And yes, the IDF has been relying on abhorrent & violently escalatory tactics since at least 1982 (Lebanon invasion).
On that note, I recently picked up an excellent book (“Our American Israel”) that dives pretty deep into the US-Israel relationship, and spends a good chunk of time on how the invasion of Lebanon was received by the West.
There are definitely some parallels between 1982 and the ongoing Gaza genocide with regards to the use of violence. But the most salient point to me is that it is quite clear that Israel learned a ton on how to ensure its image in the West does not easily get tarnished going forward.
100k dead, more injured, highest number of child casualties in any modern conflict, countless statements of genocidal intent at the highest levels. But population growth is the metric we need focus on at this point, because that’s the Hasbara talking point du jour.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_child_suicide_bombers...
Unfortunately the Israeli lobby has so much money and power they would silence anyone who says that publicly by accusing them of being antisemitic.
You see, whataboutism is really only worth calling out in super low risk environments, because the potential future consequences are irrelevant. When we’re talking about putting the world powers on trial, the future consequences are now worth considering. Get off reddit, it’s poisoning your ability to reason.
The October terror attack is not to be defended, but the response is disgusting behavior by the state of Israel. There’s nothing proportionate about this. Rather Israel sees this as an opportunity to strengthen its position and wipe out its enemies - and innocent men, women, and children.
In the United States, we talk about Israel as if it must be protected because it’s the Middle East’s only democracy. It is not a liberal democracy. It exists only to protect the rights of one type of people with one particular type of ethnicity. In America, we wouldn’t recognize this as a democracy.
For our part, it’s important to protect our own interests in the region and so yes, strange bedfellows. But given Netanyahu’s comfort with war crime, given Israel’s weak and distorted democratic institution, and given what nationalism can do to a country, we should be very careful to balance and diversify our interests.
Israel in another 10 years might not be recognizable. It’s cause for alarm.
If you mean in terms of the personal safety of the Israeli protesters, it's not dangerous or anything. Certainly nothing like the very brave people in Gaza protesting Hamas, who are actually living through hell, and who risk their lives by protesting.
Of course not comparable to Gaza.
But this is exactly what we have in America right now.
Arab citizens of Israel are systematically and legally discriminated against to an extent with no parallel in the US, and Arabs in the occupied territories (West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza) have effectively no rights at all.
It is in fact, the Arabs in the region, who have been waving a 100 year war to deny Jews autonomy in their historic homeland. Oct 7 was just a manifestation of this. They are an implacable enemy.
To the extent a minority on the far right want to them to leave, there is no racial or genocidal dimension, just a desire to expel an enemy
What is this discourse? “Sharpen the fractal of demographics and opinions until you get some rare alignment between them, and you find a supposedly irrefutable and most valid position.” Can you see why winning Internet arguments and getting upvotes doesn’t translate to your goals?
Of course you should share these thoughts and forums like these should publish them. But as much as I hate the Intellectual Dark Web and its philosophies, which are as ridiculous as, “you can gain power by thinking about things differently,” I think they are right that popularity contests are not the end all be all of conflict resolution.
[0] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/majority-israelis-support...
This Haaretz article is very troubling. To the extent it's accurate, there's not much question that it reflects war crimes.
A few thoughts:
1. The article itself says there is an ongoing investigation into some of these accusations. I hope that, to whatever extent this is happening, it's not widespread, and anyone committing war crimes is very visibly and publicly tried in court.
2. There is clearly something broken with the GHF and the new aid delivery - dozens dead every day for weeks. We really need some answers on what's going on.
3. From Haaretz today:
> The U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on Saturday urged Israel to investigate reports that soldiers opened fire towards unarmed Palestinians near aid distribution sites, detailed in a Haaretz expose, calling the allegations "too grave to ignore," while denying that any such incidents occurred within its facilities.
> GHF Interim Director John Acree stated, "There have been no incidents or fatalities at or in the immediate vicinity of any of our distribution sites."
These events are hard to believe, not because of the cruelty, but because they now happen without a shred of deniability.
All information presented is mostly unverified testimony printed verbatim by the press from untrustworthy sources on both sides. It's difficult to tell what is fact and what is not. A lot of early reports in this war turned out to be false information and the rush to immediate news notification rather than quality journalism means that the headline changes context very quickly from the first cut to what people read and remember. (I wrote an extensive suite of software to track this)
Wait and see. Do not judge too early. Take nothing as verbatim from anyone without evidence.
Don't be unknowing partisans of an information war. Veracity takes time.
Hamas has a history of threatening and intimidating journalists in Gaza.
https://cpj.org/2025/05/gaza-journalists-speak-out-about-ham...
Gaza is also an active war zone. It is dubious that western media could just walk into Gaza and report freely even if the IDF allowed that. In theory media could have crossed into Gaza from Egypt before Israel occupied the Philadelphi corridor and the border crossing but none did. So Egypt (and/or the Gazan authorities) e.g. also did not allow journalists into Gaza.
So this statement is sort of true but there's more to be considered here.
My understanding of "actively killed" is thy have been the explicit target of an attack and not casualties in general.
Given the unconscionable number of journalists who died at the IDF's hands, it seems like Israel is indeed using the transparency info from journalists to locate and target them with airstrikes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...
Israel is the side with Datalink, in case this chart doesn't make it clear.
The context is a protest: "Haruf says he was attacked without cause after leaving a prayer protest broken up by Israeli security forces in the Wadi Joz neighborhood." not the journalistic activities.
I'm not justifying this FWIW, just that it doesn't prove what you're trying to prove. If anything the publication of this article in Israel shows Israel has freedom of press.
also: "The Border Police later announced that it had suspended the two officers involved in the incident and that the Department of Internal Police Investigations has opened a probe into the matter."
There is also followup (again in Israeli press): https://www.timesofisrael.com/border-police-said-to-reinstat...
"The Union of Journalists in Israel condemned the incident and said it was “shocked by the violent attack” on Haruf.
The union said the incident was “the 37th attack on Arab journalists since the beginning of the war” on October 7, when Hamas-led terrorists launched their murderous assault on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking some 240 hostages of all ages.
The union, in a December 15 statement, said “most of the attacks [were] carried out by the security forces. This is a reality that dramatically harms freedom of the press and the ability of journalists to perform their duties.”"
Is this perfect? no. Is Israeli press generally free, attacks/criticizes the government, brings to light bad things that happen, and follow up on them? yes.
And this is how we know Israel does not believe in democracy and is not a democracy itself, since a free press is a requirement of democracy.
Democracy isn't just having elections. Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Russia has elections, too.
This demonstrates my point perfectly.
Please rather than take this point as an affront to your position and go and research both positions and compare. Then at least you can be confident in your own position and talk into it with authority.
Everything is very nuanced.
Shooting starving people should be one of those moments of clarity that cuts through the narrative.
One of those facts might be intent or misheard orders. It might just be that this actually happened (as a war crime) but it is probably too early to tell.
Regardless of what happened, it helps to wait until more info comes out.
"Look, children may be dying and maybe we're killing them but we need to verify and we need more time. Because first of all what were they even doing there? Oh and also this is our Land anyways and there were no deaths nobody died there aren't even any children in gaza!"
Every case needs to be investigated thoroughly and punished accordingly.
Which is the exact reason you should be concerned. Israel has zero accountability for their actions, many of which are documented war crimes.
And who exactly do you propose should do that? The Israeli govt?
