This isn’t just a matter of vague speculation as there are historical cases outside of Israel on which to see how things like this develop and what the consequences are both for the victims and the soldiers. These historical accounts also indicate soldiers committing these sorts of actions become victims themselves with catastrophic mental health disorders.
Israel got in trouble with ICJ court, because of quotes from top government officials. Government of Israel was very specific what they will do to Gaza! This was even full scale bombing started!
Trying to reinterpret this as a problem of "military discipline", and "soldiers are victim as well" is just another level of cynicism!
It's happened, many times. Usually this doesn't make front-page news, but soldiers that break the law are sometimes held accountable. Not nearly enough, and I think it should be far more publicized as a deterrent effect (the fact that it isn't is a pretty big indictment of the current government). But it's certainly not laughable.
A part of what the Isareli opposition has been pushing for in the last few years has been removing Netanyahu from power and presumably jailing him because of the corruption charges.
"prompting the military prosecution to call for a review into possible war crimes".
Thousands of kilometers away.
The IDF can be highly sophisticated in their plans and methods when they want to.
Calling it sophisticated does not change that fact.
As far as I can tell Israel doesn't particularly care for even looking like it's trying to behave responsibly. I don't think they've held anyone responsible for even some of the most obvious war crimes we have evidence of being committed.
That said the soldiers pulling the trigger are committing crimes. These are patently illegal actions to a common person standard which eliminates any defense of following military orders. That being said the soldiers, at least, are committing crimes. Accountability starts at the source of the crime.
If the government is ordering these actions then those are illegal orders, according to international standards of military conduct. The soldiers on the ground must ignore those orders on the basis of patently illegal conduct according to a common person standard and the officials facilitating those orders can be investigated for issuing war crimes.
As an example read about Slobodan Milošević
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87
In functioning democracies in general, sure, you have to be careful not to tar everyone with the same brush. But in the specific case of Israel in 2015, it's not realistic to argue that the government isn't a single entity, so some parts of it may not be responsible (or even in favour of) crimes against humanity.
Because that is what keeps the ICC off of their backs. The ICC only has authority to step in in cases where national jurisdiction is unable or unwilling to prevent and prosecute war crimes.
When it comes to the list of things that Israelis fear, being sentenced to a firing squad is very low down.
If Israel had regime change, new regime and majority of voters would be pro Arab... New government could actually enforce existing laws!
For that to happen, the government, and the overall population, would need to consider what's being done in Gaza and on the West Bank to actually be a genocide. I don't think popular support for that actually exists in Israel. Last time I checked, most of the population supported the annexation of Gaza and the forced eviction of the local population to neighboring countries.
I don't think I'll live to see a two-state solution.
I have distaste for Trump but something I appreciate about him is his abilities to stage a theatre with his "fake" bombings. The more mainstream politicians have much more sociopathic tendencies.
If you think about it, %100 of modern wars are about who is going to be the administrator and doesn't feel like can win an election. We live in a world of abundance, there's no reason for a group of people to kill other group for their resources. If it wasn't for the careers of some people with huge egos all this can be sorted out through civil matters. After the wars it gets sorted out anyway, we don't see mass exterminations anymore.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: yikes—quite apart from the current topic, you've been breaking the site guidelines a lot with flamewar posts and personal attacks. We ban accounts that post like this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604429 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604394 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596070 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596065 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43593235 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43593219 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322414 (March 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43251495 (March 2025)
I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also posted good things, but if you want to keep participating in this community, it would be good to review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on.
Edit: I did end up banning you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403629. We simply can't have people posting like that to HN.
It's not the case that "for each post that doesn't break the guidelines, you're allowed one that does", and that's not what I was doing. When I said HN moderation has worked the same way for over a decade, I didn't mean that the description you gave was accurate—it isn't. (Nor, I assume, did you mean it to be, since you were being sarcastic.)
I meant that what I was doing in the GP comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403362) was standard practice. As you can see from https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que..., it goes back a long time.
