Seeing PG slowly turn on this issue, from nothing into recognition and now into advocacy has been wild. Presumably because he has kids, and like many parents you understand with your eyes first, and then your heart.
PG wields some amount of power in SV, but YC and others are still inextricably tied to what's happening. Thiel was just in Israel with elad gil, rabois, alex karp, joe lonsdale. It's just too much to list.
I guess my point is when does recognition turn into action.
I used to shame PG for his elitist views. Now I celebrate his moral courage.
One man cannot fix everything.
Dear PG (I'm sure you don't read HN, but this is yet another echo),
As I said on X, your own platform (YCombinator) is still full of hateful bigots who would censor/downvote even the mildest form of speaking against the genocide. Proof: this comment being downvoted. Downvoting as a mechanism is akin to censorship. It's being abused.
Having a difference of opinion on a very complicated geopolitical situation that is the culmination of a century of regional conflict is not being a "hateful bigot" or abuse.
Downvoting on HN doesn’t go lower than -4. If it’s used as a method of censorship, and you care about internet points, then you practically have to post nothing else useful to make it work.
Barely though, moving to the states at age 4, but I guess he came back a decade ago. Not sure it warrants national pride unless his parents raised him on a strict diet of tea, scones and the BBC. I hope he turns up at YC having gained his birthright, a nice Dorset burr, "alreet moi luvlees, wart ideals be goin on ere?"
I had assumed moving to the UK was a Madonna-esque escape from getting pitched every 5 minutes while trying to do family stuff in SV.
Comments on this post are disabled for new accounts, but in the era of anti-BDS regulation and other measures aimed specifically at curtailing practical freedom of speech surrounding this conflict, can we really comment freely on this without anonymity? The vast majority (38/50) of US states have passed some form of anti-BDS legislation. We can also expect corporate retaliation against employees who speak about this issue in a "wrong way".
"Anti-BDS laws are legislation that retaliate against those that engage in Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. With regard to the Arab–Israeli conflict, many supporters of the State of Israel have often advocated or implemented anti-BDS laws, which effectively seek to retaliate against people and organizations engaged in boycotts of Israel-affiliated entities."
From Wikipedia. Also: "Not to be confused with Anti-BDSM laws."
Most of geopolitics is geography and Israel has greatly benefitted as a unique bridgehead in hostile territory for a changing roster of great-powers and states against another foe e.g.
- Early Soviet support to undermine British Imperialism
- Balfour Declaration from Britain vs. Ottomans
- Nuclear tech from France vs. Nasser and anti-colonialism
- Military/Nuclear from Apartheid South Africa vs. shared pariah status
- Hegemonic power from the US vs. every unaligned country including Cold war, OPEC, Arab Nationalism, Islamism
The more recent metastasising of support into a political-religous-racial belief-system is even more troubling than the apocalyptic machinations of great powers because pure ideology departs from reason itself and is untethered to any care for the consequences.
The theory I've been operating under is that Israel was created as a pretty bad solution to displaced Jews post-WWII, and operates essentially as a vassal state of the US's commercial military interests as a totally intractable perma-war in the region to ensure that even in lieu of other conflict taxpayer money can continuously be laundered to them in the form of expended munitions.
There's obviously a lot more going on from a social/religious perspective, but I'm prone to thinking of large-scale shifts and trends in terms of economic incentives.
I believe it's the other way around: The western governments, media and legislative bodies are under Israeli control.
Have you seen how the US Congress, half of which boos the US presidents along party lines, suddenly all rise up and fall in line when Netanyahu visits the Congress?
It is humiliating, but that makes no sense at all from a power dynamics perspective. Israel is just not that powerful, economically, militarily, or socially. The US's military industrial complex is, and basically every politician is beholden to powerful capital interests, the MIC among them. Unconditional and enthusiastic support of Israel, then, is a proxy for support of those financial interests, hence the visits, deference, etc. This backed up by the very real threat of a handful of powerful lobbying groups that will and have coordinated to redirect funding to opponents of anyone they deem insufficiently deferential.
> Israel is just not that powerful, economically, militarily, or socially.
Its not just funding and religious indoctrination. The very, very serious question that nobody seems to have the courage to ask, is this: where are Israels nukes?
The answer to that question might provide some insight into why things are so supplicant in certain halls of power ...
It doesn’t. The US does, however, and the US has for decades put all of its weight behind Israel. Without that, Israel would probably have faced the same fate as apartheid South Africa.
The current genocide is to blame on the US as much as on Israel.
Another possible explanation: Israel is a leading spyware manufacturer (e.g. Pegasus). They are probably involved in 'sensitive' eavesdropping operations world-wide, and quite likely, have data that would scare the world's leaders to even think not supporting Israel.
Many people in this thread are arguing against pro-Israel commenters. I would strongly suggest not bothering. If these people are still arguing in favour of Israel, they will quite literally never change their minds, they are beyond the point or being possible to convince with facts or evidence.
Step back and take comfort in the fact that history will look back on them as moral scum.
I for one will be holding my representatives responsible who continue to vote for the US to enable a genocide. The videos coming out of Gaza have turned me and many others into single issue voters.
Flipping the U.S. really is the key to ending this conflict. The U.S. reliably uses its security council veto to nix any meaningful UN response and the U.S. remains, by far, the biggest supplier of arms to the IDF. If the US were to stop veto'ing everything and cut off the IDF's supply of, at least, some types of weapons, the new ground assault would likely end quickly.
Unfortunately, that isn't likely to happen. Netanyahu has, to date, handled Trump deftly and Rubio's current presence in Israel seems to be aimed at offering support to the ground offensive, not opposition. I honestly have no idea what kind of backlash it would take to shake U.S. support for this genocide.
There's definitely a generational gap going in the US. Support for Israel is not popular among the younger generation in the US, and there's a good deal of voters in their 20s and 30s for whom support for Israel a red line in candidates. But older generations tend to be staunchly in favor of Israel, and too much of the gerontocratic political class thinks that pro-Israel uber alles is the key to winning votes.
It is worth noting that Andrew Cuomo, in a desperate last-minute gamble to boost support in the NYC mayoral race, has come out against Israel. Considering that much of the attacks on Mamdani have focused on his support for Palestine (construing him as antisemitic), it's notable that other candidates also seem to think that being anti-Israel is actually the vote winner for moderates right now.
I wouldn't label this as "support for Israel"/"against Israel". One can support Israel without supporting Israel's current approach. Many within Israel are not happy with Netanyahu's methods, and presumably they are not against Israel.
I understand that that's the current shorthand, but it seems inaccurate and unnecessarily polarizing to me.
> One can support Israel without supporting Israel's current approach.
I suppose you could that in theory but only in theory. In practice, the current situation is not very surprising given the overall trajectory since the inception of the country. It's very disturbing to see the memes that are coming out of the social media of the soldiers and even the general population.
Even if the current govt. of the country changes, I wouldn't hold my breath about the new government making reparations or taking any other positive steps.
This is what puzzles me - ppl keep railing about being pro or anti Israel and it's overly simplistic and also not really accurately describing things. It's more pro/anti Likud or Kahanists, or really at heart a right vs left wing divide. There's still plenty of Labor or more progressive elements of the Israeli public who are against what Netanyahu and his political allies are doing.
It's not a party - it's an ideology: zionism [1], for which there is widespread left and right support. It is almost like a 20th century manifest destiny [2], with largely the same inevitable outcome.
I find this a strange take, and I hear it a lot from inhabitants of both the USA and Israel about their leadership.
For better or worse, Netanyahu represents the Israeli governement, which represents Israel. Similar with Trump and the USA, or Putin and Russia. Sorry for the people who don't agree with them, but that's an internal power struggle, and as an outsider it is normal to abstract that away. For all of us: Your country is doing what it does.
As a Belgian, I spit on my idiotic, nasty governements. Insert tiny violin, whatever Belgium does on the international forum, I'll still be tarred with it. Similarly, we talk about Germany's role in world war 2, even if only about 10% of them were associated with the NSDAP.
Every power struggle is always represented overly simplistic. Sorry for both the jews and Israëli's who don't agree with it, you're probably good people. This time I am lucky to sit at a very comfortable sideline, criticising your country. But the point stands: Israel is correctly described as officially committing a genocide, and hence it can't be described as the good side.
Yet the only basis they have of the claim of genocide is a heavy journalistic trend to exaggerate Arab suffering in this war, and a selection of government official quotes which are interpreted in the worst way possible.
The journalistic actions are beyond reprehensible - they are responsible for the deaths of so many children by encouraging Hamas to ensure child deaths. This is not some theory, if you speak Arabic go read the Gaza telegram channels. They're not shy about it.
Israel was literally born out of political scheming to get assigned a portion of someone else's territory for an exclusive ethno-nationalistic state; then out of ethnically cleansing that territory. It was necessary to the project and planned in advanced.
You can be for the existence of a peaceful Israel that has entirely retreated within recognised borders and made amends for its past genocidal behaviour- but it's not what the current Israel is or, sadly, can ever be.
> There's still plenty of Labor or more progressive elements of the Israeli public who are against...
The Arab states haven't made amends for ethnically cleansing huge numbers of Jews (majority of Israel's Jewish population are Mizrahi Jews who fled ethnic cleansing by Arab governments)
Shouldn't similar preconditions of making amends apply to whether or not we accept the existence of those Arab states?
It is called a rhetorical device. It is considering the ends of your argument. If you are British, French, German, American, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. and you support the argument that displacement or control of a people is bad, I agree, but consider what you would want to do and apply the rule fairly. Criticising one country for “taking” land when it was given that land by the same UN you use to claim that it is a genocidal country today… well that really is rich
Yes of course it's a rhetorical device, and it's meant to subtly change the subject to prevent engaging with it.
This conversation went like this:
>>>> ppl keep railing about being pro or anti Israel and it's overly simplistic and also not really accurately describing things. It's more pro/anti Likud or Kahanists
To which I replied that Israel is constitutionally born out of a pre-planned colonisation and ethnic cleansing and it's wrong to think that its supremacist ideology only belongs to a part of its political spectrum- it could change but it's unfortunately unrealistic.
>>> Israel was literally born out of political scheming to get assigned a portion of someone else's territory for an exclusive ethno-nationalistic state; then out of ethnically cleansing that territory. It was necessary to the project and planned in advance.
To which the GP replied with something that tries to change the subject on Arab states, at the same time introducing a historical falsehood:
>> The Arab states haven't made amends for ethnically cleansing huge numbers of Jews
Now,
1) the Arab states are not born out of a planned ethnic cleansing of anyone (at least not in the recent past)
2) Many, perhaps most of the Jews that immigrated to Israel did so voluntarily (made Aliyah)
3) By the way, Israel itself even engaged in false flag terrorism to push Jews to emigrate from Arab countries to Israel.
And most importantly, the argument has no bearing with the original subject, which is whether its a specific political side that is determining Israel's course now or the country is constitutionally like that. Arab countries have nothing to do with the subject, they belong to a different conversation.
Was it really the "same" UN? In 1947, most of the world was still colonized, and had no UN representation. France, Britain and the US might not have had much of a problem with telling some people in the Third World to give up their homeland, but sentiment in colonized countries would have been very different.
Also recall that it was only a UN recommendation, not a binding resolution.
> Israel was literally born out of political scheming
Its more of a popular jewish movement that over 100 years changed the ethnic composition of the Palestine region from 1-2% in the 1840s up to 30% in the 1940s.
Political scheming is secondary and was born well after the 1840s.
> changed the ethnic composition of the Palestine region from 1-2% in the 1840s up to 30% in the 1940s.
That was the Ottomans who made that change. After losing a war to Prussia, to collect more taxes in 1856 they openly encouraged migration of all peoples - Jews, Christians, Muslims alike - to the Levant area. By the 1870s Jerusalem was Jewish majority, half a century before the British Mandate era began and even before the First Aliyah.
I was referring to the well documented deals and shenanigans that were instrumental first to get the promise of support for an Israeli homeland, and then in the UN to get the partition plan approved.
Zionism itself is a product of 19th century nationalisms and of course of a (widespread at the time) colonial mindset.
I never said this in my post. This is a reflexive defense on your part as I never specifically called out Zionists, in general, supported genocide. I said, the vast majority of the Knesset, supports genocide. I will say though, zionists in general are wishfully ignorant of this fact.
>This is defamatory BS without any evidence at best
Which parts are defamatory? Are you seriously going to argue that the Religious Zionist Party doesn't support genocide? Cmon man, Bezalel Smotrich is wanted by the ICC.[1]
Unfortunately, that is the reality of how the loudest voices globally want to frame the issue, probably for their own political reasons. That it is possible to be pro-Israel but criticize Likud is inconvenient for those trying to paint an entire country with a single brush. Ironically, the hard-line anti-Israel stances end up forcing such people to keep the criticism quiet.
There's no way of supporting Israel without supporting this current genocide. Literally no way. Because this current genocide is the logical outcome of what Israel is. And was explained as such, in detail, by David Ben Gurion and Golda Mier. Decades ago.
Albert Einstein added his name to a famous letter to the NY Times in the late 40's, in which EXACTLY THIS was explained, in plain & uncompromising language, in the very first paragraph. For Israel to exist, it would have to be just like the Nazis. That's LITERALLY what that letter said.
The splitting of a non-existing hair argument that you're trying to do is just to avoid admitting that you've been wrong the entire time, and enough people warned (or boasted) about it from the very beginning that you really don't have an excuse for being this wrong.
What’s the difference between genocide and self defense? Two state solutions were offered 5 times and rejected. Israeli withdrawal from Gaza happened. Rocket attacks by the thousands took place. A terrorist attack with rape and mutilation took place. Women were dragged through the streets naked with blood on their groin. And to this date, hostages have not been released.
Isn’t the only just response to completely eliminate the offending group, Hamas? Why should Israel and its resident tolerate ANY future risk to their residents?
> Isn’t the only just response to completely eliminate the offending group, Hamas?
Israel is eliminating far more than the "offending group" and they're doing it in a cold blooded, inhumane manner. That's why it's not "self defense". It's shameful.
> Rocket attacks by the thousands took place. A terrorist attack with rape and mutilation took place. Women were dragged through the streets naked with blood on their groin.
Wasn’t sure who you were talking about there. Still not.
"Attacks began in 2001. Since then (August 2014 data), almost 20,000 rockets have hit southern Israel,[35][36] all but a few thousand of them since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in August 2005."
...
"Some analysts see the attacks as a shift away from reliance on suicide bombing, which was previously Hamas's main method of attacking Israel, as an adoption of the rocket tactics used by the Lebanese group Hezbollah."
If you are charged with murder, but you killed because someone was attacking you, it is a legal defence that you were defending yourself.
There is no such defence against a charge of genocide.
The lawyers who wrote the international treaty, many of whom themselves survived the Holocaust and lost their relatives in it, carefully considered whether to add such a defence. They did not add it. They considered that genocide is a crime for which there is no excuse. That is should be possible to defend yourself without resorting to it.
In any case, the group at issue is not Hamas. The genocide is being conducted against all Palestinians.
Your argument also conveniently omits the extreme level of military dominance which Israel has over the Palestinians.
The real reason many Israelis cannot conceive of a solution other than killing or expelling them, is: how can we leave them there, after the level of hatred, murder, violence, and abuse we have heaped on them over the last two years? We have taken revenge for our 36 dead children, won't they want revenge for their 20,000?
Is everyone in Gaza a member of Hamas? Is it only the 200,000 Gazan casualties so far? How many more hundreds of thousands of Gazans need to be eliminated to wipe out Hamas?
I hope the answer to that last question includes those joining Hamas because of the first couple hundred thousands of Gazans killed.
Genocide according to the genocide convention which is what we're talking about can occur even when a single person is killed as long as there is "intent". This is why we keep seeing the reference to certain Israeli MK statements as proof of intent. So according to Israel's critics, which seems to be everyone here, because Yoav Gallant said that we'll shut the water to Gaza as a response to the Oct 7th attack the first bomb dropped on Hamas on Oct 8th constitutes genocide. There is no possibility of self defense.
What Israel's critics will add to that is that Israel has no right to self defense because it was occupying Gaza before the Oct 7th attack.
They'll also downplay the Oct 7th attack, claim Israelis killed their own, there was no sexual violence etc.
Then they'll look at the number of casualties as another proof. It's not "proportional". Israel is only allowed to kill a certain number of people in its wars. Otherwise it's clearly not self defense. But only for Israel, for other countries, still self defense.
People see bodies, children, on their social media feeds and destruction and that makes it very clear who the good guys and who the bad guys are.
Israel can't win this argument. Don't look for logic. Days after the Oct 7th attack Israel was already accused of genocide. Nothing Israel can do here is right and the actions western countries have taken (e.g. US post 9/11 or western response to ISIS) are not available to Israel because Israel shouldn't even exist and therefore should definitely not be allowed to defend itself (vs. the Americans and the Canadians who have lived on their land for 10,000 years and definitely didn't just steal it from the natives and kill all of them).
The only thing Israel can win is the actual war on the ground and so the leadership of Israel, while making many mistakes, is determined to win the war on the ground. Not all Israelis agree with that either. Personally I don't know if any other options really exist.
All that said, you can't really argue with the fact the population of Gaza is suffering immensely, many of them have lost everything they've had, many killed and injured, they live in terrible conditions. I mostly blame Hamas. I also blame the west for prolonging this war and not offering any reasonable solutions to Israel. Israel has faults and can and should do better but for the most part its hand is forced and has been forced by Palestinian violence/actions for some time. Maybe Gaza should have been taken immediately after Hamas took over in 2007. Maybe there would have been other courses of actions including post Oct 7. I donno. Oct 7th stunned me, it was an utter failure. Not really seeing anything proposed here at this point in time and don't recall seeing anything productive going back.
So all in all it's terrible. There's human suffering. We need to end it. The only way out I see is for Hamas to surrender. Let's get there and then we can debate what words mean, two states, one state, where do we go from here. This was is not going to end e.g. by the US telling Israel to end it.
I agree and it means that the critics have part in why Israels only action is to see it through and more or less upend Hamas. And it probably will go on for many months.
With pressure on Hamas to surrender after being defeated in a war they started, this conflict would probably be over long ago.
Wild blaming Israel's critics for something the Israeli government and military are doing. How can Hamas possibly remain a threat at his point? How many tens of thousands of more Palestinians need to die? Enough is enough!
Pressure Hamas to surrender would have saved many people from getting killed, but only a day after Israel was attacked the criticism against Israel started. The reality is that it was not the aggressor in the latest war, which also shines light on the accusation of genocide.
We're taking about a country that has 23 other states intent on performing to her citizens genocide, and a complicit anti-US media that flips the narrative in order to divide the West.
No- The Israeli (extreme) right used to say "two banks to the river jordan, one is ours and so is the other" (loose translation). This is very different than "from the river to the sea". Also the Israeli right is willing to generally accept muslims/arabs/Palestinians as equal citizens in that ideological dream.
But, how about Israel's declaration of independence? Arguably more representative of the consensus.
"WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions."
And guess what, those that listened are now part of the one million Israeli Arab citizenry.
I think if we see nuance we can acknowledge it. The worldwide campaign against Israel is devoid of nuance. Some western leaders pay lip service to the idea of removing Hamas and that Israeli hostages should be released but in fact they are taking actions that prolong the war and embolden Hamas. Basically the way the world looks at it is "we told Israel to stop and it doesn't" vs. the way it should be looking at is "What would any other country in the world be doing in these circumstances and what are the conditions Israel is looking for to end the violence and how do we get to those conditions.". There is also orchestrated pressure via social media and media like Al Jazeera that pushes narratives that we're seeing in this thread and is not factual. The cries of genocide started before Israel barely fired a shot after it was attacked and what we're reading today is the same talking points that have been flooding social media for the last two years alongside with an unprecedented flood of war imagery we have not seen in any other conflict because the sole purpose of Hamas is to get as many people killed and injured and attack Israel's image. It's been doing that really well.
Being critical of Israel's actions is 100% ok. I am very critical. But what we're seeing is public lynching, not criticism. There is nothing Israel can ever do that is right here. There are no suggestions or proposals for Israel to adjust course that make any sense. Calls for a "cease fire" don't and haven't made any sense because cease fire (which we've had) means Hamas remains in control of Gaza, can re-arm and attack Israel again, and keeps the hostages. Typically this is where the discussion goes to the standard talking points of "didn't start Oct 7th", "Gaza was occupied", "UN blah blah blah", and rhetoric which ignores Hamas and the role of Palestinians in getting where are today. We have maybe 5% of the people in these discussions (on both side - I'll admit that) who have any sense of nuance. We have maybe 1% of people who have enough knowledge on the topic/history etc. We have ideology and propaganda being the dominant forces.
So this is why this shouldn't be on Hacker News. There are enough other avenues for online "discussion" (which this is not) on the dividing topics of the day.
Nazi Germany said the same thing, but much like in your case no post hoc rationalization can wash away the fact they committed genocide.
Israel's founding founders made no bones of the fact that they saw cleansing Palestine of Palestinians as key to your ethnosupremacist ambitions.
You talk with the utter condescension (to borrow the other reply's words) of a people who have been coddled by impunity for far too long, and there is way too much tolerance for your racist narrative in spaces like this.
This isn't right, though it can feel like an option when you are looking for a solution that doesn't make you feel bad.
Zionism is the idea of colonial occupation. The internal logic will always end in ethnic cleansing. It did in 1948. It's doing it now. American Manifest Destiny had a similar function, and it also resulted in massive genocide for which we have not atoned.
Zionism is done. A secular democratic state for all people with the right of return guaranteed for displaced Palestinians along with some kind of reeducation / denazification program for the genocidal citizens of the current state of Israel is the only viable solution.
As a Jew, I don't think Arabs should pay for Germany's crimes. I think Germany should pay. They paid a little already. They should pay more, especially now that they are supporting this genocide too.
Zionism is the idea that Jewish people have rights in their historical homeland. That the Jewish people have maintained a physical and spiritual connection to this land despite having been forcibly removed from it and prevented from returning. And that Jewish people being persecuted everywhere need to return and reclaim their homeland.
As a Jew, what do you say every Seder? Do you do a Seder? לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בִּירוּשָלָיִם
There is no colonial occupation. There is immigration. Jews are not a colonizing force and Jews, and Israelis, have (with very very few exceptions) have never engaged in ethnic cleansing. Zionism acknowledged that the current people living in the region have rights. Those people didn't acknowledge the rights of the Jewish people.
As the other comment mentions, Jews were ethnically cleansed from many countries in the middle east. Their land and property stolen. Jews were attacked and ethnically cleansed in the land of Israel (e.g. Hebron, Tsfat, Jersualem, Gaza). Did you know Jews used to live in Gaza from the second century BCE until finally removed by force in 1929?
A secular democratic state for all people is what was offered to the Arabs when Israel was established! The Palestinians don't want that. Look at how Jews are faring in all other Arab countries today when you talk about "re-education". Antisemitism is rampant in those societies and Jews are erased.
You're entitled to your opinions ofcourse but IMO you are completely disconnected from your heritage and the reality on the ground. If you haven't already I recommend reading a book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Love_Dead_Jews that might give you some glimpse into some history you might not be familiar with.
Historically, Germany did pay: Billions of DM in the 1950s and tens of billions of euros since, plus ongoing survivor pensions and restitution. But the broader strategy after 1945 paired accountability with reconstruction to reduce civilian suffering and long-term instability, rather than chasing maximal punishment.
But we often don't have world powers pay immeasurable or insurmountable amounts due to the game theory that slip-up's between world powers are inevitable, and when they find themselves in a compromising and vulnerable enough position that another nation state can exert enough power on them to "punish" them, those world powers are already decimated enough that the only logical reason for the punishment is retribution/revenge, thereby adding more "hurt" into the world - when that world power's decimation was already its justice.
Also about 15 million Germans were displaced from their homes. Whole regions with 95% German population were cleansed and given to Poland. I am not making judgement on this (I am Polish, part of my family lived in a German house like that, the, land with all belongings other part lost their home and were moved to a labor camp in Siberia by Russians) just pointing out that Germans did pay.
A lot of people were displaced, forcibly moved to other areas, often to labor camps after WWII. Somehow we are able to accept this new order and live in peace. Arabs started multiple war over it, lost all of them, are still waging war today.
The road to peace for them is to lay down arms, surrender and accept the resolution made by the winning side - exactly what we all have done after WWII.
Mossad have actually warned the Netanyahu government of this, saying U.S support for Israel is slipping away and now might be the best time to implement a two state solution, while it can still be as one sided as possible in favour of Israel. Netanyahu has chosen to ignore this.
For those who don't know, Cuomo volunteered last year (apropos of nothing, he doesn't have relevant experience) to defend Netanyahu in the ICC. So any "change of mind" he might be expressing now is a little bit... Suspect.
That gap between support of Israel across age groups existed historically AFAIK, although the margins were narrower.
More worrying for Israel is that it's becoming a partisan issue. That goes to both ends - previously unthinkable, unwavering support under Republicans but a very short leash under the Democrats.
> More worrying for Israel is that it's becoming a partisan issue.
A highly salient political issue becoming partisan is a good thing in a representative democracy, as that is the only thing that makes it possible for the public to influence it by general election votes.
In FPTP, this often ends up backfiring. A politicized issue quickly becomes a polarized issue - the other side takes the opposite view, and both sides then race to the extremes. Compromise becomes less and less possible, because then each side sees it as a defeat. Nothing ends up done.
Worse there is always more than one issue. Now I can't even find someone in my own party to support as the race has brought them all the same way on this. And so I either support one of them anyway for other issues or I leave.
Why would we expect any desirable outcome in this hypothetical though? So the US flips, Israel is pressured into withdrawing, Hamas regains control of the strip and resumes rocket attacks, Israel is forced to respond eventually. It doesn't seem like a path toward a real solution.
There isn't a real solution. Just an opportunity for a few years of peace where people can do the important things in life. That is no small thing though. The danger is in chasing some quixotic nationalist dream. That is never ever going to work out.
Well the real solution is to have a single state and assimilation of some kind, so that people can coexist. It’s possible. Israel itself demonstrates this since nearly 30% of the population isn’t Jewish. But I think a peaceful two state coexistence is unlikely with people who chant “from the River to sea”, which implies the complete erasure of the state of Israel.
> Israel itself demonstrates this since nearly 30% of the population isn’t Jewish
Israel also has a law that says that the right of self-determination only belongs to its Jewish citizens- it calls itself the Jewish state. I would be entirely for a one-state solution with equal rights for everyone, but that thing cannot be Israel.
Not sure which states you refer to (and obviously you don't know either, you just mean it as a lazy retort) but it's not the point. The point is that Israel is programmatically a state for the Jews, and therefore Israel cannot be a state for everyone. There is btw nothing wrong with it- western nations can afford the luxury of being open to everyone because they are massive and ethnically homogeneous enough to be able to afford it. There's some hypocrisy or wishful thinking at the bottom of this, but doesn't matter. The fault of Israel is not that of wanting a state for the Jews, is thinking of colonising another people's land do obtain it, and then not stopping but keeping taking more and crushing all resistance with violence.
Either withdraw from all the territory that doesn't legally belong to it (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, plus the parts of Syria and Lebanon it occupies), or keep the territory and make all the inhabitants equal citizens.
It's the same liberal psychology behind UNSC Resolution 1701 in 2006 where Hezbollah pinkie promised to disarm. And now look at all the dead bodies that this liberal solution caused 18 years later. Of course the same types propose the same solutions again with no sense of shame as to how much death it causes.
The actual durable solution is something like how Sri Lanka defeated the Tamil Tigers, or how Russia defeated the insurgency in Chechnya. Which is roughly the same as what Israel is doing in Gaza now. But Israel is playing on hard mode because the international community has given such a morale boost to Hamas, prolonging the time until surrender.
> morale boost to Hamas, prolonging the time until surrender.
I think this is key. The protest must condemn Hamas while supporting innocent people. Protests that support Hamas as some kind of justified resistance just prolongates everything. Hamas doesn't care for its people. It has an ideological system that glorifies death. Death is just a means to an end for them.
This is the problem of viewing things black and white. The whole conflict is varying shades of Grey.
> 18 year causality stretch without a single critical remark about israels constant desintegration of palestinian civic life.
Good job. The feat of not blaming the obvious aggressor is something very few accomplish.
Israel has control over water, electricty, gas, road, "law enforcement", etc. and used it for decades to push palestinians out of their homes. The last violent events are a result of long oppression and netanjahu establishing a theocracy. Only focusing on extremes and make conclusions on such a basis is something dumb people do, dont you agree?
Israel is clearly to blame, when you know a little more nuanced history and consider its long time dominant position in that conflict.
> international community has given such a morale boost to Hamas
By ignoring israels obvious long running now openly genocidal master plan, you are doing the same.
Well, you seem to be confusing Gaza with South Lebanon, which is what UNSC Resolution 1701, and the 18 years since then, pertains to. There was zero aggression from Israel, they got attacked unprovoked by Hezbollah on October 8th, 2023.
As long as Israel controls the lives of millions of Palestinians who have no rights and who are treated like trash, there will be conflict.
In order to be effective, US pressure would have to be aimed at forcing Israel to do one of two things:
1. Withdraw its military from the Palestinian territories (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza), dismantle all of its illegal settlements there, and recognize a fully sovereign Palestinian state. This is basically asking Israel to give up its dreams of taking over the Palestinian territories and to withdraw to its own borders - a simple ask.
2. Alternatively, Israel gets to keep the Palestinian territories, but it has to grant full, equal citizenship to the Palestinians who live there. That would mean that 50% of the Israeli electorate would be Palestinian, effectively ending the Jewish nature of the state of Israel. The next prime minister could be a Palestinian - who knows?
Israel has held onto the Palestinian territories for nearly 60 years without granting the people who live there (except for Israeli settlers) any rights. It has to either leave the occupied territories or grant everyone who lives under its control equal rights. It's actually quite a simple and reasonable demand.
Right now, because of unconditional US support, Israel has no incentive to do either of the above. Israel's leaders correctly believe that they can have it all: they can keep the land without granting the Palestinians who live there any rights. They operate with complete impunity. The US could end that impunity and impose real costs on Israel for its actions.
The Palestinians pursued a 2-state solution (option 1 above) for over two decades. It failed largely because of dead-set opposition from the Israeli right (thanks Netanyahu) and because even the Israeli center-left was unwilling to fully withdraw to Israel's internationally recognized borders and recognize a fully sovereign Palestinian state. There were always demands to keep large chunks of territory (most critically in East Jerusalem) and maintain effective control over any future Palestinian semi-state.
Both options laid out above (the 2-state and 1-state solution) are vastly better for the Palestinians than living under permanent Israeli military occupation with no rights, and subjected to continuous violence from the Israelis. It would not be the Palestinians who would block these types of solutions, were they actually on offer.
The Israelis have a near monopoly on force in this conflict. They are the overwhelmingly dominant party, the only one with tanks, aircraft, destroyers and nuclear weapons. They have the power to dictate solutions, and that's what they've been doing for decades, using brute force. Pretending these are two equal sides that just can't agree is a fantasy.
> Why would we expect any desirable outcome in this hypothetical though?
Ending unconditional US support is the only thing that motivates Israel to seek an end other than by genocide, which is a necessary (but not sufficient, on its own) condition for any desirable outcome.
> It doesn't seem like a path toward a real solution.
As long as the Dahiya doctrine persists, it won't be. But that's an Israeli problem - their disproportionate response has been exploited for years. Hamas is fine letting Israel commit as many war crimes as it takes to satisfy their leadership, it very clearly hasn't changed tactics in recent years. The cost to Israeli international credibility seems to be "worth it" in their eyes.
So, if Israel wants peace they first have to stop escalation. But even if Hamas was defeated, we know that wouldn't be the end of things. Next the Druze has to be defended, which would result in a very justified annexation of south Syria and repeat of the same genocidal conditions in Gaza. They would also attempt to unseat power in Yemen, and then embroil America in an unwinnable war against Iran to sustain a true hegemony.
Those booby traps also kill Gazan children. Did you see that recent video of the Gazan girl getting blown to bits? They tried to pin it on Israel, but it was a Hamas IED. That's why there was a camera pointed at it.
Do you care about the safety and security of people in Israel? What would you do if a fundamentalist group shot thousands of rockets into your town over a decade?
What would you do if you were expelled from your homeland at gunpoint by foreign settlers, and then 19 years later, your refugee camp was conquered by the very same people, who then ruled over you using brute military force for nearly 60 years, with no end in sight?
What would you do if you were a southern governor responding to a slave revolt? It's the same kind of question. I wouldn't build my society on ethnic supremacy and then seek to maintain that through force.
It can either end in the death of one side, most probably Palestinians, or in peace agreement.
Currently there is war, peace is out of the window. First step is to stop the war, second step is to make both side actually negotiate.
It was attempted by Clinton a while ago but assassinations from mossad and hamas prevented the process to success.
To be honest, politicians have failed us too many times for my sad brain to believe that there will be a good outcome.
Most probably Israel society will keep radicalizing itself, Palestinians will be killed and Gaza bombed/annexed leading to the death of both Palestinian and Israeli civilization. Palestinian will be all dead and Israeli will have become in all manner what they initially sought to destroy, literal nazi.
I’d even bet that death by zyklon is more human that seeing your family and yourself getting slowly hungered to death. And contrary to nazi Germany, no Israeli can pretend to not know what’s going on.
To an extent sure but Israel 's methods of stopping them are the issue. They are using total war which causes suffering disproportionately to innocent people
No, normal people understand very well that they are. They are the children of Palestinians who were murdered or ethnically-cleansed in the Nakba and then locked up in an open-air prison. They are the resistance to zionist-colonialism. You obviously can't describe them as such, since you are a Zionist for whom such primitive smears are useful propaganda designed to deny them the internationally recognized right to armed resistance.
The US seems to be dominated by different right wing meme factions now. A choice between different strains of Maga all of whom would kill thousands in Gaza just to spite the left.
People didn't flip to red so much as blue voters in swing states sitting on their hands and abstaining from voting. Now they're looking down the barrel of authoritarianism and they're still unwilling to vote unless Gaza is a fully solved problem. The cruel irony is that this behavior is worsening the situation in Gaza.
Couldn't the Democrats change their positions so that they align with and accommodate popular positions and win elections. I don't think most of the (rather large block) of folks I know who abstained wanted a fully solved problem, they wanted the US to stop funding Israel and that is a position that the Democratic party could have taken if they had chosen to do so.
This is what people don’t understand, because it isn’t their single issue.
If I beg you to reconsider on a very serious issue that is in your power to change stance on, and you not only ignore me but laugh in my face, then why exactly do you still get my vote? Why exactly should I reward you for completely ignoring my protests?
Make sure to swap Gaza for your single issue - maybe LGBT rights, or abortion, or gun rights - and then seriously think about how you would deal with it.
The Democratic party has basically decided to lean on “but they’re worse” as a political platform while backsliding on multiple issues. They do this because Democrat voters lap that shit up, chant “vote blue no matter who” like members of a cult, and then cry out in astonishment when the Democrats in Congress and in the gov keep sliding towards the right.
Also, an addendum: before blaming abstainers and third-party voters, it might be good to ponder on why Democrats preferred risking losing the presidency over making any concessions whatsoever on Palestine. At best, it was a grave miscalculation borne out of hubris. At worst, it was an act of self-sabotage to ensure unconditional support for Israel. Pick your poison :)
It's important to also point out that not enabling genocide is one of the most important issues single-issue voters can swing their vote around. That's because genocides both
1) threaten the international rules-based order, shattering the expectation of adherence to any number of human rights-centered protocols and representing crisis that can snowball into larger conflicts,
and 2) are often facilitated in part by police actions (civilian detainment, censorship, killings dressed up in lawful rules for the use of force, etc.), which threatens a general spillover of military action into the civilian/domestic status quo.
In other words, tolerance of genocide leads to a general shift towards war and despotism, even for people who aren't in the group targeted for genocide. Tolerance of evil builds the scaffolding for further subjugation.
Black people have known for decades, you vote for the people that don't actively hate you.
Sitting out of the process does absolutely nothing, whether its a protest vote, pretending that politics don't affect you, or just giving up completely. The people who get elected in those situations always 100% ignore you.
When people are in office that are at least willing to listen, you then make a lot of noise and put on pressure. You might get ignored mostly, since you are a minority voting block, but you can make incremental gains and even sometimes big wins.
what do you do if both sides actively hate you? voting for the lesser of the two evils seems to just guarantee evil forever, and they have no reason to listen to you if they know you'll always vote for them.
You also do what black people have known since the civil war ended. You run for office. Hispanic Americans have learned this and their voices are now heard, Asian Americans also seem to finally understand this point. Gay Americans and other minorities are also running and winning. The answer is to never sit out.
Are you complaining in this post about the suffering of Gaza while downplaying the suffering of black people in the US and the work black people have done? Because you think its productive to pit the different groups against each other?
Honestly, I have listened to and sought out a lot of diverse voices because I'm genuinely curious.
I certainly found plenty of folks who were not only okay with the DNC's position but who were actively happy with Harris as the nominee.
Black people are, however, not a monolith. I'm quite aware of the differences between the many different sets of ideas (everything from hoteps to DNC-paid shills to people who genuinely liked the Harris platform to black anarchists/commiunists/ ex-panthers/ etc) and it's highly reductive to try to make the claims you're making here about "what black folks have learned".
As a person who genuinely believes actual leftist (communist and anarchist) politics are legitimate I found plenty of folks who abstained or tried to hold the DNS to change their policy.
But regardless of the "harm reduction strategies" or how legitimate you think having any semblance of political representation, the fact remains:
the democrats lost.
Unless you want to concede that "the party can only be failed, it cannot fail the people", the reality is that the party could have changed its policies and accommodated groups that abstained and perhaps won.
You can claim that the voters are just fools, but at the end of the day very few of us have any power at all over the DNC platform so it's simply bizarre to blame us for their horrible, provable failed choices.
On the contrary, Democrats win when black voters turn out and lose when they don't. Because Republicans often hold such nakedly racist and repugnant views that voting for them is a complete non-starter, the only practical choice available to most black voters is not who to vote for, but whether to vote.
Black citizens make the most progress by strategies built around embarrassing the powers that be. Those powers generally capitulate (as much as they ever were going to) after a period of tantrum-throwing, which is where we are now. Such politicians hate having to vote against the donor class's wishes, but they'll do it to get reelected (or they'll be primaried by candidates who will). Or, they'll lose. Those are the choices, which Kamala Harris unfortunately learned the hard way.
One other thing black folk have known for decades: nobody you can put into the White House or the legislature will be able to stop half the country from thinking of you as a n!gger. You don't vote based on that because Carter and Clinton and especially Obama and Biden have shown us that election-based social progression is a pipedream.
You misunderstand. GOP breaks all rules and will literally do anything to win because their policy destroys peoples lives. They're the bad cops. Democrats have the slightly less destructive policies and they sort of occupy reality. They're the good cops. Both cops have the same boss.
> GOP breaks all rules and will literally do anything to win because their policy destroys peoples lives.
Not only that, the current president literally promised everything to everyone - just to win! People are too naive (or too innocent) not to notice the lies.
Tbf, that's Athenian democracy at work - politicians would promise the most audacious things just to get elected. One could argue that's even how democracy started in the first place - just so that one guy could rule Athens independently and not as a Spartan puppet.
Of course, we haven't adopted the other facet of Athenian democracy which is ostracization by voting.
Couldn't far left progressives run their own candidates to win their own elections on issues without siphoning unreciprocated one-way support from the Democrat party? Given the toxic outcomes of supporting purity testers who give ultimatums similar to yours on political issues completely unrelated to the average voters life, theres likely no mainstream party that would align with a platform of virtue signallers that dont intend to create any meaningful policy, so to claim your position is popular is somewhat is a misnomer. Saving people is a popular concept, sure, but it's not easily perceptible to the rest of us that the group taking the strategy to ensure the most suffering for the Palestinians possible in our voting cycle is the one attempting that feat.
"Saving people" is an Orwellian turn of phrase for not supplying the bombs that are dropped on hospitals and refugee camps. Does the commuter "save" the child playing in the street by not willfully plowing her over in his SUV?
Not actively supporting a genocide isn't "virtue signalling". The Democrats will continue to lose until they face that reality. It's actually super gross to present the ethical will of voters like this.
The Democrats could simply not fund (and start) a genocide and easily win elections. Don't blame voters. I won't vote for anyone complicit with Israel, D or R. Ask yourself why it's so important to Democrats to support Israel, even when that means losing important elections. We've got big problems on our hands and it doesn't look like we'll be voting our way out of this, Israel has too much control over every aspect of our government.
Indeed. My gift to Democrats that continue to support Israel is to make sure Republicans win and destroy the country.
Genocide is cause for war and destruction of countries. And fortunately, Republicans made it convenient to destroy American society.
You see children being burnt alive by racist zealots with your tax dollars, and you CONTINUE to fund it? Yah that's a good way to end your society. The USA is no exception.
Well, blaming the voter for abstention still conveniently sidesteps blame towards the Dem party for trying to platform Biden again.
And now we have you yelling at other people in your party, sewing more division, alienating even more people from your coalition. "How is that working out for you now?"
>Well, blaming the voter for abstention still conveniently sidesteps blame towards the Dem party for trying to platform Biden again.
Non-sequitur much?
>And now we have you yelling at other people in your party, sewing more division, alienating even more people from your coalition. "How is that working out for you now?"
My party? Which party are you talking about? Don't be shy.
Just pointing out second order consequences.
As for you, what exactly are you trying to say? It's not clear to me what you hope to contribute to the discussion other than satisfying your imagined superiority to other Americans. Or is just those with an excess of melanin?
Too bad the vote led to the current situation where women pointlessly die because of restrictive abortion policy, LGBT people get even more persecuted in the USA with no hope for improvement, protesting the genocide in Palestine is now ground for deportation for non-citizen residents and seems like it would make one an enemy of the state, so you lost all chances of being able to do something. Plus the ideology being force-fed into other countries with American politicians supporting far-right parties in Europe and attempting to strong-arm them into far-right policies (https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/03/29/french-... ). I guess none of that ever mattered to abstentionists.
Well Europe was probably going to fell to the far-right anyway...
Is it the fault of the voters who couldn't stomach the genocide or the Democratic candidates who refused to budge on the issue? It's an argument that has been recapitulated millions of times now, so I'm not sure why we should repeat the exercise here.
It does make me despair to have the two parties that together govern our country both be so committed to something so heinous. Can one really be a proud citizen of such a nation?
We’re not citizens we’re subjects. Their dehumanization of Palestinians will eventually be applied to the poor and underprivileged “citizens” of the US.
Agreed, it along with claiming victory on that certain thing that started five years ago and didn't end yet, realllly annoyed the left. And now, matters are worse.
(It also made the statements about "radical left" candidates very ironic.)
If only the blue representatives would resolve this tension by pulling support for a now internationally-recognised genocide! :( I suppose that option is just too radical to put on the table.
You've thought through the full foreign policy implications for pulling aid from Israel overnight? I'm not sure why "less bad" on your pet issue isn't enough, especially when you're up against Trump, who has made posts suggesting resorts and golden statues of himself in Gaza.
I doubt any foreign policy aid would get pulled from Israel. Israel doesn't need to be taking actions perceived as genocidal. If the US wasn't offering full and unconditional support they'd just have to go about their foreign policy aims in a more palatable way.
Isreal's approach to foreign policy doesn't do them any favours, I've lost count of the number of negotiators they've taken out this year. The US would be helping them by forcing them to conform a bit more to global norms, if they upset less people and try some more cooperative strategies we might see progress on peace in the region. The fact that the Democrats failed to find a frame like that to prevent what appears, superficially, to be a genocide really goes to the heart of what GoatInGrey was pointing at.
What are the implications? Israel isn't going to align with Russia or China, so probably they'll have to stand on their own and rely more on their nuclear deterrent. It'd be easier if they weren't bombing every single neighbor they have though.
Actually I think thats exactly the plan. They will milk the US as long as they can and once they have gotten everything they can from that dead corpse, they will do what any other nation would do: Align themselves with whatever partner that can help them the most. They have a lot of talent and investment (thanks to the US) and can offer other future superpowers plenty in exchange for partnerships.
> You've thought through the full foreign policy implications for pulling aid from Israel overnight?
I don’t think many people are thinking through now especially the one at the top of power chain, otherwise we’d not have witnessed child charades like invade Canada, Greenland, and Panama, as well as overnight gutting of USAID.
The Biden administration brokered and pressured Israel into a ceasefire that asymmetrically disfavored them. Israel exchanged 30 Hamas militants per Israeli hostage. The ceasefire outlined a permanent resolution to the conflict, including Israel's full withdrawal from Gaza. They also pressured Israel to keep aid channels open during the war, which is exceptionally obvious now given significantly longer blockades and that famine broke out under Trump. The 2006 withdrawal from Gaza and Oslo Accords were also brokered by America. Israel would not have agreed to any of this without any security reassurances in the form of military aid.
On the other hand, there is no guarantee that completely cutting off ties with Israel, would make anything better for Gazans. While it's possible there would be fewer civilian casualties, it's also possible there would be more if Israel switched to from precision strikes to ground invasions and dumb weapons.
Like this whole thing has gone for 70 years in Israel. We already know what comes of the same strategy that was followed for all that time. Doubling down on it now isn’t going to change anything.
It has gone on and the people occupying Gaza and the West Bank rejected several two state solutions. And when given the right to vote, they placed Hamas into power and began an Iran backed rocket crusade against Israel. It was capped off by October 7. What solution can work except to let the one democratic society take over the entire region?
> And when given the right to vote, they placed Hamas into power
Are you sure you want to hold voters directly accountable for an election that happened over a decade ago? If yes, then it's a pretty slippery slope to be on, esp if the same standard were to be applied to US voters.
I wonder if that had anything at all to do with the Israeli right backing Hamas at the time, because they were being shamed internationally (haha) by the previously militant PLA/PLO being more and more willing to negotiate.
Netanyahu and his ilk didn't like the awkward questions of why the terrorists were negotiating but they weren't. So they started propping up Hamas.
> And when given the right to vote, they placed Hamas into power and began an Iran backed rocket crusade against Israel.
"They" started firing rockets, or Hamas? Hamas who is 30,000 of Gaza's 2.5M? Just when was that last election, again?
Nobody in Israel propped up Hamas to win elections.
Palestinian elections in 2006 were forced by USA (because democracy and stuff) despite objections from Israel and PA who were afraid that Hamas will win.
When Hamas won elections and assembled government, USA sponsored coup executed by PLO. Coup succeeded in West Bank and failed in Gaza.
The people "occupying" Gaza and the West Bank are the Israelis, and the Palestinians rightfully refuse any agreements which strip them of their rights under the guise of generosity. Stop with the ahistorical equivocation.
What are you talking about? The Camp David Accords and Israel–Jordan Peace Treaty were resounding successes. The Oslo Accords achieved mixed results but was still a major improvement. If there is a lesson to be learned, it is that requiring for Israel to unilaterally withdrawal was hopelessly naive.
Oslo was not an improvement. Palestine (the PLO/PA) gave up deterrence and renounced violence and the West Bank is now being annexed by far right Israelis. What did Israel give up in Oslo? Nothing
This is incorrect. In 1992, the PLO had little military presence and were exiled abroad. The West Bank was governed by Israel. The Oslo Accords allowed the PLO to return and govern their people, including the establishment and expansion of their security forces.
