You can only pretend Houthis are making ballistic missiles in their caves and arent directly supplied and fed targeting data by Iran to sink ships crossing red sea for so long.

you forget that in mass media not reported that every (other) day for past couple of months there are ballistic missiles launched towards Israel

Are you referring to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Iran%E2%80%93Israel_con... ? Or can you provide more information about Iran attacking Israel everyday in 2025?

(Not to say that a few months means this conflict has ended, genuinely curious what the media I’ve seen has under/mis/not-reported)

Houthis attack Israel with ballistic missiles which are supplied to them by Iran for this purpose.

In past couple of months it happens almost every (other) day. Sometime a couple times a day.

The only time it was on news when Israel failed to intercept missile and it fell in vicinity of Ben Gurion airport.

Which of the three points are you suggesting “Iran supplies arms to the houthis in Yemen” satisfies in the above criteria to justify the preemptive attack in Tehran?

It seems like it doesn't justify a preemptive attack, but rather a counter attack. Israel is responding to missile attacks from Yemen by attacking the manufacturers in Iran

And yet Israel itself calls it a preemptive attack.

And those missile attacks were in response to Israel's unrelenting and brutal genocide in Gaza, so the 'preemptive' term is still nonsense.

Why is Israel in Gaza? Oh yeh, because Hamas invaded Israel on Oct 7 2023 and killed 1,200 people. To put that death toll in perspective, it would be like a Mexican Cartel invading the US and killing 41,000 people. For China it would be 174,000 people.

And why, pray tell, was Hamas the only organization wielding some semblance of power in Gaza in 2023?

because usa forced elections to palestine assembly in 2006 despite objections of israel and pa government (which was afraid that hamas that will win).

when hamas won, usa was horrified by outcome and "sponsored" PA security forces to get rid of hamas in gaza, but hamas prevailed and killed everybody who were against (throwing from buildings, dragging behind bikes) it or tortured them into submission

Because Hamas gleefully kills anyone who opposes them.

Israel is in Gaza because they have funded and supported Hamas, in the hope they would use those funds to invade them, giving them pretext for a genocide.

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” - Benjamin Netanyahu [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/20/benjam...

That is some very stupid conspiracy theory BS.

It's an unverified quote which Netanyahu denied saying. In any case, Israel never funded Hamas as many claim; they allowed aid from Qatar which is pretty different.

I'll add that Israel allowed aid from Qatar after pressure from west and headlines in mass media that hundreds of thousands are going to starve in gaza if israel won't allow money from qatar.

the underlaying issues was that after PA tried to depose Hamas in Gaza and failed, it stopped paying salaries to everybody so Gaza was broke

'Put it in perspective'

https://visualizingpalestine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/...

Put in in perspective https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rocket_Attacks_fired_at...

Israelis make Palestinian territories into hell on earth and then when a handful of the victims fight back ever so slightly, make themselves out to be the victims and use it as justification for limitless levels of escalation. It's the kind of self delusion that's only possible through deep & pervasive narcissism -- no wonder so many of them have to take psychedelics all the time.

If you will have a closer look, rocket attacks started to climb up after Israel left Gaza.

There was expression during the disengagement process from Gaza: Palestinians can build either Singapore or Somali. It's their choice to make.

They made choice in 2006 when they elected hamas. You can see on graph how Hamas elected to use resources

A less militant government would have simply been rolled by the rabid dog that is the Israeli state sooner. The eliminationist ethnocentrism from both officials and citizenry has been consistent and not at all hidden.

Rolled like The West Bank? Hamas's stated goal is to destroy Israel. You pro-Palestinian types are always so hypocritical.

It is quite clear that ever since Yassar Arafat walked away from a deal with Israel during Clinton’s Presidency Israel has deliberately made Gaza and most of the West Bank a giant prison. Over the last 50 years far more Palestinians have been killed by Israel than Israelis killed by Palestinians. Palestinians have no navy, air force, tanks, or helicopters. The power differential between the two sides is vastly in Israel’s favor.

Arafat walked away because the ‘peace’ plan didn’t produce a viable state – West Bank was divided up in smaller enclaves

An Israeli they killed then own Prime Minister because he was willing to make peace

In my assessment, the assasination of Rabin is one the most successful assassinations in history, in terms of achieving the objectives of the assasin.

