‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

Israel‘s intention was always clear to those of us that listened to what Israeli politicians and generals were saying at the time, and also to the Palestinian victims of those words and actions. But regrettably few listened to those words and actions and many of the world leaders allowed this to escalate into where we are today rather than intervening at any time, as they are bound to do by the genocide convention.

I am glad that you have changed your mind, and now see the horrors and the crimes for what they are. Hopefully we will both see those responsible brought to justice in a court of law for their horrendous crimes.

The people who didn't realize it had many chances to do so over the past 2 years. First, the ICJ motion by South Africa: why would they have gone through the effort to even bring a case to the ICJ if nothing was amiss? Second, the ICC warrants.

In the US specifically, the biggest chance/wake up call of note was the coordinated wave of college protests. I mean, if you had sat down and seriously considered why so many colleges decided to protest across the nation, and expended just a tiny bit of effort to read past US gov statements and Western media pundits, you would have quickly realized that something was truly wrong.

If after all of this you still didn't see what was happening, then you can be proud to know that you'd likely have reacted to any other genocide the exact same way. At best, know that the skin color or "otherness" of the victim most likely contributes to your lack of empathy - so it would be good to take this as an opportunity to do some self-reflection :)

During the horrors of European colonization, governments had vested interest in treating indigenous peoples in their colonies as sub-human, and they sponsored whichever scholar to portray them as such. So I think it is very natural that we today view Europeans of the past as extremely racist bunch (their governments certainly were). But do wonder how many regular people were influenced by the racist frenzy of their governments. My guess is probably about as many as in Europe today.

And I can provide numerous examples: Portugal's colonial holdings (Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique) were unwound after the carnation revolution because the overseas wars were consuming 50% of the national budget while the Estado Novo at home was a corrupt, violent, authoritarian, corporatist state.

The Brits could not square a global empire while their countrymen were rationing food, etc. at home. That had to go as well.

Despite all the Cold War propaganda spread since the fall of the USSR, in 1991, the Soviet Union was still a first-rate military power, with 35k to 40k nuclear warheads and >150 divisions, totaling 3.4M troops. It could easily suppress any of those pro-democracy protests with trivial ease, and all the CIA's burrowing in the Sovbloc would come to nought.

But there was no longer anything worth fighting for. Even people within the Party infrastructure had come to they'd been living for a lie, lying for a lie, killing for a lie-all that for a lie!

The Qing dynasty faced massive internal revolts (Taiping, Boxer), external invasions (Opium Wars), and technological stagnation. The empire resisted modernization too long, then tried too little, too late.

Overwhelmed by foreign powers and internal revolution (1911), it died because it could no longer defend the illusion of legitimacy.

In France's Ancien Regime, nobles were exempt from taxes while peasants starved; France had a bloated, corrupt court and massive debt (partly from helping America fight the British!), yet refused reforms.

Nazi Germany claimed to be defending “Western civilization” while practicing industrial genocide and totalitarian control over - wait for it - Europeans!

One contradiction doesn't bring down a political system, but it cascades, because a hypocritical system dives deeper into hypocrisy until it eventually collapses.

Edit: And this comment is flagged to hell, as well, haha. I guess saying that the systematic murder of civilians is bad is now a controversial opinion, lmao.

Turns out most law in western democracies was largely for show

To state why I believe Israel is occupying Gaza, I'll point out that Israel’s continued status as an occupying power has been affirmed repeatedly by the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and human rights groups. Do you believe all of these entities are incorrect?

I strongly suspect that this "divisive" nature of the topic is precisely the illusion being created. That's exactly what I am challenging here.

In my non-online life I've known many vaccine skeptics, climate skeptics, crypto enthusiasts, extreme right/left-wingers, people with complex view of trans issues, divisions on BLM topics, gun fanatics, gun abolitionists etc, etc.

But the opinion around what's happening in Gaza right now doesn't fit into this category. Regardless of political opinion, outside of Zionists, I have not met anyone who will not, in private of course (for the reasons mentioned previously), agree that what's happening in Gaza is genocide and is not in the interests of the United States. The strength of the opinion can vary, but the general direction of opinion is consistent.