> On the other hand, there is no guarantee that completely cutting off ties with Israel, would make anything better for Gazans.
I agree with everything you said about Biden being practically better for Palestine, but this is nonsense. Israel would be a completely isolated state without US support. Even North Korea has China. The last completely isolated state in the world was South Africa whose apartheid ended as a result. It's not crazy to think Israelis might realize forcing people who have lived in the same country for generations to be stateless and voteless to preserve a "pure", "Jewish" state is not a worthwhile gamble if it costs them any connection to the outside world.
What do you mean by “pure Jewish state”? Israel has a 21% Arab population that is thriving and happy. In addition to 6% other non Jewish groups. So nearly 30% of the county isn’t Jewish.
Getting the Western world to agree to South Africa style sanctions towards Israel to their response to an attack is another level of unrealism over ending America's military and intelligence partnership. Even if that occurred, Israel is quite friendly with India that has only strengthened with October 7, and is capable of building a similar relationship with China.
wrong. There is a study that surveyed those that didn't. The conclusion was that if turnout had been better, Trump wins by an even larger margin. There definitely was a shift right.
And that was always known to have been a counter-productive protest. There's nothing ironic about this. They were told. They didn't care.
It was unambiguously clear that no matter how bad you felt Obama/Biden/Harris were on Israel, Trump was/would be worse.
If every single human life is worth saving (and it is), it's indisputable that Trump is worse for Gaza than Harris would have been.
It was the ultimate Trolley Problem, and a bunch of progressives acted like pulling the switch on move the trolley is NEVER acceptable regardless of how many lives it saves...
The Dems being willing to lose elections rather than meet voter expectations, says more about them than it does any particular voting or non voting group.
Have you considered that if they lose an election without that minority, then they still lose the election.
Like a political partys job is to get votes. An electorates job is to withhold votes to punish poor performance. The entity not doing their job here is the party.
The political party's job is to get votes. Which includes keeping the votes they already have. Giving things to one wing of the party can cost votes to the other wing.
The party is aware of the trade-offs. It goes ahead with its best estimation of what will win. Sometimes they can do everything right and still lose. One such scenario is when people would rather have the greater of two evils rather than be responsible for the lesser.
That was (potentially) a reasonable argument before the election, but the election happened and we know the results.
We can't adopt [potentially winning strategy] because it might harm [definitely non-winning strategy] is not a reasonable position. You don't have to adopt any specific alternative plan, but clinging to a non-working plan clearly isn't the right answer.
The only way Democrats would have lost votes is if the "Vote Blue No Matter Who" folk weren't really prepared to vote blue, no matter who. Democrats didn't lose their base, they lost their left; theoretically, there's no leftist policy they could take on that would lose them their base, because it's their base.
Sure and its possible thats what happened. But looking at their behaviour, its more like they thought they could use Trump to force everyone to fall in behind them regardless of policy.
The trolley problem is an oversimplification. What we have is actually a repeated trolley problem, where picking the least of two evils gives the “less evil” party a near infinite amount of leverage over you to demand your loyalty regardless of whether they give in to any of your requests. The “less evil” party is in effect holding the people tied to the tracks hostage in your trolley problem. Because “less evil” is still evil, society decays no matter which way you flip the switch which leads to a population prone to fascism. The neoliberals are to blame more than anyone else for the situation we’re in today. They love to deflect but they are complicit in everything going wrong right now.
> where picking the least of two evils gives the “less evil” party a near infinite amount of leverage over you to demand your loyalty regardless of whether they give in to any of your requests.
The less evil party commands no loyalty at all, you vote for it only so long as there are no better options. If we're presupposing that there will never be any other option but the greater evil, then the lesser evil very much should be voted for consistently. Why can't the other side be the one that needs to reform to better appeal to the voters interests? What is to stop the lesser evil from becoming more evil, catering to voters who actually show up?
If people voted for a third party, that would be one thing. Sure the odds of winning the election are slim, but a third party candidate needs only 5% of the vote for the party to get federal campaign funds, to say nothing of the increased legitimacy in upcoming elections. It's happened in my lifetime, it can happen again. A strong showing by a third party forces the major parties to adjust to avoid splitting the vote. Jill Stein of the Green Party was openly opposed to Israel's actions in Gaza, they could have voted for her. And while there they could have voted for down ballot candidates so one party doesn't get control of all branches of government. But they didn't; third parties had their worst election since 2012. Of the 6 million democrat votes lost from 2020 to 2024, 400,000 were picked up by the green party. You can't simultaneously accept that the two party system is the be all end all and that you don't have an obligation to vote for the better of the two parties. It's understandable that people unenthusiastic with the current political situation just want to disengage, but don't act like it's a noble act of protest. Staying home isn't playing the long game, it's just throwing away your vote.
> The neoliberals are to blame more than anyone else for the situation we’re in today. They love to deflect but they are complicit in everything going wrong right now.
That they could have done better doesn't reduce at all the blame of those who specifically worked towards creating the current situation, and those who saw what was happening and chose to do nothing.
Biden literally started the genocide and Harris vowed to continue his policies, so no they are not "better". All they had to do is not support Israel and they would have won the election.
Wait what happened? Was it that people who typically vote blue voted against those who supported Israel? As a Muslim and staunch supporter of Palestine, I didn't think that many people turned red because of this, at least not enough to swing the election. Wayne County, which has Dearborn Michigan (the city with the largest population proportionally of Muslims), stayed blue. I figured if Dearborn couldn't tip the scales any which way then the issue was probably not something worth campaigning on in terms of demographics
What happened was complex, multi-factoral, and impossible to cleanly draw pithy conclusions from. It’s like the drawing of the rabbit that turns into a duck when you look at it a different way except there are fifty animals instead of just two. Everyone wants you to think it’s just their preferred animal because it fits their agenda.
The bigger factor was people staying home because they refused any compromise on the issue. For races that swing depending on turnout, this was enough to tip those races red. Hard to say whether this impacted the Presidential election, but it probably did affect some House and Senate races.
Voting third party isn't the same as staying home. If a third party candidate gets just 5% of the vote, the party gets federal election funds in the next election. This isn't some pipe dream, third parties were crossing that threshold in the 90s. It encourages the major parties to alter their positions to avoid splitting the vote, and if they fail to do so then the third party can gain traction over the long run. Further, if you go to the polls for a third party, you are presumably also voting in down ballot races, where you have significantly more impact whether you vote third party or major party.
Staying home does nothing to combat the two party system, gives no direction to politicians as to which way they ought to move to get your vote in the future, and doesn't allow you to participate in local politics.
This is shocking to me tbh. Everyone I know who wants peace in Palestine also knew Trump would be a disaster and that Stein or whoever had 0 chance of winning...
Yes, we did know Trump is a disaster. Perhaps Democrats should have met their voterbase somewhere in the middle to reduce the risk of losing to Trump? Of course, they didn’t, so to me the Harris campaign is to blame more than the third-party voters.
Frankly, my reading was that Democrats preferred risking losing the presidency to making any concessions whatsoever on the Palestine issue.
> that was one of the biggest campaign points and voter sentiment on which people flipped to Red
This is nonsense outside Michigan. And to the extent this happened, I'd have to say pro-Palestinian voters in swing states casting with the guy who initiated the Muslim ban and recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital essentially communicated that they were fine throwing millions of people in the Middle East under the bus to satisfy their vanity.
There is such a thing as sitting-it-out. People didn’t necessarily vote for Trump. They just didn’t vote for Harris. And that is exactly what the voting record shows: votes for Democrats dropped significantly between 2020 and 2024.
Even Wayne County, Michigan, which has Dearborn, stayed blue.
Though I was honestly surprised at how much of my Muslim community was so anti-Harris that they voted for Trump. Harris may be pro-Israel, but Trump is anti-almost everything else we stand for.
> how much of my Muslim community was so anti-Harris that they voted for Trump
I'm honestly split between pro-Palestinian Arab-American Trump voters and soybean-farming Trump voters as the stupidest voting blocks of 2024. Not only are you helping put someone in power who is so obviously going to work against your interests. You've also removed yourself from the other party's table where your issue might have gained priority down the road.
Tbh we are all victims of America's shitty two party system and voting system, and just reflective of how much power political pundits and influencers have. I think ranked choice voting would make fewer people vote against their own self interests.
> ranked choice voting would make fewer people vote against their own self interests
Not for these groups. They wouldn’t rank something that benefits their interests because they’re not voting for anything; they’re voting against. That generally doesn’t work in democracies, which require engagement and compromise.
Maybe the thinking is that if you stop waiting for your turn and remove yourself from the table, someone will move your issue up the road to get you back to the table.
Half of democratic senators and zero Republicans voted to suspend arms sales to Israel. So, there's clearly a more amenable party in this debate. The Dems who didn't sign on, we lobby or primary.
I qualified it. Generally speaking, they both support it. They even called the campus protests for peace antisemetism during Biden's term. Of course the GOP are much worse, but there's definitely reason to dislike both in this regard.
It’s hard to say what Harris would have done, but it’s unlikely she would have greenlit the complete demolition of Gaza so she could build a resort.
Similarly, I doubt she would have forced places like UC Berkeley to send her lists of people critical of Israel (like you), then opened critical investigations against them.
Refusing to vote is the best way to ensure policies you object to the most are expanded.
Then you're privileging your own sense of moral purity over the welfare of the Palestinians. The situation is manifestly worse for them now, as was predictable. I hope the cleanliness of your hands makes that bearable.
Consider that the videos of Oct 7 had a similar effect on lots of decent people. The un is the same now as it was before October 7. In gueterres words "it didn't happen in a vacuum". The complete loss of credibility for the un also didn't happen in a vacuum. Even if their report is true it will fall on deaf ears thanks in no small part to their lack of any sort of objectivity when it comes to Israel.
This was me. I was browsing Hamas' Telegram account as they released the FPV videos that day. The two most disturbing scenes were the pantless body of a teenaged girl being burned amidst chanting of "Allahu Akbar", and militants scouring buildings for any person or pet they could kill and doing just that whenever they found someone.
I learned a very uncomfortable—though valuable—lesson about humans that day.
this is a baseless conspiracy. There is an entire report going over the operational failures that allowed oct 7th to happen and it wasnt the idf intentionally standing aside to let it happen. Also friend fire is predicted to be in the single digits and I dont think any has actually been confirmed.
It's true that the casualties of the Israeli counter-offensive can only conclusively be tied to ~20-30 casualties, but for many casualties it's unknown who is responsible, and there is (inconclusive) evidence Israeli fire resulted in the burning of 77 vehicles, many of which were returning to Gaza with captives (or their bodies)
It seems unlikely to me there were fewer than 80 civilian casualties (out of 815) attributable to friendly fire, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that number is over 200.
October 7 made people in the US demand that their representatives stop supporting genocide? No, it didn’t. It made a lot of supposedly decent people support and even demand evil in their name. At that point you’re just defining “being a decent person” as “if nothing evil happens you won’t be evil” which doesn’t seem like a useful definition.
On a political or legal level for Israel it might have more implications though, that is impossible for them to ignore, but ICJ will focus on the leaders who can avoid visiting certain countries...just like Putin.
> Agreed, UN doesn't have a great reputation in America, I'm skeptical many people will care about this outside the media news cycle.
Lots of people will care, but it isn’t going to move a lot of opinions.
> Pew says only 52% percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of UN in 2024
Yes, but it says 57% do in 2025, the first positive change in support since 2022. [0]
But neither is that much more than the 50% that already think Israel is committing genocide [1], and the positions are probably significantly correlated, so this probably isn’t swaying many people that aren’t already convinced.
> On a political or legal level it might have more implications though but ICJ will focus on the leaders who can avoid visiting certain countries.
Always good to see assessments of international legal impacts from people who don’t know that the International Court of Justice deals exclusively with cases between states, and that the standing body that deals with individual offenses that are war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression is the International Criminal Court.
> Always good to see assessments of international legal impacts from people who don’t know that the International Court of Justice deals exclusively with cases between states, and that the standing body that deals with individual offenses that are war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression is the International Criminal Court.
So what is your expert opinion then? What is the risk to the state of Israel itself if ICJ makes a case against them?
Too bad there weren't many good cameras around during the Nakba, my guess is we'd have some pretty revolting, hainous images to show the world.
Hatred doesn't exist in a vacuum, october 7 happened for a reason. The jew got persecuted, that created Zionism which persecuted in return, the circle of hatred is going strong.
a lot of the videos "coming out of Gaza" are propaganda/fake. I know that sounds like a "crazy conspiracy theory" but if one researches it one can see that "anti-Israel" narratives are being crafted by powerful forces.
"blame the 'evil' Jews" is one of Western Civilization's favorite "games" for some reason. "Their culture values education, frugality, they don't accept Jesus Christ as 'the Messiah', they must be evil!"
(I'm not Jewish, but many of my close friends are, and I've read a lot of history/religion/politics books)
So what? The fact that Hamas or its supporters produce fake anti-Israel propaganda doesn't mean that Israel isn't committing genocide. To suggest so is to engage in the fallacy of composition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition):
(1) "Hamas produces a lot of fake anti-Israel propaganda" -> (2) "All anti-Israel evidence is fake" -> (3)"Israel is not committing genocide".
>> Would you categorize all wars and all acts of self defense as genocide?
No, only those that fall within the definition contained in Article II of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).
Imagine 250 representatives all going to a country with a similar population. It'd be mighty strange if 250 representatives from across the US went to Kyrgyzstan. Frankly, I'd find it strange if 250 went next door to Mexico all in the same year and that's a directly neighboring country that's actually relevant to US interests and the US's single biggest trade partner. Israel gets some sort of special treatment and it's really, really weird. It's treated with higher reverence than any state within US borders is.
This is actually easily explained by Israel having an intimate role in US foreign policy and culture for the past 80 years instead of being a majority Muslim constituent republic of the Soviet Union!
Korea, Japan, UK, Mexico, Canada, etc all are tightly entwined with the US and its culture. The first 3 had major roles in opposing the USSR. Politicians aren't taking trips to any of those countries en masse. Nobody is having their visas canceled for criticizing any of those countries. No college is losing funding if someone complains about those countries.
Sure. Let's ignore the country with the biggest source of immigrants to the US and largest modern cultural and demographic influence. We can move the goalpost and go with those examples.
When was the last time 250 representatives visited any of those countries?
(This is also an account that exclusively posts defending Israel)
None of which has anything to do with which countries politicians feel most comfortable visiting. If the political class felt much affinity with Mexico (rightly or wrongly), I imagine that there would be much less talk of a border wall. Clearly they do not feel the same way about Canada.
I doubt that there are recorded numbers just for politicians, but these are all popular destinations for Americans in general. Now, if there's something else odd about this statistic other than just the number you want to point out, that's a different story.
No, they're a vote that can be won by someone willing to stand up to AIPAC. I also will not vote for a Zionist. At some point, if we live in a real democracy, someone will put winning an election over being controlled by Israel.
> they're a vote that can be won by someone willing to stand up to AIPAC
If they cast a blank ballot, sure. Otherwise, betting on new turnout is a losing strategy. Particularly if you’re counting on that off cycle or in a primary.
There’s enough rage built up against Israel that it will tip the scale. For instance, how many elections do you think the Democrats need to lose before they address the desires of their only potential voters?
The US was “blue” when we helped Israel start the genocide. Too many democrats are far too lost in cable tv style politics and absolutely refuse to address how far over the red line they’ve stepped with their support for Israel. They will continue to lose elections until this is addressed.
You mean like supporting Germany and Japan in 1944-1945? German and Japanese civilians were dying in the thousands. How could it be wrong to support imperial japan and nazi germany by opposing the allies?
When it comes to strategic bombing, honestly, yes.
It boggles my mind that militaries keep attempting despite decades of experience showing that damn near every single time it's been attempted, it's been an abject failure in its aims and very often entirely counterproductive.
Like any social media it's also a place for the lonely and paranoid. These were always attractive ideas for them. The difference is that today they come from the Left.
But the Palestians and Hamas are distinct. There are even Christian Palestinians who are of course, since Hamas is so fundamentally Islamist, not at all represented by the group.
Palestinians who are not part of Hamas are third parties and when they are attacked, you can't tell them to ask Hamas to release hostages or do anything, because they have no more influence over Hamas than anybody else does.
The Wikipedia article doesn't really support your view that they emigrate to Israel:
>In 2007, the year Hamas took over Gaza, the Gazan Christian population was at 3,000.[5][33] Israel's subsequent blockade of the territory accelerated the emigration of Christians, with many going to the West Bank, the United States, Canada, or elsewhere in the Arab world.[5]
I think they don't. I think it's as states, that they either emigrate to the West Bank or go far abroad.'
There are extreme efforts in Israel to push Christians out of certain neighbourhoods, for example, in Jerusalem, where people have been going after the Armenians.
> Do Christian Palestinians live in the Gaza strip or somewhere else?
Would note that not all Muslim Palestinians support Hamas, and to the degree they say they do, I wouldn't morally equivocate their actions with those who actually commit the atrocities (or refuse to surrender hostages).
Israel systematically abducts, tortures, and imprisons Palestinians old and young with reckless abandon. I hate to defend Hamas, but the goal of the abductions was to use them as a bargaining chip to get their own captives who'd been unjustly imprisoned in hellish conditions, for years on end.
Settlers in the West Bank openly murder Palestinians like animals, as well. The State of Israel is a violent terrorist state.
While I agree that Israel do all these illegal things, abductions, murders, letting settlers do whatever and so on, I think on a deeper level the Hamas attack was an Iranian proxy attack and to them, bargaining chips and hostages are just details. They play a dirty game.
Ignoring the thousands of rockets launched from Gaza in the hours before, Hamas telegraphed the October 7 attacks for years. Specifically, planning the attack since at least the 2010's.
Occam's Razor indicates that it was a legitimate operation by Hamas and Israel underestimated their adversary.
>I think on a deeper level the Hamas attack was an Iranian proxy attack and to them, bargaining chips and hostages are just details. They play a dirty game.
That is such a shallow understanding of someone for whom the whole region is just a source of entertainment. While Hamas is an "Iranian proxy" in a similar way that Ukraine is an "American proxy" that doesn't mean that Hamas and Ukraine don't have agency - who, despite their reliance on outside help, have a righteous cause and will keep defending their lands with or without that help.
It's also ironic that you would describe it as "on a deeper level" when it's quite the opposite - it's shallow and misguided. Hamas is a Sunni militant group, while Iran is Shia. You clearly have no understanding whatsoever how these groups have historically fought each other - just look at how they have been fiercely fighting each other in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
So why would Iran help Hamas then? For Iran, attaching themselves to a righteous cause such as Palestine has been a very effective tool to whitewash Iran's image and present Iran as "Axis of Resistance" despite having caused much harm to the Sunni-Muslims in the region (e.g. Iran cooperated with America in destroying Iraq, Iran also helped Assad oppress the Syrians for decades). Thus, helping the Palestinian resistance gives the shady Iranian regime legitimacy and positive PR like no other cause in the world. (the average iranian may genuinely support Palestine, because they are mostly unaware of the meta-game being played by their own regime)
Why does Hamas accept help from Iran? This should be much easier to understand. Most of the Arab regimes are ruled by puppets who are subservient to America and have betrayed the resistance. One of the main reasons for October 7 was Saudi's MBS being close to normalizing with Israel and thus sealing Palestine's fate forever. This was a "now or never" moment so the resistance made clear that they mean business and that they won't let any normalization happen without a sovereign Palestinian state. Back to Iran - so when you're in a dire situation, you can't be picky with your allies. Iran helps Hamas because it's a great tool to whitewash the Iranian image and Hamas gets weapons in return. October 7 however was most certainly not in Iran's interest in any way. Despite Iran's harsh language towards America, they very much tried to cozy up and seek "forgiveness" because of the crushing sanctions. Iran may play dirty games like Israel does, but Hamas doesn't - for the resistance it's quite literally about survival and resisting zionist-colonialism.
[Some more examples. In 2012, relations between Iran and Hamas soured after Hamas refused to support Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad, a key Iranian ally in the Syrian civil war. This led to Iran taking punitive measures against Hamas.
- As a financial punishment, Iran cut its funding to Hamas. This financial support had been estimated at around $23 million per month and the cut caused a significant financial crisis for Hamas in Gaza.
- Along with financial cuts, Iran also ceased military cooperation, which ended the supply of weapons to Hamas from Tehran.
- They began to rebuild their relationship around three years later, though tensions remained (see links below)
I agree with most of what you said, except that I don’t think there is anything noble about Hamas. They have a cause but their methods are despicable and stupid. Let’s just entertain the idea that they would have strictly targeted only military targets in their attack. Rightly or wrongly, that would have been a huge propaganda win for them.
I also must protest the notion that I would see the whole tragedy as entertainment. I don’t.
>I agree with most of what you said, except that I don’t think there is anything noble about Hamas. They have a cause but their methods are despicable and stupid. Let’s just entertain the idea that they would have strictly targeted only military targets in their attack. Rightly or wrongly, that would have been a huge propaganda win for them.
It's clear that you have a very surface level understanding of the entire history and I highly recommend that you first study the whole history extensively[0] before you cast judgement. While you're at it, make sure to study other revolts and its gory details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Turner's_Rebellion
There are several aspects of this which are rather fascinating:
1) The response of Oct 7 to almost 100 years of brutal colonization, ethnic-cleansing and mass-murder of Palestinians since the Nakba and the Tantura-massascre [1] was only a tiny fraction of the pain the colonizer suffered compared to the crimes committed against Palestinians. Regardless, it has been treated as pretty much the worst thing ever, while it factually was only a tiny fraction of the the pain compared to the crimes committed against Palestinians for almost a century! "Nothing justifies October 7, but October 7 somehow justifies everything" - The resistance has proven the ungodly amount of bias through which the world judged them and they forced the world to re-calibrate their unjust scales.
2) You're talking about their methods, but you haven't even studied their history comprehensively, all that they have tried, what misery Israel has inflicted upon them and their families for decades. An enemy that's unparalleled in its deviousness - invites you to peace talks, but is only interested in trying to murder your diplomats. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/12/israels-strike...]. How would you deal with such ruthless colonizers? You judge the resistance by the 1 thing that finally forced the world to properly pay attention. Say what you want, but it was Oct 7 which forced the world to properly study the history of Palestine. For almost a century the Palestinians only received fake sympathy while much of the world uncritically accepted and even regurgitated Zionist lies knowingly or unknowingly. The outrage that was shown on Oct 7 was never ever shown when Palestinians were the victims, so this was a key moment when such biased individuals were confronted with massive evidence that woke them up to their selective outrage and their unjust judgement.
3) It was the severity of Oct 7 that humiliated the colonizer who had always seen themselves as superior to the "kushim" of Palestine ("The British told us that there are some hundred thousand negroes [kushim in Hebrew] and for those there is no value." - Weizmann, quoted by Arthur Ruppin in: Yosef Heller, Bama'avak Lamedinah , Jerusalem, 1984, p.140.). It was that humiliation that the colonizer felt - they couldn't even bear to suffer a fraction of a fraction of the pain they inflicted upon the Palestinians for almost a century, such that they whipped themselves into a genocidal-frenzy and dropped their diplomatic hasbara mask. The resistance unmasked the colonizer, made them drop their masks - made the world understand who the Zionists really are and who they have always been. ["Leibowitz said that the State of Israel and Zionism had become more sacred than Jewish humanist values and described Israeli conduct in the occupied Palestinian territories as "Judeo-Nazi" in nature while warning of the dehumanizing effect of the occupation on the victims and the oppressors." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshayahu_Leibowitz ].
And even after all that, much of the world still stubbornly refused to believe their own eyes while observing the evil that Zionists livestreamed so proudly. Only after Zionists consistently and persistently insisted on being so openly and proudly evil for almost 2 years straight is when people started to believe what they were witnessing:
4) Go through Palestine's history, enlighten the people how your methods would have been so much less "despicable and stupid" in resisting colonizers who have been absolutely unscrupulous and devious at every step: https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir... . Colonizers who have murdered your ancestors and established an apartheid ethno-state [2][3] on the mass-graves of your women and children, while raving on your stolen land - within your field of vision from the open-air prison in which they have locked you up.
I appreciate it, but I'm merely a student of the wonderful work produced by other scholars and educators. All the praise belongs to them, it's their knowledge and work that I've tried to present as I've learned it.
Many of the current hostages were in a music festival (it's not a war zone) and captured during the Oct 7 massacre by Palestine.
Edit: I see you edited your comment to blame the hostages for being in the music festival. So, you normalize blaming regular people who have nothing to do with the war; the very thing you said we shouldn't do.
It is incredibly interesting how the US (and Germany) have put so much into Israel and associated groups they really don't want it to fail (despite the Israeli gov doing their damnest to facilitate just that). In my understanding Israel, in the eyes of the US, is a convenient "wedge" in the Arab space that allows for easier power projection in the area, plus they have a healthy amount of zionists close to money and power at home. I imagine the political calculus of if and how to support it is ridiculously difficult.
Israeli citizens, the vast majority of them, have not taken meaningful effort in overthrowing the government of a corrupt prime minister doing everything in his ability to stay in power, else Israeli citizens ought to learn from Nepal and call for a concrete transition of power. At this point, they are complicit in the genocide, like it or not - simply protesting in Tel Aviv and their local kibbutzim won't cut it. And I say this as someone who's view has shifted massively on this topic since October 7, 2023 - from a vocal supporter of Israeli action (as a Muslim nonetheless!) to a vocal opponent now. Until Israeli citizens overthrow their corrupt government of their own will, they are all part of the genocide and must be rightfully ostracized. Especially given that Netanyahu has outed himself as a one-Jewish-state proponent, and has no interest in a peaceful resolution - or in regional peace.
What's to say Israel's next plans aren't for Greater Israel next? Stealing parts of the Egyptian Sinai, Lebanon, Syria (which they already have done) and Jordan? And then Saudi Arabia and Iraq?
Last election the democrats didn't have a primary, and the republicans barely had one. Political change requires more than one day at the polls; it demands large scale sustained effort by many people, including those in positions of prominence, and even with that success takes time and luck.
Part of being in a leadership position is taking responsibility for what happens on your watch. The electorate can't be blamed for its leaders not doing their jobs when the their leadership is needed.
> Last election the democrats didn't have a primary, and the republicans barely had one
Now do down ballot.
> electorate can't be blamed for its leaders not doing their jobs when the their leadership is needed
Pro-Palestinian voters who swung for Trump explicitly endorsed the war. Even if they thought they were just throwing a tantrum. That includes the war’s repercussions, including the dissolution and incorporation of Palestine.
If you care about net effect, the answer is obvious. If how one feels reigns supreme, yes, that voting bloc is excused. (But still irrelevant.)
Yes, and at this point I'm not arguing for or against that action. I'm saying the current and previous US administration have very different foreign policy.
Why shouldn't Hamas leadership be bombed wherever they may be? They're the leaders of a terrorist organization. The US takes out terrorists wherever they may be (or, works with local authorities to get them first). But, when local authorities are siding with the terrorists, we go in there and do it ourselves. October 7th was Israel's 9/11 - we went and got bin Laden in Pakistan, without dealing with the Pakistani government. Why shouldn't Israel do the same thing? I say - kill all the Hamas leadership, and leave the random Palestinian citizens alone.
Let's imagine that a political opposition leader from Russia were to take refuge in the US. Now imagine that Russia performed a "surgical strike" bombing in the US to kill what they viewed as a terrorist leader. Can you imagine the outrage that would occur? That's exactly the situation that Qatar has just experienced.
It's an act of war. One country bombing another country means they are at war.
Now, the power dynamics in this region mean that they'll probably get away with it, and Qatar is more likely to let it slip than not, but it's still morally reprehensible.
We have bombed their leadership. This is an entirely different war. Hamas was/is the government of Gaza. They're part of the people there, not outside it.
You're trying to fight an organization that is part of the civilian population, not above it or outside of it. And that organization is deliberately using human shields to blur the lines even further.
It's not easy to figure out who's a random Palestinian or who's going to fire a rocket into Israel five years from now. If we want to keep bombing our way to victory, that's going to continue down the road of genocide.
Humanity needs to be better than this. We need to be better than this.
Turn your electricity off for days on end when someone in your country does something that other country disagrees with.
Hell, turn your fresh water off too.
Bomb your only airport into non-functioning rubble, and tell you that if you try to rebuild it, the same thing will happen. Keep that up for 20 years.
Park destroyers in your harbors to ensure nothing gets in or out of the country without their say so. Keep that up for a few decades as well.
Keep your land border effectively locked down so you can't even leave that way.
Bulldoze your neighborhood and childhood home because a rocket was suspected to be launched from nearby.
When the other kids in your neighborhood throw rocks at the armored bulldozers, watch as they have rubber bullets shot at them by an army. When they throw rocks at the army, watch as those soldiers return fire with live ammunition.
No, I know nothing about you. But don't pretend that having that as the only existence you've known is not going to make you increasingly angry and willing to fight back in any way, shape, or form, against the boot on your throat.
>I can turn anyone, including you, into "someone who will fire a rocket in 5 years". Give me US backing and I can do it in 4
Echoing OP's point, I can turn you into a person who'll fire a rocket in a year, even. Go read through B'Tselem's reports of Israel's torture camps [0] where tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians are systematically raped, murdered, and abused as a matter of state policy. By the time you undergo that from youth, with half the people in your family gone for years, imprisoned in such camps, while half the kids you grew up with have died in senseless state-sanctioned murder, you'll be ready to do something worse that firing rockets.
Of course, you'll argue, from a sheltered perspective that you wouldn't ever do something like that. So, what will you do instead of fighting back? Sue? LMAO. Protest? You'll get shot. Just focus on building a family? Your home will get demolished or bombed just because.
> Why shouldn't Hamas leadership be bombed wherever they may be?
Israel wouldn't be nearly as criticised if they're restricted themselves to surgical strikes on Hamas. Hell, they could have done exactly what they did until hostages started being exchanged, and then switched to surgical strikes, and I suspect--while folks would grumble--leaders would have better things to focus on.
Surgical strikes is mostly a myth presented to make the war on terrorism look better than it is. The US military defined anyone killed above the age of 15 to be a terrorist regardless of situation, and thus by definition had almost zero civilian deaths. It was one of those things that got leaked through the war logs.
The war on terror is estimated to have killed 4,5 million people. Surgical strikes is not a good description for that, nor was the war on terror a good model for how to behave in a war.
> Surgical strikes is mostly a myth presented to make the war on terrorism look better than it is
Even if they are, which I don't grant, myths matter in the fog of war.
More pointedly, surgical strikes would mean serially decapitating Hamas and destroying its infrastructure from the sky. It would preclude messing with aid flows. (Even if Hamas steals all the food, you can't turn most food into weapons. And Hamas amassing fighters they have to feed isn't a strategic threat to Israel in the way their ports and tunnels are.)
> war on terror is estimated to have killed 4,5 million people
One, source? Two, the U.S. obviously didn't prosecute a surgical war on the Taliban or Al Qaeda. We invaded, occupied and attempted to rebuild two nation states.
I fully understand the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness with this situation. Lots of people like to imagine what they'd do in certain situations, historical or otherwise. We no longer need to imagine what most people would do in the HOlocaust. We now know: nothing. In WW2, most people could reasonably claim ignorance. Even a lot of Germans could claim ignorance. Now we have livestreamed 4K 60fps evidence that is impossible to ignore.
There's a phrase that's widely attributed (arguably misattributed) to Lenin:
"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen"
So while the US could end this entire thing with a phone call, it's not true to say that things aren't changing. US support for Israel continues to plummet to new lows [1], to levels I never thought I'd see. Small things like blocking a cycling event in Spain, the future of Eurovision being uncertain, European states recognizing Palestine, problems for the port in Haifa due to changes in shipping because of Houthi rebels, ICC?ICJ investigations, these genocide findings and so on... it all adds up. It all matters. It all compounds to political and economic pressure on the actors involved.
I don't feel hopeless by pointing out that the UN report is a small piece of a puzzle, despite the high level of energy used to collectively create it.
It's easier to talk about these things and seeing consensus shift on consensus driven forums like this. My prior observations about that state's policies and supporting culture have been similar, but seen as extreme and "cancellable" at one point. Espousing my observations would have been conflated with ideas of physical harm to Jewish and Israelis, which I don't harbor. My ideas are much more similar to Jewish Israeli residents that protest their own government within Israel. And it's been nice to see many stateside Jewish people distance themselves, and now even second guess Zionism, which Jewish community leaders initially denounced 120 years ago by foreseeing these specific issues and its inherent extremism.
When it comes to my country's involvement, it's a complete aberration in US foreign policy. The reasons require a contorting ourselves for no real practical reason that isn’t already fulfilled by other countries in the Middle East, it’s just money moved from one account to the account of our politicians and appointed representatives.
So I am happy to see piece by piece, people re-evaluating the state narrative on that country. The politicians with discretion on all the levers are unfortunately a far cry away from changing anything.
That would be the first genocide that involves terrorism, hostages and human shields at the same time.
Not saying Israel is clean, but I don't see the ICC making significant progress for that case.
What also bothers me is how protesters are not depicting a good image of the cause of the Palestinians. Iran and Russia are often propping them up for division and it doesn't help.
This is a brief history of how the Zionist community in Palestine, and then the state of Israel, used its own civilians as shields in its conquest of the land.
Zionist leaders realized early on that Zionism was a civilian and a military enterprise. In 1919, the first Zionist militia, HaShomer (which evolved into the Haganah, which evolved into the Israeli army) declared “the need to begin widespread settlement close to the existing boundary lines for the purpose of defending the country.” The idea was to establish new Zionist colonies in the border areas. The idea was to put civilians in harm’s way.
But the problem ran much deeper. Zionist fighters soon realized they would need to embed themselves in civilian communities to establish a self-sustaining recruitment base and fund militia operations. The latter was achieved through combining agricultural and military training in civilian settlements. The financial support for military training was attained through the agricultural output of the settlement.
By 1936, Jewish Agency Executive Committee Chairman, David Ben-Gurion, came to agree with HaShomer’s idea to establish settlements in border areas. HaShomer “once had a good idea,” he said, “creating … settlements along the country's borders. It appears necessary to establish settlements on every mountaintop in Palestine with crucial strategic importance.”
The point became all the more obvious during the 1948 War. In April 1948, Ben Gurion told his government: “We must establish a string of settlements of a new type, different from the regular ones, that are not based on the sacred writ of the military academy but rather, constitute mixed battalions of settlers and warriors, farmers and fighters.” For Ben-Gurion, this was the only path to victory.
In the aftermath of the War, Ben Gurion outlined the roadmap for how Israel should continue to settle the country: “Our conquest in the Negev and the Galilee will not be sustainable unless we quickly populate these portions of the country…[with]...the establishment of a long line of settlements on the frontier.”
And so, in the 1950s, Israel built civilian centers in border areas to serve as a first line of military defense. 26 new settlements were established along the Lebanese border, the Jordan river and the Gilboa foothills; 13 on the eastern border, 8 in the Jerusalem corridor and 25 on the southern front. In total, some 108 such militant civilian settlements were built in Israel after 1948, including towns like Nahal Oz, short for Nahlayim Mul Aza, “Nahal soldiers across from Gaza,” which tragically ended up serving the purpose for which it was built. The point was to put Israeli civilians on the front lines as human shields.
Agricultural work conducted under guard in Moshav Nitzanei Oz (“buds of strength”) in 1954. Founded in 1951 as a Nahal settlement, the moshav was located on the Jordanian border and the outskirts of Tulkarem source (p.72)
Initially, the status of the citizens in the border towns was “identical to reserve soldiers,” according to Israeli historian Yoav Gelber. These “civil” communities were even organized in companies and platoons and integrated into the Israeli military’s command and control hierarchy. The Israeli military trained and equipped these civilians in classic civilian stuff like anti-tank and light arms instruction.
After the 1967 War, Israel took a similar approach in the newly conquered territories.
In July 1970, Israel confiscated land in Hebron by military order, ostensibly for “security purposes.” The first buildings on it would be falsely presented as a military facility, according to Israeli cabinet meeting notes. Shortly thereafter, Israel built 250 civilian housing units in Kiryat Arba within the perimeter of the area specified for the military unit’s use.
Similarly, in 1971, Israel declared Palestinian village of Aqraba a military training zone. By 1975, the Jewish settlement of Gitit was established on its ruins.
The idea in the 1970s was to enmesh Israel’s civilian and military presence in Palestine. Then Israeli Defense Minister Shimon Peres called for creating a strip of civilian settlements slicing across the West Bank “for defensive purposes” and another strip near Jerusalem to break the occupied territory into fragments. He added, “there’s a line of army bases in Samaria…I’d put a small civilian settlement next to each one.”
By 1980, the World Zionist Organization had developed a “Master Plan” for the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The plan called for settling the land between and among the Arab population to make it “hard for Palestinians to create territorial contiguity and political unity.” Civilian settlement in the service of military conquest!
“From my perspective,” Avigdor Lierman said in 2017, “it's clear that the settlements in Judea and Samaria and those here in the area of Jericho and the Dead Sea are the State of Israel’s true defensive wall.”
Israel’s military headquarters are located in the Tel Aviv city center, a few hundred meters from a large high school. All the major bus lines pass right by. Tel Aviv’s main hospital -- the Ichilov Hospital -- is just to the north and is connected to the base by emergency tunnels. The Israeli army radio station is located in a residential apartment building & its antennas are on the roof of that residential building.
Then there’s Israel’s militant settlers, who often carry out pogroms and acts of violence against Palestinians together with the Israeli military. What’s more, the Israeli military has established settler militias, known as “territorial defense units,” which are civilian groups armed and trained by the army.
All of this makes Israel’s claim that “Hamas uses human shields” deeply cynical.
In its campaign of mass murder in Gaza, +972 reported Israel prefers to strike Hamas fighters in their homes, together with their families, so long as no more than 20 civilians are killed per strike (for higher level commanders, 300 civilians massacred is considered acceptable).
Imagine if Hamas adopted this military doctrine. What percentage of Israeli households would be legitimate targets? How many Israeli households have an active-duty soldier or a reservist, or live within 100 feet of a household with a soldier or a reservist, and thus would equally be a target given Israel’s use of dumb bombs? [Note: Half the bombs Israel drops on Gaza are dumb bombs that often land 100 feet away from their target]. I’d venture to guess the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israeli civilians would be targets.
Of course, targeting civilians is always a war crime, even if they are being used as human shields. That’s true no matter who is doing the targeting.
Zionist leaders have embraced the use of Zionist, Jewish and Israeli human shields for more than a century. It’s time for this practice to end." - Zachary Foster, jewish historian, founder of palestinenexus.com, [https://palestine.beehiiv.com/p/brief-history-israels-use-is...]
For some reason, I don't see this news mentioned on any mainstream media across the political spectrum (Al Jazeera --> Guardian --> BBC --> CNN / NYT / NPR --> Fox News).
The news cycle is moving fast enough that shockingly enough this news is already pushed off the frontpage of these news sites, but the article is there if you dig a little.
Looking at the official HN guidelines, it states that "Most stories about politics" is off-topic, and "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic".
Is the Isreal/Gaza debate not political, and not mainstream news? How does a story like this not directly violate those guidelines?
Furthermore, the guidelines state that stories should be what "good hackers" find "intellectually satisfying". A political debate thread about Isreal is what "good hackers" would find intellectually satisfying?
I just can not understand how a story such as this in any way remotely meets the established, official guidelines for what belongs here.
Considering these threads also, universally, just devolve in political flamewars / hate spreading. There's nothing constructive here. There's no debate. There's no opposing ideas/opinions allowed.
Yes, but as pg once put it, "note those words most and probably" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426). That was in 2012, btw, which shows how far back HN's approach to this goes.
That leaves open the question of which stories to treat as on topic, but the links in my GP comment go into detail about how we handle that.
I'm not saying we always make the correct call about individual stories. There will never be general agreement about that, since every reader has a different set of things they care about. But I hope we can at least make the principles clear, as well as the fact that they haven't changed.
fwiw I think y'all do a fine enough job of dealing with this difficult nuanced stance. I've noticed that when they stick around, it appears to be a combo of: this seems important enough, the community can probably have a civil conversation around this, people who don't participate will find learnings through the comments still. These 3 things always seem well satisfied, personally I appreciate the measured nature of this community and thank you and tom for the genuine work of trying to maintain the balances.
I am truly disappointed by this post being here and I don’t see any evidence in your links explaining it. You owe Hacker News users two things, one a statement of what political content will be allowed and what won’t and two a declaration of your political boundaries. I say this since I have never seen a pro-Israel post on this platform (unless you include point blank stories on investments/exits for Israeli startups), but I am now seeing this post as one of a trend attempting to slander Israel. It is sad for me to need to have politics be a part of the narrative on Hacker News, but as an Israeli, I want to feel safe on my news platform
Israel and Israeli businesses are an intractable part of the modern American tech scene. Mellanox, for example, is the cited reason Nvidia ships any datacenter-scale interconnect at all today. America's highest-tech defense contractors work in direct concert with Rafael et. al, and companies like Cellebrite are suppliers of US law enforcement.
When the equation changes vis-a-vis Israel's credibility, this entire Jenga structure has to be reevaluated. It's not satisfying to think about, but it is intellectually prudent and remains important regardless of how civil the response ends up being.
> When the equation changes vis-a-vis Israel's credibility, this entire Jenga structure has to be reevaluated. It's not satisfying to think about, but it is intellectually prudent and remains important regardless of how civil the response ends up being.
If the topics and responses pertained to such a discussion, then that would be one thing. However, it seems like that is not what is being discussed in this topic nor comments section.
> A political debate thread about Isreal is what "good hackers" would find intellectually satisfying?
Personally, one aspect I always enjoyed about this site was how it was often an escape for me from the endless bombardments of political discourse that is constantly being shown/recommend to me on other platforms. I do understand the importance of the nature of these types of discussions, but I agree with you, I am not certain much honest debate is being had here.
In the n number of threads like this, I would be surprised if many leave with any of their opinions changed. All too often do people comment to soothe their own knee-jerk reactions rather than to facilitate understanding or intellectually challenge one another.
Conversely, some of us don't hang out on sites that are an endless bombardment of political discourse. That sounds awful. The HN approach seems uniquely useful. One or two post on an event, easily skipped over and ignored if you want with all the comments hidden behind clicking on that headline. Whole trees of comments trivially collapsed at will when they become uninteresting. It is actually a really great way of getting international news (including US news for me) and sampling opinions and commentary, even if it was not intended that way.
I think it always has the potential to be "intellectually satisfying" and there's an obvious 'tech' angle woven through it all. So much of it is tied to how information spreads and which technologies enable that. (And, how an actor can use technologies to their advantage).
I think that reference to "TV news" is outdated. Media has changed and there isn't even a clear division between what a media org puts on TV vs on the web.
And this sub-topic in particular (genocide ruling) isn't really getting a ton of mainstream news coverage -- many news orgs are deliberately distancing themselves from proper coverage. The story may exist on news sites, but it's not being surfaced.
It would be interesting to know how articles like this compared to the average article. How are the ratios of downvotes to upvotes, flagged to non-flagged, and comments to views? Are people who comment here positively or negative correlating to creating non-flaged/downvoted comments on other articles?
To phrase it a bit differently, does this kind of articles create a positive or negative engagement for HN?
Many more downvotes and flags for sure. I can't answer your other questions without specifically looking into it, but my guess would be many more comments and much more negativity.
I feel like parent probably meant Paul Graham. Garry holds polar opposite opinions (he blocked me on X because he had had made claims about what Intifada means, and as an Arabic speaker I felt compelled to point out the correct meaning).
In any case, I don't think Paul or Garry are interfering with the algorithm or moderation here.
The problem with the meaning of “intifada” is that in the US at least, and some other English-speaking countries, it has strong connotations of violence and terrorism dating at least to the 2nd Intifada. The “correct meaning” then becomes somewhat beside the point. Further, if someone in the US uses that term, when speaking in English, it raises a question of which sense they mean it in.
There’s no doubt that this is then used as a weapon against people like Mamdani for having used phrases such as “globalize the intifada.” But that’s going to be an uphill battle to “correct”, because you’re dealing with people who are already biased, are often unaware of their bias, and are interpreting things in a way that fits that bias.
What do the word Führer mean? Foreign words used in English can be more specific than how they are used in their source language. Especially when they are used as proper nouns (capitalized) like "The [Second] Intifada".
For me, this is meaningful because for the first time a legitimate international body is calling this a genocide.
Previously, it’s been activists and claims that this might be genocide. I haven’t read the report yet. But I will, and I intend to leave my mind open as to whether this raises the profile of this war in my mind relative to domestic issues.
Go read this UNHCR report. All the evidence is just circular references to other bodies who reference each other. The most damning thing they could pin on Israel was that "Israel admits 83% of the casualties are civilians". That idea was because Israel could name 17% of the casualties in Hamas registers as members of the organization. But assuming that every other casualty is a civilian is quite a stretch. For one thing, Israel doesn't know the name of every militant it kills while he's aiming an RPG at them. For another, there are many other militant organizations in the strip, notably the Islamic Jihad. For a third, typically 75% - 90% of the casualties of war are civilians by the UN's own numbers.
And they are interpreted in the fashion most damning to Israel, whereas much worse on-the-record quotes from other bodies, notably those bodies which have demonstrated intent to destroy Israel, are interpreted more favourably.
"On 25 July 2014, the United States Congress published a letter addressed to Pillay by over 100 members in which the signatories asserted that the Human Rights Council "cannot be taken seriously as a human rights organisation" over their handling of the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict "
> can we dismiss all statements from someone who is related to someone who worked for the Israeli government or was in the IDF too?
The point is that, as someone with limited stakes in this war and limited exposure to its history until recently, unbiased sources have been hard to come by. The entire definition of genocide has been politicised. That isn't a criticism of anyone doing it--language is a powerful tool, and it's fair game to try and bend definitions to one's advantage. But all that makes piercing the veil on whether this is the horribleness of war being selectively cited, or a selectively horrible war, tough.
This report cuts through that. The evidence is compelling, albeit less primary than I'd have hoped. The writing is clear and impartial. (Though again, a lot of secondary sourcing.) It doesn't seek to answer who is at fault for what is, essentially, an intractable multigenerational conflict (even before we involve proxies). It just seeks to simply answer a question, and in my opinion, having now skimmed (but not deeply contemplated) it, it does.
The balance of evidence suggests Israel is prosecuting a genocide against the people of Palestine. That creates legitimacy for escalating a regional conflict (one among money, I may add, and nowhere close to the deadliest) into an international peacekeeping operation.
Unfortunately, all of this rests on a system of international law that basically all the great powers of this generation (China, then Russia, and now America and India) have undermined.
Just like those international peace keepers abetted Hezbollah, providing them intel and cover, even illuminating our assets via spotlights for Hezbollah?
Or just like those international peacekeepers who filmed Hezbollah breach our border, kill soldiers, abduct others? And then when this was discovered, refused to share the unedited video with Israel?
We don't trust the UN. So which international peace keepers do you propose?
I'm uninsterested in your credibility or opinion on wether or not it's a genocide.
Courts have ruled it is. The world has ruled it is. You can skirm all you want, in 6 months you'll say you always thought it was a genocide. Mark my words.