ICC would be nice but the geopolitical gorilla in the room knocked them down.
It's a cop out and putting one's head in the sand to the real atrocities of zionistic ambitions of usurping Palestinian land.
In America, if someone trespasses into one's home and the home owner kills the trespasser, the vast majority of the time, the owner is justified and there are numerous court cases we can point to. Recently, it has become clear to me that Palestinians are simply trying to defend their own property/land/humanity.
Israel's trespasses are finally seeing the light in the latest set of conflicts and folks reading this comment that are unsure should spend 30 minutes looking up the videos of the conflict.
Israel blocking aid, murdering medical personnel with impunity, the before/after of Gaza, the list of crimes perpetuated by the government is undeniable at this point.
Interesting. . . do you have a page for the project or anything?
"There is ample evidence and this is not a new accusation, so your request to wait and see rings hollow and appears to be a de facto request to not pass judgement on Israeli crimes" is neither morally nor intellectually dishonest.
The story told by the data is that these journalists are overwhelmingly killed by Israeli forces, in some cases with prior notice of the press being where it was.
So if the IDF wants the press to tell the true story on the ground maybe let them do their work without killing them? The quesrion is: at which point do we have to stop assuming incompetence and start to assume malice (at least in parts)? For me personally that point has been months in the past.
This will be a stain on Israel for the rest of history.
This information didn't just appear out of nowhere. It took time to collate, source and verify.
Could you try to rely less on using vague innuendo on HN? If you have reasonable doubt in a theory and/or additional/missing information that isn't purely anecdotal that lead you to your statement consider sharing it on here. If you don't have any information consider the option that your opiniom might not be as much supported by the ground truth as you probably like it to be.
Journalists like these are professionals that are paid to work in a conflict zone, if they are killed, of course their death will be noted. It works like this in literally every conflict on earth and there are international organizations that monitor violence against journalists because they are an fundamentally important pillar of any free society.
The question is why the technologically advanced IDF kills journalists at rates higher than in any other conflict zone on earth. This isn't a statistical anomaly that can be simply hand-waved away. It describes the nature of this conflict with numbers that are written with blood.
Anybody who defends the killing of journalists in a war zone is on the wrong side of history, period.
Don't want to keep you from your hobby though. I don't think many comments in this thread do reach any sensible HN standards for that matter.
I hope you realize that this would be genocidal rhetoric. The kind of thinking that lead to the worst atrocities humanity has ever committed. But hey as long as it is happening to the dehumanized subhumans it is okay, right?
Many of the journalists in Gaza are Hamas operatives until they die. When suddenly their twitter or fb account is used to claim they’re a journalist.
You’re being lied to on a regular basis about nearly everything that comes out of Gaza. Aside from 3rd party medic accounts we have zero evidence of any of these supposed crimes. This is the most filmed war in history and yet after 3 weeks of claims by Hamas that GHF is shooting and booby trapping aid there is literally zero actual evidence to support that.
In such a conflict both sides have incentives to twist reality, but since the names of the killed journalists are public you can do research and provide a valuable service to the public by ensuring the truth is out there. But this means "trust me bro" isn't going to cut it.
Haaretz is a (far?) left, anti-current-government newspaper. It's not outside the mainstream or anything - it is considered largely credible, and its articles are taken seriously - but most people in Israel would find it funny that you assume it wouldn't be biased against Israel. Lots of Netanyahu supporters routinely consider it a "traitorous" publication.
I think its articles should be taken seriously, but you can't simply assume it's automatically right and not "biased". Think of it the way an American Democrat would think of Fox or something - the news org definitely has a viewpoint.
The bias of a mainstream publication that's considered "traitorous" by genocidal authoritarian ethnonationalists is, given historical consideration, likely to be toward justice.
I.e. your claim that it is leftist requires some justification.
Yeah, sure, if you are a Nazi, everything to the left of you is going to look "left", and likewise if you are a Communist, everything to the right is going to look "right", that doesn't make your viewpoint reality, however.
I'm a leftist - I identify far more with what Haaretz is doing than most other news orgs. I'm personally very angry that other orgs, even ones that are "centrist" or "anti-current-government", are not covering the stories that Haaretz is covering, and barely covering the tragedies happening in Gaza. It's common in most countries during wartime, but it's deeply wrong IMO.
That all said, saying Haaretz is on the left is like saying Fox News is on the right. It's common knowledge.
And here, I just looked it up, this is from Haaretz's own About section:
"Haaretz has built a reputation for in-depth reporting, insightful analysis, and a liberal and progressive editorial stance on domestic issues and international affairs."
So they are framing themselves as liberal and progressive.
1. If by "verified" you simply mean that the Israelis are admitting to what they did then you're right they're still lying about what they're doing everyday. Only verification are the videos, photos and dead bodies themselves of course.
2. The Israelis are out in force on these message boards, IDF. Personally I'm at the point where if I'm seeing any illogical support for the murderous regime of Israel I assume it's the IDF at this point, most real humans no matter what their political beliefs can at least agree that murdering innocent children is not good, only the Israelis struggle away with the way to justify it.
3. Lol, "wait and see..." This was the same attitude of the Nazis in world war II! "Just more time.. we just need more time so we can verify..." Amazing that the IDF is now using the same playbook that was used against them in world war II, I guess you guys figure if it works once you can work again!
By avoiding to admit this you are indeed defending the attacker.
And how dare you make accusations along those lines. Your attitude contributes to the problem.
Oh you can't answer that easily without trivializing these deaths yourself. Accusing others, that are suspicious of all of this, of "attitude" is easier.
As for enforcement and prosecution the ICC warrants were justified and the situation that remains is tragic. You can thank the US for throwing a spanner in those works.
I’m not sure why you keep trying to put words in my mouth. Perhaps to justify your partisan position rather than my entirely neutral one? Sure feels like it.
We do need to really consider the source of the information. War is often filled with propaganda and lies, that's just how it is, that's part of war, propaganda. I think we need to look at Israel's long history of humanitarianism, and look at Palenstine's history of terrorism, to get an idea as to who is right and who is wrong here. My belief if the article is a piece of fiction, a hit piece.
Anyway, some more history to consider: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-11-17/ty-article/.p...
Credulity is boundless, even (especially) in this world of open information warfare. Messages that require side-channels and discrimination with intentionally limited information are guaranteed to be misperceived and likely to have harmful memetic impact.
Agreed though, earnestness is one of our most urgent shortages.
The source is one of the biggest Israeli newspapers, by the way.
I think that's a bit misleading. Per Wikipedia, it has a ~5% readership, as opposed to the bigger papers that have a ~22% readership. It is one of the older and most established papers though, that is true.
Anecdotally, I don't think Haaretz is very widely read among the "average" populace, though I think it has a lot of cachet in intellectual (and of course Leftist) circles.
The world has been watching for over 2 years the atrocities occurring in Gaza and Israel and its people have has lost its credibility to its victimhood on the world stage.
This article is simply 1 extra reporting on a million of Israel’s offenses in the name of terrorism.
Why do you say its "unverified" ? The commander in question: Brigadier General Yehuda Vach is formally under investigation for several crimes already: https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-said-to-launch-probe-into-...
This nutcase general has faced consistent accusations from soldiers under his own command over the last year for over a dozen incidents alone. What is your holy threshold for evidence ? How can you "wait and see" if the press is not allowed at the food distribution site ? Basically, you are saying "wait and sweep it under the carpet".