Another reason I added "clearly" is because, compared to say climate change posts that are often filled with climate denial comments, there are typically very few commenters engaging in any controversial discussions. Nearly all the top level comments are in agreement, the majority of the replies are as well. Compared to genuinely controversial topics which often do quickly devolve into impossible arguments.

There's also the broader issue that silence is not always a neutral position. When one side benefits much, much more from silence than the other, you can't simply shrug your shoulders and say "well it's controversial so let's not talk about it". In this case, silencing conversations about the genocide in Gaza is very beneficial to the state perpetuating this genocide and likewise very harmful to the people suffering from it.

The strategy is simple: make the topic appear to be more divisive than it is, which makes it easy to silence as "divisive and emotional", which is essentially the most desirable outcome.

Could it actually be right?

It's hard for me to feel like these political flagfests make the rest of the site any better, while the rest of the site is what I find value in. If I want to witness mobs possessing massive standard deviations in knowledge and experience with the subject matter flamewarring each other, there are already a whole lot of places on the Internet I can go for that. It's the tech-and-genuine-curiosity-not-yelling part of HN that's the value prop for me here, and FWIW, for a sample size of one, threads like this do little to improve on that.

Of course I can hide this story and move on. But it's hard for me to believe that all the stress hormones flowing in the people reading and participating don't have some kind of negative knock-on effects on other, more peaceful threads.

On university campuses, examples include Hasbara Fellowships (training students to advocate for Israel), pro-Israel student clubs (organizing events and campaigns), social media trainings, resource support from Jewish organizations, and counter-actions against pro-Palestinian movements.

Online, Israeli ministries and affiliated organizations operate official social media teams, develop advocacy platforms and tools (like the Act.IL app), and use influencer campaigns, bots, and coordinated digital actions to shape public opinion. After October 7, 2023, civilian Hasbara initiatives on social media expanded rapidly, ranging from individual efforts to coordinated campaigns with governmental support.

So how can you say that this is a controversial topic and the dovnvotes are organic?

How is it controversial when 2mil. peope are being starved? When thousands of children have been killed by a country whose prime minister is a wanted war criminal?

Edit: Corrected "not organic" => organic

It’s disgusting, and it works to prevent people from saying anything publicly.

Modern racial antisemitism and political Zionism were two modern political projects that grew from the same 19th century soil of nationalism and race theory. They did not agree with each other, but they converged, from opposite directions, on the same fundamental conclusion: that the Jewish people constituted a distinct, unassimilable national and racial body that could not coexist as equals within a European nation-state. Political Zionism did not adopt the idea of Jewish separateness from antisemites. It inherited this idea directly from traditional Judaism itself. The entire structure of Halakha (Jewish Law), with its dietary codes, Shabbat observance, and, most crucially, its powerful prohibition on intermarriage, was a system designed to maintain the Jewish people as a distinct, separate, and unassimilated nation in exile. This was the internal, self-defined jewish reality for millennia. Modern racial antisemitism took this existing reality of Jewish separatism and reframed it as a hostile, biological threat to the European nation-state.

The secular European Zionists looked at this situation and synthesized two ideas. Zionists accepted the traditional Jewish premise ("we are a separate people") and accepted the antisemite's practical diagnosis ("they will never accept us as equals"). They rejected both solutions, the religious passivity of waiting for a Messiah and the "liberal delusion"(as Zionists described it) of assimilation. Instead, they chose to take the existing identity of Jewish separateness and reforge it using the modern tools of European nationalism and colonialism. That's also why Zionists published scathing articles about assimilated jews whom they perceived as deluded, cowardly, and "self-hating" for trying to be part of a European society.

The leadership and foot soldiers of the early Zionist project in Palestine (1900s), were not suffering from the trauma of the Holocaust (it was decades before) and did not suffer from any meaningful antisemitism, which they also documented themselves ("the Palestinians are child-like and easy to befriend"). Zionist actions and attitudes were thus the direct, confident expression of 19th Century European settler colonialism, as evident in the writings of Herzl, Jabotinsky and co. Zionism was born in the same intellectual environment as the "Scramble for Africa" and the "White Man's Burden."