They have - not in a final ruling, but in mutliple rulings adjacent, provisional measures for example. Feel free to read what the courtd have made public for all to see
Wether she is or not is not for me to decide - at any rate, her analysis seems to have been absolutely spot on if we are now recognizing it is a genocide, isn't it?
And if you think the UN rapporteur is too biased to do their job correctly, why do you care what the UN does?
> her analysis seems to have been absolutely spot on if we are now recognizing it is a genocide, isn't it?
No, no more than someone who predicts a market crash every day is proven right the one time they nail it. The quality and objectivity of the analysis matters. Not just the conclusion.
A market crash is a one-time event. A genocide is ongoing. This would be like someone claiming since 2003 there was a pedo ring in the upper echelons of society and everyone calling them a liar until...
What about "there is war in the middle east, still/again" is remotely unique enough in the last century to be a defining moment of the half-century?
If an event has the potential to be that, it's the near-peer land war in Europe.
The current Israel/Gaza conflict is a blip that is mildly different in degree than the same thing that has happened every decade or so since Israel was created.
Not to this degree in the last few decades. But I feel you are overall correct, it's just that the Internet allows for much bigger coverage of the details of the horrors committed, and it's interesting how governments around the world now fail so completely to shape the narrative.
The October 7th attacks were way worse than Hamas attacks that came before in recent history. The response was way worse than what has happened before in recent history.
And so both sides feel fully justified with their courses of action, because of what the other side did to them. That is the part that is so much not unique.
I'm afraid the latest spate of "recognizing the state of Palestine" is not, in fact, a sign of coming relief for the people there, but rather a spigot to relieve domestic pressure to engage in substantive actions (sanctions, pressuring the US and other suppliers of arms to engage in sanctions, let alone sending peacekeepers or no-fly zones).
Regardless of how much you're personally invested in the topic, this should break the hearts of everyone who dreamed that the international community could hold each other legally accountable. Indeed, the US would rather sanction individuals at the ICJ than acknowledge any sort of legitimacy—even as our own politicians accuse Russia of engaging in "war crimes". I have no doubt that they are, in fact, I think that the evidence is quite damning. But the double standard is striking, as is the difference between the footage visible on social media and what is acknowledged when you turn on the TV or open the paper.
> break the hearts of everyone who dreamed that the international community could hold each other legally accountable.
this is never going to happen. there is just no practical enforcement mechanism. laws and police works within a sovereign country because the state has the monopoly on violence, this is not true on the international stage. no country will go into war to enforce an ICC/ICJ conviction.
In the international community the double standard was always against Israel aside maybe when it declared independence. The external enemy to distract the peasants from relevant problems. It doesn't have a lot of maturity. Perhaps the UN will go the league of nations if the current Gx hegemony loses control.
> I'm afraid the latest spate of "recognizing the state of Palestine" is not, in fact, a sign of coming relief for the people there, but rather a spigot to relieve domestic pressure to engage in substantive actions (sanctions, pressuring the US and other suppliers of arms to engage in sanctions, let alone sending peacekeepers or no-fly zones).
I don't think recognition as a State would really change anything. If at least one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council will veto everything that comes up, the UN won't effectively intervene in the situation. Military intervention in such a case is unlikely, unless at least one permanent member is willing to join an intervention coalition. Looking at conflicts the US has been involved in, it usually lines up around the lines with US maybe with their usual friends vs Locals or Locals and Russia and friends. The only one I found where the pattern was when France started sending arms to Nicaragua while the US was supporting the other side [1]. Unless Russia or China wants to support the Palestinians militarily, or the US decides not to no longer support Israel militarily, there's not much chance of outside intervention here.
Given the outside countries can't effectively intervene, recognizing the state of Palestine at least sends a message, that maybe hopefully influences the US?
If it were recognized as a state, it would need a lot of outside help. But if there was agreement on the territory and acknowledement of its sovereignty, an effective state could be worked toward in ways that aren't feasible when under seige or even simply occupation.
30 years ago, conditions for peace and the start of a newly recognized state seemed better, yes. But the situation hasn't resolved itself by being left as-is either.
Japanese civilians experienced far worse in WW2, and they forgot pretty quickly. The war against the Tamil Tigers would be another case study. Once the radicalism is dealt with by force, the ratcheting of violence is reduced, and people move on.
Japanese had it bad for 2-3 years. After that they were allowed to live in their country with their own leadership. Palestinians have it bad for 80 years, they are not allowed to return to their homeland, and we expect them to live in closely monitored concentration camps.
> Japanese civilians experienced far worse in WW2, and they forgot pretty quickly
Because the vast majority of the Japanese people barely faced any kind of obstacles in the same way Palestinians are facing. Yes, they had food shortages and their wooden homes were bombed constantly to oblivion, and they suffered a couple of nuclear blasts, but that was because their history lessons teach their WW2 as something in which they were the aggressor (with Pearl Harbor, not the invasions of China and Korea). In Palestine's case, it will take much longer to wipe out that resentment. Besides, Palestinians aren't the "radicals" here.
Before Japan was defeated, their military propaganda was that they were victims of encirclement and an oil blockade, and the attack on Pearl Harbor was a justified response to this victimhood. They started teaching a different story only because the allies forced them to change their curriculum. The same process of deradicalization will be forced onto Gaza after the defeat of Hamas. And why did you overlook the Tamil Tigers case study? And why would you euphemize nuclear bombs onto civilian cities like this, as if it isn't significantly more brutal than anything the Palestinians have been subjected to?
> Besides, Palestinians aren't the "radicals" here.
A luxury belief that's only possible to hold because Israel is militarily dominant to the point that the radical views prevalent in Palestinian culture cannot be acted out. The Israelis know this luxury belief is factually false, that's why they are the way they are.
> and why would you euphemize nuclear bombs onto civilian cities like this, as if it isn't significantly more brutal than anything the Palestinians have been subjected to?
How can six Hiroshimas kill less civilians than the actual Hiroshima (let alone the fire bombings) despite much higher density? The answer to this question might unlock something in your mind.
We don't have anhthing like a complete count of the dead yet. The 60k number the media still reports has barely moved in a year because Israel destroyed almost all of the health infrastructure that used to report deaths, and even before that people trapped in the rubble and not identified by anyone weren't counted.
That's true, but that 60k number isn't just civilians, and even if the total civilian count is higher than 60k, it's still likely lower than the civilians killed in Hiroshima, which is an inconvenient fact best left unmentioned by those who say that Israel has unleashed six Hiroshimas onto a location that's over 10x higher density than 1945 Hiroshima. How do you resolve this discrepancy?
There's no discrepancy because there aren't numbers. The 60,000 number is a dramatic undercount. The fatalities were being undercounted even before Israel had attacked every hospital in Gaza multiple times. There are mass graves occasionally found in Gaza but nobody is able to go through and document everything while they're still being genocided. In any situation like this it takes decades of research to try to reach an accurate count and even then there are is huge uncertainty, particularly when whole extended families are murdered all at once. Look at the Hiroshima death toll estimates - between 90,000 and 166,000 people killed. And this is the best estimate after decades of research. Almost none of that can take place now in Gaza.
But of course I'm talking to someone who pretends to believe you can carpet bomb an entire city of 2 million people relentlessly, cut off food and water, and kill fewer than 60,000 civilians.
The analogy would be if the allies plan for ending WW2 was to ethnically cleanse the Japanese archipelago and expel Japanese people into, say, camps in Xinjiang. I imagine if they had consistently telegraphed such a plan for years during the war, the resistance might have continued longer.
There are many issues raised with the report, including it omits the invasion by the government of Gaza, Hamas, on 7 October 2023 entirely, and it omits that the Israeli army is fighting the army of Gaza, the Qasam brigades, who had 40,000 salaried fighters (pre-war), have fired thousands of missiles, developed hundreds of kilometres of tunnels specifically for urban warfare, and subverted public and private infrastructure for urban warfare. For such a serious allegation, it is important to consider and address all aspects and not simply omit them.
I would like to add, I don't think this topic is appropriate for Hacker News.
The Holocaust does not justify committing a genocide against another population. Some people having inaccurate, or even immoral, views about what occurred on October 7th does not justify genocide. The fact that Hamas engages in evil acts does not justify genocide perpetrated against innocents.
In short: Two wrongs do not make a right.
It is also worth noting that you are not portraying the matter fairly. You are transposing certain radical elements, i.e. those who actively defend Hamas, on to people who simply oppose the ethnic cleansing and genocide being perpetrated by Israel. I don't support Hamas, and I also don't support Israel.
Furthermore, you falsely assume that people are generally ignoring the evil actions perpetrated by Hamas, which is not the case. It is a false dichotomy to present the issue as supporting either Israel or Hamas. Hamas undeniably has engaged in terrorism, but that has no bearing on whether or not Israel is acting properly in response. The fact of the matter is that Israel hasn't merely been attacking Hamas targets that happen to also have civilians present, but rather that Israel is going beyond that to willfully engage in a near-indiscriminate extermination campaign against unjustifiable targets.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right” misframes the issue. Hamas murders civilians deliberately; Israel targets Hamas while taking steps to limit civilian harm. Civilian deaths are tragic, but tragedy is not genocide. The moral difference is intent.
“The fact of the matter is that Israel hasn't merely been attacking Hamas targets that happen to also have civilians present, but rather that Israel is going beyond that to willfully engage in a near-indiscriminate extermination campaign against unjustifiable targets.”
Calling this “indiscriminate extermination” ignores Hamas using civilians as shields and demands an impossible standard of zero casualties. It also drains the word genocide of meaning. The Holocaust was genocide, the systematic extermination of Jews for existing. That is not what Israel is doing to Palestinians.
>Israel targets Hamas while taking steps to limit civilian harm. Civilian deaths are tragic, but tragedy is not genocide.
Israel does not merely target Hamas with incidental civilian deaths, they have been documented actively targeting civilians. This has been indisputably demonstrated at this point. Early on I was much more skeptical since it's similarly indisputable that Hamas does engage in terroristic behavior, but as time has gone on we've had report after report confirming that Israel isn't merely targeting Hamas.
> The moral difference is intent.
Hamas intends to eliminate Israel, Israel intends to eliminate Hamas (justifiable) and exterminate the Palestinians (unjustifiable) to continue their long-running expansion operation and further their grip on the region at the expense of the other native populations.
> Calling this “indiscriminate extermination” ignores Hamas using civilians as shields and demands an impossible standard of zero casualties.
1. I've already explicitly acknowledged the distinction between attacking Hamas, inadvertently harming civilians in the process, and the active slaying of the civilian population which is taking place. The former is regrettable but unavoidable, the latter is evil and it is what is also taking place.
2. I intentionally said "near-indiscriminate" rather than just "indiscriminate" for a reason. Unlike many people, yourself included, I don't view this conflict as a completely black-and-white matter. Israel is instrumentalizing their legitimate efforts in order to implement a wider effort to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
You keep saying it is “indisputably demonstrated” that Israel is targeting civilians, but you have yet to explain anything other than your feeling. If the evidence is so overwhelming, name the specific proof. “Reports” from Hamas-run ministries or partisan NGOs are not indisputable, they are contested like all wartime information. Overstating your case makes it weaker. UN councils with 50 some odd member states share this same bias.
The crux of genocide is intent. Hamas openly declares its intent to erase Israel. Israel declares its intent to eliminate Hamas. If Israel’s goal was exterminating Palestinians, explain why it has repeatedly supported two-state proposals that Palestinian leadership rejected. Explain why over 20 percent of Israel’s citizens are Arab, voting in elections, serving in parliament, even sitting on the Supreme Court. That reality is incompatible with a state bent on extermination.
Your “near-indiscriminate” phrasing is just a rhetorical trick. If you admit it is not indiscriminate, then you acknowledge Israel is targeting Hamas, not carrying out genocide. Civilian deaths are tragic, but tragedy is not the same thing as a systematic plan to wipe out a people.
Israel drops leaflets, issues warnings, and opens corridors. Hamas embeds in schools, hospitals, and residential blocks. That doesn’t absolve Israel of responsibility when civilians die, but it does show intent matters.
Those who believe that there is any comparison between then and now generally should learn more about what happened then - and would do well to learn the history of war in general.
Both the Palestinian people and Jewish people are indigenous to Israel/Palestine.
No one side has the right to commit genocide against the other. At some point, there will have to be a two state solution.
The current Israeli government is indeed genocidal. Cabinet ministers have referred to the Palestinian people as a whole (not just Hamas) as an enemy and the IDF is carrying out the genocide.
This also means that by proxy the US is funding the military of a genocidal regime.
Just as providing Hamas with weapons is a terrible idea, giving them to Israel in its current state is an equally terrible idea.
Seeing the number of flagged comments, and going from past discussions where any discussion seen as pushback was flagged, this discussion really doesn't belong on hacker news.
The infrastructure for genocide needs a lot of technology and technology related subject. The victims of genocides include technology workers, hobbyists and hackers. No doubt there are HN members who are current victims of the ongoing genocide. They deserve our sympathy and their existence needs to be acknowledged.
The problem is there obviously isn't any discussion happening. People are so entrenched on one side or the other and that's pretty apparent by this comment section. Everyone wants to virtue signal without taking any responsibility. The unfortunate reality of this situation is that it's extremely complex and weaves in a lot of historical context. But nobody cares about nuance anymore it's all just "killing bad!" within the framework of whatever controversial event is on the inciters mind. Well duh, but how did we get here? If we can't stop and consider both sides constructively then clearly we're never going to get anywhere and shit like this will just continue.
That's essentially the pro-Israel argument for decades (Including the opinion that killing somehow weren't always bad). It hasn't prevented the current situation.
But don't let that stop you. Feel free to make a nuanced and well-researched counterargument why the UN report is wrong.
I'm not sure what you're pointing to in my response to attribute it to Israeli support. I was attempting to make light of the fact that 'discussion' requires two sides. Right now both sides live in a different reality. I am in no way condoning Israel's genocide against Palestinians. But to say Israel is the only one at fault for this situation and to only point fingers to one side betrays the historical facts of the situation. I in no way tried to downplay the situation or play sides so please don't twist my words as if I did.
The problem is that there is a massive power imbalance in the conflict and insisting on "both sides" without acknowledging that is itself muddying the waters.
Accusations of "one-sidedness" for everything that doesn't follow the Israeli narrative of the conflict has been a standard defense for decades, last employed against the two-states UN resolution.
That's why I find (naive) insistence on seeing "both sides" problematic in this conflict. By all means, do see both sides, but see them with their respective amounts of power and historical context.
I 100% agree with you here. Which is why it's important to have the acknowledgement that this isn't an isolated situation. There is a 'one-sidedness' for Israel against the Palestinians, in the same way that there's a 'one-sidedness' for the entirety of the Arab nations against the Israeli's. For as long as Israel has existed they've been fighting against their own genocide. I haven't seen anyone acknowledging that? Or that the Arab nations were the ones to provoke the Israeli's in the first place? I find no love for Israel, but we make it waaaay too easy for them to justify these positions. Like it or not it's not as simple as everyone seems to make it out to be. The western nations and the other Arabs were the ones to give up on the Palestinians first, but now all of a sudden we care? Like I said, it's all virtue signaling.
> For as long as Israel has existed they've been fighting against their own genocide. I haven't seen anyone acknowledging that? Or that the Arab nations were the ones to provoke the Israeli's in the first place?
It was so obvious that you were trying to carefully push Zionist propaganda from the very start, but here you went from 0 to 100% hasbara real quick. This isn't 1990, you won't get away with this kind of blatant Zionist revisionism; there are about 10000+ academic articles and videos now that teach the history in painful detail. So give it a rest with your lazy propaganda.
It's sad that we can't take an objective look at the facts of the matter without trying to point to one side and saying it's propaganda. Like is it so hard to say that both sides did bad things? I have no problem acknowledging that Israel is being the ultimate bully right now, is it not okay to say they have a reason? Or should we just ignore all reasoning and condem "killing bad" like I initially said this would devolve to? The US literally has the same problem right now it's kind of insane. How can you try to swat away historical facts, then in the same breath link me a random master's thesis from 1977... Like can we just go to Wikipedia, start from the beginning and then disagree over the facts that actually happened instead of trying to see it through the lens of some 20s something from the 70s?
so after trying to mislead people with outright lies and historical revisionism based on zionist fantasies, you are trying to "both sides" a livestream genocide and about a century of brutal zionist colonialism. That's your strategy.
>How can you try to swat away historical facts
The cognitive dissonance of Zionists needs to be studied in Universities across the world. You are straight up lying into people's faces and in the same breath projecting your own behavior on others "trying to 'swat away historical facts'". It's truly astonishing.
Sorry, can you point out exactly where I've lied and how? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the entire history of this conflict goes back to the UN partition plan in 47, which established a Jewish and Palestinian state. Which then lead to the 47-48 civil war, which from everything I've found relating to it, the Arab's were the ones to retaliate against the Jews in the region which started the war and it's been basically tit for tat ever since. A Palestinian petition to the Security Council in 48 even said this:
"Powerful Arab interests, both inside and outside Palestine, are defying the resolution of the General Assembly and are engaged in a deliberate effort to alter by force the settlement envisaged therein."
I have no issue discussing this situation, in fact that was the whole point of my original statement. Which is that most people seem too emotionally attached to this situation to the point where they can't even have a proper discussion without trying to talk down to me about a position I don't even hold.
>Sorry, can you point out exactly where I've lied and how?
I already quoted that exact part and even referenced the academic work which elaborated on it in detail. It was also not a "random" master thesis, it is academic work that is cited by the United States Government.
>Correct me if I'm wrong
"Entertain my Zionist revisionism". I've heard variations of your hasbara for 2 decades. It's insane that you still think that you can just lie in people's faces when everybody can just fact check you in a jiffy. You obviously don't care about the facts, that's why you persist in trying to deceive people with Zionist revisionism, but for others who happen to stumble upon this convo here some elaboration that concisely debunks these Zionist talking points:
For anyone who is more interested in a comprehensive study of the history, Zachary Foster is a jewish historian whose research can be found at palestinenexus.com of which he is the founder of.
I would go back to the founding principle of Zionism, and claim that the start of the conflict was when Zionists decided to colonize Palestine and found their own nation state on other people’s lands.
But if you insist on starting with the Palestinian civil war then you will soon find that a lot of Palestinians were expelled from their lands and never granted the right of return. It was not merely the partition, but the fact the international human rights granted the right of return for Palestinians illegally expelled, but this international human rights was promptly denied to Palestinians and has been till this day. There is no tit for tat here, as Zionists have not been illegally displaced and Zionists don’t have their rights of return denied to them.
I'm starting with 47 on the basis of the Jewish/Arab conflict. If we claim that the idea of Zionism started the conflict in the area then it doesn't seem like the history fully supports that idea. Jews in the late 1800s were getting worried about the antisemitism in Europe and wanted their own solution to "The Jewish Question" which to them was the formation of their own state. There were even talks about settling in different parts of Africa. But it wasn't until the Balfour Declaration that Zionism was completely focused on Palestine, mostly because the British didn't know what to do with the region after defeating the Ottoman Empire in the region.
>There is no tit for tat here, as Zionists have not been illegally displaced and Zionists don’t have their rights of return denied to them.
The claim Zionists make here is that the land was originally Jewish land to begin with. History does support this claim as the Roman Empire took over Judaea in the early first century and then subsequently exterminated and enslaved the Jews in the region renaming the area to Syria Palaestina about 100 years later.
You're presenting the standard Zionist narrative, a sanitized version of history that conveniently omits the actual ideology at play. Your entire argument is built to portray a European colonial project as a desperate search for "safety", if it ever had been about "safety" then why did they reject the Ugandan land they were offered? They needed a myth that justified their colonialism, which they had learned from the European colonizers whom they openly admired in their letters.
Let's correct the record. First, you claim Zionism was just a reaction to antisemitism, not the cause of the conflict. This is a deliberate misrepresentation. Political Zionism was a confident and proactive colonial project, growing from the exact same soil of European nationalism and race theory as antisemitism itself. The early Zionist leadership were not "traumatized victims" at all. They were confident Europeans, operating in the same intellectual environment as the "Scramble for Africa" who saw themselves as a superior people with the right to colonize. This wasn't some abstract theory, but their explicit worldview. As one of their key leaders, Chaim Weizmann noted: "The British told us that there are some hundred thousand negroes [kushim in Hebrew] and for those there is no value." - Weizmann, quoted by Arthur Ruppin in: Yosef Heller, Bama'avak Lamedinah , Jerusalem, 1984, p.140.
This colonial mindset is also why your second claim, that the focus on Palestine was just a pragmatic choice that only became central after Balfour, is historical nonsense. The proof is again the Zionist leadership's rejection of the Uganda offer. If the goal was simply to find a safe haven for worried Jews, a vast territory in Africa would have been the logical answer. They refused it because Zionism was never just about safety. It was a nationalist colonial project with a specific, predetermined target, and their argument was about claiming the right to do what other Europeans were doing i.e. conquering and colonizing a land inhabited by people they had already, in their own words, dismissed as having "no value."
Finally, and most cynically, you absurdly present the ancient and laughable claim to "Judea" as if it were a legitimate historical justification. You're framing a modern political maneuver as some kind of ancient "right". The secular, European, and atheist founders of Zionism did not even believe in the religious basis of this claim at all. They saw the biblical narrative noting more as useful myth-making tools to justify their colonialism. They weaponized these ancient stories, which they themselves viewed as superstition, for the very modern purpose of justifying the dispossession of the native population and legitimizing their colonial project. It was a calculated propaganda strategy, not a reclamation of faith. A faith in which they didn't even believe in, but which they were cynically weaponizing.
As far as I understand, they've made many offers to release the hostages in exchange for their own people or for other concessions. You can track the negotiations pretty well, although occasionally the diplomats get bombed for some reason.
Diplomats - who don't even live in the strip - were recently (unsuccessfully) bombed.
If Hamas wants to end the war (or supposed genocide) then they can release the hostages with no additional demands. The fact that the supposed genocide victims choose to continue the war is quite the sign that this is not genocide, in what other situation would a victim choose to continue a war that is a genocide against his people?
Why would Netanyahu stop the war? It is the only pressure on Hamas.
The way war usually works, is the side that feels it has something to loose, sues for peace by making concessions. However the international backing of Hamas has ensured them that they have nothing to loose, and everything to gain, by attacking the Jewish state.
it's not a war Netanyahu is killing innocent people and taking a full population hostage.
Also, most of the people in Gaza are not Hamas members and are regular civilians. What Natanyahu is doing is basically analog to the following:
A killer take a member of your family as a hostage (Hamas in this case is the killer) so you decide to kill a member of their family every hour until they release your beloved one. Do you think that this is acceptable or are you trying to make it acceptable?
Do you know why you have so many videos of buildings being destroyed in the Gaza strip? Because Israel warns away civilians before destroying them. Doesn't sound to me like Israel is trying to kill civilians.
"
251. The Commission’s analysis in this report relates solely to the determination
of genocide under the Genocide Convention as it relates to the responsibility of the
State of Israel both for the failure to prevent genocide, for committing genocide
against the Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023 and for the failure to punish
genocide. The Commission also notes that, while its analysis is limited to the
Palestinians specifically in Gaza during the period since 7 October 2023, it
nevertheless raises the serious concern that the specific intent to destroy the
Palestinians as a whole has extended to the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory,
that is, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, based on Israeli authorities’ and
Israeli security forces’ actions therein, and to the period before 7 October 2023. The
events in Gaza since 7 October 2023 have not occurred in isolation, as the
Commission has noted. They were preceded by decades of unlawful occupation and
repression under an ideology requiring the removal of the Palestinian population
from their lands and its replacement.
252. The Commission concludes on reasonable grounds that the Israeli
authorities and Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to
commit the following actus reus of genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza
Strip, namely (i) killing members of the group; (ii) causing serious bodily or
mental harm to members of the group; (iii) deliberately inflicting on the group
conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or
in part; and (iv) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
253. On incitement to genocide, the Commission concludes that Israeli
President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defence
Minister Yoav Gallant, have incited the commission of genocide and that Israeli
authorities have failed to take action against them to punish this incitement.
The Commission has not fully assessed statements by other Israeli political and
military leaders, including Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and
Minister for Finance Bezalel Smotrich, and considers that they too should be
assessed to determine whether they constitute incitement to commit genocide.
254. On the mens rea of genocide, the Commission concludes that statements
made by Israeli authorities are direct evidence of genocidal intent. In addition,
the Commission concludes that the pattern of conduct is circumstantial evidence
of genocidal intent and that genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference
that could be drawn from the totality of the evidence. Thus, the Commission
concludes that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have had and
continue to have the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
255. The Commission concludes that the State of Israel bears responsibility
for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide and the failure
to punish genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."
Which is completely based on trying to analyze the reactions of politicians to an attack that included mass killings of civilians, intense brutality and mass rape. surprise surprise these are filled with anger and do not read like a swedish minister reaction to migrant birds. These are not different than the USA post 9/11.
Even if you take these statements, and add everything that happened on the ground for the last two years, comparing it to the Armenian, Rawandian or Jewish genocides is a joke of epic proportions.
It's a very minor war even in Middle Eastern terms, compared to the recent Syrian or Yemen civil wars or the American involvement in Iraq
That is a straw man. The criterion is deliberate targeting of civilian populations. The US is known for having occasionally bombed a wedding party, but in Gaza, 80% of the victims were civilians. That’s a war crime and closer to WWII extermination campaigns than any modern military conflict involving western militaries. We are not talking about collateral damage from a drone strike, that’s systematic levelling of entire cities. You have to go back to things like Dresden and the Tokyo firebombings to find western equivalents.
Hospitals and journalists were deliberately bombed. That’s a war crime and the closest example of a western military doing it is Russia in Ukraine.
Emergency shelters and food distribution centres were deliberately targeted. That’s a war crime and again, there is no western equivalent.
Then there’s the pogroms on the West Bank.
When your argument is that a country’s behaviour is not as bad as ethnically cleansing in some African countries or WWII, your argument is really desperate.
The definition used here is so broad, any killing of any member of a group, without any relation to number ("part") or tactics can qualify as a genocide.
Never ceases to amuse me how people tend to cling to a position unconsciosly, then try to rationalize this unconscios act.
US and west are all about some perceived genocide, while inside Israel, half want to surrender to Hamas or whoever because hostages, and the other half had had enough (of almost 80-year war) and just want to be done with it, and the third half wants to study Tora and do nothing, but be fed by the other two halves.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics... unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
Do you truly think that this news story is showing “some interesting new phenomenon”?
I am not one to talk as an Israeli Jew who clearly disagrees with the entire bullshit premise of the article… but either way, the story is only saying things that people have been (incorrectly) claiming for months
Obviously we moderators are not present in the region, nor are we experts on the topic. That applies to almost every story that appears on HN. The “some interesting new phenomenon” is that – according to the title – ”top UN legal investigators” have made this finding. That's what we call "significant new information" about this topic. It's not for us to judge whether this finding is accurate or not; as I said, we're not there, we're not experts. But the discussion thread allows abybody with any particular knowledge on the topic to share their perspective.
I wonder the same. It’s odd to see it still here given the low quality of the discussion. And it is flooded by mischaracterizations, misinformation, and one-sided hyperbolic takes. I wonder what the right space or format is to have debates like this but in an effective way, rather than sides trying to win.
However dismayed you are by the low quality of the discussion, I promise you it bothers us even more. It's awful.
Not only that but whenever a thread like this appears, tomhow and I end up spending all day on it, which is by far the worst part of the job. I don't mean to complain—that would be grotesque, given the suffering that's going on—but rather to say how much easier it would be if HN did not discuss this or similar topics at all.
But I don't think that's an option. It wouldn't be consistent with the values or the mandate of this site as I understand them, and it's our duty to try to be as true to those as we can. I want to be able to look back and say we did our best at that, even though the outcomes are this bad. I tried to explain this in a recent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403787, though I don't know how successfully.
The upshot is that there's no good option and no way out. Maybe experiencing that is the best we can do to honor what's happening. It feels congruent with the situation being discussed, albeit in the trivial form that everything on an internet forum takes.
Serious question:
Firstly, have you ever thought about the fact that one, posts like this alienate Israelis from one of the few remaining tech news sources which made them feel safe by excluding politics? (If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, in 2023, I realised that I could no longer read The Verge due to pervasive and horrendous misinformation about Israel on a tech news site)
Secondly, given the havoc that posts like this cause and that it appears to not meet any of the rules for posts on Hacker News (clearly not tech or programming related and quite frankly, no more interesting to any person in tech than any other person), why do you allow this post to still exist?
Habr, the russian speaking HN-alike, was "outside of politics" too. That didn't end well for either Habr or posters there. For large issues like this, abstinence is complicity.
When a discussion like this happens on the front page then it at least provides some useful data for testing the software and moderation tactics for highly flammable subjects.
My conspiratorial mind wonders if it’s done on purpose as a fire drill, but a kind of The Office sitcom fire drill where someone lights an actual fire. (That’s an example of irresponsible behaviour, but I don’t actual think an HN/Israel fire drill is equivalently irresponsible.)
dang doesn't know what "brigading" is. not only is a topic like this always brigaded, the UN itself operates as a brigade. in terms of tech, the vast majority of the UN is tech illiterate, democracy illiterate, free speech illiterate (that latter of course is easy when you are illiterate)
This is politics and therefore probably off-topic for hn. It not being tech-related is irrelevant.
An argument could be made that it is an "interesting new phenomenon", but the post is most likely to result in tedious flamewars regardless and so should probably be killed.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I would agree with you if we were in 1994 and this was about Rwanda.
Those tower blocks in Gaza that were felled on the anniversary of 9/11 were not taken down with machetes. We have got AI assisted targeting going on, with all of your favourite cloud service providers delivering value to their shareholders thanks to sales to the IDF.
The corporation that once had 'don't be evil' as their mission statement are suckling on the IDF teat along with Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Cisco.
Israel: Surrender or we'll destroy your city
Hamas: Only if you let us rebuild and prepare the next war
Israel: Starts destroying the city by bombing emptied buildings, these having received warning from Israel beforehand
UN: Oh look, a genocide
I generally find HN discussions pretty interesting, but this particular topic seems to just be two groups who have zero chance of changing their minds hurling misinformation and propaganda at each other.
Bottom-of-the-barrel antisemitism ought to be the easiest thing in the world to avoid, regardless of your views or feelings about the ongoing situation. In any case, there's no place for it on Hacker News—never has been and never will.
---- original comment: ----
rimunroe is correct, you've repeated a classic antisemitic trope. We ban accounts that post like that, so please don't post like that again.
It's entirely possible, and ought to be entirely easy, to make any substantive point you have without any of that.
I wouldn’t call those intentional. Collateral damage in a defensive war against terrorists who are hiding among civilians is different from intentionally seeking to kill children as your only objective.
I agree that thousands of children have been killed in Gaza - by both Israel and Hamas. Trying to pin all of them on Israel only encourages Hamas to kill more.
Even if Israel is definitively shown to be genocidal, what the hell do you do with that? Because the result of that determination is that you now have a conflict where both sides are genocidal against the other. How do you pick a side in that scenario without implicitly supporting genocide? Do you try to determine whether Palestinian lives are worth more or less than Israeli/Jewish lives, using your own arithmetic? Try to argue that some forms of genocide aren't really genocide when you "really think about it"?
I think it's an impossible problem from an ethics perspective.
My echo chamber? I read the Gazan and other Arab telegram channels in Arabic. I write back and forth with people in Gaza (Gazans, who live there) every few days. You levy at me unfounded accusations.
So as long as there is one Hamas left standing, everyone around must die. This is what you mean?
Edit: can the non-Hamas surrender and avoid getting killed? They can't and the situations on the ground aren't that different. A Warzaw and Gazan survivor would have a lot in common.
Can the non-Hamas surrender and live? No, they can just stay and die. Tell me, what should a non-Hamas member in Gaza do right now to avoid getting bombed?
> what should a non-Hamas member in Gaza do right now to avoid getting bombed
Evacuate when told to by the IDF. It's terrible, but it's better than being bombed.
But you are correct - the responsibility to end the war and prevent further civilian casualties lies squarely with Hamas. Pressure them to return the hostages, don't pressure Israel to capitulate to terrorists.
Not so much "lies" as "a people having a genocide committed against them does not make them constitutionally incapable of ever committing one themselves in the future." For several reasons, including that it was different people (only 7% of Holocaust survivors are still alive) and that 'nation,' as a conceptual construct, still carries the same weaknesses that it did when a relatively few voices in Germany used that construct to rally the masses to commit atrocities against their own citizens (and the people in their temporarily-conquered territory) for being 'the wrong kind' of people.
"It's not wrong when we're doing it" is an old, old failing of human empathy and sense of justice.
zionists still trying to deceive people with misleading analogies while pretending that their apartheid ethno-state can just start its origin story at october 7th [1]. I wonder what kind of individual still buys into these false and lazy zionist narratives.
255. The Commission concludes that the State of Israel bears responsibility for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide and the failure to punish genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
I see that the person we replied to edited their comment. It originally said something along the lines of "that just says they failed to prevent genocide."
>The problem is the only alternative solution the pro palestinian crowd is suggesting is basically that israel should lie down and die.
IIRC theres a plan among arab states that would call for a DMZ between Israel and Palestine, theres just no way that Israel would accept their troops manning that DMZ. So it would have to be the US or UN troops manning that border and they dont want to.
>It's one of the most dehumanising things ever. "stay here and become a casualty statistic because that is the most convenient way to fulfill our political agenda."
IIRC Israel tried to pay them to leave and they wouldnt. They want to be returned to their land. Your complaint here is basically "Why wont they let Israel finish their ethnic cleansing" which is more disgusting than your implication.
> Also don't deal with israel consistently in bad faith and then expect them and their supporters to care about what you think.
I have never once, in my entire life discussing this issue, going back 10-15 years seen an Israeli government supporter argue anything in good faith. Would love to see that change.
>Just for the record i think this report is a fabrication and for those that say plenty of Israelis oppose what's going on in gaza i will respond that none of them can suggest any better alternative.
Is there a single alternative to "We will slowly take their land" that Israel would accept? They certainly wouldnt be happy if a neighbor absorbed palestine. They wont ever accept Arab League soldiers manning a DMZ. They will refuse to hand back parts of the West Bank and Golan Heights that they have occupied "For Security".
That means the only viable solution is a Single State. They should rehome the refugees, return them to their land, and get over it. Deal with Hamas as the internal matter it is.
>That means the only viable solution is
a Single State. They should rehome the
refugees, return them to their land,
and get over it. Deal with Hamas as the
internal matter it is.
I'm sorry but that's insane. Did you not hear about what happened on October 7? And the reaction on the palestinian street? If Israel would do as you suggest then the world would find out what real genocide is.
A good solution that should satisfy everyone would be to offer a couple million palestinians a new life in any of the dozen arab states that exist and are much bigger then israel. They will get enough money to set themselves up and a pathway to citizenship in their adopted country. In short treating them like every other refugee in history, just much better. I've done the calculations, if 2 million palestinian get offered 50k dollars each, including children plus whatever they can get for selling their house this scheme would cost $100 billion dollars, which actually kind of makes sense seeing how much this war is costing. It might cost something in that ballpark to rebuild gaza anyway. You can call that whatever you want, but i'd say that is the path to an optimal outcome for all sides. (actually i like that idea so much i think it deserves the Nobel prizes in the peace and economic categories.)
Or you can get hung up about ethnic cleansing and gaza stays a hellhole for the next 20 years and increasingly overpopulated.
Even according to Hamas own numbers, 60,000 Palestinians died, 200 from starvation. That's very low compared to real genocides. That's very low considering Israel killed an estimated 10,000 of Hamas soldiers. That's pretty good accuracy in all modern standards of war.
A 1:6 ratio for civilian deaths is not a good civilian casualty ratio by the standards of modern warfare. Russia in Ukraine is currently achieving a rate of about 1:3, and that's a country that's currently considered rather brutal as far as civilian casualty rates go. The US in the Iraq War managed urban operations with kill ratios better than 1:1.
Have you seen how small and remote the villages are where Russia and Ukraine are fighting? Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on earth and the fighters are not wearing uniforms and are directly embedded in civilian population centers.
According to Wikipedia between 25 and 33 thousand Bosnians and Croats were killed in the Bosnian genocide. Thus your argument doesn't hold, unless you contend that there was no genocide in Bosnia either.
I literally wrote "AI summary" at the top because I copy and pasted it from google. If there was a genocide there would be many more palestinians dead, full stop. There would not be evacuation zones, humanitarian corridors, leaflets, announced bombings, etc. It would be trivial to simply kill everyone in Gaza, it is very obviously within their power.
Israel is fully dependent on the support it receives from western governments, and it knows that support will vanish if it wages a loud open genocide and brags about it. So no, it's not trivially in their power to kill everyone in Gaza, as Israel would cease to exist if they did that.
Are you arguing that whether something does or doesn't genocide can the boiled down to a percentage. As it turns out, a lot of people disagree with that view.
Yep, it’s odd to call it a genocide when their population has been growing continuously, and significantly. Israel can’t both be a highly effective genocidal force and also failing to actually succeed at the outcomes of a genocide.
This specific political topic is on the top of everyone's mind. If the US president was assassinated, would you say the same? If your child was killed for political reasons, would you continue your blissful mornings aloof?
This specific political topic is absolutely not the top of everyone's mind. The number of people on HN that this tangibly affects is frankly miniscule.
Most of HN is American. It's on the other side of the world. It has about as much actual effect on the typical American as the just as bad events currently unfolding in Sudan.
The exact mindset, rhetoric, and politics which caused this are affecting everyone. It drives both right and left politics for over a decade now all over the West - so also in America -, and if you care about yourself or anybody (or your stocks) in 10-20 years time, you should pay close attention to the consequences of this.
I really don't see the connection between yet more war in the middle east, especially one that is more or less equally supported by both America's parties, and American stock prices over a decade from now.
This thread's numbers betray you. You're living under a rock if you think this topic isn't a regular at the highest political levels, on the news, and now frankly at the ballot box.
To follow up on my other comment: if you look at actual numbers, not only is Israel/Gaza not in the top 5 issues for US voters right now, it isn't even in the top 5 global issues ignoring everything domestic.
Gaza may have better marketing than Sudan, but both Gaza and Sudan affect US voters about the same amount, and people vote accordingly.
Those numbers you referenced have nothing to do with the topic. We aren't talking about "americans’ views of global threats". As I saw from your other comment, you're just living under a rock and you know it.
"There is war in the middle east, still/again" is not novel to anyone old enough to have experienced the headline multiple times over. What's happening right now is only mildly worse than the last few times this has happened.
The headline "Palestinians attack Israel, in response Israel bombs hospital where Palestinians may have been hiding" belongs in every decade since the Korean war.
If you think anywhere near a majority of voters consider this a top-5 issue in the US, especially considering the near-identical stance of both major parties on the subject, you're living in a bubble.
Why makes you think this is such a hot issue? It's a sporting event.
Two teams of murderous rapists are fighting one another, everyone has their favorite team, and if someone thinks someone else supports a different team they say "how can you support those murderous rapists! Just look what they did to the innocent people on my side!"
It's an opportunity for people to be tribal about something that, for the overwhelming majority of people, will never affect them the slightest bit.
I'd find this is one of the safer and more civil places to discuss these kind of topics.
And I feel like less than 1% of front page topics are political, and you're certainly not obliged to open them... yet somehow this made it "goodbye" for you?
The “hide” feature works really well for me in respect of the feelings you are expressing. It’s like the zapper tool in uBlock origin (a browser plugin that lets you delete DOM elements with a single click.)
Clicking hide and seeing something disappear forever is actively cathartic. I don’t do it often but it’s very helpful when I do. Give a try?
You know you can just not click on “comments” underneath the headline. Right? Are your views so fragile that you can’t even bear to see a viewpoint discordant with your own?
like you i largely came to hn to enjoy an intellectual conversational space away from the sensational political garbage of mainstream media. whatever you think of this submission that is still largely true: we are here, there is openness alongside thoughtful moderation in the comments. that said, this report speaks to my humanity, it should speak to anyone's humanity. if true, it's generationally profound. if intelligence is worth anything, its the possibility that we can change this course of history for the better, and that it's not something left as lesson in textbooks for our grandchildren
Exceptionally smart people are found on HN, and topics like these transcend technology enough to demand input from brighter minds. Go to lobste.rs if you want news only affecting the "Essential" tech world.
Then don't read it. I'm big headed, but not so much so to believe I can control your eyeballs to make you read my comment.
Ultimately sharing opinions is a two way street. If you want to share yours and be met with absolute silence, then it might be time to start working on that interdimensional transporter and teleport away to an alternate reality.
Or move to Russia or something. I don't know.
Point is, your comfort is not something I care about. Not in a rude way, but just in a pragmatic way. If I had to care about the comfort of every random person, I wouldn't be able to say anything, ever.
And, for the record, I don't want to hear about Israel either. Nobody does.
Why? Because it sucks. Regardless of "which side" you're on, it sucks. People are dying, children are starving, bullets are blazing, and humanity is hurt.
But I listen. Because it's important. For humanity, for my country, and for me. Even if you're perfectly selfish, the selfish thing to do is to listen and pay close attention.
Once again, that's not Israel's money. That's not gazas war. If you think you're somehow exempt from this, then you're not selfish, you're much worse - you're naive.
You can be kept on the brink of starvation just like you can keep a cup hanging over the edge of a table. It's a manufactured famine, therefore it can be created with precision. Unlike the potato famine in Ireland, it's controlled and they literally count calories going in (before cutting it to 0).
So according to that logic, Israel is intentionally orchestrating a "brink of starvation" which generates for it negative publicity but is very careful to ensure nobody actually starves. Why would be the strategy in that according to you?
If your analysis is entirely headline based I can see why you might be confused. There are several levels of starvation, and Israel has progressively put Gaza through each. Complaining at each step is absolutely valid.
Given all the hatred that is going around, I believe the genocide is real. And if it's not real yet, it will be if someone doesn't put a stop to this.
But all the reporting does not add up.
Half the pictures Hamas shows of starving children aren't legitimate. They're children with medical conditions, not in Gaza, or from a different conflict.
The number of people starving to death each day are in the single or low double digits. If what was said was really true, there would be tens of thousands of people dead by now.
And I don't believe a single thing Israel says either. How many tunnels were actually found under hospitals? Definitely at least one. Definitely not all of them.
A little truth makes all the lies more believable.
“Half the pictures Hamas shows of starving children aren't legitimate. They're children with medical conditions, not in Gaza, or from a different conflict.”
This seems like a strong claim. Please back it up.
UNRWA -as tens of thousands of people| in Gaza, mostly locals. What would be surprising is if no-one of them supported Hamas.
regarding the number of condemnations: the un is directly involved in gaza, and has been for 70 years. At the same time, the US has blocked any binding resolution in the security council.
At the same time Israel is supposed to be the only democracy in the middle east, and thus subscribe totl the values that funded the UN. That makes it's transgressions feel even worse to many - myself included.
At this point any Israel supporter can’t really afford to care about anybody’s opinion on human rights, so it doesn’t matter who is saying this. I’m sure the UN doesn’t expect their report to influence the people committing the genocide they are documenting: they hope to influence the rest of the world.
Students in the USA had their images posted on the sides of vans / trucks for protesting genocide. That may not be directly funded by the state of Israel, but it's difficult to squint and not see that this is a direct result of their lobbying and / or the lobbying of groups they support or who act on their behalf.
I couldn't find any info on intimidation of HR council members. Nevertheless there were reports of the Israeli Mossad chief intimidating the ICC chief prosecutor at the time Fatou Bensouda. [1]
Her successor Karim Khan has also reported threats were made. He was later implicated in a sex scandal [2]. It would not surprise me if this was a Mossad sting operation.
Inb4 whining that it's just the American government being slavishly loyal to the Zionist cause and the Zionist government of Israel has nothing at all to do with this. I swear to god if I get any response like this I will literally go blind from my eyeballs doing full 360s in my skull.
The right's split thinking on this issue is largely a split down generational lines. The balance of the split is shifting as old people die. The Zionist faction of the left is almost dead already, and on the right it will still take some more years, but once that's done, America's support for Israel will have expired.
I think Israel realizes they're on borrowed time, and that's why they've adopted such an overtly aggressive strategy of getting what they want now, making their strategic goals a fait accompli while still receiving protection from America. With America out of the picture, Israel goes the way of Rhodesia.
The support for Israel was always higher for older people, and that goes back all the way to the 70's as far as I could tell. Something about being young and impressible, captured by the Palestinian ethos, until people grow up.
When you say "Going by the way of Rhodesia" do you mean Israelis will just scatter away, the remaining ones will be under constant threat of violence?
No, it's because American boomers are crazy Christians who think that they must ensure that Israel continues to exist, no matter how much evil it perpetrates, because apparently their schizo book says the existence of Israel is a prerequisite for the resurrection of their Messiah who will then usher in the Apocalypse. Old people in America don't support Israel because they're smarter or more mature, it's because they're insane retards. Young people are abandoning these American churches, and largely religion in general. They haven't been brainwashed into supporting Israel like the boomers were.
BTW, Israel going the way of Rhodesia is unavoidable. Depending on how things go, it might happen in a few years, or twenty years, but as surely as baby boomers all eventually die, so too will Israel die.
No, it is uncommon to attribute to Russia the set of racist stereotypes that relate to Jews.
For example, I never saw an opinion that thinks that Russia control the media or world finance, while the above is attributed to jews since before nazis.
In the above example, it is very common for people to have a paranoid obsession with looking for Jews/Israel as an explanation for any news, and that is also a centuries old pastime
> Reality: The report was written by a 3 person UNHRC commission, which itself is seated by Ethiopia, Congo, Sudan, and Qatar.
Your framing that "3 people from Ethiopia/Congo/Sudan/Qatar wrote the report" is both incorrect and deeply racist.
Edit: and to make it clear, the report was authored by the "Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel" which is made up of the following three members:
That's not how I phrased it. I said that this is a 3-person report commissioned by the UNHRC. I then mentioned known human rights abusers who chair the UNHRC.
I had to look this up on Wikipedia and remembered this is the 19 year old UNHRC. They have never been objective in regards to the Middle East conflict.
Ok, lets imagine a scenario where there are 2 developed countries right next to each other that hate each other. One raids the other and kills some people. Generally you might sanction a raid against the military targets that supported the raid, or perhaps targeted removal of the head of state or something.
But thats not the case here. Israel herded these people into this open air prison, removing them from and then settling their land. And kept them bottled up next to their settlements.
The only moral way to approach this situation would be for it to have never developed in the first place. Failing that, you would work to undo it. Heck, as you return every single refugee to their land, you can process them to see if they are a hamas fighter and jail them.
This is the truth of the matter. As Israel uses force to contain Gazans, they are effectively their government. They cant have Electricity, or Internet without Israeli approval. They cant pass border checkpoints without Israeli approval. The Israeli military frequently raids them. They do get black vanned and sent to Israeli prisons all the time. They are defacto Israeli subjects.
Therefore, this isnt a matter of warfare, this is a matter of policing. A civilian response would be best. There is no second country, and the people who benefit most from pretending there is a pseudo state in Gaza, are the Israelis, who use it to justify asymmetric warfare.
I don’t believe questions like that are asked in good faith. Maybe you are the exception, but I have seen too many people begin with exactly this question, and then end up justifying the Gaza genocide.
