hckrnws

https://archive.is/8RsGz

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.

This is large-scale, continued, intentional CIVCAS.

I'll provide context too - I'm a Jewish Israeli. I'd probably be considered left (or even far-left) by Israeli standards, but I'm in the "pro-Israeli" camp as conventionally understood online.

This Haaretz article is very troubling. To the extent it's accurate, there's not much question that it reflects war crimes.

A few thoughts:

1. The article itself says there is an ongoing investigation into some of these accusations. I hope that, to whatever extent this is happening, it's not widespread, and anyone committing war crimes is very visibly and publicly tried in court.

2. There is clearly something broken with the GHF and the new aid delivery - dozens dead every day for weeks. We really need some answers on what's going on.

3. From Haaretz today:

> The U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on Saturday urged Israel to investigate reports that soldiers opened fire towards unarmed Palestinians near aid distribution sites, detailed in a Haaretz expose, calling the allegations "too grave to ignore," while denying that any such incidents occurred within its facilities.

> GHF Interim Director John Acree stated, "There have been no incidents or fatalities at or in the immediate vicinity of any of our distribution sites."

I don't like getting involved in political threads but on this I have to.

All information presented is mostly unverified testimony printed verbatim by the press from untrustworthy sources on both sides. It's difficult to tell what is fact and what is not. A lot of early reports in this war turned out to be false information and the rush to immediate news notification rather than quality journalism means that the headline changes context very quickly from the first cut to what people read and remember. (I wrote an extensive suite of software to track this)

Wait and see. Do not judge too early. Take nothing as verbatim from anyone without evidence.

Don't be unknowing partisans of an information war. Veracity takes time.

The information is unverified because Israel does not allow journalists into Gaza.

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Israel has allowed journalists into Gaza many times during the war. They need to accompany the IDF and the IDF has the right to censor information that can endanger their soldiers but does not control the narrative or the fact reporting.

Hamas has a history of threatening and intimidating journalists in Gaza.

https://cpj.org/2025/05/gaza-journalists-speak-out-about-ham...

Gaza is also an active war zone. It is dubious that western media could just walk into Gaza and report freely even if the IDF allowed that. In theory media could have crossed into Gaza from Egypt before Israel occupied the Philadelphi corridor and the border crossing but none did. So Egypt (and/or the Gazan authorities) e.g. also did not allow journalists into Gaza.

So this statement is sort of true but there's more to be considered here.

IDF has been actively killing journalists too. So many that this is deadliest war for journalist to report on in recorded history.

This is not a war. War is Ukraine vs Russia.

So if a journalist decides to wander away from the potemkin village they get denied access. The journalists going on these ridealongs are not doing journalism. This tactic, which america pioneered in response to vietnam war coverage, is designed to only allow journalists who will tell the right kind of narrative.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...

Israel is the side with Datalink, in case this chart doesn't make it clear.

Correct. Israel does not allow a free press.

And this is how we know Israel does not believe in democracy and is not a democracy itself, since a free press is a requirement of democracy.

Democracy isn't just having elections. Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Russia has elections, too.

The article we're talking about here is published in Israeli media.

>(I wrote an extensive suite of software to track this)

Interesting. . . do you have a page for the project or anything?

Sorry, but the killing of unarmed civilians seeking aid has been reported half a dozen times by many different outlets. The IDF denials are getting quite absurd. The only one suffering from disinformation is you.

>GHF Interim Director John Acree stated, "There have been no incidents or fatalities at or in the immediate vicinity of any of our distribution sites."

Isn't there a video of dismembered body parts after the mortar shell hit and killed a few dozen?

It sounds like if he is making such a clear statement as this, there should be an investigation, and, if it turns out there were such fatalities, then Acree (and many others) should be tried for covering up war crimes.

The only news in the article is the way civilians are murdered. The Israeli government already kills far more people per day through deliberately induced starvation.

These events are hard to believe, not because of the cruelty, but because they now happen without a shred of deniability.

As another Jewish Israeli I agree this is concerning.

I do want you to consider the context here on Hacker News though. You and me have context, we understand the history, we understand at least something about wars and how they are fought. Most people here do not.

The problem isn't whether firing on civilians with no reason when they come to get food is wrong or right. We all know it's wrong. The soldiers in Gaza know it's wrong. We all know this is a war crime.

Most cases of war crimes during war are not prosecuted at all and not visibly. This is true for US wars in the middle east. It's true for the war the West wages against ISIS. It's true for Ukraine and Russia. It's a sad but unfortunate reality of our world. The current political climate and government in Israel are also not the best for the kind of outcome you are describing.

Iran and Hamas firing missiles and rockets into population centers is a war crime too. So is their embedding and use of civilians. The entire strategy of Israel's opponents in the middle east is to engage in war crimes.

Where do we place Israel on that scale? Is there more attention on Israel vs. other similar world events? Why? Do we see similar public debate and discussion of the morality of those wars in other countries? Again, where is Israel on that scale (not of idealistic fantasy world of justice but in the real world)?

> Where do we place Israel on that scale

That is, I think, an excellent and pertinent question.

For starters may I suggest applying straightforward quantification on a linear scale and observing the results? See the following two wiki articles / subsections:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_co... (see chart preceding the Gaza war (follow anchor))

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war (Gaza war; see top table (and subsequent charts for more detailed breakdown if interested))

Based on this quantitative data where would you place Israel on that aforementioned scale?

Wikipedia on this topic is incredibly biased to one side or the other. It’s not a valid source in this case.

Do you mean the data sources it lists in those two articles are not valid? (I am referring to raw figures and not to actual textual content even). The charts themselves (and the proportions thereof) have been observed everywhere incl. in the mainstream media?

Can you present one counterexample as regards quantities / proportions of figures please? One source. (More of course if you'd like)

(My implicit point is that the proportions are so one-sided (orders of magnitude in difference; yes plural) that you will not find one; but please do find one (with actual quantities) and we can all check veracity of your source)

P.S. edit here is one of the sources the first wiki article lists (of multiple):

Lappin, Yaakov (2009). "IDF releases Cast Lead casualty numbers". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on 26 March 2013. Retrieved 5 January 2024. =>

- https://www.jpost.com/israel/idf-releases-cast-lead-casualty...

- https://web.archive.org/web/20130326192603/http://www.jpost....

As they say, citation needed - political inconvenience isn’t the same as bias.

Nah, it's just #s, and "both sides", as it were, are presented

> Where do we place Israel on that scale? Is there more attention on Israel vs. other similar world events?

I’d flip that around: why shouldn’t we expect Israel to be better than a terrorist group like Hamas or the deeply evil Iranian government? When some Americans complained that they were being held to a higher standard than Al-Qaeda or ISIL, they were rightly criticized for betraying our national aspiration to leading rather than trailing the world, and the same is happening here. Israel has rightly set its standards higher than its neighbors when it comes to democracy and civil rights, but that entails criticism where it fails to live up to that self-selected standard.

My scale isn't ISIL or Al-Qaeda. My scale is the US, the UK, Australia, France etc. The scale of the western world.

> Iran and Hamas firing missiles and rockets into population centers is a war crime too. So is their embedding and use of civilians. The entire strategy of Israel's opponents in the middle east is to engage in war crimes. Where do we place Israel on that scale?

I feel like you're moving the target now. Those are your words above.

But yes, if your scale is that of the western world then harsh criticism of Israel's war crimes should be expected and welcome.

I don't mean to put words in your mouth, maybe you did mean something along those lines and I'm misinterpreting.

It it absolutely fair to criticize Israel the same way that e.g Canada, the US, the UK, France etc. were criticized during their war on the Islamic State.

Let's get some scale here. - Probably more than 160K killed in this war. Maybe half civilians. - Siege and constant bombardment/destruction of cities like Mosul. - Millions of civilians displaced. - Many war crimes by western powers.

This was in response to what? A few westerners beheaded? Terrorist attacks killing a few dozen people?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_against_the_Islamic_State

Can you really say honestly that the amount of criticism Israel is attracting due to its war in Gaza and the circumstances are comparable? This might just be me but I don't recall huge rallies against the war. I don't recall much negative media coverage. I don't recall anyone held accountable for war crimes. I don't recall the ICC being involved.

Yes, the US bombings of random weddings in Afghanistan with Predator drones and air to surface missiles, or bombing hospitals has occasionally drawn some weak protest. Nothing at the scale of the anti-Israeli sentiment.

This isn't what-about-ism. It's not ok to bomb a wedding and it's not ok to fire into a crowd of people trying to get food. But there is no comparison of the sentiment and focus.

You can’t talk about ISIS in isolation from the U.S. invasion of Iraq which gave Zarqawi the ability to grow so much. That had enormous protests, tons of criticism for the massive civilian death toll, and plenty of negative media coverage. By the time the Islamic system was at its height, most of the reaction was muted in the backdrop of Syria’s civil war and the U.S. failure in Iraq leaving few people jumping to commit more troops into unfriendly territory. In contrast, Israel controls Gaza and has no willingness to give up that control and ownership follows that.

Israel did give up Gaza and gave Palestinians full control of it, and a border with Egypt they controlled, in 2005.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_the...

Yes, everything can be litigated to the beginning of time, WW-2, WW-1, the Romans. But the fact still stands that all those "moral" countries didn't hesitate to lay siege, starve people, bomb civilians, for tbh little reason. I don't recall hearing even crickets protest.

Why can't the "Islamic State" have their own country? Sure their culture of beheading and kidnapping Yazidi as slaves is a bit weird but come on.

If you read your own link, note how Israel has a near-total blockade and maintains military control. I have absolutely no love for Hamas but I also recognize that there are a ton of civilians caught between the hammer of Israeli and the anvil of Hamas with zero opportunity for self-determination. They have no control over Hamas - the last election was in 2006 so the majority of the Palestinian population has literally never once been able to vote – and they have even less influence with the Israeli government. That is a tragedy by any measure, and Israel’s wanton killing and collective punishment is a recipe for continued conflict because it ensures that there’s a constant supply of people who have a personal grudge because they know someone innocent whose life has been tragically altered.

> If you read your own link, note how Israel has a near-total blockade and maintains military control

For most of the period since 2005, it has been a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade, not an exclusively Israeli one. That has recently changed now that Israel has militarily occupied the Gaza side of the Egypt-Gaza border

But I do find it interesting how Israel gets exclusively blamed for something which Egypt also had a hand in - and they weren’t doing it because “Israel made us”, they had their own security reasons - they feared Hamas would support Islamist rebels in Egypt.

It does seem to support the claim that Israel gets “picked on”, when a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade gets presented as an exclusively Israeli one

> Israel did give up Gaza and gave Palestinians full control of it

From the very first paragraph in your own link:

> Since then, the United Nations, many other international humanitarian and legal organizations, and most academic commentators have continued to regard the Gaza Strip as being under Israeli occupation ...

"Full control" - except over their border, their imports, their airspace, their electromagnetic frequencies, their coastline, their construction industry, etc etc.

> WW-2, WW-1, the Romans. But the fact still stands that all those "moral" countries didn't hesitate to lay siege, starve people, bomb civilians, for tbh little reason.

... If you're taking the Romans and WW-2 as your baseline for morality, that would start to explain things.

I'm sorry but you're just wrong. The reasons the UN and others still regarded Gaza as under Israeli occupation are either political or technical. In practice when Israel left Gazans got full control. They had a border with Egypt, not to mention tunnels for smuggling goods under that border. They had enough control to build a large army, tunnels, rockets etc. I.e. they had control. They were able to send people to train in Iran.

This anti-Israeli argument that somehow Israel dismantled its settlements and left but yet still "occupied" Gaza is nonsense. It does not stand any minimal scrutiny.

Yes, as a result of Gazans making a choice to engage in war with Israel there was a blockade over that territory. That's about it. Do you expect Israel to allow them to import tanks and jets?

Sorry, to be clear, you’re saying that proof of their freedom is that they could build tunnels to smuggle goods?

And build and train a large military force. And build an extensive tunnel network in the entirety of the Gaza strip. Complete control over every day to day aspect of their lives, government, healthcare, police force. Elections. Extensive weapons manufacturing. Control of the borders with Israel and Gaza.

So yeah. I think we can say they had control.

Israel has been blockading and controlling Gaza since the 90s. To argue that they've had complete control is just historically and factually wrong. Israel has been gradually tightening the screws on the region for decades.

Exactly. It’s fair to criticize Israel for civilian casualties just like all of those countries have been criticized for failing to live up to their stated standards. Countries like Russia or Iran are recognized as being worse but don’t get criticized for being hypocritical because nobody expected them to be good.

Countries like Russia (and probably Iran) still claim to be paragons of human rights in diplomatic settings - just that most are used to ignoring them because of the immense scale and sheer audacity of their hypocrisy.

> The entire strategy of Israel's opponents in the middle east is to engage in war crimes.

I think war crimes are a lot more acceptable/understandable if they’re the only way you even potentially have a chance to get back at your agressors. Nobody blames the resistance during the Nazi occupation for what they did.

Israel is very much not in a position they need to perpetrate war crimes to win the war. They have already won. It’s like a cat playing with the mouse it killed.

This is probably what anti-Soviet groups in WWII thought when they allied with the Nazis and committed atrocities. Most people today don't seem to think they were justified in doing that.

> Nobody blames the resistance during the Nazi occupation for what they did.

Are you really sure about that? Maybe now, but while it was happening, I'm not so sure everyone was on board. Quite the opposite.

The fantasy of using civilians as a means to say this is a war crime is out the window. In order to stop one country from killing your population, most often the revers effect is the same. neither of which are justified. in order to stop the third Reich the majority of Germany was destroyed along with the mass civilian death. Attacking promptly and aggressively carries civilian death in most cases (U.S. attacking japan). This is a cycle that happens in humanity every so often, one can say we tend to take life for granted over-time. Then some big event or catastrophe happens and a group of nations put some international body in place to reduce big wars and conflicts, this usually hinders large scale conflicts for about 50-80 years until that generation forgets and or history is no longer connected to them some way and the same thing repeats again. Remember that The U.S. and some of the European nations carried the actions, in which there-after developed international body's to protect them from a similar attack like nuclear or mass genocide. The one's affected are the ones that repeat the cycle, if they were the victim last time in the cycle then they will be the perpetrator this tine around.

IDF HQ is next to a mall, so Israel is doing the same as Hamas?

And where is the Pentagon?

Attacking the Qirya, Israel's HQ, with some sort of accuracy is a legitimate military target. It's a pretty large target. Soldiers wear uniform. There are no civilians mixed into that camp.

This is very different than lobbing rockets at Beer-Sheba, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ramat Gan. The casualties from Iran's attacks, minus one off-duty soldier, were all civilians and the targets were nowhere near anything military. The intentionally aim at population centers.

You mean how IDF personnel is literally among the Israeli civilian population? One can argue IDF is using Israeli civilians as human shields.

And also, stop the genocide!

Note that this response is from a cynical American sick of Israel always Getting Away With It. I have no problem with Jewish people, but I strongly distrust the state of Israel and believe that it's a force that makes Jewish people less safe as the state screams it is doing what it is doing to protect Jewish people. One of my close college friends is a rabbi, and we've been talking about this since the start of the hostage crisis.

> 1. The article itself says there is an ongoing investigation into some of these accusations. I hope that, to whatever extent this is happening, it's not widespread, and anyone committing war crimes is very visibly and publicly tried in court.

There is zero chance that happens as long as Netanyahu, Likud, Trump, or the Reupublicans are in power. Trump would immediately offer asylum in the US to anybody accused of such a thing.

Even if Israel did investigate, there's nothing more classic than Israel going "we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong".

So if you want accountability, drive that internally with your politicians and get Netanyahu/Likud out of office

> There is zero chance that happens as long as Netanyahu, Likud, Trump, or the Reupublicans are in power. Trump would immediately offer asylum in the US to anybody accused of such a thing.

This is untrue - Israel has investigated war crimes, e.g. famously things like what happened at the Sde Teiman prison.

> So if you want accountability, drive that internally with your politicians and get Netanyahu/Likud out of office

Many have been trying for years. It's not trivial. (About half of Americans dislike {current_president}, whomever that is, but there's very little they can do about it in between elections.)

2) Hamas sabotages aid distribution as its a attack on its revenue streams ? Aid should be drone dropped. Any installation or distro center will be used to cause incidents by hamas fighters hiding in the crowd (or being the crowd)

https://youtu.be/3FO8BmzoPzU?si=L2wcnGolVDERRUzS

why israel is arming gangs in gaza

That would be too impractical. The fact of the matter is that the only effective way is basically how the GHF is doing it already. It's sad that the UN and western media are running with the pro hamas anti GHF narrative. They are giving hamas every incentive to disrupt aid distribution as much as possible. At the very least the shocking fact that UNWRA are against Gazans getting aid when it's not done through them exposes the lie that they care about palestinians.

The GHF undermines Hamas and UNWRA like nothing else has. It terrifies them and they are pulling all the propoganda stops to delegitimise them.

> I'd probably be considered left (or even far-left) by Israeli standards, but I'm in the "pro-Israeli" camp as conventionally understood online.

Would you consider ethno-nationalists of other nations (far) left, based on (speculating) their economic/women's rights/LGBT/other social stances?

(Orthogonally, I can certainly empathize with being pro-something, but not pro-everything-that-something-does. There's certainly nothing intrinsic to a Jewish state that would require firing at unarmed crowds.)

> Would you consider ethno-nationalists of other nations (far) left, based on (speculating) their economic/women's rights/LGBT/other social stances?

If your implication is that I'm an ethno-nationalist, I don't think that characterizes Israel or my thoughts about it, however much "ethnostate" is a favorite slur of people to use against Israel.

I think it might be a slur on, say, reddit, but isn’t most of the world a bunch of ethnostates? Isn’t that kinda one of the things that makes the US stand out, is that it’s explicitly not one? I’m asking this unironically, but I guess I thought e.g. Ireland was pretty homogenous, as is Japan, Ethiopia, Cuba, Peru, and Denmark. (Maybe some of those examples aren’t perfect but you get my point I hope)

> I’m asking this unironically, but I guess I thought e.g. Ireland was pretty homogenous

In the 2022 census, only 76.5% of people in Ireland were ethnically Irish. Over 20% of the population are foreign-born, with the most common countries of foreign birth being Poland, the UK, India, Romania and Lithuania.

So Ireland is far less homogeneous than you perceive it to be.

But the real issue here isn’t how diverse the state’s population is in practice, it is how the state defines itself in its own founding documents (such as the constitution) - as a state for all its citizens, or as a state for a people (ethnos) which is only a subset of the state’s citizens? Israel is (2) but essentially all Western nations nowadays are (1).

Even though the French and German constitutions still express the idea of a “national people” for whom the state exists, they consider anyone who is naturalised as a citizen as joining that people (“ethnos”). By contrast, a non-Jew can immigrate to Israel and become an Israeli citizen-but the state will still not consider them a member of the people for whom the state exists-only conversion to Judaism does that, and only if their conversion is accepted as valid by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate-non-Orthodox conversions will not be accepted, but they sometimes even reject conversions by overseas Orthodox Rabbis whom they don’t consider “rigorous” enough.

