> "On that day, our pair had the largest number of hits, 42 in all. My locator wasn’t supposed to shoot, but I gave him a break, because we were getting close to the end of our stint, and he didn’t have knees. In the end you want to leave with the feeling that you did something, that you weren’t a sniper during exercises only. So, after I had a few hits, I suggested to him that we switch. He got around 28 knees there, I’d say."

This is outright disgusting. I'm glad these kind of brutal policies are exposed and talked about.

Snipers go through quite extensive “desensitization” training as they are guaranteed to see the immediate outcome of their actions and they also tend to operate in a conditions when its not a clear “them or me” scenario.

Shooting someone who’s shooting at you or your friends is easy, taking a shot form 100’s of meters at an unsuspecting target isn’t.

Their entire training is based around you are the weapon and you must do your job, Jarhead was quite a good movie about just how much emotional toll this mindset takes even or even especially in cases when they are actually denied fulfilling their role.

From day one when snipers appeared on the battlefield things like kill counts and leader boards amongst snipers appeared as a coping mechanism.

The politicians who ordered them to shatter the knees of thousands of protesters must have gone through the same desensitisation training.

What’s the alternative shooting them dead? Let’s not pretend that this is a quiet civil rights protest, the throwing of grenades, Molotov cocktails and the planting of IEDs at the border fence happens during it.

Injuries takes a less of a political toll both nationally and internationally than fatalities.

While it’s easy to say don’t shoot at all you can’t avoid the fact that a portion of those which get too close and are shot do have quite hostile intentions.

The issue with conflicts like these is thinking that there is a simple solution and that is for one side to stop.

The Israeli public will not tolerate casualties on their side which works both ways as it grants political will for things like the withdrawal form Lebanon and the disengagement from Gaza, however it also leads to policies like this as well as the policies of Targeted Killings that were imposed initially by the Rabin administration as a low intensity solution to the rabid wave of suicide bombing across Israel.

As long as there won’t be a sufficient political will on both sides to halt all hostilities for normalization to be possible there isn’t going to be a resolution to this conflict.

This is sadly a very realistic comment.

I do not have any stakes in that conflict (live in France and loosely know a few people with Jewish and Palestinian origins) and this is how I see that conflict with my untrained eye. People fighting for something hardly shareable (land) with hartred on both sides.

One case of such a situation which tuurned fine and that I am incredibly proud of is the relationship between France and Germany. 1914-18, 1939-45 and now school exchanges where children meet other children (and to my dismay - communicate in English...). Not French meeting Germans, just kids meeting kids.

I already mentioned that earlier but one of the greatest moments during such an exchange was a football match where they had spontaneously mixed teams, not Germany vs France.

> This is sadly a very realistic comment. ... this is how I see that conflict with my untrained eye

If your eye is untrained, how do you know that the comment is realistic? The data are the following: 183 Palestininans shot dead, 9200 shot in the knees "often with life-changing injuries". [1] On the Israeli side, 0 or 1 dead, 4 to 11 wounded. (data from Wikipedia).

These are the facts: an army shooting on people without receiving any damage. So, did you ask yourself where did you get the idea that the killed and wounded constituted an actual threat? I can tell you: it comes from the people who shot them. And do you think they would tell you they're shooting on harmless people? Of course not.

> People fighting for something hardly shareable (land) with hartred on both sides.

Again: you don't realise it, but this is spin. The two sides are not equal. One is illegally occupying the other's territory. The other one is not. When you see two people fighting in the street over a handbag, you don't say "they're fighting over something hardly shareable, with hatred on both sides". You ask yourself who is the owner of the handbag, and who's the thief.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/world/middleeast/israeli-...

> If your eye is untrained, how do you know that the comment is realistic?

Because it ends with "As long as there won’t be a sufficient political will on both sides to halt all hostilities for normalization to be possible there isn’t going to be a resolution to this conflict."

The main problem is that both sides probably have a point - one side will say they were there first, the other they were there longer etc. And, again, they will have a point.

This is very much different from your example with the thief who has objectively zero rights to the bag.

I honestly pity such never-ending wars dragged through generations where everyone will claim they are completely right and the others are completely wrong, with some selected numbers on hand.