In case you are asking in good faith—and following the HN guidelines—I suggest you abandon this question and consider that maybe this is the wrong question to ask given the situation. If that is hard, then I ask you to consider that indigenous resistance against settler colonial violence has been a pretext for countless colonial oppression in the past, including many genocides.
Calling someone directly out/impugning their motives instead of responding is actually a violation of the HN guidelines. You can respond to topics, not posters. You are the one in violation.
This isn't the first time I've seem this 'you aren't in good faith' response on this topic, and is partly why again, HN just isn't a place where a real discussion can be had on this subject.
I want to be clear that my first sentence was speaking generally and not accusing my parent directly of being in bad faith. And in keeping with the spirit of HN I responded to my parent assuming good faith.
Otherwise you are right, I have accused others of being in bad faith on this topic, however when I do so, I tend to do it after many more interactions than what I have had with my parent above.
'Maybe you are the exception' isn't keeping in the spirit. You definitely called the person out lowkey without calling them out, then told them the question they asked was off limits instead of answering it, justifying violence in the process.
They have repeatedly hampered the entry of baby formula, a clear pattern of actions to stunt childhood development, increase childhood mortality and dissuade the population from having more children.
Gaza is dependent on Israel's permission. Food aid is provided by the UN and other humanitarian organisations, they require Israel's permission to bring that aid into Gaza and not attack it (n.b. attempts since 2010 to deliver aid by boat, such as the MV Rachel Corrie, have been attacked in international waters and the aid never reached Gaza). Israel destroyed the power and water desalination plants, making Gaza dependent on their supply, which has since been used as a weapon.
Since '93, the range allowed for Palestinian fishing boats has been reduced from 20 to 3 nautical miles by Israeli naval vessels. Because primarily only young fish are found that close to the shore, and because constant damage to infrastructure means untreated wastewater is being dumped close by, it's a pretty bleak picture.
According to the article, nobody actually knows when the attack took place. And the BBC is assuming that it was an Israel attack, even though 1/3 to 1/6 of Hamas rockets fall back into Gaza - that is disingenuous. Furthermore, the single photograph of the clinic shows absolutely zero kinetic damage. How does an Israeli shell or bomb leave no kinetic damage? The Hamas rockets leave little to no kinetic damage as they are fuel-air bombs, not HE.
You can read up about the members of the Pillay commission, the "Top UN legal investigators", yourself. It is just ridiculous. Reminder that thousands of rockets rained on Israel on October 7th.
Crying genocide after such an attack when your enemy retaliates and retaliates very harshly in the context of middle eastern politics will never be reasonable. Hamas is free to surrender and everything would stop tomorrow.
I quoted from the report, you can make up your mind yourself. But you already did anyway.
Pillay is from the Apartheid crew, that just ignores a side of this conflict. A side that is very much not tolerant of everyone else. Bad and unconvincing report.
Reminder that Israel razed hundreds of Palestinian villages to the ground in 1948, and expelled half the Palestinian population from their homeland. Israel has always wanted to ethnically cleanse Palestine of the indigenous population. It has resisted any diplomatic route to a two-state solution, going as far as financing Hamas because Fatah was moving towards a peaceful resolution, and Hamas was seen as an adversary against whom ethnic cleansing would be easier to justify.
Israel is quite literally built on top of the ruins of Palestinian villages. The zionist project has always required an ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population, because the project's goal is to build an ethnostate. This is just culminating in the current genocide.
> Israel is quite literally built on top of the ruins of Palestinian villages
The entire region was historically Jewish. As a simple example, consider the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. It is literally built on the ruins of a Jewish temple from BC times. That is long before any Arabs lived in the area, and long before Islam was invented.
There’s also no such thing as a “Palestinian village” because there is no such identity as Palestinian in truth. There’s just Islamic Arabs who tried to take over this land and claim it is their homeland when their homeland is really elsewhere.
> It has resisted any diplomatic route to a two-state solution
There were at least 5 different offers for a two-state solution historically. The people calling themselves “Palestinian” rejected every one of those. The real reason that can be deduced from this, is that they just don’t want a Jewish state to exist anywhere in any capacity.
> I find it funny people still find the UN legitimate. They still haven't criticised Hamas attack
I find it funny that you have to lie so much. They did, it's easy to find. My father is from a Christian orphanage in east Jerusalem. My grandmother hosted sisters and priests from Israel who worked in schools, hospice and orphanage all over the two countries. UN school programs there had a lot of issues, but being religious (Hamas was a religious group before being a terrorist one) or close to Hamas wasn't one (having no heating in schools during winter and having to sometime amputate toes from 10 year old was probably the biggest issue that I remember).
United Nations General Assembly Resolution ES-10/21 (Oct. 27th 2023):
> Condemning all acts of violence aimed at Palestinian and Israeli civilians,
including all acts of terrorism and indiscriminate attacks, as well as all acts of provocation, incitement and destruction
This resolution didn’t mention the IDF either, nor any other Zionist terror groups. Why do you want the UN to single out Hamas here? The wording was quite clear and it is easy for anybody reading this who they were referring to.
This resolution came 20 days into what would eventually be known as the Gaza genocide. The IDF had enganged in dozens of massacres at this point. The number of Palestinian victims was already over 6x that of the Oct 7 massacres (7326 when the resolution was published).
If the resolution was going to mention Hamas, it would also have to mention the IDF. The wording was deliberate for that reason.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
the only attempt on genocide was hamas attempt to kill as much jews and infadels as possible. but you glance over this, because this genocide you approve of.
here is nice quote [0] : "for the past two years theHamas leadership had been talking about implementing "the last promise" (alwaed al'akhir) – a divine promise regarding the end of days, when all human beings will accept Islam.
Sinwar and his circle ascribed an extreme and literal meaning
to the notion of "the promise, " a belief that pervaded all their
messages: in speeches, sermons, lectures in schools and
universities. The cardinal theme was the implementation of the
last promise, which included the forced conversion of all
heretics to Islam, or their killing."
everything that followed would be eventually known as largest brainwashing by mainstream and social media.
For an organization ostensibly concerned with education to violence everywhere, that's a LOT of board members with direct connections to Israel.
I also think it's common sense that if an occupying force deliberately ensures your living conditions become ever worse, shoots your friends and family to death for throwing stones and eventually obliterates entire families, that you don't exactly need textbooks to develop hatred.
it's almost like if population is educated for violence for 50 years, it will behave violently and it will result in counter action from "occupying force"
on the other side, Israeli population is been subjected to palestinian violence for extended period. Pretty much everybody was either target of it or lost somebody to it.
i am talking about systemic things in education system. not about random anecdotes. also good chunk of israeli population (and even bigger chunk of those serving in army) is secular and whatever random rabi says means nothing.
Given the Israeli military are defacto state sponsored terrorists (see e.g. their active support of settler violence on the West Bank if you want to avoid Gaza related complaints). That means every single company in Israel is employing terrorists.
Sure. The Israel military rapes, kills, slaughter, and rob Gaza and West bank. The IDF is exactly like Hamas sure. /s if you didn't understand.
The Israelis live in the West Bank. The IDF is there to protect them. There is no violence whatsoever from the settlers. It's pure propaganda. There were a few rare times of some violence, but it's nothing compared to what the Palestinians do. Last week, two Palestinians crossed the border and murdered 6 people and 20+ injured on a bus shooting in Jerusalem. They even kill each other.
Each time the IDF comes into Palestinians "cities" to catch terrorists, they throw rocks on them.
Can't find it on the source you provided. The source you provided also justifies terrorists cries about their home being destroyed. It's interesting from where they get these numbers, from Palestinians?
about year ago PA tried to remove Hamas and other charity organizations for Jenin and other cities (that it typically can't entered) but failed and asked Israel to intervene what Israel did.
So you have interesting situation, when Palestinian authority asks Israel to kill palestinians and than Israel is blamed for killing palestinians.
I really do. (personal note: I never know if I should engage with these trolls, given them more visibility, or simply ignore them, risking seeing their propaganda spread)
> Again, this is an unreliable source. It provides Palestinians testimonies. In Gaza the amount of untruthful testimonies is disgusting.
Yeah we get it, all Arabs are liars. Anyone who has sympathy for them is a liar. The Sde Teiman video is a fake and also the soldiers in it are all heroes. Israel has the most moral army in the world. IDF soldiers never post TikToks of themselves committing war crimes and laughing about it. It's not as if a person could spend 5 seconds online and find video evidence of these atrocities.
Sde Teiman MAYBE was real (there is still no proof, and it still being investigated by ISRAEL), but we're talking about terrorists whom murdered and raped people, not citizens.
TikTok is the most propagned platform currently. Not only about Gaza, but about everything. In the mean time, all the injured/starved citizens that were pictured and put on news papers were all a lie. I can also tell you I see many, many videos of sustained shops, rich food, candies and whatever first-world country has in Gaza. Give me one video please.
It's evident for example that this thin child that was put on the front page of NYT was actually suffering from a genetic disorder. It's also evident that the pictures of Gaza citizens starving with their bowls out asking for food, was actually a complete lie (you can find pictures from the side, and not only from the front). Yet you still see those images on TikTok.
IDF is state sponsored; they (and Israel more broadly) have a responsibility to comport themselves within the bounds of international law. If they choose not to, then they are behaving like terrorists.
Hamas is a terrorist organisation. Does it need to be condemned? Is Hamas a legitimate, recognised state and member of the UN? Israel is a sovereign state and member of the UN; it is therefore subject to higher standards. It should leave the UN or withdraw its staff, incl. its ambassador, if it does not like the UN.
Does it seem plausible to you that during the years of the Syrian civil war, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Tigray war in Ethiopia, the war in South Sudan and countless others (conflicts which, in total, claimed the lives of millions), Israel would commit war crimes at a ratio of 2:1 against the entire world, combined?
In contrast, the number of deaths from both Israeli and Palestinian sides in the same time period was several hundreds.
You forgot, the West Bank, under apartheid, extreme settler violence, constant and massive home expropriation, is also khamas, although no khamas ever walked on it.
It's part of a broader phenomena: feelings over facts. Doesn't matter how many commissions say it's genocide and how much evidence is presented, people don't "feel" it is true, therefore it is not true. Zero difference between these people, climate change deniers, and anti-vaxers.
While you do have points that these UN bodies do seem to sleep more often than not, one should never, under any circumstance attempt to suggest that what's happening in Gaza aren't crimes against humanity.
A friend of mine is in the Red Cross staff, they had more than 20 casualties since 2021 in Palestine. Their staff was literally shot at because they were doctors.
"never under any circumstances attempt to suggest" anything contrary to what you believe is an unreasonable and weak proposition to an argument.
You are welcome to believe what you want to believe but plenty of people throughout History believed something as strongly and self righteously as you do and turned out dead wrong. To think you are immune to that and suggest that no voice to the contrary should be allowed is ridiculous.
The fact that innocent people are purposefully being killed in Gaza is just that - a fact.
What you can do is argue that that's okay. What you CAN'T do is argue that that isn't happening.
For example, it is a fact that the US slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
You can argue it was justified and the lesser of two evil - people do it all the time. What you CAN'T argue is that hundreds of thousands of innocent people werent slaughtered. They were, it just happened.
I'm sorry, you just have to live with that and live with whatever resulting beliefs you may have.
The nuance is in the word "purposefully". Israel is purposefully targeting Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and other militants. Nobody else is being purposely targeted. But it's a war, so innocents are getting hurt as well. When the Gazans decide that they no longer like the war then they can return the hostages and the war will be over.
If you want to end the war, then pressure Hamas to return the hostages. Don't pressure Israel to bow to terrorist demands.
> But it's a war, so innocents are getting hurt as well
I'm wondering if you'd apply the same standard on the flip side? Per Hamas, they are engaged in a war with Israel, so by your standard they are justified in their rocket attacks killing Israeli civilians who have nothing to do with the war?
Which side do you think has an interest in shooting doctors?
I'll help you with that. It's not the side that would regularly take Gazan children into Israel for medical treatment before the Gazans started a war against Israeli children. Or do Israeli children mean nothing? Because I personally know two women whose children were burned to death on October 7th.
That doesn't seem to check out. This isn't to say that Hamas hasn't killed doctors and there have been several notable incidents of Israel killing healthcare workers.
> Which side do you think has an interest in shooting doctors?
The one shooting doctors.
What happened on October 7 has been a tragedy. 38 children died that day, and you know two of the mothers. I can't even relate with their suffering, in no way I can understand their pain like you do.
But I don't know either any mothers of the 32'000 killed and wounded on the other side.
"One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this."
We should not call a genocide a genocide because you personally have been impacted by the latest trigger of a long conflict?
I can never understand your pain but for me this reads like bloodlust coming from revenge. That is a path that will never lead to an end of bloodshed.
Given the actions of the Netanyahu government continuously siding with actions prolonging the genocide despite whatever action Hamas takes what do you propose?
What do you think of the colonialists/settlers/occupiers on the West Bank stealing Palestinian land and forcing people from their homes?
> One of the first Hamas Gopro videos of October 7th was the shooting of an ambulance
Nobody's ever denied that October 7th was a tragedy and that similar things happened. Not even once.
Don't get your point besides "if some of us suffered, it's fine to inflict 1000x the suffering on anybody associated, related or even just in proximity of those who caused us the suffering".
> It's not reckoning
I've never seen a war in which only one side has an army, and the other one loses almost exclusively civilians.
I can find you videos of mangled Palestinian children recorded every single day since October 8th 2023. So tell me, does October 7th in your eyes justify a war against civilians?
And if you’re about to tell me it isn’t a war against civilians, it should be easily provable by IDF videos of firefights with Hamas on a daily basis since October 8th 2023. However the videos I have seen have targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure.
I'd have to check, but I think Israel has killed more children in the past two years than Hamas killed Israelis on October 7. Israel has killed something like 30-40x the number of civilians in the same timeframe.
Hamas is a bunch of evil people. That doesn't justify descending to their level of butchery to exterminate them, especially not when you are so much more efficient at that butchery.
You don't have to check, more Gazan children have died than Israeli children. So by your argument, had Hamas killed more Israeli children then there wouldn't be a problem? I can think of no other reason why you made that argument.
> Israel has killed something like 30-40x the number of civilians in the same timeframe.
You might notice that Hamas was in Israel for less than 1/40 the time that this war has been going on. So per time period, Hamas killed _more_ children than Israel, given the chance. Who do you accuse of genocide now? They've just been denied the chance.
Perhaps. Perhaps if they somehow had the time, means and power to do it, they would have killed as many people on the other side, although this is high speculative as the past decades would have played out very differently anyway.
I'm not sure where you're going with that though. Nobody claims Hamas are kind and gently guys.
Unfortunately, Trump’s support for Israel is still “unwavering “. So we’ll continue to aid and abet arguably the most horrific human atrocity outside Africa (Rwanda, Sudan etc) in very long time. You might have to go back to Pol Pot; even the suppression of the Rohingya by Myanmar isn’t at the scale of the complete destruction of Gaza by Israel.
I don't want to downplay the atrocities going on in the current conflicts, but this sort of comment deserves some perspective.
About 70 million people were killed in WW2, as of the present day about 1 million have died in the war Russia is waging against Ukraine and about 70k people have died in the Israeli/Palestine conflict. The horrors are most certainly real. But WW3 this era is most certainly not, that's thankfully off by an order of magnitude.
The World Wars were called World Wars because of the number conflicts and the powers involved. While the casualties and damage has been lower, it seems like the powers are at least indirectly involved at the moment.
If you look back through history this has been the case since at least the Cold War, though. All the proxy hot wars in the Cold War, for example, back when the world was bi-polar. Now it’s multipolar with similar proxy wars.
The China-US arena in Taiwan has not begun. What about the Russian “provocations” against NATO? I don’t think that it is necessarily clear that these conflicts are anywhere near WWIII yet but there are clear signs that we could be heading there
The Phony War was the phase between the fall of Poland (took ~1 month) and the invasion of France, where the dominant phase of the war was actually taking place in Norway.
The best way to teach history would be to make politicians dig slit trenches and then shell them for a few days. Anything less than that people will always end up regurgitating ethno nationalist bullshit or "geopolitics".
> The best way to teach history would be to make politicians dig slit trenches and then shell them for a few days
I don't see why you think that. That didn't work for Hitler, Göring, and the countless numbers of WW1 veterans in the SA and SS hungry for another try.
There is no discussion only mass flagging for anyone who isnt in lockstep on this. This is why politics is usually a subject to be avoided.
I am sure i will be flagged despite completely agreeing with the UN here but if any real change is to happen, minds must be changed which mass flagging does nothing to help. It only further entrenches people. But hey, at least it feels good right? Righteous and all that.
For those who disagree with the UN here, id be happy to change your mind. The us should not be involved in any of this.
The subservience to Israel has become such an easy litmus test to identify which members of the Congress have absolutely zero principles and happily betray their own country for as low as O($100K)
Unfortunately that’s +90% of the Congress.
Personally I believe the best case scenario is a one state solution minus the apartheid regime (an equal rights country). But the folks in power are going for a one state solution plus a genocide
A one state solution means Palestinians can vote out the Zionists from power. They know that, so they'd rather prevent it while simultaneously genociding their population.
Hopefully we are at the beginning of a change, but I doubt this will come only from the UN.
The UN is the only international democratic institution that - even with its many imperfections - prevents the world to fall into complete anarchy. It's quite telling that it gets ignored since so many years by the country that elevates itself as the world defender of democracy, the US.
The UN has voted for decades for ending the embargo towards Cuba. Every year the outcome of the vote, which has always resulted in a great majority demanding the immediate end of the embargo, has been ignored by the US, resulting in millions of Cubans facing extreme economic consequences since many decades. The last time every country except Israel and US voted for ending the embargo (I might be wrong, maybe a single African state abstained).
In all of this, the only seed of joy I see, was seeing the Cubans a couple of years ago, after decades and decades of seeing their economy strangled by the most powerful country on Earth, roll out their own Covid vaccine just at the same time of those of big Pharma - a vaccine that resulted excellent, effective, and cheap. Hats off for the Cubans. Hope to see some other seed like this also in the Palestinians.
It's weird to claim that one country should be forced to trade with another country. International trade is voluntary on both sides. The US isn't responsible for keeping any other country's economy healthy. It's simply not our problem, and Cuban economic problems are a consequence of their own corruption and dogmatic incompetence. Should the US also be forced to trade with, let's say, North Korea?
The UN serves as a valuable diplomatic forum but let's not pretend that is does have or should have any real power or authority.
The US sanctions countries and/or foreign businesses that trade with Cuba, the embargo isn't simply between the US and Cuba. Because the US has effective control of most of the world's financial system, it is able to enforce this.
Yes, of course. No one is required to use the US financial system. Other countries are welcome to build their own. Why should we allow ours to be used to prop up a brutal and illegitimate communist dictatorship?
> The UN is the only international democratic institution that - even with its many imperfections - prevents the world to fall into complete anarchy. It's quite telling that it gets ignored since so many years by the country that elevates itself as the world defender of democracy, the US.
It's not been ignored the purpose of the UN is for largely irrelevant countries to petition the world powers to maybe consider doing something. The UN has been so successful because it has no real power over players like the USA.
> The UN has voted for decades for ending the embargo towards Cuba.
Ok? I mean the purpose of the UN is for people to suggest stuff to players like the USA not for the USA to actually do what the UN votes for.
What people fail to understand about dynamics between countries, is ultimately there is no supreme court or arbiter of truth. The UN doesn't have authority over any powerful country (or non powerful country for that matter).
People seem to have this concept that there is some supra national legal system, or even moral system that can hold a higher truth than what powerful countries want, but there isn't. When it comes to geopolitics, the biggest and most powerful sets the rules and lives by them (or not). The USA has zero motivation to do something the UN wants it to do, if it doesn't itself want to do it. No one is going to hold it to account.
Ultimately - whoever controls the violence can set the rules. For the last 80 years that's been the US. Maybe that is changing, but not quite yet.
The UN isn't an international democratic institution. For the last 20-30 years it's been a powerless theatre. And it didn't have much power before then either. Because ultimately, whoever has the most nukes and the biggest army rules the world.
> People seem to have this concept that there is some supra national legal system, or even moral system that can hold a higher truth than what powerful countries want,
Can you blame them? The same countries facilitating this genocide have been telling everyone they uphold principles of human rights and democracy, and a "rules based international order*, and that they oppose genocide. Only now are enough horrors breaking through in such a surreal way that people are forced to notice the contradictions.
Its important to note that most of those "irrelevant" countries are only irrelevant because they're perpetually under the thumb of world powers. Hence why they petition the UN. And, hence why empires and somewhat-formally colonial nations ignore them.
Ultimately, a lot of the wealth of the West comes from core countries siphoning wealth from the periphery and propping up psueodo governments to place their thumbs on the scale of world politics. Exhibit A: Israel.
Empires are not exclusive to the West, and those also ignore the UN. For many of the countries under their thumbs, the West has at least sometimes been acting in their defense.
One hopeful observation is that I actually have seen coverage of the genocide in a local newspaper this time. N=1 of course (and I'm not sure what other local newspapers have been like), but that's more than before.
> Agence France-Presse has described UN Watch as "a lobby group with strong ties to Israel" ... Primarily, UN Watch denounces what it views as anti-Israel sentiment at the UN and UN-sponsored events.
Except no-one has ever offered any proof UN Watch is “tied to Israel” and the organization has backed and saved the lives of numerous dissidents that Human Rights Watch and the UN would rather see die, whether they be Palestinian or Iranian or from other conflicts
If we're on the subject of damning historic quotes, I've got one for you:
> Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.
Of course ignoring that Hamas was deliberately funded by Israel to cause a split between the politics of the West Bank and Gaza to prevent a unified political authority in Palestine.
I can well imagine a parallel universe where Israel gave them NO money whatsoever. You know what would have happened? Hamas would do the usual Islamic fundamentalist thing. Form a terrorist group and attack Israel. And then media commentators and intellectuals would accuse Israel of failing to help Hamas get put on the right path by helping them at the start, and instead Israel's inaction was like strangling a baby in the cradle. Typical Israel! Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Many (not all) of those countries are fine with when it's a member of the second or third worlds committing atrocities. So no, there's no guts here. They perceive it's in their interest to call out some acts but not others - just like almost everyone else.
If I want to understand any position I would look for first sources. Say I want to understand why Russian invaded Ukraine, I would seek out Russian sources. When I try to understand the Palestinian position, I seek out Palestinian sources.
The beautiful thing about intellectual honesty and openness is that you don't have to agree with any position. You can expose yourself to things that deeply conflict with your personal values and walk away with a deeper understanding of why you value what you value, and how to refute ideas that you strongly disagree with.
To dismiss a source because it is Israeli ironically gives fuel to the antisemitism charge. You're saying that the very reason to dismiss it, to not even bother entertaining its arguments is because it is Israeli and no other reason. Beyond that, you are even arguing that any claims of prejudice can be dismissed outright on the basis of one thing that one Israeli Minster once said [allegedly].
Quite simply Israelis and Jews are not the same group, otherwise you would be holding all Jews on the planet responsible for this genocide. Dismissing the source for being Israeli is not antisemitic.
There are many examples of Israeli sources lying about the state of things, from the baseless claims against UNRWA to the unconscionable excuse of burying medics and the ambulances they were in, to avoid wild dogs eating them.
Israeli sources rarely offer evidence to refute the claims presented in this report, and a cry of antisemitism, as stated, conflates Judeism with Israeli nationality, hence these sources are worthless at best.
Which are not validated by the UN, Norway etc.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148821
If the claims were valid, countries would not have restarted funding to UNRWA. Simple.
I note you've not denied the issues with claims of antisemitism which are important.
I was referring to your conflation of Israelis with Jews, and calling dismissal of an Israeli news source antisemitic, which it is not.
I'm saying that a biased Israeli news source is less valid than the actions of dozens of countries, which decided to restart funding.
It is telling that UN votes for a ceasefire are only opposed by the US, Israel and a handful of client states. This is a genocide, and most countries seem to agree on that.
First, I think you are conflating two different authors in this thread.
Second, you dismissed what you deemed to be Israeli sources as "lying about the state of things, from the baseless claims against UNRWA". I brought up evidence otherwise - specifically that their claims are not baseless. Dismiss _that_ as biased all you want, but its just links to social media posts from Hamas members. Members of Hamas that also work for UNRWA in some fashion.
We do agree that the US and Israel standing alone is telling. But we will disagree on what it means. For me it confirms just how morally bankrupt the United Nations is. I see no epistemological value in just conforming to the majority when I see clear evidence otherwise.
The points still stand and remain unaddressed, that are:
Conflation of Israelis and Jews and the false claim of antisemitism.
The lack of evidence of UNRWA-Hamas association, such that Israel's claims are deemed baseless by multiple countries and they restart funding. That is not a UN decision, it is by each country and serves as a good benchmark for baseless.
As to some posts to Hamas members, Israel have called reporters Hamas members simply for reporting with Hamas members, so as far as a few posts go, classification is the issue here, to the point where Reuters and other news agencies have stopped sending the IDF their locations, as the IDF label them Hamas supporters and deliberately target them. Actions are a much more clear signal. In Lebanon, the IDF saying there were Hamas tunnels under hospitals was debunked by numerous news organisations like the BBC, Sky etc. This is the IDF here misclassifying and outright lying, let alone an Internet site.
Lastly, given that both Trump and Netanyahu have openly and on TV advocated ethnic cleansing, and that these comments get next to zero blowback, the US and Israel appear to be the morally bankrupt ones. If an internet site takes precedence over open admission by presidents, multiple country's decisions, evidence presented from an acknowledged organisation (and confirmed from multiple sources), then I'd argue that there's something amiss here.
"To dismiss a source because it is Israeli ironically gives fuel to the antisemitism charge."
We agree it is an Israeli source.
All the unwatch site does is accuse Israel's critics of being antisemites. When you can't respond to the message, attack the messenger. Accuse them of being antisemitic and being funded by Hamas.
You are aware that Shulamit Alloni was on the extreme left and was criticizing this supposed misuse of Antisemitism, this is not some playbook
The american equivalent would be to quote Bernie Sanders saying "America is fascist" and then saying, see? therefore the USA system of government is fascism, even Congress agrees!
Regarding antisemitism, it is unfortunately a two millennium old racist phenomenon, which shows itself in an obsession many persons had with Jews and their "influence on world politics".
Behaviors include use of ritual scapegoating, where double standards are applied to the jews and then blame is shifted to them, culminating in ritual violence.
It's hard to delete 2000 years of western culture, so what you are seeing is mostly a rehash of this
This predated Israel by much and can be seen online for example by the unhealthy obsession with this conflict or even paranoid delusions considering Israel ("Israel killed Charlie Kirk cause I saw Nethanyahu respond to the murder" as can be seen in this thread)
In the above mentioned UN human right council you can see it in the fact 40% of decisions are about Israel while countries like Iran chair the committee. Or the fact there is a permanent clause (Article 7) meant to condemn Israel permanently, the only such country that had such a clause
i saw this comment before going to take a look, but scrolling down from the top, the page seems to all be character assasination about Francesca Albanese and not disputing facts.
you can look for yourself - its the same as the "its funded by lunatics" comment, just swapping which lunatics.
if they've got arguments, they arent putting them forward as what they consider the most important.
Character assassination? I see you, you support UN rapporteurs being able to have trips to Australia funded by terror organizations… I see where you stand just as well as you do
Unwatch is, and has always been, critical of everything the UN does with regards to Israel. Had the UN made one statement like "Israel should not arbitrarily detain children and hold them without fair trials", I am pretty sure unwatch would twist it into antisemitism.
Proving the absence of something is kinda impossible… depends on if you believe in guilty until proven innocent or if you’re totally okay with going gung-ho into trusting the UN, a body led by the majority of non-democratic governments and used to try to destroy democracies
The purpose of a tool like unwatch is to disseminate information to help zionists pollute discussions like these. They dont care about being right, or contributing information to the discussion, as much as they want to hand out gotchas, whatabouts, ad homs and so forth. Thats why its all just character assassination.
True. And in the interest of balancing the claims of the critics, I offer up the observation that UN Watch is "a lobby group with strong ties to Israel" (AFP article: Capella, Peter. "UN Gaza probe chief underlines balanced approach." 7-Jul-2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20111222162658/https://www.googl...).
Seeing PG slowly turn on this issue, from nothing into recognition and now into advocacy has been wild. Presumably because he has kids, and like many parents you understand with your eyes first, and then your heart.
PG wields some amount of power in SV, but YC and others are still inextricably tied to what's happening. Thiel was just in Israel with elad gil, rabois, alex karp, joe lonsdale. It's just too much to list.
I guess my point is when does recognition turn into action.
For those of us not in the loop, what is PG, SV, and YC (I guess that the latter is ycombinator)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_(programmer) (YC Co-founder)
Silicon Valley
YCombinator yes
I used to shame PG for his elitist views. Now I celebrate his moral courage.
One man cannot fix everything.
Dear PG (I'm sure you don't read HN, but this is yet another echo),
As I said on X, your own platform (YCombinator) is still full of hateful bigots who would censor/downvote even the mildest form of speaking against the genocide. Proof: this comment being downvoted. Downvoting as a mechanism is akin to censorship. It's being abused.
Having a difference of opinion on a very complicated geopolitical situation that is the culmination of a century of regional conflict is not being a "hateful bigot" or abuse.
> It's being abused.
Downvoting on HN doesn’t go lower than -4. If it’s used as a method of censorship, and you care about internet points, then you practically have to post nothing else useful to make it work.
Yes but it hides the comment for most users. This is of course besides the flagging abuse which outright delists websites.
Is he still vocal about it? Do you have any recent comments of his to share?
He is, he regularly posts about it on X. I really admire his commitment to ethics. It says a lot that even for him, it must be difficult.
Random sidenote, but Brits in SF tend to give me unexpected civic pride.
Huh - I didn't know he was a West Country boy.
Barely though, moving to the states at age 4, but I guess he came back a decade ago. Not sure it warrants national pride unless his parents raised him on a strict diet of tea, scones and the BBC. I hope he turns up at YC having gained his birthright, a nice Dorset burr, "alreet moi luvlees, wart ideals be goin on ere?"
I had assumed moving to the UK was a Madonna-esque escape from getting pitched every 5 minutes while trying to do family stuff in SV.
Hard to put into words how those people act like the devil incarnate and a lot of the scene pretends that this doesn't matter.
Comments on this post are disabled for new accounts, but in the era of anti-BDS regulation and other measures aimed specifically at curtailing practical freedom of speech surrounding this conflict, can we really comment freely on this without anonymity? The vast majority (38/50) of US states have passed some form of anti-BDS legislation. We can also expect corporate retaliation against employees who speak about this issue in a "wrong way".
For anyone else not familiar with "anti-BDS":
"Anti-BDS laws are legislation that retaliate against those that engage in Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. With regard to the Arab–Israeli conflict, many supporters of the State of Israel have often advocated or implemented anti-BDS laws, which effectively seek to retaliate against people and organizations engaged in boycotts of Israel-affiliated entities."
From Wikipedia. Also: "Not to be confused with Anti-BDSM laws."
From a historical, economic, social perspective... Why does Israel hold so much power over the world?
Most of geopolitics is geography and Israel has greatly benefitted as a unique bridgehead in hostile territory for a changing roster of great-powers and states against another foe e.g.
- Early Soviet support to undermine British Imperialism
- Balfour Declaration from Britain vs. Ottomans
- Nuclear tech from France vs. Nasser and anti-colonialism
- Military/Nuclear from Apartheid South Africa vs. shared pariah status
- Hegemonic power from the US vs. every unaligned country including Cold war, OPEC, Arab Nationalism, Islamism
The more recent metastasising of support into a political-religous-racial belief-system is even more troubling than the apocalyptic machinations of great powers because pure ideology departs from reason itself and is untethered to any care for the consequences.
The theory I've been operating under is that Israel was created as a pretty bad solution to displaced Jews post-WWII, and operates essentially as a vassal state of the US's commercial military interests as a totally intractable perma-war in the region to ensure that even in lieu of other conflict taxpayer money can continuously be laundered to them in the form of expended munitions.
There's obviously a lot more going on from a social/religious perspective, but I'm prone to thinking of large-scale shifts and trends in terms of economic incentives.
I believe it's the other way around: The western governments, media and legislative bodies are under Israeli control.
Have you seen how the US Congress, half of which boos the US presidents along party lines, suddenly all rise up and fall in line when Netanyahu visits the Congress?
https://idsb.tmgrup.com.tr/ly/uploads/images/2024/07/28/thum...
Have you see the strange photos of all US politicians with yamakas near this wall in Israel as if they're pledging allegiance to something?
It's humiliating
It is humiliating, but that makes no sense at all from a power dynamics perspective. Israel is just not that powerful, economically, militarily, or socially. The US's military industrial complex is, and basically every politician is beholden to powerful capital interests, the MIC among them. Unconditional and enthusiastic support of Israel, then, is a proxy for support of those financial interests, hence the visits, deference, etc. This backed up by the very real threat of a handful of powerful lobbying groups that will and have coordinated to redirect funding to opponents of anyone they deem insufficiently deferential.
> Israel is just not that powerful, economically, militarily, or socially.
Its not just funding and religious indoctrination. The very, very serious question that nobody seems to have the courage to ask, is this: where are Israels nukes?
The answer to that question might provide some insight into why things are so supplicant in certain halls of power ...
It doesn’t. The US does, however, and the US has for decades put all of its weight behind Israel. Without that, Israel would probably have faced the same fate as apartheid South Africa.
The current genocide is to blame on the US as much as on Israel.
what power exactly Israel holds over the world ?
none
Certainly holds significant influence over the US government.
Another possible explanation: Israel is a leading spyware manufacturer (e.g. Pegasus). They are probably involved in 'sensitive' eavesdropping operations world-wide, and quite likely, have data that would scare the world's leaders to even think not supporting Israel.
Many people in this thread are arguing against pro-Israel commenters. I would strongly suggest not bothering. If these people are still arguing in favour of Israel, they will quite literally never change their minds, they are beyond the point or being possible to convince with facts or evidence.
Step back and take comfort in the fact that history will look back on them as moral scum.
I for one will be holding my representatives responsible who continue to vote for the US to enable a genocide. The videos coming out of Gaza have turned me and many others into single issue voters.
Flipping the U.S. really is the key to ending this conflict. The U.S. reliably uses its security council veto to nix any meaningful UN response and the U.S. remains, by far, the biggest supplier of arms to the IDF. If the US were to stop veto'ing everything and cut off the IDF's supply of, at least, some types of weapons, the new ground assault would likely end quickly.
Unfortunately, that isn't likely to happen. Netanyahu has, to date, handled Trump deftly and Rubio's current presence in Israel seems to be aimed at offering support to the ground offensive, not opposition. I honestly have no idea what kind of backlash it would take to shake U.S. support for this genocide.
There's definitely a generational gap going in the US. Support for Israel is not popular among the younger generation in the US, and there's a good deal of voters in their 20s and 30s for whom support for Israel a red line in candidates. But older generations tend to be staunchly in favor of Israel, and too much of the gerontocratic political class thinks that pro-Israel uber alles is the key to winning votes.
It is worth noting that Andrew Cuomo, in a desperate last-minute gamble to boost support in the NYC mayoral race, has come out against Israel. Considering that much of the attacks on Mamdani have focused on his support for Palestine (construing him as antisemitic), it's notable that other candidates also seem to think that being anti-Israel is actually the vote winner for moderates right now.
I wouldn't label this as "support for Israel"/"against Israel". One can support Israel without supporting Israel's current approach. Many within Israel are not happy with Netanyahu's methods, and presumably they are not against Israel.
I understand that that's the current shorthand, but it seems inaccurate and unnecessarily polarizing to me.
> One can support Israel without supporting Israel's current approach.
I suppose you could that in theory but only in theory. In practice, the current situation is not very surprising given the overall trajectory since the inception of the country. It's very disturbing to see the memes that are coming out of the social media of the soldiers and even the general population.
Even if the current govt. of the country changes, I wouldn't hold my breath about the new government making reparations or taking any other positive steps.
This is what puzzles me - ppl keep railing about being pro or anti Israel and it's overly simplistic and also not really accurately describing things. It's more pro/anti Likud or Kahanists, or really at heart a right vs left wing divide. There's still plenty of Labor or more progressive elements of the Israeli public who are against what Netanyahu and his political allies are doing.
It's not a party - it's an ideology: zionism [1], for which there is widespread left and right support. It is almost like a 20th century manifest destiny [2], with largely the same inevitable outcome.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny
I find this a strange take, and I hear it a lot from inhabitants of both the USA and Israel about their leadership.
For better or worse, Netanyahu represents the Israeli governement, which represents Israel. Similar with Trump and the USA, or Putin and Russia. Sorry for the people who don't agree with them, but that's an internal power struggle, and as an outsider it is normal to abstract that away. For all of us: Your country is doing what it does.
As a Belgian, I spit on my idiotic, nasty governements. Insert tiny violin, whatever Belgium does on the international forum, I'll still be tarred with it. Similarly, we talk about Germany's role in world war 2, even if only about 10% of them were associated with the NSDAP.
Every power struggle is always represented overly simplistic. Sorry for both the jews and Israëli's who don't agree with it, you're probably good people. This time I am lucky to sit at a very comfortable sideline, criticising your country. But the point stands: Israel is correctly described as officially committing a genocide, and hence it can't be described as the good side.
Yet the only basis they have of the claim of genocide is a heavy journalistic trend to exaggerate Arab suffering in this war, and a selection of government official quotes which are interpreted in the worst way possible.
The journalistic actions are beyond reprehensible - they are responsible for the deaths of so many children by encouraging Hamas to ensure child deaths. This is not some theory, if you speak Arabic go read the Gaza telegram channels. They're not shy about it.
Israel was literally born out of political scheming to get assigned a portion of someone else's territory for an exclusive ethno-nationalistic state; then out of ethnically cleansing that territory. It was necessary to the project and planned in advanced.
You can be for the existence of a peaceful Israel that has entirely retreated within recognised borders and made amends for its past genocidal behaviour- but it's not what the current Israel is or, sadly, can ever be.
> There's still plenty of Labor or more progressive elements of the Israeli public who are against...
No. Not at all.
The Arab states haven't made amends for ethnically cleansing huge numbers of Jews (majority of Israel's Jewish population are Mizrahi Jews who fled ethnic cleansing by Arab governments)
Shouldn't similar preconditions of making amends apply to whether or not we accept the existence of those Arab states?
> Shouldn't similar preconditions of making amends apply to whether or not we accept the existence of those Arab states?
And what if they should? Do you think it make Israel's genocide look better now?
Stop trying to change the subject or shift the blame, it's a trick and it's pathetic.
Why were these Arab states not persecuted for their ethnic cleansing of Jews?
It is called a rhetorical device. It is considering the ends of your argument. If you are British, French, German, American, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. and you support the argument that displacement or control of a people is bad, I agree, but consider what you would want to do and apply the rule fairly. Criticising one country for “taking” land when it was given that land by the same UN you use to claim that it is a genocidal country today… well that really is rich
Yes of course it's a rhetorical device, and it's meant to subtly change the subject to prevent engaging with it.
This conversation went like this:
>>>> ppl keep railing about being pro or anti Israel and it's overly simplistic and also not really accurately describing things. It's more pro/anti Likud or Kahanists
To which I replied that Israel is constitutionally born out of a pre-planned colonisation and ethnic cleansing and it's wrong to think that its supremacist ideology only belongs to a part of its political spectrum- it could change but it's unfortunately unrealistic.
>>> Israel was literally born out of political scheming to get assigned a portion of someone else's territory for an exclusive ethno-nationalistic state; then out of ethnically cleansing that territory. It was necessary to the project and planned in advance.
To which the GP replied with something that tries to change the subject on Arab states, at the same time introducing a historical falsehood:
>> The Arab states haven't made amends for ethnically cleansing huge numbers of Jews
Now,
1) the Arab states are not born out of a planned ethnic cleansing of anyone (at least not in the recent past)
2) Many, perhaps most of the Jews that immigrated to Israel did so voluntarily (made Aliyah)
3) By the way, Israel itself even engaged in false flag terrorism to push Jews to emigrate from Arab countries to Israel.
And most importantly, the argument has no bearing with the original subject, which is whether its a specific political side that is determining Israel's course now or the country is constitutionally like that. Arab countries have nothing to do with the subject, they belong to a different conversation.
Hope it helps.
Was it really the "same" UN? In 1947, most of the world was still colonized, and had no UN representation. France, Britain and the US might not have had much of a problem with telling some people in the Third World to give up their homeland, but sentiment in colonized countries would have been very different.
Also recall that it was only a UN recommendation, not a binding resolution.
> Israel was literally born out of political scheming
Its more of a popular jewish movement that over 100 years changed the ethnic composition of the Palestine region from 1-2% in the 1840s up to 30% in the 1940s.
Political scheming is secondary and was born well after the 1840s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palesti...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerus...
I was referring to the well documented deals and shenanigans that were instrumental first to get the promise of support for an Israeli homeland, and then in the UN to get the partition plan approved.
Zionism itself is a product of 19th century nationalisms and of course of a (widespread at the time) colonial mindset.
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Zionists do not support genocide. This is defamatory BS without any evidence at best
>Zionists do not support genocide.
I never said this in my post. This is a reflexive defense on your part as I never specifically called out Zionists, in general, supported genocide. I said, the vast majority of the Knesset, supports genocide. I will say though, zionists in general are wishfully ignorant of this fact.
>This is defamatory BS without any evidence at best
Which parts are defamatory? Are you seriously going to argue that the Religious Zionist Party doesn't support genocide? Cmon man, Bezalel Smotrich is wanted by the ICC.[1]
[1]https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/11/1157286
Unfortunately, that is the reality of how the loudest voices globally want to frame the issue, probably for their own political reasons. That it is possible to be pro-Israel but criticize Likud is inconvenient for those trying to paint an entire country with a single brush. Ironically, the hard-line anti-Israel stances end up forcing such people to keep the criticism quiet.
There's no way of supporting Israel without supporting this current genocide. Literally no way. Because this current genocide is the logical outcome of what Israel is. And was explained as such, in detail, by David Ben Gurion and Golda Mier. Decades ago.
Albert Einstein added his name to a famous letter to the NY Times in the late 40's, in which EXACTLY THIS was explained, in plain & uncompromising language, in the very first paragraph. For Israel to exist, it would have to be just like the Nazis. That's LITERALLY what that letter said.
The splitting of a non-existing hair argument that you're trying to do is just to avoid admitting that you've been wrong the entire time, and enough people warned (or boasted) about it from the very beginning that you really don't have an excuse for being this wrong.
> One can support Israel without supporting Israel's current approach.
I think you're overthinking this. We're taking about a country committing genocide here. You either support them or you don't.
What’s the difference between genocide and self defense? Two state solutions were offered 5 times and rejected. Israeli withdrawal from Gaza happened. Rocket attacks by the thousands took place. A terrorist attack with rape and mutilation took place. Women were dragged through the streets naked with blood on their groin. And to this date, hostages have not been released.
Isn’t the only just response to completely eliminate the offending group, Hamas? Why should Israel and its resident tolerate ANY future risk to their residents?
> Isn’t the only just response to completely eliminate the offending group, Hamas?
Israel is eliminating far more than the "offending group" and they're doing it in a cold blooded, inhumane manner. That's why it's not "self defense". It's shameful.
> Rocket attacks by the thousands took place. A terrorist attack with rape and mutilation took place. Women were dragged through the streets naked with blood on their groin.
Wasn’t sure who you were talking about there. Still not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_...
"Attacks began in 2001. Since then (August 2014 data), almost 20,000 rockets have hit southern Israel,[35][36] all but a few thousand of them since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in August 2005."
...
"Some analysts see the attacks as a shift away from reliance on suicide bombing, which was previously Hamas's main method of attacking Israel, as an adoption of the rocket tactics used by the Lebanese group Hezbollah."
But we're going way back, during this ongoing war: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/10/7/live-hezbo...
"Updates: Hamas, Hezbollah fire rockets at Israel on October 7 anniversary"
If you are charged with murder, but you killed because someone was attacking you, it is a legal defence that you were defending yourself.
There is no such defence against a charge of genocide.
The lawyers who wrote the international treaty, many of whom themselves survived the Holocaust and lost their relatives in it, carefully considered whether to add such a defence. They did not add it. They considered that genocide is a crime for which there is no excuse. That is should be possible to defend yourself without resorting to it.
In any case, the group at issue is not Hamas. The genocide is being conducted against all Palestinians.
Your argument also conveniently omits the extreme level of military dominance which Israel has over the Palestinians.
The real reason many Israelis cannot conceive of a solution other than killing or expelling them, is: how can we leave them there, after the level of hatred, murder, violence, and abuse we have heaped on them over the last two years? We have taken revenge for our 36 dead children, won't they want revenge for their 20,000?
The woman was dragged by the IDF
Is everyone in Gaza a member of Hamas? Is it only the 200,000 Gazan casualties so far? How many more hundreds of thousands of Gazans need to be eliminated to wipe out Hamas?
I hope the answer to that last question includes those joining Hamas because of the first couple hundred thousands of Gazans killed.
Genocide according to the genocide convention which is what we're talking about can occur even when a single person is killed as long as there is "intent". This is why we keep seeing the reference to certain Israeli MK statements as proof of intent. So according to Israel's critics, which seems to be everyone here, because Yoav Gallant said that we'll shut the water to Gaza as a response to the Oct 7th attack the first bomb dropped on Hamas on Oct 8th constitutes genocide. There is no possibility of self defense.
What Israel's critics will add to that is that Israel has no right to self defense because it was occupying Gaza before the Oct 7th attack.
They'll also downplay the Oct 7th attack, claim Israelis killed their own, there was no sexual violence etc.
Then they'll look at the number of casualties as another proof. It's not "proportional". Israel is only allowed to kill a certain number of people in its wars. Otherwise it's clearly not self defense. But only for Israel, for other countries, still self defense.
People see bodies, children, on their social media feeds and destruction and that makes it very clear who the good guys and who the bad guys are.
Israel can't win this argument. Don't look for logic. Days after the Oct 7th attack Israel was already accused of genocide. Nothing Israel can do here is right and the actions western countries have taken (e.g. US post 9/11 or western response to ISIS) are not available to Israel because Israel shouldn't even exist and therefore should definitely not be allowed to defend itself (vs. the Americans and the Canadians who have lived on their land for 10,000 years and definitely didn't just steal it from the natives and kill all of them).
The only thing Israel can win is the actual war on the ground and so the leadership of Israel, while making many mistakes, is determined to win the war on the ground. Not all Israelis agree with that either. Personally I don't know if any other options really exist.
All that said, you can't really argue with the fact the population of Gaza is suffering immensely, many of them have lost everything they've had, many killed and injured, they live in terrible conditions. I mostly blame Hamas. I also blame the west for prolonging this war and not offering any reasonable solutions to Israel. Israel has faults and can and should do better but for the most part its hand is forced and has been forced by Palestinian violence/actions for some time. Maybe Gaza should have been taken immediately after Hamas took over in 2007. Maybe there would have been other courses of actions including post Oct 7. I donno. Oct 7th stunned me, it was an utter failure. Not really seeing anything proposed here at this point in time and don't recall seeing anything productive going back.