So Israel is actually unique in this regard - no Western nation makes becoming “not just a citizen of the state, but a member of the people for whom it exists” contingent on religious conversion. If you want a parallel, you’d have to look at the Islamic world, where non-Muslims are sometimes (not always) permitted citizenship, but are denied membership in the category of “nation for whose sake the state exists”

Israel is not at all unique in this regard. Your (1) is essentially limited to Western Europe ("civic" nation-states) and non-nation-states.

Israel really is unique among Western nations. Can you point to a Western nation where there is a constitutional distinction between "citizens" and "the nation for whom the state exists", such that you can belong to the former without belonging to the later?

And it isn't "essentially limited to Western Europe". The same is true of the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand – naturalisation as a citizen automatically makes you an official member of the "nation for whom the state exists". I believe it is true for most or all Latin American nations as well.

Now, Israel is not unique globally speaking – I think Malaysia's bumiputera status is a rather close parallel. But I doubt that's a comparison most Zionists are keen to draw attention to.

> "civic" nation-states) and non-nation-states

If you are going to argue that "Germany is a civic nation state, the US is a non-nation-state", that is a false and arbitrary distinction. Because American nationalism is an entirely real thing – but in its mainstream contemporary manifestation it is civic nationalist, not ethnic nationalist, just like how mainstream contemporary German nationalism is civic nationalist not ethnic nationalist. Now, historically America was arguably racial nationalist – America was a nation, not necessarily for any particular White ethnicity, but for White people [0] – but it has evolved from racial nationalism into civic nationalism

[0] The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited US citizenship by naturalization to "free white persons". The Naturalization Act of 1870 made people of African descent eligible for citizenship by naturalization, but people who were categorised as neither "white" nor "African" remained ineligible for citizenship by naturalisation until the The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (the McCarran-Walter Act) removed all racial restrictions on naturalisation. So US nationality law arguably was explicitly racially nationalist from 1790 to 1870, and remained so in a somewhat watered down sense from 1870 to 1952.

Yes, I hold the "America is not a nation-state" perspective. I generally like the analysis by Bret Devereaux on this topic (https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-...), but if that's not convincing I don't have anything to argue this point on beyond my own experiences that "American" is a "civic group" but not a "national group". So, we'll just have to agree to disagree there.

It doesn't really take away from my main point. Yes, Western Europe and pretty much all New World countries are "civic" oriented. No Western state, Israel included I am pretty sure, has in their constitution or equivalent that a subset of citizens has legal rights other citizens do not. The closest I can think of to what you asked for is actually the Baltics - not a citizen-subgroup distinction, but where there is a complex situation due to not having granted most non-ethnic residents at the time of independence automatic citizenship. Otherwise, we are primarily talking about symbolism in the legal documents and cultural norms in the population. Japan is pretty clearly an ethnic nation-state. Eastern European states were generally ethnic nation-states at the time of independence, but some are moving closer to civic nation-states now.

> Yes, I hold the "America is not a nation-state" perspective. I generally like the analysis by Bret Devereaux on this topic (https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-...), but if that's not convincing I don't have anything to argue this point on beyond my own experiences that "American" is a "civic group" but not a "national group". So, we'll just have to agree to disagree there.

But that's defining the word "nation" in a sense which deliberately skews it towards "ethnic nationalism" and away from "civic nationalism". If you are going to insist on defining it in that narrow way, then arguably France and Germany aren't "nation states" any more either, even though they used to be.

And while contemporary mainstream American self-definition is predominantly civic, 19th century Americans commonly viewed their nation in racial terms, as a state for the white race – so, if France and Germany have become "non-nation states" by transforming ethnic nationalism into civic nationalism, then in fundamentally the same way, America has become a "non-nation state" by transforming racial nationalism into civic nationalism

> No Western state, Israel included I am pretty sure, has in their constitution or equivalent that a subset of citizens has legal rights other citizens do not

Israel's constitution insists that all citizens are formally equal in the rights of citizenship, but at the same time officially relegates non-Jewish citizens to the symbolic status of "second class citizens" – what Western state has a constitution that does that? And, the reality on the ground is – there are complaints of real discrimination in practice against non-Jewish citizens of Israel, and unless you are going to argue that none of those complaints are valid, the idea that official symbolic discrimination in the constitution has no causal role to play in sustaining practical discrimination on the ground is rather implausible

> The closest I can think of to what you asked for is actually the Baltics - not a citizen-subgroup distinction, but where there is a complex situation due to not having granted most non-ethnic residents at the time of independence automatic citizenship

The Baltics do not have any legally recognised category of "citizens of the state but not members of the nation for whom it exists"; Israel does. The complex issue of long-term residents who lack citizenship you point to is real, but it isn't the same thing as what Israel does

> Japan is pretty clearly an ethnic nation-state

De jure, it isn't. Japanese law and court decisions are very clear: naturalised Japanese citizens are officially just as Japanese as anyone else. Membership in Japan's historical ethnic supermajority (the Yamato people) has no formal constitutional significance

Now, no denying the social reality that there is a lot of informal discrimination against non-Yamato Japanese citizens. But that social reality has no constitutional basis.

So you are comparing a state which officially declares in its constitution that some of its citizens are "not members of the nation for whom it exists", to a state whose constitution and laws never officially say that, even though it arguably remains a widespread informal belief/attitude amongst its population. Both de jure and de facto "second class citizenship" are bad, but there is an important sense in which the former is a lot worse

I do not use it as a slur, nor do I think Israel is an exception in this regard - China, Japan, Korea, Ukraine, Poland, Sudan, Finland, Egypt, are all effectively ethno-states. They may host a few minorities, but they are primarily vessels for the self-determination and preservation of their nations.

Ethnostate is not a slur, it's an accurate description of a country that itself passed the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People.

(A basic law in Israel is roughly like a constitutional amendment in the US.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law%3A_Israel_as_the_Nat...

Ethnostate is an ambiguous word. Does it mean ethnically homogenous? Israel is certainly not that. Does it mean, essentially, a nation-state whose "national group" is an ethnicity? Israel is that - but so is much of Europe and some parts of Asia.

How many of those have declared themselves to be the Nation-State of the X people? (at least after the 1940s)

Many former Soviet and former Yugoslavia nations did this.

I ran the question by AI, and it seems to think that somewhere between 30-50 since WWII have done so explicitly.

Seems fair to call those ethnostates as well.

Edit: I asked ChatGPT "How many nations have declared themselves to be the Nation-State of a people?" earlier and got the same answer as you. I asked again just now and got "Israel is the only nation in the world that has legally declared itself the “Nation‑State of the Jewish People.”" [I didn't specify Jewish]

Can't rely on AI.

Nationalism could be seen as a "left" movement in the first place in that it often served as an ideology of revolution against the (imperial) powers that be. There have been many prominent leftist nationalist movements and parties, from Sinn Fein to the PKK.

"ethnonationalism" is a redundancy, ethne and natio are just the Greek and Latin words for the same concept

>"ethnonationalism" is a redundancy, ethne and natio are just the Greek and Latin words for the same concept

This is sophistic equivocating. Stratification based on ethnicity is neither a necessary nor essential component of nationalism.

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).

Tracking on the Shia; sorry about the confusion! Referring to Iran-backed ops in Syria etc.

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.

[flagged]

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.

Also, just to add, a lot of this generic population data just doesn't factor in the current military action at all, they just operate on the last known figures. It's a complete red herring to this discussion. No one knows exactly how many people are in Gaza right now. Israeli policy is actively obstructing people from finding out. I suspect (fear) the total death toll may be well above the ~100k figure.

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There's an extremely large amount of people who subconsciously believe that history began on Oct 7.

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They absolutely should face something similar to the Nuremberg trials. This is planned extermination of a group of people.

Unfortunately the Israeli lobby has so much money and power they would silence anyone who says that publicly by accusing them of being antisemitic.

Arguably then, shouldn’t China be ahead of them in line for Uighur camps, and the US for the Japanese camps?

It's possible to have multiple trials occurring simultaneously. Also whataboutism is not at all helpful to the discussion at hand.

> Some context first so my opinion isn't misconstrued

too late, m8

anybody with unfavorable opinions against Israeli government is a "leftist stereotype"

any unfavorable opinions and facts against Israeli government gets you pinned as a "anti-semite" these days

I love the Jewish community, so I don’t say this lightly, but I view Netanyahu actions as somewhat resembling Nazi Germany in one respect (though certainly not others). He may not believe Israeli Jews have a birthright to the whole world (rather they are trying to strengthen one nation’s borders), but there is no doubt in my mind they are indiscriminately cleansing a people out of existence. That is their aim, beyond simple deterrence or defense.

The October terror attack is not to be defended, but the response is disgusting behavior by the state of Israel. There’s nothing proportionate about this. Rather Israel sees this as an opportunity to strengthen its position and wipe out its enemies - and innocent men, women, and children.

In the United States, we talk about Israel as if it must be protected because it’s the Middle East’s only democracy. It is not a liberal democracy. It exists only to protect the rights of one type of people with one particular type of ethnicity. In America, we wouldn’t recognize this as a democracy.

For our part, it’s important to protect our own interests in the region and so yes, strange bedfellows. But given Netanyahu’s comfort with war crime, given Israel’s weak and distorted democratic institution, and given what nationalism can do to a country, we should be very careful to balance and diversify our interests.

Israel in another 10 years might not be recognizable. It’s cause for alarm.

> Israel in another 10 years might not be recognizable.

The strange thing is, this statement held true before October 7th. Hopefully not everyone has forgotten that there were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets before the war, protesting what Netanyahu was doing to the Israeli government.

There are many protesting this government as we speak, as well.

That must be a harrowing situation. It didn't exactly look safe and low stress before the war.

> That must be a harrowing situation. It didn't exactly look safe and low stress before the war.

If you mean in terms of the personal safety of the Israeli protesters, it's not dangerous or anything. Certainly nothing like the very brave people in Gaza protesting Hamas, who are actually living through hell, and who risk their lives by protesting.

Thanks, I appreciate the info. I saw some photography and reporting of the protests the summer before the war (in Tel Aviv, I guess) that honestly looked a little worrying. In my memory, they were relying on the military to keep order.

Of course not comparable to Gaza.

This is a repugnant statement.

It is in fact, the Arabs in the region, who have been waving a 100 year war to deny Jews autonomy in their historic homeland. Oct 7 was just a manifestation of this. They are an implacable enemy.

To the extent a minority on the far right want to them to leave, there is no racial or genocidal dimension, just a desire to expel an enemy

> It exists only to protect the rights of one type of people with one particular type of ethnicity. In America, we wouldn’t recognize this as a democracy.

But this is exactly what we have in America right now.

I'm not fan of the Trump administration, but nevertheless, no, it really isn't.

Arab citizens of Israel are systematically and legally discriminated against to an extent with no parallel in the US, and Arabs in the occupied territories (West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza) have effectively no rights at all.

Yeah, the narrative of America wanting to protect and maintain democracy has been completely crippled by its actions this year. It's an openly corupt oligarchy (as opposed to at least keeping a facade up for decades prior) for the short term present.

Another POV is that when you distill everyone’s experiences, not just yours, into legitimate votes, people, on both sides of this conflict, choose violence. Does the discourse you participate in achieve your goals? No, it achieves the opposite.

What is this discourse? “Sharpen the fractal of demographics and opinions until you get some rare alignment between them, and you find a supposedly irrefutable and most valid position.” Can you see why winning Internet arguments and getting upvotes doesn’t translate to your goals?

Of course you should share these thoughts and forums like these should publish them. But as much as I hate the Intellectual Dark Web and its philosophies, which are as ridiculous as, “you can gain power by thinking about things differently,” I think they are right that popularity contests are not the end all be all of conflict resolution.

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What do you mean by "most likely be banned soon"? Banned from where, and by who?

I think he's referring to actions taken in Israel against Haaretz, e.g. cutting off government contact from Haaretz, etc.

That makes sense, thanks for the clarification.

How many Muslims are writing for Haaretz?

one (used to be two, but one ran away to US)

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> War crimes in this war should be dealt with. Nuremberg trials is really not the right analogy.

War crimes for firing into a crowd of civilians, for both the one that ordered it, and those that executed it, should definitely be at the same levels as the nuremberg trials.

The fact that it will never happen doesn’t detract from that. Happily, the ICC seems to already know so, which is why there’s warrants out for all these Isrealian leaders, no?

The ICC is a political circus and Israel is not a signatory. It has no jurisdiction.

Even if Israel was a signatory the ICC should only intervene after Israel has done its own investigation and if it failed to hold the relevant standards.

If there were war crimes committed then people need to be held accountable.

The scale of the alleged war crimes is totally different than the crimes persecuted in Nuremberg.

Just because there are fewer Palestinians in Gaza than there were Jews in the Nazi Reich doesn't make the attempted extermination of Palestinians any less serious of a crime. Genocide is genocide and those that take part in it should not be afforded the opportunity to steal more oxygen from decent people.

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> The [League of Nations] is a political circus and [the Greater German Reich] is not a signatory. It has no jurisdiction.

> Even if [the Reich] was a signatory the [League of Nations] should only intervene after [the Reich] has done its own investigation and if it failed to hold the relevant standards.

See, this version wouldn't sound convincing to me in the slightest. So I'm unsure why yours is supposed to be any more so.

More broadly, this is either a hopelessly naive or tactically calculated take. 'Why does the police keep arresting criminals, before they've had a chance to conduct their own investigations of their own conduct?'

I am not following your logic at all.

The League of Nations had no jurisdiction over the Germans (that I'm aware of).

The matter of countries doing their own investigation is fundamental to the ICC and so is the matter of its jurisdiction being restricted to member countries. That is part of the convention that established it.

The police in contrast, in a certain country, has jurisdiction and the power to arrest criminals. The ICCs powers come from the countries that are members of it extending their powers to this body via mutual agreement.

The more proper analogy would be that me and a bunch of friends will issue an arrest warrant and put you in jail because we feel like it.

EDIT: This is known as the principle of complementarity: https://www.icc-cpi.int/about/how-the-court-works

"The ICC is intended to complement, not to replace, national criminal systems; it prosecutes cases only when States do not are unwilling or unable to do so genuinely."

Re: Jurisdiction: "In the absence of a UNSC referral of an act of aggression, the Prosecutor may initiate an investigation on his own initiative or upon request from a State Party. The Prosecutor shall first ascertain whether the Security Council has made a determination of an act of aggression committed by the State concerned. Where no such determination has been made within six months after the date of notification to the UNSC by the Prosecutor of the situation, the Prosecutor may nonetheless proceed with the investigation, provided that the Pre-Trial Division has authorized the commencement of the investigation. Also, under these circumstances, the Court shall not exercise its jurisdiction regarding a crime of aggression when committed by a national or on the territory of a State Party that has not ratified or accepted these amendments."

The Palestinians and Gaza are not a state party. Israel is not a state party. and the UNSC has not referred this to the ICC. Therefore the ICC has no jurisdiction.

Wrong. Palestine is a state party to the ICC, effective 1 April 2015. The ICC has jurisdiction on the territory of its member states.

It is the position of both the ICC itself and the United Nations General Assembly that Palestine is a state and ergo entitled to be a member of the ICC. Whether Israel (or you) accept this definition of Palestine is largely irrelevant.

Moreover, whether Israel is or is not a state party to the ICC is completely without bearing on the ICC investigation in question, since Gaza is not part of Israel's territory under any definition, including Israel's own. To my knowledge, no state recognises Gaza as part of Israel, including Israel itself.

TLDR: It is Palestine's membership of ICC that results in the ICC lawfully exercising its jurisdiction on the territory of Gaza.

Palestine is not a state. That much is fact. It's not a matter of "position". It does not meet any definition of state. The UN also does not consider Palestine to be a state and it is not a member of the UN. The UN and the ICC can declare the moon is made of cheese and the earth is flat. Pretty much nobody recognizes the "state" of Palestine.

The ICC and the UNGA recognise Palestine as a state. A sizeable and ever increasing majority of UN members recognise Palestine as a state, and they make up the vast majority of the world by any measure - population, size, economy, what have you.

You are free to assert that you have fact on your side, that there is no dispute, that it's "not a matter of 'position'" all you want, but none of it matters. Your position on whether Palestine is a state (or mine, for that matter) is about as relevant to the membership of the ICC as our respective positions on the planethood of Pluto.

It's fascinating that Israel thinks it can dictate the membership of a body that it refuses to recognise, let alone join. The ICC decides who is a member of the ICC, and the ICC - consistent with widespread state practice in every continent on Earth - considers Palestine a state.

The situation isn't as simple as you're describing it even from the ICC's perspective.

https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/icc-pre-trial-chamber-i-issues-...

"In today's decision, Pre-Trial Chamber I recalled that the ICC is not constitutionally competent to determine matters of statehood that would bind the international community. By ruling on the territorial scope of its jurisdiction, the Chamber is neither adjudicating a border dispute under international law nor prejudging the question of any future borders. The Chamber's ruling is for the sole purpose of defining the Court's territorial jurisdiction. "

And yes, who am I to argue with China, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Yemen, Afghanistan, Egypt, Belarus, Syria, Sudan, and their friends. Clearly Palestine is a state.

EDIT: for a more coherent argument: https://www.drake.edu/media/departmentsoffices/dussj/2006-20...

EDIT2: Asking the various AIs supports my position. Despite the recognition of various countries Palestine is not legally a state as it does not meet the criteria for being one. I do agree that the Palestinians have been very effective in fighting Israel in the diplomatic arena but unless they actually negotiate in good faith with Israel I wouldn't count on their future prospects to actually have their own country. Palestinians in general also oppose the two state solution anyways.

> "In today's decision, Pre-Trial Chamber I recalled that the ICC is not constitutionally competent to determine matters of statehood that would bind the international community. By ruling on the territorial scope of its jurisdiction, the Chamber is neither adjudicating a border dispute under international law nor prejudging the question of any future borders. The Chamber's ruling is for the sole purpose of defining the Court's territorial jurisdiction.

I am amused by you quoting this. I suggest you re-read that, they're being very careful with their words, and they are entirely correct.

It is true that the ICC has no capacity to dictate to the rest of the international community what is or is not a state, or the location of international borders; that would have the causality reversed. Instead, it takes the definition of a state or the location of borders from the international community. As the international community widely agrees that Palestine is a state, it therefore satisfies the condition set by the Rome Statute for membership of the ICC.

And, as your very excerpt shows, the the ICC is perfectly competent to rule on who is its member and where its jurisdiction lies. I will admit I am somewhat surprised to see you quote something that so well underlines my argument. I trust this discussion is concluded, then.

I would also note the PTC decision is something that virtually no one talks about (since it's entirely consistent with the ICC's usual position and the decision makes it very clear that the ICC considers Palestine a state), but that does happen to be on the Wikipedia page on this topic, so I somewhat suspect there's been a regression here to strip mining Wiki for cites and refs. I also strongly suspect that those refs are going unread, if you think the PTC decision supports any view other than that Palestine is a state. This would seem to reduce your argument below the level that warrants engagement.

Perhaps, rather than trying to mine that Wikipedia article for ammunition, actually read it, and then go read the PTC decision, and have a long hard think about why many well-meaning rational people (most of the world, in fact) take a different position from you on this issue.

> Asking the various AIs supports my position.