Yup, but consider how much death and injury that action has caused

Why?

Israel has had plenty of votes since then to elect another Prime Minister who would push for peace.

Why is this considered a success of one assassin instead of a failure of a broad democratic electorate to push for peaceful resolution?

In fact, the protests against Netenyahu and young people refusing to serve the IDF shows that Israel was trying to push for peace internally.

Then Hamas decided to attack a music festival of teenagers and young adults who want a free palestine. They spent over a year planning this operation all to kill a bunch of Israeli's who didn't exactly disagree with their cause.

If Hamas hadn't attacked, Bibi might already be in prison. You know, I'm not convinced Hamas wants peace any more than Bibi does.

multiple rounds of negotiations happened after rabin death. camp david in 2000 for example which resulted in second intifada. taba. etc. negotiations continued till 2013 or so.

even Netanyahu, which was elected after Rabin death signed follow up agreements to Oslo as result of which Israel handed over Hebron and additional areas in west bank to PA.

It wasn't failure of "broad democratic electorate to push for peaceful resolution" but violence of second intifada and non-compliance of PA with oslo accords from very beginning: http://israelvisit.co.il/BehindTheNews/WhitePaper.htm

That’s link is a highly polarised view of what happened

I’m not claiming it was a good deal. I’m claiming that since he walked away from the deal Israel has decided that it will slowly consume all of the West Bank and make living there and in Gaza a hell for Palestinians. It’s a slow genocide. Though now in Gaza it’s been sped up.

It was in fact a fantastic deal the Palestinians were fools to reject it.

If you look at the rest of the maps https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/maps-from-the-2000-camp...

You’ll see the one you posted was unrepresentative of what was actually on the table and what the Israeli’s would agree too wouldn’t deliver a viable state and it was divided up by Israeli roads and other security apparatus

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/map-of-the-israeli-offe...

Then 100x those figures and you find the proportion that Israel killed in Gaza versus its population, significantly women and children, for perspective.

Why is that relevant? Israel is justified in killing as many people as they need to to ensure their security. The number of dead seems irrelevant to me, you need to convince that the people killed died needlessly. I just really dont get this argument I guess. Every war between a technological power and a non technological power will have lopsided casualty numbers.

When a people are oppressed and suppressed enough they fight back. People fight back using methods that are available to them. Palestinians have been systematically oppressed by Israel. Gaza is basically a giant prison. The people there have no navy, tanks, helicopters, or air force. They did inflict some damage. The response has been so disproportionate that it is rightfully viewed as immoral. Palestinians deserve peace and pursuit of happiness too. So do Israelis. One side has that much greater than the other and one side has been denying the other side those things for decades.

I agree with all of this. So what do you think the Israelis should do? Ive been against the war from october 8th saying Israel should focus on border control instead but I can see why the Israelis wouldnt be happy with that solution. Tel Aviv has been pretty continuously bombarded for the last 2 decades by Hamas, hard to say they just have to live with that.

Israelis have a right to live peacefully. Unfortunately they are not peaceful toward Palestinians. They continually encroach and annex Palestinian land in the West Bank oppress Palestinians. Palestinians fight back but it’s a hopeless cause for them.

From my understanding Israel tried to make peace by exchanging land for peace treaties. Only the Egyptians took them up on that. I think Israel is done seeking a moral solution and are now slowly annexing all of the West Bank and now Gaza. Palestinians should be given land somewhere and/or forced to emigrate. They’ve clung to what was once theirs but the reality is they are never getting it back.

But Israel is being immoral and their treatment of Palestinians is deplorable.

Im not seeing a plan here. I agree that the Israeli rights goal to annex the west bank is a huge problem and probably makes a peace that the palestinians accept impossible. Im not so sure Israelis want to annex gaza as much as expel the gazans. The more analysis I do the more doomed the situation looks.

> Palestinians should be given land somewhere and/or forced to emigrate.

This is what the Israelis are trying to do. No one is willing to take them.

Hitler said "lebensraum" was for 'security' too. It did not in fact make Germany more secure, and the same will ultimately prove true for Israel's very transparent attempts to use the Oct 7 ghetto uprising as a pretext to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

It was a gamble, if Japan hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor it certainly seems possible Germany would have taken most of Europe and had enough juice left over that their Russian incursions wouldn't have been fatal.