We try to persuade users to follow the site guidelines, and tend to give warnings and make requests before banning accounts, especially if they are active participants who have been around for a while. We don't rush to banning such users; we try to explain the intended use of the site and convince them to honor it. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.
I am absolutely no one, but I'd like to highlight that this kind of policy is (indirectly) why I don't use HN. Tolerating intolerance to the extent you do (which isn't 100% but still a lot) allows people like the one you responded to originally to drive hackers like me, my loved ones, my colleagues and my students away, while attracting other hateful people, as they see that they are tolerated here. In a possibly too extreme comparison, this the same dynamic as the "nazi bar problem" (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nazi_bar). I hope you know what kind of community these policies has made of HN.
It's easy to invoke strong pejoratives like "hateful" when describing people who have opposing viewpoints and passions to one's own—in fact, it's hard not to. But it leads to a rapid escalation. A bad comment turns into a "hateful view", "hateful view" turns into "a hateful person", and soon that leaps to "how can you tolerate hateful people on your site". (The next logical step would be to suspect the mods of being "hateful people" themselves.) This escalation is, in my view, bad for community. It leads to uniformity within one's own group and rage and enmity towards difference.
Having banned countless accounts for breaking the site guidelines over the years, I can't accept that "hateful people" are tolerated here for very long. When accounts are posting abusively, we may give them more warnings than you (or a lot of other users) would prefer, but we ban them in the end. A good example is this very subthread. I ended up banning that account (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403629). (Not, I should probably add, because of this or any other conversation about moderation, but just out of standard practice.)
p.s. You are not no one! I appreciate your comments and I wish I could write a better reply—I know a better one is possible, that expresses more precisely how I think about this. Alas it would take me hours, so I'm making do with one I don't much care for.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 is one time that I got closer to it, and maybe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31812293. I still like the phrase "supported communication across differences". Unsupported communication across differences just leads to Hobbesian flamewar.
But anyway, this is only one case and we should not base our thinking just on it. The problem is the policy (or the way it's systematically enforced) and its broader results. I don't know the details of how the moderation works here nor have I any statistics. I only know that I saw too much racism and hate towards whole groups of people because of their identity here in the past, and that when I occasionally stumble across a HN link, I usually can still see that hate being a lot more represented than in other spaces I frequent, and that the kind of policy you described to me has never worked at building diverse and interesting communities.
Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire, then became conquerors of the world.
Russians were oppressed by the Mongols, then became conquerors of Eurasia.
Communists were oppressed by Tsarists, then became ruthless oppressors themselves.
Protestants were oppressed in Europe, so they set sail to America and became oppressors of the natives.
The better explanation is simple and banal - power concentration makes people abuse it.
My list of examples is very similar to this one and the ven diagram here is "was oppressed became oppressor"... in most cases it appears that only if the oppressed are destroyed or I would argue in the case of America- controlled at the margins... then they don't circle back around to abuse their newly acquired power.
Everyone was oppressed by Tsarists. Commies are ruthless oppressors by default.
Just think of any powerful nation (or group of people, or whatever), and try to think of somebody they have oppressed, or are still oppressing. It's typically not hard to come up with examples.
Neanderthals aren’t going to become oppressors.
So sure, workers at Haarez probably don't, but when the extermination feeling is widespread enough that 47% feel they can openly agree to a question proscribing the killing women and children, then insisting on the insistence on precision comes across mostly as an attempt at distraction.
[1] https://theconversation.com/in-israel-calls-for-genocide-hav...
Fortunately many Israelis are against the ongoing genocide, but powerless to stop it.
All this to say you're right, but the government is indocrinating more and more people for these views.
It is indeed sickening. They straight out tell you how they want all Palestinian children to die.
Why? Because Netanyahu and a good chunk of the Israeli population want the Palestinians to cease to exist and its territory to be part of Israel. An opponent that wants to achieve its goals through political action and appeals to the international community meant that there was a risk of Israel being dragged into a two-state commitment. A terrorist group attacking civilians gives those hardliners a perpetual excuse to go to war.