In the future, please begin your posts with this, so people can save time engaging.

Palestine is very much a state. You know how I know? It has a Wikipedia page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine

> Pretty much nobody recognizes the "state" of Palestine

It's recognized by 147 of the 193 members of the UN. That's the majority or 75%.

You know how I know? There is a Wikipedia page about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_P...

You also know what else is a fact? Israel is doing a genocide in the state of Palestine. You know how I know ? There is a Wikipedia page about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide

If you claim we should give Israel the benefit of the doubt that it is not a genocide, maybe you also deny the Holocaust ever happened? After all, there are multiple ex Nazis who deny anything like that ever taken place.

We don't know the facts. Like we didn't do with the buried ambulances and journalists like Shireen Akleh.

It didn't happen. We didn't do it. If it happened Hamas did it. If we did it they deserved it. Oh it's on video, our bad, we did an oopsie.

Countless of cases like this.

I agree these don't all look good but you're lumping different things under the same umbrella. And you're blaming the victim. If Hamas didn't attack Israel on Oct 7th then there wouldn't be Israeli soldiers in Gaza killing and getting killed and there wouldn't be issues with ambulances. It doesn't help that Hamas uses ambulances and that its combatants don't wear uniforms and rely on being able to pass as civilians as part of their strategy.

So yes, an Israeli ambush in Gaza that opened fire on a civilian vehicle is something that should be looked at. But they get a lot of leeway because it's a war and in a war mistakes can happen. In order for this to be a crime you need to show beyond doubt the soldiers knew these were civilians and intentionally wanted to kill them. There were other civilians that passed unharmed through the same forces and so proving intent is pretty difficult.

Whether it's on video or not doesn't matter. In a war soldiers will potentially kill civilians. The bar is different from peacetime operations. The war was started, and is continued, by Hamas. Yes it looks bad. Yes the IDF should do whatever it can to minimize it. Yes there are whackos.

I realize I'm not going to convince you but I believe that if the Palestinians stopped using violence you wouldn't see any incidents of Palestinians getting killed by security forces. The stories they are telling you about resistance and occupation are false. I am painting a broad brush here- Some Palestinians just want to live in peace. But too many do not. Pressure on Israel is misguided. Pressure should be on Hamas to surrender. Pressure on Israel emboldens Hamas, makes the war go on longer, and is not helping Palestinians. Even if you believe Israelis are evil you should still pressure the Palestinians because they are the ones who need to end this war. After the war is over we can talk about what to do next. Israelis can't and won't be pressured into letting Hamas remain in power.

Genocider said what.

You're misreading. The civilian casualties are very much intentional. They are being ordered to fire on unarmed people seeking food. There are verified reports of IDF targeting journalists and EMTs. I am also Jewish American and I am 100% convinced that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. I find it utterly reprehensible that this opinion can ever be considered antisemitic since the actions of the Israeli government are so incontrovertibly at odds with Jewish ideology. They shame us all.

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Etymology of the word is irrelevant when it comes to current usage, and current usage and understanding is neatly summarized by Wikipedia in the first sentence of that same article where your quote about the etymology comes from.

"Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people."

Israel is not "targeting Palestinians because of their membership of a group" and does not aim at the "destruction of Palestinians as a people".

Israel is at war with Gaza because Gaza has attacked it on Oct 7th and is holding Israeli hostages and has continued an armed conflict with it since then. Previously Gaza has launched 10's of thousands of rockets into Israeli population centers, executed terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, etc.

The "current use" so to speak of the term is just to weaponize it against Israel as part of a long term strategy. So by that definition - you're absolutely right. In fact the term started popping up before Israel responded at all to Oct 7th. Since Oct 8th more or less.

Wtf are you talking about you lunatic

Israel's government is doing a genocide on the Palestinian people. The ICC sees it and that is why the war criminal Netanyahu has a warrant for his arrest and will be tried in the Hague, not Nuremberg, but close enough.

Stop the Israeli genocide on Palestinian people.

RIght this isn't Israel as a whole, it's the crazed right wing Netanyahu government. I can understand taking out Hamas but their tactics have far superceded what is considered "not a war crime"

People ought to understand that this problem of innocent Gazans - often children - being fired upon by IDF soldiers isn't a new one, it predates the current food distribution operation.

An article from October in the NY Times detailing some well-documented atrocities ("44 health care workers saw multiple cases of preteen children who had been shot in the head or chest in Gaza") was published as an opinion piece, in spite of the fact that it consisted of dozens of eyewitness accounts. [0][1]

The incomparable sway that Israel holds in American media and American politics prevents pressure to hold those responsible accountable on an international level. When there's enough pressure within Israel to demand accountability for something terrible (and that's rare enough, outside of their peace movement) the conclusion drawn is typically that the soldiers are just careless, but not acting with malice. [2] If there's a single instance of an IDF soldier being held accountable for a civilian killing in this conflict, someone could make me feel a little better by sharing it.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/09/opinion/gaza-...

[1] https://archive.is/9Lr00

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yotam...

I just want to point out something important about that article - it's not just talking about children, it's specifically talking about pre-teen children. Hamas recruits many "children" in the sense of under-18s to fight, but that's not true of pre-teen children.

(Btw, I don't necessarily agree that that article proves the IDF is firing on children, there's actually no evidence of that presented in the article. But I want to forestall a common "pro-Israeli" objection that is not true in this case.)

> I don't necessarily agree that that article proves the IDF is firing on children, there's actually no evidence of that presented in the article.

I think the appropriate term is "circumstantial evidence." A doctor wouldn't be in the position to actually witness the cause of a gunshot wound (hey, maybe all these well-placed gunshot wounds are the result of Palestinians shooting their own kids, I guess would be the alternate explanation...), but let's not pretend that these reports are not evidence of crimes, evidence worthy of investigation.

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That doesn't justify annexing neighbors, destroying civilian infrastructure or fratricide on the IDF's behalf, though.

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Following your logic, Russia should keep annexing Ukraine until it no longer exist as justifiable, does it make sense for you?

It’s not following the logic at all as Ukraine hasn’t provoked Russia.

Russia is a terrorist state and has been training hamas, what are you on about.

Define "terrorist state" for us, then. Take your time considering any... uh... contradictions.

Most people do understand, there are many sites dedicated to citing and maintaining lists of the atrocities for easy access through google. I think it's okay just to refer to the incident in the article and immediate opinions and emotions it evokes.

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Children are children. That's why we respond with abject horror when you see them hungry and huddled, riddled with bullets. If you have to prepend a nationality to "child" to justify it, then I regret to inform you that you are a racist.

It doesn't matter whether it happens in Israeli-occupied territory or an American middle school. It's absolutely reprehensible. "stop killing children you dislike" or "stop targeting journalists" should not be a controversial demand in the 21st century. Certainly not to a modernized military.

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I always strikes me how the people that encourage the Palestinians to start wars they can't win are oblivious to how much of a shit bag they are for doing that.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

> But yeah, in practice, we seem to want it to end with full Israeli dominance, and the Palestinians either emigrating to Egypt and Jordan or vanishing into thin air, I suppose.

No, the majority of the West strongly wants a two-state solution (on the 1967 border, roughly). So did many Israelis, who voted people into office intent on achieving that goal many times.

The problem is, Israel and Palestine never managed to sign an agreement leading to a two-state solution. And in parallel to the peace process, some Palestinians launched the second intifada, a terror campaign which killed many hundreds of Israelis. This eventually lead most Israelis to think that a two-state solution is impossible.

Not to mention that all the Palestinian borders are made up, and they've actively disagreed with them as defined by intermediaries every time.

What exactly are the borders of Israel then?

I'd "assume" they're very similar to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine

I'd like better news coverage of that:

What exactly ARE the goals / demands of every side. Both what they say in public, and what's generally accepted as the rational real goals each side requests / demands / etc via peace talks as well as through violence.

The breakdown could even focus on factions within the nebulous term of 'sides'. An average citizen is likely to have looser criteria than a government / terrorist.

Here's the coverage you've asked (opinions my own, I do not pretend to rep. anyone)

Israel stated goals of war:

1. Return the hostages

2. Remove Hamas regime from Gaza

3. (arguably done) bring north-Israel communities safely back home

Unstated goals:

1. Open Egypt-Gaza border. This had failed.

2. Create safe zone on the Gaza-Israeli border. This is mostly done in practice. This goal cannot be stated (though it'll save many lives)

Hamas goals:

Read Hamas chapter, or see interviews with captured Hamas militants post 7/10 attack (if you believe it's not scripted)

Gazan who are not part of Hamas regime goals: survive

Another unstated goal: punitively deter future attacks.

100%. Thanks for mentioning that.

Stated goal (by Ben Givir, Smoltrich and, yes, Bibi himself): genocide of Gaza.

Half the cabinet of the current Israeli government has made public statements to the effect of wanting to starve everyone or kill all the kids.

We've seen the videos and, with !gt, we can read the translations.

> Half the cabinet of the current Israeli government has made public statements to the effect of wanting to starve everyone or kill all the kids.

There's a database tracking those: https://law4palestine.org/law-for-palestine-releases-databas...

Hum... when I look at pictures of the very thorough destruction in Gaza (hospitals, civilians etc) it would seem that the israelis think "Remove Hamas" actually means kill everyone one in Gaza.

If not a genocide, at the very least an ethnocide.

Next step: Riviera Gaza!

They think Palestinian = Hamas

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Ah ... I understand your point.

All those jew death camps in Gaza must be closed down, for sure.

All those Gaza tanks and those Gaza fighter jets must be taken down.

And don't forget the Gaza navy patrolling the sea, preventing the israelis from fishing for their subsistence.

Totally agree with you.

Now... back to reality...

It’s absolutely the case that Hamas hasn’t sued for peace with unconditional surrender. (Or recognised that the hostages confer leverage on Israel, not themselves.) Both Hamas and Israel remain belligerents in this conflict until one of them withdraws or surrenders, that’s just how war works.

There are a lot of atrocities being committed in this conflict. But bombing a school that was used as a missile launch site really isn’t one of them.

Who is committing the atrocities?

> Who is committing the atrocities?

Mostly Israel due to a firepower disadvantage. But Hamas seems to be about as into committing war crimes as Netanyahu.

In terms of indifference to suffering, the people dying are in Gaza. Not Israel. Hamas should be suing for peace, not posturing because some fucks in Doha would prefer to punt the question. (Palestine unilaterally turning over its hostages would rob Israel of a tremendous amount of leverage.)

> Germany surrendered, so we stopped bombing Dresden.

And no British person was pubished as war criminal for the war crime of attacking Dresden. :-(

Dresden made the Germans surrender? We're really going with that now? Not the Soviets taking Berlin and Hitler blowing his brains out lest they capture him?

Also, the Germans sent untrained 15 year olds to fight Soviet tanks. That's as close to total battlefield defeat as has ever happened in history.

For the record, the firebombing of Dresden was indefensible.

I say this as someone whose family endured 6 years of Nazi German and Soviet crimes, including genocide, violence, rape, large scale looting and destruction of cultural heritage, and mass destruction of cities (85% of Warsaw alone was reduced to rubble, intentionally and systematically).

Why do I mention that? I mention that to underscore that just war is not utilitarian. You cannot justify Dresden or Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It doesn't mean you can't take strong measures, or that circumstances don't make a difference, only that the circumstances did not morally justify these acts. And it seems that the behavior of the Allies in Dresden and Hiroshima serve as precedent that is used to justify crimes like the leveling of Gaza and treating its civilians like cattle.

We stopped dropping bombs on Germany after they surrendered. If you are militarily defeated, then surrender typically results in the bombs stop dropping... unless your catchphrase is "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab" -- I probably wouldn't surrender to those guys or Russians.

Unstated goal #1 for Netanyahu: avoid prison at any cost.

That's another straw man argument. No other prime minister would act differently in his place.

Hamas goal with the hostages was exchange has Israel has tens of thousands Palestinian prisoners. Turns out Israel doesn't care anymore and will even sacrifice their own to further right wing Zionist goals.

Unfortunately this Israeli government has consisently refused to articulate any sort of positive goal. Netanyahu is only publicly against things. He is adamant about preventing a Palestinian state and crippling Iran, but seems to have no plan for what should happen in Palestine, hence the seemingly endless horrible situation there.

Hamas' explicit goal is "from the river to the sea". If there is an alternative that they are willing to settle for, nobody knows what it is.

The individual Gazans almost certainly have one in mind, likely some variant of the two state solution. But Hamas is in charge, and there is nobody else to talk to about it. Ordinary Gazans don't much like Hamas but they are the only thing standing between them and Israel, who as you know is attacking with impunity.

Israel's nominal goal is to remove Hamas and engage such a negotiation, though there is significant doubt that this tactic is going to lead there. And they know that.

Israelis are roughly equally divided on what they want. About half want to wipe out Gaza and have control of (but not responsibility for) the West Bank. They are the ones in government.

The other half is much more amenable to a two state solution, but they are extremely skeptical of finding it. Long before the October 7 attacks, Israelis routinely have to shelter from rocket attacks. We hear little about them because they are largely ineffective, but it does not give Israelis a lot of confidence in any kind of negotiated settlement. That side is also happy to have Gaza walled off.

And all of these sides are backed by powerful outside forces for whom the conflict itself is their goal.

That is an extremely high level breakdown, as neutral as I can be.

Didn't they remove that from their charter, same as Likud?

The problem with enunciating real positions to domestic audiences are that the extremists on both sides will literally murder anyone who compromises.

Let's not forget Israel's domestic orthodox/right-wing Jewish terrorism and Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.

Ergo, there's even more incentive for leaders to continually espouse positions they know will never happen, but which play well at home.

As a violence in poli sci professor of mine once quipped, this is a 'the only solution is killing the grandmothers' conflict. Because generational narratives of victimization are so ingrained in large parts of both societies that there is no room for compromise.

Silence extremist voices forcefully, wait a generation, and then there might be a path to peace. :(

Who will provide the force to silence these extremist voices?

Maybe there are some parallels in this situation and late 1800’s-mid 1900’s Western Europe. The civil war on the European continent between Germanic states on one hand and French/British ended when two powerful outsiders (US and Soviet Russia) invaded and split the continent. During this occupation west Europeans nations learned how to live with themselves and to atone for their mistakes and to not repeat these mistakes. But they only learned this because they were under military occupation.

This scenario will most likely not happen in the Middle East and so I think there will not be peace there for generations.

The greatest chance for this was probably the US-Arab world, but the Shia/Sunni sectarian-political feudalism made that a non-starter, especially in the context of the Cold War.

As a colleague from Bahrain once quipped, 'the countries of the Arab world love to use Palestinians as propaganda for domestic purposes, but none of them actually give enough of a shit to make hard choices to solve the problem.'

In precisely the same way that the Nazis wanted their conflict to end with Jews emigrating to Africa (Madagascar according to their original plan) or vanishing into thin air.

At this point, I think the Two-State Solution has proven to be incredibly naive.

As long as there are outside forces, such as Iran, willing to embed & fund militants among the Gazan population, the -only- practical solution towards peace is assimilation: have Gazans broken up & spread out through Israel until law enforcement can be practically achieved.

Now assimilation sucks & will likely result in all sorts of social injustice, but I consider it a better alternative to the current ethnic cleansing.

EDIT: @casspipe suggested the option of subsidized resettlement and I agree that is another option that should be explored.

Even assimilation seems hard at this point. If I were a gazan I'd ask the international community to have Israel buy me decent housing somewhere safe in an arab speaking country. Like, I get it you are stronger and don't want me here but give me.somewhere decent to go. I often wonder what are the options for Palestinians and especially gazans who do want to get out of there.

Israel's neighbours are absolutely unwilling to take large numbers of Palestinians, for reasons that seem perfectly fair.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_insurgency_in_Sout...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinai_insurgency#Gaza_Strip_sp...

There are not necessarily Arab countries that want to take on millions of Palestinian refugees. There is a broader issue that what you suggest is not considered good for the Palestinian cause. I'll give an example. UNRWA uses a specific definition for Palestinian refugees that differs from the general refugee definition used by UNHCR. They define Palestinian refugees as "persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict". This status also extends to their descendants. This means children and grandchildren of the original 1948 refugees maintain refugee status even if born outside Palestine. When you think about it, this is kind of the opposite of what you suggested. It creates a massive class of legal Palestinians who live in and are citizens of other countries (particularly Jordan), but are ostensibly waiting for their opportunity to return (or receive some other "durable solution" such as compensation).

In general, Arab states and Palestinian leadership argue that naturalizing refugees would undermine their right to return to their original homes. You can interpret this cynically: because many Arab states are not too friendly with Israel, having a massive class of refugees putting political pressure on them could be advantageous, and is probably one of the only ways to "defeat" Israel as a jewish state (because if all of those refugees had the right to live in Israel, jews might become a minority.) But it is true that removing refugee status without a just solution would erase Palestinian claims and rights under international law.

It's interesting to compare that treatment to the Mizrahi Jews who fled persecution in Arab states after 1948 and many settled in Israel. They're not refugees anymore. The Arab states stole tons of property from Mizrahi Jews (adding up to multiple times the size of Israel) but nobody is demanding that the Arab states pay reparations to Mizrahi Jews as a condition for peace. Meanwhile those same Arab states radicalize their populace against Israel by calling Israelis "land thieves" - the hypocrisy is quite amazing considering many of those Israelis literally had their grandparents' land stolen by those same Arab states.

> nobody is demanding that the Arab states pay reparations to Mizrahi Jews as a condition for peace

Why not?

Maybe the Mizrahi Jews can get their property back if they return the land they stole?

Seriously though, if you look back far enough, all land is stolen. I think it's more prudent to focus on the present day.

That's not quite fair. The Mizrahi Jews the GP is referring to were kicked out of the country they were born in, and had nowhere else to go but Israel, the land for which was already "stolen" when the Mizrahi Jews got there. (Obviously settlements are ongoing so you can say that land theft is continuing to happen. If that's what you meant, ignore me.)

I've done the math, and if the US had given every Palestinian $100,000 to move elsewhere (surely enough to relocate) they could have forcefully relocated every single Palestinian without killing them all. And they would have spent less money than they have on bombs and stuff for Israel.

Still a dick move, but much less so than wiping out an entire group of people.

Nobody wants palestinian population. Egypt built a wall for a reason.

So just kill them all or even what?

Why would any Arab-speaking country accept 2M Palestinian refugees?

> I'd ask the international community to have Israel buy me decent housing somewhere safe in an arab speaking country

The degree to which France and the UK have dodged the question of reparations in this debate is frankly surprising to me.

Assimilation definitely would be a hard option.

I agree that subsidized resettlement should be another option explored by middle east nations.

> If I were a gazan I'd ask the international community to have Israel buy me decent housing somewhere safe in an arab speaking country.

The Arab states seized properties from Mizrahi Jews fleeing to Israel decades ago, land that adds up to multiple times the size of Israel. They have plenty of space to resettle refugees without asking Israel to "buy" their own stolen land back!

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Is there a way for IDF to fight Hamas without "inflict war crimes, or terrorism on civilians" though? How would that work in practical terms?

When Hamas uses hospitals for military purposes (or any purpose "harmful to their enemy" [other than solely medical care of injured Hamas combatants]), those hospitals lose their protected status otherwise provided by the Geneva Convention.