In Europe, where I live, there were wars for 1000 years between countries who thought that the others were illegally occupying "their" territory. Some of these lands kept switching sides (Alsace/Lorraine/Moselle, Silesia, ...) and I am glad they are more or less settled now and people can live there in peace.

> Again: you don't realise it, but this is spin. The two sides are not equal. One is illegally occupying the other's territory. The other one is not.

A Google search for "why jews can historically have their land" or similar brings plenty of sources. I opened the first few and it looks clear that the land belongs to Jews.

A Google search for "why palestinians can historically have their land" or similar brings plenty of sources. I opened the first few and it looks clear that the land belongs to the Palestinians.

See the problem? I do not have a particular interest in that conflict so I do not have an opinion. I just see that people are killing each other for land and that both sides have lots of documentation to back their positions. And various political support worldwide (some for one side, some others for the other).

Look, I'm not even talking about the legitimacy of the state of Israel. I think it was a mistake to allow its creation but now, now entire generations of Israelis have been born there and that's their country. Period. You cannot roll back history, and especially you cannot expel millions of people to who knows where. So everything you said in your comment is completely pointless. I'll assume you said it in good faith and were not aware of advancing a straw man argument.

The problem is that Israel occupies portions of territory that formally don't belong to it- it drives away the indigenous population, subjects them to every form of violence and harassment, controls their borders and every aspect of their life, and builds settlements on their ground, where it installs its own civilian population. This has been declared illegal many times by all international authorities. It is in blatant contravention of international law. It generates enormous amounts of suffering and hatred. And it is not a state of things, it is a process. It is going on now, it inches a bit further every day and every year.

You say you don't have an opinion, but in fact you repeat exactly the things that those who don't want this process to stop would like to hear from you: that the question has two sides, that it's impossible to say who's right or wrong, that there are many opinions. It's a form of denialism (let's hear the other side, some say this but some say that, etc.).

This thread is a good representation of the conflict at least partially as it includes a party which firmly made up their mind.

Anyone who’s willing to say that Palestinian militant groups pose no threat to Israelis is clearly not willing to debate in good faith.

Does it mean everyone who got shot posed an immediate threat? Probably not, however I find it very disturbing when a party ignores documented physical evidence of such instances simply because it came from a side they do not agree with.

Especially since this article is form an Israeli, which hints at even more dubious selective bias.

However I don’t think the core of the issue is who was there first and who’s land is it today, and who’s land should it be.

That will never yield constructive results if one side is utterly unwilling to face reality on principle.

Any solution to this problem would would require a partition of the land which will be acceptable to both sides in a manner that would A) Create a Palestinian State and B) Maintain Israel’s existence as it exists today; so far I haven’t seen any hints of this being possible.

Overall I also think that it is naïve to think that this conflict will be resolved without Jordan a state which was formed on 75% of the original British mandate.

A state which is predominantly Palestinian in its demographics even without accounting for any refugees from the 47 and 67 wars.

The refugee problem is also something that is unfortunately ignored. Even at the peak of the negotiations they were a sore sport as the Palestinian Authority always was in a position that any agreement between them and the Israelis will not cover the refugee issue and that would have to be solved separately.

I’m not even sure if refugees are even a correct term since Palestinians are the only ones who can’t get a UN refugee status, they got a special status which is quite problematic.

Countries are not allowed to settle Palestinian refugees, UNRWA the UN agency which is dedicated to them is banned form seeking any permanent solution which is why there are 70 year old refugee camps still. This combined with a unique status which is not only perpetual but also can be inherited as the descendants of any male Palestinian refugee also get to claim that status will eventually result in a situation that will not be resolvable.

However across all circles it’s extremely hard to find people who are willing to be honest about just how fucked the situation is and just how predictable the actions of both sides are given these parameters.

Fuck - that was an article I wish I'd never read.

I almost hoped it would stop at the half-way mark, so I could just shake my head at people I could despise, but it kept going.

My thoughts in no particular order:

Clearly the Palestinians are physically suffering most from this - but whether they acknowledge it or not, it's destroying the Israelis involved. Similar to the US involvement in VietNam - doesn't matter if you win/lose or even why - people who come back are changed.

I don't "blame Israel" - I work for an Israeli company. Not a choice, just a happenstance of a takeover. Quite an eye-opener when somebody politely tells you that we need to wrap up the conference call, as there are incoming rockets.