Since October 7th sources from within Palestine have been accurate regarding deaths and actions. Often being attacked first and then quietly acknowledged later.
There is no reason to doubt the reporting of Israel’s paper of record, which though considered left wing writhing Israel, supports Netanyahu’s attacks on Gaza and applies rigorous journalistic standards.
> 1. The article itself says there is an ongoing investigation into some of these accusations. I hope that, to whatever extent this is happening, it's not widespread, and anyone committing war crimes is very visibly and publicly tried in court.
There is zero chance that happens as long as Netanyahu, Likud, Trump, or the Reupublicans are in power. Trump would immediately offer asylum in the US to anybody accused of such a thing.
Even if Israel did investigate, there's nothing more classic than Israel going "we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong".
So if you want accountability, drive that internally with your politicians and get Netanyahu/Likud out of office
This is untrue - Israel has investigated war crimes, e.g. famously things like what happened at the Sde Teiman prison.
> So if you want accountability, drive that internally with your politicians and get Netanyahu/Likud out of office
Many have been trying for years. It's not trivial. (About half of Americans dislike {current_president}, whomever that is, but there's very little they can do about it in between elections.)
I do want you to consider the context here on Hacker News though. You and me have context, we understand the history, we understand at least something about wars and how they are fought. Most people here do not.
The problem isn't whether firing on civilians with no reason when they come to get food is wrong or right. We all know it's wrong. The soldiers in Gaza know it's wrong. We all know this is a war crime.
Most cases of war crimes during war are not prosecuted at all and not visibly. This is true for US wars in the middle east. It's true for the war the West wages against ISIS. It's true for Ukraine and Russia. It's a sad but unfortunate reality of our world. The current political climate and government in Israel are also not the best for the kind of outcome you are describing.
Iran and Hamas firing missiles and rockets into population centers is a war crime too. So is their embedding and use of civilians. The entire strategy of Israel's opponents in the middle east is to engage in war crimes.
Where do we place Israel on that scale? Is there more attention on Israel vs. other similar world events? Why? Do we see similar public debate and discussion of the morality of those wars in other countries? Again, where is Israel on that scale (not of idealistic fantasy world of justice but in the real world)?
I’d flip that around: why shouldn’t we expect Israel to be better than a terrorist group like Hamas or the deeply evil Iranian government? When some Americans complained that they were being held to a higher standard than Al-Qaeda or ISIL, they were rightly criticized for betraying our national aspiration to leading rather than trailing the world, and the same is happening here. Israel has rightly set its standards higher than its neighbors when it comes to democracy and civil rights, but that entails criticism where it fails to live up to that self-selected standard.
I feel like you're moving the target now. Those are your words above.
But yes, if your scale is that of the western world then harsh criticism of Israel's war crimes should be expected and welcome.
I don't mean to put words in your mouth, maybe you did mean something along those lines and I'm misinterpreting.
Let's get some scale here. - Probably more than 160K killed in this war. Maybe half civilians. - Siege and constant bombardment/destruction of cities like Mosul. - Millions of civilians displaced. - Many war crimes by western powers.
This was in response to what? A few westerners beheaded? Terrorist attacks killing a few dozen people?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_against_the_Islamic_State
Can you really say honestly that the amount of criticism Israel is attracting due to its war in Gaza and the circumstances are comparable? This might just be me but I don't recall huge rallies against the war. I don't recall much negative media coverage. I don't recall anyone held accountable for war crimes. I don't recall the ICC being involved.
Yes, the US bombings of random weddings in Afghanistan with Predator drones and air to surface missiles, or bombing hospitals has occasionally drawn some weak protest. Nothing at the scale of the anti-Israeli sentiment.
This isn't what-about-ism. It's not ok to bomb a wedding and it's not ok to fire into a crowd of people trying to get food. But there is no comparison of the sentiment and focus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_the...
Yes, everything can be litigated to the beginning of time, WW-2, WW-1, the Romans. But the fact still stands that all those "moral" countries didn't hesitate to lay siege, starve people, bomb civilians, for tbh little reason. I don't recall hearing even crickets protest.
Why can't the "Islamic State" have their own country? Sure their culture of beheading and kidnapping Yazidi as slaves is a bit weird but come on.
For most of the period since 2005, it has been a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade, not an exclusively Israeli one. That has recently changed now that Israel has militarily occupied the Gaza side of the Egypt-Gaza border
But I do find it interesting how Israel gets exclusively blamed for something which Egypt also had a hand in - and they weren’t doing it because “Israel made us”, they had their own security reasons - they feared Hamas would support Islamist rebels in Egypt.
It does seem to support the claim that Israel gets “picked on”, when a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade gets presented as an exclusively Israeli one
From the very first paragraph in your own link:
> Since then, the United Nations, many other international humanitarian and legal organizations, and most academic commentators have continued to regard the Gaza Strip as being under Israeli occupation ...
"Full control" - except over their border, their imports, their airspace, their electromagnetic frequencies, their coastline, their construction industry, etc etc.
> WW-2, WW-1, the Romans. But the fact still stands that all those "moral" countries didn't hesitate to lay siege, starve people, bomb civilians, for tbh little reason.
... If you're taking the Romans and WW-2 as your baseline for morality, that would start to explain things.
This anti-Israeli argument that somehow Israel dismantled its settlements and left but yet still "occupied" Gaza is nonsense. It does not stand any minimal scrutiny.
Yes, as a result of Gazans making a choice to engage in war with Israel there was a blockade over that territory. That's about it. Do you expect Israel to allow them to import tanks and jets?
So yeah. I think we can say they had control.
The "tightening of the screws" is a result of Palestinians deciding to wage war against Israel, build rockets, fire them into civilian populations.
It's really pretty simple. Palestinians want to destroy Israel. They have and had no interest having a "Singapore" in Gaza.
I'm not sure how you get to the 90's. We are talking about the disengagement in 2005.
I lived in Israel during this time and I know very well what the mood was. I've also seen interviews with people who were in the loop who say Ariel Sharon (who architected the withdrawal) sincerely wanted to see Palestinians succeed and use this as a blue print to also end the conflict in the west bank. International donors even bought equipment from Israel (like greenhouses) so they can leave it for the Palestinians who promptly proceeded to destroy them.
The latter happened as recently as this month; the IDF commandeered a boat delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza and arrested its passengers in international waters. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/06/israeli-forces-commandeer-aid...
> The movement, founded in 2006 by activists during Israel’s war on Lebanon, went on to launch 31 boats between 2008 and 2016, five of which reached Gaza despite heavy Israeli restrictions.
> Since 2010, all flotillas attempting to break the Gaza blockade have been intercepted or attacked by Israel in international waters.
That doesn't imply much about aid; it's not a total blockade and there are mechanisms for importing aid. One can argue that the aid distribution mechanisms are bad, and it might be reasonable to propose various changes (different aid mechanisms, a relaxation of the blockade, etc), but it wouldn't really make sense for Israel to make exceptions and allow certain unauthorized ships to just circumvent its blockade.
They bombed the first boat. In international waters.
Extremist ideology makes people say some strange things, but the intellectual contortion dlubarov asks the reader to endure in order to see Israel as a bonafide example of “proper channels” is tantamount to lobotomy.
I don't see a need to engage with you further, especially as you increasingly use dog whistles to tacitly support the actions of Israel while repeating clear propaganda. Your arguments are not helping as much as you think, and only increasingly turning people against Israel as their actions become more and more obvious.