I don't like the prospect of hospitals being attacked, but if Hamas houses combatants or arms inside a hospital, attacking Hamas therein does not appear to be a war crime, provided Israel has issued a warning and allowed a reasonable time for Hamas to vacate the hospital.

The Geneva Convention does not provide "One Weird Trick to Avoid Combatants Being Attacked"

The Geneva Convention does not provide carveouts to particularly angry personnel. You can try to define fake conditions to justify it but the hearing hasn't happened so you're just speculating.

And you know what? You can document the torture, sexual assault and murder of innocent prisoners without getting a proper investigation from the ICC. Many US citizens will remember that from Abu Ghraib! Lord only knows how much the CIA is shielding Israel from the fallout of SAVAK. You might as well drop the moral pretenses and admit that you don't think a fair trial would be desirable.

If fighting X requires you to inflict war crimes, perhaps you should question the premise of why you are fighting in the first place.

And assuming the answer to the questioning is that the war is currently required.

Let's say in order to return the hostages (considered popular amongst the Zionists).

Now what is the practical way to execute the war without the abovementioned consequences?

What's the alternative?

Quit meddling in Arab democracies?

I'm reminded of an episode of Saga of Tanya the Evil where a 'guerilla military unit' had 'taken over a captured city'. The progag's military unit had to go 'clear the city'. Their military commanders had given clear orders that all hostile forces were enemy soldiers who must be killed. They started by issuing a demand to release the hostages and allow them to exit the war zone. One of the few who didn't want to fight was shot while trying to escape. From that point it predictably went in a very bad direction.

As far as I'm aware, the citizens of Israel are free to leave that country* (free to enter another country is another issue, but they're also free to move about). It's terrorism and illegal military action to knowingly fire upon civilians. I agree with that for all sides of a conflict. The issue with the other side(s) in this conflict is that they do not present as a clearly identified military force. IMO the most proper solution is the same as evaporatively purifying water. Issue sufficient (<< heavy lifting here) warnings for civilians to leave an area, with an area for them to move to. Then any who remain in the military action area are combatants. Probably just like in the anime episode that showcases this circumstance. (war is hell, that's one of the hells.)

It's been widely reported that the IDF substantially loosened their acceptable civilian collateral casualty rules after Oct 7th.

>> In each strike, the order said, officers had the authority to risk killing up to 20 civilians. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/world/middleeast/israel-h...

The very existence of guidance change on civilian casualties should constitute a war crime, because to put it another way, the IDF decided that Palestinian civilian lives were worth less after the terror attacks.

In other metrics, the October attacks killed 1,200 Israelis, plus 1,700 killed in the war. Versus 50,000+ Palestinian fatalities.

So we're at ~1:17 Israeli: Palestinian killed.

I feel like any human can agree there should be an ethical ceiling to that number. Maybe it's lower or higher than the current number, but it being unlimited is genocide.

The Gulf War had a more extreme casualty ratio of ~1:1,000+. Would you consider that an extremely unethical war? Should the US have done something differently to even out the ratio?

Apples/oranges. In the Gulf War there were identifiable, organized military forces.

Ergo, the majority of those casualties could be attributed to military:military.

Given the nature of the Gaza conflict, trying to sub-classify casualties leads inevitably to the 'military aged male' problem.

It seems like we're in agreement now that total casualty ratios alone (like that 1:17 ratio) aren't very meaningful metrics.

Civilian casualty ratios are more relevant to ethics, but we don't know that number since Hamas doesn't report their losses.

We are not: it depends on the conflict.

When one military force blends in with the civilian populace, actual civilian casualties will fall somewhere inbetween extremes (100% of those killed and 0%).

Ergo, excessive casualty ratios indicate that either (a) the enemy military force is larger, (b) the IDF is exceedingly good at killing only enemy combatants without taking casualties, or (c) a large number of civilians are being killed.

I don't think anyone would argue that Hamas has as many fighters as the IDF?

I don't think anyone would argue against the fact that the Geneva Conventions require combatants to distinguish themselves from the civilian population.

When Hamas fighters repeatedly, strategically, and intentionally fail to do so, I think they bear significant (and even the majority) responsibility for the resulting increase in what you call "actual civilian casualties".

> The very existence of guidance change on civilian casualties should constitute a war crime

Surely a change in tactics by Hamas could lead to a legitimate reason to change the proportion of civilian risks.

Imagine if Hamas were scrupulously avoiding all civilians and civilian structures by 200 meters before date X and changed tactics on date X to freely intermingle with civilians and occupy civilian structures with military units and arms.

I'd expect before date X for Israel to have minimal civilian casualties be considered acceptable and proportional, but after that change in tactics I would see justification for a change in the math to justify a higher figure as being the lowest reasonable amount of civilian risk.

And indeed, Israel has made token efforts to say this is happening, but I'm not aware of any proof. Which, coupled with the fact that the IDF is explicitly prohibiting reporting, isn't a good look.

Furthermore, even if Israel has a justification for large numbers of civilian casualties, there are other portions of the Geneva Convention it's obviously breaching:

>> ART. 53. — Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or co-operative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.

>> ART. 55. — To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.

>> ART. 56. — To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the co-operation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties.

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-...

I would say that more than one view exists of whether Israel is an Occupying Power in Gaza.

One is that Hamas governs Gaza and Israel is not occupying Gaza via a sustained and continuous military control of the territory and population, but rather has intermittent military operations and is otherwise more akin to an embargo. (The US was not "occupying Cuba" at the height of the Cuban embargo, for example.)

The other is that Israel is occupying Gaza, notwithstanding Hamas' claim to be independently governing the territory and the lack of continuous occupying military forces holding territory on the ground.

Whether Israel or Hamas has effective control over the territory and its population does not appear to me to have a bright-line/clear-cut answer. I don't think either side has less than 10% control, but I don't think they have more than 90% control either.

Iff they are an Occupying Power, then they have those obligations. Many of those obligations presume an effective control by an on-the-ground occupying force.

The US didn't have troops in Havana during the Cuban embargo.

Israel certainly has the military capability to control aid, ergo they have the responsibility to facilitate it.

Are you serious? ... congratulations on your PhD in Gaslighting.

You've earned it.

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If that were true, the Palestinians in the West Bank should be living in peace and prosperity. Yet they aren't...

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.

> 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.

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.

If you are from US/Australia/... chances are you also think the land is yours and occasionally you celebrate what is for locals an "invasion day"

in this sense Jews are in a much better position because their presence in specifically that area many hundreds of years before Muslim conquest is archeologically documented. Unlike presence of Europeans in Americas or Australia.

What I say does not justify war atrocities. Just that "you are wrong to call it your land" is not a good working logic

I'm unsure what your point is, because that example supports my argument. There is no documented European presence but there is Native presence for millenia in those lands. Yet nobody would seriously argue that non-native Americans/Australians should be kicked out so the land is returned to their "original owners" as defined by "the vague descendents of the earliest known occupiers as defined in a muddy ethnoreligious way"... Yet when talking about this group in particular that claim holds?!

> Yet nobody would seriously argue that non-native Americans/Australians should be kicked out so the land is returned to their "original owners"

Maybe somebody would if they could? Or how about not kicked out but just made subordinate to government by native original owners, how would you like that?

I guess somebody else can say but Americans developed land, built infrastructure and democracy and did good more. But then the same can be said about Israel. And unlike Americans Jews did not invade somewhere new because they were there in BC era

I don't defend bad stuff done by Israel gov but I suggest condemning specifically bad stuff instead of suggesting "bias" that you did. It's a bit more complicated.

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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.

You just discovered the concept of male expendability.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_expendability

I understand the biological incentives, but we’re supposed to be better than that.

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.

> "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.

As a German, I think you should cut your colleague some slack.

There's 8 billion people in the world who aren't German. If there's one topic that Germans don't chip in on, it won't move the needle.

Whatever we as Germans say on Israel/Palestine will be taken the wrong way by someone. Critical of Israel? Still an antisemite! Supportive of Israel? Pathological guilt!

It super sucks, but I too will leave it to others to voice strong opinions in this matter. And there's no shortage of that.

There is also an unspoken bit of realpolitik there: Israel is still an ally to Germany, Palestine isn't, Iran isn't, Hamas isn't, etc.

So this is actually a super-nice position to be in, you can support your ally no matter what they do, while still looking contrite and morally superior by pulling the "we are Germany, we are not allowed to have a say in the matter" card.

And so you leave your politicians to set the official German opinion of unconditional support for Israel.

> Whatever we as Germans say on Israel/Palestine will be taken the wrong way by someone. Critical of Israel? Still an antisemite! Supportive of Israel? Pathological guilt!

How does that distinguish Israel/Palestine from any other issue?

> Whatever we as Germans say on Israel/Palestine will be taken the wrong way by someone. Critical of Israel? Still an antisemite! Supportive of Israel? Pathological guilt!

The lesson here is not: "Jew always right", it's "Genocide always bad". If you don't have a stance, you are still helping Israel to do a genocide on the Palestinian people.

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I am interested to know why you call out Japan as learning nothing. Obviously modern Japan has an excellent reputation and is not known as a warring nation( "no military" but ofc they have the JDF) so I'm guessing there's something deeper I don't know. Genuinely curious.

There is some denial about the crimes committed by Imperial Japan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre_denial https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gb94m1/why_...

That's not representative of the Japanese public opinion at all, so I fail to see how it supports the view that the entire country "hasn't learned anything at all."

What is the average level of knowledge around the history of imperial Japan. Is that period covered thoroughly in school?

I was under the impression that Japanese people don't so much deny war crimes, as they just don't talk/learn about the uglier parts of what happened during the first half of the 20th century. Is the Rape of Nanking a well known event in Japan? Are the significant battles and general tactics of the war(s) talked about? Do they talk about the Japanese Army's general treatment of foreign civilians?

I guess, what I'm wondering is if I asked the average person on the street these questions, would they know at all what I'm talking about? Would they have the knowledge to talk about it in more detail?

Is this like in the US where most people have no idea about American intervention in Cuba, and the rest of the meddling that the US was involved in in Latin America?

It's covered in much detail as the other eras of Japanese history. At least it's widely understood that there were massacres, rapes, targeting of civilians, displacement and forced labor, etc etc.

It's true that the far right, disproportionately loud in online circles, tries to downplay all of this like in the sibling comment. It's concerning how social media amplifies these voices, but it's still not mainstream opinion.

> I guess, what I'm wondering is if I asked the average person on the street these questions, would they know at all what I'm talking about?

They would, yes, but mostly because South Korea won’t shut up about it nearly a century and several ‘final’ sets of reparations later. It seems to be about as popular a political crutch in SK as it is to kill Palestinians in Israel.

I don’t know. It is about as relevant to current Japanese as the Dutch colonial past is to me. I’m sure we did plenty of bad stuff, but feeling remorse for it now is just bizarre. People several generations before me committed those crimes.

History isn't supposed to be about your personal feelings of ethnic pride or remorse. It's about learning from past successes and failures, and better understanding how people from different cultures may view each other. Other countries can and should learn from Japanese history too, because no country is immune to the mistakes that Japan made during WW2. Especially in this day and age, people around the world should have a hard look at how propaganda was used to commit atrocities.

Also if you care about national interest, it would be counterproductive to "shut up" or forget about past failures for an ego boost. That would make the country detached from reality, isolated from the rest of the world, and prone to the same failures.

Last but not least, it's very insensitive and inconsiderate of you to label South Korean trauma as a mere "political crutch" or the Dutch colonial past as no longer "relevant." Historical injustices can carry on to today's injustices much more than you think. You should try to see the perspective from the other side more before dismissing these things.

> People several generations before me committed those crimes.

It isn't that long ago.

There are still women alive who were used as sex slaves by the Japanese Army. I can see why their (SK) government is unwilling to let the issue be forgotten. Paying reparations does not mean that you can now forget the attrocity. Should the US not teach about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because it was our grandfathers who did it, and we feel like we have made it up by rebuilding Japan? Should we tell the Hibakusha that its time for them to shut-up, and there is no point in talking about what happened since the people who made those attacks are all dead?

The point of this knowledge, at least in the west, isn't to make you feel badly, or remorseful. The point is to remember that there are monsters lurking beneath the surface, even in the modern era. The Banality of Evil (the book) is about demonstrating that even a mediocre, non-fanatical, reluctant Nazi bureaucrat like Eichmann can be a pivotal figure in a genocide. We remember so that we don't repeat. Should we not learn from experiences?

That is awful, I see.

>As part of a lesson, they were banned having an army >They have powerful army anyway >Millions of Koreans live in constant fear of the power and brutality of their army

Japan obviously learn nothing.

I've been to SK numerous times. The older people dislike Japan A LOT. But their biggest base is a US one. I've never heard fear of the JDF. They have another more problematic neighbor.

The United States - who made the constitution that banned the military - does exercises with and supports the JDF. Idk if that fits unconstitutional anymore.

Their denial of horrid events and their attempts to suppress the fact that comfort women happened is undeniably awful though and shows many did not learn.

I would not extrapolate from the discourse with one German to a general statement of a heterogeneous population of ~80M people. There are many different opinions and positions in Germany - like in every country in the world. Please keep that in mind.

Germany has indeed still have a ‘vaccination’. How well it works, and whether it is not exploited by politics, is another matter.

Lastly, the conflict in the Middle East is one of the most complex conflicts in recent human history - and there is no easy way out. That also applies to the situation in Gaza.

As someone living in Germany, that philosophy of "we don't have the right to intervene or say anything" is definitely embedded in the culture here. Obviously there are plenty of people who don't follow this philosophy, and there are left-wing pro-Palestine movements here as well, but overall there's a big cultural sense of obligation to Israel due to Germany's history.

A friend of mine even ended up talking to a German diplomat in Israel, who said much the same thing: they could cosign other nations' condemnations of Israeli actions when they happened, but they couldn't condemn Israeli actions unilaterally. Obviously that was just his opinion and not an official viewpoint of the German government, but I found it fascinating that Germany still felt this sense of needing to make things right to Israel specifically.

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Is Germany lecturing anyone else here? I think I'm missing some context to your comment.

Have you not been following the German government’s position and statements on the Gaza conflict?

Weird take. When does it end? Do you feel guilt and hold your tongue on subjects where your country has a history of doing bad? What’s the time limit? 100 years? 10000?

They’re rabidly and actively supporting & covering for a genocide, and have been working tirelessly to suppress all internal dissent to this position (good old Stasi days peeking from under the covers).

Further, they’re going to lengths no other European country is going to in pursuit of this goal of covering for a genocide, all out of national guilt? It is a delusional position to take.

Now, if they actually were holding their tongue on this instead of providing unconditional support and cover, no one would be bringing up that these are the grandchildren of Nazis lecturing us about the right thing to do here :)

> Germany is the absolute last country on this planet to lecture the rest of us on how to criticize Israel

What a bad take. Germany, if it learned its lessons from the Holocaust, which was a genocide they did on the Jewish population, is absolutely the FIRST country in the world to teach Israel that what it's doing is absolutely abhorrent. Don't repeat my mistakes, so to say.

> if it learned its lessons from the Holocaust

It clearly did not, because it is actively supporting a genocide right now.

Anyhow, I can’t be bothered to spend too much time expanding on this position - so you’ll have to either get it or not. I don’t care either way tbh.

We are on the same page. Germany IS supporting Israel's genocide on Palestine right now.

So they perpetrated the Holocaust, claimed that they learned from their mistakes and drowned themselves in guilt, and now act as holier than thou unconditional defenders of Israel as it commits a genocide in Gaza.

If they want to support a genocide - regardless of who the perpetrator is - then they’re tacitly admitting that they have learnt nothing and are just following in the footsteps of their Third Reich forefathers.

At least the Japanese didn’t drown us with hypocritical bullshit about guilt and repentance.

> So they perpetrated the Holocaust, claimed that they learned from their mistakes and drowned themselves in guilt, and now act as holier than thou unconditional defenders of Israel as it commits a genocide in Gaza.

Yes, because they haven't learned shit from their past.

No, there is nothing “complex” about Gaza - neither before nor after Oct 7.

The late Michael Brooks shared a small thought experiment that might help elucidate this: https://youtu.be/7ebPj_FqM5Q

It’s one thing to call the situation “nothing complex”, but there was no solution in this clip.

Usually when people call something complex they mean that the solution is complex.

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> idea that the injustice & domination should continue because there is no clear cut solution is pure evil

It’s prioritisation. There are multiple horrible civil wars, rebellions and displacements happening around the world right now. Every person doesn’t need to have a position on each one; there is an argument that’s counterproductive. (Exhibit A: the Columbia protests.)

Since you brought up the Columbia protests and general dissent inside the US: how many such conflicts and genocides are directly backed and propped up by the US?

> how many such conflicts and genocides are directly backed and propped up by the US?

Fewer than you’d think [1]. (We send aid to Sudan and are practically uninvolved in Myanmar.)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_confli...

Well, that’s my point. This is the only major ongoing conflict where the US and major Western powers are virtually unconditionally backing the “bad guys”.

So it makes sense that there would be more attention and pushback on this one versus others.

Hmm, thank you. Hadn’t considered that.

(It’s interesting because it requires disentangling anti-American sentiments from the equation.)

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How exactly do you suggest that a country like Germany (since Germanys inaction was the topic of this thread) reach those goals? How does Germany end the blockade of Gaza? How does Germany end apartheid in the West Bank?

Just because I can’t do anything to improve the situation does not mean that I am in favour of the status quo. That does not make me evil either.

Are you seriously asking me this question, or is this an attempt at a rhetorical? And why are we shifting the goalposts once again?

How do you think apartheid South Africa ended? How does any country pressure another?

In a supposedly democratic nation like Germany, how would citizens pressure their government to stop supporting & providing diplomatic cover for another to commit a genocide & maintain apartheid?

> Just because I can’t do anything to improve the situation does not mean that I am in favour of the status quo. That does not make me evil either.

It does. The Germans who stood aside when the Nazis rose to power and the soldiers just "executing orders" were as much to blame for the rise of Hitler as the ones supporting it. Not taking a side against evil is taking evil's side. And you of all peoples should have learned from your history. Genocide is bad.

> How does Germany end apartheid in the West Bank?

By applying pressure on the international community to boycott Israel. Same way Germany is applying pressure on the international community to boycott Russia.

The idea that Isreal is occupying the west bank and or Gaza goes back to the 1967 6 day war and has jack all to do with Palestinian borders real or imaginary.

Those lands were the property of Jordan and Egypt...

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Can you please stop posting flamewar comments? It's against the site guidelines because it destroys the curious conversation we're trying for. I know that topic is both important and activating, but that makes it more important, not less, to stick to the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Instead, please make your substantive points thoughtfully, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.

Was the problem with my comment the use of profanity? I did not insult the commenter, nor did I make any ad hominem attacks.

I don’t see any rules against profanity in general, or the use of profanity to respond to an argument. I also took the time to clarify why the argument is “bullshit”. But maybe I am missing something.

Not profanity per se, but if you lead with "Bullshit." then you're already well into aggressive flamewar mode.

"You can try all you want to erase [etc.]" is a form of personal attack. You don't need that.