Their argument was not: "We are traumatized victims who need a safe space.", because if that had been the case they wouldn't have rejected the ugandan land they were offered - it was: "You Europeans have successfully conquered and colonized vast territories inhabited by inferior natives. We, as a superior European people currently without a state, claim the right to do the same thing as you". It was the logical, confident, and systematic execution of a European colonial project by a group that chose to see itself as a superior people with the right to displace and subjugate an indigenous population it viewed as inferior (i.e. the 'kushim' of Palestine). Those secular European atheist jews who, despite rejecting religion as superstitious and irrational, still saw value in it as essential myth-making tool to justify the dispossession of natives and legitimize their colonial zionist project by weaponizing those myths ("our God [which they as atheists didn't even believe in] promised this land to us") .

However, every colonial invader, occupier, genocidaire and war criminal of the last few hundred years has done their best to flip the blame.

Some of them have been really, really good at it, and each learns from the previous efforts.

There's no genocide taking place from the Palestinian side against Israel.

That alone refutes everything you're saying and invalidates your entire perspective.

First, genocide isn’t defined by whether all members of an ethnic group are being killed everywhere they live—it’s about intent and actions toward any part of the group “as such.” The fact that Palestinians exist elsewhere doesn’t negate what’s happening in Gaza. The UN and multiple human rights organizations have documented mass civilian casualties, deliberate targeting of infrastructure, starvation as a weapon, and systematic displacement. That pattern aligns far more with collective punishment than a surgical military operation against Hamas.

Second, invoking WW2 to justify killing civilians today is morally bankrupt. The world learned from WW2—that’s why the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law exist: to prevent states from repeating those same atrocities. “We did it in WW2” is not a defense—it’s an indictment.

Third, claiming Hamas could “end it all by surrendering” is naive at best, dishonest at worst. Hamas doesn’t control every decision civilians make—babies didn’t vote for October 7. Collective punishment violates international law, period. And 60% of Gazans allegedly supporting October 7? Even if that number were accurate (which is debatable given wartime polling), collective punishment is still illegal and immoral. Civilian rights don’t evaporate because of public opinion.

Lastly, the idea that a population “actively trying to kill you” justifies cutting off food, water, and medicine reveals a complete erosion of moral clarity. If that logic held, any state could commit war crimes and simply blame the victims for “supporting the wrong group.”

You can condemn Hamas and demand restraint from Israel. These are not mutually exclusive positions—they’re what civilized societies are supposed to uphold

Or when they bombed all the hospitals [0], or targeted pediatricians and oncologists, and their families [1] for assassination.

Or leaving preemie babies to rot and be eaten by wild dogs at Al Nasr [2].

Or when they dropped over 6 Hiroshimas worth of explosives [3] onto an area roughly equal to a 12 x 12 mile square, populated with over a million children - in Biden's term alone.

There's a lot more. Suffice to say that anyone paying attention has known that the US, Israel, Germany, England and more have been propping up a genocide for quite some time now.

0 - https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countrie...

1 - https://abcnews.go.com/International/gaza-pediatrician-mothe...

2 - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/abandoned-babies-found-de...

3 - https://www.bradford.ac.uk/news/archive/2025/gaza-bombing-eq...

The US is a direct enabler, not a passive observer.

Yes, with the huge caveat that the leading architects of the conflation are pro-Israeli activists. Using Judaism as a human-shield.

That the term anti-Semitism is constantly used to deflect or tar those objecting to Israels mass killing of civilians really is equally offensive I would suggest.

What people here don't understand is that there is a war going on. In wars people get killed. The war and the condition of the Palestinian population is 100% the responsibility of their government, Hamas, that continues fighting and holding Israeli hostages.

Israel can not and will not let Hamas keep going. It is, as is appropriate, putting its citizen's safety as a first priority.

I have plenty of criticism of various specific actions of the Israeli government and military. But the big picture is still what it is. And in this big picture no other country, including the one you live in, would respond differently when/where it comes to securing the lives of its citizens. Let Hamas surrender, return the hostages, and then we can discuss the path forward. They are making the choices.