I visited Israel for a sports seminar some ~10 years ago and met many nice people. I felt sympathetic to their reality of living in an ever-hostile environment from all sides, and struggle to keep their place in the world safe. I admired their resilience and strength.
When this Gaza conflict started, I saw how the Israeli protested against their government and demanded peace, so I thought there is a semblance of an excuse for glimpses of abhorrence being reported - "it's a small number of people in power, not the Israeli nation doing it, and also there are always 2 sides to the story".
Since then, there have been unfathomable horrors and crimes against humanity done from the Israel side, with extreme intensity and one-sidedness, and it's now been going for so long. I can find no excuse of any kind anymore, for what has been and is being done in Gaza. I don't think any normal person could. The weight of these things, in my mind at least, is such that if the Israeli people really wanted anything different, it was their human duty and utmost responsibility to stop this by now, in whatever way needed. They didn't... It's sad that people who have suffered so much as well, let themselves become the villains to this depth and extent.
xg15 · 1h ago
I'm German and I really see a lot of the blame for this on our states as well - the US and the EU states (especially Germany, sadly).
As horrible as the Israeli mindset is, their subjective viewpoint is at least somewhat relatable: An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else, just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead - and will with very high likelihood experience terror attacks themselves. That this upbringing doesn't exactly make you want to engage with the other side is psychologically understandable.
(I'm imaging this as the universal experience of all Jewish Israelis, religious or secular, left or right. I'm excluding the religious and Zionist-ideological angles here, because those are a whole different matter once again)
What I absolutely cannot understand is the behavior of our states. We're pretending to be neutral mediators who want nothing more than to end the conflict, yet in reality, we're doing everything to keep the conflict going. We're fully subscribed to Zionist narrative of an exclusive Israeli right to the land (the justifications ranging from ostensibly antifascist to openly religious) and we're even throwing our own values about universal human rights and national sovereignty under the bus to follow the narrative.
If the messianic and dehumanizing tendencies of Israelis are answered by nothing else than full support and encouragement of their allies, I don't find it exactly surprising that they will grow.
lottin · 1h ago
What does it even mean 'to want nothing more than to end the conflict'? As far as I can tell it doesn't mean anything. Everybody wants the conflict to end, including the Israelis and the Palestinians. They just want it to end differently, of course.
xg15 · 1h ago
In theory, we want to end it through the Two-State Solution (though even what this means is vague - certainty not the borders of 1967 that Palestinians and Arabs are demanding)
But yeah, in practice, we seem to want it to end with full Israeli dominance, and the Palestinians either emigrating to Egypt and Jordan or vanishing into thin air, I suppose.
LightBug1 · 1h ago
Sorry, bullshit.
I'd prefer peace, but if Hamas and the IDF want to fight it out, go ahead.
But do not inflict genocide, or war crimes, or terrorism on civilians. It's that simple.
You seem to imply it's complicated based on the different desired outcomes called peace. It's not.
And for the record ... yes, Hamas initiated this current round, but the actions of Israel have been abhorrent to the point where I don't consider them a civilised nation anymore, let alone a democracy. Considering the Palestinians have been obliterated and imprisoned and occupied for decades, I'll give them a pass, though the same applies to them.
Yes, there are Israeli's who are against the current actions, but .. like I say to those who didn't vote for Trump ... at some point, you have to own it. Don't come back saying 'it's not your fault', all I want to see is how you're fighting against the current Israeli offensive and encouraging others to do the same. As, no matter how long it takes, that's the only thing deserving of respect.
johnebgd · 1h ago
I don’t understand what the anti Israel crowd wants aside from erasure of Israel. has given land and control of the land to the Palestinians and they elected Hamas. Hamas canceled elections and attacked Israel. Israel is routing out Hamas.
All of the death toll coming out of Gaza are from Hamas and they revised the numbers back in April to show 72% of the deaths are military aged males.
It’d be convenient if Jews just stopped existing so the Arabs could take their homeland again but the Jews decided they had a right to exist and are now a regional power because of their own self determination.
Bibi on the other hand is clearly a criminal and needs to go.
cropcirclbureau · 1h ago
You're espousing the extremist rhetoric that is being used to justify the horrible crimes that are taking place. That the other side wants all Israelis dead. If both sides are saying that a segment of the other wants them all dead, that leaves no room for compromise. This line of thinking is as extreme as it gets and I'm sad to see how prevalent it is in Israeli thinking.
And also, killing mostly "military aged males" is not a clean tactic as you think it is not to mention that it doesn't justify killing a lot of women and children as collateral.
Filligree · 53m ago
Not to mention, the claim that because you’re a boy in your late teens you’re a valid target… it’s just so incredibly…
Do I call it sexist? Stereotyping? What? It entirely denies the existence of males as anything other than enemies, and these are still children we’re talking about.
jdkoeck · 6m ago
You just discovered the concept of male expendability.
If that were true, the Palestinians in the West Bank should be living in peace and prosperity. Yet they aren't...
avip · 9m ago
They are considerably better off than Gazans, though I'd agree "living in piece and prosperity" would not be the first adjective comes to mind.
andrepd · 59m ago
> It’d be convenient if Jews just stopped existing so the Arabs could take their homeland again
This argument betrays your bias: that the land is yours (Jewish I mean), and "Arabs" stole it and want to steal it again.
Of course, the other side sees it differently. They see a half a century of immigration to their land culminating in a partition that was imposed from the outside in Western colonialist fashion without the consent of the people living there. They saw massacres and expulsions and ethnic cleansing. That is the root of the conflict.
Of course now 80 years and many complications have passed; both sides have legitimate complaints about the other and many people have been born in both territories making them natives and not part of either colonisation or expulsion. It's difficult.
> All of the death toll coming out of Gaza are from Hamas and they revised the numbers back in April to show 72% of the deaths are military aged males.
This betrays it even more. Not only do you cite a non-credible source going against the consensus, but your argument is literally "Palestinian males between 16 and 45 are fair game for extermination". Not sure what to reply to that.
xg15 · 48m ago
I find it exemplified in the disagreements even in the beginning of the conflict. I feel, pro-Israeli commenters either prefer to start with 1948 (The state somehow appeared like some sort of divine creation and was immediately declared war by all surrounding countries) or in biblical times.
Pro-Palestinian commenters usually start with the Balfour Declaration or Theodor Herzl's books, I believe.
I found 1881/1882 a good starting point, because this was the first time there was organized immigration that explicitly followed Zionist plans and ideology - I.e. people were not abstractly thinking about "returning to Jerusalem" and they weren't immigrating into the Ottoman empire for other reasons, but they were deliberately immigrating with the intention of (re-)establishing a "Jewish homeland" in the biblical Land of Israel.
cropcirclbureau · 1h ago
Israel and people of Jewish heritage has a lot of soft-power in the west. And the anti-terrorism rhetoric that Israeli's using to sell this has has previously been deployed by the west to cover up it's own crimes.
yoavm · 47m ago
I would argue that the Muslim world has gained quite some political power in the West, perhaps as a simple result of immigration. The EU for example seem to have about 50 times more Muslims than Jews.
Anti-terrorism rhetorics has indeed previously led to terrible crimes, but I wouldn't suppose that's a reason to support pro-terrorism rhetorics. It's probably best to look at the content instead of the type of rhetorics.
cropcirclbureau · 8m ago
You're not making sense my friend. The recent Muslim immigrants have nothing to do with soft power and I don't see how that's relevant to this context. Are you saying that it counters the influence that Israel has?
And if we're talking about terrorism, IDF and Mossad are very much known to deploy terror tactics across a lot of their historical engagements. The definition of the word doesn't hinge on designation by a Western organization. And the vast majority of "pro-palestine" people in the world are not Iran proxies and secret anti-semites. They're actually, for the most part, young people that are working from a place of empathy and horror. The most blatant and harmful propganda in this whole mess is the attempt to designate pro-palestine protestors anti-semites and secretly in support of Iran and Hamas policies. What a terrible cheapening of the word. Point is, the ones using the most pro-terror rhetoric are those trying to defend the IDF right now.
closewith · 2m ago
[delayed]
jxjnskkzxxhx · 22m ago
Speaking of Germany - Israel really weaponized the holocaust, in the sense that's absolutely impossible to criticize Israel without being accused of antisemitism. I actually think it got to the point it makes difficult fighting antisemitism because it's evident to any honest person that the accusation is a weapon now.
maeil · 56m ago
I'm Swedish. Since I was a child, for decades, I was taught and never questioned the idea that Germany had learnt from their history, in the most admirable way. That it was really ingrained into the German culture to never let anything like the holocaust happen again. That the education system there was very good in really making people understand why it happened, what went wrong, and how to make sure there would be no second one.
In early 2024, I was chatting with a German colleague of mine. Great guy, politically we were the most aligned out of anyone in our team. The genocide in Gaza was already well under way, so the topic came up. He told me, as if it was incredibly obvious "Well of course as Germany we couldn't possibly say anything about Gaza, given our history." For the rest of my life I will remember exactly that moment, where we were stood, the scene, because it came as a shock; this belief that I'd had since childhood turned out to be entirely wrong. It was the exact opposite - Germany had learnt nothing, in fact they'd learnt even less than the countries they had occupied. It was all a complete ruse, and I really lost all respect I had for how Germany has dealt with it all. A country like Japan at least doesn't even pretend to have learnt anything, and I'm not convinced that's the worse option.
I should've known the second news started flowing out of Germany such as "Award ceremony set to honor novel by Palestinian author at the Frankfurt Book Fair canceled “due to the war in Israel,", along with stuff like designating B.D.S as "antisemitic" but I wanted to believe that was just a tiny minority of ignorant people.
Yes, I know that now "the narrative inside Germany has been turning around" but imo it's far too late, and can't possibly be sincere, being entirely fuelled by external pressure rather than any kind of actual realization.
xg15 · 38m ago
> "the narrative inside Germany has been turning around"
Fully agreeing with your post - and also, it's not. Maybe for parts of the population (though even there, many are extremely conflicted) but definitely not for the current (conservative) leadership. What worries them is that they find the country increasingly isolated and there is a growing risk they could become personally liable - this forces them to make some concerned noises if the atrocities become undeniable.
But they never stopped practically supporting Israel wherever they can, be it with military aid or preventing EU actions that might put pressure on it. They will also snap back into the unequivocally pro-Israel narrative as soon as they can get away with it.
exoverito · 27m ago
>What I absolutely cannot understand is the behavior of our states.
Epstein was probably running a blackmail operation for the Mossad and CIA. Ghislain Maxwell's father was a media mogul who was an intelligence asset for the Mossad. It seems overwhelmingly likely that Israel exerts extreme influence over the USA and Western nations through blackmail, threats, and control over major institutions. The major CEOs of internet companies, media corporations, newspapers, and financial institutions are disproportionately Jewish.
lupusreal · 22m ago
That could all be true, it seems plausible, but I don't think any of it is necessary to explain America's unwaivering support for Israel.
American Evangelical Protestants believe that the continued existence of Israel is a prophesied necessary prerequisite for the resurrection of Jesus, who will then start the Apocalypse. They think they can force prophecy by defending Israel. It doesn't matter how badly Israel behaves, they think the ends justify all of it.
watwut · 24m ago
I do not think this simplification works. A lot of the conflict is about systematic attempts at expansion of Israel itself - that is what settlements are and always were. Removal and mistreatment of original population went hand in hand with that.
avip · 2m ago
Are we talking about the expansion out of Lebanon in 2000 or the expansion out of Gaza in 2005?
IG_Semmelweiss · 1h ago
I dont disagree with anything you said, but isn't that the role of elected leaders ? Actually making the difficult decisions that may be unpopular, but necessary ?
Or is it the leader class in most western countries have no sense of duty , are effectively cowards, and are in it just to have a profitable, white-collar career ?
dmix · 1h ago
It's a bunch of >60yr old western leaders who had 40yrs of seeing violence and terrorism in Israel and Palestine, and every couple years a naive western leader announces they want to fix it, while nothing changes.
People are just numb to the whole area.
The most difficult part is the fact Israel is wealthy and aggressive while (both) Palestine government has been the definition of dysfunction and tribalism for decades, even during peace times. Diplomatic solutions have became harder and harder since the 90s.
You can read the history the political bodies in West Bank and even they seem to not care to fix anything either. They have their own leadership issues (like never electing new leaders).
There’s a major gap between a western savior wanting something bad to stop and actually going there and accomplishing something.
hidingfearful · 1h ago
> Or is it the leader class in most western countries have no sense of duty , are effectively cowards, and are in it just to have a profitable, white-collar career ?
They are cowards who are just in it to enrich themselves by bribery, theft, and extortion.
You are looking in the right direction and not seeing just how far our society has gone.
awkwardpotato · 1h ago
> Actually making the difficult decisions that may be unpopular, but necessary ?
What is the unpopular, necessary decision? GP is commenting on the US/EUs continual campaigns to arm and fund Israel's efforts in Gaza without pushback. I don't wish to misinterpret you, but this read to me, that funding/aiding human rights violations and genocide in Gaza is a "necessary" act.
xg15 · 1h ago
That's a good question. I know, in Germany, saying - let alone doing - anything critical of Israel as a public figure has effectively been a taboo. The justification had always been the Holocaust and the perpetual guilt of Germany towards the Jewish people arising from it.
For a long time, that made some sense - it's starting to shift into quite horrific territory though, if leaders and communities interpret this obligation as some sort of absolute fealty towards the Israeli government, at the exclusion of everything else - even if that government itself is repeating the path of Nazi Germany. Yet this seems to be how a lot of German politicians interpret it.
I found the distinction exemplified in the "Never again" vs "Never again for anyone" slogans.
I don't understand what exactly is going on in the US, but there seems to have been a similar taboo, though maybe stemming from different sources (like that Evangelical end-of-days prophecy that sees Israel literally as part of a divine plan that trumps everything else).
I find it notable that part of Trump's voter support in the election were actually pro-Palestinian groups - because they saw Trump as the only alternative to a complicit Harris administration. Of course, Trump turned out to be even more complicit and openly embracing the Evangelical narrative.
So as far as US voters were concerned, there was no pro-Palestinian or even neutral options to vote for. There was just secular pro-Israel and religious pro-Israel. (Well, there was also Jill Stein, but she had no realistic chance of winning)
Of course there are other voices saying that all those justifications - Holocaust, biblical prophecy, etc - are just show and the real reason for the unconditional support is just ordinary geopolitics. The image of Israel as the "unsinkable aircraft carrier" that guarantees US dominance in the region.
tim333 · 44m ago
I don't think that's true, the:
>We're fully subscribed to Zionist narrative of an exclusive Israeli right to the land...
The land in almost all of the world has changed hands in wars with different people making claims to historic ownership of different bits, but the general solution is for people to live peacefully on whatever bit of land they live on and if there is a land dispute they can go to court rather than try to shoot their neighbours due to some historic grudge.
Prior to this both sides were living reasonably peacefully in Israel and Gaza and Hamas started the current round of killing the neighbours due to a historic grudge so that leads to the forces of keeping the peace leaning towards the Israeli side. It now seems the Israelis have gone over the top hitting back which is another problem.
xg15 · 22m ago
> Prior to this both sides were living reasonably peacefully in Israel and Gaza
That's simply not true. Israel never gave up control over airspace, land and sea borders after the disengagement and effectively put the strip under siege after Hamas came to power.