Got it, I will dial it down a bit then :)

> A country like Japan at least doesn't even pretend to have learnt anything

I was under the impression that they had a lot to say about how WWII taught them the virtues of pacifism?

Germany has learned to be critical of themselves, and not be critical of others. Especially the victims of Nazisim.

That worked when Germany was occupied, or split in half, or broke.

Now that a unified Germany is in a position of leadership, rethinking history in terms of absolute right and wrong is probably a good idea.

Of course you’ll learn nothing when you’re not allowed to question…

David Simon (creator of The Wire) once gave a lecture at a Jewish conference trying to make the case that Jews in America should be uniquely aligned with the plight of Black Americans in the inner cities. The case was that the Jews went through an experience during WW2 that makes them uniquely qualified to always align in solidarity against oppression, poverty, and general suffering.

To be children of ethnic cleansing (obviously I’m describing the Holocaust lightly here) and still commit the same crime in Gaza is profound.

It’s a great point you bring up, that being, what have we learned?

Jews in America are not the ones committing a genocide in Gaza. Quite a significant proportion of the American Jews are absolutely horrified.

Can I ask why you think that American Jews are any more responsible for the crimes of Israel in Gaza than non-Jews, or Jews elsewhere in the world? Do you think that Judaism is a monolith, or that American Jews are the same as all Jews?

I ask because blaming Jews elsewhere for the acts of Israel, and conflating all of Jewry with Israel is a common tactic of anti-Semitic movements. I can't tell if you are doing that intentionally, or if you have just made your point poorly.

Assuming you are acting in good faith, you should look at the history of Black/Jewish relations in the civil rights eras. There was a disproportionate amount of support from American Jews (compared to the population at large) towards the civil rights movement.

MLK himself was outspoken about the support from American Jews:

"How could there be anti-Semitism among Negroes when our Jewish friends have demonstrated their commitment to the principle of tolerance and brotherhood not only in the form of sizable contributions, but in many other tangible ways, and often at great personal sacrifice. Can we ever express our appreciation to the rabbis who chose to give moral witness with us in St. Augustine during our recent protest against segregation in that unhappy city? Need I remind anyone of the awful beating suffered by Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld of Cleveland when he joined the civil rights workers there in Hattiesburg, Mississippi? And who can ever forget the sacrifice of two Jewish lives, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, in the swamps of Mississippi? It would be impossible to record the contribution that the Jewish people have made toward the Negro's struggle for freedom—it has been so great."

I would say that Israel/Zionism wants to conflate worldwide jewelry with itself.

And the KKK claims to represent all whites....

It does not matter that someone claims to represent a population, if in obvious fact, they do not.

Agreed - living in New York City, I know quite a lot of Jews. Not a single one supports the genocide.

> An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else,

They know perfectly well that their settlers are conducting daily pogroms against Palestinian villages in the West Bank, protected by their own army. They know perfectly well that thousands of Palestinians are detained for years without due process, trialled by military courts, kept in a state of apartheid.

They just don't care.

I think they meant, they are born into the situation and don't have an outsiders perspective, not that they are ignorant of what's happening

The situation is not static. The oppression of the Palestinians is active, progressive, and happens every day. This is not a state you're born in, but it is something you actively participate in or decide to ignore. Those who say "this is just the situation now" are disingenuous, as new crimes by one side against the other are perpetrated every day.

I agree. Dwelling on the past is pointless. All of this is new.

> 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).

I understand that you are talking about the recent era, but I wonder if you could speak to the history of the creation of Israel, and the German perception of that. Is there any discussion about the European role in the creation of Israel? After the end of the war, it isn’t as if there was a movement to return property and homes to European Jews. If anything, the powers in Europe after the war (and, in the case of Eichmann, pre war as well) saw Zionism as a solution for what to do with the Jews.

Is there any sympathy or responsibility felt in European communities for essentially using Zionism as a solution?

From my experience, the history of Israel as discussed in the media usually begins in 1948. A standard phrase is "The state was founded and immediately declared war at".

Sometimes discussion goes back a bit further about how the area was a "League of Nations Mandatory Area" before, that was for some reason was administered by the British.

That's usually it.

An interesting detail is that the legitimacy of Israel here is usually explained with the UN (the Partition Plan resolutions and the accepted membership) - not with any kind of divine right. I think that's quite different from how (right wing) Israelis see the source of legitimacy themselves.

That's a whole other fork of the story.

I was basically getting at how does Europe see its role in the fact that a big part of what made Israel possible was the more or less complete displacement of European jewry during the war, and the complete lack of will to create a place in post-war europe for their own Jewish community.

This perspective comes from my own family history where a few relatives managed to survive the war in Nazi custody, but then spent longer in Western European refugee camps postwar than they spent in the concentration and death camps during the war. The entire family ended up outside of Europe (USA and Israel) since it was the most viable path out of the camps.

Basically the success of Zionism is due in no small part to the active support from Europe in the years after the war, and my question is, do Europeans see that in as self-interested terms as it can look. More succinctly, does the Western European community realize that creating Israel was a solution to the post-war "Jewish Problem" that conveniently did not require those nations to create a hospitable place for jewish communities within their own borders.

That's a very good question, and thank you for sharing the experience of your family.

I can't really say.

From what I see here, there is not a lot of discussion in that area. (That was the first time I heard about those refugee camps, but that may just be me)

From what I understand, the discussion for a long time was more about whether Jews would even want to come back to.Germany, after all the other Germans did to them.

German reflection on the Nazi period also happened in multiple stages. From what I know, the initial phase, right after the war, was quite inadequate. Yes, there were the Nuremberg Trials, but both Allies and Germans were interested in quickly getting back to some kind of "normal" and rebuilding the country - the US and the Soviets in particular in preparation for the imminent conflict between them. So a lot of Nazi personnel stayed in office.

I believe, support of Israel in that time was seen as a sort of reparation that conveniently made it unnecessary to engage with the Nazi past on a deeper level. (I did wonder when learning more about the conflict recently, why the Allies didn't designate some are inside former Germany as a Jewish state - let's say the Rhineland. That would have been entirely justified IMO. But of course the question of Israel was already settled at that time.)

There was a sort of "second stage" a generation later, during the Civil Rights movement, where students forced a revisit of the Nazi past. I believe, a lot of the currently known details of the Holocaust are coming from that phase. But I think they didn't say a lot about Israel and just saw it as an emancipatory, left-wing project.

Today, people here are enormously proud that Jewish communities exist again in Germany, though it's understood that it's still a lot less than before the war.

It would be an interesting question how the sentiment of German leadership towards Jews was in the 50s and 60s.

In case you are interested in the bigger picture, the camps were called Displaced Person camps in English. Most had closed by 1952, with the last one in Germany closing in 1957.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displaced_persons_camps_in_pos...

“Desperate and traumatised Jewish survivors refused to return to neighbours who had denounced or deported them; when some were returned to Poland anyway and met with pogroms and hatred, all prospect of Jewish repatriation evaporated. Following sharp criticism from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which was caring for Jewish survivors, in December 1945 Truman opened up visas in excess of the usual quotas for some 23,000 DPs in the American zone, two-thirds of them Jewish, and from January 1946 UNRRA too recognised Jews as a national group, to be housed apart from other refugees. In this case (and no other), the Soviets and Americans were on the same page, agreeing that refuge outside Europe must be found, ideally in Palestine. The British, having learned how strongly Palestine’s Arab population would resist this project, objected until, in 1948, they surrendered their mandate, leaving – as one departing official put it – the key under the mat. Of some 230,000 registered Jewish DPs, just over 130,000 would settle in the new state of Israel and about 65,000 in the United States.”

From a recent review in the LRB of a book (Lost Souls) about those camps and their inhabitants. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n10/susan-pedersen/owner...

Europeans were eager to see Jews gone, one way or another. “Pogroms and hatred” sounds pretty violent.

I think that part of history is largely forgotten. I don't think a lot of Europeans have much self-interest in mind when picking a side in this conflict today.

Well it's in their self interest to deny any culpability. That way older generations could say "Jews get out of Poland! Go back to Palestine!" And younger generations can say "Jews get out of Palestine! Go back to Poland!" Without acknowledging that taken together, these statements show they just don't want Jews to exist anywhere.

And what if the jews set up shop in your living room? What would you say to that?

What if the Arab states stole property multiple times the size of Israel from Mizrahi Jews? Which they did.

The Arab states clearly owe Israelis more reparations than the other way around.

If a genocide survivor showed up on my doorstep with nowhere else to go, I hope that my reaction would be: Welcome fellow man. You must be desperate. How can I help.

Nope. It's basically forgotten. At least, I haven't heard anyone talking about it, either in my circles or in the media.

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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.

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.

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.

>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

Propaganda? I am not very familiar with the details and frankly I don’t really care, but at the two pro-Palestinian rallies that I saw were used "From the river to the sea" slogans, and like all protesters were okay with that.

Different words/phrases have different meanings to different groups/over time.

To Zionists, Zionism means that Jews have the right to have a homeland, free of persecution. To non-Zionists, it means that Zionists think that they have the right to a specific area of land (Israel) and that that land is their god-given right, and that they are free to use violence to obtain it. To a secular person, the idea of someone having a "god-given" right to a piece of land is insanity.

"From the river to the sea" has been used to mean "Palestinians will be free everywhere" and also "the Jews that are violently occupying Palestine will be killed from the river to the sea".

I can't speak for specific protestors you encountered, but the majority of people I know that are anti-Israel don't want "all Jews to die" or even any of them. They just want the genocide to stop, for people to stop dying. It's really that simple. Protestors are protesting violence.

What evidence of this do you see? Non Jewish natural born Americans also outnumber Jews in America, yet I don’t see any immigrant students getting deported for criticizing Americans.

Jews have disproportionate levels of soft power in the US. Israel receives billions in support every year. Anti Muslim propaganda is pushed out every year in Hollywood. The medias coverage of Gaza is essentially one big lie by omission. Many states pass laws aimed to deter criticism of Israel.

I don’t see any other group in America that receives this level of support.

I thought I wrote pretty clearly what evidence I have: the EU has about 50 times more Muslims than Jews. That translates into political power in democratic societies.

I'm not an expert on US politics and the reasoning for why the US supports Israel. I do however think that it's sensible to see Israel, with its relatively free elections, women rights, entrepreneurship etc as a more natural ally to the US than other countries in the Middle East, regardless of the "soft-power" you're referring to. The fact that some of its enemies also threaten the US probably plays a role too.

> Anti-terrorism rhetorics has indeed previously led to terrible crimes, but I wouldn't suppose that's a reason to support pro-terrorism rhetorics

Opposing genocide is not supporting terrorism. Labelling support for basic human rights as being pro-terrorism is, well, part of the genocide.

What are you even commenting on? Did I (or anyone?) say that opposing genocide is supporting terrorism? Did I say that human rights are pro-terrorism?

The parent comment was dismissing anti-terrorism rhetorics because previously they were used to committing crimes. That sounds illogical to me, and that's what I was commenting on.

> just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead

So naturally, the logical response is to wish that on others. Seriously, wat?

> 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.

This "entirety of the surrounding population want them dead" language is both dehumanizing, false, and (perhaps not intended by you) genocidal.

The "surrounding population" is not a monolith. I imagine only a very small minority of people want all Jewish Israelis dead. I do Palestinian liberation work with many non-Jewish people from the middle east (I'm Jewish) and have yet to meet a single one who wants me dead.

They all want an end to Zionism.

Some may want it replaced with an Islamic government (which at its best is not different from the ideal "Zionism" you may hear defended by liberal Zionists, and at its worst is no different from the Zionism instituted by the modern state of Israel today)

Most want it replaced with a secular state where everyone has equal rights.

If your intent was to explain the mindset of an "ordinary Israeli citizen" who supports Zionism, then I agree with you, but it's dangerous to say something like this without distinguishing why this is a flawed mindset which can only exist due to an extensive system of propaganda.

> Most want it replaced with a secular state where everyone has equal rights.

I believe that this is true of most of the people you've worked with. However, polling in the West Bank and Gaza finds that to be a fairly unpopular position. Quoting https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/what-do-... :

> These numbers are not the same as popular support for a single state “from the river to the sea” with equal rights accorded to Arab and Jewish citizens, as in recent international proposals. In 2020 polls, only about 10 percent of West Bank and Gazan respondents favored this option over either a Palestinian state or two states. Notably, a theological premise underpins the one-state preference: A majority of the Palestinian respondents believe that “eventually, the Palestinians will control almost all of Palestine, because God is on their side”—that is, not because Palestinian control will flow from demographic changes or from a joint arrangement with Israel.

I agree with you that it's not accurate to say that the entirety of Jordan or Egypt want Israelis dead. However, if we're trading anecdote for anecdote: I know someone who grew up in Saudi, and he told me that when he was growing up it was completely normal to insult someone by calling them a jew (especially someone you perceive as being stingy, scammy, or reneging on a deal). He said it was so normalized that when he came to North America, he had an awkward adjustment period before he realized that was considered unacceptable here.

Now, there's a big difference between calling someone a jew as an insult and wanting all jews dead, but I have no trouble believing that antisemitism is very common within the middle east. Don't forget that it wasn't so long ago that there was a mass exodus of jews from the Middle East and North Africa to Israel, which can only be explained by some degree of "push factor" pushing them away from those countries. So while "wants them dead" is probably an exaggeration, you have to empathize a bit with the fact that almost every other middle eastern country was quite hostile towards jews in the past 100 years, and there's not an especially good guarantee that they would not be hostile again.

A quarter of Israeli citizens immigrated there, so probably quite a few of them do know something else.

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.

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 ?

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.

> 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.

And they may even find it comforting that it's OK to bomb innocent civilians for years because that's the only solution they can think of to deal with their own dissatisfied populace ultimately, when things will predictably get worse in Europe as well...?

It's not Russia or terrorism they are afraid of.

> 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.

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.

>> An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else, just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead.

You have to look at the other side too. Palestinian's are born knowing that Israeli's have taken lots of their land through violent force. And they want to take more of it. And while the Israeli's live in a well developed wealthy nation they are condemned to poverty.

Consider the King David Hotel Bombing[1]. Israeli terrorists murdered nearly 100 people. In 2006 Netanyahu presided over the unveiling of a memorial plaque, alongside some of the terrorists involved in it, with the plaque specifically remembering the terrorist who died in the attack. So Israeli terrorism is fine, even worthy of praise.

And while the Israelis may grow up scared that the Palestinian's want them dead, 10's of thousands of Palestinian children won't grow up at all.

>> I'm German and I really see a lot of the blame for this on our states as well

I agree. It seems that all over Europe at least, the governments are largely going against public opinion on this issue. But it's not the first time we've seen this (Iraq being a recent example).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

No question about that.

I found it a remarkable detail that from the shore of Gaza, you see the port of and industrial zone of Ashdod, only a few kilometers away. It seems almost like a permanent reminder that the entire area is in fact well-developed - the wasteland only exists where they live.

And in the US insurrectionists are pardoned. That’s a striking parallel.

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.

Are we talking about the expansion out of Lebanon in 2000 or the expansion out of Gaza in 2005?

We are talking about all settlements into territory that was not Israel's regardless of the year. The settlements like that are internationally illegal precisely because they are clear attempt to use civilian population as shields in a land takeover.

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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.

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> 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.

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.

When westerners and people like Bill Clinton have got involved they have mostly proposed having a Palestinian state with their own land but the Palestinians have mostly objected to Israel existing so we have the current stuff.

> but the Palestinians have mostly objected to Israel existing so we have the current stuff.

It was not the Palestinians who killed Rabin.

They were killing each other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settler_violence

Yes, there was an exchange of job seekers, however even that was among a deliberately resource-constrained Gaza, with no hope of the situation improving.

Hamas was definitely not helping in those regards and Oct.7 cannot be excused. But Israel also never did anything to support an alternative to Hamas.

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I recommend you reflect a little deeper on this topic. Maybe look a little bit into how Jews were treated in Europe and the middle east.

The Anti-Israeli crowd is throwing universal human rights under the bus. That crowd doesn't care about human rights under Arab and Muslim rule. It wants to see some imaginary "justice" at the cost of murdering the Jewish people. It promotes antisemitism including justification of the Holocaust.

I'm Israeli and your "relatable" is nonsense. Israelis engaged with the other side in good faith many times. We made peace with Jordan and Egypt. We negotiated with the Palestinians during the Oslo process. What we got in return was a suicide bombing campaign in the late 1990's early 2000's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_at... and then we got Oct 7th. Israelis would be happy with a solution that leaves the with those human rights that you appear to be championing, such as the right not to be murdered.

Modern anti-zionism is just another incarnation of antisemitism. There is really no other way to look at it or explain it. The selectivity and the images used are 1:1 with antisemitism throughout the ages. This is not about whether you can critique Israel or its government. This is purely Jew hatred and racism under the mask of anti-Israeli.

EDIT: And for people who are reading this comment who think antisemitism isn't a reasonable argument here I would recommend the book: https://www.amazon.ca/People-Love-Dead-Jews-Reports/dp/03935... ... Once you read this you will have a better understanding of the different forms antisemitism takes and learn a bit of interesting history too.

Almost half of Jewish Israelis polled said they supported killing everyone in Gaza. https://archive.is/nNzq4 About 80 percent supported ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

I don't think it's just propaganda. These folks know they'll materially benefit from Palestinians being dispossessed of their remaining land.

From the start of Israel’s assault on Gaza, the vast majority of Israelis haven’t shown any concern about the suffering in Gaza. Those who campaign for an end to the war do so purely as a means to secure the release of the hostages.

The civilians even blocked aid entering Gaza.

That's not surprising. They remember the scenes of ecstatic celebration on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank on october 7. And the fact is that the people of Gaza could end the conflict whenever they want. All they need to do is surrender and hand over the hostages. You might think i'm oversimplifying but actually that's really it.

> All they need to do is surrender and hand over the hostages. You might think i'm oversimplifying but actually that's really it.

“The people of Gaza” have about as much chance of doing this as the ICC has of arresting and putting Netanyahu on trial.

Maybe maybe not but i see no major movement in Gaza towards surrendering. Of course seeing how the UN and most media outlets are working so well to supress any anti hamas narratives in Gaza (it's either that, or everyone in Gaza supports hamas, an absurd suggestion but one which would ironically fully vindicate Israel. The dishonesty of the UN upsets me) , even if there was we would be unlikely to hear about it.

> Of course seeing how the UN and most media outlets are working so well to supress any anti hamas narratives in Gaza

... You have evidence of this? Or, are you making things up without any evidence at all to smear the UN; as we've seen Israel do countless times during this holocaust?

What does surrender even mean here? How do Gazans surrender?

If people were able to hit back from within the concentration camps would the inmates cheer it on? If they did would that have given Germany the right to do what they did?

Imagine if your city was invaded by a powerful enemy. They bomb the place to rubble. They blow up every hospital. They enact a blockade and hinder aid organizations from providing basic food. They do this for nearly two years straight and show no sign of stopping.

They say, “just surrender and it will all be over.” Are you going to trust that?

What are you actually expecting an average Israeli who does not agree with this to do? This comment strikes me as wild considering the exact same thing is playing out in America right now, and a bunch of people are making up their minds about "Americans" and what they stand for.