> It did not in fact make Germany more secure

Yes, focus on this part, not the lopsided casualty count. Much more convincing argument.

I find the crimes against humanity more persuasive than concerns for the security of an irredeemable ethnostate but you do you.

> because Hamas invaded Israel

And why did they do that? It's like gang warfare, never ending. It started long before Hamas and we've all lost track of why so finger pointing only makes it worse.

Because Hamas loves killing Jews.

And Jews love killing children. See how easy that is?

The difference is I'm correct and you are not. Hamas decided to attack a music festival of teenagers and young adults who want a free Palestine. They spent over a year planning this operation all to kill a bunch of Israeli's who didn't exactly disagree with their cause.

If Hamas hadn't attacked, Bibi might already be in prison. You know, I'm not convinced Hamas wants peace any more than Bibi does.

> The difference is I'm correct and you are not.

This is the kind of thinking that keeps this insanity going on forever.

You're demonstrating my point: we've lost track of "who started it" and it doesn't even matter now. It's too easy for each side to claim it's the other side's fault. They both have legitimate reasons to so it's easy to get support for those claims, too.

But I would argue that correct vs incorrect is entirely irrelevant. Nothing you or I can say can justify their actions.

You obviously haven't read the Hamas charter in which Hamas says their goal is the destruction of Israel.

You're doing it again.

For every point you make about Hamas I could match you with one about Israel. But what's the point?

" I could match you with one about Israel"

The point is you would not be correct. Hamas wants to end the existence of Israel but lacks the ability. Israel wants to coexist with Gaza but Hamas doesn't want that.

> The point is you would not be correct.

You know I'm wrong before I even say anything? That's...impressive.

Yes. Because your fundamental premise that Hamas and Israel have the same goals is false.

I didn't know what you're talking about. I never once commented on either of their goals, or who was right or wrong. That was my entire point.

So either you are not following the conversation or you are trolling. Have a nice day.

You say you can match any claim I make about Hamas with an equivalent one about Israel.

I say that yes but my statement about Hamas would be factual while yours would not be because Hamas really does want to destroy Israel while Israel just wants coexistence with Palestinians. At its core Hamas is an Islamic Theocratic Supremacists group that truly hates Jews. Just read their charter.

The point you continue to miss (or ignore) is that equivalence doesn't matter. Hamas is bad. Israel is bad. Neither is going to admit it. Ever.

But since you asked:

https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unimaginable-horrors-m...

Israel isn't as bad as Hamas because if Hamas stopped attacking Israel Israel would stop attacking Hamas. This isn't that hard to understand.

How is that coexistence? Can a Palestinian acquire Israeli nationality? Do they already have actually or they don't have passport?

Can a Jew live in Gaza without being murdered?

Is Gaza a country?

> And why did they do that?

Because in 2023 Saudi Arabia, one of Iran’s most powerful enemies in the region, was expressing willingness to normalize relations with Israel. So Iran orchestrated attacks via its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, in order to torpedo the normalization process. (People forget that Hamas wasn’t the only one attacking Israel in October 2023—beginning October 8th Hezbollah began firing rockets and artillery into northern Israel, forcing over 90,000 Israelis to flee for safety.)

Israeli and american intelligence agree that Iran was not aware of the October 7th attack. Hamas did that by themselves. In hindsight we also know that Israel thoroughly infiltrated the Iranian forces, so if they had known, Israel would have known in advance as well.

Would you think the same if, for example, Russia started attacking manufacturers in the EU that supply weapons to Ukraine?

If Russia had the capability to do so without facing an extreme counter attack you better believe they'd blow the shit out of weapon manufacturers.

The problem for Russia is that such an attack would bring in all of NATO which they likely can't defend against. And either way would result in massive damage to nearly everything in Russia.

OTOH, Israel can attack Iran and as shown in the past[1], Iran will roll over and only send a weak-ass slow drone attack as a response.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2024_Iranian_strikes_o...

I wasn't asking about capabilities. I asked the user if he believed Russia has the right to attack EU countries providing weapons to Ukraine, possibly causing civilian deaths, just as he thinks Israel had the right to do so in regards to Iran.

There is no “right” in geo politics. Might has made right throughout history.