Only firm feeling I take away is that I loathe "dehumanization" - that pernicious and onmi-present trope that is rolled out by all sides in pretty much every country, under every circumstance - and has been forever.

Even more tragically, it's destroying both the Israeli people doing the shooting and the Palestinian people who are the victims, but it's not touching those who are setting the policies which lead to that situation nearly as viscerally.

>Palestinians are physically suffering most from this - but whether they acknowledge it or not, it's destroying the Israelis involved

The difference of course is that one is being attacked by others, and the other is doing it to themselves.

> when somebody politely tells you that we need to wrap up the conference call, as there are incoming rockets.

I guess illegally occupying someone else's land, destroying their homes and forcing millions in an open air prison has its price.

It's so disappointing to see a country and people founded in the ashes of a holocaust committing war crimes, doubly so against a relatively disenfranchised population (as opposed to some external antagonist in a more traditional interstate conflict).

While the holocaust did give the Israeli project one last political boost, I think the creation of Israel was not because of it but despite it. The tragic loss of millions of potential citizens had a significant impact on the demographic feasibility of the country. Ben-Gurion himself says: "For many of us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]. I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution. Płońsk was remarkably free of it ... Nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Płońsk that sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town in Poland of comparable size."

I mean the Balfour declaration was in 1917. Herzl's "a land without a people for a people without a land" only makes sense if you read it through the eyes of a colonial European.

in reaction to the united nations partition plan ben-Gurion says: "The total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. Such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%"

a democratic and Jewish Israel was and still is impossible without the expulsion (ethnic cleansing*) of a major part of its Arab population. (regardless of the incompetence of the Arab leaders and their stupid war)

I would argue that this is not really unexpected from a country built on Deir Yassine, king David's bombing and the assassination of a UN negotiator. Acts committed by the Irgun, which was the political predecessor of Israel's right-wing Herut (or "Freedom") party, which led to today's Likud the current ruling party.

to clarify the asterisk near ethnic cleansing is because this is a highly debated topic and there is no consensus whether it happened. Expulsion, on the other hand, is undeniable.

for the first Ben-Gurion's quote check: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion#Childhood_and...

for the second one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_...

Deir Yassine was in 1948 much closer than the holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre

King David Hotel bombing (1946) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

The UN negotiator I'm speaking of is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte

This is why I contreversly believe that it serves zero purpose to "never forget" the Holocaust or even 9/11. The victims of such tragedies are themselves commiting other tragedies (generally speaking).

Those are different things. The holocaust should never be forgotten because of the huge number of innocent lives that were lost in that monstrosity. It has zero relation with the current Israel government (which didn't even exist at that time), and remembering it should help to avoid history to repeat. Hopefully. The current attitude of Israel government against Palestine is a whole different thing; claiming that Israel today is de facto a rogue terrorist nation, wrt Palestine, should have zero relation on our feelings about the holocaust. The point is that they will always attempt to conveniently dismiss any criticism as antisemitic, while we're actually talking about Israel government, not people. In fact, I can at the same time deeply hate Israel government for what they do against Palestinians and cry every time I see the images from what those poor prisoners had to suffer in nazi lager camps during WWII. Two completely different things that are not mutually exclusive.

> emembering it should help to avoid history to repeat

That is precisely my point. It's evidently not helping.

Throughout history, the propaganda of victimhood has always been used to perpetuate horrors. Whether it is the nazis, whether it is the israelis/zionists, whether it is the american settlers, etc.

Almost always, victimhood is the justification of theft, attacks and brutality. What was the nazis justification for brutalizing jews and stealing their property in europe? The economic crisis post ww1. What is the israelis justification for brutalizing palestinians and stealing their land, the holocaust. What was our justification for extermination and stealing native land? Native massacres of settlers.

If you look at history, every oppressor claims to be the oppressed and uses it as justification to oppress. Doesn't matter if it is a democracy, monarchy, communist, fascist, etc. They all cry out "Ow" in pain as they smash another person in the face.

That's because every oppressor is oppressed. We try to segregate people into these two groups, but the fact is that every person is capable of oppression, and every society is guilty of it. The history of human civilization is a story of people who were oppressed that went on to oppress others to continue the cycle.