The same has been true for Iran, only up until now (and probably still) we have always had a more nuanced discussion - its the Iranian government, not the people of Iran.

Come on, the government of many countries does not necessarily represent the people.

Israel is supposed to be a democratic state. If the average Israeli disagrees with this they can speak up. The only voices we are hearing now are those who support it's current activities. Those who oppose are fewer and quieter.

what evidence do you have to support that claim?

I'm also baffled by the suggestion that democracy truly represents a majority and the apparent belief that dissent is quickly processed and rectified by democracy. Which country do you think shows this is working well?

It might be true that I am in a bubble and I am only hearing voices supporting these atrocities.

Democracy need not represent the majority, but if it works against the majority without any repercussions then who is to blame? Will the leadership be held accountable?

This war was started because the government knew they can get away with it. Every citizen is complicit in every crime committed by their government. Don't the citizens enjoy the fruits of crime even after claiming to oppose the actions of their government?

What specifically do you want individual citizens to do? Are you yourself complicit in everything your government does? Do you even know what they do?

Israelis are protesting, for better or worse this is what democracy looks like.

Another question to ask, does every Russian support the war in Ukraine? What can they do about it?

Yes, I am complicit in the crimes of my government. I am helpless do much, but the crime must be acknowledged. We are a part of the system, no sense in burying our head in the sand.

Only when a crime is acknowledge, we can talk about punishments. Will Israeli people not profit from this war? Protests will have some teeth if steps be taken so this will not repeat itself. I don't see this happening.

Look at USA, war after war. Presidents are blamed but not punished and the population enjoys the economical hegemony that is the fruit of war.

People aren't speaking up because it's only a democracy on paper. If you're too vocal about your opposition to Israel you will be taken care of.

> What are you actually expecting an average Israeli who does not agree with this to do?

Funny you say this because you don’t have to look far for people saying that “Gazans deserve what’s happening” because the average Gazan should fight back against Hamas.

Some things to consider:

* The majority of the Palestinian population are minors (< 18)

* The last nationwide election in Palestine was 2006

In other words, the last time an election was held, the majority of Palestinians weren't yet born, let alone old enough to vote in it. So, it's difficult to hold the Palestinian people en masse responsible for Hamas in the same way we'd hold Israelis responsible for their current government, who held their last election in 2022.

The same thing has been said generally about Muslims and Islamic terror organizations.

Well anyway, it is still crazy to me that somebody is making a decision about the entire population of a country based on the governments actions in 2025.

I upvoted this article because it reminds me that there are Israelis who are opposed to what is going on. And newspapers that take risk to report on it. And maybe even military investigators trying to stop it.

It’s no different with the American military.

By now Gaza has been so destroyed that it has become a nation of children. About 40% of people there are age 14.

Brainwashing by the government, religion, the media, schools, etc is what I suspect based on documentaries I watched. It’s heartbreaking what people can be made to think and say. I feel bad for the citizens of Israel to have become detached so much from humanity.

> if the Israeli people really wanted anything different, it was their human duty and utmost responsibility to stop this by now

It’s wrong to single out Israel. The US is funding this mass murder of children and blocking attempts to stop it. It should correctly be called the US-Israeli genocide of Gaza.

For my part, as an American and a nobody, I feel helpless to stop the atrocities my government is participating in.

But I’ve found, for myself, the reason to fight the genocide - however I can - isn’t because I expect to stop it. I am powerless to do that. For me it’s to maintain a sense of human dignity in the face of evil.

Knowing my country’s role in the mass murder of children, shrugging my shoulders would feel like I’m surrendering something precious.

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.

I highly recommend the book by Prof. Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, from the academic perspective of the situations. His relative was once the mayor of Jerusalem and he's the Editor of the reputable Journal of Palestine Studies based in the US. The book begins with an examination of correspondence from 1889 between his relative Yusuf Diya ad-Din Pasha al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, and Theodor Herzl, father of modern political Zionism [1],[2].

Although the book was published back in 2020 prior to the current conflict, he correctly labeled the many years siege on Gaza by Israel as the act of war against Palestinian people, and it turn out to be manifested in the all out war in 2024.

1] The Hundred Years' War on Palestine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hundred_Years%27_War_on_Pa...

[2] A new abyss’: Gaza and the hundred years’ war on Palestine (2024):

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/11/a-new-abyss-ga...

> Be aware that Jews are not native to Palestine, except those that had been living there before the state was founded.

Not true, many Semitic Jews who fled from those lands due to persecution went to Europe and North Africa, that includes Ashkenazi and Sephardim Jews.

The difficulty I have with your statement is akin to denying a white, blue eyed aboriginal in Australia their heritage to the land just because one of their ancestors slept with a European colonialist - its fundamentally racist. White skinned blue eyed Australian aboriginals exist.

Palestinians are genetically closer to the jews that populated those lands centuries ago. The reality is palestinians ancestors were mostly jews who decided to convert to islam. Denying their rights to continue living there is absurd.

The state of Israel is just another example of euro white colonialism.

Im not saying that any of this excuses the nationalist movement Israel is today, im just stating a fact that semitic descendants in Europe have heritage to those lands. Just because someone appears white and blue-eyed doesn't necessarily negate that.

Judaism is an ethno-religion, so while some people may have no connection to semitic people, others will have a closer connection and its discriminatory to simply say “they are not native” which my original post was critical of.

>Palestinians are genetically closer to the jews that populated those lands centuries ago. The reality is palestinians ancestors were mostly jews who decided to convert to islam.

Thank you for pointing this fact, if this is true it makes the Israel govt as self-hating Jews, and is very sad and ironic at the same time. The Israel govt should perform thorough DNA test on the Palestinian people. Potentially many Palestinians can have higher Jews ancestors percentage than the emigrants themselves.

Just because they are not native doesn't mean they can't live there, but they shouldn't live while oppressing the native Palestinians and prevent them from returning in order to preserve an ethnic majority.

Jews outside of Palestine are not uniquely descended from Jews that lived there 2000 years ago. Also the idea of Jews as a homogeneous people is a fairly recent phenomenon, people married into Jewish families, converted etc...

Even having mixed parentage can make you an oppressor. During slavery, mixed race people were often used in Brazil to hunt escaped slaves. At the end of the day its not about people's parentage but to what group they get put into and whether they choose to use any privilege they have to fight against oppression.

I would put myself in the timeframe of the Holocaust era. Germans were next to the concentration camps and they did nothing. Germans were conditioned to support nationalism. And they trusted the nationalist party (known as nazionale Party). The Germans had convinced themselves that the Jews were different people. (And the Jews had earned much infamy during the time when Germany was suffering economically.)

Today, we see Israelis who are taught to perceive Palestinians as enemies. They see the Palestinian flag during birthrights and are taught by the IDF to hate it. And they are also taught that the west bank is dangerous and they are not to go there. Then we see IDF operations in West Bank and we see silence. We know Gaza is in a plight caused by Israel and we see silence and ignorance. Israel is bad. Israelis are bad too. And the polls have shown that 80% wish for Gaza to be cleansed, 56% support the forced expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel, 47% want the IDF to act according to the Biblical war against Jericho. That is effectively 47% want murder while 33% want expulsion (equivalent of the ghettos+concentration camps). The benefit of doubt is disappearing rapidly fast.

And the west has been supporting Israel for decades in this campaign. This is the second millenial crusade of Europe (aka the west).

There is strong support within Israel for the genocide of Palestinians.

Unfortunately religious zionism isn't limited to Jews. Christian evangelicals also support it, and they make up a huge percentage of voting americans (and even worse, elected officials).

https://theconversation.com/in-israel-calls-for-genocide-hav...

https://theconversation.com/christian-zionism-hasnt-always-b...

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.

These people are manipulated by the media and by their government and by their spiritual leaders.

I sometimes wonder if a section of the public just wants plausible deniability for committing atrocities, and their government is happy to provide that for them.

Could be, but that doesn’t really matter in the end. Support is support.

You were judging the morality of the people in your above comment. Being manipulated into giving support doesn't make the people bad.

Anyone can be mislead factually, but we can't accept the idea that being told a crime is okay gives you a moral license to do it - otherwise every neo-nazi would escape among innumerable other criminals.

I am just not willing to say a whole country is bad because a current bad regime has support.

That's true, but you have to be realistic about the influence the five to fifteen percent with good morals are going to have in the long run. Especially when they also know the odds and choose to emigrate if they are able. There may have been a resistance in Germany, didn't succeed in the end.

At some point people have to be responsible for themselves if the concept of responsibility is to have any meaning at all. Our views and actions are all the product of our environment.

> Our views and actions are all the product of our environment.

And if that view is manipulated by people way more powerful than you...

I'm all for personal responsibility but we have laws against certain practices because companies can hack brains so well. You don't think states can do it just as well if not better?

Where do you draw the line? Was the thoroughly indoctrinated SS officer shooting untermenschen responsible, or was he just a victim of manipulation? What about the average Nazi who just went to work every day and thought the Fuhrer was doing a decent job?

I just can't implicate a whole country is bad because their regime is bad. I initially had to pause when you questioned "bad regime, good people" but find I can't say all of Iran or China is bad because of their govt - the countries I most often think of when that phrase comes to mind.

Edit: where do you draw the line? Is an immigrant from a 'bad' country a bad person? Why didn't we try more Germans if what you say about support is true?

I don’t mean to suggest that everyone living under a bad government is bad. Just that you don’t have a situation where the entire populace is good but can’t get their government under control. There may be minority rule. Maybe as low as 1/4th of the population supports the government and its actions. But that is still a lot. Far too many for me to say that “the nation” is against it.

There's something deeply sick in a society where the strongest objections to the genocide being carried out are not in opposition to the genocide itself, but rather that the indiscriminate killing could reduce the chances of recovering hostages.

> I’m becoming very skeptical of the “bad government, good people” idea. Governments need popular support. This goes even for horrible dictatorships

You're either being disingenuous or have never experienced real dictatorship. I lived under theocracy in IRAN for more than half my life and I promise you that the Westerns screaming from the back "just revolt!" have no clue what they are talking about.

These regimes control communication, the media, intact laws that punishes any kind of dissent and often has multi layered of security forces to keep the population in check (not including the regular army and police).

It's easy to shout this when it's not your life, your sibling, your child or significant other's life on the line. These regimes will not hesitate to murder their own citizens to stay in power.

I don't know enough about Israel's internal politics and their society to make an assertive comment but what I _can_ say, is that from my interactions with them, they seem like ordinary and kind people who have no intention of harming me or my family.

Unless you are psychopath, you are not going to wake up one day and decide to murder people.

>it was their human duty and utmost responsibility to stop this

Do you apply the same standard to Palestinians for not overthrowing Hamas, to Americans for the US being the key enabler of Israel's military operations, to the citizens of any Western country for not adding Israel next to Russia in all their sanction laws? If not, why?

Or maybe we should be careful with assigning collective guilt and not throw stones in glass house?

And you can think the same way about russians. They support all horrors russian people do to Ukrainian cities. And many are trying to earn some extra cash out of it.

No different how Americans are brain washed that they are supporting a noble goal democracy at whatever cost around the world

Are they brainwashed? Are they really supporting?

In 2025 USA is supporting russian dictator more than Ukrainian democratic government.

> In 2025 USA is supporting russian dictator more than Ukrainian democratic government.

Are they? I see USA still supplying Ukraine with weapons, how many weapons have Russia gotten from USA? None, USA is not selling any weapons to Russia still.

It's a state founded on ethnic cleansing. People were already living there when settlers came to create an ethno-state for themselves.

In late 1947, their militias begun a campaign of massacring and expelling Palestinians from mostly defenseless villages. These refuges pouring into neighboring Arab countries is what prompted the 1948 war. When the war ended, they murdered any civilians trying to return to their homes.

Gaza was originally a refugee camp created for receiving these expelled people.

The ethnic cleansing and denial of rights has continued ever since. The current Gaza war is not when the crimes against humanity started. Israel has been commiting crimes against humanity throughout its entire existence.

> People were already living there when settlers came to create an ethno-state for themselves

Including a sizeable Jewish minority.

The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region. But it’s a continuation of outsiders (in particular Westerners, though the Iranians also bought this settler-colonialist nonsense which led to their recent miscalculations) with no connection to the land drawing up broad moral claims for how the Middle East should be divided up.

> Including a sizeable Jewish minority.

There was a Jewish community in Palestine (mostly centered around Jerusalem) but they did not come up with the Zionist project. Actually, many were opposed and some of their descendants still do so to this day.

> The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region

The (European) architects of the Zionist project literally called it colonialism.

"You are being invited to help make history. It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews … How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial." -Theodor Herzl

Ze'ev Jabotinsky literally compared the Zionist project to other colonial projects when arguing the people living there would fight back against their colonizers and the need for numbers and strength to counter them.

> Ze'ev Jabotinsky literally compared the Zionist project to other colonial projects

The Zionist Project is comparable to colonialism. That doesn’t make it settler-colonialism. (And Jabotinsky isn’t the final word on anything other than himself.)

The whole notion of settling outside borders is marketing for annexation but has total support from Western Governments, yet those same governments are absolutely against the annexation of Ukraine.

… fuck I hate politics :(

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Sure. I can find terrible people opining on the case for a Palestinian state, too. That isn’t really an argument about what it is.

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There are a lot of Jews that have built their lives in Western countries and are not keen on joining a ultra orthodox ethno state.

Always good to remember that most Jews aren't religious crazies- although the crazies breed faster unfortunately.

And history tells us that at some point those Jews are going to be a target. Other than the anomaly of the last 50 years or so. It wasn't that long ago that Jews in the US could not be members of golf clubs or were otherwise discriminated against. Antisemitism is on the rise again. If you think you can somehow magically decouple Jewish existence from Zion/Israel then think again. I've also built my life in a western country and antisemitism runs deep below the surface. Up until recently expressing that was frowned upon but seems that's changing.

I mean we know you guys run the media, control the money, run the US government, and fire space lasers from Mars. It's all fun and game until they burn your house and worse.

I'm also worried about Israel in many ways (re: ultra-orthodox ethno state) but if you think that living in Christian states or states of other ethnicity is somehow safer I'm not too sure about that. Even the European Jews that thought they were just Europeans found out they're not. And that story has repeated throughout history. To me a successful, democratic, moral, and Jewish, Israel is important part of the future of the Jewish people. And I'm not going to join the mob that wants it destroyed.

> The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region.

"Outsiders" like the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association that funded Zionist settlement in Palestine? The problem with folks who try to claim that this is ahistorical is that contemporary Zionists talked all the time about colonizing Palestine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Jewish_Colonizatio...

In 1920 (the year when British took over Palestine from the Ottomans) the jewish population was less than 10% Jewish and represented less than 1% of global Jewry. By 1948, after the British flooded in Jewish migrants mainly from Europe and the Americas, the population became about ~65% + arab and 35+% Jewish. Zionism was always predicated on Ethnic cleansing from the start and the founders of zionists were always aware of that fact.

“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country.” - Theodore Herzl , Father of Zionism in 1895.

"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement]. I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." - David Ben Gurion, Father of Israel.

"the world has become accustomed to the idea of mass migrations and has become fond of them. … Hitler – as odious as he is to us – has given this idea a good name in the world." - Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Founder of Revisionist Zionism, 1940.

Zionism is textbook settler-colonialism. I dont see it worth even arguing the point.

> how the Middle East should be divided up

Given how every group claims it is a holy place, I'd expect each group would want it held in a state of peace, prosperity, and reverence for the benefits of creation. Instead they all seem bent on holding their holy lands in states of violence, discord, and waste.

You're not wrong that there is deep external interference but wouldn't holy peoples rise above any of that to do better from every side?

There's plenty of videos of orthodox Jewish people getting brutalized in public by Israeli government thugs. There are many Jewish voices that oppose the genocide. Please don't conflate Judaism with a violent project of political extremism, even though the latter uses the former cynically as a "human shield".

> Please don't conflate Judaism with a violent project of political extremism

I’m not. I’m arguing that one can oppose what’s happening in Gaza without careening into counterproductiveness and calling for the destruction of Israel.

A state named "Israel" is not a prerequisite for Jewish people to live peacefully anywhere. In fact, it appears to be the opposite, based on historical fact. There are also Jewish communities that live peacefully with dignity in Iran.

> A state named "Israel" is not a prerequisite for Jewish people to live peacefully anywhere. In fact, it appears to be the opposite, based on historical fact

That's not my take from 2000 years of Jewish prosecution, in muslim countries or europe

There are Jewish communities within Iran, yes. But peacefully?

https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/iran/2025-06-27/ty-... (archive: https://archive.is/0qEg9)

One could blame this crackdown on Israel, sure. But that absolves the countries perpetuating persecution of Jews from their own share of responsibility in it. After all, when the American Government interned all those Japanese-Americans - did we blame Japan for it, or did we rightfully blame the American government?

I do not seek to defend Israel's actions against the Palestinian people, but to say that the Jews live "peacefully and with dignity" in places where they often are scapegoated, persecuted, and killed out of hand is not the way. Look at what happened to the Jewish populations of the region between the 40s and now, and you will see a grim picture of persecution, killings, and exodus.

nettanyahu has tried to bribe iranian jews to come to israel. they've chosen not to so I can't imagine its that bad for them there. additionally, iranian jews have positionsof power in government and mandated representation. it would be a very easy argument to make that iranian jews in iran are treated much better than non jewish palestinians have ever been treated in israel.

While most Iranian Jews left Iran and are currently in Israel, 200k compared to 9k left in Iran, so the numbers don't really support your statement

source?

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Jews

" In July 2007, Iran's Jewish community rejected financial emigration incentives to leave Iran. Offers ranging from 5,000 to 30,000 British pounds, financed by a wealthy expatriate Jew with the support of the Israeli government, were turned down by Iran's Jewish leaders.[90][106][107] To place the incentives in perspective, the sums offered were up to 3 times or more than the average annual income for an Iranian.[108] However, in late 2007 at least forty Iranian Jews accepted financial incentives offered by Jewish charities for immigrating to Israel.[109]"

Israel literally bombed their own jews in Iraq to force them to relocate to israel

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950%E2%80%931951_Baghdad_bo...

“Those who assign responsibility for the bombings to an Israeli or Iraqi Zionist underground movement suggest the motive was to encourage Iraqi Jews to immigrate to Israel.”

You’re stating a supposition as a fact.

> state named "Israel" is not a prerequisite for Jewish people to live peacefully anywhere

Sort of irrelevant. The state of Israel exists. Israelis who call that land their home exist.

Those calling for the destruction of Israel are advocating for a holy war in the Levant. A war that would lead to hundreds of thousands if not millions of casualties.

> A state named "Israel" is not a prerequisite for Jewish people to live peacefully anywhere. In fact, it appears to be the opposite, based on historical fact.

Whatever else you think, this is some massive misunderstanding of history.

Historically, the lack of a state for Jews was one of the main reasons Jews experienced the Holocaust, which originated the term Genocide. Half of the Jewish population, making up (iirc) 90% of the population of Europe, died, because they had nowhere else to go.

And of the ones that survived, they still had nowhere else to go, no one wanted to take them in. The only place they could go, and what was agreed to worldwide, was to go to then-Palestine. Then, the hundreds of thousands of Jews "living peacefully" in Arab countries were ethnically cleansed from their countries, which they'd lived in for generations, and also largely had nowhere to go except Palestine.