The west bank is cut up into hundreds of small Palestinian enclaves that are separated and controlled by the IDF. There is also a policy of systematically denying Palestinians in the West Bank resources and on the other hand priorizing the settlers.
Both areas have been under siege for decades, just with different intensity.
When the current government was elected - a year before Oct.7 - it made speeding up the land grabs and eventual full annexation of the West Bank a priority. Look at the ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich: Both have deep connections to the settlers and have made deeply dehumanizing statements towards the Palestinians. (Smotrich officially published his "Decisive Plan" in 2017 about his proposal for a "permanent solution": Either "encourage emigration", allow them to live as non-citizens with restricted rights in isolated enclaves or "let the army deal with them". Both ministers are fully on board with the current starvation policy - or rather, it's still too lenient for them)
Ben Gvir is now head of the Israeli police. Smotrich is finance minister and "Minister in the defense ministry", a special role that gives him the ultimate authority about anything that concerns the West Bank.
All that happened before Oct.7.
tim333 · 2m ago
When I said reasonable peacefully I meant not killing each other and quite a lot of people in Gaza were crossing for jobs on the Israeli side of the border. I wasn't say love and social justice reigned.
ithkuil · 32m ago
It's hard to have any kind of reconciliation when the open sores are too recent but not recent enough to be easily undone.
Whatever you think about the moral or legal standing of the founding of Israel, right now most Israeli citizens have been born there and have no other place to call home.
Very few people are calling for an actual reconciliation that gives the right to live to all ethnicities who currently inhabit the land.
Most voices continuously dig up the horrific injustices and crimes and dispute which side is worse. This cannot lead to any solution to the conflict
wat10000 · 11m ago
I’m becoming very skeptical of the “bad government, good people” idea. Governments need popular support. This goes even for horrible dictatorships. There are degrees, of course. An oppressive state can survive with less popular support than a democracy. But it still needs a decent amount. The machinery of dictatorship is as much about keeping popular support as it is about forcing people to suppress their opposition.
7sigma · 1h ago
This point of view whitewashes a lot of the history. Israel has been doing horrible things since its founding to Palestinians, starting with the Nakba in 1948 which was an ethnic cleaning campaign to create an ethno state. Many massacres occurred like in Deir Yassin in 1948 and continued with other massacres like in Kahn Younis in 1956 where they lined up more than 200 men over 15 and executed them against the wall.
With the continued persecution of Palestinians, whether its the illegal occupation of the west bank or the siege of Gaza which was essentially a concentration camp, that was "mowed" like grass every few years in terrorist bombing campaigns by Israel, its no surprise that organisations like Hamas, originally a humanitarian charity, exist.
Israelis want peace through domination, just like the French in Algeria. Be aware that Jews are not native to Palestine, except those that had been living there before the state was founded. They are living as colonialists on stolen land, and are continually denying the native Palestinians the right to return, which is part of the definition ethnic cleansing.
I say this as Jewish person originally born in Palestine (or Israel) and who had grandparents that survivide the Holocaust. Once I read about what really happened in 1948, that it was zionist terrorist militias that started the conflict and that Palestinians did not "simply leave", I became an anti zionist. I don't think Israel has the right to exist. People have the right to exist and they have the right to fight back against jewish supremacism.
kpozin · 1m ago
Haaretz's English edition is an anti-Israel propaganda outlet, not a serious newspaper.
> Haaretz’s English edition claims that IDF soldiers were ordered to fire at unarmed Palestinians waiting for food in Gaza, but the original Hebrew version? It states they were told to fire towards crowds to keep them away from the aid sites. This represents a significant difference in intent, legality, and moral implications.
wuschel · 48s ago
How credible is the reporting in in Haaretz?
I am normally fairly well accustomed to the reliability and credibility of newspapers, but I have never read this newspaper.
the__alchemist · 1h ago
Some context first so my opinion isn't misconstrued as as leftist stereotype. This is within context of the behavior described in the article.
- I'm a Jew in USA, and served in the military for more than a decade.
- I used to get annoyed by the Palestinian protests I'd see in the years before this, and generally sided with Israel, and the operations its military performed in counter-Shia-militia operations etc in the region, and was outraged at the Oct 7 attacks.
Israel's operations as described in the article are clear-cut war crimes. The military and civilian leaders responsible for these ROE should face something similar to the Nuremberg trials. I am embarrassed for my country's support of Israel's operations.
This is large-scale, continued, intentional CIVCAS.
cropcirclbureau · 1h ago
Hamas are not Shia, they're Sunni. And Shia is not some some inherently violent ideology as your usage of the word there implies. And, while I'm at it, you should know the human crimes in the Gaza strip long predate Oct 7. Chemical weapons, starvation, terror bombing, these are tactics that the IDF's deployed in short time I've been alive (21st century).
the__alchemist · 56m ago
Tracking on the Shia; sorry about the confusion! Referring to Iran-backed ops in Syria etc.
Cyph0n · 50m ago
The commenter is probably referring to Hezbollah and Iran.
And yes, the IDF has been relying on abhorrent & violently escalatory tactics since at least 1982 (Lebanon invasion).
On that note, I recently picked up an excellent book (“Our American Israel”) that dives pretty deep into the US-Israel relationship, and spends a good chunk of time on how the invasion of Lebanon was received by the West.
There are definitely some parallels between 1982 and the ongoing Gaza genocide with regards to the use of violence. But the most salient point to me is that it is quite clear that Israel learned a ton on how to ensure its image in the West does not easily get tarnished going forward.
wakeupcaller · 32m ago
According to CEIC Data and other non-state-sponsored agencies:
Gaza’s population continues to grow at a steady pace compared to pre-war levels. There is no evidence of genocide.
souldeux · 8m ago
Your account was created 30m before writing this comment. There is no evidence you're not a Zionist bot.
Cyph0n · 26m ago
Yeah, I know the playbook - deflect and deny, etc.
100k dead, more injured, highest number of child casualties in any modern conflict, countless statements of genocidal intent at the highest levels. But population growth is the metric we need focus on at this point, because that’s the Hasbara talking point du jour.
wakeupcaller · 1h ago
Although there are 1.2 million smartphones in Gaza, there’s still no video evidence of these events. Haaretz has become an Islamic mouthpiece and will most likely be banned soon — just like Al Jazeera, which is already barred in much of the Middle East, including the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and others.
nozzlegear · 17m ago
What do you mean by "most likely be banned soon"? Banned from where, and by who?
selimthegrim · 50m ago
How many Muslims are writing for Haaretz?
avip · 15m ago
one (used to be two, but one ran away to US)
austin-cheney · 6h ago
The biggest problem with this isn’t the horror of the actual war crime. The far more serious concern are the lengths the government will go to avoid holding anyone accountable. That is so much worse because it unintentionally endorses future crimes and challenges the offenders to take ever more offensive actions without fear of consequences.
lucubratory · 5h ago
I do not believe it is unintentional.
originalvichy · 3h ago
They can take out nuclear scientists thousands of kilometers away by either planting bombs in their cars in traffic or firing accurate munitions through their windows when they sleep.
Thousands of kilometers away.
The IDF can be highly sophisticated in their plans and methods when they want to.
alkhatib · 1h ago
Those things you described are also war crimes.
Calling it sophisticated does not change that fact.
andrepd · 51m ago
I think the point is that if Israel can do pinpoint decapitation strikes anywhere in Iran they sure as hell can do so in Gaza, but they choose to bomb hospitals and flatten every single building in the Gaza Strip instead.
austin-cheney · 5h ago
Until corrective actions with criminal penalties occur incidents like these almost certainly continue with possible increases of frequency and severity. More importantly though when this becomes a matter of conduct and military discipline is that it will spread to other areas even outside Gaza.
This isn’t just a matter of vague speculation as there are historical cases outside of Israel on which to see how things like this develop and what the consequences are both for the victims and the soldiers. These historical accounts also indicate soldiers committing these sorts of actions become victims themselves with catastrophic mental health disorders.
throw9032093 · 4h ago
The idea Israeli government would hold anyone accountable is a laughable.
Israel got in trouble with ICJ court, because of quotes from top government officials. Government of Israel was very specific what they will do to Gaza! This was even full scale bombing started!
Trying to reinterpret this as a problem of "military discipline", and "soldiers are victim as well" is just another level of cynicism!
edanm · 2h ago
> The idea Israeli government would hold anyone accountable is a laughable.
It's happened, many times. Usually this doesn't make front-page news, but soldiers that break the law are sometimes held accountable. Not nearly enough, and I think it should be far more publicized as a deterrent effect (the fact that it isn't is a pretty big indictment of the current government). But it's certainly not laughable.
edanm · 1h ago
Btw, the literal sub-headline of the article includes this sentence:
"prompting the military prosecution to call for a review into possible war crimes".
amanaplanacanal · 1h ago
Who is gonna arrest Bibi?
edanm · 1h ago
Well, he is on trial. So he could be arrested. Prime Ministers have been arrested (and jailed!) before.
A part of what the Isareli opposition has been pushing for in the last few years has been removing Netanyahu from power and presumably jailing him because of the corruption charges.
HappyPanacea · 1h ago
The same people who arrested Olmert
ajb · 4h ago
Even ignoring primary crimes, under Israeli law, even incitement to genocide is punishable by death. But so many members of the political and media elite have made inciting statements, that the rubicon is crossed; the political class cannot allow any serious, independent consideration of war crimes to ever occur, because that would risk them all facing the firing squad. This in turn signals to individual soldiers that there will be no accountability, even in the absence of directives.
roshin · 3h ago
Regarding the risk to Israelis facing the firing squad, you do know that Israel only executed Eichmann (and one other person in a field court) since the founding of the country?
When it comes to the list of things that Israelis fear, being sentenced to a firing squad is very low down.
ajb · 3h ago
Fair enough, but I don't think that makes the incentive much different. If you are convicted of a crime punishable by death, your actual punishment is not likely to be trivial.
throw9032093 · 2h ago
Government and regime can always change. Post socialist countries convinced border guards, for shooting unarmed civilians, who were trying to escape across country borders. That was a crime even under socialist laws.
If Israel had regime change, new regime and majority of voters would be pro Arab... New government could actually enforce existing laws!
rbanffy · 2h ago
> even incitement to genocide is punishable by death
For that to happen, the government, and the overall population, would need to consider what's being done in Gaza and on the West Bank to actually be a genocide. I don't think popular support for that actually exists in Israel. Last time I checked, most of the population supported the annexation of Gaza and the forced eviction of the local population to neighboring countries.
I don't think I'll live to see a two-state solution.
ajb · 1h ago
You may be missing a legal wrinkle: the crime of incitement usually does not require the underlying primary crime to actually occur. (Admittedly I'm not sure if that is the definition in Israel, but they inherited a lot of British law so it is likely). So this does not require the Israeli population to accept that this was a genocide, only that some war crimes occurred and that they should be prosecuted. Right now they are not there, but the point is that the government has an incentive to keep the population in that state.
basisword · 4h ago
You mean the government whose leader is facing a corruption trial?
No comments yet
FranzFerdiNaN · 4h ago
Why would the government hold someone accountable for its own actions? Let’s not pretend that this is just some random soldiers doing this, this is exactly what the Israeli government wants.
austin-cheney · 4h ago
Soldiers shooting at civilians is a war crime. It does not matter what the intentions of the soldiers are. It doesn’t even matter if the civilians are also armed up until the point they display violent intent according to a common person standard. Shooting at a crowd is a crime.
That said the soldiers pulling the trigger are committing crimes. These are patently illegal actions to a common person standard which eliminates any defense of following military orders. That being said the soldiers, at least, are committing crimes. Accountability starts at the source of the crime.
If the government is ordering these actions then those are illegal orders, according to international standards of military conduct. The soldiers on the ground must ignore those orders on the basis of patently illegal conduct according to a common person standard and the officials facilitating those orders can be investigated for issuing war crimes.
NATO was conducting defensive operations against Yugoslavia around that time. It isn't clear that war crimes can be committed so easily by US allies. It'd be nice if they can be recognised though.
stefan_ · 2h ago
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding here. War crimes are not judged by what a diligent investigation after the fact might find. It hinges on the information and judgement by those acting in the moment. You are a soldier told these armed people a click out are the insurgent group you are fighting? Of course you can engage them. And there is a similar lenient standard applied to whoever got that information in the first place. War by any other standard of course would be entirely unworkable.
xorcist · 3h ago
Because "the govahment" is not a singular entity. In functioning democracies, by popular definition in large parts of the field, legislative and executive powers are kept separated from the judicial powers. So the executive power can not interfere with being held accountable. That's not fullt implemented everywhere, but that is the general idea how it is supposed to work.
dmurray · 2h ago
Well, the civilian leadership is obviously in favour of massacring civilians, the military leadership orders civilians to be massacred, and the soldiers on the ground revel in the opportunity to massacre civilians. And the courts are happy to allow the massacre of civilians.
In functioning democracies in general, sure, you have to be careful not to tar everyone with the same brush. But in the specific case of Israel in 2015, it's not realistic to argue that the government isn't a single entity, so some parts of it may not be responsible (or even in favour of) crimes against humanity.
mschuster91 · 1h ago
> Why would the government hold someone accountable for its own actions?
Because that is what keeps the ICC off of their backs. The ICC only has authority to step in in cases where national jurisdiction is unable or unwilling to prevent and prosecute war crimes.
fzeroracer · 4h ago
Well, there is actually a reasonable reason. Typically you'd want the government to hold people accountable so you could have the thin veneer of operating by the rules of warfare and not committing war crimes. That's usually been a popular strategy of the US for when someone goes a little too far (or gets caught).
As far as I can tell Israel doesn't particularly care for even looking like it's trying to behave responsibly. I don't think they've held anyone responsible for even some of the most obvious war crimes we have evidence of being committed.
mrtksn · 2h ago
It's even worse: Awful lot of people die for the careers of politicians and it's not limited to Israel. If someone needs political tension for weathering a scandal or economic turmoil, it can be created artificially by killing certain people and they do it all the time.
I have distaste for Trump but something I appreciate about him is his abilities to stage a theatre with his "fake" bombings. The more mainstream politicians have much more sociopathic tendencies.
If you think about it, %100 of modern wars are about who is going to be the administrator and doesn't feel like can win an election. We live in a world of abundance, there's no reason for a group of people to kill other group for their resources. If it wasn't for the careers of some people with huge egos all this can be sorted out through civil matters. After the wars it gets sorted out anyway, we don't see mass exterminations anymore.
sdeframond · 1h ago
As a westerner, I feel ashamed that my country is Isreal's ally. It makes me guilty by association because the western world is letting Israel commit thoses atrocities.
Worse, we are helping them when they need it, and closing our eyes when they don't want us to watch.
wakeupcaller · 1h ago
There are 1.2 million smartphones in Gaza, and still no video evidence of these events ever happening.
mrkeen · 2m ago
Maybe their phones are running a bit low on charge and they can't find an outlet here:
what about the last two years of video evidence of all the other war crimes?
The bodies of burnt children. The reports of doctors who document multiple sniper rounds found in the bodies of small children and toddlers?
I've been seeing reports about internet connectivity being very touch and go in Gaza the last few weeks.
Is it not unreasonable to think, those who are starving the most might not have internet/electricity to charge a device/care to document when they're starving?
