house searches during the military operations (Chapter XIV).
The Palestinian men were blindfolded and handcuffed as they were forced to enter houses ahead
of the Israeli soldiers. In one of the incidents, Israeli forces repeatedly forced a man to enter a
house in which Palestinian combatants were hiding. Published testimonies of Israeli soldiers who
took part in the military operations confirm the continued use of this practice, in spite of clear
orders from Israel’s High Court to the armed forces to put an end to it and repeated public
assurances from the armed forces that the practice had been discontinued. The Mission
concludes that this practice amounts to the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields and is
therefore prohibited by international humanitarian law.
Despite Israel's claims Hamas does not use civilians in this way. Instead they fight from built-up areas and make it difficult to distinguish combatant from non-combatant. They "hide among civilians" but they don't "use them as shields".
We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamewar comments (not just in this thread but in many others). That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
It's especially in violation of the intended spirit that I tried to explain at the top of the current thread.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
You can't attack another user like this on HN, no matter how wrong they are or you feel they are.
You may not feel you owe the other person better, but you owe this community better if you're participating it; especially given the intended spirit that I attempted to describe at the top of this thread.
Denouncing others as monsters without humanity is what fuels this entire horror. The least we can do is not allow that on Hacker News.
If you call someone a monster and tell them their humanity has been stolen, that's dehumanizing language. That's not allowed here, from any side. Moreover, if one's intention is to oppose dehumanization, one should begin by not practicing it oneself.
> Yes there is collateral damage because Hamas uses civilians as human shields, so we have no choice but to kill them too, but we do not specifically target them.
> we have no choice but to kill them too, but we do not specifically target them
The ruling is a joke, how can you rule against the defendant and yet order the defendant to monitor themselves?
The ICJ knew if it found against Israel it would loose all credibility outside the West, but it also had too much political pressure from the West to rule for Israel.
No, it didn't. It ruled on what amounts to (in the parlance of the US legal system) a preliminary injunction, ordering one because the pleadings and supporting evidence on initial review warrant it, while the process of a trial on the merits will take longer.
> The ruling is a joke, how can you rule against the defendant and yet order the defendant to monitor themselves?
The only people the ICJ can order are the parties. External monitoring and enforcement is a matter for, primarily, the UN Security Council.
> The ICJ knew if it found against Israel it would loose all credibility outside the West, but it also had too much political pressure from the West to rule for Israel.
The process by which the ICJ might rule for or against Israel, rather than ordering provisional measures, is much longer. This is just an early part of the case.
> The ICJ could, however, order a ceasefire that is a freezing of the conflict.
It could, as it did against Russia in Ukraine v. Russia (2022). But note that in Ukraine v. Russia it specifically cited the resolution adopted by the General Assembly under Uniting for Peace addressing the Russia invasion as a violation of the UN Charter as a violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of another UN member, that is, it was addressing an operation already declared illegal independent of the issue before the Court.
Ordering a halt to an operation that otherwise might fall within the recognized UN Charter right if individual or collective self-defense is, especially when the allegedly aggressing party is not subject to the order, seems pretty hard to justify as a provisional measure.
(One might also note the absence of an effect of that order in Ukraine v. Russia.)
It did order Hamas to release its prisoners and not Israel, even though Hamas wasn't on trial and Israel has multiple times more children [1] in jail than all Hamas' prisoners.
Its a punt by an organization that has always been useless except to tut tut people and regimes the West doesn't like.
[1] I mean child as is used colloquially, not as "under 18" in the manner is often disingenuously used.
No, it didn't order Hamas to do anything, as it has no authority to order non-state actors. It, in the last of the paragraphs that are part of the discussion and not part of the provisional measures that constitute the binding orders, “calls on” Hamas and other armed groups to release all hostages immediately and unconditionally.
South Africa asked for something analogous to a preliminary injunction. The ICJ declined to order a preliminary ceasefire. Instead, the case will be tried as usual.
Sure. I don’t think the ICJ was envisioned as an incapacitating body. Instead its existence is a deterrent. A venue for retribution and possibly even restitution.
There's so much wiggle room within the statement. For example
78 - Israel must... take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of... acts... in particular: ... (d) imposing measures
intended to prevent births within the group.
Bombing or evacuating hospitals will have that effect, but it would be extremely difficult to prove intention. So they can keep doing what they say is necessary.
Many governments have issued vague calls to minimise civilian deaths etc. If Israel rejected those, it's hard to see it treating this differently.
That especially means two things here: being kind, and not using the thread to do battle. If you're not able to stick to that, that's fine, but in that case please don't post.
What does be kind mean in a context like this? Many things, but here's one in my view: it means finding a place in your heart for the humanity of the other—whoever the other happens to be for you.
That isn't easy but it's the spirit we want here. If you can't find it in yourself, that's understandable, but on this topic, please only post if you can.