Some people seem to have the idea that most of the people are European Jews, when in reality, it was more Arab jews, in large part due to the Nazis. The standardized language even reflects this, closet to the local pronounciation of hebrew than the "accents" in Europe. Or even Jiddish

Having a sizeable minority of some kind does not really justify or excuse kicking out other ethnicities and religions to form a new state based on the primacy of that group. The mental gymnastics to think that expelling people living there while bringing in a population from Europe to displace them--literally to the point of having them move into homes vacated by Arabs who were expelled--is something other than a settler-colonialist is pretty astounding.

And the ambivalence and opposition of the Jews of Palestine to the Zionist project is fairly well-documented.

Rabbi Yakov Shapiro talks a lot about that, I think Gabor Mate does to some extent as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7POk0hVsgM

> People were already living there when settlers came to create an ethno-state for themselves.

Isn't that just history repeating itself? Even in the old testament, they had to clear the current inhabitants of their promised land after wander the desert for 40 years.

Archeology suggests biblical Israel was actually a federation of tribes, some of which were enemies in early parts of the Bible. For example, the philistines which became one of the 12 tribes and also are the origin of the term Palestinian.

They never became an Israeli tribe, they were a people of a foreign origin, probably greek. They have disappeared from history after they were exiled by the babylonians, like most people of the area of that time.

Many states were "founded on ethnic cleansing". They are widely considered to posses a right of existence, and even expected to defend their citizens.

(excuse me for ignoring the history trolling)

A right to exist doesn't justify a million other things that are completely unacceptable about the Israeli state.

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It's a popular opinion these days, all the cool kids are doing it

> It's a popular opinion these days

Westerners with no connection to the Middle East deciding they know best for the people actually there has been a popular opinion for a long time.

Suspiciously consistent with the Israeli-connected Americans who deliberately minimize the significance of issues in Lebanon and Syria.

Annexing one's neighbors sure fosters some queer international consequences.

> Many states were "founded on ethnic cleansing".

So what? I don't get your point.

Israel has continuously been oppressing the Palestinians for almost 80 years. That is immoral. Israel is in the wrong.

> They are widely considered to posses a right of existence, and even expected to defend their citizens.

You are just jumping to a different topic. I said nothing about its right to exist.

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That's not entirely true but your are changing the subject.

Have the Palestinians been ethnically cleansed? Yes or no? Have they been oppressed for almost 80 years? Yes or no?

No and yes.

What Palestinians need is what Israelis got: a state. To the extent there is an argument maximally antithetical to that cause, it’s arguing that Israel shouldn’t exist.

> What Palestinians need is what Israelis got: a state.

Palestinians had several opportunities to get that, especially with Oslo agreements, but their leadership refused that everytime.

> their leadership refused that everytime

I don’t think it’s fair to extend that to “Palestinians had several opportunities.”

Arafat was an hero for the Palestinians, but he was the main responsible for the failing of Oslo agreements. Moreover Hamas won the elections in Gaza with 45% of the votes and, as we saw immediately after 7/11, most of them was cheering for the slaughterings and the rapes.

Unfortunately Palestinians have an huge responsibility on the actual situation.

> Hamas won the elections in Gaza with 45% of the votes

That was a generation ago.

> as we saw immediately after 7/11, most of them was cheering for the slaughterings and the rapes

One, it’s unclear how widespread this was. But also two, you see similar dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israelis today. That’s just how human psychology works in a war footing—I think we and chimpanzees are the only species that will go out of our way to exterminate a threat.

> Palestinians have an huge responsibility on the actual situation

Oh sure. And I think whether a future Palestinian state could exist peacefully bordering Israel is a real question. But I would push back on the notion that a plebiscite today requiring recognition of Israel as a sovereign state within its current borders in exchange for a Palestinian state (with West Bank settlements transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction) wouldn’t pass.

> That was a generation ago.

Some surveys estimated that Hamas consensus was more than 60% before the 7/11. And this is the main reason why there is no other elections in West Bank since than: Fatah leadership is scared to lose elections.

> you see similar dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israelis today

I have many colleagues and friends in Israel and nobody of them is cheering about the civilian killings. At the opposite, they just demand peace and freedom for hostages. This is the main difference: while in Israel a large part of population is against war and atrocity, Hamas is still supported by an huge part of Palestinian population.

> But I would push back on the notion that a plebiscite today requiring recognition of Israel as a sovereign state within its current borders in exchange for a Palestinian state (with West Bank settlements transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction) wouldn’t pass.

This was mostly the proposal of Oslo agreements and Arafat, as Palestinian representative, refused that. Do you really think that a public opinion supporting Hamas() , will accept that now?

() Hamas wrote in his statuta that any sionistic state must be unacceptable and Israel must be erased from the heart.

> Do you really think that a public opinion supporting Hamas() , will accept that now?

I think it’s worth a shot. (I wouldn’t put much worth in any polling in Gaza, let alone recent polling.)

One could even throw in a reparation fund for the lands Israel conquered since ‘48 as well as those which the French and British gave away. (Hell, eminent domain the West Bank settlers and pay them out, too.)

> I think it’s worth a shot.

Even if it will win, having a state, means also to have an army. And guess what will happens immediately? The problem is also the education: in Gaza, the school system (also the one by ONU/UNWRA paid by us) is completely rotten: they are not preparing people to improve their country, they are preparing people to become martyr and hate Israel.

> One could even throw in a reparation fund for the lands Israel conquered since ‘48 as well as those which the French and British gave away.

Do you have any idea about how many money the Western country put in Gaza for humanitarian and development projects? Well, a big part of those funds are spent on building tunnels, buying weapons and building rockets. There is no any way to change the situation until Hamas would be there.

> Hell, eminent domain the West Bank settlers and pay them out, too

Israeli settlers are a big obstacle to peace and should be stopped and repressed with force. Unfortunately it will not happen until Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are part of the government

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Wait are you calling me "European"? This is honestly insulting.

Would you please apologize on-record or edit that out? Thanks

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> In any case, Israel doesn't even have the right to exist

It does: UN resolution, 1967.

That you do not recognize an entire state to exist is an admission to preparing a genocide. The fact that 4 countries around Israel are preparing genocide justifies Israel’s measures are reasonable to maintain peace.

What is reasonable?

Well it’s not like Gaza didn’t start the shooting with 7000 rockets pre-October festival (I was myself surprised that Israel didn’t respond pre-October). Those rockets were indiscriminate against population centers, each of them were a war crime. So it’s reasonable to reduce the neighbor’s ability to wage war to dust.

Are the Gazans exempt from responsibility of their state’s actions?

To answer, we need to check whether the Hamas was imposed to the Gazans or whether they voted for it and, in a broader sense, whether the Gazans wish the genocide of Israel. It turns out the 2006 elections were almost the last ones in Gaza, and that’s when the Hamas was elected (and the opponents were not better). So the Gazans are aligned with the actions performed by the collective group of their nation, it’s not a small group of extremists, it represents the will of the nation, and therefore the facilities and support network of the Hamas are part of the war logistics, and deserves to be reduced to dust.

Did Israel act with restraint?

Israel has the nuclear bomb and has enough power to genocide if they want. The fact that they perform spot actions instead of sweeping actions is proof that Israel tries to discriminate the military, its support network with genocide intent against Israel (=pretty much everyone) and tries to spare the innocents, is proof that Israel is not committing a genocide.

Would that be the same UN that Israel (and the US, to a large degree) refuses to recognize the authority of? Can't have your cake and eat it too, friend.

> What is reasonable?

Not instituting so many decrees ("militaty orders") that even the military authority responsible for 'ruling' the area can't produce an accurate or complete list of all of said decrees. Decrees which, I might add, forbid planting flowers, raising a flag, operating a farm tractor, going to school, or making a bank account withdrawal without the permission of the Israeli military: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Order

Let that sink in: if you're a Palestianian you can't go to the bank and take out your own money without permission of the Israeli military.

Another military order allows the Israeli military to seize your business if you don't open during regular business hours.

Those decrees also allow Jews to "buy" (seize) land from Palestinians who refuse to sell to them, merely by asserting "power of attorney"

Not having snipers executing children. Not conducting missile and gun attacks on ambulances and independent worldwide-recognized medical aid organizations, and then attacking rescuers who show up to render aid. Not slaughtering an entire hospital's worth of patients and burying them in mass graves. Not slaughtering people lined up to get food aid. Not purposefully starving millions of people.

Not using a black-box AI to decide who is a "terrorist" and then blowing up their entire house, thus killing not only the supposed terrorist, but the entire family, or possibly the neighbor - because a "smart" bomb would be too expensive.

> UN (…) Israel does not recognize

An UN agreement is still the highest rank of agreements for whether a state exists.

UN is shock-full of anti-Israeli militants, so it is also unsurprising that Israel doesn’t respect all of it.

> Let that sink in: if you're a Palestianian you can't go to the bank and take out your own money without permission of the Israeli military.

Is this money used for the war against Israel? If yes, it can be legitimately seized. If Palestinians didn’t swear the death of Israel, that would be another story.

Both parties wage a war to death. If Israel gets feable, it gets genocide.

The only way out is peace, but you are actively arguing for the entire eradication of Israel, with the entire weight of the Western Civilization behind you, so… oh man that doesn’t help at all.

> Not having snipers executing children

Depends what the children are doing. Without context, it seems horrible, and yet every time we’re filled in on the context that was conveniently forgotten by “journalists” (who are a certain socio demographic of Western youths, surprisingly), then we notice there’s more to it than “Israel kills blindly”.

If Israel killed blindly, they wouldn’t take so many precautions.

And the funny thing is, I’m not even pro-Israel. I’m just here to show the balance that you have forgotten.

> That you do not recognize an entire state to exist is an admission to preparing a genocide.

Israel doesn't recognise Palestine as a state, so by your own definition Israel is preparing a genocide.

Really? Is this why the world does not recognize the north part of Cyprus despite Turkish Cypriots not butchering any Greeks south of the border since 1974, when they unilaterally declared independence?

Please name some other countries post-WW2 that were "founded by ethnic cleansing" and embraced by the international community and educate the rest of us. And please don't include previously warring peoples whose leaders agreed on a population exchange and imposed that mandatory trauma on their own people.

Palestine, Cyprus, and India had the unenviable luck of being long-term victims of a last gasp British empire's farewell divide-and-conquer gambit.

(and excuse me for ignoring the deflection trolling)

> Please name some other countries post-WW2 that were "founded by ethnic cleansing" and embraced by the international community and educate the rest of us

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Greeks_from_Istan...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_German...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_of_Turks_from_Bulgaria_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istrian%E2%80%93Dalmatian_exod...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_expulsion_of_Italians_fro...

It was quite common and very accepted method in the 1940s, hell, expelling 15 million germans, some living there for hundreds of years, was proposed by Churchill.

The reason you never heard about the rest of these is because the people were resettled, not kept in a state of permanent inheritable refugee state financed by the UN with financial incentives to be kept that way.

>Please name some of other countries post-WW2 that were "founded by ethnic cleansing"

(proceeds to list examples of countries which were already founded before the ethnic cleansing events they mention or events I already alluded to)

It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to list Libyans expelling italians as a comparable example, when Libya was a colony of Italy. Ditto Germans, a people of belonging to the aggressor country. Bulgaria declared independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1908. And you have to explain why you included the pakistan link, as I already mentioned it in my post.

Look, it's not expelling some imperial troops. but peaceful citizens, who sometimes had lived there for centuries.

The idea that people of different ethnicities live, unmixed, divided by neat borders of nation-states is pretty recent. This was the case neither in Europe, nor in Middle East for a very long time before the advent of state-based nationalism in the 19th century. It was quite normal for people of different ethnicities, languages, and even faiths to live intermixed in certain regions, especially areas of intense trade, which the entire Mediterranean coast used to be. Borders were more about economic and political control than ethnic identity.

(The ethnic unity purportedly achieved by nation-states formed in 19th and early 20th centuries is also often more by fiat: look at the variety of German or Italian languages prior to unification of Germany or Italy, for instance, to say nothing about India.)

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Palestinians can be arguably labeled as the aggressor country if that's how you want to spin the narrative. As Jews were peacefully buying lands when the massacres and ethnic cleansing started at 1929.

Most germans were living in their respected newly founded Communist Poland and Czechoslovakia for hundreds of years if not more when expelled.

Italians, even if they were colonialists, were expelled from their homes, by people who previously have been colonialists themselves, some when arriving with the arab conquests.

Bulgaria expelled the turks in the 1950s, and the partition of india, forming pakistan and india, were two newly formed countries around the time of israel and palestine, included ethnic cleansing from both sides

Do you think that these examples of ethnic cleansing post ww2 are irrelevant when no new country was formed?

What, like it's happened elsewhere so it's OK now? How do you think that kind of defense argument goes down in court?

No but when someone says "Israel is uniquely evil and must be destroyed because of [reason that also applies to dozens of other countries whose destruction they're not demanding]" it implies either ignorance or bad faith.

It's not a defense argument rather than reality. People seem to think this conflict is special, but usually due to ignoring similarities to their own countries and their own moralities.

Regarding court, there is a very valid defense in court called selective enforcement, and this is exactly for situations when someone is scape goated

The only thing special about this conflict is that it's far more "televised" than any other genocide in history, due to the proliferation of internet access and social media, and that the US is directly funding it.

I think it makes a lot of sense to be more incensed about the genocide in Palestine vs. the Myanmar civil war if you're an American citizen. Americans are struggling and the government is sending billions of our tax dollars to war criminals overseas.

I don't think it's possible to understand the whole issue without taking into account how people fled into Israel, both because of genocide in Europe as well as prosecution in multi-ethnic yet predominantly Arab states. Germany being in an awkward position of being an economically dominant state but also having contributed to the whole misery. Also the US is far from neutral probably due to deeper ties that are just part of reality. You cannot undo the past but I don't think it's possible to unroll the whole problem without properly confronting it. The increasingly horrific escalations have obviously completely detached from any reason

They fled into Palestine*, and later established the state of Israel. Saying they fled into Israel assumes there was an Israel to begin with, but there wasn't.

Yes, it was a British colony... Either way, the vast majority moved there after the state was established. And yes, most suffered prosecution around the world including Arab countries. Pogroms against Jews are documented since centuries.

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Maybe because it happened 1000 years ago and there are people being killed in Gaza at this very moment?

People being killed in Gaza are the colonizers isn't it? In addition to being colonizers they clearly declared the goal of performing ethnic cleansing of Jews, and proved that it isn't just words by perpetrating genocide of Jews on October 7.

You nicely sidestepped the case of US where Native people are still fighting for their rights and would be killed the same way if they try to perpetrate against Non-Native Americans the things like October 7.

Palestinians perpetrated October 7, Native Americans don't do such things, thus no surprise that the situation is different.

>Maybe because it happened 1000 years ago

So, how old or recent it should be for you to dismiss or not an ethnic cleansing?

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There were hundreds of Palestinians held by the IDF without charges on Oct 6th. What’s another word for “held without charges”? Yes it’s hostage.

There were 3 days of idf bombing in gaza in september 2023.

Bringing up “hostages” as a reason for anything is a lie, a distortion, and a laundering of genocide.

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Such weird framing.

Netanyahu is not supported by all israelis, no question. But israeli isn’t a dictatorship - the actions of the state have been varying degrees of genocide and ethnic cleansing for 75+ years, and pinning that all on one man is bonkers. Do you also consider the war in Iraq a war between Bush and the Ba’ath?

Calling what I said “one siding” is similarly bonkers. My point is just to be consistent with the actions of both sides: israel had hostages before oct 7th - if hamas hostages are justification for mass murder of palestinian civilians, then israeli hostages before oct 7th justify the oct 7th attacks. To say otherwise is to one-side the situation.

To be clear: i don’t believe that hostages justify killing civilians. Doesn’t matter who’s hostages they are.

> i don’t believe that hostages justify killing civilians

It is, however, casus belli. And I don’t know how one fights a guerilla force without significant collateral damage.(This order, to be clear, wouldn’t count as collateral damage if accurately presented.)

“casus belli” is the stated reason to go to war. It says nothing about if those reasons are moral. Hamas had casus belli. The US has casus belli when bush invaded iraq based on lies about WMD. Hell, russia has it in ukraine (something something nato).

If you cannot conduct war against a guerilla force without murdering hundreds of thousands, destroying every piece of peaceful infrastructure, and blockading aid - then the truth is it’s wrong to conduct that war.

It’s not justifying killing civilians. It is justified for Israel to attempt to get their kidnapped citizens back. Hamas could minimize this, but you and I both know that maximizing Palestinian death is their preference.

It seems like you’re saying the oct 7th attack was entirely justified, as long as one of their goals was to free the Palestinians kept hostage by israel… or that you have two different standards of acceptable conduct for the idf and hamas.

Leadership on both sides is incentivised to continue the war for domestic purposes.

I agree with that point. However, I don’t believe Netanyahu or the Israeli government glorify the death of their own people.

> I don’t believe Netanyahu or the Israeli government glorify the death of their own people

The indifference shown to the fate of the hostages could have fooled me. But yes, Hamas and PJ treat their civilian population expendably in a way Tel Aviv does not.

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The difference is that e.g. Māori or native Americans and whatnot are full citizens with full rights.

The "founded on ethnic cleansing" is not the most important bit from the previous post. It's the "ethnic cleansing and denial of rights has continued ever since" that's the most important bit.

No, the difference is that the native population of western countries very much disappeared, because this was an actual genocide their percent of population is now negligible.

While the Palestinian population in Israel proper is around 25% with full rights, while those under the control of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have rights in their respective political entity.

Again there are other examples of countries where the population lost all rights and were expelled like germans in czechoslovakia and poland or greeks from turkey

> the native population of western countries very much disappeared

That's simply not true. It's very obviously not true. Are you denying that Māoris and Native Americans exist today? I cannot phantom why you would say such obvious nonsense.

I no longer believe you are engaging in good faith. Good day.

I said "negligible". The original population was largely killed and replaced

Māori is something like a fifth of the population of New Zealand. You have no idea what you're talking about and have starting to spread falsehoods of Trumpian proportions. Maybe the Māori are eating the cats and dogs too?

There's a bunch of native tribes that got completely wiped out. What are you talking about?

> Facts is that most of the palestinians fled in the earlier phases of the war, and the very little instances of forced evacuation of the population where within the borders of Israel/Palestine, not out of the country.

People don't leave their homes voluntarily. They leave because of violence or fear of violence. The fact is there were Palestinians living all over the map at the "before" stage. Settlers came to form an ethno-state. The orders given to the Zionist militia commanders were literally "cleanse" this or that village. In the "after" stage, all these people are gone from most of the map and the ones trying to return to their homes are shot dead.

That is ethnic cleansing period. The goal was to create an ethno-state in a place where people already lived. These people have been getting confined to smaller and smaller areas ever since. And the oppression continues to this day.

> Regarding the "State founded on ethnic cleaning", in recent times this includes entire South America, parts of Africa, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.

So what? What's your point?

> People don't leave their homes voluntarily. They leave because of violence or fear of violence.