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 56m ago
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Is there a reason to disbelieve the soldiers’ testimony?
wakeupcaller · 55m ago
Haaretz has become a radical-Islam mouthpiece and will most likely be banned soon — just like Al Jazeera, which is already barred in much of the Middle East, including the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and others.
hedora · 7m ago
Here's a story from NPR that makes much stronger claims agaist Israel (and cites sources) than the Haaretz story:
> Haaretz has become a radical-Islam mouthpiece and will most likely be banned soon
Okay but this is just another claim that seems to require evidence. Why should I believe this?
jimmydoe · 38m ago
A new account today, I was expecting better from Zionism bot army.
wakeupcaller · 26m ago
Can't twist facts: 1.2 million cameras. Lots of videos from that area. None show what is described.
tkel · 6h ago
We already knew this was happening from testimony from Gazans, it was obvious that the new US-Israeli monopolized "aid" organization was running the Hunger Games, with dozens killed by Israelis (+ US contractors) every time there was a distribution day, and horrific pictures and video of it. Entirely predictable too when the genocidaires are controlling the aid. It is good there is now proof from the inside as well.
wordofx · 4h ago
We already know from Gazans that Hamas has stolen aid and publicly executes people who try to get any.
iddan · 5m ago
I love how HN has no interest that Israeli civilians are still held hostage. Let's see how you manage with your loved ones held by a terrorist organisation.
xg15 · 2h ago
> He also said the activity in his area of service is referred to as Operation Salted Fish – the name of the Israeli version of the children's game "Red light, green light".
The Israeli tradition of giving their Gaza operations names of children's games also continues, after "Operation Cast Lead".
(Not sure if they wanted to make a reference to Squid Games as well...)
alkhatib · 1h ago
Green light : They send out notifications to people telling them aid is available at a certain location.
Red light: 10 minutes later they send out another notification saying no aid is being distributed there today and start shooting anyone in the area
lucubratory · 6h ago
This isn't ambiguous. This is really clear evidence of (at minimum) an atrocious and continuing war crime with full intentionality. Realistically, it is more likely explicitly genocidal in intent.
This is a normal procedure in a war zone when distributing food. HN people are naive as they have never been close to a war zone.
When you distribute food in a war zone you tell people not to come near the food and they do it anyway. What are you going to do? shoot them? Yes, you shoot them if they get too close. First you fire at the air, then you shoot at people if they get closer anyway.
If you don't shoot them they will take a sack by force, and then everybody will take a sack by force. Usually they coordinate themselves into bands or gangs to steal the food.
Of course, those brave enough to take the sacks by force risking their lives will not distribute them evenly. They will give it to their families, their gang and sell the rest.
Israel could be brutal for a lot of things, but not for this. Hamas was way more brutal to their own people. For example, Hamas executed their own people for wanting to escape the bombing areas so they did not loose their body shields.
MSFT_Edging · 2m ago
There have been many many aid trucks refused entry. The famine has been manufactured by Israel. "normal procedure" might have some weight if there weren't 100s of trucks refused entry.
palmfacehn · 47m ago
If we accept this and the claim that Hamas deliberately seeks to maximize civilian casualties, then consider the hypothetical:
What would stop them from deliberately drawing fire under this scenario?
Aside from meeting the Israeli demands, what other options remain for Hamas?
jxjnskkzxxhx · 10m ago
Israel is an excellent example of what happens if a fundamentalist theocracy becomes too powerful compared to its neighbors.
LePetitPrince · 1h ago
Not remembering history and ignoring the truth is a sin that can only be committed once.
The Green March or how a crowd of elderly people, women, and children with no other weapon than the Quran in their hands take a military position.
Beachhead!
elnatro · 1h ago
Now they are being colonized by Morocco. They protested against Spanish domination and now they’ve been deported and oppressed by an autocratic regime.
nba456_ · 32m ago
So this is what fills my front page now, with by far the most engagement. A paywalled article that few have even read about nothing even tangentially related to tech from an extremely biased rag.
kome · 6h ago
The news from Palestine are atrocious; a genocide is unfolding before our eyes, and world leaders are doing nothing to stop it.
thrance · 3h ago
A lot of world leaders are helping speed it up.
derelicta · 5h ago
That's normal; a lot of them directly or indirectly profit from it.
alon_honig · 1h ago
I am not saying this didn't happen but none of the sources in this haaretz piece were named or any actual evidence provided beyond anonymous testimony. The Israeli military is highly bureaucratized and if those incidents did occur there will be documented evidence and the purpotrators will be punished in accordance with the law.
earnestinger · 53m ago
Are you really of this opinion or are you trying to incite replies? :)
ivanstame · 2h ago
Poor people :(
ahmetcadirci25 · 3h ago
A street in Gaza, a map of dreams, and the people desperate to live
Why though, what does it achieve? Do they want to make sure that there will be terrorists / freedom fighters in the future so that they have a reason not to negotiate? Because they expect to "win" if violence continues?
perlgeek · 4h ago
From Israel's perspective, Palestinians are a problem. Long term, they have a few options:
1) Give them their own state. This is difficult for quite many reasons, and Israel (by which I mean the current government) doesn't want that
2) Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation, and let them participate in the regular political processes. The current government certainly doesn't want that, and I have no idea what part of the Palestinians would want that.
3) Continue to treat them as sub-human, and deal with the consequences of the hatred that fosters. That seems to have been the "strategy" before October last year.
4) Try to exterminate or exile them, or at least decimating them to such an extend that the problem becomes smaller.
Since 1) and 2) are (again, from the perspective of Isreal's government) undesirable, and 3) has stopped working, 4) seems to be their current strategy.
rgblambda · 4h ago
>Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation
As the Palestinians are the majority, the Jewish Israelis would become a minority in terms of citizens and votes. This is very much akin to Apartheid South Africa, where a minority ethnic group rules over the rest of the population.
yoavm · 43m ago
The White minority in South Africa were around 15% of the population, while Jews and Palestinians in Israel & Palestine seem to be much more around a 50%-50% split.
msgodel · 4h ago
You'd think given Israel's history they'd do everything they could to not make 4) acceptable.
ben_w · 2h ago
It's very common for people to treat their own side as naturally right, and excuse anything their side does, simply *because* it is their own side.
For a commonplace example, look at a soccer match, fans screaming at the referee whenever a decision doesn't go their team's way.
tradethedelta · 4h ago
I think it's the contrary. "Never again" means by any means necessary we will prevent another genocide of our people, even if it means committing genocide unto others. That much has become clear.
easyThrowaway · 1h ago
I don't think there's much overlapping between those who experienced the holocaust and whoever is in charge in Israel right now.
Speaking for experience from some relatives, the immigration laws for people of jewish faith and ancestry were nigh insurmountable if you came from african, arab or middle east countries and pretty much just nominal even in recent times for those who had even a remote connection but came from the US and the UK.
I have the feeling they are jewish the same way Henry IV was a Catholic when he said "Paris is well worth a Mass".
xorcist · 3h ago
Or exile is probably the key word. There are more historical examples of exoduses than genocides.
The problem with understanding this situation is that it probably has more to do with Israel's internal politics than what the situation looks like on the ground in Gaza and elsewhere. Just a quick read from the wikipedia page should give an idea just how corrupt the situation really is.
There's also the fact that Palestinians aren't a homogenous group in any sense of the word. That makes it hard for them to unite under any political flag. It also doesn't help that the borders are all closed, from both sides, and no neighboring country are willing to accept them.
From the outside the situation certainly looks very bleak.
edanm · 2h ago
> Continue to treat them as sub-human, and deal with the consequences of the hatred that fosters. That seems to have been the "strategy" before October last year.
This is a pretty big claim, and I highly disagree with it. I didn't particularly like Israeli policy towards Palestinians for the last 15 years, but they were certainly not treated as "sub-human". Gazans, specifically, were governed by Hamas, which had a lot more say in how the average Gazan was reacted than ISrael did.
amanaplanacanal · 1h ago
Gaza was governed by Hamas under an Israeli blockade. You don't think that had any effect on Gaza lives?
edanm · 1h ago
(An Israeli and Egyptian blockade)
Yes, I do think it had an effect, but less of one than their governing body did, hence my saying so.
Either way, unless you think the blockade itself is "Israel treating Gazans as sub-human", then my point still stands.
tveita · 4h ago
You can't kill 2.1 million people by bombing them.
And when allied countries got too uneasy about them just blocking all aid trucks at the border, they set up their own aid organization to trickle out nominal amounts of food while they take pot shots at people desperate enough to show up: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74ne108e4vo
They didn't just make this up as they go, presumably the plans have been sitting around for a long time waiting for a suitable moment.
yoavm · 1h ago
I think that's a very unsensible comment.
1. You definitely can kill 2.1 million people by bombing them. It's actually way easier than doing it with a gun.
2. If you decide to do it with a gun, and you end up killing tens when tens of thousands are gathering for food, you're aiming terribly.
3. There is enough proof of Hamas using hospital facilities as headquarters.
4. Instead of getting food into Gaza (paid partly by Israel) only to get people to gather and then shoot tens of them every day, Israel could have just not let food in.
In other words, none of this makes sense. There's a war. Yes, Israel is committing terrible crimes. No, it's not because they aim to kill everyone, it's because they really stopped caring about killing civilians. It's horrific and is illegal.
There is actually one party in this conflict that has deliberately said it's aiming to kill civilians, and that's Hamas. I have no idea about your personal opinion, but I suspect that many of the people who are shouting "genocide!" would have been very quiet if the Jews were the ones being slaughtered, and I have absolutely no doubt that if only Hamas had the power, it would have committed way more serious crimes than the IDF ever committed.
amanaplanacanal · 1h ago
Though probably true, it is irrelevant. Hamas doesn't have the power, and Israel does. This war is almost entirely one sided.
yoavm · 1h ago
My point was that the comment I was commenting on was false, and that many people who express that sentiment wouldn't be expressing it if the powers were flipped. I'm personally very glad that the powers aren't flipped because I think that if Hamas had F-16s there would many more deaths.
earnestinger · 27m ago
> and that many people who express that sentiment wouldn't be expressing it if the powers were flipped
That is definitely not true.
nathan_compton · 19m ago
Do you really genuinely believe that typical american liberal types would ignore a genocide committed against Jewish people by anyone, particularly arabs? In the American liberal mind "genocide" is, essentially, synonymous with The Holocaust, and I think your average liberal is, if anything, sensitive to Jewish discrimination, over and above random people out there in the world. There are definitely anti-semetic Americans and they should be launched into the sun, but I think your sense that people wouldn't care if Jews were being killed in the tens of thousands is extremely off point.
yoavm · 10m ago
I'm sorry, I live in Europe and I was referring more to the kind of protests and protesters I see around me. The aren't many liberal Americans there. I completely agree that the situation could be different elsewhere.
cropcirclbureau · 1h ago
If the Israeli administration could get away with fire bombing the strip, it'd have done so a long time ago. The whole world is screaming at them to stop the genocide and you think it's them just not "caring about civilians" that's responsible for this. There's no war in Gaza, there's only a genocide. A holocaust.
I'm not Arab, I'm not Muslim. I've never met a Jewish person. I've no reason to have any prejudice against people of Jewish heritage or ethnicity. But it's still a genocide by any definitions of the word. A lot of Jewish people even agree with this. And the reason that you and most Israeli people seem to struggle to grasp it is because they've been drinking on this exact extremist rhetoric that the "other" side only wants to see them slaughtered. By the same measure, you're saying Hamas can justify it's actions since there will always be ultra-Zionist factions of Israeli societies that wants to see Palestinians slaughtered. I implore you to wake up to what is being done in the name of your people.
yoavm · 1h ago
I am an Arab Jew, and I actually have many friends in Gaza. I don't disagree about the usage of the words Genocide, though I think the terms is a little too easy to apply. I think a Holocaust is a completely different thing. There are Palestinians in the Israeli parliament, in the Supreme Court. No one is gathering Palestinians in gas chambers, and in general the Palestinian population only grew since the establishment of Israel. If there were more Jews in Europe after WW2 than before it, no one would remember it as a Holocaust.
There is war in Gaza in the simple sense that rockets from Gaza still shoot into Israel, that Israeli hostages are still being held, and that Hamas itself (the elected goverenement) says it would attack again. It's a very unbalanced conflict, and in it terrible crimes are committed that you can call genocidal. But Jews in the ghettos weren't bombing Berlin - not during WW2 and not after it.
cropcirclbureau · 41m ago
That's an interpretation of events that I've heard from a lot of Israeli folks that are in some way horrified what's happening in Gaza. I think it's very naive and I don't even think most folks saying this believe in it themselves. What actions from the IDF, what imbalance of power, what civilian casualty rates will you need to see to believe that it's no longer a war? Are you really waiting for the actual mass starvation to take place before accept there's intent? Does it have to be gas chambers? Does the death toll have to pass 1 million? 6 million? Do you really think that the Israeli government wants to brings the hostages back? What do you think would happen after they did bring them back? Will you rescind your support then?
Jews in the Ghetto didn't get the chance to shoot rockets at Berlin but had they been able to fight back, I'd have given them the same understanding that I currently extends to Palestinians that grew up in the concentration camp that is Gaza. Hamas is the direct results of Israeli policies of the past decades. Even if the IDF manages to somehow invent some purity test for Gazans that it can use to confirm there are no longer any Hamas members left and it finally declares it's operations concluded, you'll have people shooting rockets at Israel if they keep their policies with the Gaza strip and the West Bank. But long term solutions come later, right now, Israelis need to wake up and say no to what is unfolding in the name of their security.
yoavm · 13m ago
I will stop thinking that this conflict is a war when there will be a side in it that doesn't have the motivation to take over all the land, and acts towards it by attempting to kill the other. As long as there are two parties that are constantly trying to kill each other, I call that a war. As I wrote elsewhere - that doesn't mean I disagree with the idea that genocidal actions are being taken during this war.
Your comment about Jews in Ghetto is wrong at every possible level. Jews were killed in the Holocaust _without_ a conflict, _without_ attempting to kill Germans, _without_ fighting with anyone over the land and _without_ having any aspirations to control the other. That is an example of a situation where there is no war, and no, it has nothing to do with the situation between Israelis and Palestinians.
Cyph0n · 41m ago
You having “friends in Gaza” is seemingly not enough to undo the deep mental conditioning you and many other Zionists have undergone in order to continue to justify 20 months of war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
As an Arab who knows Gazans and Palestinians, I can tell you that if you actually do have friends in Gaza, you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself for belittling their suffering.
yoavm · 26m ago
I suspect that it's you who have undergone deep mental conditioning if you think that I am justifying this war. One can hold a complex opinion, and nowhere have I said that I think this war is justified.
Not only I do not belittler their suffering, I personally helped some of them out. I also ran an organization that provided thousands of Gazan with electricity, and I was arrested by the Israeli police when encouraging Palestinians in Israel to vote. At the same time I have family members who were killed (and kidnapped) on the first day of this war. Life isn't black and white.
MrVitaliy · 11m ago
Thank you for sharing your perspective Yoav, it's refreshing to read comments from an actual observer and not an army of armchair warriors.
Cyph0n · 11m ago
I am completely OK with being conditioned against siding with a 20 month long genocidal onslaught committed by an apartheid ethnostate against a blockaded territory with no sovereignty and no actual defenses of its own.
I completely agree that life isn’t always black and white. But right now it is, just like it was in countless other situations in the past. You can think it’s “complicated” all you like, but the evidence is overwhelmingly against such a framing, which is where the conditioning comes into the picture.