Read it again. Note how effectively this statement conveys a deeply dehumanizing generalization of Palestinians.
I advise all readers to take careful note. Even the most well-manicured extremists will eventually tell you who they really are.
Since the 90's Israel has been blockading Gaza: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip
So your statement is 100% a lie.
> Control of the borders with Israel and Gaza.
Was maintained by Israel, the apartheid state creators. Stop the genocide!
Genocider complains about double standards.
> Nothing at the scale of the anti-Israeli sentiment.
Because Israel does it systematically, and annexes territories not belonging to them, while also having prominent government figures saying that the enemy is "animals".
Israel is doing a genocide in Gaza, and you are what-abouting some other countries? Sure, we will call on them as well. Doesn't change that Israel, at this very moment, is doing a genocide on the people of Palestine.
Israel does not "annex territories" not belonging to them. Israel e.g. returned Sinai to Egypt. Israel gave Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005. Israel in negotiations with Palestinians created the Palestinian Authority and gave it control of large swaths of territory.
This is not what-about.
All I hear is twisting of the truth, not surprising from an apartheid genocidal regime.
Let's look at the statistics before Oct 7-th, for the years 2008-2020:
https://www.statista.com/chart/16516/israeli-palestinian-cas...
- 5590 dead Palestinians
- 250 dead Israeli
And, the most recent ones:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war
- 56772 Palestinians
- 1706 Israeli
What else is there to say? Your genocidal government is:
- Withholding humanitarian aid (war crime): https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-attacks-ki...
- Shooting at civilians and children (war crime): https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_forces_fatally_shoot_1...
- Bombing hospitals (war crime): https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2jvx3yjg3o
- Yoav Gallant called the Palestinians "human animals", which, ironically, is similar to what the Nazis were calling the Jews during WW2: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ReZEJPwrM1k
- Using starvation as a weapon (war crime): https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0k3d1y10pzo.
> Israeli soldiers, attacks Israeli civilians (there are still occasional rockets fired out of Gaza).
Maybe don't use your civilians as human shields then. Why is your military next to your civilians? See how that works?
> Israel does not "annex territories" not belonging to them. Israel e.g. returned Sinai to Egypt. Israel gave Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005. Israel in negotiations with Palestinians created the Palestinian Authority and gave it control of large swaths of territory.
They do, illegally occupying and expanding on land that doesn't belong to them https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1j5954edlno
So, everything you said is a lie, which is 100% expected from a supporter of a genocidal state
Russia doesn't target civilian population to the extent Israel does. There is a reason only Israel is charged with genocide, and not Russia. Don't get me wrong, both the countries' governments are run by bunch of homicidal dictators, but only Isreal systematically does enough war crimes and human rights violations to fit the criteria of genocide.
> instead of just saying random stuff like a coward.
You can't comment like this on HN, no matter what you're replying to.
You've posted many comments in this thread that are inflammatory and risk breaking the guidelines. On a topic like this one, this guideline is especially important:
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
You've been asked before to make an effort to observe the guidelines. Please remind yourself of them and keep them in mind when commenting here.
I think war crimes are a lot more acceptable/understandable if they’re the only way you even potentially have a chance to get back at your agressors. Nobody blames the resistance during the Nazi occupation for what they did.
Israel is very much not in a position they need to perpetrate war crimes to win the war. They have already won. It’s like a cat playing with the mouse it killed.
Are you really sure about that? Maybe now, but while it was happening, I'm not so sure everyone was on board. Quite the opposite.
Because the Nazis lost. Had the Nazis won, alternative history and all that, the argument would probably be the other way around, how, faced with overwhelmingly strong enemies, they "had to" create death camps to "get back" at their aggressors.
Not a great argument, I think.
Attacking the Qirya, Israel's HQ, with some sort of accuracy is a legitimate military target. It's a pretty large target. Soldiers wear uniform. There are no civilians mixed into that camp.
This is very different than lobbing rockets at Beer-Sheba, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ramat Gan. The casualties from Iran's attacks, minus one off-duty soldier, were all civilians and the targets were nowhere near anything military. The intentionally aim at population centers.
Let's look at the statistics before Oct 7-th, for the years 2008-2020:
https://www.statista.com/chart/16516/israeli-palestinian-cas...
- 5590 dead Palestinians
- 250 dead Israeli
And, the most recent ones:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war
- 56772 Palestinians
- 1706 Israeli
What else is there to say? Your genocidal government is:
- Withholding humanitarian aid (war crime): https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-attacks-ki...
- Shooting at civilians and children (war crime): https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_forces_fatally_shoot_1...
- Bombing hospitals (war crime): https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2jvx3yjg3o
- Yoav Gallant called the Palestinians "human animals", which, ironically, is similar to what the Nazis were calling the Jews during WW2: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ReZEJPwrM1k
- Using starvation as a weapon (war crime): https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0k3d1y10pzo.
> The casualties from Iran's attacks, minus one off-duty soldier, were all civilians and the targets were nowhere near anything military. The intentionally aim at population centers
Maybe don't use your civilians as human shields then. Why is your military next to your civilians? See how that works?
So, everything genocidal state
And also, stop the genocide!
That is, I think, an excellent and pertinent question.
For starters may I suggest applying straightforward quantification on a linear scale and observing the results? See the following two wiki articles / subsections:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_co... (see chart preceding the Gaza war (follow anchor))
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war (Gaza war; see top table (and subsequent charts for more detailed breakdown if interested))
Based on this quantitative data where would you place Israel on that aforementioned scale?
Can you present one counterexample as regards quantities / proportions of figures please? One source. (More of course if you'd like)
(My implicit point is that the proportions are so one-sided (orders of magnitude in difference; yes plural) that you will not find one; but please do find one (with actual quantities) and we can all check veracity of your source)
P.S. edit here is one of the sources the first wiki article lists (of multiple):
Lappin, Yaakov (2009). "IDF releases Cast Lead casualty numbers". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on 26 March 2013. Retrieved 5 January 2024. =>
- https://www.jpost.com/israel/idf-releases-cast-lead-casualty...
- https://web.archive.org/web/20130326192603/http://www.jpost....
Would you consider ethno-nationalists of other nations (far) left, based on (speculating) their economic/women's rights/LGBT/other social stances?
(Orthogonally, I can certainly empathize with being pro-something, but not pro-everything-that-something-does. There's certainly nothing intrinsic to a Jewish state that would require firing at unarmed crowds.)
If your implication is that I'm an ethno-nationalist, I don't think that characterizes Israel or my thoughts about it, however much "ethnostate" is a favorite slur of people to use against Israel.
(A basic law in Israel is roughly like a constitutional amendment in the US.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law%3A_Israel_as_the_Nat...
I ran the question by AI, and it seems to think that somewhere between 30-50 since WWII have done so explicitly.
Edit: I asked ChatGPT "How many nations have declared themselves to be the Nation-State of a people?" earlier and got the same answer as you. I asked again just now and got "Israel is the only nation in the world that has legally declared itself the “Nation‑State of the Jewish People.”" [I didn't specify Jewish]
Can't rely on AI.
In the 2022 census, only 76.5% of people in Ireland were ethnically Irish. Over 20% of the population are foreign-born, with the most common countries of foreign birth being Poland, the UK, India, Romania and Lithuania.
So Ireland is far less homogeneous than you perceive it to be.