In short: the answer is yes, that appears to be precisely the point: to prevent any possibility of peaceful reconciliation and drive the Palestinians to eventual expulsion or eradication.
That's why Israel has systematically taken out every hospital in Gaza: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdd25d9vp2qo
Has blocked and sabotaged aid at every turn, including bombing UN food trucks: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/01/1158746
And when allied countries got too uneasy about them just blocking all aid trucks at the border, they set up their own aid organization to trickle out nominal amounts of food while they take pot shots at people desperate enough to show up: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74ne108e4vo
They didn't just make this up as they go, presumably the plans have been sitting around for a long time waiting for a suitable moment.
1. You definitely can kill 2.1 million people by bombing them. It's actually way easier than doing it with a gun. 2. If you decide to do it with a gun, and you end up killing tens when tens of thousands are gathering for food, you're aiming terribly. 3. There is enough proof of Hamas using hospital facilities as headquarters. 4. Instead of getting food into Gaza (paid partly by Israel) only to get people to gather and then shoot tens of them every day, Israel could have just not let food in.
In other words, none of this makes sense. There's a war. Yes, Israel is committing terrible crimes. No, it's not because they aim to kill everyone, it's because they really stopped caring about killing civilians. It's horrific and is illegal.
There is actually one party in this conflict that has deliberately said it's aiming to kill civilians, and that's Hamas. I have no idea about your personal opinion, but I suspect that many of the people who are shouting "genocide!" would have been very quiet if the Jews were the ones being slaughtered, and I have absolutely no doubt that if only Hamas had the power, it would have committed way more serious crimes than the IDF ever committed.
I'm not Arab, I'm not Muslim. I've never met a Jewish person. I've no reason to have any prejudice against people of Jewish heritage or ethnicity. But it's still a genocide by any definitions of the word. A lot of Jewish people even agree with this. And the reason that you and most Israeli people seem to struggle to grasp it is because they've been drinking on this exact extremist rhetoric that the "other" side only wants to see them slaughtered. By the same measure, you're saying Hamas can justify it's actions since there will always be ultra-Zionist factions of Israeli societies that wants to see Palestinians slaughtered. I implore you to wake up to what is being done in the name of your people.
There is war in Gaza in the simple sense that rockets from Gaza still shoot into Israel, that Israeli hostages are still being held, and that Hamas itself (the elected goverenement) says it would attack again. It's a very unbalanced conflict, and in it terrible crimes are committed that you can call genocidal. But Jews in the ghettos weren't bombing Berlin - not during WW2 and not after it.
1) Give them their own state. This is difficult for quite many reasons, and Israel (by which I mean the current government) doesn't want that
2) Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation, and let them participate in the regular political processes. The current government certainly doesn't want that, and I have no idea what part of the Palestinians would want that.
3) Continue to treat them as sub-human, and deal with the consequences of the hatred that fosters. That seems to have been the "strategy" before October last year.
4) Try to exterminate or exile them, or at least decimating them to such an extend that the problem becomes smaller.
Since 1) and 2) are (again, from the perspective of Isreal's government) undesirable, and 3) has stopped working, 4) seems to be their current strategy.
For a commonplace example, look at a soccer match, fans screaming at the referee whenever a decision doesn't go their team's way.
Speaking for experience from some relatives, the immigration laws for people of jewish faith and ancestry were nigh insurmountable if you came from african, arab or middle east countries and pretty much just nominal even in recent times for those who had even a remote connection but came from the US and the UK.
I have the feeling they are jewish the same way Henry IV was a Catholic when he said "Paris is well worth a Mass".
As the Palestinians are the majority, the Jewish Israelis would become a minority in terms of citizens and votes. This is very much akin to Apartheid South Africa, where a minority ethnic group rules over the rest of the population.
The problem with understanding this situation is that it probably has more to do with Israel's internal politics than what the situation looks like on the ground in Gaza and elsewhere. Just a quick read from the wikipedia page should give an idea just how corrupt the situation really is.