So all in all it's terrible. There's human suffering. We need to end it. The only way out I see is for Hamas to surrender. Let's get there and then we can debate what words mean, two states, one state, where do we go from here. This was is not going to end e.g. by the US telling Israel to end it.
I agree and it means that the critics have part in why Israels only action is to see it through and more or less upend Hamas. And it probably will go on for many months.
With pressure on Hamas to surrender after being defeated in a war they started, this conflict would probably be over long ago.
Wild blaming Israel's critics for something the Israeli government and military are doing. How can Hamas possibly remain a threat at his point? How many tens of thousands of more Palestinians need to die? Enough is enough!
Pressure Hamas to surrender would have saved many people from getting killed, but only a day after Israel was attacked the criticism against Israel started. The reality is that it was not the aggressor in the latest war, which also shines light on the accusation of genocide.
We're taking about a country that has 23 other states intent on performing to her citizens genocide, and a complicit anti-US media that flips the narrative in order to divide the West.
It is possible to despise Israel's behavior, and even want their current political standing to change, without being antisemitic or genocidal.
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"From the river to the sea", right?
Oh, wait, that was Likud's slogan long before anyone else used it.
Shame on you for your utter condescension that anyone remotely critical of Israel's behavior are "useful idiots" devoid of nuance.
No- The Israeli (extreme) right used to say "two banks to the river jordan, one is ours and so is the other" (loose translation). This is very different than "from the river to the sea". Also the Israeli right is willing to generally accept muslims/arabs/Palestinians as equal citizens in that ideological dream.
But, how about Israel's declaration of independence? Arguably more representative of the consensus.
"WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions."
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/israel.asp
And guess what, those that listened are now part of the one million Israeli Arab citizenry.
I think if we see nuance we can acknowledge it. The worldwide campaign against Israel is devoid of nuance. Some western leaders pay lip service to the idea of removing Hamas and that Israeli hostages should be released but in fact they are taking actions that prolong the war and embolden Hamas. Basically the way the world looks at it is "we told Israel to stop and it doesn't" vs. the way it should be looking at is "What would any other country in the world be doing in these circumstances and what are the conditions Israel is looking for to end the violence and how do we get to those conditions.". There is also orchestrated pressure via social media and media like Al Jazeera that pushes narratives that we're seeing in this thread and is not factual. The cries of genocide started before Israel barely fired a shot after it was attacked and what we're reading today is the same talking points that have been flooding social media for the last two years alongside with an unprecedented flood of war imagery we have not seen in any other conflict because the sole purpose of Hamas is to get as many people killed and injured and attack Israel's image. It's been doing that really well.
Being critical of Israel's actions is 100% ok. I am very critical. But what we're seeing is public lynching, not criticism. There is nothing Israel can ever do that is right here. There are no suggestions or proposals for Israel to adjust course that make any sense. Calls for a "cease fire" don't and haven't made any sense because cease fire (which we've had) means Hamas remains in control of Gaza, can re-arm and attack Israel again, and keeps the hostages. Typically this is where the discussion goes to the standard talking points of "didn't start Oct 7th", "Gaza was occupied", "UN blah blah blah", and rhetoric which ignores Hamas and the role of Palestinians in getting where are today. We have maybe 5% of the people in these discussions (on both side - I'll admit that) who have any sense of nuance. We have maybe 1% of people who have enough knowledge on the topic/history etc. We have ideology and propaganda being the dominant forces.
So this is why this shouldn't be on Hacker News. There are enough other avenues for online "discussion" (which this is not) on the dividing topics of the day.
It's actually over 2 million Arabs in Israel.
Nazi Germany said the same thing, but much like in your case no post hoc rationalization can wash away the fact they committed genocide.
Israel's founding founders made no bones of the fact that they saw cleansing Palestine of Palestinians as key to your ethnosupremacist ambitions.
You talk with the utter condescension (to borrow the other reply's words) of a people who have been coddled by impunity for far too long, and there is way too much tolerance for your racist narrative in spaces like this.
This isn't right, though it can feel like an option when you are looking for a solution that doesn't make you feel bad.
Zionism is the idea of colonial occupation. The internal logic will always end in ethnic cleansing. It did in 1948. It's doing it now. American Manifest Destiny had a similar function, and it also resulted in massive genocide for which we have not atoned.
Zionism is done. A secular democratic state for all people with the right of return guaranteed for displaced Palestinians along with some kind of reeducation / denazification program for the genocidal citizens of the current state of Israel is the only viable solution.
As a Jew, I don't think Arabs should pay for Germany's crimes. I think Germany should pay. They paid a little already. They should pay more, especially now that they are supporting this genocide too.
Zionism is the idea that Jewish people have rights in their historical homeland. That the Jewish people have maintained a physical and spiritual connection to this land despite having been forcibly removed from it and prevented from returning. And that Jewish people being persecuted everywhere need to return and reclaim their homeland.
As a Jew, what do you say every Seder? Do you do a Seder? לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בִּירוּשָלָיִם
There is no colonial occupation. There is immigration. Jews are not a colonizing force and Jews, and Israelis, have (with very very few exceptions) have never engaged in ethnic cleansing. Zionism acknowledged that the current people living in the region have rights. Those people didn't acknowledge the rights of the Jewish people.
As the other comment mentions, Jews were ethnically cleansed from many countries in the middle east. Their land and property stolen. Jews were attacked and ethnically cleansed in the land of Israel (e.g. Hebron, Tsfat, Jersualem, Gaza). Did you know Jews used to live in Gaza from the second century BCE until finally removed by force in 1929?
A secular democratic state for all people is what was offered to the Arabs when Israel was established! The Palestinians don't want that. Look at how Jews are faring in all other Arab countries today when you talk about "re-education". Antisemitism is rampant in those societies and Jews are erased.
You're entitled to your opinions ofcourse but IMO you are completely disconnected from your heritage and the reality on the ground. If you haven't already I recommend reading a book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Love_Dead_Jews that might give you some glimpse into some history you might not be familiar with.
> As a Jew, I don't think Arabs should pay for Germany's crimes.
Germany no, but the Arab states should definitely pay for ethnically cleansing the Mizrahi Jews who currently make up a majority of Israeli Jews.
Mizrahi Jews make up 45% of Israeli Jews (as of 2018). A plurality but not quite a majority.
Source: https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/noah/files/2018/07/Ethnic...
Historically, Germany did pay: Billions of DM in the 1950s and tens of billions of euros since, plus ongoing survivor pensions and restitution. But the broader strategy after 1945 paired accountability with reconstruction to reduce civilian suffering and long-term instability, rather than chasing maximal punishment.
But we often don't have world powers pay immeasurable or insurmountable amounts due to the game theory that slip-up's between world powers are inevitable, and when they find themselves in a compromising and vulnerable enough position that another nation state can exert enough power on them to "punish" them, those world powers are already decimated enough that the only logical reason for the punishment is retribution/revenge, thereby adding more "hurt" into the world - when that world power's decimation was already its justice.
Also about 15 million Germans were displaced from their homes. Whole regions with 95% German population were cleansed and given to Poland. I am not making judgement on this (I am Polish, part of my family lived in a German house like that, the, land with all belongings other part lost their home and were moved to a labor camp in Siberia by Russians) just pointing out that Germans did pay.
A lot of people were displaced, forcibly moved to other areas, often to labor camps after WWII. Somehow we are able to accept this new order and live in peace. Arabs started multiple war over it, lost all of them, are still waging war today. The road to peace for them is to lay down arms, surrender and accept the resolution made by the winning side - exactly what we all have done after WWII.
You just put words to something I felt, but could not entirely find the words for. Also, war does not solve war.
Mossad have actually warned the Netanyahu government of this, saying U.S support for Israel is slipping away and now might be the best time to implement a two state solution, while it can still be as one sided as possible in favour of Israel. Netanyahu has chosen to ignore this.
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For those who don't know, Cuomo volunteered last year (apropos of nothing, he doesn't have relevant experience) to defend Netanyahu in the ICC. So any "change of mind" he might be expressing now is a little bit... Suspect.
https://nypost.com/2024/11/25/us-news/andrew-cuomo-joins-hig...
That gap between support of Israel across age groups existed historically AFAIK, although the margins were narrower.
More worrying for Israel is that it's becoming a partisan issue. That goes to both ends - previously unthinkable, unwavering support under Republicans but a very short leash under the Democrats.
> More worrying for Israel is that it's becoming a partisan issue.
A highly salient political issue becoming partisan is a good thing in a representative democracy, as that is the only thing that makes it possible for the public to influence it by general election votes.
In FPTP, this often ends up backfiring. A politicized issue quickly becomes a polarized issue - the other side takes the opposite view, and both sides then race to the extremes. Compromise becomes less and less possible, because then each side sees it as a defeat. Nothing ends up done.
Worse there is always more than one issue. Now I can't even find someone in my own party to support as the race has brought them all the same way on this. And so I either support one of them anyway for other issues or I leave.
And my mom's hippie generation loved the PLO and Arafat, and my generation supported Israel. Israel existed through it all.
whats actually going on with the mayoral race? is cuomo running as an independent against mamdani?
https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2025/09/10/mamdani-hol...
Why would we expect any desirable outcome in this hypothetical though? So the US flips, Israel is pressured into withdrawing, Hamas regains control of the strip and resumes rocket attacks, Israel is forced to respond eventually. It doesn't seem like a path toward a real solution.
There isn't a real solution. Just an opportunity for a few years of peace where people can do the important things in life. That is no small thing though. The danger is in chasing some quixotic nationalist dream. That is never ever going to work out.
"Just an opportunity for a few years of peace where people can do more important things in life"
For many people that's amazing.
Well the real solution is to have a single state and assimilation of some kind, so that people can coexist. It’s possible. Israel itself demonstrates this since nearly 30% of the population isn’t Jewish. But I think a peaceful two state coexistence is unlikely with people who chant “from the River to sea”, which implies the complete erasure of the state of Israel.
> Israel itself demonstrates this since nearly 30% of the population isn’t Jewish
Israel also has a law that says that the right of self-determination only belongs to its Jewish citizens- it calls itself the Jewish state. I would be entirely for a one-state solution with equal rights for everyone, but that thing cannot be Israel.
Just like every other state in the middle east.
Not sure which states you refer to (and obviously you don't know either, you just mean it as a lazy retort) but it's not the point. The point is that Israel is programmatically a state for the Jews, and therefore Israel cannot be a state for everyone. There is btw nothing wrong with it- western nations can afford the luxury of being open to everyone because they are massive and ethnically homogeneous enough to be able to afford it. There's some hypocrisy or wishful thinking at the bottom of this, but doesn't matter. The fault of Israel is not that of wanting a state for the Jews, is thinking of colonising another people's land do obtain it, and then not stopping but keeping taking more and crushing all resistance with violence.
So that is hardly a real solution at all. And many Israeli people clearly don't want to coexist either.
But a peace process might give people a few years of peace. And peace is the best starting point we have for further peace.
The US and all other nations sanction Israel. If that doesn't work, military intervention. Israel will fall, it's just a matter of time.
What would you demand Israel do to be released from these hypothetical sanctions?
Military intervention meaning invade a nuclear power?
Either withdraw from all the territory that doesn't legally belong to it (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, plus the parts of Syria and Lebanon it occupies), or keep the territory and make all the inhabitants equal citizens.
Be dissolved. I think sanctions and making Israel economically unviable are a peaceful solution.
What makes you think "dissolving Israel" would be any more peaceful than "dissolving Gaza" would be?
Your comment is as extreme as Israel's actions at the moment.
This sort of mentality will perpetuate conflict and atrocities.
The Iron Dome prevents most of the rocket attacks. Gaza has no protection against what has become indiscriminate Israeli bombing.
It's the same liberal psychology behind UNSC Resolution 1701 in 2006 where Hezbollah pinkie promised to disarm. And now look at all the dead bodies that this liberal solution caused 18 years later. Of course the same types propose the same solutions again with no sense of shame as to how much death it causes.
The actual durable solution is something like how Sri Lanka defeated the Tamil Tigers, or how Russia defeated the insurgency in Chechnya. Which is roughly the same as what Israel is doing in Gaza now. But Israel is playing on hard mode because the international community has given such a morale boost to Hamas, prolonging the time until surrender.
> morale boost to Hamas, prolonging the time until surrender.
I think this is key. The protest must condemn Hamas while supporting innocent people. Protests that support Hamas as some kind of justified resistance just prolongates everything. Hamas doesn't care for its people. It has an ideological system that glorifies death. Death is just a means to an end for them.
This is the problem of viewing things black and white. The whole conflict is varying shades of Grey.
> 18 year causality stretch without a single critical remark about israels constant desintegration of palestinian civic life.
Good job. The feat of not blaming the obvious aggressor is something very few accomplish.
Israel has control over water, electricty, gas, road, "law enforcement", etc. and used it for decades to push palestinians out of their homes. The last violent events are a result of long oppression and netanjahu establishing a theocracy. Only focusing on extremes and make conclusions on such a basis is something dumb people do, dont you agree? Israel is clearly to blame, when you know a little more nuanced history and consider its long time dominant position in that conflict.
> international community has given such a morale boost to Hamas
By ignoring israels obvious long running now openly genocidal master plan, you are doing the same.
Well, you seem to be confusing Gaza with South Lebanon, which is what UNSC Resolution 1701, and the 18 years since then, pertains to. There was zero aggression from Israel, they got attacked unprovoked by Hezbollah on October 8th, 2023.
As long as Israel controls the lives of millions of Palestinians who have no rights and who are treated like trash, there will be conflict.
In order to be effective, US pressure would have to be aimed at forcing Israel to do one of two things:
1. Withdraw its military from the Palestinian territories (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza), dismantle all of its illegal settlements there, and recognize a fully sovereign Palestinian state. This is basically asking Israel to give up its dreams of taking over the Palestinian territories and to withdraw to its own borders - a simple ask.
2. Alternatively, Israel gets to keep the Palestinian territories, but it has to grant full, equal citizenship to the Palestinians who live there. That would mean that 50% of the Israeli electorate would be Palestinian, effectively ending the Jewish nature of the state of Israel. The next prime minister could be a Palestinian - who knows?
Israel has held onto the Palestinian territories for nearly 60 years without granting the people who live there (except for Israeli settlers) any rights. It has to either leave the occupied territories or grant everyone who lives under its control equal rights. It's actually quite a simple and reasonable demand.
Right now, because of unconditional US support, Israel has no incentive to do either of the above. Israel's leaders correctly believe that they can have it all: they can keep the land without granting the Palestinians who live there any rights. They operate with complete impunity. The US could end that impunity and impose real costs on Israel for its actions.
Your ignoring or forgetting that Palestinians don't want either of those solutions, and that's a core part of the conflict.
The Palestinians pursued a 2-state solution (option 1 above) for over two decades. It failed largely because of dead-set opposition from the Israeli right (thanks Netanyahu) and because even the Israeli center-left was unwilling to fully withdraw to Israel's internationally recognized borders and recognize a fully sovereign Palestinian state. There were always demands to keep large chunks of territory (most critically in East Jerusalem) and maintain effective control over any future Palestinian semi-state.
Both options laid out above (the 2-state and 1-state solution) are vastly better for the Palestinians than living under permanent Israeli military occupation with no rights, and subjected to continuous violence from the Israelis. It would not be the Palestinians who would block these types of solutions, were they actually on offer.
The Israelis have a near monopoly on force in this conflict. They are the overwhelmingly dominant party, the only one with tanks, aircraft, destroyers and nuclear weapons. They have the power to dictate solutions, and that's what they've been doing for decades, using brute force. Pretending these are two equal sides that just can't agree is a fantasy.
> Why would we expect any desirable outcome in this hypothetical though?
Ending unconditional US support is the only thing that motivates Israel to seek an end other than by genocide, which is a necessary (but not sufficient, on its own) condition for any desirable outcome.
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That or the Israelis could be relocated to the US. Give Palestinians their land back and our Israeli friends can come live next to us.
> It doesn't seem like a path toward a real solution.
As long as the Dahiya doctrine persists, it won't be. But that's an Israeli problem - their disproportionate response has been exploited for years. Hamas is fine letting Israel commit as many war crimes as it takes to satisfy their leadership, it very clearly hasn't changed tactics in recent years. The cost to Israeli international credibility seems to be "worth it" in their eyes.
So, if Israel wants peace they first have to stop escalation. But even if Hamas was defeated, we know that wouldn't be the end of things. Next the Druze has to be defended, which would result in a very justified annexation of south Syria and repeat of the same genocidal conditions in Gaza. They would also attempt to unseat power in Yemen, and then embroil America in an unwinnable war against Iran to sustain a true hegemony.
America is pissing away its hegemony all on its own.
Israel needs to take a more precise approach to getting rid of Hamas.
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People who think it's acceptable to bomb civilian residential areas flat because they're "booby trapped" are lost souls.
Those booby traps also kill Gazan children. Did you see that recent video of the Gazan girl getting blown to bits? They tried to pin it on Israel, but it was a Hamas IED. That's why there was a camera pointed at it.
sorry, is this an argument that no israeli explosions are caught on camera? that seems unlikely
No, this is what Gazans in Gaza say. They say that the camera was pointed at the IED location to film Israeli soldiers tripping it.
You are talking to an ex-IDF member who is being deliberately obtuse.
In what sense am I being obtuse? By actually talking to Gazans?
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Why does this matter?
This is an argument that Hamas is bad not why buildings need to be destroyed
Imagine having your comment history and pretending to care about children in Gaza being blown to bits. Unreal.
Do you care about the safety and security of people in Israel? What would you do if a fundamentalist group shot thousands of rockets into your town over a decade?
What would you do if you were expelled from your homeland at gunpoint by foreign settlers, and then 19 years later, your refugee camp was conquered by the very same people, who then ruled over you using brute military force for nearly 60 years, with no end in sight?
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The question was what would you do, not what you wouldn't do.
What would you do if you were a southern governor responding to a slave revolt? It's the same kind of question. I wouldn't build my society on ethnic supremacy and then seek to maintain that through force.
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Wtf? We've banned this account.
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You definitely won the argument.
"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."
a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Attacking structures instead of Hamas members is not precision
the most precise thing is getting somebody else into power who removes hamas via police means rather than leveling buildings.
You know what, you're right.
As soon as Hamas returns the hostages, we could then progress to the day after and who will rule the strip.
Therefore Genocide and starvation ? That’s has to be the weakest every physiological argument
It can either end in the death of one side, most probably Palestinians, or in peace agreement.
Currently there is war, peace is out of the window. First step is to stop the war, second step is to make both side actually negotiate.
It was attempted by Clinton a while ago but assassinations from mossad and hamas prevented the process to success.
To be honest, politicians have failed us too many times for my sad brain to believe that there will be a good outcome.
Most probably Israel society will keep radicalizing itself, Palestinians will be killed and Gaza bombed/annexed leading to the death of both Palestinian and Israeli civilization. Palestinian will be all dead and Israeli will have become in all manner what they initially sought to destroy, literal nazi.
I’d even bet that death by zyklon is more human that seeing your family and yourself getting slowly hungered to death. And contrary to nazi Germany, no Israeli can pretend to not know what’s going on.
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To an extent sure but Israel 's methods of stopping them are the issue. They are using total war which causes suffering disproportionately to innocent people
No, normal people understand very well that they are. They are the children of Palestinians who were murdered or ethnically-cleansed in the Nakba and then locked up in an open-air prison. They are the resistance to zionist-colonialism. You obviously can't describe them as such, since you are a Zionist for whom such primitive smears are useful propaganda designed to deny them the internationally recognized right to armed resistance.
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I wouldn't mistake Palestinians for Hamas operatives, despite how much Hamas wants that.
Would the IDF?
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The US seems to be dominated by different right wing meme factions now. A choice between different strains of Maga all of whom would kill thousands in Gaza just to spite the left.
> The videos coming out of Gaza have turned me and many others into single issue voters.
Ironically, that was one of the biggest campaign points and voter sentiment on which people flipped to Red. We all know what happened.
People didn't flip to red so much as blue voters in swing states sitting on their hands and abstaining from voting. Now they're looking down the barrel of authoritarianism and they're still unwilling to vote unless Gaza is a fully solved problem. The cruel irony is that this behavior is worsening the situation in Gaza.
Couldn't the Democrats change their positions so that they align with and accommodate popular positions and win elections. I don't think most of the (rather large block) of folks I know who abstained wanted a fully solved problem, they wanted the US to stop funding Israel and that is a position that the Democratic party could have taken if they had chosen to do so.
This is what people don’t understand, because it isn’t their single issue.
If I beg you to reconsider on a very serious issue that is in your power to change stance on, and you not only ignore me but laugh in my face, then why exactly do you still get my vote? Why exactly should I reward you for completely ignoring my protests?
Make sure to swap Gaza for your single issue - maybe LGBT rights, or abortion, or gun rights - and then seriously think about how you would deal with it.
The Democratic party has basically decided to lean on “but they’re worse” as a political platform while backsliding on multiple issues. They do this because Democrat voters lap that shit up, chant “vote blue no matter who” like members of a cult, and then cry out in astonishment when the Democrats in Congress and in the gov keep sliding towards the right.
Also, an addendum: before blaming abstainers and third-party voters, it might be good to ponder on why Democrats preferred risking losing the presidency over making any concessions whatsoever on Palestine. At best, it was a grave miscalculation borne out of hubris. At worst, it was an act of self-sabotage to ensure unconditional support for Israel. Pick your poison :)
> “vote blue no matter who”
Say centrist Dems, unless it’s Zohran Mamdani. They have learnt nothing. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/16/zohran-mamda...
It's important to also point out that not enabling genocide is one of the most important issues single-issue voters can swing their vote around. That's because genocides both
1) threaten the international rules-based order, shattering the expectation of adherence to any number of human rights-centered protocols and representing crisis that can snowball into larger conflicts,
and 2) are often facilitated in part by police actions (civilian detainment, censorship, killings dressed up in lawful rules for the use of force, etc.), which threatens a general spillover of military action into the civilian/domestic status quo.
In other words, tolerance of genocide leads to a general shift towards war and despotism, even for people who aren't in the group targeted for genocide. Tolerance of evil builds the scaffolding for further subjugation.
Black people have known for decades, you vote for the people that don't actively hate you.
Sitting out of the process does absolutely nothing, whether its a protest vote, pretending that politics don't affect you, or just giving up completely. The people who get elected in those situations always 100% ignore you.
When people are in office that are at least willing to listen, you then make a lot of noise and put on pressure. You might get ignored mostly, since you are a minority voting block, but you can make incremental gains and even sometimes big wins.
what do you do if both sides actively hate you? voting for the lesser of the two evils seems to just guarantee evil forever, and they have no reason to listen to you if they know you'll always vote for them.
You also do what black people have known since the civil war ended. You run for office. Hispanic Americans have learned this and their voices are now heard, Asian Americans also seem to finally understand this point. Gay Americans and other minorities are also running and winning. The answer is to never sit out.
Somehow this long hundred year process has resulted in genocide, so it seems something is broken.
Are you complaining in this post about the suffering of Gaza while downplaying the suffering of black people in the US and the work black people have done? Because you think its productive to pit the different groups against each other?
Honestly, I have listened to and sought out a lot of diverse voices because I'm genuinely curious.
I certainly found plenty of folks who were not only okay with the DNC's position but who were actively happy with Harris as the nominee.
Black people are, however, not a monolith. I'm quite aware of the differences between the many different sets of ideas (everything from hoteps to DNC-paid shills to people who genuinely liked the Harris platform to black anarchists/commiunists/ ex-panthers/ etc) and it's highly reductive to try to make the claims you're making here about "what black folks have learned".
As a person who genuinely believes actual leftist (communist and anarchist) politics are legitimate I found plenty of folks who abstained or tried to hold the DNS to change their policy.
But regardless of the "harm reduction strategies" or how legitimate you think having any semblance of political representation, the fact remains:
the democrats lost.
Unless you want to concede that "the party can only be failed, it cannot fail the people", the reality is that the party could have changed its policies and accommodated groups that abstained and perhaps won.
You can claim that the voters are just fools, but at the end of the day very few of us have any power at all over the DNC platform so it's simply bizarre to blame us for their horrible, provable failed choices.
You still vote for the lesser evil? Sitting out only benefits the greater evil, not you. I don't know how to make this any clearer.
On the contrary, Democrats win when black voters turn out and lose when they don't. Because Republicans often hold such nakedly racist and repugnant views that voting for them is a complete non-starter, the only practical choice available to most black voters is not who to vote for, but whether to vote.
Black citizens make the most progress by strategies built around embarrassing the powers that be. Those powers generally capitulate (as much as they ever were going to) after a period of tantrum-throwing, which is where we are now. Such politicians hate having to vote against the donor class's wishes, but they'll do it to get reelected (or they'll be primaried by candidates who will). Or, they'll lose. Those are the choices, which Kamala Harris unfortunately learned the hard way.
One other thing black folk have known for decades: nobody you can put into the White House or the legislature will be able to stop half the country from thinking of you as a n!gger. You don't vote based on that because Carter and Clinton and especially Obama and Biden have shown us that election-based social progression is a pipedream.
You misunderstand. GOP breaks all rules and will literally do anything to win because their policy destroys peoples lives. They're the bad cops. Democrats have the slightly less destructive policies and they sort of occupy reality. They're the good cops. Both cops have the same boss.
> GOP breaks all rules and will literally do anything to win because their policy destroys peoples lives.
Not only that, the current president literally promised everything to everyone - just to win! People are too naive (or too innocent) not to notice the lies.
Tbf, that's Athenian democracy at work - politicians would promise the most audacious things just to get elected. One could argue that's even how democracy started in the first place - just so that one guy could rule Athens independently and not as a Spartan puppet.
Of course, we haven't adopted the other facet of Athenian democracy which is ostracization by voting.
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They are both dirty cops more like it.
Couldn't far left progressives run their own candidates to win their own elections on issues without siphoning unreciprocated one-way support from the Democrat party? Given the toxic outcomes of supporting purity testers who give ultimatums similar to yours on political issues completely unrelated to the average voters life, theres likely no mainstream party that would align with a platform of virtue signallers that dont intend to create any meaningful policy, so to claim your position is popular is somewhat is a misnomer. Saving people is a popular concept, sure, but it's not easily perceptible to the rest of us that the group taking the strategy to ensure the most suffering for the Palestinians possible in our voting cycle is the one attempting that feat.
"Saving people" is an Orwellian turn of phrase for not supplying the bombs that are dropped on hospitals and refugee camps. Does the commuter "save" the child playing in the street by not willfully plowing her over in his SUV?
Not actively supporting a genocide isn't "virtue signalling". The Democrats will continue to lose until they face that reality. It's actually super gross to present the ethical will of voters like this.
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The Democrats could simply not fund (and start) a genocide and easily win elections. Don't blame voters. I won't vote for anyone complicit with Israel, D or R. Ask yourself why it's so important to Democrats to support Israel, even when that means losing important elections. We've got big problems on our hands and it doesn't look like we'll be voting our way out of this, Israel has too much control over every aspect of our government.
Indeed. My gift to Democrats that continue to support Israel is to make sure Republicans win and destroy the country.
Genocide is cause for war and destruction of countries. And fortunately, Republicans made it convenient to destroy American society.
You see children being burnt alive by racist zealots with your tax dollars, and you CONTINUE to fund it? Yah that's a good way to end your society. The USA is no exception.
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Well, blaming the voter for abstention still conveniently sidesteps blame towards the Dem party for trying to platform Biden again.
And now we have you yelling at other people in your party, sewing more division, alienating even more people from your coalition. "How is that working out for you now?"
The GOP actually platformed orange man after he did the coup. That's infinitely worse than being old and hiding it.
>Well, blaming the voter for abstention still conveniently sidesteps blame towards the Dem party for trying to platform Biden again.
Non-sequitur much?
>And now we have you yelling at other people in your party, sewing more division, alienating even more people from your coalition. "How is that working out for you now?"
My party? Which party are you talking about? Don't be shy.
Just pointing out second order consequences.
As for you, what exactly are you trying to say? It's not clear to me what you hope to contribute to the discussion other than satisfying your imagined superiority to other Americans. Or is just those with an excess of melanin?
Too bad the vote led to the current situation where women pointlessly die because of restrictive abortion policy, LGBT people get even more persecuted in the USA with no hope for improvement, protesting the genocide in Palestine is now ground for deportation for non-citizen residents and seems like it would make one an enemy of the state, so you lost all chances of being able to do something. Plus the ideology being force-fed into other countries with American politicians supporting far-right parties in Europe and attempting to strong-arm them into far-right policies (https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/03/29/french-... ). I guess none of that ever mattered to abstentionists.
Well Europe was probably going to fell to the far-right anyway...
Is it the fault of the voters who couldn't stomach the genocide or the Democratic candidates who refused to budge on the issue? It's an argument that has been recapitulated millions of times now, so I'm not sure why we should repeat the exercise here.
It does make me despair to have the two parties that together govern our country both be so committed to something so heinous. Can one really be a proud citizen of such a nation?
We’re not citizens we’re subjects. Their dehumanization of Palestinians will eventually be applied to the poor and underprivileged “citizens” of the US.
Agreed, it along with claiming victory on that certain thing that started five years ago and didn't end yet, realllly annoyed the left. And now, matters are worse.
(It also made the statements about "radical left" candidates very ironic.)
If only the blue representatives would resolve this tension by pulling support for a now internationally-recognised genocide! :( I suppose that option is just too radical to put on the table.
Yep. It really is that simple.
https://jewishcurrents.org/chuck-schumer-cannot-meet-the-mom...
You've thought through the full foreign policy implications for pulling aid from Israel overnight? I'm not sure why "less bad" on your pet issue isn't enough, especially when you're up against Trump, who has made posts suggesting resorts and golden statues of himself in Gaza.
I doubt any foreign policy aid would get pulled from Israel. Israel doesn't need to be taking actions perceived as genocidal. If the US wasn't offering full and unconditional support they'd just have to go about their foreign policy aims in a more palatable way.
Isreal's approach to foreign policy doesn't do them any favours, I've lost count of the number of negotiators they've taken out this year. The US would be helping them by forcing them to conform a bit more to global norms, if they upset less people and try some more cooperative strategies we might see progress on peace in the region. The fact that the Democrats failed to find a frame like that to prevent what appears, superficially, to be a genocide really goes to the heart of what GoatInGrey was pointing at.
What are the implications? Israel isn't going to align with Russia or China, so probably they'll have to stand on their own and rely more on their nuclear deterrent. It'd be easier if they weren't bombing every single neighbor they have though.
Actually I think thats exactly the plan. They will milk the US as long as they can and once they have gotten everything they can from that dead corpse, they will do what any other nation would do: Align themselves with whatever partner that can help them the most. They have a lot of talent and investment (thanks to the US) and can offer other future superpowers plenty in exchange for partnerships.
> bombing every single neighbor they have
The neighbors who signed peace treaties (Egypt, Jordan) seem to be maintaining peace fine.
It's the ones who've refused to normalize relations since 1949 and keep launching rockets over the border at civilians who get hit back.
Russia and China would love to get their hands on Israeli tech. Nothing happens in a vacuum.
> You've thought through the full foreign policy implications for pulling aid from Israel overnight?
I don’t think many people are thinking through now especially the one at the top of power chain, otherwise we’d not have witnessed child charades like invade Canada, Greenland, and Panama, as well as overnight gutting of USAID.
The Biden administration brokered and pressured Israel into a ceasefire that asymmetrically disfavored them. Israel exchanged 30 Hamas militants per Israeli hostage. The ceasefire outlined a permanent resolution to the conflict, including Israel's full withdrawal from Gaza. They also pressured Israel to keep aid channels open during the war, which is exceptionally obvious now given significantly longer blockades and that famine broke out under Trump. The 2006 withdrawal from Gaza and Oslo Accords were also brokered by America. Israel would not have agreed to any of this without any security reassurances in the form of military aid.
On the other hand, there is no guarantee that completely cutting off ties with Israel, would make anything better for Gazans. While it's possible there would be fewer civilian casualties, it's also possible there would be more if Israel switched to from precision strikes to ground invasions and dumb weapons.
They are using the “smart” bombs to precisely target and collapse civilian apartment buildings and hospitals on the thinnest pretext.
How would “dumb” bombs be worse?
It's very easy to kill people with dumb weapons especially in a dense city.
Syria killed 10,000s of civilians in just a few weeks using only dumb artillery to shell a city: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Hama_massacre
The American incendiary bombing of Tokyo killed 100,000 people in a single night of bombing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_194...
Like this whole thing has gone for 70 years in Israel. We already know what comes of the same strategy that was followed for all that time. Doubling down on it now isn’t going to change anything.
It has gone on and the people occupying Gaza and the West Bank rejected several two state solutions. And when given the right to vote, they placed Hamas into power and began an Iran backed rocket crusade against Israel. It was capped off by October 7. What solution can work except to let the one democratic society take over the entire region?
> And when given the right to vote, they placed Hamas into power
Are you sure you want to hold voters directly accountable for an election that happened over a decade ago? If yes, then it's a pretty slippery slope to be on, esp if the same standard were to be applied to US voters.
I do because it was clear to them what Hamas stood for. Try reading their charter for details.
I wonder if that had anything at all to do with the Israeli right backing Hamas at the time, because they were being shamed internationally (haha) by the previously militant PLA/PLO being more and more willing to negotiate.
Netanyahu and his ilk didn't like the awkward questions of why the terrorists were negotiating but they weren't. So they started propping up Hamas.
> And when given the right to vote, they placed Hamas into power and began an Iran backed rocket crusade against Israel.
"They" started firing rockets, or Hamas? Hamas who is 30,000 of Gaza's 2.5M? Just when was that last election, again?
Nobody in Israel propped up Hamas to win elections.
Palestinian elections in 2006 were forced by USA (because democracy and stuff) despite objections from Israel and PA who were afraid that Hamas will win.
When Hamas won elections and assembled government, USA sponsored coup executed by PLO. Coup succeeded in West Bank and failed in Gaza.
The people "occupying" Gaza and the West Bank are the Israelis, and the Palestinians rightfully refuse any agreements which strip them of their rights under the guise of generosity. Stop with the ahistorical equivocation.
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What are you talking about? The Camp David Accords and Israel–Jordan Peace Treaty were resounding successes. The Oslo Accords achieved mixed results but was still a major improvement. If there is a lesson to be learned, it is that requiring for Israel to unilaterally withdrawal was hopelessly naive.
Oslo was not an improvement. Palestine (the PLO/PA) gave up deterrence and renounced violence and the West Bank is now being annexed by far right Israelis. What did Israel give up in Oslo? Nothing
This is incorrect. In 1992, the PLO had little military presence and were exiled abroad. The West Bank was governed by Israel. The Oslo Accords allowed the PLO to return and govern their people, including the establishment and expansion of their security forces.
Biden doesn't get credit for a few weeks of ceasefire after materially supporting the genocide for over a year.
> On the other hand, there is no guarantee that completely cutting off ties with Israel, would make anything better for Gazans.
I agree with everything you said about Biden being practically better for Palestine, but this is nonsense. Israel would be a completely isolated state without US support. Even North Korea has China. The last completely isolated state in the world was South Africa whose apartheid ended as a result. It's not crazy to think Israelis might realize forcing people who have lived in the same country for generations to be stateless and voteless to preserve a "pure", "Jewish" state is not a worthwhile gamble if it costs them any connection to the outside world.
What do you mean by “pure Jewish state”? Israel has a 21% Arab population that is thriving and happy. In addition to 6% other non Jewish groups. So nearly 30% of the county isn’t Jewish.
Getting the Western world to agree to South Africa style sanctions towards Israel to their response to an attack is another level of unrealism over ending America's military and intelligence partnership. Even if that occurred, Israel is quite friendly with India that has only strengthened with October 7, and is capable of building a similar relationship with China.
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wrong. There is a study that surveyed those that didn't. The conclusion was that if turnout had been better, Trump wins by an even larger margin. There definitely was a shift right.
> There is a study
Where is the study?
And that was always known to have been a counter-productive protest. There's nothing ironic about this. They were told. They didn't care.
It was unambiguously clear that no matter how bad you felt Obama/Biden/Harris were on Israel, Trump was/would be worse.
If every single human life is worth saving (and it is), it's indisputable that Trump is worse for Gaza than Harris would have been.
It was the ultimate Trolley Problem, and a bunch of progressives acted like pulling the switch on move the trolley is NEVER acceptable regardless of how many lives it saves...
The Dems being willing to lose elections rather than meet voter expectations, says more about them than it does any particular voting or non voting group.
Have you considered that it isn’t voter expectation outside of a small minority of the party?
Have you considered that if they lose an election without that minority, then they still lose the election.
Like a political partys job is to get votes. An electorates job is to withhold votes to punish poor performance. The entity not doing their job here is the party.
The political party's job is to get votes. Which includes keeping the votes they already have. Giving things to one wing of the party can cost votes to the other wing.
The party is aware of the trade-offs. It goes ahead with its best estimation of what will win. Sometimes they can do everything right and still lose. One such scenario is when people would rather have the greater of two evils rather than be responsible for the lesser.
That was (potentially) a reasonable argument before the election, but the election happened and we know the results.
We can't adopt [potentially winning strategy] because it might harm [definitely non-winning strategy] is not a reasonable position. You don't have to adopt any specific alternative plan, but clinging to a non-working plan clearly isn't the right answer.
The only way Democrats would have lost votes is if the "Vote Blue No Matter Who" folk weren't really prepared to vote blue, no matter who. Democrats didn't lose their base, they lost their left; theoretically, there's no leftist policy they could take on that would lose them their base, because it's their base.
Sure and its possible thats what happened. But looking at their behaviour, its more like they thought they could use Trump to force everyone to fall in behind them regardless of policy.
Maybe at the time it was. Not so much anymore.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/support-for-israel-contin...
The trolley problem is an oversimplification. What we have is actually a repeated trolley problem, where picking the least of two evils gives the “less evil” party a near infinite amount of leverage over you to demand your loyalty regardless of whether they give in to any of your requests. The “less evil” party is in effect holding the people tied to the tracks hostage in your trolley problem. Because “less evil” is still evil, society decays no matter which way you flip the switch which leads to a population prone to fascism. The neoliberals are to blame more than anyone else for the situation we’re in today. They love to deflect but they are complicit in everything going wrong right now.
> where picking the least of two evils gives the “less evil” party a near infinite amount of leverage over you to demand your loyalty regardless of whether they give in to any of your requests.
The less evil party commands no loyalty at all, you vote for it only so long as there are no better options. If we're presupposing that there will never be any other option but the greater evil, then the lesser evil very much should be voted for consistently. Why can't the other side be the one that needs to reform to better appeal to the voters interests? What is to stop the lesser evil from becoming more evil, catering to voters who actually show up?
If people voted for a third party, that would be one thing. Sure the odds of winning the election are slim, but a third party candidate needs only 5% of the vote for the party to get federal campaign funds, to say nothing of the increased legitimacy in upcoming elections. It's happened in my lifetime, it can happen again. A strong showing by a third party forces the major parties to adjust to avoid splitting the vote. Jill Stein of the Green Party was openly opposed to Israel's actions in Gaza, they could have voted for her. And while there they could have voted for down ballot candidates so one party doesn't get control of all branches of government. But they didn't; third parties had their worst election since 2012. Of the 6 million democrat votes lost from 2020 to 2024, 400,000 were picked up by the green party. You can't simultaneously accept that the two party system is the be all end all and that you don't have an obligation to vote for the better of the two parties. It's understandable that people unenthusiastic with the current political situation just want to disengage, but don't act like it's a noble act of protest. Staying home isn't playing the long game, it's just throwing away your vote.
> The neoliberals are to blame more than anyone else for the situation we’re in today. They love to deflect but they are complicit in everything going wrong right now.
That they could have done better doesn't reduce at all the blame of those who specifically worked towards creating the current situation, and those who saw what was happening and chose to do nothing.
It's the democrats who are holding the lever, not the voters
Biden literally started the genocide and Harris vowed to continue his policies, so no they are not "better". All they had to do is not support Israel and they would have won the election.
Wait what happened? Was it that people who typically vote blue voted against those who supported Israel? As a Muslim and staunch supporter of Palestine, I didn't think that many people turned red because of this, at least not enough to swing the election. Wayne County, which has Dearborn Michigan (the city with the largest population proportionally of Muslims), stayed blue. I figured if Dearborn couldn't tip the scales any which way then the issue was probably not something worth campaigning on in terms of demographics
What happened was complex, multi-factoral, and impossible to cleanly draw pithy conclusions from. It’s like the drawing of the rabbit that turns into a duck when you look at it a different way except there are fifty animals instead of just two. Everyone wants you to think it’s just their preferred animal because it fits their agenda.
The bigger factor was people staying home because they refused any compromise on the issue. For races that swing depending on turnout, this was enough to tip those races red. Hard to say whether this impacted the Presidential election, but it probably did affect some House and Senate races.
Ah, that's a good point. Indeed, I voted Stein over Harris, which is basically the same as staying home (much to my chagrin).
Voting third party isn't the same as staying home. If a third party candidate gets just 5% of the vote, the party gets federal election funds in the next election. This isn't some pipe dream, third parties were crossing that threshold in the 90s. It encourages the major parties to alter their positions to avoid splitting the vote, and if they fail to do so then the third party can gain traction over the long run. Further, if you go to the polls for a third party, you are presumably also voting in down ballot races, where you have significantly more impact whether you vote third party or major party.
Staying home does nothing to combat the two party system, gives no direction to politicians as to which way they ought to move to get your vote in the future, and doesn't allow you to participate in local politics.
This is shocking to me tbh. Everyone I know who wants peace in Palestine also knew Trump would be a disaster and that Stein or whoever had 0 chance of winning...
If you live in a safe blue/safe red state, then there's no harm in voting third party.
Yes, we did know Trump is a disaster. Perhaps Democrats should have met their voterbase somewhere in the middle to reduce the risk of losing to Trump? Of course, they didn’t, so to me the Harris campaign is to blame more than the third-party voters.
Frankly, my reading was that Democrats preferred risking losing the presidency to making any concessions whatsoever on the Palestine issue.
'Fuck American, put Palestine first' from the people who complain about APIC or whatever it's called is so on brand.
> that was one of the biggest campaign points and voter sentiment on which people flipped to Red
This is nonsense outside Michigan. And to the extent this happened, I'd have to say pro-Palestinian voters in swing states casting with the guy who initiated the Muslim ban and recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital essentially communicated that they were fine throwing millions of people in the Middle East under the bus to satisfy their vanity.
There is such a thing as sitting-it-out. People didn’t necessarily vote for Trump. They just didn’t vote for Harris. And that is exactly what the voting record shows: votes for Democrats dropped significantly between 2020 and 2024.
"votes for Democrats dropped significantly between 2020 and 2024."
For, or from? this is an important distinction to make.
Even Wayne County, Michigan, which has Dearborn, stayed blue.
Though I was honestly surprised at how much of my Muslim community was so anti-Harris that they voted for Trump. Harris may be pro-Israel, but Trump is anti-almost everything else we stand for.
> how much of my Muslim community was so anti-Harris that they voted for Trump
I'm honestly split between pro-Palestinian Arab-American Trump voters and soybean-farming Trump voters as the stupidest voting blocks of 2024. Not only are you helping put someone in power who is so obviously going to work against your interests. You've also removed yourself from the other party's table where your issue might have gained priority down the road.
Tbh we are all victims of America's shitty two party system and voting system, and just reflective of how much power political pundits and influencers have. I think ranked choice voting would make fewer people vote against their own self interests.
> ranked choice voting would make fewer people vote against their own self interests
Not for these groups. They wouldn’t rank something that benefits their interests because they’re not voting for anything; they’re voting against. That generally doesn’t work in democracies, which require engagement and compromise.
Maybe the thinking is that if you stop waiting for your turn and remove yourself from the table, someone will move your issue up the road to get you back to the table.
> if you stop waiting for your turn and remove yourself from the table, someone will move your issue up the road to get you back to the table
This doesn’t work unless you have the numbers to field your own candidate.
Serious question, will you abstain from voting? There are only 2 parties and they both fund Israel. One maybe slightly less.
Half of democratic senators and zero Republicans voted to suspend arms sales to Israel. So, there's clearly a more amenable party in this debate. The Dems who didn't sign on, we lobby or primary.
I qualified it. Generally speaking, they both support it. They even called the campus protests for peace antisemetism during Biden's term. Of course the GOP are much worse, but there's definitely reason to dislike both in this regard.
Stop this nonsense.
Yes, I will. I will not vote for anyone who supports Israel. My vote is here for the taking, I just need to see an anti-Zionist candidate.
You must vote, but I wont fault anyone for voting 3rd party (or leaving a blank ballot, if you must).
Voting 3rd party sends a message: "be more like this 3rd party if you want my vote".
Not voting also sends a message: "I wont show up and vote, so just ignore me".
This line of reasoning helped get Trump in.
It’s hard to say what Harris would have done, but it’s unlikely she would have greenlit the complete demolition of Gaza so she could build a resort.
Similarly, I doubt she would have forced places like UC Berkeley to send her lists of people critical of Israel (like you), then opened critical investigations against them.
Refusing to vote is the best way to ensure policies you object to the most are expanded.
Committing genocide helped Trump win. That’s squarely on democrats.
Then you're privileging your own sense of moral purity over the welfare of the Palestinians. The situation is manifestly worse for them now, as was predictable. I hope the cleanliness of your hands makes that bearable.
Consider that the videos of Oct 7 had a similar effect on lots of decent people. The un is the same now as it was before October 7. In gueterres words "it didn't happen in a vacuum". The complete loss of credibility for the un also didn't happen in a vacuum. Even if their report is true it will fall on deaf ears thanks in no small part to their lack of any sort of objectivity when it comes to Israel.
This was me. I was browsing Hamas' Telegram account as they released the FPV videos that day. The two most disturbing scenes were the pantless body of a teenaged girl being burned amidst chanting of "Allahu Akbar", and militants scouring buildings for any person or pet they could kill and doing just that whenever they found someone.
I learned a very uncomfortable—though valuable—lesson about humans that day.
Then you must surely be learning something new about humans every day since?
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this is a baseless conspiracy. There is an entire report going over the operational failures that allowed oct 7th to happen and it wasnt the idf intentionally standing aside to let it happen. Also friend fire is predicted to be in the single digits and I dont think any has actually been confirmed.
Read the UN fact-finding report, particularly starting at page 44 ("Israeli Security Forces counter-offensive and the application of the ‘Hannibal Directive"): https://www.un.org/unispal/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/a-hrc-...
It's true that the casualties of the Israeli counter-offensive can only conclusively be tied to ~20-30 casualties, but for many casualties it's unknown who is responsible, and there is (inconclusive) evidence Israeli fire resulted in the burning of 77 vehicles, many of which were returning to Gaza with captives (or their bodies)
It seems unlikely to me there were fewer than 80 civilian casualties (out of 815) attributable to friendly fire, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that number is over 200.
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October 7 made people in the US demand that their representatives stop supporting genocide? No, it didn’t. It made a lot of supposedly decent people support and even demand evil in their name. At that point you’re just defining “being a decent person” as “if nothing evil happens you won’t be evil” which doesn’t seem like a useful definition.
Agreed, UN doesn't have a great reputation in America, I'm skeptical many people will care about this outside the media news cycle
Pew says only 52% percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of UN in 2024 https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/05/most-peop...