It is great that you volunteered in Gaza, but it’s also tragic that you fail to see what is happening even after directly interacting with Gazans.
Some day in the future, when free Palestinians can build museums and monuments and make movies to mourn those lost in this genocide, everyone will always have been against this.
andrepd · 4h ago
Netanyahu has privately expressed preference for terrorist Hamas over political Fatah, and Israel has propped up those terrorist groups in the past (this is well documented not a conspiracy theory).
Why? Because Netanyahu and a good chunk of the Israeli population want the Palestinians to cease to exist and its territory to be part of Israel. An opponent that wants to achieve its goals through political action and appeals to the international community meant that there was a risk of Israel being dragged into a two-state commitment. A terrorist group attacking civilians gives those hardliners a perpetual excuse to go to war.
In short: the answer is yes, that appears to be precisely the point: to prevent any possibility of peaceful reconciliation and drive the Palestinians to eventual expulsion or eradication.
AndyMcConachie · 5h ago
Israel wants to kill all Palestinians. This helps achieve this. They're committing genocide.
yoavm · 1h ago
If Israel wanted to kill all Palestinians, wouldn't it be easier to start with the millions of Palestinians living in Israel, unarmed, instead of going into Gaza?
polotics · 5h ago
You do realise that the people writing for Haaretz are also nationals of that country right? Maybe learn to be precise, helps in all situations.
SiempreViernes · 4h ago
When asked, in an representative online, poll, 47% percent of Israeli agreed that the IDF should kill all the inhabitants of cities it conquered[1].
So sure, workers at Haarez probably don't, but when the extermination feeling is widespread enough that 47% feel they can openly agree to a question proscribing the killing women and children, then insisting on the insistence on precision comes across mostly as an attempt at distraction.
Israel here obviously standing for "the current government of Israel" (with presumed majority support), not "every single Israeli person".
Fortunately many Israelis are against the ongoing genocide, but powerless to stop it.
tfrutuoso · 4h ago
There's a palestinian guy living in the US making the rounds on tiktok, talking to random israeli people on something like omegle. The amount of hate he gets is nothing short of depressing. Children cursing at him, IDF soldiers saying they want to kill every single person in Gaza, calling them sub-humans... sounds like the fourth reich is here already.
All this to say you're right, but the government is indocrinating more and more people for these views.
polotics · 4h ago
Be very wary of any such weaponized truth: you don't know how much selection bias is at play, how much confirmation bias is requested, you don't even know if the interviewees are what they say they are.
tfrutuoso · 3h ago
You raise a very valid point, which i will take in consideration. I don't believe it to be the case, since the person in question also shares positive interactions, and i believe some of the worst "contacts" have been doxxed. But your point still stands.
It is indeed sickening. They straight out tell you how they want all Palestinian children to die.
polotics · 4h ago
I disagree: when anything is obviously meaning what someone obviously thinks it means, then others will apply their own obvious understanding of it to justify very non-obvious behaviours.
tradethedelta · 4h ago
The perpetual fight is mutually beneficial to all. The extremist right would not have been able to claim large swaths of land had they not had the air cover to raze Gaza. Now there is serious talk of going back into Gaza. And talk by Trump to turn it into a seaside resort has the settler movement giddy.
lordofgibbons · 4h ago
This genocide has, for many people, burst any illusions of a "rules based world order".
There multiple EU signatory countries of the Rome Statute (pledging to cooperate with ICC) that have welcomed these war criminals... who have warrants out by the ICC.
And the same war criminals are invited to give a speech at the U.S Congress to near unanimous applause. It really makes you wonder if we're the "good guys".
-- edit -- If you're curious how much your congressperson receives from AIPAC (Israeli lobby) this website is a great resource:
https://www.trackaipac.com/congress
o999 · 4h ago
Indeed, the leading countries of so-called "free world" are willing to commit and support war crimes and break the intl law as well as DPRK or Iran when it serves their intrests, all while signaling virtue and progressiveness.
stavros · 3h ago
If you're still wondering if you're the good guys, you haven't been paying attention. I don't think there are any "good guys" when it comes to nations, but for the US it's not even close.
Theodores · 3h ago
In the world outside the West, 'rules based world order' does not mean what you think it does. To them 'rules based world order' means that the UK/USA/Israel/NATO/EU do whatever they want rather than go through the UN. Going through the UN would be 'international law', which is not to be confused with 'rules based world order'.
With 'rules based world order', there is one rule for the West and one rule for everyone else. Hence it is okay to have a referendum in Kosovo for Kosovo to split away from Serbia, but not okay for a region of the Ukraine to have a referendum, to break away from Ukraine. So Crimea, where everyone speaks Russian and identifies as Russian, with no interest in the Ukraine or the EU, can't get the treatment that was afforded Kosovo. This is because 'rules based world order', and how the global majority sees it.
Almost no-one[1] recognizes Crimea as part of Russia because it was entirely manufactured. Unmarked foreign soldiers invaded a country, pretended to be local rebels, staged a referendum and immediately asked to join the invading country to give the shameless land grab a veneer of legitimacy. The referendums in Crimea and elsewhere had to be staged because even leaked internal polling showed that nowhere did the local population support the invasion. It's a total joke that has nothing in common with genuine ethnic conflicts.
If we look at history, do the oppressed always become oppressors?
bombcar · 1h ago
No. Many times the oppressed simply cease to exist (by assimilation, assassination, or other means).
Neanderthals aren’t going to become oppressors.
spacecadet · 1h ago
Well yeah, I meant if they go on to survive and become significant enough to be considered oppressive...
perlgeek · 3h ago
I'd say it's very hard for a powerful nation to not suppress somebody in the long run.
Just think of any powerful nation (or group of people, or whatever), and try to think of somebody they have oppressed, or are still oppressing. It's typically not hard to come up with examples.
spacecadet · 1h ago
Agreed. Its possible that the group survived their oppression and becomes powerful enough to oppress, they loose their identify, in the sense that their culture evolves, along the way. Resulting in oppression along some axis.
meindnoch · 3h ago
Mostly, yes.
Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire, then became conquerors of the world.
Russians were oppressed by the Mongols, then became conquerors of Eurasia.
Communists were oppressed by Tsarists, then became ruthless oppressors themselves.
Protestants were oppressed in Europe, so they set sail to America and became oppressors of the natives.
orbital-decay · 2h ago
Not sure if I would lump all those up together, these examples are overly broad and have little in common. There's more than a thousand years and basically no causal link between Roman persecution of early Christians and Crusades, let alone European imperialism, especially if you take Ethiopian, Greek, Georgian, and Armenian Christians into account. Same for Russians and Mongols, there's a pretty large gap with a ton of events in between, and Mongol Empire was humongous to begin with, it wasn't about Rus' in particular. And communists that became ruthless oppressors were already radicalized during the persecution, it was literally the radical wing of a militant faction of a huge umbrella party that included people that would have felt right at home in modern EU (e.g. Kollontai and her early activism).
The better explanation is simple and banal - power concentration makes people abuse it.
spacecadet · 1h ago
I wouldn't consider this "lumping the groups together", or that they must exist together in time... its likely a group may require many generations before they can "oppress" another group.
My list of examples is very similar to this one and the ven diagram here is "was oppressed became oppressor"... in most cases it appears that only if the oppressed are destroyed or I would argue in the case of America- controlled at the margins... then they don't circle back around to abuse their newly acquired power.
wiseowise · 1h ago
> Communists were oppressed by Tsarists, then became ruthless oppressors themselves.
Everyone was oppressed by Tsarists. Commies are ruthless oppressors by default.
locallost · 3h ago
I don't know if it's always the case, but it's true if given the opportunity. In the end all people are the same. Cultures may be different, but our lizard brains are the same. Us vs them, and dehumanizing others into something less than humans, whose suffering does not concern us.
mikevm · 5h ago
[flagged]
dang · 5h ago
No racial flamewar on HN, please. I realize this topic is fraught with it but that's no reason to jump straight in—it's a reason to do the opposite:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Edit: yikes—quite apart from the current topic, you've been breaking the site guidelines a lot with flamewar posts and personal attacks. We ban accounts that post like this:
I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also posted good things, but if you want to keep participating in this community, it would be good to review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on.
Is this a new karma system where for each post that doesn't break the guidelines, you're allowed one that does?
dang · 4h ago
No, this is how HN moderation has worked for over a decade.
Dettorer · 3h ago
Wait, my message was obviously intended as a bit sarcastic (which isn't very smart, I'll admit). But are you actually saying that I'm now allowed two racist comments without risking a ban? (three, counting this guideline-abiding comment?)
dang · 3h ago
I'm not saying that, no.
Dettorer · 3h ago
Then I don't understand what you were saying by "this is how HN moderation has worked for over a decade", wasn't that a response to my previous comment that said exactly that?
dang · 3h ago
Oh, I see. Let me try to be clearer.
It's not the case that "for each post that doesn't break the guidelines, you're allowed one that does", and that's not what I was doing. When I said HN moderation has worked the same way for over a decade, I didn't mean that the description you gave was accurate—it isn't. (Nor, I assume, did you mean it to be, since you were being sarcastic.)
We try to persuade users to follow the site guidelines, and tend to give warnings and make requests before banning accounts, especially if they are active participants who have been around for a while. We don't rush to banning such users; we try to explain the intended use of the site and convince them to honor it. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.
Dettorer · 2h ago
Thank you for clarifying and sorry about the sarcasm.
I am absolutely no one, but I'd like to highlight that this kind of policy is (indirectly) why I don't use HN. Tolerating intolerance to the extent you do (which isn't 100% but still a lot) allows people like the one you responded to originally to drive hackers like me, my loved ones, my colleagues and my students away, while attracting other hateful people, as they see that they are tolerated here. In a possibly too extreme comparison, this the same dynamic as the "nazi bar problem" (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nazi_bar). I hope you know what kind of community these policies has made of HN.
dang · 2h ago
I don't agree with that characterization of HN. In my experience, people who make this complaint are usually coming from a place of political passion. That's understandable, and we might have more common ground on that level than you'd expect. But it's no basis for operating a community, assuming you don't want to just exclude people with different views and backgrounds to your own.
It's easy to invoke strong pejoratives like "hateful" when describing people who have opposing viewpoints and passions to one's own—in fact, it's hard not to. But it leads to a rapid escalation. A bad comment turns into a "hateful view", "hateful view" turns into "a hateful person", and soon that leaps to "how can you tolerate hateful people on your site". (The next logical step would be to suspect the mods of being "hateful people" themselves.) This escalation is, in my view, bad for community. It leads to uniformity within one's own group and rage and enmity towards difference.
Having banned countless accounts for breaking the site guidelines over the years, I can't accept that "hateful people" are tolerated here for very long. When accounts are posting abusively, we may give them more warnings than you (or a lot of other users) would prefer, but we ban them in the end. A good example is this very subthread. I ended up banning that account (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403629). (Not, I should probably add, because of this or any other conversation about moderation, but just out of standard practice.)
p.s. You are not no one! I appreciate your comments and I wish I could write a better reply—I know a better one is possible, that expresses more precisely how I think about this. Alas it would take me hours, so I'm making do with one I don't much care for.
I have trouble seeing it your way. The person you were originally responding to, and originally wanted to tolerate because they also did good posts, was saying blatantly racist things about "the arabs in palestine" and that they essentially deserved the war crimes they're suffering, or that they brought it on themselves or whatever. To me this sounds like pretty straightforward political and ideological hate.
But anyway, this is only one case and we should not base our thinking just on it. The problem is the policy (or the way it's systematically enforced) and its broader results. I don't know the details of how the moderation works here nor have I any statistics. I only know that I saw too much racism and hate towards whole groups of people because of their identity here in the past, and that when I occasionally stumble across a HN link, I usually can still see that hate being a lot more represented than in other spaces I frequent, and that the kind of policy you described to me has never worked at building diverse and interesting communities.
seirl · 2h ago
Why such an involved effort just to keep racists on the website?
dang · 2h ago
This feels like a 'have you stopped beating your wife yet' question. Those are not really very motivating.
tfrutuoso · 4h ago
We appreciate your biased comment, aimed at portraying Palestinians as terrorists and non-indigenous to the area, cherry-picking history as it suits your narrative. We're not interested, though. Thank you.
hermitcrab · 1h ago
Is anyone surprised at horrific behaviour by Israel and the IDF at this point?
Every country has a percentage of right wing psychopaths. Unfortunately, they seem to be running the government in Israel.
Israel's intended end game seem to be to make Gaza completely uninhabitable, so that the Palestinians are forced to leave, then Israel can grab the land. A bit like they are doing in the West Bank, but on turbo mode. However, the Palestinians don't want to leave their land (why should they?) and no other state wants to take them. So we are left with enormous human misery, with no end in sight.
Most baffling of all, many Western states are not just turning a blind eye, but actively supporting Israel. Shame on them.
lemoncookiechip · 3h ago
The comment section in the article is revolting. I don't know if they're state actors, or if they're real people with those beliefs, but my god.
ben_w · 2h ago
> I don't know if they're state actors, or if they're real people with those beliefs
Both. And also trolls, and these days GenAI.
Some say "Never again means now", with the flag of Israel, and no sense of irony or hypocrisy. I wonder if any say the same words with the flag of Palestine? Hamas is still also genocidal, with their leaders giving similar comments about all Jews as the current Israel coalition members give about Palestinians.
When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers. The IDF and Hamas are the elephants, and there are many innocent civilians (metaphorically grass) suffering because of it. The supremely dominant power of the IDF means the suffering grass is overwhelmingly on one side of a border that Israel doesn't recognise, but there are innocents everywhere.
I don't have any answers. I have learned to recognise this kind of mindset, but I cannot find words to act as levers to change those minds.
cropcirclbureau · 1h ago
Your comment is full of attempts to justify, excuse and underplay what the IDF are doing and many Israelis believe in. From Hamas to GenAI to trolls.
Whatever the historical record that brought us here, the fact is, Israel's standing army (not some personal goons of some dictator, the standing army of a moden democratic nation), appear to be practically all in on executing a systemic genocide. And I don't think there's anyway you can justify or underplay that.
Maybe the answer you're looking for is that good people anywhere shouldn't let anyone sell them a holocaust no matter the deal.
ben_w · 1h ago
I'm literally in that comment describing the IDF as genocidal and dominant. In another comment on this thread, I liken the damage the IDF is causing to "a nuke going off". If you think this is "underplay", what words would you have used? Would you insist I blame all jews, even though this linked story is literally showing jewish people living in Israel being critical of their own government's actions? Would you insist that I said "Palestinians" instead of Hamas, when it's just the militants and not the civilians whose actions on that side I blame?
I do not divide either my criticism or sympathy by nationality, I divide it by victimising and victimhood — and even then with the humility to know that I cannot see through the fog of all the propaganda I'm being shown.
cropcirclbureau · 24m ago
But can't you see that your description of the situation as elephants crashing, your instinct to bring up a hypothetical that there's some Palestine flag waving person out there that has the same extremist thinking that the Israelis are using today, that your need to remind yourself that Hamas (to borrow the words of some other folks in the comments today, an organization that's literally _surrounded_ by overtly hostile populace) is genocidal...can't you see how replying this to what the GP said and the article as a whole can be "mistaken" to be such an attempt at underplaying?