But the real issue here isn’t how diverse the state’s population is in practice, it is how the state defines itself in its own founding documents (such as the constitution) - as a state for all its citizens, or as a state for a people (ethnos) which is only a subset of the state’s citizens? Israel is (2) but essentially all Western nations nowadays are (1).
Even though the French and German constitutions still express the idea of a “national people” for whom the state exists, they consider anyone who is naturalised as a citizen as joining that people (“ethnos”). By contrast, a non-Jew can immigrate to Israel and become an Israeli citizen-but the state will still not consider them a member of the people for whom the state exists-only conversion to Judaism does that, and only if their conversion is accepted as valid by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate-non-Orthodox conversions will not be accepted, but they sometimes even reject conversions by overseas Orthodox Rabbis whom they don’t consider “rigorous” enough.
So Israel is actually unique in this regard - no Western nation makes becoming “not just a citizen of the state, but a member of the people for whom it exists” contingent on religious conversion. If you want a parallel, you’d have to look at the Islamic world, where non-Muslims are sometimes (not always) permitted citizenship, but are denied membership in the category of “nation for whose sake the state exists”
And it isn't "essentially limited to Western Europe". The same is true of the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand – naturalisation as a citizen automatically makes you an official member of the "nation for whom the state exists". I believe it is true for most or all Latin American nations as well.
Now, Israel is not unique globally speaking – I think Malaysia's bumiputera status is a rather close parallel. But I doubt that's a comparison most Zionists are keen to draw attention to.
> "civic" nation-states) and non-nation-states
If you are going to argue that "Germany is a civic nation state, the US is a non-nation-state", that is a false and arbitrary distinction. Because American nationalism is an entirely real thing – but in its mainstream contemporary manifestation it is civic nationalist, not ethnic nationalist, just like how mainstream contemporary German nationalism is civic nationalist not ethnic nationalist. Now, historically America was arguably racial nationalist – America was a nation, not necessarily for any particular White ethnicity, but for White people [0] – but it has evolved from racial nationalism into civic nationalism
[0] The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited US citizenship by naturalization to "free white persons". The Naturalization Act of 1870 made people of African descent eligible for citizenship by naturalization, but people who were categorised as neither "white" nor "African" remained ineligible for citizenship by naturalisation until the The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (the McCarran-Walter Act) removed all racial restrictions on naturalisation. So US nationality law arguably was explicitly racially nationalist from 1790 to 1870, and remained so in a somewhat watered down sense from 1870 to 1952.
It doesn't really take away from my main point. Yes, Western Europe and pretty much all New World countries are "civic" oriented. No Western state, Israel included I am pretty sure, has in their constitution or equivalent that a subset of citizens has legal rights other citizens do not. The closest I can think of to what you asked for is actually the Baltics - not a citizen-subgroup distinction, but where there is a complex situation due to not having granted most non-ethnic residents at the time of independence automatic citizenship. Otherwise, we are primarily talking about symbolism in the legal documents and cultural norms in the population. Japan is pretty clearly an ethnic nation-state. Eastern European states were generally ethnic nation-states at the time of independence, but some are moving closer to civic nation-states now.
But that's defining the word "nation" in a sense which deliberately skews it towards "ethnic nationalism" and away from "civic nationalism". If you are going to insist on defining it in that narrow way, then arguably France and Germany aren't "nation states" any more either, even though they used to be.
And while contemporary mainstream American self-definition is predominantly civic, 19th century Americans commonly viewed their nation in racial terms, as a state for the white race – so, if France and Germany have become "non-nation states" by transforming ethnic nationalism into civic nationalism, then in fundamentally the same way, America has become a "non-nation state" by transforming racial nationalism into civic nationalism
> No Western state, Israel included I am pretty sure, has in their constitution or equivalent that a subset of citizens has legal rights other citizens do not
Israel's constitution insists that all citizens are formally equal in the rights of citizenship, but at the same time officially relegates non-Jewish citizens to the symbolic status of "second class citizens" – what Western state has a constitution that does that? And, the reality on the ground is – there are complaints of real discrimination in practice against non-Jewish citizens of Israel, and unless you are going to argue that none of those complaints are valid, the idea that official symbolic discrimination in the constitution has no causal role to play in sustaining practical discrimination on the ground is rather implausible
> The closest I can think of to what you asked for is actually the Baltics - not a citizen-subgroup distinction, but where there is a complex situation due to not having granted most non-ethnic residents at the time of independence automatic citizenship
The Baltics do not have any legally recognised category of "citizens of the state but not members of the nation for whom it exists"; Israel does. The complex issue of long-term residents who lack citizenship you point to is real, but it isn't the same thing as what Israel does
> Japan is pretty clearly an ethnic nation-state
De jure, it isn't. Japanese law and court decisions are very clear: naturalised Japanese citizens are officially just as Japanese as anyone else. Membership in Japan's historical ethnic supermajority (the Yamato people) has no formal constitutional significance
Now, no denying the social reality that there is a lot of informal discrimination against non-Yamato Japanese citizens. But that social reality has no constitutional basis.
So you are comparing a state which officially declares in its constitution that some of its citizens are "not members of the nation for whom it exists", to a state whose constitution and laws never officially say that, even though it arguably remains a widespread informal belief/attitude amongst its population. Both de jure and de facto "second class citizenship" are bad, but there is an important sense in which the former is a lot worse
And there is alot of tension right now because of that. Not just in Ireland, but much of the West.
But really, why do you think states exist if not to protect the interests of its underlying culture/ethnicty/group. If not, why Canada refuse to join USA as a 51st state? From an economic perspective it would be logical, fron a political perspective they would have decisive power due to their relative population. What is the fundamental reasoning behind the refusal to join?
Trump’s idea of Canada as a US state is constitutionally ludicrous, because it ignores the fact that Canada is already a federation of provinces - which are essentially equivalent to states, choosing a different name was fundamentally a branding exercise not a difference of substance-indeed, when Britain’s colonies in Australia federated, they decided to be called “states” not “provinces”, because their greater physical distance from the US made them feel less of a need to distinguish themselves from the US. So Canada as a 51st state would create the globally near-unprecedented scenario of a federation within a federation, states within a state. [0] Why would anyone wish to experience such a constitutional novelty?
If you were serious about merging the US and Canada, a more sensible way to do it would be to admit Canada’s provinces as US states. But the problem with that proposal, is not only do most Canadians not want that, I doubt most Americans would either. Sure, Republicans might seem open to the idea as long as it remains a Trump thought bubble with zero chance of ever being implemented - but actually adding Canada’s provinces as US states would fundamentally upset the balance between Republicans and Democrats in the US, most of Canada’s provinces would act like blue states in the US-even many conservatives in Canada are closer to conservative Democrats than liberal Republicans-and would probably shift US politics as a whole in a more “progressive” direction. I think if it actually started to seem like a realistic prospect, Republicans would turn against it out of their own political self-interest and block it.
I think the most realistic scenario in the long-run, is a sort of “exchange” in which Canada loses some provinces to the US (most likely Alberta) but then progressive-leaning areas of the US secede to join Canada. North America might end up reorganised along ideological lines, “Blue-America+Canada” vs “Red-America+Alberta”. Not happening any time soon, but over a century or two I don’t think the possibility can be ruled out.