There's also the fact that Palestinians aren't a homogenous group in any sense of the word. That makes it hard for them to unite under any political flag. It also doesn't help that the borders are all closed, from both sides, and no neighboring country are willing to accept them.
From the outside the situation certainly looks very bleak.
This is a pretty big claim, and I highly disagree with it. I didn't particularly like Israeli policy towards Palestinians for the last 15 years, but they were certainly not treated as "sub-human". Gazans, specifically, were governed by Hamas, which had a lot more say in how the average Gazan was reacted than ISrael did.
Yes, I do think it had an effect, but less of one than their governing body did, hence my saying so.
Either way, unless you think the blockade itself is "Israel treating Gazans as sub-human", then my point still stands.
Notice how israel (the country currently committing the genocide) is not even mentioned in your reply.
There multiple EU signatory countries of the Rome Statute (pledging to cooperate with ICC) that have welcomed these war criminals... who have warrants out by the ICC.
And the same war criminals are invited to give a speech at the U.S Congress to near unanimous applause. It really makes you wonder if we're the "good guys".
-- edit -- If you're curious how much your congressperson receives from AIPAC (Israeli lobby) this website is a great resource: https://www.trackaipac.com/congress
With 'rules based world order', there is one rule for the West and one rule for everyone else. Hence it is okay to have a referendum in Kosovo for Kosovo to split away from Serbia, but not okay for a region of the Ukraine to have a referendum, to break away from Ukraine. So Crimea, where everyone speaks Russian and identifies as Russian, with no interest in the Ukraine or the EU, can't get the treatment that was afforded Kosovo. This is because 'rules based world order', and how the global majority sees it.
Your comment would be fine without that bit.
If neither side can agree on peace, if neither side has objectives which the other will accept, if neither side is willing to compromise; What other outcome is possible in terms of realpolitik?
It is upsetting to observe. We all want better for humanity.
Of course it is understandable to be outraged by the violence and atrocities. The human suffering is real, but arguments focusing on these points can miss the larger picture. The underlying incentives dictate outcomes. Atrocities are often marketed as rationalizations for further violence.
We want to prescribe an outcome without atrocities. Yet discussions fall into recrimination before they can describe the conflict coherently.
Which actually holds up quite well for everybody who loves to bring up that quote: realism aka "we shouldn't face the consequences of our actions" is the obvious rallying cry for people facing the consequences of their actions.
I am not optimistic at all and I am very afraid for Gazans.
When Netanyahu talked about Palestinians in Gaza being Amalek, about the necessity to destroy Amalek, he meant exactly that. And when the defense minister Gallant said: They are human animals, and then he said „no food, no water, no electricity“, he punished 2.3 mill people, half of them children. That’s why both have arrest warrants from ICJ.
Over 90% of Israeli population want more death and destruction in Gaza. Netanyahu and Gallant are no single incidents. The whole Israeli society knows what their soldiers are doing in Palestine. And they are ok with it.
This article and my comment will be flagged until dead. Just like anyone speaking about Israeli Apartheid, genocide, oppression in Palestine. But things are changing. Hasbara troll farms can’t keep up.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/jun/26...
Both. And also trolls, and these days GenAI.
Some say "Never again means now", with the flag of Israel, and no sense of irony or hypocrisy. I wonder if any say the same words with the flag of Palestine? Hamas is still also genocidal, with their leaders giving similar comments about all Jews as the current Israel coalition members give about Palestinians.
When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers. The IDF and Hamas are the elephants, and there are many innocent civilians (metaphorically grass) suffering because of it. The supremely dominant power of the IDF means the suffering grass is overwhelmingly on one side of a border that Israel doesn't recognise, but there are innocents everywhere.
I don't have any answers. I have learned to recognise this kind of mindset, but I cannot find words to act as levers to change those minds.
Whatever the historical record that brought us here, the fact is, Israel's standing army (not some personal goons of some dictator, the standing army of a moden democratic nation), appear to be practically all in on executing a systemic genocide. And I don't think there's anyway you can justify or underplay that.