On a political or legal level for Israel it might have more implications though, that is impossible for them to ignore, but ICJ will focus on the leaders who can avoid visiting certain countries...just like Putin.
> Agreed, UN doesn't have a great reputation in America, I'm skeptical many people will care about this outside the media news cycle.
Lots of people will care, but it isn’t going to move a lot of opinions.
> Pew says only 52% percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of UN in 2024
Yes, but it says 57% do in 2025, the first positive change in support since 2022. [0]
But neither is that much more than the 50% that already think Israel is committing genocide [1], and the positions are probably significantly correlated, so this probably isn’t swaying many people that aren’t already convinced.
> On a political or legal level it might have more implications though but ICJ will focus on the leaders who can avoid visiting certain countries.
Always good to see assessments of international legal impacts from people who don’t know that the International Court of Justice deals exclusively with cases between states, and that the standing body that deals with individual offenses that are war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression is the International Criminal Court.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/09/05/united-na...
[1] https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3929
> Always good to see assessments of international legal impacts from people who don’t know that the International Court of Justice deals exclusively with cases between states, and that the standing body that deals with individual offenses that are war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression is the International Criminal Court.
So what is your expert opinion then? What is the risk to the state of Israel itself if ICJ makes a case against them?
Informing people > admonishing them
Too bad there weren't many good cameras around during the Nakba, my guess is we'd have some pretty revolting, hainous images to show the world. Hatred doesn't exist in a vacuum, october 7 happened for a reason. The jew got persecuted, that created Zionism which persecuted in return, the circle of hatred is going strong.
a lot of the videos "coming out of Gaza" are propaganda/fake. I know that sounds like a "crazy conspiracy theory" but if one researches it one can see that "anti-Israel" narratives are being crafted by powerful forces.
https://honestreporting.com/behind-the-headlines-the-data-th...
https://www.newsweek.com/mainstream-media-biased-against-isr...
https://www.ajc.org/news/podcast/journalist-matti-friedman-e...
https://icejusa.org/2025/05/22/anti-israel-media-bias-ratche...
"blame the 'evil' Jews" is one of Western Civilization's favorite "games" for some reason. "Their culture values education, frugality, they don't accept Jesus Christ as 'the Messiah', they must be evil!"
(I'm not Jewish, but many of my close friends are, and I've read a lot of history/religion/politics books)
https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/on-democraci...
https://www.audible.com/pd/On-Democracies-and-Death-Cults-Au...
https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/when-christi...
*edited typos and capitalization
So what? The fact that Hamas or its supporters produce fake anti-Israel propaganda doesn't mean that Israel isn't committing genocide. To suggest so is to engage in the fallacy of composition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition):
(1) "Hamas produces a lot of fake anti-Israel propaganda" -> (2) "All anti-Israel evidence is fake" -> (3)"Israel is not committing genocide".
You can't reach conclusion (2) from (1).
Would you categorize all wars and all acts of self defense as genocide? Is there a specific threshold for collateral damage that makes it a genocide?
>> Would you categorize all wars and all acts of self defense as genocide?
No, only those that fall within the definition contained in Article II of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).
We don't need to meander about definitions here, it's defined in the report. It is also described how they reached their conclusions.
US sure likes israel...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/saar-urges-250-...
250 us legislators had to fly there (probably paid by the taxpayers) a few days ago.
Sadly, looking at the US politics, whichever side you vote, israel wins.
Those are US state legislators. We have 7,386 of them. Sometimes a few wander outside during their election races.
You could easily fit that delegation into New Hampshire’s House of Representatives of 400 seats.
Meanwhile it’s more than double California’s total state legislature size of 120 seats.
It’s fun!
Still a strangely high number.
Imagine 250 representatives all going to a country with a similar population. It'd be mighty strange if 250 representatives from across the US went to Kyrgyzstan. Frankly, I'd find it strange if 250 went next door to Mexico all in the same year and that's a directly neighboring country that's actually relevant to US interests and the US's single biggest trade partner. Israel gets some sort of special treatment and it's really, really weird. It's treated with higher reverence than any state within US borders is.
This is actually easily explained by Israel having an intimate role in US foreign policy and culture for the past 80 years instead of being a majority Muslim constituent republic of the Soviet Union!
Korea, Japan, UK, Mexico, Canada, etc all are tightly entwined with the US and its culture. The first 3 had major roles in opposing the USSR. Politicians aren't taking trips to any of those countries en masse. Nobody is having their visas canceled for criticizing any of those countries. No college is losing funding if someone complains about those countries.
It would be more accurate to compare to England, France, or Canada. The US relationship with Mexico is complicated.
Sure. Let's ignore the country with the biggest source of immigrants to the US and largest modern cultural and demographic influence. We can move the goalpost and go with those examples.
When was the last time 250 representatives visited any of those countries?
(This is also an account that exclusively posts defending Israel)
None of which has anything to do with which countries politicians feel most comfortable visiting. If the political class felt much affinity with Mexico (rightly or wrongly), I imagine that there would be much less talk of a border wall. Clearly they do not feel the same way about Canada.
I doubt that there are recorded numbers just for politicians, but these are all popular destinations for Americans in general. Now, if there's something else odd about this statistic other than just the number you want to point out, that's a different story.
I agree. That’s why I won’t vote unless someone NOT funded by AIPAC is on the ballot.
> I won’t vote unless someone NOT funded by AIPAC is on the ballot
Then you're electorally irrelevant. Particularly if your only civic (in)action is not voting.
No, they're a vote that can be won by someone willing to stand up to AIPAC. I also will not vote for a Zionist. At some point, if we live in a real democracy, someone will put winning an election over being controlled by Israel.
> they're a vote that can be won by someone willing to stand up to AIPAC
If they cast a blank ballot, sure. Otherwise, betting on new turnout is a losing strategy. Particularly if you’re counting on that off cycle or in a primary.
There’s enough rage built up against Israel that it will tip the scale. For instance, how many elections do you think the Democrats need to lose before they address the desires of their only potential voters?
> enough rage built up against Israel that it will tip the scale
There isn’t. Not across partisan lines.
There is to flip primaries. But those too lazy or stupid to vote don’t affect those.
That’s not how US elections work.
Fun fact: If people like you would get off their asses on Election Day, Texas would have been a blue state for the last 15 years.
The GOP would be done, and we could meaningfully decide between the Bidens and Bernies of this world.
The US was “blue” when we helped Israel start the genocide. Too many democrats are far too lost in cable tv style politics and absolutely refuse to address how far over the red line they’ve stepped with their support for Israel. They will continue to lose elections until this is addressed.
People that don’t vote are just voting to let someone else decide.
Good news! You have made no impact on Israel.
They’ve had lots of impact on Gaza though.
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You mean like supporting Germany and Japan in 1944-1945? German and Japanese civilians were dying in the thousands. How could it be wrong to support imperial japan and nazi germany by opposing the allies?
Perhaps so if the death toll among civilians in Germany had been as high as the death toll in the Gaza Strip.
How about the allies in WWII? Were they on the wrong side of history?
When it comes to strategic bombing, honestly, yes.
It boggles my mind that militaries keep attempting despite decades of experience showing that damn near every single time it's been attempted, it's been an abject failure in its aims and very often entirely counterproductive.
How about when it comes to military actions that were not strategic bombing?
FWIW the reason that Israeli troops are on the ground and not just razing the Strip from the air is to reduce risk to civilians.
So thoughtful of them
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Antisemitism doesn't come from a lack of IQ, it comes from being a bad person
And support for genocide? Which one causes that?
Like any social media it's also a place for the lonely and paranoid. These were always attractive ideas for them. The difference is that today they come from the Left.
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But the Palestians and Hamas are distinct. There are even Christian Palestinians who are of course, since Hamas is so fundamentally Islamist, not at all represented by the group.
Palestinians who are not part of Hamas are third parties and when they are attacked, you can't tell them to ask Hamas to release hostages or do anything, because they have no more influence over Hamas than anybody else does.
Do Christian Palestinians live in the Gaza strip or somewhere else?
There is a Christian minority in the Gaza strip.
A dwindling minority. They emigrate to Israel If they can.
Christian population is going down in Palestine, and up in Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gazan_Christians#Hamas
The Wikipedia article doesn't really support your view that they emigrate to Israel:
>In 2007, the year Hamas took over Gaza, the Gazan Christian population was at 3,000.[5][33] Israel's subsequent blockade of the territory accelerated the emigration of Christians, with many going to the West Bank, the United States, Canada, or elsewhere in the Arab world.[5]
I think they don't. I think it's as states, that they either emigrate to the West Bank or go far abroad.'
There are extreme efforts in Israel to push Christians out of certain neighbourhoods, for example, in Jerusalem, where people have been going after the Armenians.
That is not surprising. There are no Islamic or Arab nations in which the Christians population is increasing.
In fact, so far as I know (I only know the Levant) there are no growing minorities in any Levant country, other than in Israel.
There are Christian Palestinians in Gaza. Remember the Catholic church in Gaza that was bombed by Israel resulting in a rare apology to the Vatican?
> Do Christian Palestinians live in the Gaza strip or somewhere else?
Would note that not all Muslim Palestinians support Hamas, and to the degree they say they do, I wouldn't morally equivocate their actions with those who actually commit the atrocities (or refuse to surrender hostages).
What you are describing is collective punishment.
It is a war crime.
Is it? Please link it.
Spouting talking points is pointless.
This is a war.
Article 33 of the Geneva Convention 4.
> This is a war.
Yes. That’s what the Geneva convention is for.
You’re welcome.
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This disconnect from reality is what makes the place so irredeemably doomed.
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Israel systematically abducts, tortures, and imprisons Palestinians old and young with reckless abandon. I hate to defend Hamas, but the goal of the abductions was to use them as a bargaining chip to get their own captives who'd been unjustly imprisoned in hellish conditions, for years on end.
Settlers in the West Bank openly murder Palestinians like animals, as well. The State of Israel is a violent terrorist state.
While I agree that Israel do all these illegal things, abductions, murders, letting settlers do whatever and so on, I think on a deeper level the Hamas attack was an Iranian proxy attack and to them, bargaining chips and hostages are just details. They play a dirty game.
Ignoring the thousands of rockets launched from Gaza in the hours before, Hamas telegraphed the October 7 attacks for years. Specifically, planning the attack since at least the 2010's.
Occam's Razor indicates that it was a legitimate operation by Hamas and Israel underestimated their adversary.
https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-october-7-attack-an-assessment...
https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/analyses/guard-down-d...
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/05/nx-s1-5318591/israel-shin-bet...
I do agree that Hamas has agency and its own agendas. I just doubt they would be as "successful" without Iranian support.
>I think on a deeper level the Hamas attack was an Iranian proxy attack and to them, bargaining chips and hostages are just details. They play a dirty game.
That is such a shallow understanding of someone for whom the whole region is just a source of entertainment. While Hamas is an "Iranian proxy" in a similar way that Ukraine is an "American proxy" that doesn't mean that Hamas and Ukraine don't have agency - who, despite their reliance on outside help, have a righteous cause and will keep defending their lands with or without that help.
It's also ironic that you would describe it as "on a deeper level" when it's quite the opposite - it's shallow and misguided. Hamas is a Sunni militant group, while Iran is Shia. You clearly have no understanding whatsoever how these groups have historically fought each other - just look at how they have been fiercely fighting each other in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
So why would Iran help Hamas then? For Iran, attaching themselves to a righteous cause such as Palestine has been a very effective tool to whitewash Iran's image and present Iran as "Axis of Resistance" despite having caused much harm to the Sunni-Muslims in the region (e.g. Iran cooperated with America in destroying Iraq, Iran also helped Assad oppress the Syrians for decades). Thus, helping the Palestinian resistance gives the shady Iranian regime legitimacy and positive PR like no other cause in the world. (the average iranian may genuinely support Palestine, because they are mostly unaware of the meta-game being played by their own regime)
Why does Hamas accept help from Iran? This should be much easier to understand. Most of the Arab regimes are ruled by puppets who are subservient to America and have betrayed the resistance. One of the main reasons for October 7 was Saudi's MBS being close to normalizing with Israel and thus sealing Palestine's fate forever. This was a "now or never" moment so the resistance made clear that they mean business and that they won't let any normalization happen without a sovereign Palestinian state. Back to Iran - so when you're in a dire situation, you can't be picky with your allies. Iran helps Hamas because it's a great tool to whitewash the Iranian image and Hamas gets weapons in return. October 7 however was most certainly not in Iran's interest in any way. Despite Iran's harsh language towards America, they very much tried to cozy up and seek "forgiveness" because of the crushing sanctions. Iran may play dirty games like Israel does, but Hamas doesn't - for the resistance it's quite literally about survival and resisting zionist-colonialism.
[Some more examples. In 2012, relations between Iran and Hamas soured after Hamas refused to support Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad, a key Iranian ally in the Syrian civil war. This led to Iran taking punitive measures against Hamas.
- As a financial punishment, Iran cut its funding to Hamas. This financial support had been estimated at around $23 million per month and the cut caused a significant financial crisis for Hamas in Gaza.
- Along with financial cuts, Iran also ceased military cooperation, which ended the supply of weapons to Hamas from Tehran.
- They began to rebuild their relationship around three years later, though tensions remained (see links below)
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/hamas-ditches-assad-ba...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/09/hamas-iran-reb...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palest... ]
I agree with most of what you said, except that I don’t think there is anything noble about Hamas. They have a cause but their methods are despicable and stupid. Let’s just entertain the idea that they would have strictly targeted only military targets in their attack. Rightly or wrongly, that would have been a huge propaganda win for them.
I also must protest the notion that I would see the whole tragedy as entertainment. I don’t.
>I agree with most of what you said, except that I don’t think there is anything noble about Hamas. They have a cause but their methods are despicable and stupid. Let’s just entertain the idea that they would have strictly targeted only military targets in their attack. Rightly or wrongly, that would have been a huge propaganda win for them.
It's clear that you have a very surface level understanding of the entire history and I highly recommend that you first study the whole history extensively[0] before you cast judgement. While you're at it, make sure to study other revolts and its gory details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Turner's_Rebellion
There are several aspects of this which are rather fascinating:
1) The response of Oct 7 to almost 100 years of brutal colonization, ethnic-cleansing and mass-murder of Palestinians since the Nakba and the Tantura-massascre [1] was only a tiny fraction of the pain the colonizer suffered compared to the crimes committed against Palestinians. Regardless, it has been treated as pretty much the worst thing ever, while it factually was only a tiny fraction of the the pain compared to the crimes committed against Palestinians for almost a century! "Nothing justifies October 7, but October 7 somehow justifies everything" - The resistance has proven the ungodly amount of bias through which the world judged them and they forced the world to re-calibrate their unjust scales.
2) You're talking about their methods, but you haven't even studied their history comprehensively, all that they have tried, what misery Israel has inflicted upon them and their families for decades. An enemy that's unparalleled in its deviousness - invites you to peace talks, but is only interested in trying to murder your diplomats. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/12/israels-strike...]. How would you deal with such ruthless colonizers? You judge the resistance by the 1 thing that finally forced the world to properly pay attention. Say what you want, but it was Oct 7 which forced the world to properly study the history of Palestine. For almost a century the Palestinians only received fake sympathy while much of the world uncritically accepted and even regurgitated Zionist lies knowingly or unknowingly. The outrage that was shown on Oct 7 was never ever shown when Palestinians were the victims, so this was a key moment when such biased individuals were confronted with massive evidence that woke them up to their selective outrage and their unjust judgement.
3) It was the severity of Oct 7 that humiliated the colonizer who had always seen themselves as superior to the "kushim" of Palestine ("The British told us that there are some hundred thousand negroes [kushim in Hebrew] and for those there is no value." - Weizmann, quoted by Arthur Ruppin in: Yosef Heller, Bama'avak Lamedinah , Jerusalem, 1984, p.140.). It was that humiliation that the colonizer felt - they couldn't even bear to suffer a fraction of a fraction of the pain they inflicted upon the Palestinians for almost a century, such that they whipped themselves into a genocidal-frenzy and dropped their diplomatic hasbara mask. The resistance unmasked the colonizer, made them drop their masks - made the world understand who the Zionists really are and who they have always been. ["Leibowitz said that the State of Israel and Zionism had become more sacred than Jewish humanist values and described Israeli conduct in the occupied Palestinian territories as "Judeo-Nazi" in nature while warning of the dehumanizing effect of the occupation on the victims and the oppressors." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshayahu_Leibowitz ]. And even after all that, much of the world still stubbornly refused to believe their own eyes while observing the evil that Zionists livestreamed so proudly. Only after Zionists consistently and persistently insisted on being so openly and proudly evil for almost 2 years straight is when people started to believe what they were witnessing:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-inter...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/01/israel-committ...
4) Go through Palestine's history, enlighten the people how your methods would have been so much less "despicable and stupid" in resisting colonizers who have been absolutely unscrupulous and devious at every step: https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir... . Colonizers who have murdered your ancestors and established an apartheid ethno-state [2][3] on the mass-graves of your women and children, while raving on your stolen land - within your field of vision from the open-air prison in which they have locked you up.
[0] "The Masterplan for the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" - https://youtu.be/C3cnRcfp_us?si=hsKzuI6T1wljAAW0
[1] YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNtrUjUNkJw or on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B0B8KSBXJX
[2][3] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-... https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra...
Pretty inspiring stuff and you are very knowledgeable and clever. Have you thought about writing articles or a book?
I appreciate it, but I'm merely a student of the wonderful work produced by other scholars and educators. All the praise belongs to them, it's their knowledge and work that I've tried to present as I've learned it.
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The hostages have nothing to do with it... as much as Gazans have nothing to do with the Oct 7 massacre.
How would the hostage return the land? How would Gazan tell Hamas to stop?
Both answers are they can't
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Many of the current hostages were in a music festival (it's not a war zone) and captured during the Oct 7 massacre by Palestine.
Edit: I see you edited your comment to blame the hostages for being in the music festival. So, you normalize blaming regular people who have nothing to do with the war; the very thing you said we shouldn't do.
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It is incredibly interesting how the US (and Germany) have put so much into Israel and associated groups they really don't want it to fail (despite the Israeli gov doing their damnest to facilitate just that). In my understanding Israel, in the eyes of the US, is a convenient "wedge" in the Arab space that allows for easier power projection in the area, plus they have a healthy amount of zionists close to money and power at home. I imagine the political calculus of if and how to support it is ridiculously difficult.
I see a lot of comments here are about how other countries should react to this designation, rightfully so.
I wonder also though, how Israel will react. Is this anything new for them?
Same cards they always play:
- our enemies are Hamas sympathisers
- our enemies are secretly Hamas members OR
- it's antisemitism
People in Israel don't really care about stuff that comes out of UN.
Here is how they reacted, by preparing for isolation
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/15/middleeast/netanyahu-israel-i...
https://www.dw.com/en/middle-east-israel-to-get-ready-for-is...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-admits-israel-is-eco...
pick whichever source you respect the most
What about the rest of Israel?
Until Israeli citizens do to the coalition what they're [ostensibly] hoping Gaza citizens do to Hamas
then what about the rest of Israel?
it's not like there's a lack of "settlers"
Israeli citizens, the vast majority of them, have not taken meaningful effort in overthrowing the government of a corrupt prime minister doing everything in his ability to stay in power, else Israeli citizens ought to learn from Nepal and call for a concrete transition of power. At this point, they are complicit in the genocide, like it or not - simply protesting in Tel Aviv and their local kibbutzim won't cut it. And I say this as someone who's view has shifted massively on this topic since October 7, 2023 - from a vocal supporter of Israeli action (as a Muslim nonetheless!) to a vocal opponent now. Until Israeli citizens overthrow their corrupt government of their own will, they are all part of the genocide and must be rightfully ostracized. Especially given that Netanyahu has outed himself as a one-Jewish-state proponent, and has no interest in a peaceful resolution - or in regional peace.
What's to say Israel's next plans aren't for Greater Israel next? Stealing parts of the Egyptian Sinai, Lebanon, Syria (which they already have done) and Jordan? And then Saudi Arabia and Iraq?
I could never really get behind imagining expansionist policies without a clear philosophy supporting them
What would be the philosophy here? I've seen holdings from wars being held and released, and Golan Heights
he had press conference today and walked back what he said.
Useless except if the following done on the US side:
Remove exception to AIPAC political status
Reevaluate AIPAC non profit status entirely
Replicate EO 14046 for Israel which adds the entire ruling party and head of state and spouses and military and affiliated business to the OFAC list
all of this is easy and doesn’t require Congress
but nobody is close to considering those actions with regard to Israel. Notably, other nation’s organizations do not enjoy this courtesy
(Don’t sorry guys, Hamas is already on these lists too)
Voters can take a stand and refuse to vote for anyone complicit in this atrocity.
In the US, both parties were supportive in the last election. Not many choices.
> both parties were supportive in the last election. Not many choices.
Primaries.
The truth is that foreign policy rarely flips American elections. Particularly when we don't have our troops on the ground.
Last election the democrats didn't have a primary, and the republicans barely had one. Political change requires more than one day at the polls; it demands large scale sustained effort by many people, including those in positions of prominence, and even with that success takes time and luck.
Part of being in a leadership position is taking responsibility for what happens on your watch. The electorate can't be blamed for its leaders not doing their jobs when the their leadership is needed.
> Last election the democrats didn't have a primary, and the republicans barely had one
Now do down ballot.
> electorate can't be blamed for its leaders not doing their jobs when the their leadership is needed
Pro-Palestinian voters who swung for Trump explicitly endorsed the war. Even if they thought they were just throwing a tantrum. That includes the war’s repercussions, including the dissolution and incorporation of Palestine.
If you care about net effect, the answer is obvious. If how one feels reigns supreme, yes, that voting bloc is excused. (But still irrelevant.)
couldnt you instead, run for government? if its something voters care about, either youll win, or the competing candidates will change their tune
One party had a long leash. The other cut the leash and yelled attaboy.
Now acting mildly concerned when the neighbour downstreet (Qatar) got their chickens bombed.
> Now acting mildly concerned when the neighbour downstreet (Qatar) got their chickens bombed.
Thing is, what was bombed there was Hamas leadership, not some rank-and-file goons.
Yes, and at this point I'm not arguing for or against that action. I'm saying the current and previous US administration have very different foreign policy.
Why shouldn't Hamas leadership be bombed wherever they may be? They're the leaders of a terrorist organization. The US takes out terrorists wherever they may be (or, works with local authorities to get them first). But, when local authorities are siding with the terrorists, we go in there and do it ourselves. October 7th was Israel's 9/11 - we went and got bin Laden in Pakistan, without dealing with the Pakistani government. Why shouldn't Israel do the same thing? I say - kill all the Hamas leadership, and leave the random Palestinian citizens alone.
Let's imagine that a political opposition leader from Russia were to take refuge in the US. Now imagine that Russia performed a "surgical strike" bombing in the US to kill what they viewed as a terrorist leader. Can you imagine the outrage that would occur? That's exactly the situation that Qatar has just experienced.
It's an act of war. One country bombing another country means they are at war.
Now, the power dynamics in this region mean that they'll probably get away with it, and Qatar is more likely to let it slip than not, but it's still morally reprehensible.
There was only one bin Laden, and we didn't use missiles for that one.
We have bombed their leadership. This is an entirely different war. Hamas was/is the government of Gaza. They're part of the people there, not outside it.
You're trying to fight an organization that is part of the civilian population, not above it or outside of it. And that organization is deliberately using human shields to blur the lines even further.
It's not easy to figure out who's a random Palestinian or who's going to fire a rocket into Israel five years from now. If we want to keep bombing our way to victory, that's going to continue down the road of genocide.
Humanity needs to be better than this. We need to be better than this.
I can turn anyone, including you, into "someone who will fire a rocket in 5 years". Give me US backing and I can do it in 4
Out of curiosity, how would you plan to do that?
You know nothing about me.
Turn your electricity off for days on end when someone in your country does something that other country disagrees with.
Hell, turn your fresh water off too.
Bomb your only airport into non-functioning rubble, and tell you that if you try to rebuild it, the same thing will happen. Keep that up for 20 years.
Park destroyers in your harbors to ensure nothing gets in or out of the country without their say so. Keep that up for a few decades as well.
Keep your land border effectively locked down so you can't even leave that way.
Bulldoze your neighborhood and childhood home because a rocket was suspected to be launched from nearby.
When the other kids in your neighborhood throw rocks at the armored bulldozers, watch as they have rubber bullets shot at them by an army. When they throw rocks at the army, watch as those soldiers return fire with live ammunition.
No, I know nothing about you. But don't pretend that having that as the only existence you've known is not going to make you increasingly angry and willing to fight back in any way, shape, or form, against the boot on your throat.
>I can turn anyone, including you, into "someone who will fire a rocket in 5 years". Give me US backing and I can do it in 4
Echoing OP's point, I can turn you into a person who'll fire a rocket in a year, even. Go read through B'Tselem's reports of Israel's torture camps [0] where tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians are systematically raped, murdered, and abused as a matter of state policy. By the time you undergo that from youth, with half the people in your family gone for years, imprisoned in such camps, while half the kids you grew up with have died in senseless state-sanctioned murder, you'll be ready to do something worse that firing rockets.
Of course, you'll argue, from a sheltered perspective that you wouldn't ever do something like that. So, what will you do instead of fighting back? Sue? LMAO. Protest? You'll get shot. Just focus on building a family? Your home will get demolished or bombed just because.
[0]: https://www.btselem.org/publications/202408_welcome_to_hell
> Why shouldn't Hamas leadership be bombed wherever they may be?
Israel wouldn't be nearly as criticised if they're restricted themselves to surgical strikes on Hamas. Hell, they could have done exactly what they did until hostages started being exchanged, and then switched to surgical strikes, and I suspect--while folks would grumble--leaders would have better things to focus on.
Surgical strikes is mostly a myth presented to make the war on terrorism look better than it is. The US military defined anyone killed above the age of 15 to be a terrorist regardless of situation, and thus by definition had almost zero civilian deaths. It was one of those things that got leaked through the war logs.
The war on terror is estimated to have killed 4,5 million people. Surgical strikes is not a good description for that, nor was the war on terror a good model for how to behave in a war.
> Surgical strikes is mostly a myth presented to make the war on terrorism look better than it is
Even if they are, which I don't grant, myths matter in the fog of war.
More pointedly, surgical strikes would mean serially decapitating Hamas and destroying its infrastructure from the sky. It would preclude messing with aid flows. (Even if Hamas steals all the food, you can't turn most food into weapons. And Hamas amassing fighters they have to feed isn't a strategic threat to Israel in the way their ports and tunnels are.)
> war on terror is estimated to have killed 4,5 million people
One, source? Two, the U.S. obviously didn't prosecute a surgical war on the Taliban or Al Qaeda. We invaded, occupied and attempted to rebuild two nation states.
Do you accept Washington post as source? https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/15/war-on-terro...
That is the Post reporting on a report. Do you know who wrote the report?
To be clear, the estimate doesn’t sound incredulous. I’m just curious to see how they are estimating.
hamas sits in estimated 350-450 miles of tunnels below cities. deepest known tunnels are ~230ft deep. entrances to tunnels are in buildings
how do you see surgical strikes on this ? and what kind of munition ?
or what is surgical strike when you have hamas team with rpg in the window of the building ?
> the U.S. obviously didn't prosecute a surgical war on the Taliban or Al Qaeda. We invaded, occupied and attempted to rebuild two nation states.
Which is why holding Israel to a higher standard than we hold ourselves is odd, to say the least.
I can write in “free Palestine”
And it's gonna get seen by one (1) vote counter who'll then put it away/throw it in the bin
As long as it doesn’t go to a genocide enabler I could care less where my vote goes
Oh I just don't vote instead, it just feels performative now
They tried that last November and wound up worse off than if they hadn't.
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I fully understand the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness with this situation. Lots of people like to imagine what they'd do in certain situations, historical or otherwise. We no longer need to imagine what most people would do in the HOlocaust. We now know: nothing. In WW2, most people could reasonably claim ignorance. Even a lot of Germans could claim ignorance. Now we have livestreamed 4K 60fps evidence that is impossible to ignore.
There's a phrase that's widely attributed (arguably misattributed) to Lenin:
So while the US could end this entire thing with a phone call, it's not true to say that things aren't changing. US support for Israel continues to plummet to new lows [1], to levels I never thought I'd see. Small things like blocking a cycling event in Spain, the future of Eurovision being uncertain, European states recognizing Palestine, problems for the port in Haifa due to changes in shipping because of Houthi rebels, ICC?ICJ investigations, these genocide findings and so on... it all adds up. It all matters. It all compounds to political and economic pressure on the actors involved.[1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/692948/u.s.-back-israel-militar...
I don't feel hopeless by pointing out that the UN report is a small piece of a puzzle, despite the high level of energy used to collectively create it.
It's easier to talk about these things and seeing consensus shift on consensus driven forums like this. My prior observations about that state's policies and supporting culture have been similar, but seen as extreme and "cancellable" at one point. Espousing my observations would have been conflated with ideas of physical harm to Jewish and Israelis, which I don't harbor. My ideas are much more similar to Jewish Israeli residents that protest their own government within Israel. And it's been nice to see many stateside Jewish people distance themselves, and now even second guess Zionism, which Jewish community leaders initially denounced 120 years ago by foreseeing these specific issues and its inherent extremism.
When it comes to my country's involvement, it's a complete aberration in US foreign policy. The reasons require a contorting ourselves for no real practical reason that isn’t already fulfilled by other countries in the Middle East, it’s just money moved from one account to the account of our politicians and appointed representatives.
So I am happy to see piece by piece, people re-evaluating the state narrative on that country. The politicians with discretion on all the levers are unfortunately a far cry away from changing anything.
That would be the first genocide that involves terrorism, hostages and human shields at the same time.
Not saying Israel is clean, but I don't see the ICC making significant progress for that case.
What also bothers me is how protesters are not depicting a good image of the cause of the Palestinians. Iran and Russia are often propping them up for division and it doesn't help.
>That would be the first genocide that involves terrorism, hostages and human shields at the same time.
No it wouldn't be, you're just spewing lazy Zionist propaganda.
"Jewish-Zionist Terrorism and the establishment of Israel" - https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
"Release of civilian hostages held in Gaza and arbitrarily detained [de facto hostages] Palestinians must be immediate and not hinge on ceasefire negotiations" - https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/02/release-of-ci...
"Why Does Israel Have So Many Palestinians in Detention [de facto hostages] and Available to Swap?" https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/29/why-does-israel-have-so-...
"Israeli use of human shields in Gaza was systematic, soldiers and former detainees tell the AP" - https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-arm...
"The Israeli army’s use of Palestinian civilians as human shields has been documented on a large scale" - https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6390/The-Israeli-army%...
"The Israeli military has used Palestinians as human shields in Gaza, soldier and former detainees say - https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/24/middleeast/palestinians-h...
"A Brief History of Israel's Use of Human Shields
This is a brief history of how the Zionist community in Palestine, and then the state of Israel, used its own civilians as shields in its conquest of the land. Zionist leaders realized early on that Zionism was a civilian and a military enterprise. In 1919, the first Zionist militia, HaShomer (which evolved into the Haganah, which evolved into the Israeli army) declared “the need to begin widespread settlement close to the existing boundary lines for the purpose of defending the country.” The idea was to establish new Zionist colonies in the border areas. The idea was to put civilians in harm’s way. But the problem ran much deeper. Zionist fighters soon realized they would need to embed themselves in civilian communities to establish a self-sustaining recruitment base and fund militia operations. The latter was achieved through combining agricultural and military training in civilian settlements. The financial support for military training was attained through the agricultural output of the settlement. By 1936, Jewish Agency Executive Committee Chairman, David Ben-Gurion, came to agree with HaShomer’s idea to establish settlements in border areas. HaShomer “once had a good idea,” he said, “creating … settlements along the country's borders. It appears necessary to establish settlements on every mountaintop in Palestine with crucial strategic importance.” The point became all the more obvious during the 1948 War. In April 1948, Ben Gurion told his government: “We must establish a string of settlements of a new type, different from the regular ones, that are not based on the sacred writ of the military academy but rather, constitute mixed battalions of settlers and warriors, farmers and fighters.” For Ben-Gurion, this was the only path to victory. In the aftermath of the War, Ben Gurion outlined the roadmap for how Israel should continue to settle the country: “Our conquest in the Negev and the Galilee will not be sustainable unless we quickly populate these portions of the country…[with]...the establishment of a long line of settlements on the frontier.” And so, in the 1950s, Israel built civilian centers in border areas to serve as a first line of military defense. 26 new settlements were established along the Lebanese border, the Jordan river and the Gilboa foothills; 13 on the eastern border, 8 in the Jerusalem corridor and 25 on the southern front. In total, some 108 such militant civilian settlements were built in Israel after 1948, including towns like Nahal Oz, short for Nahlayim Mul Aza, “Nahal soldiers across from Gaza,” which tragically ended up serving the purpose for which it was built. The point was to put Israeli civilians on the front lines as human shields.
Agricultural work conducted under guard in Moshav Nitzanei Oz (“buds of strength”) in 1954. Founded in 1951 as a Nahal settlement, the moshav was located on the Jordanian border and the outskirts of Tulkarem source (p.72) Initially, the status of the citizens in the border towns was “identical to reserve soldiers,” according to Israeli historian Yoav Gelber. These “civil” communities were even organized in companies and platoons and integrated into the Israeli military’s command and control hierarchy. The Israeli military trained and equipped these civilians in classic civilian stuff like anti-tank and light arms instruction. After the 1967 War, Israel took a similar approach in the newly conquered territories. In July 1970, Israel confiscated land in Hebron by military order, ostensibly for “security purposes.” The first buildings on it would be falsely presented as a military facility, according to Israeli cabinet meeting notes. Shortly thereafter, Israel built 250 civilian housing units in Kiryat Arba within the perimeter of the area specified for the military unit’s use. Similarly, in 1971, Israel declared Palestinian village of Aqraba a military training zone. By 1975, the Jewish settlement of Gitit was established on its ruins. The idea in the 1970s was to enmesh Israel’s civilian and military presence in Palestine. Then Israeli Defense Minister Shimon Peres called for creating a strip of civilian settlements slicing across the West Bank “for defensive purposes” and another strip near Jerusalem to break the occupied territory into fragments. He added, “there’s a line of army bases in Samaria…I’d put a small civilian settlement next to each one.” By 1980, the World Zionist Organization had developed a “Master Plan” for the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The plan called for settling the land between and among the Arab population to make it “hard for Palestinians to create territorial contiguity and political unity.” Civilian settlement in the service of military conquest! “From my perspective,” Avigdor Lierman said in 2017, “it's clear that the settlements in Judea and Samaria and those here in the area of Jericho and the Dead Sea are the State of Israel’s true defensive wall.” Israel’s military headquarters are located in the Tel Aviv city center, a few hundred meters from a large high school. All the major bus lines pass right by. Tel Aviv’s main hospital -- the Ichilov Hospital -- is just to the north and is connected to the base by emergency tunnels. The Israeli army radio station is located in a residential apartment building & its antennas are on the roof of that residential building. Then there’s Israel’s militant settlers, who often carry out pogroms and acts of violence against Palestinians together with the Israeli military. What’s more, the Israeli military has established settler militias, known as “territorial defense units,” which are civilian groups armed and trained by the army. All of this makes Israel’s claim that “Hamas uses human shields” deeply cynical. In its campaign of mass murder in Gaza, +972 reported Israel prefers to strike Hamas fighters in their homes, together with their families, so long as no more than 20 civilians are killed per strike (for higher level commanders, 300 civilians massacred is considered acceptable).
Imagine if Hamas adopted this military doctrine. What percentage of Israeli households would be legitimate targets? How many Israeli households have an active-duty soldier or a reservist, or live within 100 feet of a household with a soldier or a reservist, and thus would equally be a target given Israel’s use of dumb bombs? [Note: Half the bombs Israel drops on Gaza are dumb bombs that often land 100 feet away from their target]. I’d venture to guess the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israeli civilians would be targets. Of course, targeting civilians is always a war crime, even if they are being used as human shields. That’s true no matter who is doing the targeting. Zionist leaders have embraced the use of Zionist, Jewish and Israeli human shields for more than a century. It’s time for this practice to end." - Zachary Foster, jewish historian, founder of palestinenexus.com, [https://palestine.beehiiv.com/p/brief-history-israels-use-is...]
What charity can one donate to? I just can't stand just doing nothing anymore.
Médecins sans frontières perhaps?
https://www.msf.org/
For some reason, I don't see this news mentioned on any mainstream media across the political spectrum (Al Jazeera --> Guardian --> BBC --> CNN / NYT / NPR --> Fox News).
Could be that I just missed it, but seems odd.
First news on all major outlets here (Europe)
The news cycle is moving fast enough that shockingly enough this news is already pushed off the frontpage of these news sites, but the article is there if you dig a little.
- BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8641wv0n4go
- The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/16/israel-committ...
- NPR: https://www.npr.org/2025/09/16/g-s1-89014/israel-gaza-genoci...
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-c...
Yes, this is ownership issue, nothing new :)
The mainstream media in the West is pro-Israel in a bizarre way. Social media however has not been captured but idk what's happening to TikTok now.
Wonder why this made the frontpage when other political articles die.
Has the rules around political non technical articles changed? Can we get an Epstein thread for the frontpage sometime this week?
No, the rules haven't changed—they've been the same for many years. Let me try to dig up some past explanations.
Edit: here's one from a few months ago, which covers the principles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43738815.
Re how we approach political topics on HN in general: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Re how we deal with Major Ongoing Topics, i.e. topics where there are a ton of articles and submissions over time: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Re how we approach turning off flags: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Re the perception that "HN has been getting more political lately" (spoiler: it hasn't - though it does fluctuate): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.
If you or anyone will check out some of those links and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Looking at the official HN guidelines, it states that "Most stories about politics" is off-topic, and "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic".
Is the Isreal/Gaza debate not political, and not mainstream news? How does a story like this not directly violate those guidelines?
Furthermore, the guidelines state that stories should be what "good hackers" find "intellectually satisfying". A political debate thread about Isreal is what "good hackers" would find intellectually satisfying?
I just can not understand how a story such as this in any way remotely meets the established, official guidelines for what belongs here.
Considering these threads also, universally, just devolve in political flamewars / hate spreading. There's nothing constructive here. There's no debate. There's no opposing ideas/opinions allowed.
Yes, but as pg once put it, "note those words most and probably" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426). That was in 2012, btw, which shows how far back HN's approach to this goes.
That leaves open the question of which stories to treat as on topic, but the links in my GP comment go into detail about how we handle that.
I'm not saying we always make the correct call about individual stories. There will never be general agreement about that, since every reader has a different set of things they care about. But I hope we can at least make the principles clear, as well as the fact that they haven't changed.
fwiw I think y'all do a fine enough job of dealing with this difficult nuanced stance. I've noticed that when they stick around, it appears to be a combo of: this seems important enough, the community can probably have a civil conversation around this, people who don't participate will find learnings through the comments still. These 3 things always seem well satisfied, personally I appreciate the measured nature of this community and thank you and tom for the genuine work of trying to maintain the balances.
I am truly disappointed by this post being here and I don’t see any evidence in your links explaining it. You owe Hacker News users two things, one a statement of what political content will be allowed and what won’t and two a declaration of your political boundaries. I say this since I have never seen a pro-Israel post on this platform (unless you include point blank stories on investments/exits for Israeli startups), but I am now seeing this post as one of a trend attempting to slander Israel. It is sad for me to need to have politics be a part of the narrative on Hacker News, but as an Israeli, I want to feel safe on my news platform
> There's nothing constructive here. There's no debate. There's no opposing ideas/opinions allowed.
That doesn't seem true to me. I'm seeing lots of opinions I don't agree with.
Israel and Israeli businesses are an intractable part of the modern American tech scene. Mellanox, for example, is the cited reason Nvidia ships any datacenter-scale interconnect at all today. America's highest-tech defense contractors work in direct concert with Rafael et. al, and companies like Cellebrite are suppliers of US law enforcement.
When the equation changes vis-a-vis Israel's credibility, this entire Jenga structure has to be reevaluated. It's not satisfying to think about, but it is intellectually prudent and remains important regardless of how civil the response ends up being.
you aren't using the word "intractable" right. meant "inextricable" maybe.
Yet buried 3 or 4 levels in the comments is where you find this post :)
> When the equation changes vis-a-vis Israel's credibility, this entire Jenga structure has to be reevaluated. It's not satisfying to think about, but it is intellectually prudent and remains important regardless of how civil the response ends up being.
If the topics and responses pertained to such a discussion, then that would be one thing. However, it seems like that is not what is being discussed in this topic nor comments section.
> A political debate thread about Isreal is what "good hackers" would find intellectually satisfying?
Personally, one aspect I always enjoyed about this site was how it was often an escape for me from the endless bombardments of political discourse that is constantly being shown/recommend to me on other platforms. I do understand the importance of the nature of these types of discussions, but I agree with you, I am not certain much honest debate is being had here.
In the n number of threads like this, I would be surprised if many leave with any of their opinions changed. All too often do people comment to soothe their own knee-jerk reactions rather than to facilitate understanding or intellectually challenge one another.
Conversely, some of us don't hang out on sites that are an endless bombardment of political discourse. That sounds awful. The HN approach seems uniquely useful. One or two post on an event, easily skipped over and ignored if you want with all the comments hidden behind clicking on that headline. Whole trees of comments trivially collapsed at will when they become uninteresting. It is actually a really great way of getting international news (including US news for me) and sampling opinions and commentary, even if it was not intended that way.
I think it always has the potential to be "intellectually satisfying" and there's an obvious 'tech' angle woven through it all. So much of it is tied to how information spreads and which technologies enable that. (And, how an actor can use technologies to their advantage).
I think that reference to "TV news" is outdated. Media has changed and there isn't even a clear division between what a media org puts on TV vs on the web.
And this sub-topic in particular (genocide ruling) isn't really getting a ton of mainstream news coverage -- many news orgs are deliberately distancing themselves from proper coverage. The story may exist on news sites, but it's not being surfaced.
Because it's BS. The rules are secondary to someone's political agenda.
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Please make your substantive points without crossing into personal attack.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Just wanna say this is the kind of day where I feel like I should send you a fruit basket or something for the work you do here.
I think you are the only good moderator on the internet.
It would be interesting to know how articles like this compared to the average article. How are the ratios of downvotes to upvotes, flagged to non-flagged, and comments to views? Are people who comment here positively or negative correlating to creating non-flaged/downvoted comments on other articles?
To phrase it a bit differently, does this kind of articles create a positive or negative engagement for HN?
Many more downvotes and flags for sure. I can't answer your other questions without specifically looking into it, but my guess would be many more comments and much more negativity.
So again, why do you allow this post to stay up? Is it some political agenda? If so, please state it clearly
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45269642
One question went unanswered: Can we get an Epstein thread this week?
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I've never discussed this topic with Garry and no one at YC has tried to influence how we moderate HN on this or any other political topic.
You might want to check out the part of the HN FAQ which explains that the moderators are editorially independent: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
I feel like parent probably meant Paul Graham. Garry holds polar opposite opinions (he blocked me on X because he had had made claims about what Intifada means, and as an Arabic speaker I felt compelled to point out the correct meaning).
In any case, I don't think Paul or Garry are interfering with the algorithm or moderation here.
Yep, I meant pg
The problem with the meaning of “intifada” is that in the US at least, and some other English-speaking countries, it has strong connotations of violence and terrorism dating at least to the 2nd Intifada. The “correct meaning” then becomes somewhat beside the point. Further, if someone in the US uses that term, when speaking in English, it raises a question of which sense they mean it in.
There’s no doubt that this is then used as a weapon against people like Mamdani for having used phrases such as “globalize the intifada.” But that’s going to be an uphill battle to “correct”, because you’re dealing with people who are already biased, are often unaware of their bias, and are interpreting things in a way that fits that bias.
What does the word Intifada actually mean? You have piqued my interest now.
I believe that it means "a shaking" as in "to shake off". But Arabic is not my first language (nor my second, it's number 4).
What do the word Führer mean? Foreign words used in English can be more specific than how they are used in their source language. Especially when they are used as proper nouns (capitalized) like "The [Second] Intifada".
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For me, this is meaningful because for the first time a legitimate international body is calling this a genocide.
Previously, it’s been activists and claims that this might be genocide. I haven’t read the report yet. But I will, and I intend to leave my mind open as to whether this raises the profile of this war in my mind relative to domestic issues.
Go read this UNHCR report. All the evidence is just circular references to other bodies who reference each other. The most damning thing they could pin on Israel was that "Israel admits 83% of the casualties are civilians". That idea was because Israel could name 17% of the casualties in Hamas registers as members of the organization. But assuming that every other casualty is a civilian is quite a stretch. For one thing, Israel doesn't know the name of every militant it kills while he's aiming an RPG at them. For another, there are many other militant organizations in the strip, notably the Islamic Jihad. For a third, typically 75% - 90% of the casualties of war are civilians by the UN's own numbers.
Pages 51-54 contain a list of on-the-record quotes from the government itself. Those, at least, are not in contention.
And they are interpreted in the fashion most damning to Israel, whereas much worse on-the-record quotes from other bodies, notably those bodies which have demonstrated intent to destroy Israel, are interpreted more favourably.
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It absolutely does have merit when the point is to highlight hypocrisy and bias.
> The most damning thing they could pin on Israel was that "Israel admits 83% of the casualties are civilians".
Which means that at least 83% are.
Nobody knowledgeable about the circumstances of that number could reasonably come to the conclusion you've come to.
Go look at the report and the org and the people in it.
There is nothing "legitimate" about it.
The head of this alleged body is a staunch anti-Israel activist who is not taken seriously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navi_Pillay#Israel-Gaza_confli...
"On 25 July 2014, the United States Congress published a letter addressed to Pillay by over 100 members in which the signatories asserted that the Human Rights Council "cannot be taken seriously as a human rights organisation" over their handling of the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict "
Francesca Albanese has held the genocide line since day one as the UN special rapporteur on israel and palestine
She's hardly impartial. Her husband worked for the Palestinian Authority.
Ooh, can we dismiss all statements from someone who is related to someone who worked for the Israeli government or was in the IDF too?
Wait, you know people who were killed by Hamas? You can’t even pretend to be impartial.
> can we dismiss all statements from someone who is related to someone who worked for the Israeli government or was in the IDF too?
The point is that, as someone with limited stakes in this war and limited exposure to its history until recently, unbiased sources have been hard to come by. The entire definition of genocide has been politicised. That isn't a criticism of anyone doing it--language is a powerful tool, and it's fair game to try and bend definitions to one's advantage. But all that makes piercing the veil on whether this is the horribleness of war being selectively cited, or a selectively horrible war, tough.
This report cuts through that. The evidence is compelling, albeit less primary than I'd have hoped. The writing is clear and impartial. (Though again, a lot of secondary sourcing.) It doesn't seek to answer who is at fault for what is, essentially, an intractable multigenerational conflict (even before we involve proxies). It just seeks to simply answer a question, and in my opinion, having now skimmed (but not deeply contemplated) it, it does.
The balance of evidence suggests Israel is prosecuting a genocide against the people of Palestine. That creates legitimacy for escalating a regional conflict (one among money, I may add, and nowhere close to the deadliest) into an international peacekeeping operation.