[0] not totally unprecedented, in that Soviet-era Russia was a federation within the larger federation of the USSR-but the Soviet Union’s authoritarian political system made its federalism more nominal than real, nobody knows how a federation-within-a-federation would work in practice in combination with a genuinely democratic political system
The answer is - no, I wouldn't want Jews being a minority in Israel; I think Jews need at least one homeland where they are a majority, especially given how Jews have been treated throughout history. But also, it's complicated, and really depends on how we get there.
France, US, England etc allow immigration. But all of them put caps and conditions on immigration. All of them also have fierce internal debates around the topic of immigration, because of the fear of a fundamental change in the character of the country.
Both those points apply to most nations, not just the Jewish one. (This reply may seem curt, but I'm not disagreeing)
The Zionist movement started because early Jewish leaders saw this phenomenon gaining traction, and understood that as these national identities were created and states started being created for them, many wouldn't consider Jews part of their "nationality", therefore Jews also needed a national homeland. This was, in retrospect, the exactly correct analysis, given the pogroms that happened in the 19th century and given the Holocaust.
Despite so many people claiming otherwise, there's not much different about Israel than many other European nations.
"ethnonationalism" is a redundancy, ethne and natio are just the Greek and Latin words for the same concept
This is sophistic equivocating. Stratification based on ethnicity is neither a necessary nor essential component of nationalism.
why israel is arming gangs in gaza
The ghf undermines Hamas and UNWRA like nothing else has. It terrifies them and they are pulling all the propoganda stops to delegitimise them.
Isn't there a video of dismembered body parts after the mortar shell hit and killed a few dozen?
It sounds like if he is making such a clear statement as this, there should be an investigation, and, if it turns out there were such fatalities, then Acree (and many others) should be tried for covering up war crimes.
Sorry but you’re either dishonest or totally delusional. Tens of thousands of children murdered, nobody even thinks of putting a stop on this, and you say « it’s not widespread ». What?
There has been so so many atrocities, even before Oct 7th committed by both the Israeli army and armed settlers in the West Bank. There is never, NEVER, anyone being held accountable. Snipers shoot kids on the beach? All good. Torture and rape in your prisons? Fine.
Dude, you should fix your society. You are simply heading towards your own destruction, morally, on the side of public sympathy, and merely as people capable of living with other people peacefully.
edit: minor typo.
As a random bystander with no real skin in this conflict, other than being American, what I can say is that for a while, it did seem that Israel the country had to unfairly deal with hate and war and it seemed quite unfortunate.
Most of the horrifying stories that would occasionally rise up seemed unbelievable, if not overblown.
Though in recent weeks, social media & news has provided another perspective.
1. Numerous Israeli citizens mocking Palestinians and having the gall to upload it to social media.
2. Numerous classrooms and children being taught that non-Israeli's do no deserve the same human rights as Israelis, and the children from a young age reveling in their superiority.
3. Videos showing citizens in normal cars being a nuisance to Palestinian medical vehicles.
4. Videos showing the absolute decimation of Gaza.
5. Israeli news articles reporting 70% and more of the population supporting certain war actions.
6. Ex-IDF soldiers whistleblowing the atrocious acts they needed to commit.
7. Citizens barbequing and hanging out right along the Gaza's border as Palestinian folks on the other side starve.
8. The video of Palestinian medics getting murdered on the side of the highway.
9. Pictures of the logos on IDF uniforms showing "our promised land" with a map showing borders that claim the land of Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon.
I don't think there is something "broken" in aid delivery. It appears that there is a systemic and concerted effort by the bulk of the government and citizens (100% of who have to serve in the IDF) to colonize and usurp Palestinian land and beyond.
And it seems that the latest set of conflicts have pulled back the curtain on the attitudes held by both the Israeli citizens and government.
Liberal Israelis will use their white-knight status to justify a genocide.
The article generally describes the IDF being asked to do crowd control with lethal weapons. For the most part it also described casualties (number unclear/unknown) as unintentional consequences.
I agree this does not look good but it's also not a matter of fact either. We don't know the facts, we don't know the scale, we don't know the intentions, we don't know who is making the allegations, we don't know the details.
War crimes in this war should be dealt with. Nuremberg trials is really not the right analogy.
War crimes for firing into a crowd of civilians, for both the one that ordered it, and those that executed it, should definitely be at the same levels as the nuremberg trials.
The fact that it will never happen doesn’t detract from that. Happily, the ICC seems to already know so, which is why there’s warrants out for all these Isrealian leaders, no?
Even if Israel was a signatory the ICC should only intervene after Israel has done its own investigation and if it failed to hold the relevant standards.
If there were war crimes committed then people need to be held accountable.
The scale of the alleged war crimes is totally different than the crimes persecuted in Nuremberg.
It is ridiculous, or malicious, to compare the war in Gaza to the murder of 6 million Jews for no reason other than their race/ethnicity.
> Even if [the Reich] was a signatory the [League of Nations] should only intervene after [the Reich] has done its own investigation and if it failed to hold the relevant standards.
See, this version wouldn't sound convincing to me in the slightest. So I'm unsure why yours is supposed to be any more so.
More broadly, this is either a hopelessly naive or tactically calculated take. 'Why does the police keep arresting criminals, before they've had a chance to conduct their own investigations of their own conduct?'
The League of Nations had no jurisdiction over the Germans (that I'm aware of).
The matter of countries doing their own investigation is fundamental to the ICC and so is the matter of its jurisdiction being restricted to member countries. That is part of the convention that established it.
The police in contrast, in a certain country, has jurisdiction and the power to arrest criminals. The ICCs powers come from the countries that are members of it extending their powers to this body via mutual agreement.
The more proper analogy would be that me and a bunch of friends will issue an arrest warrant and put you in jail because we feel like it.
EDIT: This is known as the principle of complementarity: https://www.icc-cpi.int/about/how-the-court-works
"The ICC is intended to complement, not to replace, national criminal systems; it prosecutes cases only when States do not are unwilling or unable to do so genuinely."
Re: Jurisdiction: "In the absence of a UNSC referral of an act of aggression, the Prosecutor may initiate an investigation on his own initiative or upon request from a State Party. The Prosecutor shall first ascertain whether the Security Council has made a determination of an act of aggression committed by the State concerned. Where no such determination has been made within six months after the date of notification to the UNSC by the Prosecutor of the situation, the Prosecutor may nonetheless proceed with the investigation, provided that the Pre-Trial Division has authorized the commencement of the investigation. Also, under these circumstances, the Court shall not exercise its jurisdiction regarding a crime of aggression when committed by a national or on the territory of a State Party that has not ratified or accepted these amendments."
The Palestinians and Gaza are not a state party. Israel is not a state party. and the UNSC has not referred this to the ICC. Therefore the ICC has no jurisdiction.
It is the position of both the ICC itself and the United Nations General Assembly that Palestine is a state and ergo entitled to be a member of the ICC. Whether Israel (or you) accept this definition of Palestine is largely irrelevant.
Moreover, whether Israel is or is not a state party to the ICC is completely without bearing on the ICC investigation in question, since Gaza is not part of Israel's territory under any definition, including Israel's own. To my knowledge, no state recognises Gaza as part of Israel, including Israel itself.
TLDR: It is Palestine's membership of ICC that results in the ICC lawfully exercising its jurisdiction on the territory of Gaza.
You are free to assert that you have fact on your side, that there is no dispute, that it's "not a matter of 'position'" all you want, but none of it matters. Your position on whether Palestine is a state (or mine, for that matter) is about as relevant to the membership of the ICC as our respective positions on the planethood of Pluto.