No, I don't blame all Jews at all and I've seen a lot of Jewish people actively work to stop the genocide. But I definitely blame this narrative of Hamas is what's been used to sell to genocide to what are otherwise normal and compassionate people. I believe the only people who can stop this are the Israeli citizens saying no and the time was way too long ago.
navane · 1h ago
Fwiw, I don't read any excuse or justification in parents post. The fact is that the IDF are (right now) more effective than Hamas in exterminating the other party.
cropcirclbureau · 18m ago
What you're saying is completely true. But I like to think that most Israelis believe that the other party doesn't include the countless civilians that were killed so far and are facing dire starvation right now. Israeli people should not let their grief and their fear prevent them from saying no from those amongst them that want to do terrible things.
basisword · 4h ago
I really don't think that it's a coincidence that just as this news was starting to gain traction a few weeks ago, Isreal started bombing Iran. It was the perfect distraction.
Gareth321 · 4h ago
There has been so much disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda from so many nations and interested parties that I find it impossible to believe any claims anymore without seeing a video for myself. In this case, there are none. Even according to the article, the soldiers were ordered to fire on looters, which seems reasonable in the context of this war.
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submeta · 4h ago
377,000 people in Gaza are missing. A few thousand fled to Egypt while they could. The rest: Under rubbles, propably.
When Netanyahu talked about Palestinians in Gaza being Amalek, about the necessity to destroy Amalek, he meant exactly that. And when the defense minister Gallant said: They are human animals, and then he said „no food, no water, no electricity“, he punished 2.3 mill people, half of them children. That’s why both have arrest warrants from ICJ.
Over 90% of Israeli population want more death and destruction in Gaza. Netanyahu and Gallant are no single incidents. The whole Israeli society knows what their soldiers are doing in Palestine. And they are ok with it.
This article and my comment will be flagged until dead. Just like anyone speaking about Israeli Apartheid, genocide, oppression in Palestine. But things are changing. Hasbara troll farms can’t keep up.
conartist6 · 3h ago
This is a description of blackest evil.
Anyone who knows they are raising an assault rifle to a crowd of civilians and pulls the trigger is a mass murderer and a psychopath
oulipo · 4h ago
Israel is knowingly committing a genocide, and there will be a Nuremberg 2 for the perpetrators and the people supporting it
forinti · 3h ago
There were Nuremberg trials because Germany capitulated. We don't even have sanctions on Israel and the people responsible will only be jailed if they step outside Israel.
I am not optimistic at all and I am very afraid for Gazans.
dilawar · 4h ago
The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. -- Thucydidus
jcranmer · 1h ago
Spoken by the Athenians and resulting in a war that, as Thucydides's audience knew quite well, Athens lost big-time.
Which actually holds up quite well for everybody who loves to bring up that quote: realism aka "we shouldn't face the consequences of our actions" is the obvious rallying cry for people facing the consequences of their actions.
palmfacehn · 2h ago
It is descriptive, but not prescriptive.
If neither side can agree on peace, if neither side has objectives which the other will accept, if neither side is willing to compromise; What other outcome is possible in terms of realpolitik?
It is upsetting to observe. We all want better for humanity.
bombcar · 1h ago
There have been cases in the past where an external strong power has been able to suppress both sides but it has to be done for generations until the reasons are lost to time.
palmfacehn · 1h ago
Depending on who you ask, there have been a variety of external powers stirring the pot. Most people are horrified by the violence. Beyond the territorial, religious and cultural disputes there are opposing geopolitical factions.
Of course it is understandable to be outraged by the violence and atrocities. The human suffering is real, but arguments focusing on these points can miss the larger picture. The underlying incentives dictate outcomes. Atrocities are often marketed as rationalizations for further violence.
We want to prescribe an outcome without atrocities. Yet discussions fall into recrimination before they can describe the conflict coherently.
volleyball · 3h ago
I guess the Israeli government's original plan to arm and support drug gangs and literally ISIS (euphemistically called 'clans') as "aid security" wasn't working out? Especially after it was revealed said "security" was stealing and reselling the food aid under the protection of IDF while the Israeli govt. and media blamed the looting on Hamas.
And after the Israeli opposition leader exposed the whole charade and Netanyahu defended it saying “On the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas. What’s wrong with that? It only saves the lives of Israeli solders, and publicising this only benefits Hamas.”
To be honest, I do prefer drug dealers over Hamas islamists in general. And where exactly is the proof the gangs are connected to ISIS?
"The basis for Lieberman’s allegation of ties to IS was unclear."
It is easy to throw dirt and hope something sticks, but the main thing speaking against his group seems Netanjahu's support in my opinion. But otherwise I don't see the scandal so much here. Especially not compared to the scandal of intentionally targeting civilian population and indiscriminate killing of starving people like the article states.
Also, if, as in the recent New York City mayoral debate, US politicians are supposed to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which it recognizes itself as, then I don't see the big deal over Palestine as an Islamic state. I myself would prefer to see a secular PFLP state, but the Zionist entity, US, Canada etc. fight against the PFLP, proscribe them as "terrorists" etc.
lukan · 1h ago
"he was propping them up prior to the current battles"
Those words indicate something different, than allowing quatari money to reach the civilian part of Hamas government as part of a temporary peace deal. Because that sounds actually reasonable to me.
Now there is indeed more, like this:
"Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who is now Mr. Netanyahu’s finance minister, put it bluntly in 2015, the year he was elected to Parliament.
“The Palestinian Authority is a burden,” he said. “Hamas is an asset.”"
But those words came without context (just a youtube video, that I won't watch right now).
LunaSea · 34m ago
Palestinians preferred them as well since they elected Hamas.
nelox · 1h ago
Ironically, the closest you will get to something approaching that type of Marxist-Leninist utopia in the Middle East, is living in an Israeli kibbutz near the border with Gaza.
LudwigNagasena · 1h ago
Why is a civic state in the Middle East is utopia? Do you think that the US not based on white nationalism is also a Marxist-Leninist utopia?
ben_w · 3h ago
> To be honest, I do prefer drug dealers over Hamas islamists in general. And where exactly is the proof the gangs are connected to ISIS?
A simple dealer vs an armed wing of a religious theocracy who think people like me are the devil incarnate, I'd pick the dealer.
An organised armed drug network that necessarily has to be at least comparable strength to an existing network of religious theocrats who are obviously getting external support owing to the ability to continue fighting despite the evidence of systematic destruction of their civil environment that satellite imagery shows has been in aggregate comparable in scope and depth to a nuke going off…
I don't want either of them anywhere near anyone I care about. Even if the latter wasn't associated with a different group of religious zealots.
No comments yet
xg15 · 2h ago
It gets ugly at the latest when remembering that "looting" was always a core part of the Israeli narrative to explain the humanitarian crisis.
Even before the current siege/semi-siege, the standard response to calls from aid orgs had been essentially "Look, it's not us. We're letting in aid, but it's not our fault if Palestinian armed gangs themselves are looting it after we let it in. Palestinians are just too stupid to organize their own survival."
Of course that response was already ridiculous back then: The 1000s of aid trucks stuck at the Egypt-Gazan border are definitely not kept there by Hamas or armed gangs. Even the looting attacks themselves were suspicions: Aid orgs kept reporting they were happening in areas under full control of the IDF - and IDF was forbidding using any other route[1]:
> Israel is doing the opposite of ensuring aid can be delivered to Palestinians in need. For example, a U.N. memo recently obtained by the Washington Post concluded that the armed gangs looting aid convoys could be “benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence” and “protection” from Israel’s military, and that a gang leader had a military-like compound in an area “restricted, controlled and patrolled” by the Israeli military.
The gangs operate in areas under Israeli control, often within eyeshot of Israeli forces. When convoys are looted, Israeli forces watch and do nothing, even when aid workers request assistance. Israeli forces refer to one area about a kilometer from its Kerem Shalom border checkpoint as “the looting zone.” The IDF-designated looting zone might be the only place in Gaza that Israeli forces won’t shoot an armed Palestinian.
But there was still at least some benefit of the doubt that the armed gangs were just some ordinary criminals exploiting the situation. Claims that the gangs themselves were operating under Israeli orders were conspiracy theories.
Netanyahu now confirmed those theories as reality.
Well, Israel could have worked with the UN… it’s not the like choices are ONLY Hamas or Drug Dealers.
Unless, of course, delivering aid is not actually your intent.
aaomidi · 2h ago
> To be honest, I do prefer drug dealers over Hamas islamists in general. And where exactly is the proof the gangs are connected to ISIS?
Comments like this coming from an audience currently not being genocided is going to haunt our history forever.
lukan · 1h ago
Can you get a bit more specific here?
Because it kind of reads like an attack towards me for not caring about genocide. If you are curious about my point of view, it is that both Hamas and Israeli leadership belongs in prison and the US and EU should stop supporting them immediately.
But that doesn't mean I support anyone who wants to erease Israel. Do you support Hamas?
Fraterkes · 1h ago
This is an article about idf warcrimes, I think the comment you are responding to is just pointing out that you are immediately pivotting to condemning Hamas
navane · 51m ago
But the comment he's responding to already talks primerely about Hamas, it's not he who switched the topic from IDFs horrors to Hamas crimes.
> I guess the Israeli government's original plan to arm and support drug gangs and literally ISIS (euphemistically called 'clans') as "aid security" wasn't working out? Especially after it was revealed said "security" was stealing and reselling the food aid under the protection of IDF while the Israeli govt. and media blamed the looting on Hamas.
To which he responded his opinions about drug and faith dealers.
aaomidi · 57m ago
Asking if I support Hamas makes this unworthy of a response.
lukan · 50m ago
You could just state "no", if you don't, then I would have apologized.
But you gave a response, but avoided the question. Together with your comment history and wording I do conclude now that you do.
tuyguntn · 2h ago
[flagged]
No comments yet
fakedang · 3h ago
> To be honest, I do prefer drug dealers over Hamas islamists in general. And where exactly is the proof the gangs are connected to ISIS?
This is like the equivalent of "Tbh, I do prefer ISIS over Saddam Hussein". Or "I do prefer cancer over heart disease".
lukan · 3h ago
No, because drug dealers by definition mainly sell drugs to people who want them.
A subset of them indeed engages with dark methods like mixing highly addictive drugs into harmless ones and turf war, but the majority just sells things.
Before weed was legal in germany I engaged with quite some of them and they were mostly decent people all in all. Not the greatest and often messed up themself a bit, but otherwise no danger to me or anyone else. My choice if I damaged myself with their products.
A islamist on the other hand is buisy by definition with spreading the rule of Islam over everyone, everywhere.
Dangerous to any non muslim.
fakedang · 3h ago
So you're equating the drug dealing "clans" in Gaza to your local streetside dealer in Germany?
Both Hamas and the clans are cancers to society, and it's abhorrent that the IDF is dealing with them to distribute aid, instead of being directly involved (which they can easily commit to).
lukan · 3h ago
My main issue was equating the term "drug dealer" with something worse than a terrorist.
Now as my edit above hopefully made clear, apparently they ain't just "drug dealers", but ruthless criminals who loot and shoot a UN aid convoy for profit.
And abhorrent are indeed many things about the whole situation.
niyyou · 1h ago
Sourced articles like these are good and further proof that Israel is a psychopathic state and society. But what's odd is to depict is as "surprising" or even shocking when the same state has been carpet bombing civilian, including women and children for 16 months straight, causing what is estimated at 300 000 deaths, committing every single atrocity or infringement to the international law possible, including targeting medics, journalists, using starvation as a weapon of war, bragging on it on social media, having politicians incite to eradicate the remaining part of the Gaza population, and I could go on and on with nameless atrocities. So just to put things in perspective, this article depicts a horrible incident, but it is entirely in line with the rest of the Israeli policy, and unfortunately pales in comparison with the ongoing large-scale massacre.
nelox · 1h ago
Your statement paints a one-sided picture that oversimplifies a complex conflict while ignoring critical context. The claim of Israel as a “psychopathic state and society” dismisses the diversity of its population and the internal debates within its democracy, flawed as it may be. Accusations of “carpet bombing” and “300,000 deaths” are inflammatory and lack credible sourcing. Estimates from neutral observers, like the UN or reputable NGOs, place Gaza’s death toll far lower, though still tragic, and often note the difficulty of verifying numbers due to Hamas’s control of local reporting. The charge of “every single atrocity” ignores that international law violations are alleged on both sides, including Hamas’s deliberate targeting of civilians, use of human shields, and rocket attacks on Israeli population centers, which you omit entirely.
Starvation as a weapon and targeting medics or journalists are grave accusations, but they require rigorous evidence, not blanket assertions. Israel’s military actions, while devastating, occur in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, which killed over 1,200 Israelis and took hundreds hostage, including women and children. This context doesn’t justify all of Israel’s actions, but it complicates the narrative of unprovoked aggression. Social media boasts and political rhetoric, while reprehensible, don’t equate to state policy, and cherry-picking them ignores dissenting Israeli voices calling for restraint or peace.
The article you reference may highlight a horrific incident, but framing it as “entirely in line” with a monolithic “Israeli policy” flattens a multifaceted conflict. It also sidesteps Hamas’s role in prolonging the war by rejecting ceasefires and embedding military infrastructure in civilian areas, as documented by the IDF and independent analysts. Both sides’ actions deserve scrutiny, but your statement’s selective outrage and lack of evidence undermine its credibility. If you’re aiming to critique, provide specific, verifiable data, otherwise it is empty rhetoric.
aristofun · 1h ago
If something emotionally charged is published on a website in the middle of a war going on - it must be all true, mkay.
locallost · 3h ago
The guidelines of HN, to be kind and curious in the comments, are difficult to follow in this case. Outrage doesn't bring anything either, but a polite and curious discussion is impossible. The lack of reflection in the western world on this issue is seriously disturbing.
dang · 3h ago
I hear you and I agree that there are topics which conventional politeness cannot respond to adequately, and that this is one of those topics.
If you take those words "kind" and "curious" in a large sense—larger than usual—I think there's enough room there to talk about even this topic without breaking the guidelines.
How to do this? That is something we have to work out together. You're certainly right that it's difficult.
From a moderation point of view, I can tell you that just avoiding garden-variety flamewar and internet tropes already gets us a lot of the way there. You'd be surprised at how many users who think they're taking a grand moral stand against conventional politeness are simply repeating those. Conventional impoliteness isn't any answer either.
locallost · 1h ago
Thanks. I was not critical, especially not of the moderation, just tried to sum up what I think about it, and other than meaningless outrage there was nothing there. And yet there is no point in that because that's just letting off steam. I don't think it should be removed either.
TheGuyWhoCodes · 3h ago
Why don't you remove it then?
Time and time again you allow this off topic submission to persists on HN
dang · 3h ago
I don't agree that it's off topic, nor that HN would be better if we suppressed it and acted like this isn't happening. We're trying for a global optimum*, and the most important part of that is not to settle for local optima, such as not discussing difficult things.
I've posted about this quite a bit, since it inevitably comes up every time this topic appears on HN's front page. Here's another part of the current thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403458.
Maybe you should reconsider whether suppressing it would be better. The comments are the usual cesspool that can be found everywhere else. An obvious tell is the incessant attempt at redefining the word genocide.
TheGuyWhoCodes · 2h ago
[flagged]
dang · 2h ago
Funnily enough I just finished responding to someone who makes the opposite complaint about us: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403907. Notice that word "always", which both of you use. Interesting, no?
People with strong passions on a topic always feel like the moderators are against them. (As you see, I'm not immune to "always" perceptions either!)