I think this is lost on many people. There's no authority overseeing sovereign nations, no real law or consequence to law-breaking even if there was one. There's only allies, treaties, pacts between nations, military might, and the consequences of aggression that keep the peace. Russia would be bombing all the supply lines of weapons flowing into Ukraine if the consequences weren't so high. There's certainly no law that is preventing them from doing so, only the consequences of their actions.

I doubt that “many people” are ignorant of the fact that there are no real supranational authorities that can stop wars. But it seems that some people gloss over the fact that these discussions aren’t about stopping nations from waging war, as if the UN (let alone a comment section) could do that. For some reason which goes beyond smug “might makes right” apparent-truisms, even mighty nations justify their wars. Perhaps especially to their own citizens. Which in turn means that discourse on what is “moral” might matter a tiny bit.

> Russia would be bombing all the supply lines of weapons flowing into Ukraine if the consequences weren't so high. There's certainly no law that is preventing them from doing so, only the consequences of their actions.

Remember when Russia invaded Ukraine and people in the comments threw their hands up and said the strong take what they can? No, me neither.

This question is difficult to answer because it's unclear what you mean by "right" in this context. The moral high ground? Russia doesn't have that now, nor has it ever had it throughout its history of military expansionism.

Well, by "right" I meant the same thing the user I was replying to said Israel had when attacking Iran.

Reality is that any sovereign country has the right to do whatever they want.

Russia HAS attacked and sabotaged arms storage facilities in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_ammunition_... is one such example.

Arms supply to the terrorist groups and states(russia) is enough to justify limited hit against Iran.

All three.

1) Iran's government openly calls for the destruction of Israel.

2) They are building nukes. And to use them (see point 1)

3) In a few days, they will have them. So, if Israel waits a few days, it would be much worse.

Also, your own link cites the six day war as an example of a morally justified preemptive strike. This is very analogous.

Also, when it comes to life and death of your family, a military strike on your enemies is not something you have to think too hard about.

> There are no indications that Iran intends to use nuclear weapons against Israel.

The Iranian government are rather extreme theocrats, but they aren’t a suicide cult. They know that a nuclear first strike against Israel would result in massive nuclear retaliation aimed at annihilating Iran as a modern nation-state. They aren’t going to do that.

I think their primary reason for pursuing nuclear weapons is as a deterrent against conventional invasion, forcible “regime change” like what the US did to Saddam Hussein - much as Iran welcomed the removal of one of their national archenemies - given Iraq is majority Shi’a, a democratic Iraq is generally more friendly to Iran, although not all Iraqi Shi’a are pro-Iranian (e.g. Ayatollah Sistani, who is very influential, dislikes how Iran has politicised the religion) - but it raised the risk the Americans might try the same thing on them.

Yes.

> I think their primary reason for pursuing nuclear weapons is as a deterrent against conventional invasion

Israel just showed how effective that deterrent is.

> Please don’t act as if you don’t know that you are peddling nonsense.

You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

When a person writes something that is obviously nonsensical it should be called out as such. This is especially so when the topic is about ongoing acts of war.

If it's an important topic, which it is, it's all the more important to convey the substance of your point, without the abusive barbs. Dropping the swipe "Please don’t act as if you don’t know that you are peddling nonsense" would have made all the difference. We can't know what people "know" when they write things on a discussion board.

I disagree. The logic used was so bad that the most reasonable conclusion is that it was deliberately so. This is my opinion. I could be wrong.

You can be wrong / right and you can be polite / rude

those two are unrelated. Being right and rude (or worse) is not great for a discussion, especially on a topic like this one.

In general I agree. But not in this case. In the “polite” approach what happens is that obviously bad assertions are made and one politely engages but the starting point is such that you are engaged in an attempt to just get to a reasonable place. It’s sort like how combatting a lie is much more effort than spreading one.

My comment above was not for the person who made. I don’t engage with such people. It was for the people who stumbled upon it. I want them to know that there are people who think the comment is ridiculously bad.

There's no "not in the case" on HN, though. People can figure out the quality of a comment themselves, perhaps helped along by a comment that disputes what the first comment says. But the idea you're doing everyone some service by trashing the place is misplaced, it's just not how things work.

I disagree.

You don’t have to agree, you just can’t comment like that on HN.

But I did comment like that becuase I don’t agree with what you said. I will continue to comment like I did where I deem appropriate. You are free to ban me or get someone to ban me.