It's fascinating that Israel thinks it can dictate the membership of a body that it refuses to recognise, let alone join. The ICC decides who is a member of the ICC, and the ICC - consistent with widespread state practice in every continent on Earth - considers Palestine a state.
https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/icc-pre-trial-chamber-i-issues-...
"In today's decision, Pre-Trial Chamber I recalled that the ICC is not constitutionally competent to determine matters of statehood that would bind the international community. By ruling on the territorial scope of its jurisdiction, the Chamber is neither adjudicating a border dispute under international law nor prejudging the question of any future borders. The Chamber's ruling is for the sole purpose of defining the Court's territorial jurisdiction. "
And yes, who am I to argue with China, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Yemen, Afghanistan, Egypt, Belarus, Syria, Sudan, and their friends. Clearly Palestine is a state.
EDIT: for a more coherent argument: https://www.drake.edu/media/departmentsoffices/dussj/2006-20...
EDIT2: Asking the various AIs supports my position. Despite the recognition of various countries Palestine is not legally a state as it does not meet the criteria for being one. I do agree that the Palestinians have been very effective in fighting Israel in the diplomatic arena but unless they actually negotiate in good faith with Israel I wouldn't count on their future prospects to actually have their own country. Palestinians in general also oppose the two state solution anyways.
I am amused by you quoting this. I suggest you re-read that, they're being very careful with their words, and they are entirely correct.
It is true that the ICC has no capacity to dictate to the rest of the international community what is or is not a state, or the location of international borders; that would have the causality reversed. Instead, it takes the definition of a state or the location of borders from the international community. As the international community widely agrees that Palestine is a state, it therefore satisfies the condition set by the Rome Statute for membership of the ICC.
And, as your very excerpt shows, the the ICC is perfectly competent to rule on who is its member and where its jurisdiction lies. I will admit I am somewhat surprised to see you quote something that so well underlines my argument. I trust this discussion is concluded, then.
I would also note the PTC decision is something that virtually no one talks about (since it's entirely consistent with the ICC's usual position and the decision makes it very clear that the ICC considers Palestine a state), but that does happen to be on the Wikipedia page on this topic, so I somewhat suspect there's been a regression here to strip mining Wiki for cites and refs. I also strongly suspect that those refs are going unread, if you think the PTC decision supports any view other than that Palestine is a state. This would seem to reduce your argument below the level that warrants engagement.
Perhaps, rather than trying to mine that Wikipedia article for ammunition, actually read it, and then go read the PTC decision, and have a long hard think about why many well-meaning rational people (most of the world, in fact) take a different position from you on this issue.
> Asking the various AIs supports my position.
In the future, please begin your posts with this, so people can save time engaging.
I'm sorry but you're the one who is not engaging.
I just used AI at the end of this conversation as a sanity check. I looked at my own arguments and said hey, maybe I am wrong. It wouldn't hurt you to consider this to. I think LLMs are a good tool for this.
Maybe you should consider why many well-meaning rational people take a different position than you on this issue as well. This "state" was formed out of thin air, without meeting any normal criteria for statehood, as a legal weapon against Israel. It does not meet any requirement for an actual state, it does not look like a state, it is not a state. Maybe you should give me your definition of a state.
Ask yourself how come there's no Kurdish state? How come there's no Baloch state? How come there's no state for the Sikhs? What makes Palestinians more deserving? The ethnic minorities in Iran would also love statehood...
EDIT: I'm always open to the possibility of being wrong. I.e. I'm open to look at facts that contradict my theories. Right now my theory is that Israel is being unjustly targeted as a result of antisemitism and world politics. There is a massive, well funded, PR campaign against Israel (primarily by Qatar but also with interests from China and Russia). There is a clear pattern of propaganda messaging here, including the one you're echoing. This doesn't mean Israel is always right. It doesn't mean there aren't war crimes (there are in any war). But it should be clear if you dig deeper there are different standards applied and there is a concerted effort to e.g. equate Jews/Israelis to Nazis, strip Israel of its legitimacy, not allow it to defend itself to the level that other countries are allowed to, excuse Hamas (and Iran e.g.) genocidal attempts and war crimes towards Israel, rewrite history, redefine language. Excuse and normalize human rights violations. This campaign is decades long. Again, I would really love to see Israel behave better but that campaign doesn't need or care about Israel's behavior here. This campaign isn't strictly against Israel, it's also against the west and western values. This campaign also directly translates into higher rates of antisemitism and violence against Jewish people worldwide.
The UN as a body, and the adjacent entities, mostly represents oppressive non-democratic regimes where people do not enjoy the freedoms we enjoy in the west. Ignoring the various outright lies, leveraging what the UN says or doesn't say as a way of supporting a moral, or factual, argument is problematic. UN (UNRWA) workers are documented to have participated in the Oct 7th attack on Israeli civilians. You would have a higher chance of making me change my mind by addressing the question of Palestinian statehood from first principles. Do they control territory? Do they control their borders? Do they have their own currency? Passports? What is the history of their state? What exactly makes them a state other than the political scheming to try and force Israel to accept a two state solution that Palestinians themselves reject today, rejected numerous times in the past, going back to the partition plan, and everyone knows has no chance in hell of succeeding. It's true that international recognition is an important part of being a state, but one can't make a state out of thin air solely with international recognition. Historical precedence is that a state needs to exist and then be recognized, not the other way around.
https://libertascouncil.org/only-20-percent-of-people-live-i...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatari_involvement_in_US_highe...
https://forward.com/opinion/574346/freepalestine-tiktok-isra...
Palestinians deserve what every other human being deserves. This is not it. This is not the way. This is regression in freedom and norms. This is a post-truth world.
In that context you’re correct, that Palestinian statehood doesn’t look like others’. Recognition of statehood by any entities is a strategic choice to attempt to break the stranglehold the Zionist narrative has on global politics.
One of the major goals of Israel’s anti-statehood work is to provide people like you the internal cover needed to continue to avoid looking at Israel’s war crimes and genocidal actions. It helps mend the cognitive dissonance between what Israel does and what Israel claims to be.
I hope someday you have the capacity to let go of that narrative and heal what’s broken inside of you.
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
But it's still a total lie and misrepresentation overall. This fracture was created and maintained primarily by Palestinians and reflect the division in the Palestinian public between the Jihadists and those that prefer other methods to eliminate Israel and the Jews. There is also a backdrop of the PA refusing to engage in dialogue. Israel did hand over Gaza to the PA and Israel did and still supports the PA to date. Without Israel's support the PA would not exist.
https://www.cija.ca/palestinians_have_never_had_the_opportun...
The Oslo peace process failed due to Hamas suicide bombing attacks on Israel that made it impossible to make any progress. Gaza failed due to Hamas taking over and using it as a platform to attack Israel. But more fundamentally Palestinians (enough or most of them) don't want peace, they want Israel destroyed. The Oct 7th attack wasn't called "stop the occupation of Gaza", it was called the "Al Aqsa flood". The intent was to murder all Jews in Israel.
But yes, once Hamas was a fact in Gaza, and there was zero chance of getting the PA to retake control, the Israeli government in its foolishness thought that stability with Hamas was better with chaos and maybe some benefit from that political split. There was also a ton of international pressure on Israel to let money and aid flow into Gaza under Hamas. There was really no obvious alternative other than the IDF retaking Gaza (which would look more or less like it's looking now, maybe slightly less worse, but not something the Israelis wanted to pursue).