I wish we could do something about that—I don't enjoy having so many people, from all sides of every divisive topic, feeling like we're against them when we're not. However, after years of observing this and thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it's inevitable. The cognitive bias underlying it is just ironclad. We all share this bias, which is why your complaint and the complaint of someone on the opposite side are basically the same.
It's true that HN has hosted several major threads about Israel/Gaza, but it's also true that many (perhaps a hundred times as many) submissions on the topic have ended up flagged and we haven't turned off the flags. I don't see an "always" in there.
As for Saturdays—that factor is so far from affecting how we moderate HN that I had to puzzle for a bit over what you might mean. Nor does this discussion strike me as one-sided. People wouldn't be disagreeing with each other if it were.
Rodeoclash · 2h ago
You do good work Dang. I'd love to buy you a beer sometime.
"submissions on the topic have ended up flagged and we haven't turned off the flags." only because they were flagged before getting traction.
Saturdays - Observing Jewish people don't check HN on a Saturday, and they are one of the major side of the story here, unsurprisingly.
edanm · 2h ago
That's a pretty serious accusation, and I don't think you can actually back that up with anything.
Online, pretty much any time Israel is discussed, the majority of commenters (or articles) are anti-Israel. Regardless of why you think that is, it's just a fact. You can't blame dang for that.
TheGuyWhoCodes · 1h ago
I don't blame him for the content I blame him for letting it stay up because it's off topic and not in the spirit of HN yet he allows them to stay up, for the reasons above.
No comments yet
lynx97 · 5h ago
Black Hawk Down comes to mind, sadly. :-(
niemandhier · 4h ago
This comment thread is the most civilised online discussion I have seen in a long while about this particular topic, despite people coming from diverse backgrounds and disagreeing.
In this sense, hackernews gives me hope that online culture is not lost yet.
t0lo · 4h ago
It's because realistically hn is an oasis of educated people that has been overlooked by astroturfers and foreign interests (very strongly including the government in this piece), and hasn't expanded its core demographic for profit. This is what the rest of the internet would be like without manipulation. Imagine how much better things would be
joenot443 · 1h ago
HN has an experienced and famously fair moderator for whom cultivating the conversation on this site is a full time job.
I have no doubt whatsoever that dang is the biggest reason that HN comment sections are so high quality compared to the rest of the web.
lukan · 3h ago
If HN is so educated and civic, we would be able to have more of that sort of debate and not just once in a while.
Also note that dang is already pretty active here banning people.
It is a topic where deep emotions come up and where fanatism is widespread. Also among educated people. Also not sure if you have not noticed before, but HN is part of a profit orientated venture capitalist company. Still, I also do enjoy this Oasis here. But I don't see how it can scale in any way you seem to imagine.
t0lo · 3h ago
I think people understand there's a time and a place for important political discussion on an otherwise tech community, especially because the quality and insight tends to be better than other places.
I don't have any delusions about ycombinator seeing some of the things it has supported recently, but in this laughably dumbed down world you take what you can get.
As for new communities I believe in being selective and restrictive- based on location, education, or interest and think it's the only way we can get smart communities again. Think how the tech barrier and slow adoption in the 90s/2000s resulted in a smart bubble online, and how covid was the death knell for distinct non homogenous smart online spaces because it brought everyone further online. It's discriminatory but look what we've become.
intended · 3h ago
This is at t= 3 hours, and large swathes of people asleep on a weekend.
These types of topics pull themselves apart VERY fast, as the homogenity of discussion norms / definitions, shared by users decreases.
avip · 19m ago
If such orders were given, in the manner hereby described, these are clearly illegal orders and MUST be refused by any IDF soldier who listened during training.
But I'm in doubt such orders were given. I assume (or hope, but certainly do not know), they were ordered to not allow any mob to come close to them (this is obviously required). We've been there and it should be possible to attain without killing anyone.
Regardless, it's time to bring all the hostages back home, and stop the war.
When this Gaza conflict started, I saw how the Israeli protested against their government and demanded peace, so I thought there is a semblance of an excuse for glimpses of abhorrence being reported - "it's a small number of people in power, not the Israeli nation doing it, and also there are always 2 sides to the story".
Since then, there have been unfathomable horrors and crimes against humanity done from the Israel side, with extreme intensity and one-sidedness, and it's now been going for so long. I can find no excuse of any kind anymore, for what has been and is being done in Gaza. I don't think any normal person could. The weight of these things, in my mind at least, is such that if the Israeli people really wanted anything different, it was their human duty and utmost responsibility to stop this by now, in whatever way needed. They didn't... It's sad that people who have suffered so much as well, let themselves become the villains to this depth and extent.
As horrible as the Israeli mindset is, their subjective viewpoint is at least somewhat relatable: An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else, just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead - and will with very high likelihood experience terror attacks themselves. That this upbringing doesn't exactly make you want to engage with the other side is psychologically understandable.
(I'm imaging this as the universal experience of all Jewish Israelis, religious or secular, left or right. I'm excluding the religious and Zionist-ideological angles here, because those are a whole different matter once again)
What I absolutely cannot understand is the behavior of our states. We're pretending to be neutral mediators who want nothing more than to end the conflict, yet in reality, we're doing everything to keep the conflict going. We're fully subscribed to Zionist narrative of an exclusive Israeli right to the land (the justifications ranging from ostensibly antifascist to openly religious) and we're even throwing our own values about universal human rights and national sovereignty under the bus to follow the narrative.
If the messianic and dehumanizing tendencies of Israelis are answered by nothing else than full support and encouragement of their allies, I don't find it exactly surprising that they will grow.
But yeah, in practice, we seem to want it to end with full Israeli dominance, and the Palestinians either emigrating to Egypt and Jordan or vanishing into thin air, I suppose.
I'd prefer peace, but if Hamas and the IDF want to fight it out, go ahead.
But do not inflict genocide, or war crimes, or terrorism on civilians. It's that simple.
You seem to imply it's complicated based on the different desired outcomes called peace. It's not.
And for the record ... yes, Hamas initiated this current round, but the actions of Israel have been abhorrent to the point where I don't consider them a civilised nation anymore, let alone a democracy. Considering the Palestinians have been obliterated and imprisoned and occupied for decades, I'll give them a pass, though the same applies to them.
Yes, there are Israeli's who are against the current actions, but .. like I say to those who didn't vote for Trump ... at some point, you have to own it. Don't come back saying 'it's not your fault', all I want to see is how you're fighting against the current Israeli offensive and encouraging others to do the same. As, no matter how long it takes, that's the only thing deserving of respect.
All of the death toll coming out of Gaza are from Hamas and they revised the numbers back in April to show 72% of the deaths are military aged males.
https://www.cf.org/news/hamas-quietly-reduces-civilian-death...
It’d be convenient if Jews just stopped existing so the Arabs could take their homeland again but the Jews decided they had a right to exist and are now a regional power because of their own self determination.
Bibi on the other hand is clearly a criminal and needs to go.
And also, killing mostly "military aged males" is not a clean tactic as you think it is not to mention that it doesn't justify killing a lot of women and children as collateral.
Do I call it sexist? Stereotyping? What? It entirely denies the existence of males as anything other than enemies, and these are still children we’re talking about.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_expendability
This argument betrays your bias: that the land is yours (Jewish I mean), and "Arabs" stole it and want to steal it again.
Of course, the other side sees it differently. They see a half a century of immigration to their land culminating in a partition that was imposed from the outside in Western colonialist fashion without the consent of the people living there. They saw massacres and expulsions and ethnic cleansing. That is the root of the conflict.
Of course now 80 years and many complications have passed; both sides have legitimate complaints about the other and many people have been born in both territories making them natives and not part of either colonisation or expulsion. It's difficult.
> All of the death toll coming out of Gaza are from Hamas and they revised the numbers back in April to show 72% of the deaths are military aged males.
This betrays it even more. Not only do you cite a non-credible source going against the consensus, but your argument is literally "Palestinian males between 16 and 45 are fair game for extermination". Not sure what to reply to that.
Pro-Palestinian commenters usually start with the Balfour Declaration or Theodor Herzl's books, I believe.
I found 1881/1882 a good starting point, because this was the first time there was organized immigration that explicitly followed Zionist plans and ideology - I.e. people were not abstractly thinking about "returning to Jerusalem" and they weren't immigrating into the Ottoman empire for other reasons, but they were deliberately immigrating with the intention of (re-)establishing a "Jewish homeland" in the biblical Land of Israel.
Anti-terrorism rhetorics has indeed previously led to terrible crimes, but I wouldn't suppose that's a reason to support pro-terrorism rhetorics. It's probably best to look at the content instead of the type of rhetorics.
And if we're talking about terrorism, IDF and Mossad are very much known to deploy terror tactics across a lot of their historical engagements. The definition of the word doesn't hinge on designation by a Western organization. And the vast majority of "pro-palestine" people in the world are not Iran proxies and secret anti-semites. They're actually, for the most part, young people that are working from a place of empathy and horror. The most blatant and harmful propganda in this whole mess is the attempt to designate pro-palestine protestors anti-semites and secretly in support of Iran and Hamas policies. What a terrible cheapening of the word. Point is, the ones using the most pro-terror rhetoric are those trying to defend the IDF right now.
In early 2024, I was chatting with a German colleague of mine. Great guy, politically we were the most aligned out of anyone in our team. The genocide in Gaza was already well under way, so the topic came up. He told me, as if it was incredibly obvious "Well of course as Germany we couldn't possibly say anything about Gaza, given our history." For the rest of my life I will remember exactly that moment, where we were stood, the scene, because it came as a shock; this belief that I'd had since childhood turned out to be entirely wrong. It was the exact opposite - Germany had learnt nothing, in fact they'd learnt even less than the countries they had occupied. It was all a complete ruse, and I really lost all respect I had for how Germany has dealt with it all. A country like Japan at least doesn't even pretend to have learnt anything, and I'm not convinced that's the worse option.
I should've known the second news started flowing out of Germany such as "Award ceremony set to honor novel by Palestinian author at the Frankfurt Book Fair canceled “due to the war in Israel,", along with stuff like designating B.D.S as "antisemitic" but I wanted to believe that was just a tiny minority of ignorant people.
Yes, I know that now "the narrative inside Germany has been turning around" but imo it's far too late, and can't possibly be sincere, being entirely fuelled by external pressure rather than any kind of actual realization.
Fully agreeing with your post - and also, it's not. Maybe for parts of the population (though even there, many are extremely conflicted) but definitely not for the current (conservative) leadership. What worries them is that they find the country increasingly isolated and there is a growing risk they could become personally liable - this forces them to make some concerned noises if the atrocities become undeniable.
But they never stopped practically supporting Israel wherever they can, be it with military aid or preventing EU actions that might put pressure on it. They will also snap back into the unequivocally pro-Israel narrative as soon as they can get away with it.
Epstein was probably running a blackmail operation for the Mossad and CIA. Ghislain Maxwell's father was a media mogul who was an intelligence asset for the Mossad. It seems overwhelmingly likely that Israel exerts extreme influence over the USA and Western nations through blackmail, threats, and control over major institutions. The major CEOs of internet companies, media corporations, newspapers, and financial institutions are disproportionately Jewish.
American Evangelical Protestants believe that the continued existence of Israel is a prophesied necessary prerequisite for the resurrection of Jesus, who will then start the Apocalypse. They think they can force prophecy by defending Israel. It doesn't matter how badly Israel behaves, they think the ends justify all of it.
Or is it the leader class in most western countries have no sense of duty , are effectively cowards, and are in it just to have a profitable, white-collar career ?
People are just numb to the whole area.
The most difficult part is the fact Israel is wealthy and aggressive while (both) Palestine government has been the definition of dysfunction and tribalism for decades, even during peace times. Diplomatic solutions have became harder and harder since the 90s.
You can read the history the political bodies in West Bank and even they seem to not care to fix anything either. They have their own leadership issues (like never electing new leaders).
There’s a major gap between a western savior wanting something bad to stop and actually going there and accomplishing something.
They are cowards who are just in it to enrich themselves by bribery, theft, and extortion.
You are looking in the right direction and not seeing just how far our society has gone.
What is the unpopular, necessary decision? GP is commenting on the US/EUs continual campaigns to arm and fund Israel's efforts in Gaza without pushback. I don't wish to misinterpret you, but this read to me, that funding/aiding human rights violations and genocide in Gaza is a "necessary" act.
For a long time, that made some sense - it's starting to shift into quite horrific territory though, if leaders and communities interpret this obligation as some sort of absolute fealty towards the Israeli government, at the exclusion of everything else - even if that government itself is repeating the path of Nazi Germany. Yet this seems to be how a lot of German politicians interpret it.
I found the distinction exemplified in the "Never again" vs "Never again for anyone" slogans.
I don't understand what exactly is going on in the US, but there seems to have been a similar taboo, though maybe stemming from different sources (like that Evangelical end-of-days prophecy that sees Israel literally as part of a divine plan that trumps everything else).
I find it notable that part of Trump's voter support in the election were actually pro-Palestinian groups - because they saw Trump as the only alternative to a complicit Harris administration. Of course, Trump turned out to be even more complicit and openly embracing the Evangelical narrative.
So as far as US voters were concerned, there was no pro-Palestinian or even neutral options to vote for. There was just secular pro-Israel and religious pro-Israel. (Well, there was also Jill Stein, but she had no realistic chance of winning)
Of course there are other voices saying that all those justifications - Holocaust, biblical prophecy, etc - are just show and the real reason for the unconditional support is just ordinary geopolitics. The image of Israel as the "unsinkable aircraft carrier" that guarantees US dominance in the region.
>We're fully subscribed to Zionist narrative of an exclusive Israeli right to the land...
The land in almost all of the world has changed hands in wars with different people making claims to historic ownership of different bits, but the general solution is for people to live peacefully on whatever bit of land they live on and if there is a land dispute they can go to court rather than try to shoot their neighbours due to some historic grudge.
Prior to this both sides were living reasonably peacefully in Israel and Gaza and Hamas started the current round of killing the neighbours due to a historic grudge so that leads to the forces of keeping the peace leaning towards the Israeli side. It now seems the Israelis have gone over the top hitting back which is another problem.
That's simply not true. Israel never gave up control over airspace, land and sea borders after the disengagement and effectively put the strip under siege after Hamas came to power.
The west bank is cut up into hundreds of small Palestinian enclaves that are separated and controlled by the IDF. There is also a policy of systematically denying Palestinians in the West Bank resources and on the other hand priorizing the settlers.
Both areas have been under siege for decades, just with different intensity.
When the current government was elected - a year before Oct.7 - it made speeding up the land grabs and eventual full annexation of the West Bank a priority. Look at the ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich: Both have deep connections to the settlers and have made deeply dehumanizing statements towards the Palestinians. (Smotrich officially published his "Decisive Plan" in 2017 about his proposal for a "permanent solution": Either "encourage emigration", allow them to live as non-citizens with restricted rights in isolated enclaves or "let the army deal with them". Both ministers are fully on board with the current starvation policy - or rather, it's still too lenient for them)
Ben Gvir is now head of the Israeli police. Smotrich is finance minister and "Minister in the defense ministry", a special role that gives him the ultimate authority about anything that concerns the West Bank.
All that happened before Oct.7.
Whatever you think about the moral or legal standing of the founding of Israel, right now most Israeli citizens have been born there and have no other place to call home.
Very few people are calling for an actual reconciliation that gives the right to live to all ethnicities who currently inhabit the land.