Maybe the answer you're looking for is that good people anywhere shouldn't let anyone sell them a holocaust no matter the deal.
And after the Israeli opposition leader exposed the whole charade and Netanyahu defended it saying “On the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas. What’s wrong with that? It only saves the lives of Israeli solders, and publicising this only benefits Hamas.”
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/06/netanyahu-defe...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Abu_Shabab
[3] - https://archive.is/20250606144357/https://www.ynetnews.com/a...
"The basis for Lieberman’s allegation of ties to IS was unclear."
It is easy to throw dirt and hope something sticks, but the main thing speaking against his group seems Netanjahu's support in my opinion. But otherwise I don't see the scandal so much here. Especially not compared to the scandal of intentionally targeting civilian population and indiscriminate killing of starving people like the article states.
Edit: But I just read
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerem_Shalom_aid_convoy_loot...
And well, that is indeed better to show who we are dealing with, ruthless criminals who loot and shoot a UN aid convoy for profit.
This is like the equivalent of "Tbh, I do prefer ISIS over Saddam Hussein". Or "I do prefer cancer over heart disease".
A subset of them indeed engages with dark methods like mixing highly addictive drugs into harmless ones and turf war, but the majority just sells things.
Before weed was legal in germany I engaged with quite some of them and they were mostly decent people all in all. Not the greatest and often messed up themself a bit, but otherwise no danger to me or anyone else. My choice if I damaged myself with their products.
A islamist on the other hand is buisy by definition with spreading the rule of Islam over everyone, everywhere.
Dangerous to any non muslim.
Both Hamas and the clans are cancers to society, and it's abhorrent that the IDF is dealing with them to distribute aid, instead of being directly involved (which they can easily commit to).
Now as my edit above hopefully made clear, apparently they ain't just "drug dealers", but ruthless criminals who loot and shoot a UN aid convoy for profit.
And abhorrent are indeed many things about the whole situation.
A simple dealer vs an armed wing of a religious theocracy who think people like me are the devil incarnate, I'd pick the dealer.
An organised armed drug network that necessarily has to be at least comparable strength to an existing network of religious theocrats who are obviously getting external support owing to the ability to continue fighting despite the evidence of systematic destruction of their civil environment that satellite imagery shows has been in aggregate comparable in scope and depth to a nuke going off…
I don't want either of them anywhere near anyone I care about. Even if the latter wasn't associated with a different group of religious zealots.
Netanyahu prefers Hamas, he was propping them up prior to the current battles, according to the New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...
Also, if, as in the recent New York City mayoral debate, US politicians are supposed to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which it recognizes itself as, then I don't see the big deal over Palestine as an Islamic state. I myself would prefer to see a secular PFLP state, but the Zionist entity, US, Canada etc. fight against the PFLP, proscribe them as "terrorists" etc.
Those words indicate something different, than allowing quatari money to reach the civilian part of Hamas government as part of a temporary peace deal. Because that sounds actually reasonable to me.
Now there is indeed more, like this:
"Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who is now Mr. Netanyahu’s finance minister, put it bluntly in 2015, the year he was elected to Parliament.
“The Palestinian Authority is a burden,” he said. “Hamas is an asset.”"
But those words came without context (just a youtube video, that I won't watch right now).
Even before the current siege/semi-siege, the standard response to calls from aid orgs had been essentially "Look, it's not us. We're letting in aid, but it's not our fault if Palestinian armed gangs themselves are looting it after we let it in. Palestinians are just too stupid to organize their own survival."
Of course that response was already ridiculous back then: The 1000s of aid trucks stuck at the Egypt-Gazan border are definitely not kept there by Hamas or armed gangs. Even the looting attacks themselves were suspicions: Aid orgs kept reporting they were happening in areas under full control of the IDF - and IDF was forbidding using any other route[1]:
> Israel is doing the opposite of ensuring aid can be delivered to Palestinians in need. For example, a U.N. memo recently obtained by the Washington Post concluded that the armed gangs looting aid convoys could be “benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence” and “protection” from Israel’s military, and that a gang leader had a military-like compound in an area “restricted, controlled and patrolled” by the Israeli military.