Unfortunately, all of this rests on a system of international law that basically all the great powers of this generation (China, then Russia, and now America and India) have undermined.
Or just like those international peacekeepers who filmed Hezbollah breach our border, kill soldiers, abduct others? And then when this was discovered, refused to share the unedited video with Israel?
We don't trust the UN. So which international peace keepers do you propose?
> We don't trust the UN. So which international peace keepers do you propose?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t know! But the point of peacekeepers is the belligerents lose their votes.
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I'm uninsterested in your credibility or opinion on wether or not it's a genocide.
Courts have ruled it is. The world has ruled it is. You can skirm all you want, in 6 months you'll say you always thought it was a genocide. Mark my words.
They have not.
They have - not in a final ruling, but in mutliple rulings adjacent, provisional measures for example. Feel free to read what the courtd have made public for all to see
They have not.
https://x.com/Mr_Andrew_Fox/status/1783621258032136550
What court has ruled this a genocide? The "top UN legal investigators" was a 3-person commission of the UN HRC.
You should ask chatgpt
Wether she is or not is not for me to decide - at any rate, her analysis seems to have been absolutely spot on if we are now recognizing it is a genocide, isn't it?
And if you think the UN rapporteur is too biased to do their job correctly, why do you care what the UN does?
> her analysis seems to have been absolutely spot on if we are now recognizing it is a genocide, isn't it?
No, no more than someone who predicts a market crash every day is proven right the one time they nail it. The quality and objectivity of the analysis matters. Not just the conclusion.
She didn't predict anything, she analysed evidence and arrived to the same conclusion as the ruling you qre recognizing today.
Odd you can't reconcile that both parties can be correct
The evidence didnt exist day 1
Fetch me a false report she made, lackey
A market crash is a one-time event. A genocide is ongoing. This would be like someone claiming since 2003 there was a pedo ring in the upper echelons of society and everyone calling them a liar until...
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maybe because we are two years into an event that will define the early 21st century.
What about "there is war in the middle east, still/again" is remotely unique enough in the last century to be a defining moment of the half-century?
If an event has the potential to be that, it's the near-peer land war in Europe.
The current Israel/Gaza conflict is a blip that is mildly different in degree than the same thing that has happened every decade or so since Israel was created.
Not to this degree in the last few decades. But I feel you are overall correct, it's just that the Internet allows for much bigger coverage of the details of the horrors committed, and it's interesting how governments around the world now fail so completely to shape the narrative.
Yeah it's worse.
The October 7th attacks were way worse than Hamas attacks that came before in recent history. The response was way worse than what has happened before in recent history.
And so both sides feel fully justified with their courses of action, because of what the other side did to them. That is the part that is so much not unique.
So sad to see that you seen 1 Gazan life worth 10 Syrians or 5 Yeminis… Is that really rational?
C'mon man, the Charlie Kirk post stayed on the front-page for a pretty long time.
With the amount of moderation that post seemed to be taking, I fully expected it to be killed quickly. Was pretty surprised it stayed up.
Yeah, that was pretty surprising. Usually political stories are flagged and buried pretty quickly.
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I'm afraid the latest spate of "recognizing the state of Palestine" is not, in fact, a sign of coming relief for the people there, but rather a spigot to relieve domestic pressure to engage in substantive actions (sanctions, pressuring the US and other suppliers of arms to engage in sanctions, let alone sending peacekeepers or no-fly zones).
Regardless of how much you're personally invested in the topic, this should break the hearts of everyone who dreamed that the international community could hold each other legally accountable. Indeed, the US would rather sanction individuals at the ICJ than acknowledge any sort of legitimacy—even as our own politicians accuse Russia of engaging in "war crimes". I have no doubt that they are, in fact, I think that the evidence is quite damning. But the double standard is striking, as is the difference between the footage visible on social media and what is acknowledged when you turn on the TV or open the paper.
> break the hearts of everyone who dreamed that the international community could hold each other legally accountable.
this is never going to happen. there is just no practical enforcement mechanism. laws and police works within a sovereign country because the state has the monopoly on violence, this is not true on the international stage. no country will go into war to enforce an ICC/ICJ conviction.
A country that wanted an excuse might use it.
In the international community the double standard was always against Israel aside maybe when it declared independence. The external enemy to distract the peasants from relevant problems. It doesn't have a lot of maturity. Perhaps the UN will go the league of nations if the current Gx hegemony loses control.
> I'm afraid the latest spate of "recognizing the state of Palestine" is not, in fact, a sign of coming relief for the people there, but rather a spigot to relieve domestic pressure to engage in substantive actions (sanctions, pressuring the US and other suppliers of arms to engage in sanctions, let alone sending peacekeepers or no-fly zones).
I don't think recognition as a State would really change anything. If at least one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council will veto everything that comes up, the UN won't effectively intervene in the situation. Military intervention in such a case is unlikely, unless at least one permanent member is willing to join an intervention coalition. Looking at conflicts the US has been involved in, it usually lines up around the lines with US maybe with their usual friends vs Locals or Locals and Russia and friends. The only one I found where the pattern was when France started sending arms to Nicaragua while the US was supporting the other side [1]. Unless Russia or China wants to support the Palestinians militarily, or the US decides not to no longer support Israel militarily, there's not much chance of outside intervention here.
Given the outside countries can't effectively intervene, recognizing the state of Palestine at least sends a message, that maybe hopefully influences the US?
[1] https://www.csmonitor.com/1982/0715/071566.html
China and Russia would prefer to turn Israel away from the US and more or less fortify their influence in the Middle East. Much more rewarding.
There's not really much of a state to recognize in the first place, is there? Maybe this would have made a big difference 30 years ago, but now?
If it were recognized as a state, it would need a lot of outside help. But if there was agreement on the territory and acknowledement of its sovereignty, an effective state could be worked toward in ways that aren't feasible when under seige or even simply occupation.
30 years ago, conditions for peace and the start of a newly recognized state seemed better, yes. But the situation hasn't resolved itself by being left as-is either.
It makes it worse by reducing pressure on Hamas to surrender, increasing the duration of the war. Grotesque virtue signalling.
Surely if a surrender takes place, it will be merely symbolic. I cannot imagine anyone can convince a population so terrorized to forgive or forget.
Japanese civilians experienced far worse in WW2, and they forgot pretty quickly. The war against the Tamil Tigers would be another case study. Once the radicalism is dealt with by force, the ratcheting of violence is reduced, and people move on.
Japanese had it bad for 2-3 years. After that they were allowed to live in their country with their own leadership. Palestinians have it bad for 80 years, they are not allowed to return to their homeland, and we expect them to live in closely monitored concentration camps.
> Japanese civilians experienced far worse in WW2, and they forgot pretty quickly
Because the vast majority of the Japanese people barely faced any kind of obstacles in the same way Palestinians are facing. Yes, they had food shortages and their wooden homes were bombed constantly to oblivion, and they suffered a couple of nuclear blasts, but that was because their history lessons teach their WW2 as something in which they were the aggressor (with Pearl Harbor, not the invasions of China and Korea). In Palestine's case, it will take much longer to wipe out that resentment. Besides, Palestinians aren't the "radicals" here.
Before Japan was defeated, their military propaganda was that they were victims of encirclement and an oil blockade, and the attack on Pearl Harbor was a justified response to this victimhood. They started teaching a different story only because the allies forced them to change their curriculum. The same process of deradicalization will be forced onto Gaza after the defeat of Hamas. And why did you overlook the Tamil Tigers case study? And why would you euphemize nuclear bombs onto civilian cities like this, as if it isn't significantly more brutal than anything the Palestinians have been subjected to?
> Besides, Palestinians aren't the "radicals" here.
A luxury belief that's only possible to hold because Israel is militarily dominant to the point that the radical views prevalent in Palestinian culture cannot be acted out. The Israelis know this luxury belief is factually false, that's why they are the way they are.
> and why would you euphemize nuclear bombs onto civilian cities like this, as if it isn't significantly more brutal than anything the Palestinians have been subjected to?
https://www.bradford.ac.uk/news/archive/2025/gaza-bombing-eq...
> Gaza bombing ‘equivalent to six Hiroshimas’
How can six Hiroshimas kill less civilians than the actual Hiroshima (let alone the fire bombings) despite much higher density? The answer to this question might unlock something in your mind.
We don't have anhthing like a complete count of the dead yet. The 60k number the media still reports has barely moved in a year because Israel destroyed almost all of the health infrastructure that used to report deaths, and even before that people trapped in the rubble and not identified by anyone weren't counted.
That's true, but that 60k number isn't just civilians, and even if the total civilian count is higher than 60k, it's still likely lower than the civilians killed in Hiroshima, which is an inconvenient fact best left unmentioned by those who say that Israel has unleashed six Hiroshimas onto a location that's over 10x higher density than 1945 Hiroshima. How do you resolve this discrepancy?
There's no discrepancy because there aren't numbers. The 60,000 number is a dramatic undercount. The fatalities were being undercounted even before Israel had attacked every hospital in Gaza multiple times. There are mass graves occasionally found in Gaza but nobody is able to go through and document everything while they're still being genocided. In any situation like this it takes decades of research to try to reach an accurate count and even then there are is huge uncertainty, particularly when whole extended families are murdered all at once. Look at the Hiroshima death toll estimates - between 90,000 and 166,000 people killed. And this is the best estimate after decades of research. Almost none of that can take place now in Gaza.
But of course I'm talking to someone who pretends to believe you can carpet bomb an entire city of 2 million people relentlessly, cut off food and water, and kill fewer than 60,000 civilians.
The analogy would be if the allies plan for ending WW2 was to ethnically cleanse the Japanese archipelago and expel Japanese people into, say, camps in Xinjiang. I imagine if they had consistently telegraphed such a plan for years during the war, the resistance might have continued longer.
You appear to be unaware of the multiple genocidal statements made by the allies towards the Japanese.
The international community is a worthwhile endeavour. But all other countries play at the behest of the US and now, also China.
Between them, the rest have only local influence.
What, they thought it might've actually been Egypt before this whole time?
Rebuttal here: https://www.scholarsfortruthaboutgenocide.com
There are many issues raised with the report, including it omits the invasion by the government of Gaza, Hamas, on 7 October 2023 entirely, and it omits that the Israeli army is fighting the army of Gaza, the Qasam brigades, who had 40,000 salaried fighters (pre-war), have fired thousands of missiles, developed hundreds of kilometres of tunnels specifically for urban warfare, and subverted public and private infrastructure for urban warfare. For such a serious allegation, it is important to consider and address all aspects and not simply omit them.
I would like to add, I don't think this topic is appropriate for Hacker News.
Genocide is horrible. But what is worse is living in a world that has let it go on for the last two years.
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The Holocaust does not justify committing a genocide against another population. Some people having inaccurate, or even immoral, views about what occurred on October 7th does not justify genocide. The fact that Hamas engages in evil acts does not justify genocide perpetrated against innocents.
In short: Two wrongs do not make a right.
It is also worth noting that you are not portraying the matter fairly. You are transposing certain radical elements, i.e. those who actively defend Hamas, on to people who simply oppose the ethnic cleansing and genocide being perpetrated by Israel. I don't support Hamas, and I also don't support Israel.
Furthermore, you falsely assume that people are generally ignoring the evil actions perpetrated by Hamas, which is not the case. It is a false dichotomy to present the issue as supporting either Israel or Hamas. Hamas undeniably has engaged in terrorism, but that has no bearing on whether or not Israel is acting properly in response. The fact of the matter is that Israel hasn't merely been attacking Hamas targets that happen to also have civilians present, but rather that Israel is going beyond that to willfully engage in a near-indiscriminate extermination campaign against unjustifiable targets.
Israel isn't geocoding Palestinians though, the report is reaching.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right” misframes the issue. Hamas murders civilians deliberately; Israel targets Hamas while taking steps to limit civilian harm. Civilian deaths are tragic, but tragedy is not genocide. The moral difference is intent.
“The fact of the matter is that Israel hasn't merely been attacking Hamas targets that happen to also have civilians present, but rather that Israel is going beyond that to willfully engage in a near-indiscriminate extermination campaign against unjustifiable targets.”
Calling this “indiscriminate extermination” ignores Hamas using civilians as shields and demands an impossible standard of zero casualties. It also drains the word genocide of meaning. The Holocaust was genocide, the systematic extermination of Jews for existing. That is not what Israel is doing to Palestinians.
>Israel targets Hamas while taking steps to limit civilian harm. Civilian deaths are tragic, but tragedy is not genocide.
Israel does not merely target Hamas with incidental civilian deaths, they have been documented actively targeting civilians. This has been indisputably demonstrated at this point. Early on I was much more skeptical since it's similarly indisputable that Hamas does engage in terroristic behavior, but as time has gone on we've had report after report confirming that Israel isn't merely targeting Hamas.
> The moral difference is intent.
Hamas intends to eliminate Israel, Israel intends to eliminate Hamas (justifiable) and exterminate the Palestinians (unjustifiable) to continue their long-running expansion operation and further their grip on the region at the expense of the other native populations.
> Calling this “indiscriminate extermination” ignores Hamas using civilians as shields and demands an impossible standard of zero casualties.
1. I've already explicitly acknowledged the distinction between attacking Hamas, inadvertently harming civilians in the process, and the active slaying of the civilian population which is taking place. The former is regrettable but unavoidable, the latter is evil and it is what is also taking place.
2. I intentionally said "near-indiscriminate" rather than just "indiscriminate" for a reason. Unlike many people, yourself included, I don't view this conflict as a completely black-and-white matter. Israel is instrumentalizing their legitimate efforts in order to implement a wider effort to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
You keep saying it is “indisputably demonstrated” that Israel is targeting civilians, but you have yet to explain anything other than your feeling. If the evidence is so overwhelming, name the specific proof. “Reports” from Hamas-run ministries or partisan NGOs are not indisputable, they are contested like all wartime information. Overstating your case makes it weaker. UN councils with 50 some odd member states share this same bias.
The crux of genocide is intent. Hamas openly declares its intent to erase Israel. Israel declares its intent to eliminate Hamas. If Israel’s goal was exterminating Palestinians, explain why it has repeatedly supported two-state proposals that Palestinian leadership rejected. Explain why over 20 percent of Israel’s citizens are Arab, voting in elections, serving in parliament, even sitting on the Supreme Court. That reality is incompatible with a state bent on extermination.
Your “near-indiscriminate” phrasing is just a rhetorical trick. If you admit it is not indiscriminate, then you acknowledge Israel is targeting Hamas, not carrying out genocide. Civilian deaths are tragic, but tragedy is not the same thing as a systematic plan to wipe out a people.
Israel drops leaflets, issues warnings, and opens corridors. Hamas embeds in schools, hospitals, and residential blocks. That doesn’t absolve Israel of responsibility when civilians die, but it does show intent matters.
lol... genocide defenders get the last word.
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Those who believe that there is any comparison between then and now generally should learn more about what happened then - and would do well to learn the history of war in general.
Pride? That’s your projection. There’s no pride in grief. Only despair at people excusing terrorism with sloppy false equivalences.
Both the Palestinian people and Jewish people are indigenous to Israel/Palestine.
No one side has the right to commit genocide against the other. At some point, there will have to be a two state solution.
The current Israeli government is indeed genocidal. Cabinet ministers have referred to the Palestinian people as a whole (not just Hamas) as an enemy and the IDF is carrying out the genocide.
This also means that by proxy the US is funding the military of a genocidal regime.
Just as providing Hamas with weapons is a terrible idea, giving them to Israel in its current state is an equally terrible idea.
Seeing the number of flagged comments, and going from past discussions where any discussion seen as pushback was flagged, this discussion really doesn't belong on hacker news.
Technology enables so many of these problems and yet the technology builders want to flag it off the face of the internet?
Hey stock prices might go down if you're not careful.
Oh no, people are commenting too hard. Only mild topics on HN, otherwise the servers explode... or something
The infrastructure for genocide needs a lot of technology and technology related subject. The victims of genocides include technology workers, hobbyists and hackers. No doubt there are HN members who are current victims of the ongoing genocide. They deserve our sympathy and their existence needs to be acknowledged.
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When peoples' comments are flagged to invisibility, there isn't discussion occuring. When people aren't willing to post, discussion isn't occurring.
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The problem is there obviously isn't any discussion happening. People are so entrenched on one side or the other and that's pretty apparent by this comment section. Everyone wants to virtue signal without taking any responsibility. The unfortunate reality of this situation is that it's extremely complex and weaves in a lot of historical context. But nobody cares about nuance anymore it's all just "killing bad!" within the framework of whatever controversial event is on the inciters mind. Well duh, but how did we get here? If we can't stop and consider both sides constructively then clearly we're never going to get anywhere and shit like this will just continue.
That's essentially the pro-Israel argument for decades (Including the opinion that killing somehow weren't always bad). It hasn't prevented the current situation.
But don't let that stop you. Feel free to make a nuanced and well-researched counterargument why the UN report is wrong.
I'm not sure what you're pointing to in my response to attribute it to Israeli support. I was attempting to make light of the fact that 'discussion' requires two sides. Right now both sides live in a different reality. I am in no way condoning Israel's genocide against Palestinians. But to say Israel is the only one at fault for this situation and to only point fingers to one side betrays the historical facts of the situation. I in no way tried to downplay the situation or play sides so please don't twist my words as if I did.
The problem is that there is a massive power imbalance in the conflict and insisting on "both sides" without acknowledging that is itself muddying the waters.
Accusations of "one-sidedness" for everything that doesn't follow the Israeli narrative of the conflict has been a standard defense for decades, last employed against the two-states UN resolution.
That's why I find (naive) insistence on seeing "both sides" problematic in this conflict. By all means, do see both sides, but see them with their respective amounts of power and historical context.
I 100% agree with you here. Which is why it's important to have the acknowledgement that this isn't an isolated situation. There is a 'one-sidedness' for Israel against the Palestinians, in the same way that there's a 'one-sidedness' for the entirety of the Arab nations against the Israeli's. For as long as Israel has existed they've been fighting against their own genocide. I haven't seen anyone acknowledging that? Or that the Arab nations were the ones to provoke the Israeli's in the first place? I find no love for Israel, but we make it waaaay too easy for them to justify these positions. Like it or not it's not as simple as everyone seems to make it out to be. The western nations and the other Arabs were the ones to give up on the Palestinians first, but now all of a sudden we care? Like I said, it's all virtue signaling.
> For as long as Israel has existed they've been fighting against their own genocide. I haven't seen anyone acknowledging that? Or that the Arab nations were the ones to provoke the Israeli's in the first place?
It was so obvious that you were trying to carefully push Zionist propaganda from the very start, but here you went from 0 to 100% hasbara real quick. This isn't 1990, you won't get away with this kind of blatant Zionist revisionism; there are about 10000+ academic articles and videos now that teach the history in painful detail. So give it a rest with your lazy propaganda.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
It's sad that we can't take an objective look at the facts of the matter without trying to point to one side and saying it's propaganda. Like is it so hard to say that both sides did bad things? I have no problem acknowledging that Israel is being the ultimate bully right now, is it not okay to say they have a reason? Or should we just ignore all reasoning and condem "killing bad" like I initially said this would devolve to? The US literally has the same problem right now it's kind of insane. How can you try to swat away historical facts, then in the same breath link me a random master's thesis from 1977... Like can we just go to Wikipedia, start from the beginning and then disagree over the facts that actually happened instead of trying to see it through the lens of some 20s something from the 70s?
so after trying to mislead people with outright lies and historical revisionism based on zionist fantasies, you are trying to "both sides" a livestream genocide and about a century of brutal zionist colonialism. That's your strategy.
>How can you try to swat away historical facts
The cognitive dissonance of Zionists needs to be studied in Universities across the world. You are straight up lying into people's faces and in the same breath projecting your own behavior on others "trying to 'swat away historical facts'". It's truly astonishing.
Sorry, can you point out exactly where I've lied and how? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the entire history of this conflict goes back to the UN partition plan in 47, which established a Jewish and Palestinian state. Which then lead to the 47-48 civil war, which from everything I've found relating to it, the Arab's were the ones to retaliate against the Jews in the region which started the war and it's been basically tit for tat ever since. A Palestinian petition to the Security Council in 48 even said this: "Powerful Arab interests, both inside and outside Palestine, are defying the resolution of the General Assembly and are engaged in a deliberate effort to alter by force the settlement envisaged therein."
I have no issue discussing this situation, in fact that was the whole point of my original statement. Which is that most people seem too emotionally attached to this situation to the point where they can't even have a proper discussion without trying to talk down to me about a position I don't even hold.
https://web.archive.org/web/20101003080945/http://unispal.un...
you could go back further into the 20s or 00s of people moving in and not hiring or otherwise excluding the locals.
>Sorry, can you point out exactly where I've lied and how?
I already quoted that exact part and even referenced the academic work which elaborated on it in detail. It was also not a "random" master thesis, it is academic work that is cited by the United States Government.
>Correct me if I'm wrong
"Entertain my Zionist revisionism". I've heard variations of your hasbara for 2 decades. It's insane that you still think that you can just lie in people's faces when everybody can just fact check you in a jiffy. You obviously don't care about the facts, that's why you persist in trying to deceive people with Zionist revisionism, but for others who happen to stumble upon this convo here some elaboration that concisely debunks these Zionist talking points:
- "The Conflict Based on a Lie" https://youtu.be/dy56Q1a0Flc - "The Masterplan for the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" https://youtu.be/C3cnRcfp_us
For anyone who is more interested in a comprehensive study of the history, Zachary Foster is a jewish historian whose research can be found at palestinenexus.com of which he is the founder of.
I would go back to the founding principle of Zionism, and claim that the start of the conflict was when Zionists decided to colonize Palestine and found their own nation state on other people’s lands.
But if you insist on starting with the Palestinian civil war then you will soon find that a lot of Palestinians were expelled from their lands and never granted the right of return. It was not merely the partition, but the fact the international human rights granted the right of return for Palestinians illegally expelled, but this international human rights was promptly denied to Palestinians and has been till this day. There is no tit for tat here, as Zionists have not been illegally displaced and Zionists don’t have their rights of return denied to them.
I'm starting with 47 on the basis of the Jewish/Arab conflict. If we claim that the idea of Zionism started the conflict in the area then it doesn't seem like the history fully supports that idea. Jews in the late 1800s were getting worried about the antisemitism in Europe and wanted their own solution to "The Jewish Question" which to them was the formation of their own state. There were even talks about settling in different parts of Africa. But it wasn't until the Balfour Declaration that Zionism was completely focused on Palestine, mostly because the British didn't know what to do with the region after defeating the Ottoman Empire in the region.
>There is no tit for tat here, as Zionists have not been illegally displaced and Zionists don’t have their rights of return denied to them.
The claim Zionists make here is that the land was originally Jewish land to begin with. History does support this claim as the Roman Empire took over Judaea in the early first century and then subsequently exterminated and enslaved the Jews in the region renaming the area to Syria Palaestina about 100 years later.
You're presenting the standard Zionist narrative, a sanitized version of history that conveniently omits the actual ideology at play. Your entire argument is built to portray a European colonial project as a desperate search for "safety", if it ever had been about "safety" then why did they reject the Ugandan land they were offered? They needed a myth that justified their colonialism, which they had learned from the European colonizers whom they openly admired in their letters.
Let's correct the record. First, you claim Zionism was just a reaction to antisemitism, not the cause of the conflict. This is a deliberate misrepresentation. Political Zionism was a confident and proactive colonial project, growing from the exact same soil of European nationalism and race theory as antisemitism itself. The early Zionist leadership were not "traumatized victims" at all. They were confident Europeans, operating in the same intellectual environment as the "Scramble for Africa" who saw themselves as a superior people with the right to colonize. This wasn't some abstract theory, but their explicit worldview. As one of their key leaders, Chaim Weizmann noted: "The British told us that there are some hundred thousand negroes [kushim in Hebrew] and for those there is no value." - Weizmann, quoted by Arthur Ruppin in: Yosef Heller, Bama'avak Lamedinah , Jerusalem, 1984, p.140.
This colonial mindset is also why your second claim, that the focus on Palestine was just a pragmatic choice that only became central after Balfour, is historical nonsense. The proof is again the Zionist leadership's rejection of the Uganda offer. If the goal was simply to find a safe haven for worried Jews, a vast territory in Africa would have been the logical answer. They refused it because Zionism was never just about safety. It was a nationalist colonial project with a specific, predetermined target, and their argument was about claiming the right to do what other Europeans were doing i.e. conquering and colonizing a land inhabited by people they had already, in their own words, dismissed as having "no value."
Finally, and most cynically, you absurdly present the ancient and laughable claim to "Judea" as if it were a legitimate historical justification. You're framing a modern political maneuver as some kind of ancient "right". The secular, European, and atheist founders of Zionism did not even believe in the religious basis of this claim at all. They saw the biblical narrative noting more as useful myth-making tools to justify their colonialism. They weaponized these ancient stories, which they themselves viewed as superstition, for the very modern purpose of justifying the dispossession of the native population and legitimizing their colonial project. It was a calculated propaganda strategy, not a reclamation of faith. A faith in which they didn't even believe in, but which they were cynically weaponizing.
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As far as I understand, they've made many offers to release the hostages in exchange for their own people or for other concessions. You can track the negotiations pretty well, although occasionally the diplomats get bombed for some reason.
Diplomats - who don't even live in the strip - were recently (unsuccessfully) bombed.
If Hamas wants to end the war (or supposed genocide) then they can release the hostages with no additional demands. The fact that the supposed genocide victims choose to continue the war is quite the sign that this is not genocide, in what other situation would a victim choose to continue a war that is a genocide against his people?
The victims are the 60k+ dead people (including children), stop confusing things, you know this.
No one here is defending Hamas
They've offered! Israel's government is demonstrably not interested in the hostages.
The never offered to release all of the hostages, they always insisted on holding some back.
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The war could stop at any minute, if only Netanyahu stops it.
Why would Netanyahu stop the war? It is the only pressure on Hamas.
The way war usually works, is the side that feels it has something to loose, sues for peace by making concessions. However the international backing of Hamas has ensured them that they have nothing to loose, and everything to gain, by attacking the Jewish state.
it's not a war Netanyahu is killing innocent people and taking a full population hostage.
Also, most of the people in Gaza are not Hamas members and are regular civilians. What Natanyahu is doing is basically analog to the following:
A killer take a member of your family as a hostage (Hamas in this case is the killer) so you decide to kill a member of their family every hour until they release your beloved one. Do you think that this is acceptable or are you trying to make it acceptable?
Do you know why you have so many videos of buildings being destroyed in the Gaza strip? Because Israel warns away civilians before destroying them. Doesn't sound to me like Israel is trying to kill civilians.
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Conclusion:
" 251. The Commission’s analysis in this report relates solely to the determination of genocide under the Genocide Convention as it relates to the responsibility of the State of Israel both for the failure to prevent genocide, for committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023 and for the failure to punish genocide. The Commission also notes that, while its analysis is limited to the Palestinians specifically in Gaza during the period since 7 October 2023, it nevertheless raises the serious concern that the specific intent to destroy the Palestinians as a whole has extended to the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory, that is, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, based on Israeli authorities’ and Israeli security forces’ actions therein, and to the period before 7 October 2023. The events in Gaza since 7 October 2023 have not occurred in isolation, as the Commission has noted. They were preceded by decades of unlawful occupation and repression under an ideology requiring the removal of the Palestinian population from their lands and its replacement.
252. The Commission concludes on reasonable grounds that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to commit the following actus reus of genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, namely (i) killing members of the group; (ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (iii) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and (iv) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
253. On incitement to genocide, the Commission concludes that Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, have incited the commission of genocide and that Israeli authorities have failed to take action against them to punish this incitement. The Commission has not fully assessed statements by other Israeli political and military leaders, including Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Minister for Finance Bezalel Smotrich, and considers that they too should be assessed to determine whether they constitute incitement to commit genocide.
254. On the mens rea of genocide, the Commission concludes that statements made by Israeli authorities are direct evidence of genocidal intent. In addition, the Commission concludes that the pattern of conduct is circumstantial evidence of genocidal intent and that genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference that could be drawn from the totality of the evidence. Thus, the Commission concludes that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have had and continue to have the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
255. The Commission concludes that the State of Israel bears responsibility for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide and the failure to punish genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."
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That's why the mens rea element is also an element of the crime. You've completely skipped over that part of the report and the conclusion.
Which is completely based on trying to analyze the reactions of politicians to an attack that included mass killings of civilians, intense brutality and mass rape. surprise surprise these are filled with anger and do not read like a swedish minister reaction to migrant birds. These are not different than the USA post 9/11.
Even if you take these statements, and add everything that happened on the ground for the last two years, comparing it to the Armenian, Rawandian or Jewish genocides is a joke of epic proportions. It's a very minor war even in Middle Eastern terms, compared to the recent Syrian or Yemen civil wars or the American involvement in Iraq
> And let's find a war where clauses I, II, and III do not apply
When these clauses apply against civilian populations, they are war crimes or crimes against Humanity, or both.
Can you name a war in which members of a group weren't killed, or serious bodily or mental harm wasn't caused to a members of a group?
That is a straw man. The criterion is deliberate targeting of civilian populations. The US is known for having occasionally bombed a wedding party, but in Gaza, 80% of the victims were civilians. That’s a war crime and closer to WWII extermination campaigns than any modern military conflict involving western militaries. We are not talking about collateral damage from a drone strike, that’s systematic levelling of entire cities. You have to go back to things like Dresden and the Tokyo firebombings to find western equivalents.
Hospitals and journalists were deliberately bombed. That’s a war crime and the closest example of a western military doing it is Russia in Ukraine.
Emergency shelters and food distribution centres were deliberately targeted. That’s a war crime and again, there is no western equivalent.
Then there’s the pogroms on the West Bank.
When your argument is that a country’s behaviour is not as bad as ethnically cleansing in some African countries or WWII, your argument is really desperate.
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I don't see the corollary here.
The definition used here is so broad, any killing of any member of a group, without any relation to number ("part") or tactics can qualify as a genocide.
Never ceases to amuse me how people tend to cling to a position unconsciosly, then try to rationalize this unconscios act.
US and west are all about some perceived genocide, while inside Israel, half want to surrender to Hamas or whoever because hostages, and the other half had had enough (of almost 80-year war) and just want to be done with it, and the third half wants to study Tora and do nothing, but be fed by the other two halves.
This is ridiculous and very bloody.
Can we please just be rational?
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Why is this posted on a tech news site?
From the guidelines:
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics... unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Do you truly think that this news story is showing “some interesting new phenomenon”?
I am not one to talk as an Israeli Jew who clearly disagrees with the entire bullshit premise of the article… but either way, the story is only saying things that people have been (incorrectly) claiming for months
Obviously we moderators are not present in the region, nor are we experts on the topic. That applies to almost every story that appears on HN. The “some interesting new phenomenon” is that – according to the title – ”top UN legal investigators” have made this finding. That's what we call "significant new information" about this topic. It's not for us to judge whether this finding is accurate or not; as I said, we're not there, we're not experts. But the discussion thread allows abybody with any particular knowledge on the topic to share their perspective.
I wonder the same. It’s odd to see it still here given the low quality of the discussion. And it is flooded by mischaracterizations, misinformation, and one-sided hyperbolic takes. I wonder what the right space or format is to have debates like this but in an effective way, rather than sides trying to win.
However dismayed you are by the low quality of the discussion, I promise you it bothers us even more. It's awful.
Not only that but whenever a thread like this appears, tomhow and I end up spending all day on it, which is by far the worst part of the job. I don't mean to complain—that would be grotesque, given the suffering that's going on—but rather to say how much easier it would be if HN did not discuss this or similar topics at all.
But I don't think that's an option. It wouldn't be consistent with the values or the mandate of this site as I understand them, and it's our duty to try to be as true to those as we can. I want to be able to look back and say we did our best at that, even though the outcomes are this bad. I tried to explain this in a recent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403787, though I don't know how successfully.
The upshot is that there's no good option and no way out. Maybe experiencing that is the best we can do to honor what's happening. It feels congruent with the situation being discussed, albeit in the trivial form that everything on an internet forum takes.
Serious question: Firstly, have you ever thought about the fact that one, posts like this alienate Israelis from one of the few remaining tech news sources which made them feel safe by excluding politics? (If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, in 2023, I realised that I could no longer read The Verge due to pervasive and horrendous misinformation about Israel on a tech news site) Secondly, given the havoc that posts like this cause and that it appears to not meet any of the rules for posts on Hacker News (clearly not tech or programming related and quite frankly, no more interesting to any person in tech than any other person), why do you allow this post to still exist?
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Because Israel is a part of the tech news cycle.
I don't understand this complaint. Are you the editor of this site?
Habr, the russian speaking HN-alike, was "outside of politics" too. That didn't end well for either Habr or posters there. For large issues like this, abstinence is complicity.
@dang isn’t this the exact kind of story HN isn’t supposed to have?
See here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45267159
When a discussion like this happens on the front page then it at least provides some useful data for testing the software and moderation tactics for highly flammable subjects.
My conspiratorial mind wonders if it’s done on purpose as a fire drill, but a kind of The Office sitcom fire drill where someone lights an actual fire. (That’s an example of irresponsible behaviour, but I don’t actual think an HN/Israel fire drill is equivalently irresponsible.)
dang doesn't know what "brigading" is. not only is a topic like this always brigaded, the UN itself operates as a brigade. in terms of tech, the vast majority of the UN is tech illiterate, democracy illiterate, free speech illiterate (that latter of course is easy when you are illiterate)
This is not tech related and does not belong on hacker news
This is politics and therefore probably off-topic for hn. It not being tech-related is irrelevant.
An argument could be made that it is an "interesting new phenomenon", but the post is most likely to result in tedious flamewars regardless and so should probably be killed.
From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I would agree with you if we were in 1994 and this was about Rwanda.
Those tower blocks in Gaza that were felled on the anniversary of 9/11 were not taken down with machetes. We have got AI assisted targeting going on, with all of your favourite cloud service providers delivering value to their shareholders thanks to sales to the IDF.
The corporation that once had 'don't be evil' as their mission statement are suckling on the IDF teat along with Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Cisco.
Israel: Surrender or we'll destroy your city Hamas: Only if you let us rebuild and prepare the next war Israel: Starts destroying the city by bombing emptied buildings, these having received warning from Israel beforehand UN: Oh look, a genocide
Sure it does, if enough users find this interesting to them. I for one find this interesting.
I find it interesting and worth talking about.
I generally find HN discussions pretty interesting, but this particular topic seems to just be two groups who have zero chance of changing their minds hurling misinformation and propaganda at each other.
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Looks like the Zionist flagger bots are in full force here, you are all pathetic
This is a genocide.
A tech-enabled one.
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Edit: since you've posted egregiously like this before and have ignored our requests to stop, I've banned the account.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44738555 (July 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44362828 (June 2025)
Bottom-of-the-barrel antisemitism ought to be the easiest thing in the world to avoid, regardless of your views or feelings about the ongoing situation. In any case, there's no place for it on Hacker News—never has been and never will.
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rimunroe is correct, you've repeated a classic antisemitic trope. We ban accounts that post like that, so please don't post like that again.
It's entirely possible, and ought to be entirely easy, to make any substantive point you have without any of that.
What Israel is doing is reprehensible, but you're promoting a classic antisemetic myth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel
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Intentionally killing children will never be justified, everything else serves as a decoy from acknowledging this simple fact.
Israel does not intentionally kill children. Hamas does. They state it clearly.
Quite a few thousand killed by Israel, or are you claiming that's not true?
I wouldn’t call those intentional. Collateral damage in a defensive war against terrorists who are hiding among civilians is different from intentionally seeking to kill children as your only objective.
I agree that thousands of children have been killed in Gaza - by both Israel and Hamas. Trying to pin all of them on Israel only encourages Hamas to kill more.
Even if Israel is definitively shown to be genocidal, what the hell do you do with that? Because the result of that determination is that you now have a conflict where both sides are genocidal against the other. How do you pick a side in that scenario without implicitly supporting genocide? Do you try to determine whether Palestinian lives are worth more or less than Israeli/Jewish lives, using your own arithmetic? Try to argue that some forms of genocide aren't really genocide when you "really think about it"?
I think it's an impossible problem from an ethics perspective.
Quite the opposite actually.
You're free to Google the countless cases of Israel deliberately killing children, but I doubt you wanna get out of your echo chamber.
My echo chamber? I read the Gazan and other Arab telegram channels in Arabic. I write back and forth with people in Gaza (Gazans, who live there) every few days. You levy at me unfounded accusations.
Nobody in israel's army is aiming at children except maybe for some people turning crazy because of the war, which happens in every war.
Pretending otherwise is just blatant propaganda.
you were downvoted because people don't have any argument against your point : jews couldn't stop the holocaust by just surrendering, like hamas does.
The two situations have absolutely nothing in common.
So as long as there is one Hamas left standing, everyone around must die. This is what you mean?
Edit: can the non-Hamas surrender and avoid getting killed? They can't and the situations on the ground aren't that different. A Warzaw and Gazan survivor would have a lot in common.
So as long as there is one Hamas left standing, he could return the hostages and end the war.
So, you don't disagree. That's pretty telling.
Nor do you. Why can’t Hamas surrender and turn over hostages? Why should Israel put up with a continued threat against its residents of any magnitude?
Can the non-Hamas surrender and live? No, they can just stay and die. Tell me, what should a non-Hamas member in Gaza do right now to avoid getting bombed?
Edit: I found your answer to that question:
https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=45268680&goto=threads%...
Paraphrased, the children are part of the culture and may die. There are no civilians.
But you are correct - the responsibility to end the war and prevent further civilian casualties lies squarely with Hamas. Pressure them to return the hostages, don't pressure Israel to capitulate to terrorists.
Except in practice, IDF bombs "safe" areas too. There's no out.
But it seems you are getting your way, we will find out exactly how many dead are acceptable to mr Bibi.
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That's if the Israeli army won't kill the captives after they're freed.
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That sounds like you're flirting with holocaust denial. We ban that sort of account, so no more of this please.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Not so much "lies" as "a people having a genocide committed against them does not make them constitutionally incapable of ever committing one themselves in the future." For several reasons, including that it was different people (only 7% of Holocaust survivors are still alive) and that 'nation,' as a conceptual construct, still carries the same weaknesses that it did when a relatively few voices in Germany used that construct to rally the masses to commit atrocities against their own citizens (and the people in their temporarily-conquered territory) for being 'the wrong kind' of people.
"It's not wrong when we're doing it" is an old, old failing of human empathy and sense of justice.
In fact, I think trauma often makes the victims more likely to perpetuate violence.
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zionists still trying to deceive people with misleading analogies while pretending that their apartheid ethno-state can just start its origin story at october 7th [1]. I wonder what kind of individual still buys into these false and lazy zionist narratives.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
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Cited from the full report:
255. The Commission concludes that the State of Israel bears responsibility for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide and the failure to punish genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The reality is that it would take a court to find guilt and it's not their place to conclude guilt on someone not even subject to their accusation.
It literally says they bear responsibility for the commission of genocide. Did you fail to... read the one sentence you were responding to?
You forgot to read the "commission of genocide" part.
I see that the person we replied to edited their comment. It originally said something along the lines of "that just says they failed to prevent genocide."
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>The problem is the only alternative solution the pro palestinian crowd is suggesting is basically that israel should lie down and die.
IIRC theres a plan among arab states that would call for a DMZ between Israel and Palestine, theres just no way that Israel would accept their troops manning that DMZ. So it would have to be the US or UN troops manning that border and they dont want to.
>It's one of the most dehumanising things ever. "stay here and become a casualty statistic because that is the most convenient way to fulfill our political agenda."
IIRC Israel tried to pay them to leave and they wouldnt. They want to be returned to their land. Your complaint here is basically "Why wont they let Israel finish their ethnic cleansing" which is more disgusting than your implication.
> Also don't deal with israel consistently in bad faith and then expect them and their supporters to care about what you think.
I have never once, in my entire life discussing this issue, going back 10-15 years seen an Israeli government supporter argue anything in good faith. Would love to see that change.
>Just for the record i think this report is a fabrication and for those that say plenty of Israelis oppose what's going on in gaza i will respond that none of them can suggest any better alternative.
Is there a single alternative to "We will slowly take their land" that Israel would accept? They certainly wouldnt be happy if a neighbor absorbed palestine. They wont ever accept Arab League soldiers manning a DMZ. They will refuse to hand back parts of the West Bank and Golan Heights that they have occupied "For Security".
That means the only viable solution is a Single State. They should rehome the refugees, return them to their land, and get over it. Deal with Hamas as the internal matter it is.
>That means the only viable solution is a Single State. They should rehome the refugees, return them to their land, and get over it. Deal with Hamas as the internal matter it is.
I'm sorry but that's insane. Did you not hear about what happened on October 7? And the reaction on the palestinian street? If Israel would do as you suggest then the world would find out what real genocide is.
A good solution that should satisfy everyone would be to offer a couple million palestinians a new life in any of the dozen arab states that exist and are much bigger then israel. They will get enough money to set themselves up and a pathway to citizenship in their adopted country. In short treating them like every other refugee in history, just much better. I've done the calculations, if 2 million palestinian get offered 50k dollars each, including children plus whatever they can get for selling their house this scheme would cost $100 billion dollars, which actually kind of makes sense seeing how much this war is costing. It might cost something in that ballpark to rebuild gaza anyway. You can call that whatever you want, but i'd say that is the path to an optimal outcome for all sides. (actually i like that idea so much i think it deserves the Nobel prizes in the peace and economic categories.)
Or you can get hung up about ethnic cleansing and gaza stays a hellhole for the next 20 years and increasingly overpopulated.
Israel being inconvenienced is not "Real Genocide"
A financial resolution to complete Israeli ethnic cleansing is unlikely.
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What stat are you using for current Palestinian population during this conflict? Any good estimate of the deaths to hunger over the next few years?
I don't believe that the charges in the report require success either way, but it would help with your statistics.
Even according to Hamas own numbers, 60,000 Palestinians died, 200 from starvation. That's very low compared to real genocides. That's very low considering Israel killed an estimated 10,000 of Hamas soldiers. That's pretty good accuracy in all modern standards of war.
A 1:6 ratio for civilian deaths is not a good civilian casualty ratio by the standards of modern warfare. Russia in Ukraine is currently achieving a rate of about 1:3, and that's a country that's currently considered rather brutal as far as civilian casualty rates go. The US in the Iraq War managed urban operations with kill ratios better than 1:1.
Have you seen how small and remote the villages are where Russia and Ukraine are fighting? Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on earth and the fighters are not wearing uniforms and are directly embedded in civilian population centers.
What is the number in Mariupol ? A hell of a lot higher than 1:3.
According to Wikipedia between 25 and 33 thousand Bosnians and Croats were killed in the Bosnian genocide. Thus your argument doesn't hold, unless you contend that there was no genocide in Bosnia either.
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I literally wrote "AI summary" at the top because I copy and pasted it from google. If there was a genocide there would be many more palestinians dead, full stop. There would not be evacuation zones, humanitarian corridors, leaflets, announced bombings, etc. It would be trivial to simply kill everyone in Gaza, it is very obviously within their power.
Israel is fully dependent on the support it receives from western governments, and it knows that support will vanish if it wages a loud open genocide and brags about it. So no, it's not trivially in their power to kill everyone in Gaza, as Israel would cease to exist if they did that.
...Hence why it is very obviously not waging a genocide.
Are you arguing that whether something does or doesn't genocide can the boiled down to a percentage. As it turns out, a lot of people disagree with that view.
Yep, it’s odd to call it a genocide when their population has been growing continuously, and significantly. Israel can’t both be a highly effective genocidal force and also failing to actually succeed at the outcomes of a genocide.
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This specific political topic is on the top of everyone's mind. If the US president was assassinated, would you say the same? If your child was killed for political reasons, would you continue your blissful mornings aloof?
This specific political topic is absolutely not the top of everyone's mind. The number of people on HN that this tangibly affects is frankly miniscule.
Most of HN is American. It's on the other side of the world. It has about as much actual effect on the typical American as the just as bad events currently unfolding in Sudan.
The exact mindset, rhetoric, and politics which caused this are affecting everyone. It drives both right and left politics for over a decade now all over the West - so also in America -, and if you care about yourself or anybody (or your stocks) in 10-20 years time, you should pay close attention to the consequences of this.
I really don't see the connection between yet more war in the middle east, especially one that is more or less equally supported by both America's parties, and American stock prices over a decade from now.
Then check Netanyahu’s politics.
This thread's numbers betray you. You're living under a rock if you think this topic isn't a regular at the highest political levels, on the news, and now frankly at the ballot box.
To follow up on my other comment: if you look at actual numbers, not only is Israel/Gaza not in the top 5 issues for US voters right now, it isn't even in the top 5 global issues ignoring everything domestic.
Gaza may have better marketing than Sudan, but both Gaza and Sudan affect US voters about the same amount, and people vote accordingly.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/19/americans...
Those numbers you referenced have nothing to do with the topic. We aren't talking about "americans’ views of global threats". As I saw from your other comment, you're just living under a rock and you know it.
> We aren't talking about "americans’ views of global threats".
That...is in fact exactly the topic of conversation? I can't help you with this one.
Eh. I doubt it. Show some receipts.
"There is war in the middle east, still/again" is not novel to anyone old enough to have experienced the headline multiple times over. What's happening right now is only mildly worse than the last few times this has happened.
The headline "Palestinians attack Israel, in response Israel bombs hospital where Palestinians may have been hiding" belongs in every decade since the Korean war.
If you think anywhere near a majority of voters consider this a top-5 issue in the US, especially considering the near-identical stance of both major parties on the subject, you're living in a bubble.
> What's happening right now is only mildly worse than the last few times this has happened.
So you _are_ living under a rock, okay.
Why makes you think this is such a hot issue? It's a sporting event.
Two teams of murderous rapists are fighting one another, everyone has their favorite team, and if someone thinks someone else supports a different team they say "how can you support those murderous rapists! Just look what they did to the innocent people on my side!"
It's an opportunity for people to be tribal about something that, for the overwhelming majority of people, will never affect them the slightest bit.
We all are. Some of us are just aware of it.
I'd find this is one of the safer and more civil places to discuss these kind of topics.
And I feel like less than 1% of front page topics are political, and you're certainly not obliged to open them... yet somehow this made it "goodbye" for you?
The “hide” feature works really well for me in respect of the feelings you are expressing. It’s like the zapper tool in uBlock origin (a browser plugin that lets you delete DOM elements with a single click.)
Clicking hide and seeing something disappear forever is actively cathartic. I don’t do it often but it’s very helpful when I do. Give a try?
You know you can just not click on “comments” underneath the headline. Right? Are your views so fragile that you can’t even bear to see a viewpoint discordant with your own?
like you i largely came to hn to enjoy an intellectual conversational space away from the sensational political garbage of mainstream media. whatever you think of this submission that is still largely true: we are here, there is openness alongside thoughtful moderation in the comments. that said, this report speaks to my humanity, it should speak to anyone's humanity. if true, it's generationally profound. if intelligence is worth anything, its the possibility that we can change this course of history for the better, and that it's not something left as lesson in textbooks for our grandchildren
> political news
How come factual genocide is "political news"?