Most voices continuously dig up the horrific injustices and crimes and dispute which side is worse. This cannot lead to any solution to the conflict
With the continued persecution of Palestinians, whether its the illegal occupation of the west bank or the siege of Gaza which was essentially a concentration camp, that was "mowed" like grass every few years in terrorist bombing campaigns by Israel, its no surprise that organisations like Hamas, originally a humanitarian charity, exist.
Israelis want peace through domination, just like the French in Algeria. Be aware that Jews are not native to Palestine, except those that had been living there before the state was founded. They are living as colonialists on stolen land, and are continually denying the native Palestinians the right to return, which is part of the definition ethnic cleansing.
I say this as Jewish person originally born in Palestine (or Israel) and who had grandparents that survivide the Holocaust. Once I read about what really happened in 1948, that it was zionist terrorist militias that started the conflict and that Palestinians did not "simply leave", I became an anti zionist. I don't think Israel has the right to exist. People have the right to exist and they have the right to fight back against jewish supremacism.
https://mrandrewfox.substack.com/p/haaretz-the-lies-continue
> Haaretz’s English edition claims that IDF soldiers were ordered to fire at unarmed Palestinians waiting for food in Gaza, but the original Hebrew version? It states they were told to fire towards crowds to keep them away from the aid sites. This represents a significant difference in intent, legality, and moral implications.
I am normally fairly well accustomed to the reliability and credibility of newspapers, but I have never read this newspaper.
This is large-scale, continued, intentional CIVCAS.
And yes, the IDF has been relying on abhorrent & violently escalatory tactics since at least 1982 (Lebanon invasion).
On that note, I recently picked up an excellent book (“Our American Israel”) that dives pretty deep into the US-Israel relationship, and spends a good chunk of time on how the invasion of Lebanon was received by the West.
There are definitely some parallels between 1982 and the ongoing Gaza genocide with regards to the use of violence. But the most salient point to me is that it is quite clear that Israel learned a ton on how to ensure its image in the West does not easily get tarnished going forward.
Gaza’s population continues to grow at a steady pace compared to pre-war levels. There is no evidence of genocide.
100k dead, more injured, highest number of child casualties in any modern conflict, countless statements of genocidal intent at the highest levels. But population growth is the metric we need focus on at this point, because that’s the Hasbara talking point du jour.
Thousands of kilometers away.
The IDF can be highly sophisticated in their plans and methods when they want to.
Calling it sophisticated does not change that fact.
This isn’t just a matter of vague speculation as there are historical cases outside of Israel on which to see how things like this develop and what the consequences are both for the victims and the soldiers. These historical accounts also indicate soldiers committing these sorts of actions become victims themselves with catastrophic mental health disorders.
Israel got in trouble with ICJ court, because of quotes from top government officials. Government of Israel was very specific what they will do to Gaza! This was even full scale bombing started!
Trying to reinterpret this as a problem of "military discipline", and "soldiers are victim as well" is just another level of cynicism!
It's happened, many times. Usually this doesn't make front-page news, but soldiers that break the law are sometimes held accountable. Not nearly enough, and I think it should be far more publicized as a deterrent effect (the fact that it isn't is a pretty big indictment of the current government). But it's certainly not laughable.
"prompting the military prosecution to call for a review into possible war crimes".
A part of what the Isareli opposition has been pushing for in the last few years has been removing Netanyahu from power and presumably jailing him because of the corruption charges.
When it comes to the list of things that Israelis fear, being sentenced to a firing squad is very low down.
If Israel had regime change, new regime and majority of voters would be pro Arab... New government could actually enforce existing laws!
For that to happen, the government, and the overall population, would need to consider what's being done in Gaza and on the West Bank to actually be a genocide. I don't think popular support for that actually exists in Israel. Last time I checked, most of the population supported the annexation of Gaza and the forced eviction of the local population to neighboring countries.
I don't think I'll live to see a two-state solution.
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That said the soldiers pulling the trigger are committing crimes. These are patently illegal actions to a common person standard which eliminates any defense of following military orders. That being said the soldiers, at least, are committing crimes. Accountability starts at the source of the crime.
If the government is ordering these actions then those are illegal orders, according to international standards of military conduct. The soldiers on the ground must ignore those orders on the basis of patently illegal conduct according to a common person standard and the officials facilitating those orders can be investigated for issuing war crimes.
As an example read about Slobodan Milošević
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87
In functioning democracies in general, sure, you have to be careful not to tar everyone with the same brush. But in the specific case of Israel in 2015, it's not realistic to argue that the government isn't a single entity, so some parts of it may not be responsible (or even in favour of) crimes against humanity.
Because that is what keeps the ICC off of their backs. The ICC only has authority to step in in cases where national jurisdiction is unable or unwilling to prevent and prosecute war crimes.
As far as I can tell Israel doesn't particularly care for even looking like it's trying to behave responsibly. I don't think they've held anyone responsible for even some of the most obvious war crimes we have evidence of being committed.
I have distaste for Trump but something I appreciate about him is his abilities to stage a theatre with his "fake" bombings. The more mainstream politicians have much more sociopathic tendencies.
If you think about it, %100 of modern wars are about who is going to be the administrator and doesn't feel like can win an election. We live in a world of abundance, there's no reason for a group of people to kill other group for their resources. If it wasn't for the careers of some people with huge egos all this can be sorted out through civil matters. After the wars it gets sorted out anyway, we don't see mass exterminations anymore.
Worse, we are helping them when they need it, and closing our eyes when they don't want us to watch.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kSHED-mRP1g
The bodies of burnt children. The reports of doctors who document multiple sniper rounds found in the bodies of small children and toddlers?
I've been seeing reports about internet connectivity being very touch and go in Gaza the last few weeks.
Is it not unreasonable to think, those who are starving the most might not have internet/electricity to charge a device/care to document when they're starving?
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/28/nx-s1-5449587/israel-gaza-haa...
Okay but this is just another claim that seems to require evidence. Why should I believe this?
The Israeli tradition of giving their Gaza operations names of children's games also continues, after "Operation Cast Lead".
(Not sure if they wanted to make a reference to Squid Games as well...)
Red light: 10 minutes later they send out another notification saying no aid is being distributed there today and start shooting anyone in the area
When you distribute food in a war zone you tell people not to come near the food and they do it anyway. What are you going to do? shoot them? Yes, you shoot them if they get too close. First you fire at the air, then you shoot at people if they get closer anyway.
If you don't shoot them they will take a sack by force, and then everybody will take a sack by force. Usually they coordinate themselves into bands or gangs to steal the food.
Of course, those brave enough to take the sacks by force risking their lives will not distribute them evenly. They will give it to their families, their gang and sell the rest.
Israel could be brutal for a lot of things, but not for this. Hamas was way more brutal to their own people. For example, Hamas executed their own people for wanting to escape the bombing areas so they did not loose their body shields.
What would stop them from deliberately drawing fire under this scenario?
Aside from meeting the Israeli demands, what other options remain for Hamas?
And it's a sin that Israel cannot afford.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_March
The Green March or how a crowd of elderly people, women, and children with no other weapon than the Quran in their hands take a military position.
Beachhead!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/jun/26...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44387199
1) Give them their own state. This is difficult for quite many reasons, and Israel (by which I mean the current government) doesn't want that
2) Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation, and let them participate in the regular political processes. The current government certainly doesn't want that, and I have no idea what part of the Palestinians would want that.
3) Continue to treat them as sub-human, and deal with the consequences of the hatred that fosters. That seems to have been the "strategy" before October last year.
4) Try to exterminate or exile them, or at least decimating them to such an extend that the problem becomes smaller.
Since 1) and 2) are (again, from the perspective of Isreal's government) undesirable, and 3) has stopped working, 4) seems to be their current strategy.
As the Palestinians are the majority, the Jewish Israelis would become a minority in terms of citizens and votes. This is very much akin to Apartheid South Africa, where a minority ethnic group rules over the rest of the population.
For a commonplace example, look at a soccer match, fans screaming at the referee whenever a decision doesn't go their team's way.
Speaking for experience from some relatives, the immigration laws for people of jewish faith and ancestry were nigh insurmountable if you came from african, arab or middle east countries and pretty much just nominal even in recent times for those who had even a remote connection but came from the US and the UK.
I have the feeling they are jewish the same way Henry IV was a Catholic when he said "Paris is well worth a Mass".
The problem with understanding this situation is that it probably has more to do with Israel's internal politics than what the situation looks like on the ground in Gaza and elsewhere. Just a quick read from the wikipedia page should give an idea just how corrupt the situation really is.
There's also the fact that Palestinians aren't a homogenous group in any sense of the word. That makes it hard for them to unite under any political flag. It also doesn't help that the borders are all closed, from both sides, and no neighboring country are willing to accept them.
From the outside the situation certainly looks very bleak.
This is a pretty big claim, and I highly disagree with it. I didn't particularly like Israeli policy towards Palestinians for the last 15 years, but they were certainly not treated as "sub-human". Gazans, specifically, were governed by Hamas, which had a lot more say in how the average Gazan was reacted than ISrael did.
Yes, I do think it had an effect, but less of one than their governing body did, hence my saying so.
Either way, unless you think the blockade itself is "Israel treating Gazans as sub-human", then my point still stands.
That's why Israel has systematically taken out every hospital in Gaza: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdd25d9vp2qo
Has blocked and sabotaged aid at every turn, including bombing UN food trucks: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/01/1158746
And when allied countries got too uneasy about them just blocking all aid trucks at the border, they set up their own aid organization to trickle out nominal amounts of food while they take pot shots at people desperate enough to show up: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74ne108e4vo
They didn't just make this up as they go, presumably the plans have been sitting around for a long time waiting for a suitable moment.
1. You definitely can kill 2.1 million people by bombing them. It's actually way easier than doing it with a gun. 2. If you decide to do it with a gun, and you end up killing tens when tens of thousands are gathering for food, you're aiming terribly. 3. There is enough proof of Hamas using hospital facilities as headquarters. 4. Instead of getting food into Gaza (paid partly by Israel) only to get people to gather and then shoot tens of them every day, Israel could have just not let food in.
In other words, none of this makes sense. There's a war. Yes, Israel is committing terrible crimes. No, it's not because they aim to kill everyone, it's because they really stopped caring about killing civilians. It's horrific and is illegal.
There is actually one party in this conflict that has deliberately said it's aiming to kill civilians, and that's Hamas. I have no idea about your personal opinion, but I suspect that many of the people who are shouting "genocide!" would have been very quiet if the Jews were the ones being slaughtered, and I have absolutely no doubt that if only Hamas had the power, it would have committed way more serious crimes than the IDF ever committed.
That is definitely not true.
I'm not Arab, I'm not Muslim. I've never met a Jewish person. I've no reason to have any prejudice against people of Jewish heritage or ethnicity. But it's still a genocide by any definitions of the word. A lot of Jewish people even agree with this. And the reason that you and most Israeli people seem to struggle to grasp it is because they've been drinking on this exact extremist rhetoric that the "other" side only wants to see them slaughtered. By the same measure, you're saying Hamas can justify it's actions since there will always be ultra-Zionist factions of Israeli societies that wants to see Palestinians slaughtered. I implore you to wake up to what is being done in the name of your people.
There is war in Gaza in the simple sense that rockets from Gaza still shoot into Israel, that Israeli hostages are still being held, and that Hamas itself (the elected goverenement) says it would attack again. It's a very unbalanced conflict, and in it terrible crimes are committed that you can call genocidal. But Jews in the ghettos weren't bombing Berlin - not during WW2 and not after it.
Jews in the Ghetto didn't get the chance to shoot rockets at Berlin but had they been able to fight back, I'd have given them the same understanding that I currently extends to Palestinians that grew up in the concentration camp that is Gaza. Hamas is the direct results of Israeli policies of the past decades. Even if the IDF manages to somehow invent some purity test for Gazans that it can use to confirm there are no longer any Hamas members left and it finally declares it's operations concluded, you'll have people shooting rockets at Israel if they keep their policies with the Gaza strip and the West Bank. But long term solutions come later, right now, Israelis need to wake up and say no to what is unfolding in the name of their security.
Your comment about Jews in Ghetto is wrong at every possible level. Jews were killed in the Holocaust _without_ a conflict, _without_ attempting to kill Germans, _without_ fighting with anyone over the land and _without_ having any aspirations to control the other. That is an example of a situation where there is no war, and no, it has nothing to do with the situation between Israelis and Palestinians.
As an Arab who knows Gazans and Palestinians, I can tell you that if you actually do have friends in Gaza, you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself for belittling their suffering.
Not only I do not belittler their suffering, I personally helped some of them out. I also ran an organization that provided thousands of Gazan with electricity, and I was arrested by the Israeli police when encouraging Palestinians in Israel to vote. At the same time I have family members who were killed (and kidnapped) on the first day of this war. Life isn't black and white.
I completely agree that life isn’t always black and white. But right now it is, just like it was in countless other situations in the past. You can think it’s “complicated” all you like, but the evidence is overwhelmingly against such a framing, which is where the conditioning comes into the picture.
It is great that you volunteered in Gaza, but it’s also tragic that you fail to see what is happening even after directly interacting with Gazans.
Some day in the future, when free Palestinians can build museums and monuments and make movies to mourn those lost in this genocide, everyone will always have been against this.
Why? Because Netanyahu and a good chunk of the Israeli population want the Palestinians to cease to exist and its territory to be part of Israel. An opponent that wants to achieve its goals through political action and appeals to the international community meant that there was a risk of Israel being dragged into a two-state commitment. A terrorist group attacking civilians gives those hardliners a perpetual excuse to go to war.
In short: the answer is yes, that appears to be precisely the point: to prevent any possibility of peaceful reconciliation and drive the Palestinians to eventual expulsion or eradication.
So sure, workers at Haarez probably don't, but when the extermination feeling is widespread enough that 47% feel they can openly agree to a question proscribing the killing women and children, then insisting on the insistence on precision comes across mostly as an attempt at distraction.
[1] https://theconversation.com/in-israel-calls-for-genocide-hav...
Fortunately many Israelis are against the ongoing genocide, but powerless to stop it.
All this to say you're right, but the government is indocrinating more and more people for these views.
It is indeed sickening. They straight out tell you how they want all Palestinian children to die.
There multiple EU signatory countries of the Rome Statute (pledging to cooperate with ICC) that have welcomed these war criminals... who have warrants out by the ICC.
And the same war criminals are invited to give a speech at the U.S Congress to near unanimous applause. It really makes you wonder if we're the "good guys".
-- edit -- If you're curious how much your congressperson receives from AIPAC (Israeli lobby) this website is a great resource: https://www.trackaipac.com/congress
With 'rules based world order', there is one rule for the West and one rule for everyone else. Hence it is okay to have a referendum in Kosovo for Kosovo to split away from Serbia, but not okay for a region of the Ukraine to have a referendum, to break away from Ukraine. So Crimea, where everyone speaks Russian and identifies as Russian, with no interest in the Ukraine or the EU, can't get the treatment that was afforded Kosovo. This is because 'rules based world order', and how the global majority sees it.
Your comment would be fine without that bit.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...
Neanderthals aren’t going to become oppressors.
Just think of any powerful nation (or group of people, or whatever), and try to think of somebody they have oppressed, or are still oppressing. It's typically not hard to come up with examples.
Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire, then became conquerors of the world.
Russians were oppressed by the Mongols, then became conquerors of Eurasia.