The gangs operate in areas under Israeli control, often within eyeshot of Israeli forces. When convoys are looted, Israeli forces watch and do nothing, even when aid workers request assistance. Israeli forces refer to one area about a kilometer from its Kerem Shalom border checkpoint as “the looting zone.” The IDF-designated looting zone might be the only place in Gaza that Israeli forces won’t shoot an armed Palestinian.
But there was still at least some benefit of the doubt that the armed gangs were just some ordinary criminals exploiting the situation. Claims that the gangs themselves were operating under Israeli orders were conspiracy theories.
Netanyahu now confirmed those theories as reality.
Comments like this coming from an audience currently not being genocided is going to haunt our history forever.
Because it kind of reads like an attack towards me for not caring about genocide. If you are curious about my point of view, it is that both Hamas and Israeli leadership belongs in prison and the US and EU should stop supporting them immediately. But that doesn't mean I support anyone who wants to erease Israel. Do you support Hamas?
Unless, of course, delivering aid is not actually your intent.
If you take those words "kind" and "curious" in a large sense—larger than usual—I think there's enough room there to talk about even this topic without breaking the guidelines.
How to do this? That is something we have to work out together. You're certainly right that it's difficult.
From a moderation point of view, I can tell you that just avoiding garden-variety flamewar and internet tropes already gets us a lot of the way there. You'd be surprised at how many users who think they're taking a grand moral stand against conventional politeness are simply repeating those. Conventional impoliteness isn't any answer either.
I've posted about this quite a bit, since it inevitably comes up every time this topic appears on HN's front page. Here's another part of the current thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403458.
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
People with strong passions on a topic always feel like the moderators are against them. (As you see, I'm not immune to "always" perceptions either!)
I wish we could do something about that—I don't enjoy having so many people, from all sides of every divisive topic, feeling like we're against them when we're not. However, after years of observing this and thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it's inevitable. The cognitive bias underlying it is just ironclad. We all share this bias, which is why your complaint and the complaint of someone on the opposite side are basically the same.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
It's true that HN has hosted several major threads about Israel/Gaza, but it's also true that many (perhaps a hundred times as many) submissions on the topic have ended up flagged and we haven't turned off the flags. I don't see an "always" in there.
As for Saturdays—that factor is so far from affecting how we moderate HN that I had to puzzle for a bit over what you might mean. Nor does this discussion strike me as one-sided. People wouldn't be disagreeing with each other if it were.
"submissions on the topic have ended up flagged and we haven't turned off the flags." only because they were flagged before getting traction.
Saturdays - Observing Jewish people don't check HN on a Saturday, and they are one of the major side of the story here, unsurprisingly.
Online, pretty much any time Israel is discussed, the majority of commenters (or articles) are anti-Israel. Regardless of why you think that is, it's just a fact. You can't blame dang for that.
The fact that this is contrary to the moderation team’s position is convincing that it is false.
Anyone who knows they are raising an assault rifle to a crowd of civilians and pulls the trigger is a mass murderer and a psychopath
How anyone could support this is beyond comprehension.
IMO Netanyahu changing won’t make this go away.
When this Gaza conflict started, I saw how the Israeli protested against their government and demanded peace, so I thought there is a semblance of an excuse for glimpses of abhorrent being reported - "it's a small number of people in power, not the Israeli nation doing it, and also there are always 2 sides to the story".
Since then, there have been unfathomable horrors and crimes against humanity done from the Israel side, with extreme intensity and one-sidedness, and it's now been going for so long. I can find no excuse of any kind anymore, for what has been and is being done in Gaza. I don't think any normal person could. The weight of these things, in my mind at least, is such that if the Israeli people really wanted anything different, it was their human duty and utmost responsibility to stop this by now, in whatever way needed. They didn't... It's sad that people who have suffered so much as well, let themselves become the villains to this depth and extent.