Our texts don't do a good job of documenting this -- they just designate all losers as oppressed and all victors as oppressors.

What I wonder is whether they are aware of it or do they operate under a sort of doublethink.

Doesn't someone realize that hey wait, what I am doing to them now is what others did to us/our ancestors. Shouldn't that stay your hand instead of justifying it.

I think regardless of where you stand on the issue of the Gaza protests, you would find this piece to be a good and rare, almost entirely neutral article. Good Journalism.

Agreed. This is good journalism. It simply states the facts and let's the reader decide what the implications are.

Could use a lot more journalism like this.

This is journalism. Far too much opinion is mislabeled as journalism.

Watch Gaza Fights for Freedom, a documentary by Abby Martin and Mike Prysner, for a horrifying look into what life is like in Gaza for the Palestinian people. It was filmed inside Gaza and the footage smuggled out.

It is a humanitarian crisis to say the least. I personally think it's closer to genocide.

If you are shooting someone in the knee, and it is not by accident, you are the bad guy.

There may be times where you have to shoot someone to kill them, even if they are not directly a threat to you.

There may be times where you have to disable someone who is running towards you. In that case you shoot for the upper parts of the legs.

You shoot a knee and that will for ever cripple them, with no benefit to you, other than the enemy will always be in pain -- i.e. a benefit only to a psychopath.

I am not naive; I know that there are really bad people out there whom we would all be better of without, but I also understand that there is a level, which you must not cross unless you want to become just as evil yourself. These snipers crossed it, and in doing so created yet another argument to show that Israel is not mature enough to be a legitimate country.

Why is this downweighted?

Any criticism of Israel must be dismissed, and authors labeled as antisemitic.

Wow, and now it's been flagged to death. There's nothing wrong with the article, either. It's evenhanded, and Haaretz is about as mainstream as the New York Times.

Is this a normal HN thing that I just haven't noticed until now? Is this subject just too radioactive to be discussed?

I wasn't referring to the article; I saw many times in different contexts, critics of the Israel government actions against Palestine being labeled as antisemitic just to make them appear as racists and dismiss their valid points.

I can only wish "imagine yourself in the shoes of the protester before making a decision" would be added to the training.

There was a part that mentioned how one of the soldiers identifies with the child protestors, and how a high ranking officer mentioned if he were a Palestinian he’d be a terrorist. I don’t think it matters, they are basically just doing their job (or playing the game) they’ve been trained for. They still have to ask for authorization from the chain of command, so it doesn’t really matter what they think.

Pretty heavy article

"a high ranking officer mentioned if he were a Palestinian he’d be a terrorist" - That was Ehud Barak, former Israeli Prime Minister.

I clicked this link, came back to the front page to check comments, and it was gone. Hm!

Humans dismembering other trapped humans for fun and bragging rights. Mine as well go back to crucifixes that the Romans used 2000 years ago.

Interesting response. I don't mean to start an argument but I genuinely wonder what the reaction would be if it were a response to a Holocaust incident.

I've rarely seen a question implying such intriguing omitted context. You might not be getting downvotes if you had included it, since the question is kind of unclear without it anyway.

What context is that? You have a post describing a tragedy and a reply saying that humans have done it before. I was asking whether the same reply to a description of one of the tragedies during the Holocaust would have received the same non-chalant reaction.

Why drop into a thread in order to change the subject? Do your own research.

Since the dawn of humankind at least, seeing that other apes can be as cruel within their resources. The difference is that we are way smarter, we can be evil on top of being cruel.

To put it in perspective, more people have died in the past 12 hours of covid-19 in Italy alone, than were killed by Israeli snipers armed with the best technology possible over 2 years. In the next week, more Italians will die from the virus than could have been killed by Israeli snipers even if all injuries made last year became instantly fatal.

In fact, more people were murdered in Chicago by random gangsters, than were killed by Israeli snipers in the past 2 years.

I think we can take this post of yours as the reference for a definition of Whataboutism.

Paywall :/

If you continue to post flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to HN, we are going to have to ban you. We've warned you about this multiple times already.

Don't cut yourself on all that edge.

Go ahead and say that quiet part louder: You hope that US Army snipers are trained to shoot protestors.

At least they aren't headshots.

That's the spirit....

I know, right? Maybe next we can talk the folks firing rockets into using glitter bombs.