There's nothing broken inside me. I would love to see peace. You should take a pause yourself and ask why you're joining the antisemitic mob here and aligning yourself with people who share none of your values. You should ask yourself for an example of when did Palestinians try to actually have peaceful coexistence and denounce terrorism and violence. I mean that would surely counter Israel's narrative here? The answer is never. Gaza launched rockets into Israeli population center and Palestinians in the West Bank keep murdering Israeli civilians. You got cause and effect completely reversed.
There is no cognitive dissonance between what Israel does and what it claims to be. There is a very logical and clear story about how we got here if you viewpoint is Israel's right to exist and to defend its citizens and you look at facts and history and not fairy tales or lies.
"the stanglehold the Zionist narrative has" is blatant antisemitism. This is the same old story of the Zionists (Jews) controlling the world. The truth is it's the anti-Israeli narrative has a hold on global politics and Israel despite mostly being in the good side barely gets by.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine
> Pretty much nobody recognizes the "state" of Palestine
It's recognized by 147 of the 193 members of the UN. That's the majority or 75%.
You know how I know? There is a Wikipedia page about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_P...
You also know what else is a fact? Israel is doing a genocide in the state of Palestine. You know how I know ? There is a Wikipedia page about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide
If you claim we should give Israel the benefit of the doubt that it is not a genocide, maybe you also deny the Holocaust ever happened? After all, there are multiple ex Nazis who deny anything like that ever taken place.
We have investigated our highest leaders, and have found them absolutely blameless. Netanyahu is often found on the same golden cloud that Putin is often seen floating around on.
There’s a reason we have a police force instead of allowing the criminals to investigate themselves.
It didn't happen. We didn't do it. If it happened Hamas did it. If we did it they deserved it. Oh it's on video, our bad, we did an oopsie.
Countless of cases like this.
So yes, an Israeli ambush in Gaza that opened fire on a civilian vehicle is something that should be looked at. But they get a lot of leeway because it's a war and in a war mistakes can happen. In order for this to be a crime you need to show beyond doubt the soldiers knew these were civilians and intentionally wanted to kill them. There were other civilians that passed unharmed through the same forces and so proving intent is pretty difficult.
Whether it's on video or not doesn't matter. In a war soldiers will potentially kill civilians. The bar is different from peacetime operations. The war was started, and is continued, by Hamas. Yes it looks bad. Yes the IDF should do whatever it can to minimize it. Yes there are whackos.
I realize I'm not going to convince you but I believe that if the Palestinians stopped using violence you wouldn't see any incidents of Palestinians getting killed by security forces. The stories they are telling you about resistance and occupation are false. I am painting a broad brush here- Some Palestinians just want to live in peace. But too many do not. Pressure on Israel is misguided. Pressure should be on Hamas to surrender. Pressure on Israel emboldens Hamas, makes the war go on longer, and is not helping Palestinians. Even if you believe Israelis are evil you should still pressure the Palestinians because they are the ones who need to end this war. After the war is over we can talk about what to do next. Israelis can't and won't be pressured into letting Hamas remain in power.
A lot of the world ser you for what you really are.
Stop the Israeli genocide on Palestinian people.
Are you including Palestinians that are Israeli citizens? The West Bank? Those living outside the region?
Word choice matters here.
Is Israel executing a plan to kill all Gazans?
I am 100% convinced Israel is not actually committing a genocide against Palestinians. That claim has no factual support. Do I agree with everything Israel is doing? No. Are there war crimes being committed by the IDF? Possibly yes, not necessarily different than any other modern war waged ever.
What would you suggest, based on Jewish ideology, should have been the proper response to Oct 7th? Would you go to war? Would you wage it differently? How would you deal with the realities on the ground?
Firing on people seeking food is not right.
The use of the word genocide, coined to describe the systemic murder of 6 million Jews for no reason, in this context, is very clearly meant as a form of diminishing/denying the Holocaust. There is just no other way to look at it. If Hamas was to surrender and return the hostages would Israel be sending all Palestinians to gas chambers?
"The word "genocide" was coined in 1944 by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin. He combined the Greek word "genos" (meaning race or tribe) with the Latin word "cide" (meaning killing) to create the term. Lemkin used the word to describe the systematic destruction of groups of people, specifically referencing the Nazi's actions during the Holocaust"
"Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people."
Israel is at war with Gaza because Gaza has attacked it on Oct 7th and is holding Israeli hostages and has continued an armed conflict with it since then. Previously Gaza has launched 10's of thousands of rockets into Israeli population centers, executed terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, etc.
The "current use" so to speak of the term is just to weaponize it against Israel as part of a long term strategy. So by that definition - you're absolutely right. In fact the term started popping up before Israel responded at all to Oct 7th. Since Oct 8th more or less.
https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Ele...
Israel has been killing Palestinian civilians. Israel has been restricting food and medical supplies going to Palestinian civilians. All of that was beyond reasonable in regard to military objectives (e.g., bombing hospitals to take out a weapons stash). Israel's political and military leaders have expressed their opinions that Palestinians (not just Hamas or militants) are an ethnicity deserving punishment.
Note that, in the ICC's definitions, genocide does not require intent to eliminate the entirety of a group. It only requires targeting people based on their belonging to a protected group with the intent to diminish that group.
- Israel has been restricting supplies to the Gaza Strip, no to all Palestinians, as a result of a war. The Palestinian civilians are broadly the responsibility of their government who is refusing to end the war, stealing aid to finance its operations, and hoarding aid to enable the war to be prolonged. Just like North Korean citizens are the responsibility of the North Korean government (as one example) and the Russian citizens are the responsibility of the Russian government.
- Hamas is the elected government of Gaza.
- Various politicians in Israel made various statement. The official position of the government of Israel is that the war is against Hamas, not against Palestinian civilians. This has been said numerous time.
- Hamas makes extensive usage of hospitals and civilian infrastructure. Israel does not "bomb a hospital just to take out a weapons stash". Israel e.g. bombed near a hospital to kill Hamas military leaders in a tunnel. Or raided a hospital, while protecting civilians, to capture militants. Israel has supported the creation of field hospitals to ensure civilians can get some minimal care while Hamas is using the civilian infrastructure that was supposed to be for that purpose. https://gaza-aid-data.gov.il/main/medical-response/ Israel also facilitates moving of patients that can't be treated in Gaza to other locations. You are not going to find any example of a similar war situation where a one side has done more.
- Palestinians are not targeted because they are Palestinians or to diminish that group.
Israel has very much been targeting civilians.
> Civilian deaths have been a consequence of military objectives and actions
So you agree Iran's rockets were fired as a defense against the cowardly unprovoked attack by the genocidal Israeli? Those rockets killed some Israeli civilians but since
Why place your Israeli military next to civilians then? Sounds like you are using your civilians for human shields.
> While it's possible that some war crimes have been committed the official orders and policy is crystal clear
It's genocide and it's been verified by trusted third parties. We are supposed to take Israel's word for it? Especially considering Israel shoots journalists and aid workers, it's pretty clear the genocidal regime doesn't want the truth of their war crimes to come out.
Stop the genocide.
too late, m8
anybody with unfavorable opinions against Israeli government is a "leftist stereotype"
any unfavorable opinions and facts against Israeli government gets you pinned as a "anti-semite" these days
It’s not even about being shameful about Israel support at that point. It’s going to be a black stain on both countries forever.
This is large-scale, continued, intentional CIVCAS.