Nobody is interested in banning you, people are simply asking you not to shit in the place they use so that they and you can continue using it.

Trying to present this shitting as some sort of principled martyrdom or, heaven help us, favour to the rest of us is silly, selfish and unconvincing. Just ease off on the shitting in the future, it's not like most everyone else has any trouble doing it.

Martyrdom? I’m not important enough or self centered enough to have any feelings of martyrdom with regard to this site. I was just letting you know that I don’t agree with you and I’m not going to stop. As such the only option is for me to be banned. Pointing out this fact does not qualify as martyrdom.

If you cannot make your point clear politely you also cannot force it into people. It just look terrible for everyone reading the conversation. I actually agree with the direction your argument but can't agree with the form. And also unfortunately if you position was the opposite, the moderation would be less severe, but it is what it is. This is an US American forum after all.

It's not like Iran did this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_2024_Iranian_strikes_aga... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2024_Iranian_strikes_o...

The U.S. shot down a civilian Iranian airplane and killed around 200 people. The commander of the ship that did this later got promoted. This does not mean the U.S. wants to use nuclear weapons against Iran. Your points are not valid.

Can you give source on him getting a promotion?

He did not get promoted later. I was wrong. But he wasn’t fired, relieved of command or put in jail. He later received an award for his naval service. But all of this irrelevant to the point I made.

When a Soviet fighter pilot shot down a Korean jetliner the U.S. reaction to that was quite a bit different than our reaction to the Vincennes shooting down the Iranian jetliner.

Ethics are utterly irrelevant in geopolitical affairs. When nation states face existential threats they'll do whatever it takes to survive. They might invent some ethical justification after the fact for public consumption.

And I don't mean this as a particular criticism of Israel. Most other countries do the same sort of thing when necessary.

Is Israel facing an existential threat or Netanyahu?

They are the same thing.

That's only because we're throwing away the hard fought prize humanity earned at the cost of two world wars and millions of lives: the system of international laws and the UN.

Nah. The UN is a cute little debating society but it never had any meaningful capacity to enforce international treaties on it's own. Relations between sovereign states have always been fundamentally anarchic, and always will be.

The current system might be bad, but some sort of world government run by the UN would be far worse.

On the contrary, the US has become England: A state of the art cutting edge industrial society and empire turned into a smug entitlement driven immoral turd that is far beyond useless for everyone outside and most inside of it. This will inevitably trigger a global effort to disconnect and help foster the downfall. It will be expensive for everyone involved.

Also wise to remember, there are now so many quiet parts you can't say out loud that pretty much everyone who knows anything no longer participates in online conversation.

We don't make things in the West anymore so our dialog has no constructive purpose. You don't care what I think, say or who I am but those with nefarious intend are the ones paying close attention to everyone.

The destructive people are outperforming the rest of us and it can only end in one way. It has always ended the same way.

> the US has become England: A state of the art cutting edge industrial society and empire turned into a smug entitlement driven immoral turd that is far beyond useless for everyone outside and most inside of it.

Oh don't worry, Trump and his cronies are working hard to make the US not cutting edge at anything anymore.

I'm not sure the UN provides a real alternative to that though.

> An obvious intention to do injury

https://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-general-says-tehran-aims-...

"Iran general says Tehran aims to wipe Israel off the ‘global political map’", that's consistent with other leaders and the regime ideology since the very start

“We warn them [Zionists] that if a new war breaks out, it will result in their termination,”

and there are no shortage of such quotes, and even concrete plans (for example by using Hamas and Hezbollah), one attempt of which we have witnessed in 2023

https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/hamas-strategy-to-destr...

> active preparations that turn that intention into a positive danger

>a situation in which the risk of defeat will be greatly increased if the fight is delayed

We know independently that Iran has been enriching massive amounts of uranium to degrees of purity only suitable for nuclear weapons. See last announcement by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

According to Israel there have been other advancements in the nuclear program which might lead them to a nuclear bomb

1. Arming and organizing proxies to attack Israel for years is much more than just intention to do injury, it is actual. Those proxies continue attack on Israel (the latest missile launch at Israel was this week). How many missiles does a country have to eat before clause 1 if fulfilled? Any country besides Israel that number would be 1. In additional Iran does not recognise Israel's right to exist as a country and explicitly calls for Israel's destruction.

2. https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-857003

3. https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-857003