As horrible as the Israeli mindset is, their subjective viewpoint is at least somewhat relatable: An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else, just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead - and will with very high likelihood experience terror attacks themselves. That this upbringing doesn't exactly make you want to engage with the other side is psychologically understandable.
(I'm imaging this as the universal experience of all Jewish Israelis, religious or secular, left or right. I'm excluding the religious and Zionist-ideological angles here, because those are a whole different matter once again)
What I absolutely cannot understand is the behavior of our states. We're pretending to be neutral mediators who want nothing more than to end the conflict, yet in reality, we're doing everything to keep the conflict going. We're fully subscribed to Zionist narrative of an exclusive Israeli right to the land (the justifications ranging from ostensibly antifascist to openly religious) and we're even throwing our own values about universal human rights and national sovereignty under the bus to follow the narrative.
If the messianic and dehumanizing tendencies of Israelis are answered by nothing else than full support and encouragement of their allies, I don't find it exactly surprising that they will grow.
Or is it the leader class in most western countries have no sense of duty , are effectively cowards, and are in it just to have a profitable, white-collar career ?
They are cowards who are just in it to enrich themselves by bribery, theft, and extortion.
You are looking in the right direction and not seeing just how far our society has gone.
What is the unpopular, necessary decision? GP is commenting on the US/EUs continual campaigns to arm and fund Israel's efforts in Gaza without pushback. I don't wish to misinterpret you, but this read to me, that funding/aiding human rights violations and genocide in Gaza is a "necessary" act.
People are just numb to the whole area.
The most difficult part is the fact Israel is wealthy and aggressive while (both) Palestine government has been the definition of dysfunction and tribalism for decades, even during peace times. Diplomatic solutions have became harder and harder since the 90s.
You can read the history the political bodies in West Bank and even they seem to not care to fix anything either. They have their own leadership issues (like never electing new leaders).
There’s a major gap between a western savior wanting something bad to stop and actually going there and accomplishing something.
For a long time, that made some sense - it's starting to shift into quite horrific territory though, if leaders and communities interpret this obligation as some sort of absolute fealty towards the Israeli government, at the exclusion of everything else - even if that government itself is repeating the path of Nazi Germany. Yet this seems to be how a lot of German politicians interpret it.
I found the distinction exemplified in the "Never again" vs "Never again for everyone" slogans.
I don't understand what exactly is going on in the US, but there seems to have been a similar taboo, though maybe stemming from different sources (like that Evangelical end-of-days prophecy that sees Israel literally as part of a divine plan that trumps everything else).
I find it notable that part of Trump's voter support in the election were actually pro-Palestinian groups - because they saw Trump as the only alternative to a complicit Harris administration. Of course, Trump turned out to be even more complicit and openly embracing the Evangelical narrative.
So as far as US voters were concerned, there was no pro-Palestinian or even neutral options to vote for. There was just secular pro-Israel and religious pro-Israel. (Well, there was also Jill Stein, but she had no realistic chance of winning)
Of course there are other voices saying that all those justifications - Holocaust, biblical prophecy, etc - are just show and the real reason for the unconditional support is just ordinary geopolitics. The image of Israel as the "unsinkable aircraft carrier" that guarantees US dominance in the region.
But yeah, in practice, we seem to want it to end with full Israeli dominance, and the Palestinians either emigrating to Egypt and Jordan or vanishing into thin air, I suppose.
All of the death toll coming out of Gaza are from Hamas and they revised the numbers back in April to show 72% of the deaths are military aged males.
https://www.cf.org/news/hamas-quietly-reduces-civilian-death...
It’d be convenient if Jews just stopped existing so the Arabs could take their homeland again but the Jews decided they had a right to exist and are now a regional power because of their own self determination.
Bibi on the other hand is clearly a criminal and needs to go.
I'd prefer peace, but if Hamas and the IDF want to fight out, go ahead.