Communists were oppressed by Tsarists, then became ruthless oppressors themselves.
Protestants were oppressed in Europe, so they set sail to America and became oppressors of the natives.
The better explanation is simple and banal - power concentration makes people abuse it.
My list of examples is very similar to this one and the ven diagram here is "was oppressed became oppressor"... in most cases it appears that only if the oppressed are destroyed or I would argue in the case of America- controlled at the margins... then they don't circle back around to abuse their newly acquired power.
Everyone was oppressed by Tsarists. Commies are ruthless oppressors by default.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: yikes—quite apart from the current topic, you've been breaking the site guidelines a lot with flamewar posts and personal attacks. We ban accounts that post like this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604429 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604394 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596070 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596065 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43593235 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43593219 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322414 (March 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43251495 (March 2025)
I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also posted good things, but if you want to keep participating in this community, it would be good to review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on.
Edit: I did end up banning you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403629. We simply can't have people posting like that to HN.
It's not the case that "for each post that doesn't break the guidelines, you're allowed one that does", and that's not what I was doing. When I said HN moderation has worked the same way for over a decade, I didn't mean that the description you gave was accurate—it isn't. (Nor, I assume, did you mean it to be, since you were being sarcastic.)
I meant that what I was doing in the GP comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403362) was standard practice. As you can see from https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que..., it goes back a long time.
We try to persuade users to follow the site guidelines, and tend to give warnings and make requests before banning accounts, especially if they are active participants who have been around for a while. We don't rush to banning such users; we try to explain the intended use of the site and convince them to honor it. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.
I am absolutely no one, but I'd like to highlight that this kind of policy is (indirectly) why I don't use HN. Tolerating intolerance to the extent you do (which isn't 100% but still a lot) allows people like the one you responded to originally to drive hackers like me, my loved ones, my colleagues and my students away, while attracting other hateful people, as they see that they are tolerated here. In a possibly too extreme comparison, this the same dynamic as the "nazi bar problem" (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nazi_bar). I hope you know what kind of community these policies has made of HN.
It's easy to invoke strong pejoratives like "hateful" when describing people who have opposing viewpoints and passions to one's own—in fact, it's hard not to. But it leads to a rapid escalation. A bad comment turns into a "hateful view", "hateful view" turns into "a hateful person", and soon that leaps to "how can you tolerate hateful people on your site". (The next logical step would be to suspect the mods of being "hateful people" themselves.) This escalation is, in my view, bad for community. It leads to uniformity within one's own group and rage and enmity towards difference.
Having banned countless accounts for breaking the site guidelines over the years, I can't accept that "hateful people" are tolerated here for very long. When accounts are posting abusively, we may give them more warnings than you (or a lot of other users) would prefer, but we ban them in the end. A good example is this very subthread. I ended up banning that account (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403629). (Not, I should probably add, because of this or any other conversation about moderation, but just out of standard practice.)
p.s. You are not no one! I appreciate your comments and I wish I could write a better reply—I know a better one is possible, that expresses more precisely how I think about this. Alas it would take me hours, so I'm making do with one I don't much care for.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 is one time that I got closer to it, and maybe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31812293. I still like the phrase "supported communication across differences". Unsupported communication across differences just leads to Hobbesian flamewar.
But anyway, this is only one case and we should not base our thinking just on it. The problem is the policy (or the way it's systematically enforced) and its broader results. I don't know the details of how the moderation works here nor have I any statistics. I only know that I saw too much racism and hate towards whole groups of people because of their identity here in the past, and that when I occasionally stumble across a HN link, I usually can still see that hate being a lot more represented than in other spaces I frequent, and that the kind of policy you described to me has never worked at building diverse and interesting communities.
Every country has a percentage of right wing psychopaths. Unfortunately, they seem to be running the government in Israel.
Israel's intended end game seem to be to make Gaza completely uninhabitable, so that the Palestinians are forced to leave, then Israel can grab the land. A bit like they are doing in the West Bank, but on turbo mode. However, the Palestinians don't want to leave their land (why should they?) and no other state wants to take them. So we are left with enormous human misery, with no end in sight.
Most baffling of all, many Western states are not just turning a blind eye, but actively supporting Israel. Shame on them.
Both. And also trolls, and these days GenAI.
Some say "Never again means now", with the flag of Israel, and no sense of irony or hypocrisy. I wonder if any say the same words with the flag of Palestine? Hamas is still also genocidal, with their leaders giving similar comments about all Jews as the current Israel coalition members give about Palestinians.
When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers. The IDF and Hamas are the elephants, and there are many innocent civilians (metaphorically grass) suffering because of it. The supremely dominant power of the IDF means the suffering grass is overwhelmingly on one side of a border that Israel doesn't recognise, but there are innocents everywhere.
I don't have any answers. I have learned to recognise this kind of mindset, but I cannot find words to act as levers to change those minds.
Whatever the historical record that brought us here, the fact is, Israel's standing army (not some personal goons of some dictator, the standing army of a moden democratic nation), appear to be practically all in on executing a systemic genocide. And I don't think there's anyway you can justify or underplay that.
Maybe the answer you're looking for is that good people anywhere shouldn't let anyone sell them a holocaust no matter the deal.
I do not divide either my criticism or sympathy by nationality, I divide it by victimising and victimhood — and even then with the humility to know that I cannot see through the fog of all the propaganda I'm being shown.
No, I don't blame all Jews at all and I've seen a lot of Jewish people actively work to stop the genocide. But I definitely blame this narrative of Hamas is what's been used to sell to genocide to what are otherwise normal and compassionate people. I believe the only people who can stop this are the Israeli citizens saying no and the time was way too long ago.
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When Netanyahu talked about Palestinians in Gaza being Amalek, about the necessity to destroy Amalek, he meant exactly that. And when the defense minister Gallant said: They are human animals, and then he said „no food, no water, no electricity“, he punished 2.3 mill people, half of them children. That’s why both have arrest warrants from ICJ.
Over 90% of Israeli population want more death and destruction in Gaza. Netanyahu and Gallant are no single incidents. The whole Israeli society knows what their soldiers are doing in Palestine. And they are ok with it.
This article and my comment will be flagged until dead. Just like anyone speaking about Israeli Apartheid, genocide, oppression in Palestine. But things are changing. Hasbara troll farms can’t keep up.
Anyone who knows they are raising an assault rifle to a crowd of civilians and pulls the trigger is a mass murderer and a psychopath
I am not optimistic at all and I am very afraid for Gazans.
Which actually holds up quite well for everybody who loves to bring up that quote: realism aka "we shouldn't face the consequences of our actions" is the obvious rallying cry for people facing the consequences of their actions.
If neither side can agree on peace, if neither side has objectives which the other will accept, if neither side is willing to compromise; What other outcome is possible in terms of realpolitik?
It is upsetting to observe. We all want better for humanity.
Of course it is understandable to be outraged by the violence and atrocities. The human suffering is real, but arguments focusing on these points can miss the larger picture. The underlying incentives dictate outcomes. Atrocities are often marketed as rationalizations for further violence.
We want to prescribe an outcome without atrocities. Yet discussions fall into recrimination before they can describe the conflict coherently.
And after the Israeli opposition leader exposed the whole charade and Netanyahu defended it saying “On the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas. What’s wrong with that? It only saves the lives of Israeli solders, and publicising this only benefits Hamas.”
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/06/netanyahu-defe...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Abu_Shabab
[3] - https://archive.is/20250606144357/https://www.ynetnews.com/a...
"The basis for Lieberman’s allegation of ties to IS was unclear."
It is easy to throw dirt and hope something sticks, but the main thing speaking against his group seems Netanjahu's support in my opinion. But otherwise I don't see the scandal so much here. Especially not compared to the scandal of intentionally targeting civilian population and indiscriminate killing of starving people like the article states.
Edit: But I just read
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerem_Shalom_aid_convoy_loot...
And well, that is indeed better to show who we are dealing with, ruthless criminals who loot and shoot a UN aid convoy for profit.
Netanyahu prefers Hamas, he was propping them up prior to the current battles, according to the New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...
Also, if, as in the recent New York City mayoral debate, US politicians are supposed to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which it recognizes itself as, then I don't see the big deal over Palestine as an Islamic state. I myself would prefer to see a secular PFLP state, but the Zionist entity, US, Canada etc. fight against the PFLP, proscribe them as "terrorists" etc.
Those words indicate something different, than allowing quatari money to reach the civilian part of Hamas government as part of a temporary peace deal. Because that sounds actually reasonable to me.
Now there is indeed more, like this:
"Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who is now Mr. Netanyahu’s finance minister, put it bluntly in 2015, the year he was elected to Parliament.
“The Palestinian Authority is a burden,” he said. “Hamas is an asset.”"
But those words came without context (just a youtube video, that I won't watch right now).
A simple dealer vs an armed wing of a religious theocracy who think people like me are the devil incarnate, I'd pick the dealer.
An organised armed drug network that necessarily has to be at least comparable strength to an existing network of religious theocrats who are obviously getting external support owing to the ability to continue fighting despite the evidence of systematic destruction of their civil environment that satellite imagery shows has been in aggregate comparable in scope and depth to a nuke going off…
I don't want either of them anywhere near anyone I care about. Even if the latter wasn't associated with a different group of religious zealots.
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Even before the current siege/semi-siege, the standard response to calls from aid orgs had been essentially "Look, it's not us. We're letting in aid, but it's not our fault if Palestinian armed gangs themselves are looting it after we let it in. Palestinians are just too stupid to organize their own survival."
Of course that response was already ridiculous back then: The 1000s of aid trucks stuck at the Egypt-Gazan border are definitely not kept there by Hamas or armed gangs. Even the looting attacks themselves were suspicions: Aid orgs kept reporting they were happening in areas under full control of the IDF - and IDF was forbidding using any other route[1]:
> Israel is doing the opposite of ensuring aid can be delivered to Palestinians in need. For example, a U.N. memo recently obtained by the Washington Post concluded that the armed gangs looting aid convoys could be “benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence” and “protection” from Israel’s military, and that a gang leader had a military-like compound in an area “restricted, controlled and patrolled” by the Israeli military.
The gangs operate in areas under Israeli control, often within eyeshot of Israeli forces. When convoys are looted, Israeli forces watch and do nothing, even when aid workers request assistance. Israeli forces refer to one area about a kilometer from its Kerem Shalom border checkpoint as “the looting zone.” The IDF-designated looting zone might be the only place in Gaza that Israeli forces won’t shoot an armed Palestinian.
But there was still at least some benefit of the doubt that the armed gangs were just some ordinary criminals exploiting the situation. Claims that the gangs themselves were operating under Israeli orders were conspiracy theories.
Netanyahu now confirmed those theories as reality.
[1] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/gaza-aid/
Unless, of course, delivering aid is not actually your intent.
Comments like this coming from an audience currently not being genocided is going to haunt our history forever.
Because it kind of reads like an attack towards me for not caring about genocide. If you are curious about my point of view, it is that both Hamas and Israeli leadership belongs in prison and the US and EU should stop supporting them immediately. But that doesn't mean I support anyone who wants to erease Israel. Do you support Hamas?
> I guess the Israeli government's original plan to arm and support drug gangs and literally ISIS (euphemistically called 'clans') as "aid security" wasn't working out? Especially after it was revealed said "security" was stealing and reselling the food aid under the protection of IDF while the Israeli govt. and media blamed the looting on Hamas.
To which he responded his opinions about drug and faith dealers.
But you gave a response, but avoided the question. Together with your comment history and wording I do conclude now that you do.
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This is like the equivalent of "Tbh, I do prefer ISIS over Saddam Hussein". Or "I do prefer cancer over heart disease".
A subset of them indeed engages with dark methods like mixing highly addictive drugs into harmless ones and turf war, but the majority just sells things.
Before weed was legal in germany I engaged with quite some of them and they were mostly decent people all in all. Not the greatest and often messed up themself a bit, but otherwise no danger to me or anyone else. My choice if I damaged myself with their products.
A islamist on the other hand is buisy by definition with spreading the rule of Islam over everyone, everywhere.
Dangerous to any non muslim.
Both Hamas and the clans are cancers to society, and it's abhorrent that the IDF is dealing with them to distribute aid, instead of being directly involved (which they can easily commit to).
Now as my edit above hopefully made clear, apparently they ain't just "drug dealers", but ruthless criminals who loot and shoot a UN aid convoy for profit.
And abhorrent are indeed many things about the whole situation.
If you take those words "kind" and "curious" in a large sense—larger than usual—I think there's enough room there to talk about even this topic without breaking the guidelines.
How to do this? That is something we have to work out together. You're certainly right that it's difficult.
From a moderation point of view, I can tell you that just avoiding garden-variety flamewar and internet tropes already gets us a lot of the way there. You'd be surprised at how many users who think they're taking a grand moral stand against conventional politeness are simply repeating those. Conventional impoliteness isn't any answer either.
I've posted about this quite a bit, since it inevitably comes up every time this topic appears on HN's front page. Here's another part of the current thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403458.
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
People with strong passions on a topic always feel like the moderators are against them. (As you see, I'm not immune to "always" perceptions either!)
I wish we could do something about that—I don't enjoy having so many people, from all sides of every divisive topic, feeling like we're against them when we're not. However, after years of observing this and thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it's inevitable. The cognitive bias underlying it is just ironclad. We all share this bias, which is why your complaint and the complaint of someone on the opposite side are basically the same.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
It's true that HN has hosted several major threads about Israel/Gaza, but it's also true that many (perhaps a hundred times as many) submissions on the topic have ended up flagged and we haven't turned off the flags. I don't see an "always" in there.
As for Saturdays—that factor is so far from affecting how we moderate HN that I had to puzzle for a bit over what you might mean. Nor does this discussion strike me as one-sided. People wouldn't be disagreeing with each other if it were.
"submissions on the topic have ended up flagged and we haven't turned off the flags." only because they were flagged before getting traction.
Saturdays - Observing Jewish people don't check HN on a Saturday, and they are one of the major side of the story here, unsurprisingly.
Online, pretty much any time Israel is discussed, the majority of commenters (or articles) are anti-Israel. Regardless of why you think that is, it's just a fact. You can't blame dang for that.
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In this sense, hackernews gives me hope that online culture is not lost yet.
I have no doubt whatsoever that dang is the biggest reason that HN comment sections are so high quality compared to the rest of the web.
Also note that dang is already pretty active here banning people.
It is a topic where deep emotions come up and where fanatism is widespread. Also among educated people. Also not sure if you have not noticed before, but HN is part of a profit orientated venture capitalist company. Still, I also do enjoy this Oasis here. But I don't see how it can scale in any way you seem to imagine.
I don't have any delusions about ycombinator seeing some of the things it has supported recently, but in this laughably dumbed down world you take what you can get.
As for new communities I believe in being selective and restrictive- based on location, education, or interest and think it's the only way we can get smart communities again. Think how the tech barrier and slow adoption in the 90s/2000s resulted in a smart bubble online, and how covid was the death knell for distinct non homogenous smart online spaces because it brought everyone further online. It's discriminatory but look what we've become.
These types of topics pull themselves apart VERY fast, as the homogenity of discussion norms / definitions, shared by users decreases.
But I'm in doubt such orders were given. I assume (or hope, but certainly do not know), they were ordered to not allow any mob to come close to them (this is obviously required). We've been there and it should be possible to attain without killing anyone.
Regardless, it's time to bring all the hostages back home, and stop the war.