Well the same applies to the Mizrahi Jews who fled Arab countries to Israel.

The Arab countries then seized their properties, which are estimated to add up to multiple times the size of Israel itself.

So on the larger ledger of who owes who reparations, the Arab states clearly owe Israelis more than the other way around.

> Settlers came to form an ethnostate

Zionists like most national movement of the same time goal was to form an ethnostate, just like the palestinian national movement goal was to form an ethnostate, or the czech, polish, ukraine, etc that's pretty obvious

> People don't leave their homes voluntarily

People flee war torn zones, that's not the same thing as ethnic cleansing.

> The orders given to the Zionist militia commanders were literally to "cleanse" that village

Yes, that happened, that doesn't change the fact that most of the population fled on their own accord, that a very sizeable part of the palestinian population remains in Israel to this day, and that the Palestinians were trying to cleanse the Israel population as well (and were successful in a few instances)

> So what? what's your point?

My point is that the horrors you cite are nothing compared to what your very own country was founded on (and that's an educated guess on where you are from, or all countries of the world founding story really)

Judaism isn't an ethnicity. And I would agree those states are founded on the same ideals. All should be abolished.

>they have ethnically cleansed the Jews like in Hebron

Have you been to Hebron? I'd highly encourage it because you will see literally the most vile state sponsored racists in the western world.

The ethnic cleansing is not as violent as the gazan genocide but it ought to make any person with a conscience sick to the stomach. You walk around looking up at the settlement guards (more of them than there are settlers) pointing guns at you from guard towers as the racist settlers living above literally throw trash down on the Palestinian untermensch living below them.

Every year they squeeze Palestinians who live and work there further and further out.

It's also the home of the venerated terrorist Baruch Goldstein (10% of Israelis consider him a hero because he shot up a mosque), his shrine and Itamir ben Gvir - the national security minister who idolized him.

After seeing that place I became convinced that if anywhere was going to commit a nazi style genocide it would be israel. 8 years later thats exactly what happened.

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Netanyahu, when addressing the troops, even said "Do not forget what Amalek has done to you", invoking the memory of the biblical commandment to genocide the Amalekites.

Reposting as it was flagged by Zionists:

You don't have to have sympathy for them. Their religion literally tells them to kill children to steal their land:

"However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you." - Deuteronomy 20:16-17

And now they are literally doing it.

I wondered how an entire ethnic group could be so depraved and removed from humanity, where literally hundreds of thousands of their members in Hebrew Telegram channels cheer on children being burned alive. And now I know that, it was always their religion that caused their depraved behavior. From a philosophy of racial superiority to literally commands to kill children to steal their land. It was always going to come to this genocidal conclusion.

It's perfectly fine to say Judaism should be canceled, given how Jews are behaving publicly and without shame in their desire to steal land and kill children. They literally don't know that they're not supposed to steal land and kill children. They believe that's completely fine.

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What do you think is a proper solution? 30% being pro genocide is insane.

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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.

I do not believe it is unintentional.

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.

Those things you described are also war crimes.

Calling it sophisticated does not change that fact.

> Those things you described are also war crimes

No, it’s war. Targeted killing of a military scientist is war. Gunning down civilians trying to get food is a war crime. If we start labelling all war as criminal, the term loses all meaning.

Unless prosecuted and people either go to jail or are executed, war crimes are just a label for anyone in opposition to Western domination.

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.

This. Israel demonstrably has the capability for precision warfare.

That they chose to level infrastructure across Gaza instead is indicative.

And it'd be real stretch to assume they did so even for military-economic reasons.

They knew the world community would give them some leeway after Oct 7th, so exploited it as far as possible to militarily achieve their geo-political goals.

To wit, the elimination of anything resembling a Palestinian state: politically, economically, and demographically.

Which is cynical and evil as fuck, given they're smart enough to realize they eventually either have to (a) kill every Palestinian or (b) make a deal.

Instead, they decided killing 50,000+ Palestinians was worth improving their negotiation position and kicking the can down the road.

> They knew the world community would give them some leeway after Oct 7th, so exploited it as far as possible to militarily achieve their geo-political goals.

That’s my read as well. I was strongly pro-Israel for decades and while I was never comfortable with the plight of Palestinians Hamas had a lot of the blame, too, but the last year really moved me over to thinking that the people who said most of the “accidents” over the years were intentional were correct. They can pull off these amazingly accurate strikes when they want to, it’s implausible that they suddenly have the precision of a drunken 18th century musketeer around aid workers and civilians. Their leadership clearly do not care and collective punishment is a war crime no matter who does it.

The term ”mowing the lawn”[1] has been used to describe their long term strategy, so I can ”excuse” someone for thinking that they can’t control the situation, but it’s been a tactic for a long time.

HN readers can recognize the tactic in other parts of our world too. It’s the strategy of people in power who believe they can control the chaos. When chaos in one group is a benefit to the other, chaos becomes a worthy status quo. When your military is infinitely more powerful, any uprising can eventually be exhausted, and you get automatic casus belli. The Cold War was full of this destabilizing politics, where superpowers tried their best to turn functioning socities into hellholes, in the hopes that it would spread in the enemy’s region. The same works for Israel. The less legitimacy Gaza and the West Bank Palestinians have, the longer they can keep building settlements. If they ever gain independence, it will cause another war, which has been planned for, because settlements have been overwhelmingly built on higher ground. Illegal settlers will not give up easily, and will likely gain military assistance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mowing_the_grass

To be fair, the Iranian state is a proper military. I’m not sure if there is a way to fight a guerilla force without massive civilian casualties. (Which is why one generally shouldn’t.)

A better analog might be Hezbollah. Surgically dispatched. Resolved with minimal follow-on nonsense from both sides.

You do understand they actually targeted whole apartment blocks in Iran, right? 10s of civilians dead. Not so sophisticated. Just criminals.

On the flip side, this is not as controversial (or even at all in western media) when done by the Ukraine military (not specifically nuclear scientists). This is not a justification, but I think some characteristics of conflict are less interesting/important to focus on when trying to formalise critique against an assailant. This would be more important if contrasted with for example a conflicting ideological narrative.

I‘m sorry, but you’re comparing apples to bedrooms. Israel vs. Iran is a war/conflict between two proper countries‘ militaries - which means that both belligerents stick to certain agreed upon rules and military traditions, such as trying to separate the civilian from the military world/infrastructure. In lack of another word (haven’t slept, please forgive me for the choice of word), there’s “honor“ and a notion of equality and respect (somewhat) between the foes, even if Iran has declared it wants to wipe Israel off the map.

All of this does not apply to the conflict with Hamas. With them muddling the lines, it’s extremely hard to fight a “clean“ war. You’re between a rock and a hard place - either you lose but with your head held high and your moral compass intact, or you stoop to their level thereby slowly losing your values but win in the end. If that win is worth it or not, is heavily debated in the rest of the world, but only debated in the fringes of Israeli society. But no military expert is able to suggest a real alternative of fighting Hamas without inflicting heavy losses on one’s own army.

I find the committed war crimes abhorrent and wish they’d be heavily prosecuted at least.

For as long as countries like Israel stand against giving Palestinians a legitimate state, militias and terror groups will continue to rise. The US showed that it was possible to fight an insurgency as an occupying force without resorting to literally levelling cities. It was not easy, it took more lives than they hoped, but they did it anyway, because they at least acted like war crimes out in the open was off limits.

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.

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!

> 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.

Btw, the literal sub-headline of the article includes this sentence:

"prompting the military prosecution to call for a review into possible war crimes".

Who is gonna arrest Bibi?

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.

The same people who arrested Olmert

For each of their "operations" on Gaza they usually had one or two soldiers in trouble for something like stealing and using a civilians credit card. When there were many more serious crimes like deliberately targeting the disabled.

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.

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.

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.

israel executes plenty of people. maybe if it’s done by the military it doesnt count

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_war_crimes_in_the_Gaza...

https://web.archive.org/web/20240104213949/https://www.middl...

https://web.archive.org/web/20240424005326/https://news.un.o...

https://web.archive.org/web/20240409122432/https://thehill.c...

https://archive.is/UJb6g

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!

> 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.

There isn't popular support for it when you factor in the Israeli-Palestian but in opinion polling it has now gone beyond 50% among the rest of the Israeli population.

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.

Where I hope this comes back, after the conflict and a new Israel government, is human culpability for automated systems.

AI being whitewashing for IP is disruptive and troubling.

It being whitewashing for war crimes is a much more serious problem.

If Israel/IDF put in place a automated system that gave effectively caused war crimes to be committed, some humans in positions of power need to be held responsible and face consequences.

The world should not allow cases where (a) it's undisputed that war crimes occurred but (b) authority was interwoven in an automated system in such a way that humans escape consequences.

Sadly, it'll probably take the fall of right-wing Israeli and current Russian governments to have a hope of passing through.

> is human culpability for automated systems.

Human culpability for crimes committed by large human systems isn't ever going to happen. I wouldn't hold my breath for the automated ones.

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.

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.

As an example read about Slobodan Milošević

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

They were just following orders.

You mean the government whose leader is facing a corruption trial?

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Can you please make your substantive points thoughtfully, without snark or flamebait? It's not hard if you choose to, and the site guidelines ask people to do so, regardless of how charged or divisive the topic is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Ok. The parent is the same kind of rhetorical question, whose counter-argument is so evident that it shouldn’t have existed, and it’s disappointing that one side gets the right of way on HN and the other is downvoted, one camp is making use of flaws in your rules to win without merit, aka bullying.

But yes. I’ll speak without snarkiness.

Yes, the parent was the same kind of question; in fact I almost included that observation in my reply to you. However, it's all a matter of degree, and your comment was significantly worse in the degree of snark and flamebait that you were posting. That's why I replied to you and not the other comment. It had nothing to do with which side either of you are on, although I understand how it ends up feeling that way. (I've posted quite a bit about that elsewhere in this thread, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403947.)

Ok. I’ll be better in the future. My apologies.

Thank you for maintaining this community.

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.

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.

THe USA is currently run by a convicted felon, so it doesn't really surprise me.

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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?

jsyk many cases of evidence turned out to be propaganda and instead was showing Syria (https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231229-war-of-narrat... and Bellingcat looked into it as well)

Some of it may be real but you really need to pay attention about who posted it originally, who reposted it etc, even people you wouldn't expect sometimes retweeted recycled Syrian footage...

Maybe their phones are running a bit low on charge and they can't find an outlet here:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kSHED-mRP1g

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Is there a reason to disbelieve the soldiers’ testimony?

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Here's a story from NPR that makes much stronger claims agaist Israel (and cites sources) than the Haaretz story:

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/28/nx-s1-5449587/israel-gaza-haa...

> 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?

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There is plenty of reason to disbelieve the testimony was reported accurately.

Haaretz’s English edition claims that IDF soldiers were ordered to fire at unarmed Palestinians waiting for food in Gaza, but the original Hebrew version? It states they were told to fire towards crowds to keep them away from the aid sites. This represents a significant difference in intent, legality, and moral implications

https://mrandrewfox.substack.com/p/haaretz-the-lies-continue

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44404779

> fire at unarmed Palestinians waiting for food in Gaza

> fire towards crowds to keep them away from the aid sites

I am struggling to understand the distinction.

The difference is the agenda of the reader, sadly.

Who cares about the word used in that sentence. They also said they killed people every day by doing this. How is that explained away?

For you and me conversation is about facts, reality and accuracy. For them it is about bending the narrative as far as it will go. It's not strange behavior if everyone around you is doing it.

Just to balance this out, I'm also a Westerner and have largely the opposite view. I think Israel has been for the most part justified in neutralizing clear threats to their country. Oct 7 was an atrocity, these other instances being cited look more like propaganda. Even this headline seems to be largely false.

There was very purposeful targeting of civilians by Hamas. Israel is not intentionally harming civilians in any comparable way, but civilian deaths are a reality in an urban war setting.

I'm fairly certain you haven't read the haaretz article. Otherwise your comment is inexplicable.

They have a right to take out Hamas, they don't have the right to mow down crowds of starving people with sub-machine guns while they're just trying to get to some food

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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.

> ...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 ... the genocidaires are controlling the aid.

It was apparently 2 VCs and not the military that came up with GHF (and if I recall, there even was a brief flare up between the ruling Cabinet and the Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, who did not want the IDF to be responsible for aid).

  Even though the early planning was led by the Israeli military, two Israeli technology investors played an influential role in shaping discussions as they progressed, according to six Israeli and American individuals familiar with the GHF’s origins. One was Liran Tancman, an entrepreneur and reservist in the IDF’s 8200 signals intelligence unit, who called for using biometric identification systems outside the distribution hubs to vet Palestinian civilians. Another was Michael Eisenberg, an American Israeli venture capitalist who argued that existing U.N. aid distribution networks were sustaining Hamas and needed to be overhauled.

> One was Liran Tancman, an entrepreneur and reservist in the IDF’s 8200 signals intelligence unit, who called for using biometric identification systems outside the distribution hubs to vet Palestinian civilians.

Gives the feeling of the serial number tattoos the Germans used, with tech "fixing" the bad optics of doing that, but the biometric ID serves as one.

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I appreciate that this topic has been permitted to stay on the HN front page. It has been utterly horrific watching the barbaric and inhuman behavior of Israel. I have no idea how we are supposed to ever respect or forgive our own states that have aquiesced in this, let alone Israel.

> 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...)

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

Just like several months ago, “we advise Gazans to move to southern Gaza as operations intensify in the north”.

Within days: “Israeli bombing of southern Gaza intensifies 80%”.

I have to say, these warnings are byond any logic I can comprehend. It it not like Hamas does not get these warnings. Obviously they moved aswell. Then again, was this intended by Israel? So in the end nobody can trust these warnings. They are pointless.

The target for the warnings isn't Palestinians, it's a figleaf for international media.

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.

The UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories has concluded in a pretty comprehensive report that there is a genocide occurring in Gaza. https://reliefweb.int/attachments/f78b0a28-c3af-44ed-a010-9b...

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Right, you can fire really awesome warning shots with mortars.

But that is still a war crime.

And yet this harmelss "scare away" firing has been routinely killing tens of crowd members per day.

Not to mention that Israel is openly using starvation as a weapon of war.

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It's worth comparing these reports to the Flour Massacre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour_Massacre) that occurred over a year ago.

I'd also suggest this (impassioned) video about the event: https://youtu.be/sCW-ARvywto?t=5020

Compare this reporting from a year ago with the Wikipedia page now. How has this reporting from a year ago held up?

Israel is an excellent example of what happens if a fundamentalist theocracy becomes too powerful compared to its neighbors.

I thought Israel was a parliamentary democracy?

Ironically, Israel's government would be less theocratic-conservative if it weren't so hard to form governing coalitions in the Knesset.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_twent...

After moderate partners abandoned Netanyahu, his only source of support was more right-wing partners, which steadily pushed government policy to the ultra-right.

It's not ironic at all, it's democracy working as intended.

It might superficially appear ironic because us in the west confuse being a democracy with being moderate. But that's not the case if a large fraction of your population are religious fundamentalists, which goes to my point. In Israel, the problem isn't just the government, it's also the culture of the majority of the population.

Considering ~50% of the Knesset is in opposition, I don't think it's proof that a politically large fraction of Israeli society is religiously fundamentalist.

It's non-negligible, but the reasons ultra-right parties like Otzma Yehudit [0] have a voice in politics has more to do with election calculus by Netanyahu.

The ideal 2+ party parliamentary system seems to be >2 but <6.

Below that, you get bad outcomes (US). Above that, you get bad outcomes (Israel, India).

Somewhere in the middle, it forces the right amount of coerced cooperation... most of the time (Germany).

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otzma_Yehudit

> Considering ~50% of the Knesset is in opposition

You mean < 50% (strictly less than 50%) right? Otherwise the opposition would form a government

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.

Historically it's the pre-eminent center-left paper in Israel, with the Jerusalem Post being the center-right flagship.

It is a credible source with a left-wing focus.

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Thanks for the info. The tone of the publication sounded like that.

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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.

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

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.

I was encouraged by yours and parents posts to look at some of the comments but I think I just got duped into wasting time with bots that are in fact astroturfing!

HN is an oasis of borderline autistic people who have no knowledge or rational opinions about anything more open ended than which JavaScript framework is the worst

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.

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.

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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.

https://www.standupforpeace.org/ is intended to help organize around this issue.

The news from Palestine are atrocious; a genocide is unfolding before our eyes, and world leaders are doing nothing to stop it.

A lot of world leaders are helping speed it up.

Like with most genocides in history.

The vast majority barely make the global news.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides

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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.

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 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.

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.

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I'm mostly just seeing people discuss what Israel's military is doing, with people on both sides adding historical context. It's sure as hell not a "hate-fest."

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Their nonsense is already flag'd and dead'd, you'd need to enable showdead in your profile to see their posts.

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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.

* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

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Gatekeeping genocide is a whole new topic, and a ‘tell’ all of its own.

Gatekeeping. Lol.

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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.

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.

You do good work Dang. I'd love to buy you a beer sometime.

dang I cannot respect you enough. Thank you. I have strong feelings about Palestine and learned quite long ago how powerless my rhetoric is. Although I believe I see the truth, it's clear the world needs yet more time. The only thing that must be done now is to facilitate discourse and to leave the flow of information unimpeded. Time will humble us all.

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I would be very surprised if the majority, or even a significant fraction, of those who are on the "Israel" side were observing Jews. Jews are probably a minority of Israel-supporting commenters, and observing Jews are, in my experience, a minority of these Jews.

I agree, that argument seemed fairly wrong to me.

It's some people, but a minority, I'm fairly certain.

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.

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You don't decide what's on topic or the spirit of HN. If anyone does it's Deng, who you're arguing with. Sorry you feel the need to decide what adults can talk about.

I've very well aware who Dang is (clearly you don't, at least write his name correctly). You have a lot of venues to vent on reddit, facebook, twitter etc. Clearly Dang is biased and therefore he bends the guidelines:

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

Maybe you should have a bit more intellectual humility. "Clearly Dang is biased" (emphasis mine)? You might be right, you might be wrong, but I for sure don't think you can be certain of dang's motive here, especially considering lots of people on the "other side" of this issue feel he's biased against them!

I believe the majority of stories are voted on, and flagged, by the community. If the community decides these are stories worth discussing, I think they fit within the guidelines of HN. Stories about the Russia/Ukraine war also appear. So do stories about US politics. In all of these threads some people complain that they're off-scope, but apparently enough of the community wants to talk about them that they sometimes get upvoted.

And that's just the beginning. They want to expand to the east.

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

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.

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.

Watching Blinken say "rules based international order" on camera about Ukraine was one of the few times I felt good about American foreign policy, then watching Blinken talk about Israel made it clear that it's rules for our enemies only, and loyalty for our "friends" which is the precise opposite of a rules based international order.

Hearing democrats decry Russian foreign influence was also something I was on board with, but much like Nancy Pelosi saying it's not corrupt when she trades on stock with private information, apparently it's not corrupt when the democratic party accepts foreign aid in the form of AIPAC donations, or just as likely threats of the use of Pegasus against them.

It is quite sad to be an American of good conscience right now. It's hard to respect our country in any way when it shows such little moral fiber and such little backbone.