But do not inflict genocide or terrorism on civilians. It's that simple.
You seem to imply it's complicated based on the different desired outcomes called peace. It's not.
And for the record ... yes, Hamas initiated this current round, but the actions of Israel have been abhorrent to the point where I don't consider them a civilised nation anymore, let alone a democracy. Considering the Palestinians have been obliterated and imprisoned and occupied for decades, I'll give them a pass, though the same applies to them.
Yes, there are Israeli's who are against the current actions, but .. like I say to those who didn't vote for Trump ... at some point, you have to own it. Don't come back saying 'it's not your fault', all I want to see is how you're fighting against the current Israeli offensive and encouraging others to do the same. As, not matter how long it takes, that's the only thing deserving of respect.
With the continued persecution of Palestinians, whether its the illegal occupation of the west bank or the siege of Gaza which was essentially a concentration camp, that was "mowed" like grass every few years in terrorist bombing campaigns by Israel, its no surprise that organisations like Hamas, originally a humanitarian charity, exist.
Israelis want peace through domination, just like the French in Algeria. Be aware that Jews are not native to Palestine, except those that had been living there before the state was founded. They are living as colonialists on stolen land, and are continually denying the native Palestinians the right to return, which is part of the definition ethnic cleansing.
I say this as Jewish person originally born in Palestine (or Israel) and who had grandparents that survivide the Holocaust. Once I read about what really happened in 1948, that it was zionist terrorist militias that started the conflict and that Palestinians did not "simply leave", I became an anti zionist. I don't think Israel has the right to exist. People have the right to exist and they have the right to fight back against jewish supremacism.
The Israeli tradition of giving their Gaza operations names of children's games also continues, after "Operation Cast Lead".
(Not sure if they wanted to make a reference to Squid Games as well...)
Red light: 10 minutes later they send out another notification saying no aid is being distributed there today and start shooting anyone in the area
Worse, we are helping them when they need it, and closing our eyes when they don't want us to watch.
When you distribute food in a war zone you tell people not to come near the food and they do it anyway. What are you going to do? shoot them? Yes, you shoot them if they get too close. First you fire at the air, then you shoot at people if they get closer anyway.
If you don't shoot them they will take a sack by force, and then everybody will take a sack by force. Usually they coordinate themselves into bands or gangs to steal the food.
Of course, those brave enough to take the sacks by force risking their lives will not distribute them evenly. They will give it to their families, their gang and sell the rest.
Israel could be brutal for a lot of things, but not for this. Hamas was way more brutal to their own people. For example, Hamas executed their own people for wanting to escape the bombing areas so they did not loose their body shields.
Every country has a percentage of right wing psychopaths. Unfortunately, they seem to be running the government in Israel.
Israel's intended end game seem to be to make Gaza completely uninhabitable, so that the Palestinians are forced to leave, then Israel can grab the land. A bit like they are doing in the West Bank, but on turbo mode. However, the Palestinians don't want to leave their land (why should they?) and no other state wants to take them. So we are left with enormous human misery, with no end in sight.
Most baffling of all, many Western states are not just turning a blind eye, but actively supporting Israel. Shame on them.
- I'm a Jew in USA, and served in the military for more than a decade.
- I used to get annoyed by the Palestinian protests I'd see in the years before this, and generally sided with Israel, and the operations its military performed in counter-Shia-militia operations etc in the region, and was outraged at the Oct 7 attacks.
This is large-scale, continued, intentional CIVCAS.
And it's a sin that Israel cannot afford.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_March
The Green March or how a crowd of elderly people, women, and children with no other weapon than the Quran in their hands take a military position.
Beachhead!
Me, and anyone else. But it’s obvious Israeli are hold to an impossibly high standard that absolutely no one else in the world is expected to follow.
The way I see it, Israel and Ukraine are presently our last line of defense against barbarity, and I’m glad they don’t care about what a very biased media tries to force them to do.
lucubratory•5h ago
andrepd•3h ago