Exceptionally smart people are found on HN, and topics like these transcend technology enough to demand input from brighter minds. Go to lobste.rs if you want news only affecting the "Essential" tech world.
Best of luck.
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Hi, your comment is exactly the kind of thing I don't come to hackernews to read.
Well lucky for us your preferences don’t dictate what’s allowed on this forum.
Then don't read it. I'm big headed, but not so much so to believe I can control your eyeballs to make you read my comment.
Ultimately sharing opinions is a two way street. If you want to share yours and be met with absolute silence, then it might be time to start working on that interdimensional transporter and teleport away to an alternate reality.
Or move to Russia or something. I don't know.
Point is, your comfort is not something I care about. Not in a rude way, but just in a pragmatic way. If I had to care about the comfort of every random person, I wouldn't be able to say anything, ever.
And, for the record, I don't want to hear about Israel either. Nobody does.
Why? Because it sucks. Regardless of "which side" you're on, it sucks. People are dying, children are starving, bullets are blazing, and humanity is hurt.
But I listen. Because it's important. For humanity, for my country, and for me. Even if you're perfectly selfish, the selfish thing to do is to listen and pay close attention.
Once again, that's not Israel's money. That's not gazas war. If you think you're somehow exempt from this, then you're not selfish, you're much worse - you're naive.
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You can be kept on the brink of starvation just like you can keep a cup hanging over the edge of a table. It's a manufactured famine, therefore it can be created with precision. Unlike the potato famine in Ireland, it's controlled and they literally count calories going in (before cutting it to 0).
So according to that logic, Israel is intentionally orchestrating a "brink of starvation" which generates for it negative publicity but is very careful to ensure nobody actually starves. Why would be the strategy in that according to you?
Because they thought actual famine would be worse. They didn't realize how little the US would care.
If your analysis is entirely headline based I can see why you might be confused. There are several levels of starvation, and Israel has progressively put Gaza through each. Complaining at each step is absolutely valid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_scales
Given all the hatred that is going around, I believe the genocide is real. And if it's not real yet, it will be if someone doesn't put a stop to this.
But all the reporting does not add up.
Half the pictures Hamas shows of starving children aren't legitimate. They're children with medical conditions, not in Gaza, or from a different conflict.
The number of people starving to death each day are in the single or low double digits. If what was said was really true, there would be tens of thousands of people dead by now.
And I don't believe a single thing Israel says either. How many tunnels were actually found under hospitals? Definitely at least one. Definitely not all of them.
A little truth makes all the lies more believable.
> If what was said was really true, there would be tens of thousands of people dead by now.
But that is exactly the claim. What is your argument here? You say there cannot be a genocide because genocide is too awful?
“Half the pictures Hamas shows of starving children aren't legitimate. They're children with medical conditions, not in Gaza, or from a different conflict.”
This seems like a strong claim. Please back it up.
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Israel seems like a very ineffective bully considering that the UN consistently condemns them the most vs. any other country in the world.
https://unwatch.org/un-condemns-israel-17-times-6-on-rest-of...
But for me, this says more about the nature of the UN than that of Israel.
Are they?
Yossi Cohen the director at Mossad used the photo of the ICC judge’s husband to threaten her not to rule aginst Israel.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/28/israel...
UNRWA -as tens of thousands of people| in Gaza, mostly locals. What would be surprising is if no-one of them supported Hamas.
regarding the number of condemnations: the un is directly involved in gaza, and has been for 70 years. At the same time, the US has blocked any binding resolution in the security council.
At the same time Israel is supposed to be the only democracy in the middle east, and thus subscribe totl the values that funded the UN. That makes it's transgressions feel even worse to many - myself included.
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At this point any Israel supporter can’t really afford to care about anybody’s opinion on human rights, so it doesn’t matter who is saying this. I’m sure the UN doesn’t expect their report to influence the people committing the genocide they are documenting: they hope to influence the rest of the world.
Students in the USA had their images posted on the sides of vans / trucks for protesting genocide. That may not be directly funded by the state of Israel, but it's difficult to squint and not see that this is a direct result of their lobbying and / or the lobbying of groups they support or who act on their behalf.
In what way has Israel bullied members on the HR council?
I couldn't find any info on intimidation of HR council members. Nevertheless there were reports of the Israeli Mossad chief intimidating the ICC chief prosecutor at the time Fatou Bensouda. [1]
Her successor Karim Khan has also reported threats were made. He was later implicated in a sex scandal [2]. It would not surprise me if this was a Mossad sting operation.
[1] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240528-israels-mossad-ch... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgeg738rvdeo
Edit: as the sibling comment states, the Americans have put in place sanctions against members of the HR council, along members of the ICC.
They use America to sanction the participants: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/07/09/us-sanctions... Just one example of many.
Inb4 whining that it's just the American government being slavishly loyal to the Zionist cause and the Zionist government of Israel has nothing at all to do with this. I swear to god if I get any response like this I will literally go blind from my eyeballs doing full 360s in my skull.
The US will bully them on Israel's behalf.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/trump-administrat...
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The right's split thinking on this issue is largely a split down generational lines. The balance of the split is shifting as old people die. The Zionist faction of the left is almost dead already, and on the right it will still take some more years, but once that's done, America's support for Israel will have expired.
I think Israel realizes they're on borrowed time, and that's why they've adopted such an overtly aggressive strategy of getting what they want now, making their strategic goals a fait accompli while still receiving protection from America. With America out of the picture, Israel goes the way of Rhodesia.
The support for Israel was always higher for older people, and that goes back all the way to the 70's as far as I could tell. Something about being young and impressible, captured by the Palestinian ethos, until people grow up.
When you say "Going by the way of Rhodesia" do you mean Israelis will just scatter away, the remaining ones will be under constant threat of violence?
No, it's because American boomers are crazy Christians who think that they must ensure that Israel continues to exist, no matter how much evil it perpetrates, because apparently their schizo book says the existence of Israel is a prerequisite for the resurrection of their Messiah who will then usher in the Apocalypse. Old people in America don't support Israel because they're smarter or more mature, it's because they're insane retards. Young people are abandoning these American churches, and largely religion in general. They haven't been brainwashed into supporting Israel like the boomers were.
BTW, Israel going the way of Rhodesia is unavoidable. Depending on how things go, it might happen in a few years, or twenty years, but as surely as baby boomers all eventually die, so too will Israel die.
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Antisemitism is back, with its nasty conspiracy theories, jews as baby killers, controlling the world, involved in any news item.
Good thing Zionism was invented exactly to counter that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_assassinations
Everyone here is talking about Israel, even the person with the wild comment about Epstein and Kirk.
It is common for a minority of people to say similarly wild things about the US, Russia, China, and so on.
No, it is uncommon to attribute to Russia the set of racist stereotypes that relate to Jews.
For example, I never saw an opinion that thinks that Russia control the media or world finance, while the above is attributed to jews since before nazis.
In the above example, it is very common for people to have a paranoid obsession with looking for Jews/Israel as an explanation for any news, and that is also a centuries old pastime
Almost certainly
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> Reality: The report was written by a 3 person UNHRC commission, which itself is seated by Ethiopia, Congo, Sudan, and Qatar.
Your framing that "3 people from Ethiopia/Congo/Sudan/Qatar wrote the report" is both incorrect and deeply racist.
Edit: and to make it clear, the report was authored by the "Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel" which is made up of the following three members:
- Ms. Navanethem Pillay (South Africa)
- Mr. Miloon Kothari (India)
- Mr. Chris Sidoti (Australia)
You can read more about the commission here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-israel/index
That's not how I phrased it. I said that this is a 3-person report commissioned by the UNHRC. I then mentioned known human rights abusers who chair the UNHRC.
I had to look this up on Wikipedia and remembered this is the 19 year old UNHRC. They have never been objective in regards to the Middle East conflict.
It's easy to confuse them with the UNHCR, which I believe is a reputable body.
I'm sorry but Qatar is part of neutral commission? Israel just bombed them. It was a bad for Israel to do, but this isn't "third-party."
And Sudan is having a home grown genocide right now...
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Ok, lets imagine a scenario where there are 2 developed countries right next to each other that hate each other. One raids the other and kills some people. Generally you might sanction a raid against the military targets that supported the raid, or perhaps targeted removal of the head of state or something.
But thats not the case here. Israel herded these people into this open air prison, removing them from and then settling their land. And kept them bottled up next to their settlements.
The only moral way to approach this situation would be for it to have never developed in the first place. Failing that, you would work to undo it. Heck, as you return every single refugee to their land, you can process them to see if they are a hamas fighter and jail them.
This is the truth of the matter. As Israel uses force to contain Gazans, they are effectively their government. They cant have Electricity, or Internet without Israeli approval. They cant pass border checkpoints without Israeli approval. The Israeli military frequently raids them. They do get black vanned and sent to Israeli prisons all the time. They are defacto Israeli subjects.
Therefore, this isnt a matter of warfare, this is a matter of policing. A civilian response would be best. There is no second country, and the people who benefit most from pretending there is a pseudo state in Gaza, are the Israelis, who use it to justify asymmetric warfare.
I don’t believe questions like that are asked in good faith. Maybe you are the exception, but I have seen too many people begin with exactly this question, and then end up justifying the Gaza genocide.
In case you are asking in good faith—and following the HN guidelines—I suggest you abandon this question and consider that maybe this is the wrong question to ask given the situation. If that is hard, then I ask you to consider that indigenous resistance against settler colonial violence has been a pretext for countless colonial oppression in the past, including many genocides.
Calling someone directly out/impugning their motives instead of responding is actually a violation of the HN guidelines. You can respond to topics, not posters. You are the one in violation.
This isn't the first time I've seem this 'you aren't in good faith' response on this topic, and is partly why again, HN just isn't a place where a real discussion can be had on this subject.
I want to be clear that my first sentence was speaking generally and not accusing my parent directly of being in bad faith. And in keeping with the spirit of HN I responded to my parent assuming good faith.
Otherwise you are right, I have accused others of being in bad faith on this topic, however when I do so, I tend to do it after many more interactions than what I have had with my parent above.
'Maybe you are the exception' isn't keeping in the spirit. You definitely called the person out lowkey without calling them out, then told them the question they asked was off limits instead of answering it, justifying violence in the process.
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They have repeatedly hampered the entry of baby formula, a clear pattern of actions to stunt childhood development, increase childhood mortality and dissuade the population from having more children.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-hampering-entry-of...
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/07/01/i...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/22/gaza-i...
Why can't it come in through Egypt?
Because Israel controls that border crossing:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/7/israel-takes-control...
Even before this they had effective control of all goods moving through since 2007.
Consistent with the precedent set by the USA. Of course, they didn’t just hamper, they blew up the factory itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_pharmaceutical_factor...
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Gaza is dependent on Israel's permission. Food aid is provided by the UN and other humanitarian organisations, they require Israel's permission to bring that aid into Gaza and not attack it (n.b. attempts since 2010 to deliver aid by boat, such as the MV Rachel Corrie, have been attacked in international waters and the aid never reached Gaza). Israel destroyed the power and water desalination plants, making Gaza dependent on their supply, which has since been used as a weapon.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/07/thirst-weapo... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1w0l3q4zd0o
Why can't Gaza supply itself? There is farmland in Gaza. The Mediterranean sea is right there - plenty of fish.
Other folks are free to Google the answers to these questions.
If they haven't yet, what will get them to look?
Since '93, the range allowed for Palestinian fishing boats has been reduced from 20 to 3 nautical miles by Israeli naval vessels. Because primarily only young fish are found that close to the shore, and because constant damage to infrastructure means untreated wastewater is being dumped close by, it's a pretty bleak picture.
I suspect you haven't heard that Gaza is under a blockade for decades?
Why's it under blockade?
> The attack on Gaza’s largest fertility clinic destroyed thousands of embryos, sperm samples, and eggs.
More info on that particular attack: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15npnzpd08o
According to the article, nobody actually knows when the attack took place. And the BBC is assuming that it was an Israel attack, even though 1/3 to 1/6 of Hamas rockets fall back into Gaza - that is disingenuous. Furthermore, the single photograph of the clinic shows absolutely zero kinetic damage. How does an Israeli shell or bomb leave no kinetic damage? The Hamas rockets leave little to no kinetic damage as they are fuel-air bombs, not HE.
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You can read up about the members of the Pillay commission, the "Top UN legal investigators", yourself. It is just ridiculous. Reminder that thousands of rockets rained on Israel on October 7th.
Crying genocide after such an attack when your enemy retaliates and retaliates very harshly in the context of middle eastern politics will never be reasonable. Hamas is free to surrender and everything would stop tomorrow.
I quoted from the report, you can make up your mind yourself. But you already did anyway.
Pillay is from the Apartheid crew, that just ignores a side of this conflict. A side that is very much not tolerant of everyone else. Bad and unconvincing report.
Reminder that Israel razed hundreds of Palestinian villages to the ground in 1948, and expelled half the Palestinian population from their homeland. Israel has always wanted to ethnically cleanse Palestine of the indigenous population. It has resisted any diplomatic route to a two-state solution, going as far as financing Hamas because Fatah was moving towards a peaceful resolution, and Hamas was seen as an adversary against whom ethnic cleansing would be easier to justify.
Israel is quite literally built on top of the ruins of Palestinian villages. The zionist project has always required an ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population, because the project's goal is to build an ethnostate. This is just culminating in the current genocide.
> Israel is quite literally built on top of the ruins of Palestinian villages
The entire region was historically Jewish. As a simple example, consider the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. It is literally built on the ruins of a Jewish temple from BC times. That is long before any Arabs lived in the area, and long before Islam was invented.
There’s also no such thing as a “Palestinian village” because there is no such identity as Palestinian in truth. There’s just Islamic Arabs who tried to take over this land and claim it is their homeland when their homeland is really elsewhere.
> It has resisted any diplomatic route to a two-state solution
There were at least 5 different offers for a two-state solution historically. The people calling themselves “Palestinian” rejected every one of those. The real reason that can be deduced from this, is that they just don’t want a Jewish state to exist anywhere in any capacity.
Yeah, almost as many people as Jews were driven out of surrounding countries. I don't think headcounts do serve any sensible argument.
There is a lot of fiction in your post and I am not surprised that you have a problem with the existence of Israel.
You do realize Israel committed terrorist attacks against Arab Jews to make them flee their countries, right?
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> I find it funny people still find the UN legitimate. They still haven't criticised Hamas attack
I find it funny that you have to lie so much. They did, it's easy to find. My father is from a Christian orphanage in east Jerusalem. My grandmother hosted sisters and priests from Israel who worked in schools, hospice and orphanage all over the two countries. UN school programs there had a lot of issues, but being religious (Hamas was a religious group before being a terrorist one) or close to Hamas wasn't one (having no heating in schools during winter and having to sometime amputate toes from 10 year old was probably the biggest issue that I remember).
UNRWA schoolbooks for you: https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/UNRWA-Education...
and first UN general assembly resolution condemning hamas attack is the one from the past week that speaks about recognition of palestinian state.
unless you can find different one
United Nations General Assembly Resolution ES-10/21 (Oct. 27th 2023):
> Condemning all acts of violence aimed at Palestinian and Israeli civilians, including all acts of terrorism and indiscriminate attacks, as well as all acts of provocation, incitement and destruction
https://docs.un.org/en/A/ES-10/L.25
The UN has been condemning the Hamas terrorist attacks from the start.
no condemnation of hamas attack. no mention of hamas. generic one that was mixed in into condemnation of israeli response.
This resolution didn’t mention the IDF either, nor any other Zionist terror groups. Why do you want the UN to single out Hamas here? The wording was quite clear and it is easy for anybody reading this who they were referring to.
obviously UN wouldn't like to single out hamas which just executed mass massacre which proudly livestreamed on internet.
i wouldn't expect UN to care about it.
This resolution came 20 days into what would eventually be known as the Gaza genocide. The IDF had enganged in dozens of massacres at this point. The number of Palestinian victims was already over 6x that of the Oct 7 massacres (7326 when the resolution was published).
If the resolution was going to mention Hamas, it would also have to mention the IDF. The wording was deliberate for that reason.
It took 20 days just so they could smuggle Israel into the condemnation. Come on man, it's so obvious, it's a pattern of behavior from the UN.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre
the only attempt on genocide was hamas attempt to kill as much jews and infadels as possible. but you glance over this, because this genocide you approve of.
here is nice quote [0] : "for the past two years theHamas leadership had been talking about implementing "the last promise" (alwaed al'akhir) – a divine promise regarding the end of days, when all human beings will accept Islam. Sinwar and his circle ascribed an extreme and literal meaning to the notion of "the promise, " a belief that pervaded all their messages: in speeches, sermons, lectures in schools and universities. The cardinal theme was the implementation of the last promise, which included the forced conversion of all heretics to Islam, or their killing."
everything that followed would be eventually known as largest brainwashing by mainstream and social media.
[0] https://judaic.arizona.edu/sites/judaic.arizona.edu/files/20...
I can't refute all their findings, but it's still worth looking at the board of that org:
https://www.impact-se.org/about-us/impact-se-board-members/
For an organization ostensibly concerned with education to violence everywhere, that's a LOT of board members with direct connections to Israel.
I also think it's common sense that if an occupying force deliberately ensures your living conditions become ever worse, shoots your friends and family to death for throwing stones and eventually obliterates entire families, that you don't exactly need textbooks to develop hatred.
As for "from the Nile to the Euphrates", just ask Daniella Weiss: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-10-21/ty-article-ma...
"i can't refute the facts so i will have to do character assassination".
(i'll remind that those are books that are taught by UN agency)
the atlantic article from 1961 about unrwa camps showing that they were taught back than liberation of entire area by force and destruction of israel https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/archives/1961/10/208-4/132...
it's almost like if population is educated for violence for 50 years, it will behave violently and it will result in counter action from "occupying force"
on the other side, Israeli population is been subjected to palestinian violence for extended period. Pretty much everybody was either target of it or lost somebody to it.
Lets see what do we have in Israeli schoolbooks: https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/Arabs-and-Pales...
Yeah, they do that stuff in the pre-army courses instead.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-09-04/ty-article-op...
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-08-09/ty-article-ma...
i am talking about systemic things in education system. not about random anecdotes. also good chunk of israeli population (and even bigger chunk of those serving in army) is secular and whatever random rabi says means nothing.
but kudos on shifting goal posts.
The UN secretary general condemned it the day it happened.
https://press.un.org/en/2023/sgsm21981.doc.htm
Given the Israeli military are defacto state sponsored terrorists (see e.g. their active support of settler violence on the West Bank if you want to avoid Gaza related complaints). That means every single company in Israel is employing terrorists.
Sure. The Israel military rapes, kills, slaughter, and rob Gaza and West bank. The IDF is exactly like Hamas sure. /s if you didn't understand.
The Israelis live in the West Bank. The IDF is there to protect them. There is no violence whatsoever from the settlers. It's pure propaganda. There were a few rare times of some violence, but it's nothing compared to what the Palestinians do. Last week, two Palestinians crossed the border and murdered 6 people and 20+ injured on a bus shooting in Jerusalem. They even kill each other.
Each time the IDF comes into Palestinians "cities" to catch terrorists, they throw rocks on them.
> no violence whatsoever
The UN reported that, in the West Bank, Palestinians killed 6 Israeli settlers and 16 soldiers, while Israelis killed 719 Palestinians, from October 7, 2023, to October 7, 2024" https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-updat...
International journalists can't access Gaza, but they have witnessed first hand settler violence. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cewy88jle0eo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0pHcC0HMiQ
> while Israelis killed 719 Palestinians
Can't find it on the source you provided. The source you provided also justifies terrorists cries about their home being destroyed. It's interesting from where they get these numbers, from Palestinians?
Apologies, that was for the week ending September 30, only 695 had been killed at that stage in the West Bank. The week ending October 10 has the 719 figure for the full 365 days: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-updat...
What authority, other than the local government, would you be more comfortable with providing those numbers?
any breakdown between civilians and combatants ?
about year ago PA tried to remove Hamas and other charity organizations for Jenin and other cities (that it typically can't entered) but failed and asked Israel to intervene what Israel did.
So you have interesting situation, when Palestinian authority asks Israel to kill palestinians and than Israel is blamed for killing palestinians.
Good that you mention it, yes Israel rapes, kills, robs, as you say. https://www.btselem.org/publications/202408_welcome_to_hell
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I really do. (personal note: I never know if I should engage with these trolls, given them more visibility, or simply ignore them, risking seeing their propaganda spread)
We know they do. Now adjust what that tells you about the "first world".
Being a "first-world" country has never been incompatible with war crimes.
> Again, this is an unreliable source. It provides Palestinians testimonies. In Gaza the amount of untruthful testimonies is disgusting.
Yeah we get it, all Arabs are liars. Anyone who has sympathy for them is a liar. The Sde Teiman video is a fake and also the soldiers in it are all heroes. Israel has the most moral army in the world. IDF soldiers never post TikToks of themselves committing war crimes and laughing about it. It's not as if a person could spend 5 seconds online and find video evidence of these atrocities.
Sde Teiman MAYBE was real (there is still no proof, and it still being investigated by ISRAEL), but we're talking about terrorists whom murdered and raped people, not citizens.
TikTok is the most propagned platform currently. Not only about Gaza, but about everything. In the mean time, all the injured/starved citizens that were pictured and put on news papers were all a lie. I can also tell you I see many, many videos of sustained shops, rich food, candies and whatever first-world country has in Gaza. Give me one video please.
Where is your evidence?
It's evident for example that this thin child that was put on the front page of NYT was actually suffering from a genetic disorder. It's also evident that the pictures of Gaza citizens starving with their bowls out asking for food, was actually a complete lie (you can find pictures from the side, and not only from the front). Yet you still see those images on TikTok.
You mean Mohammad Al-Motawaq, the boy with muscular dystrophy? MD wasn't the cause of this weight loss, a lack of food was.
Unless you'd prefer to trust the word of an Israeli blogger over the childs doctors (because of their ethnicity).
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/05/nx-s1-5488798/gaza-baby-starv...
Where is your evidence to back any of your opinions?
I don't think I can even give you the benefit of the doubt of being clueless, you're just deliberately spreading false propaganda.
IDF is 100 times worse than Hamas. What do you mean?
Qualitatively, no. On the other hand, there's this saying in war, quantity is a quality its own. So, IDF looks very bad right now.
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Since 1948, on average, the IDF has killed 10x as many Palestinians that Israelis killed.
Since October 7th, that is at least 60x.
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IDF is state sponsored; they (and Israel more broadly) have a responsibility to comport themselves within the bounds of international law. If they choose not to, then they are behaving like terrorists.
"The UN is HAMAS" is certainly .. an opinion
Yes, everyone that criticizes Israel for killing and mutilating thousands of children in the most horrible ways is Hamas, we already know that...
Hamas is a terrorist organisation. Does it need to be condemned? Is Hamas a legitimate, recognised state and member of the UN? Israel is a sovereign state and member of the UN; it is therefore subject to higher standards. It should leave the UN or withdraw its staff, incl. its ambassador, if it does not like the UN.
Hamas is the government of Gaza.
AlJazeera is far better than most Western Media.
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The UN discredits itself: UNGA 2015-2023, 154 resolutions against Israel, 71 against all other countries _combined_.
Of course it stems from the anti-Israeli bias of its members: a single Jewish state against 57 Muslim states.
the number one cause of child mortality today is Israel.
That is an insane comment.
I think this was an even clearer example of the UN's anti-Israel bias: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/debunked-un-off...
Very blatant disinformation from a top UN official (leader of OCHA), no retraction or apology, and no consequences.
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Or it stems from Israel committing more war crimes than other nations
Does it seem plausible to you that during the years of the Syrian civil war, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Tigray war in Ethiopia, the war in South Sudan and countless others (conflicts which, in total, claimed the lives of millions), Israel would commit war crimes at a ratio of 2:1 against the entire world, combined?
In contrast, the number of deaths from both Israeli and Palestinian sides in the same time period was several hundreds.
It’s just proportional to the horrors it commits. Don’t blame the judge for your own crimes.
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You forgot, the West Bank, under apartheid, extreme settler violence, constant and massive home expropriation, is also khamas, although no khamas ever walked on it.
It's part of a broader phenomena: feelings over facts. Doesn't matter how many commissions say it's genocide and how much evidence is presented, people don't "feel" it is true, therefore it is not true. Zero difference between these people, climate change deniers, and anti-vaxers.
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that sounds like IDF propaganda and their credibility is basically non-existent
My claims have been widely reported in the media
The media used to (some still do) widely report IDF propaganda verbatim, so that is not a good measure
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While you do have points that these UN bodies do seem to sleep more often than not, one should never, under any circumstance attempt to suggest that what's happening in Gaza aren't crimes against humanity.
A friend of mine is in the Red Cross staff, they had more than 20 casualties since 2021 in Palestine. Their staff was literally shot at because they were doctors.
It's sickening.
"never under any circumstances attempt to suggest" anything contrary to what you believe is an unreasonable and weak proposition to an argument.
You are welcome to believe what you want to believe but plenty of people throughout History believed something as strongly and self righteously as you do and turned out dead wrong. To think you are immune to that and suggest that no voice to the contrary should be allowed is ridiculous.
There are facts and there are lies.
The fact that innocent people are purposefully being killed in Gaza is just that - a fact.
What you can do is argue that that's okay. What you CAN'T do is argue that that isn't happening.
For example, it is a fact that the US slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
You can argue it was justified and the lesser of two evil - people do it all the time. What you CAN'T argue is that hundreds of thousands of innocent people werent slaughtered. They were, it just happened.
I'm sorry, you just have to live with that and live with whatever resulting beliefs you may have.
The nuance is in the word "purposefully". Israel is purposefully targeting Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and other militants. Nobody else is being purposely targeted. But it's a war, so innocents are getting hurt as well. When the Gazans decide that they no longer like the war then they can return the hostages and the war will be over.
If you want to end the war, then pressure Hamas to return the hostages. Don't pressure Israel to bow to terrorist demands.
> But it's a war, so innocents are getting hurt as well
I'm wondering if you'd apply the same standard on the flip side? Per Hamas, they are engaged in a war with Israel, so by your standard they are justified in their rocket attacks killing Israeli civilians who have nothing to do with the war?
Which side do you think has an interest in shooting doctors?
I'll help you with that. It's not the side that would regularly take Gazan children into Israel for medical treatment before the Gazans started a war against Israeli children. Or do Israeli children mean nothing? Because I personally know two women whose children were burned to death on October 7th.
That doesn't seem to check out. This isn't to say that Hamas hasn't killed doctors and there have been several notable incidents of Israel killing healthcare workers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_health_workers_in_t...
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/20/nx-s1-5370617/israeli-probe-k...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0xp969n69o
> Which side do you think has an interest in shooting doctors?
The one shooting doctors.
What happened on October 7 has been a tragedy. 38 children died that day, and you know two of the mothers. I can't even relate with their suffering, in no way I can understand their pain like you do.
But I don't know either any mothers of the 32'000 killed and wounded on the other side.
"One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this."
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We should not call a genocide a genocide because you personally have been impacted by the latest trigger of a long conflict?
I can never understand your pain but for me this reads like bloodlust coming from revenge. That is a path that will never lead to an end of bloodshed.
Given the actions of the Netanyahu government continuously siding with actions prolonging the genocide despite whatever action Hamas takes what do you propose?
What do you think of the colonialists/settlers/occupiers on the West Bank stealing Palestinian land and forcing people from their homes?
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> One of the first Hamas Gopro videos of October 7th was the shooting of an ambulance
Nobody's ever denied that October 7th was a tragedy and that similar things happened. Not even once.
Don't get your point besides "if some of us suffered, it's fine to inflict 1000x the suffering on anybody associated, related or even just in proximity of those who caused us the suffering".
> It's not reckoning
I've never seen a war in which only one side has an army, and the other one loses almost exclusively civilians.
I can find you videos of mangled Palestinian children recorded every single day since October 8th 2023. So tell me, does October 7th in your eyes justify a war against civilians?
And if you’re about to tell me it isn’t a war against civilians, it should be easily provable by IDF videos of firefights with Hamas on a daily basis since October 8th 2023. However the videos I have seen have targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure.
> under any circumstance attempt to suggest that what's happening in Gaza aren't crimes against humanity
I mean I don't think anyone will argue it's good but "crimes against humanity" is certainly a massive exaggeration.
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I'd have to check, but I think Israel has killed more children in the past two years than Hamas killed Israelis on October 7. Israel has killed something like 30-40x the number of civilians in the same timeframe.
Hamas is a bunch of evil people. That doesn't justify descending to their level of butchery to exterminate them, especially not when you are so much more efficient at that butchery.
You don't have to check, more Gazan children have died than Israeli children. So by your argument, had Hamas killed more Israeli children then there wouldn't be a problem? I can think of no other reason why you made that argument.
You might notice that Hamas was in Israel for less than 1/40 the time that this war has been going on. So per time period, Hamas killed _more_ children than Israel, given the chance. Who do you accuse of genocide now? They've just been denied the chance.> Who do you accuse of genocide now?
The one doing it
> They've just been denied the chance.
Perhaps. Perhaps if they somehow had the time, means and power to do it, they would have killed as many people on the other side, although this is high speculative as the past decades would have played out very differently anyway.
I'm not sure where you're going with that though. Nobody claims Hamas are kind and gently guys.
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This commenter is located in Israel, FWIW.
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Yeah you know, the UN, notoriously hostile towards Israel.
Despite, you know, literally creating it.
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Addressed by dang here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45267159
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Unfortunately, Trump’s support for Israel is still “unwavering “. So we’ll continue to aid and abet arguably the most horrific human atrocity outside Africa (Rwanda, Sudan etc) in very long time. You might have to go back to Pol Pot; even the suppression of the Rohingya by Myanmar isn’t at the scale of the complete destruction of Gaza by Israel.
Combined with the other ongoing conflicts it really feels like we’re in a WW3 era
I don't want to downplay the atrocities going on in the current conflicts, but this sort of comment deserves some perspective.
About 70 million people were killed in WW2, as of the present day about 1 million have died in the war Russia is waging against Ukraine and about 70k people have died in the Israeli/Palestine conflict. The horrors are most certainly real. But WW3 this era is most certainly not, that's thankfully off by an order of magnitude.
The World Wars were called World Wars because of the number conflicts and the powers involved. While the casualties and damage has been lower, it seems like the powers are at least indirectly involved at the moment.
If you look back through history this has been the case since at least the Cold War, though. All the proxy hot wars in the Cold War, for example, back when the world was bi-polar. Now it’s multipolar with similar proxy wars.
The China-US arena in Taiwan has not begun. What about the Russian “provocations” against NATO? I don’t think that it is necessarily clear that these conflicts are anywhere near WWIII yet but there are clear signs that we could be heading there
Yes, but WWII also had a phase called Phony War, and after that much of the war was in Poland.
We could say that Ukraine is the current Poland.
The Phony War was the phase between the fall of Poland (took ~1 month) and the invasion of France, where the dominant phase of the war was actually taking place in Norway.
The Invasion of Norway was only the final month.
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Sadly history is a very poorly studied topic.
I look at European leaders and they don't seem to remember it any better.
The best way to teach history would be to make politicians dig slit trenches and then shell them for a few days. Anything less than that people will always end up regurgitating ethno nationalist bullshit or "geopolitics".
> The best way to teach history would be to make politicians dig slit trenches and then shell them for a few days
I don't see why you think that. That didn't work for Hitler, Göring, and the countless numbers of WW1 veterans in the SA and SS hungry for another try.
May we remain condemned for our failure to stop this for all of time.
For the 100th time?
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There is no discussion only mass flagging for anyone who isnt in lockstep on this. This is why politics is usually a subject to be avoided.
I am sure i will be flagged despite completely agreeing with the UN here but if any real change is to happen, minds must be changed which mass flagging does nothing to help. It only further entrenches people. But hey, at least it feels good right? Righteous and all that.
For those who disagree with the UN here, id be happy to change your mind. The us should not be involved in any of this.
The UN’s teeth appear to be red white and blue.
The subservience to Israel has become such an easy litmus test to identify which members of the Congress have absolutely zero principles and happily betray their own country for as low as O($100K)
Unfortunately that’s +90% of the Congress.
Personally I believe the best case scenario is a one state solution minus the apartheid regime (an equal rights country). But the folks in power are going for a one state solution plus a genocide
If that is true the simplest explanation is that members of the US congress do indeed have an advantage over you.
A one state solution means Palestinians can vote out the Zionists from power. They know that, so they'd rather prevent it while simultaneously genociding their population.
Sky is blue.
Hopefully we are at the beginning of a change, but I doubt this will come only from the UN.
The UN is the only international democratic institution that - even with its many imperfections - prevents the world to fall into complete anarchy. It's quite telling that it gets ignored since so many years by the country that elevates itself as the world defender of democracy, the US.
The UN has voted for decades for ending the embargo towards Cuba. Every year the outcome of the vote, which has always resulted in a great majority demanding the immediate end of the embargo, has been ignored by the US, resulting in millions of Cubans facing extreme economic consequences since many decades. The last time every country except Israel and US voted for ending the embargo (I might be wrong, maybe a single African state abstained).
In all of this, the only seed of joy I see, was seeing the Cubans a couple of years ago, after decades and decades of seeing their economy strangled by the most powerful country on Earth, roll out their own Covid vaccine just at the same time of those of big Pharma - a vaccine that resulted excellent, effective, and cheap. Hats off for the Cubans. Hope to see some other seed like this also in the Palestinians.
It's weird to claim that one country should be forced to trade with another country. International trade is voluntary on both sides. The US isn't responsible for keeping any other country's economy healthy. It's simply not our problem, and Cuban economic problems are a consequence of their own corruption and dogmatic incompetence. Should the US also be forced to trade with, let's say, North Korea?
The UN serves as a valuable diplomatic forum but let's not pretend that is does have or should have any real power or authority.
The US sanctions countries and/or foreign businesses that trade with Cuba, the embargo isn't simply between the US and Cuba. Because the US has effective control of most of the world's financial system, it is able to enforce this.
Yes, of course. No one is required to use the US financial system. Other countries are welcome to build their own. Why should we allow ours to be used to prop up a brutal and illegitimate communist dictatorship?
> The UN is the only international democratic institution that - even with its many imperfections - prevents the world to fall into complete anarchy. It's quite telling that it gets ignored since so many years by the country that elevates itself as the world defender of democracy, the US.
It's not been ignored the purpose of the UN is for largely irrelevant countries to petition the world powers to maybe consider doing something. The UN has been so successful because it has no real power over players like the USA.
> The UN has voted for decades for ending the embargo towards Cuba.
Ok? I mean the purpose of the UN is for people to suggest stuff to players like the USA not for the USA to actually do what the UN votes for.
What people fail to understand about dynamics between countries, is ultimately there is no supreme court or arbiter of truth. The UN doesn't have authority over any powerful country (or non powerful country for that matter).
People seem to have this concept that there is some supra national legal system, or even moral system that can hold a higher truth than what powerful countries want, but there isn't. When it comes to geopolitics, the biggest and most powerful sets the rules and lives by them (or not). The USA has zero motivation to do something the UN wants it to do, if it doesn't itself want to do it. No one is going to hold it to account.
Ultimately - whoever controls the violence can set the rules. For the last 80 years that's been the US. Maybe that is changing, but not quite yet.
The UN isn't an international democratic institution. For the last 20-30 years it's been a powerless theatre. And it didn't have much power before then either. Because ultimately, whoever has the most nukes and the biggest army rules the world.
> People seem to have this concept that there is some supra national legal system, or even moral system that can hold a higher truth than what powerful countries want,
Can you blame them? The same countries facilitating this genocide have been telling everyone they uphold principles of human rights and democracy, and a "rules based international order*, and that they oppose genocide. Only now are enough horrors breaking through in such a surreal way that people are forced to notice the contradictions.
Its important to note that most of those "irrelevant" countries are only irrelevant because they're perpetually under the thumb of world powers. Hence why they petition the UN. And, hence why empires and somewhat-formally colonial nations ignore them.
Ultimately, a lot of the wealth of the West comes from core countries siphoning wealth from the periphery and propping up psueodo governments to place their thumbs on the scale of world politics. Exhibit A: Israel.
Empires are not exclusive to the West, and those also ignore the UN. For many of the countries under their thumbs, the West has at least sometimes been acting in their defense.
One hopeful observation is that I actually have seen coverage of the genocide in a local newspaper this time. N=1 of course (and I'm not sure what other local newspapers have been like), but that's more than before.
It's always useful to balance these claims against their critics.
Towards that end I offer up unwatch.
https://unwatch.org/
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Watch:
> Agence France-Presse has described UN Watch as "a lobby group with strong ties to Israel" ... Primarily, UN Watch denounces what it views as anti-Israel sentiment at the UN and UN-sponsored events.
Except no-one has ever offered any proof UN Watch is “tied to Israel” and the organization has backed and saved the lives of numerous dissidents that Human Rights Watch and the UN would rather see die, whether they be Palestinian or Iranian or from other conflicts
> Except no-one has ever offered any proof UN Watch is “tied to Israel”
Here is Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch (https://x.com/HillelNeuer/status/1711844160804638980): “I just got off the phone with a third call with Prime Minister Netanyahu”
Isn't that an Israeli "hasbara" site? The Israelis have admitted that they use the false cry of "antisemitism" to attack.
"Calling it antisemitism - it’s a trick we always use." Shulamit Aloni, former Israeli Minister
https://x.com/SuppressedNws/status/1896748975207952758
If we're on the subject of damning historic quotes, I've got one for you:
- Hamas founding charterOf course ignoring that Hamas was deliberately funded by Israel to cause a split between the politics of the West Bank and Gaza to prevent a unified political authority in Palestine.
I can well imagine a parallel universe where Israel gave them NO money whatsoever. You know what would have happened? Hamas would do the usual Islamic fundamentalist thing. Form a terrorist group and attack Israel. And then media commentators and intellectuals would accuse Israel of failing to help Hamas get put on the right path by helping them at the start, and instead Israel's inaction was like strangling a baby in the cradle. Typical Israel! Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
And today they are promoted by second and third world countries who oppose the first world, specifically to divide the first world nations.
They are succeeding.
This sounds to me like you are trying portray poorer countries as lesser worth because they had the guts of calling Israel out.
The solution to rich countries being divided on an the issue of an ongoing genocide is you know, not committing said genocide.
What does "poorer" have anything to do with it? Is that some tactic to garner sympathy?
> However, Third World is still used as a (pejorative) term for the traditionally less-developed world (e.g. Africa)
So now the entire west, NATO and other US allies should with blinded conviction approve of the genocide?
This seems like you are afraid of isolation and the fallout of the ongoing genocide.
There’s cracks showing and you know when they open Israel will lose its privileged position.
There is not objective genocide. The only people targeting Gazan civilians are the reporters.
It doesn't take "guts" to call out Israel in the forum of the UN. It is in 95% of cases just simple populism and nobody has to fear any consequences.
Many (not all) of those countries are fine with when it's a member of the second or third worlds committing atrocities. So no, there's no guts here. They perceive it's in their interest to call out some acts but not others - just like almost everyone else.
How is that a refutation?
If I want to understand any position I would look for first sources. Say I want to understand why Russian invaded Ukraine, I would seek out Russian sources. When I try to understand the Palestinian position, I seek out Palestinian sources.
The beautiful thing about intellectual honesty and openness is that you don't have to agree with any position. You can expose yourself to things that deeply conflict with your personal values and walk away with a deeper understanding of why you value what you value, and how to refute ideas that you strongly disagree with.
To dismiss a source because it is Israeli ironically gives fuel to the antisemitism charge. You're saying that the very reason to dismiss it, to not even bother entertaining its arguments is because it is Israeli and no other reason. Beyond that, you are even arguing that any claims of prejudice can be dismissed outright on the basis of one thing that one Israeli Minster once said [allegedly].
That is the very definition of prejudice.
Quite simply Israelis and Jews are not the same group, otherwise you would be holding all Jews on the planet responsible for this genocide. Dismissing the source for being Israeli is not antisemitic.
There are many examples of Israeli sources lying about the state of things, from the baseless claims against UNRWA to the unconscionable excuse of burying medics and the ambulances they were in, to avoid wild dogs eating them.
Israeli sources rarely offer evidence to refute the claims presented in this report, and a cry of antisemitism, as stated, conflates Judeism with Israeli nationality, hence these sources are worthless at best.
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Which are not validated by the UN, Norway etc. https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148821 If the claims were valid, countries would not have restarted funding to UNRWA. Simple.
I note you've not denied the issues with claims of antisemitism which are important.
There is considerable evidence that there is a deep connection between members of Hamas and its extensive support network and UNRWA.
Receipts: https://unwatch.org/report-unrwas-terrorgram/
If that's not antisemitic, I'm not sure what would be in your mind.
But I think for you, you are able to dismiss it because the rest of the world choose to not see it.
I was referring to your conflation of Israelis with Jews, and calling dismissal of an Israeli news source antisemitic, which it is not.
I'm saying that a biased Israeli news source is less valid than the actions of dozens of countries, which decided to restart funding.
It is telling that UN votes for a ceasefire are only opposed by the US, Israel and a handful of client states. This is a genocide, and most countries seem to agree on that.
First, I think you are conflating two different authors in this thread.
Second, you dismissed what you deemed to be Israeli sources as "lying about the state of things, from the baseless claims against UNRWA". I brought up evidence otherwise - specifically that their claims are not baseless. Dismiss _that_ as biased all you want, but its just links to social media posts from Hamas members. Members of Hamas that also work for UNRWA in some fashion.
We do agree that the US and Israel standing alone is telling. But we will disagree on what it means. For me it confirms just how morally bankrupt the United Nations is. I see no epistemological value in just conforming to the majority when I see clear evidence otherwise.
The points still stand and remain unaddressed, that are:
Conflation of Israelis and Jews and the false claim of antisemitism.
The lack of evidence of UNRWA-Hamas association, such that Israel's claims are deemed baseless by multiple countries and they restart funding. That is not a UN decision, it is by each country and serves as a good benchmark for baseless.
As to some posts to Hamas members, Israel have called reporters Hamas members simply for reporting with Hamas members, so as far as a few posts go, classification is the issue here, to the point where Reuters and other news agencies have stopped sending the IDF their locations, as the IDF label them Hamas supporters and deliberately target them. Actions are a much more clear signal. In Lebanon, the IDF saying there were Hamas tunnels under hospitals was debunked by numerous news organisations like the BBC, Sky etc. This is the IDF here misclassifying and outright lying, let alone an Internet site.
Lastly, given that both Trump and Netanyahu have openly and on TV advocated ethnic cleansing, and that these comments get next to zero blowback, the US and Israel appear to be the morally bankrupt ones. If an internet site takes precedence over open admission by presidents, multiple country's decisions, evidence presented from an acknowledged organisation (and confirmed from multiple sources), then I'd argue that there's something amiss here.
"To dismiss a source because it is Israeli ironically gives fuel to the antisemitism charge."
We agree it is an Israeli source.
All the unwatch site does is accuse Israel's critics of being antisemites. When you can't respond to the message, attack the messenger. Accuse them of being antisemitic and being funded by Hamas.
The Israelis have taken it to the point of farce!
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/09/stop-antisem...
Receipts: https://unwatch.org/report-unrwas-terrorgram/
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You are aware that Shulamit Alloni was on the extreme left and was criticizing this supposed misuse of Antisemitism, this is not some playbook
The american equivalent would be to quote Bernie Sanders saying "America is fascist" and then saying, see? therefore the USA system of government is fascism, even Congress agrees!
Not sure how that's the equivalent.
Lets see if there is a pattern.
Roger Waters criticizes Israel, Roger Waters is an antisemite.
Tucker Carlson criticizes Israel, Tucker Carlson is an antisemite.
Edward Said criticizes Israel, Edward Said is an antisemite.
Even "legends" get called antisemites! [1]
Hannah Einbinder criticizes Israel, Hannah Einbinder is an antisemite? Hmmm.
According to Jerry Seinfeld, anyone who says "free palestine" is antisemitic.
Any website, or any person, that claims "antisemitism" has lost all credibility for me.
[1] https://moguldom.com/454177/silicon-valley-legend-paul-graha...
You have simply given a false example.
Regarding antisemitism, it is unfortunately a two millennium old racist phenomenon, which shows itself in an obsession many persons had with Jews and their "influence on world politics". Behaviors include use of ritual scapegoating, where double standards are applied to the jews and then blame is shifted to them, culminating in ritual violence.
It's hard to delete 2000 years of western culture, so what you are seeing is mostly a rehash of this
This predated Israel by much and can be seen online for example by the unhealthy obsession with this conflict or even paranoid delusions considering Israel ("Israel killed Charlie Kirk cause I saw Nethanyahu respond to the murder" as can be seen in this thread)
In the above mentioned UN human right council you can see it in the fact 40% of decisions are about Israel while countries like Iran chair the committee. Or the fact there is a permanent clause (Article 7) meant to condemn Israel permanently, the only such country that had such a clause
unwatch is funded by religious lunatics in Israel. Nobody takes it seriously.
I'm a secular Israeli and I take unwatch very seriously.
In fact, I'd love to see you refute their arguments, instead of character assassination.
i saw this comment before going to take a look, but scrolling down from the top, the page seems to all be character assasination about Francesca Albanese and not disputing facts.
you can look for yourself - its the same as the "its funded by lunatics" comment, just swapping which lunatics.
if they've got arguments, they arent putting them forward as what they consider the most important.
Character assassination? I see you, you support UN rapporteurs being able to have trips to Australia funded by terror organizations… I see where you stand just as well as you do
Are you ok with ypu goverment comitting mass murder? That is the only question that matters.
You can criticize it, but the fact that we're here should tell you enough already.
There is no "yes, but" when genocide is taking place.
Is there a specific report arguing that Israel is not committing genocide? I don’t see it on the home page.
Unwatch is, and has always been, critical of everything the UN does with regards to Israel. Had the UN made one statement like "Israel should not arbitrarily detain children and hold them without fair trials", I am pretty sure unwatch would twist it into antisemitism.
https://unwatch.org/un-watch-rebuttal-legal-analysis-of-pill... If you’re interested to see a rebuttal
Proving the absence of something is kinda impossible… depends on if you believe in guilty until proven innocent or if you’re totally okay with going gung-ho into trusting the UN, a body led by the majority of non-democratic governments and used to try to destroy democracies
> guilty until proven innocent
Like how Israel treats Palestinians?
The purpose of a tool like unwatch is to disseminate information to help zionists pollute discussions like these. They dont care about being right, or contributing information to the discussion, as much as they want to hand out gotchas, whatabouts, ad homs and so forth. Thats why its all just character assassination.
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True. And in the interest of balancing the claims of the critics, I offer up the observation that UN Watch is "a lobby group with strong ties to Israel" (AFP article: Capella, Peter. "UN Gaza probe chief underlines balanced approach." 7-Jul-2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20111222162658/https://www.googl...).
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Nice critic. I remember on Reddit watching someone get blown up the other day while carrying water while it was still up. I think they were under 10.
Not sure if they died or just lost all their limbs.
That was a young Gazan girl who tripped a Hamas IED that had been set for Israeli troops. That's why there was a camera pointed at it.
>That was a young Gazan girl
Are we sure we are talking about the same child who got blown up? There is quite a few.
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>It could have been another, unfortunately many children are dying right now.
Yeah. It happens sometimes. People just explode. Natural causes.[0]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOXvDGRvX70