Even the stated explanation that they wanted to deprive Hamas of the ability to fundraise by stealing food and selling it back didn't make sense. Food shortages would cause the market value of hoarded food to rise, thus helping Hamas. Flooding the region with food would collapse the prices and deprive them of a revenue stream.
It is also much simpler to do this than qualify each and every statement by enumerating the list of good or bad countries :)
BTW, all orgs (other than the lyin' IDF) says Hamas wasn't stealing significant amounts of aid (nowhere near the 10% claimed). Therefore it's clear starvation was the goal, not targeting funding or Hamas at all.
Yet the talking point - which attempted to justify genocide and never had a shred of evidence - will linger for years. I still meet people who think Saddam did 9/11, or that Afghanistan was connected.
I still meet many people who don't even know a third tower fell in NYC that day. When news media repeats a talking point that long, or ignores evidence that long, it makes a very deep impression on the type of person who takes things at face value a little too much.
0 - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/world/middleeast/hamas-un...
Do people in the west today consciously consider Palestinians to be subhuman? I don’t think so? So this today is like much much worse actually IMO from a moral defensibility standpoint.
This is orthogonal to your point, I agree with your point.
During the horrors of European colonization, governments had vested interest in treating indigenous peoples in their colonies as sub-human, and they sponsored whichever scholar to portray them as such. So I think it is very natural that we today view Europeans of the past as extremely racist bunch (their governments certainly were). But do wonder how many regular people were influenced by the racist frenzy of their governments. My guess is probably about as many as in Europe today.
And I can provide numerous examples: Portugal's colonial holdings (Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique) were unwound after the carnation revolution because the overseas wars were consuming 50% of the national budget while the Estado Novo at home was a corrupt, violent, authoritarian, corporatist state.
The Brits could not square a global empire while their countrymen were rationing food, etc. at home. That had to go as well.
Despite all the Cold War propaganda spread since the fall of the USSR, in 1991, the Soviet Union was still a first-rate military power, with 35k to 40k nuclear warheads and >150 divisions, totaling 3.4M troops. It could easily suppress any of those pro-democracy protests with trivial ease, and all the CIA's burrowing in the Sovbloc would come to nought.
But there was no longer anything worth fighting for. Even people within the Party infrastructure had come to they'd been living for a lie, lying for a lie, killing for a lie-all that for a lie!
The Qing dynasty faced massive internal revolts (Taiping, Boxer), external invasions (Opium Wars), and technological stagnation. The empire resisted modernization too long, then tried too little, too late.
Overwhelmed by foreign powers and internal revolution (1911), it died because it could no longer defend the illusion of legitimacy.
In France's Ancien Regime, nobles were exempt from taxes while peasants starved; France had a bloated, corrupt court and massive debt (partly from helping America fight the British!), yet refused reforms.
Nazi Germany claimed to be defending “Western civilization” while practicing industrial genocide and totalitarian control over - wait for it - Europeans!
One contradiction doesn't bring down a political system, but it cascades, because a hypocritical system dives deeper into hypocrisy until it eventually collapses.
Howard Zinn, Chomsky, and most other anti imperialist intellectuals viewed history similarly badly and are looking almost as stupid in retrospect as Fukuyama did with his claim that history has ended. For every example they bring up, there's 5 counterexamples that they didn't bring up because in some cases the evidence for the good they did is locked up in a spooks SKIF for the next 50 years - or in other cases they didn't bring it up because America just isn't allowed to be the good guy anymore if you personally took part in America doing bad things.
The amount of damage that folks like Marx did through making people believe in telelogical views of history ( i.e. "Capitalism is GUARANTEED to destroy itself due to internal contradictions") is colossal.
Shit bad regimes which are based on lies are now stronger than ever. I'm willing to bet $$$ that not only does NK exist in 50 years, but it's stronger than ever and even more authoritarian. AI literally locks in power structures and perfects them.
There you go advancing the same teleological theory of history you're supposed to be denouncing.
Like the saying goes, history doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes: when institutions, states, etc. behave in a certain way for an extended period of time, we can infer what their future will look like by studying similar examples from the past.
Wait for few more hours to be thankful.
Edit: And this comment is flagged to hell, as well, haha. I guess saying that the systematic murder of civilians is bad is now a controversial opinion, lmao.
I’ve caught flak from both sides for saying so. Some people seem deadset on making an enemy of nuance.
> It’s sort of like saying “All Lives Matter” at every police shooting.
Eh. I hear that as a less articulate, more annoying way to say "I care more generally about police violence more than police violence against black people, specifically." Seems reasonable to me, even if people bring it up in an oblique way.
1: The violent Israeli settlers, if certain accounts are true, are committing crimes against humanity. But you can't punish every Israeli just because they share nationality with a criminal. Just like we shouldn't starve Palestinians who live in the same area as Hamas.
Look at how many Americans clamor for the mass murder of enslaved Russian teenagers.
If you wanna cry, go cry to Hamas who started it all.
To refresh your memory: saturday-october-seven.com
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
And there are other reasons to flag an article like this - like some people would rather HN have less politics.
Yeah, Hamzah has been making lots of videos of IDF soldiers (and other Israelites) saying that they want all Palestinian children to die, and that their lives are worth more than Palestinians' lives.
I am not surprised by any of this, the media is probably controlled. They hear what the Government wants them to hear, which is this: they are the good guys.
[1] I do not claim to know everything either, which should be very obvious, but I try to postpone forming a judgment.
It is still sickening (in my humble opinion) that many people straight out tell him that they want children to die, but only Palestinian children.
Well, them and Israeli far right who have been able to stay in power so far.
No, but this mode of discourse is obnoxious and uncharitable.
> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
This is a genocide. Get some perspective.
Part of civility and respect is not demanding that other people see things your way, or supposing that there is something wrong with them if the evidence available to them has not led them to the same conclusion as you. Another part is not ironically laughing because things don't go your way. Another part is not insisting that you are being persecuted for entirely innocent conduct in a way that ignores previously provided explanations for why that conduct was not considered innocent by others.
That's the truth. "Never again". Clearly our politicians do not believe in human rights or international law. What do they believe in? Democracy? I doubt it. Money? Western exceptionalism? More likely. Where do we go from here? Why would anyone ever take any moral argument from a western nation seriously ever again?
Western nations aren't doing anything nor are middle eastern governments, nor asian governments.
My takeaway is that the UN needs to be replaced with something without the 5 veto powers. Both Gaza now and Syria could have been prevented with peacekeeping missions if it weren't for the US and Russia and their vetos.
On the other hand, middle Eastern nations and Asian nations are typically protesting loudly, they don't protect Israel in the UN, they recognize the Palestinian state, they don't sell weapons to Israel.
Most Asian and ME countries recognize Palestine, most European/Western countries don't: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of...
About Chinese weapons exports it seems we have different sources. From what I can tell Israels arms imports are dominated by US and Germany, with scattered contributions from other European countries.
Chinas arms imports to Israel are miniscule by comparison.
On the other hand I'm sure China provides a lot of components to Israels military industry, but that's a different question.
It usually easy to bash the west, but still I don't see anybody else doing much better.
The unsettling conclusion is that these nations are willing to let Palestinians live in dire conditions--conditions the world has no reservation against decrying passionately on cable news and social media--so long as Israel does not get a perceived "win." The West has adopted the Hamas mindset.
?????
I am generally not at all invested in this conflict and I cede that I have very little information about what is going on, and it's been like that for me for decades.
But the information that is available to me, in the current context, from looking at HN, is: pro-Palestine and anti-Israeli sentiments are the norm in comment sections here; comments resisting this viewpoint are routinely downvoted and flagged; news stories about the conflict that make it to the HN front page (including this one) overwhelmingly are taking Palestine's side; and on occasions where I've tried to flag submissions that I felt were grossly uncharitable (making claims beyond what their evidence supports, and/or using inflammatory language) they have not been taken down (and I've only seen anti-Israel examples of such to flag).
At any rate, your comment is a polemic that appears not to even consider reasons why other people might see the issue differently, and implicitly shames people for not coming to a conclusion you consider obvious. That is not up to the standard I understood HN political discussion to expect.
(And since I have showdead on, I can see the replies to you that were flagged and killed. They are really not any worse from what I can tell, but they apparently have the wrong political polarity — the one you claim is endorsed, directly counter to the evidence available to me.)
P.S. Whoever downvoted and flagged this, please explain your reasoning. I am happy to consider your point of view.
The vast majority of people across the world is in favour of the end of bombing and segregation, and against the regime that perpetuate it, if only because of empathy alone. And HN does indeed reflects this to some extent.
What the OP was alluding to when he said that pro palestinian view points were silenced is the more or less dissimulated support for the war and systematically misleading depiction of the situation in the mainstream news. To say nothing about the exceedingly harsh criminalization of dissent.
You might not be aware of it, if really you don't read anything beyond tech news, and I'm not going to blame you for that.
Should you not feel the need to evidence this?
> the more or less dissimulated support for the war and systematically misleading depiction of the situation in the mainstream news.
First, I don't see why I should conclude that that's what the comment was about. The part I quoted was:
> I, for one, am thankful this hasn't been taken down like any article remotely critical of Israel.
I understood this to mean "taken down from HN".
But I see nothing of the sort in mainstream news, either. The news coverage available to me is full of stories like the submission, and says rather little that would tend to justify Israel. If I search, for example, for coverage in the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) of the conflict, I find plenty of independent sources claiming that there is some kind of whitewashing going on (and none of the people making these claims seem to face any negative repercussions for doing so — as they shouldn't, since Canada is also pretty good on the freedom of speech thing), but then I look at the actual CBC articles I find and they're just... not as described.
The general sense I get is that people who characterize this as a genocide are upset that other people fail to accept this characterization by fiat.
> To say nothing about the exceedingly harsh criminalization of dissent.
Who has been imprisoned for merely expressing the view that this is a genocide, as opposed to being imprisoned for the usual disorderly, anti-social actions that typically get protesters (in general, whatever they're protesting for) imprisoned?
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/06/03/most-peop...
Notice that the question asked by this poll was a bit stronger than my claim (I believe one is more likelly to be in favor of the end of bombing than against Israel because advocating for peace is less damaging for one's reputation than voicing a more political stance, whatever that is).
Definitely doesn’t reflect what I’ve seen in the mainstream media. Almost everyday at the top of the news are stories taken almost verbatim from Hamas’s Health Ministry or other arms. The stories have been routinely retracted by the BBC, NYTimes, Washington Post, NPR, etc after they’re later shown false.
Yesterday I saw the story that’s been in almost every major news publication showing an emaciated boy starving while his mother holds him with headlines of “Gazan children starving”.
The problem is the boys brother who is healthy and well fed was cropped or left out. The boy has muscular dystrophy. None of that was mentioned in most of the coverage.
Here’s the photo with the boys brother that I’ve only seen posted on X or Instagram posted by regular users:
https://x.com/razzajj/status/1948819116217008340
The war has made it hard to get treatment for him, but that’s not listed in most of the articles.
It’s a clear yellow journalism piece. Of course those MSM outlets also make lots of advertisement money by posting such rage bait stories.
That’s what most people, and even politicians, end up seeing and then believing.
> To say nothing about the exceedingly harsh criminalization of dissent.
From what I’ve read a few violent protesters were arrested. Some student visas were revoked, etc. I’ve seen pro-Palestinian protests in person in the US and the UK going about quite freely.
Do any of these stories compare to the mainstream media's systematic lies about 40 beheaded babies? Or babies burned in ovens? Or systematic rape? Did the US President launder any of those lies long after they were debunked?
Were the stories about premie babies left to rot at Al Nasr true? Were the stories about Hind Rajab true? Were the stories about civilians being used as target practice while they try to get aid true? Were the stories about the IDF mass murdering a convoy of emergency vehicles and burying them in a shallow unmarked grave true?
Do Hamas have people in the BBC censoring stories they don't like? Did the NYT run huge stories by Hamas "journalists" with no experience and no evidence?
> Yesterday I saw the story that’s been in almost every major news publication showing an emaciated boy starving while his mother holds him with headlines of “Gazan children starving”.
You don't refute that the boy is starving. He's far from the only one. Gaza is in stage 5 of famine; the effect of which will be felt for generations - and you think a photo of a "well fed" (and horrifically traumatized for life) boy proves that they're actually fine??
Read the comments on your own link - they're absolutely vile and I won't repeat them here, but that you think this is making a good case for you is absolutely wild.
How many people have been murdered while trying to get aid in the past week? Are those stories lies too, even though they come from whistleblowers who were there; even though there's video of some of the incidents?
Sometimes I almost feel pity for the type of mind that can defend the perpetrators of these acts. But this is going on for 21 months (and 80 years) now. At some point - long past - you become fully complicit by defending this holocaust.
My refutation was implicit in the fact that the boy's condition appears to be genetic and that his brother appears healthy and well fed. His mother also appears not to be starving either.
> Read the comments on your own link - they're absolutely vile and I won't repeat them here, but that you think this is making a good case for you is absolutely wild.
I didn't link to those comments nor do I condone them. There's plenty of vile pro-Palestinian comments on X and elsewhere as well.
You also don't deny the veracity of the photo or the full story.
There is real starvation occurring in Gaza, but the IDF has also started scaling up aid and food including announcing safe corridors for UN aid delivery which I believe the IDF should've done sooner.
> Sometimes I almost feel pity for the type of mind that can defend the perpetrators of these acts. But this is going on for 21 months (and 80 years) now. At some point - long past - you become fully complicit by defending this holocaust.
You've convinced yourself it's a holocaust, despite the scales being 2 orders of magnitudes different in number and completely different in actions and intentions. Note it wasn't just 6 million Jews killed in the holocaust, but also 5-6 million Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, disabled people, and more. That's 2 out of every 3 Jewish people in Europe at the time.
Your distortions and semi-irrational accusations don't change the actual realities which are hard enough to estimate.
Estimates place the ratio of combatant to civilian death near to that of other urban wars. Most sources estimate a civilian to combatant death rate of 4:1 in Gaza, while Mosul was 4.7-6.1:1. That's despite Hamas leadership actively using civilians as shields.
There's worse confirmed famine occurring just hundreds of miles some estimates of 522,000 infant deaths due to starvation in Sudan in the last two years alone. Despite 10 times the numbers of people dying in Sudan, much less Yemen and Somolia, they're receiving only a fraction of the international aid or attention that Gazans receive.
Yet it's not sensational or in the headlines everyday, so who cares right?
I'm not the only one who says it.
It's a holocaust. You are promoting holocaust denial.
Look at the footage of Rafah: desolation as far as the drone can see. Even by the end of Biden's term, the majority of civilian buildings had been destroyed across the strip. 6 Hiroshimas, on a 12x12 mile square populated with over a million children.
> Note it wasn't just 6 million Jews killed in the holocaust, but also 5-6 million Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, disabled people, and more.
Christians, homosexuals, and disabled people have all been slaughtered by Israel as well - and hostages too. So what's your point?
> Estimates place the ratio of combatant to civilian death near to that of other urban wars.
You're missing the key piece of factual information there: IDF estimates. Other estimates put the ratio of civilian deaths an order of magnitude higher, and if there's any evidence whatsoever for IDF's claims of Hamas fighters killed I don't know anyone who's ever seen it. Feel free to present some if you have it.
> Most sources estimate a civilian to combatant death rate of 4:1 in Gaza
What sources are these? The IDF, Netanyahu, and Ben Gvir?
You're lying.
> That's despite Hamas leadership actively using civilians as shields.
Still no evidence for that claim whatsoever. Plenty of evidence of Israel doing it though - it's openly admitted, including in your own linked article.
> There's worse confirmed famine occurring just hundreds of miles some estimates of 522,000 infant deaths due to starvation in Sudan in the last two years alone.
Is Sudan surrounded by aid trucks sitting idle? And are both connected to Western interference?
> Despite 10 times the numbers of people dying in Sudan, much less Yemen and Somolia, they're receiving only a fraction of the international aid or attention that Gazans receive.
Somolia? ... Even if we ignore the problems with your figures (using IDF estimates, ignoring the fact Sudan is 25 times more populated than Gaza, longer time period, etc) - there are still at least three major problems:
One, Western powers are directly enabling, funding and arming Israel's genocide, which means we are complicit and have more of a responsibility to discuss and bring an end the situation as soon as possible.
Two, Western interference (esp the US and Israel) with Sudan, Yemen and Somalia is also responsible for no small part of their current problems, so the comparison is pretty rude.
Three, if the best argument you have in defense of slaughtering tens (more likely hundreds) of thousands of people is that more people are dying elsewhere, you're very far gone.
I wish you the best of luck finding your way back; it won't be easy but you really need to try.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
If sarcastic:
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
One interesting excuse I hear about slavery in America was that that’s just how life was back then, people didn’t know better. This is not true, as we know for a fact abolitionist knew what right and wrong was during those times. Even if it was only a small percentage of people that knew morality, it’s enough proof that that no American alive at the time lacked the human capacity to perceive it.
This is still true today. We know what’s going on here morally, and as a collective whole (8 billion people), we are collectively responsible. The moral standard does not change. It was wrong to murder people 2000 years ago, it was wrong to enslave people 2000 years ago, and all of that is still wrong today. Honest people knew it then, and honest people know it today.
No bullshit, please. Right and wrong is never a morally nebulous problem, it’s just an utterly strict standard to adhere to. It never changes. It’s an understated reason why many have no fear of God or have abandoned the concept entirely, not just because there’s no proof, but because even if there was, what a fucking moral standard to live up to (quite hard for humanity since the beginning of time).
You are operating until a false premise that Palestinians/Hamas are some sort of children and bear no responsibility for anything at all.
Where in reality, the war could have been over in 5 minutes if they released the hostages at any time during the past 3 years. It still can be over in 5 minutes if they choose to do that. But no, they will put as many of their own people in harm's way as necessary to get to the world opinion to be what it is. And literally no one, including you, is questioning that. But please, do tell me that hostages have nothing to do with anything or Netanyahu bad or whatever else you can cook up.
> while Soviet citizens starved
As someone who grew up in the USSR, I can assure you - no one was starving.
> what killed the Soviet Union was disillusion. People at all levels realized that a system that couldn't provide its people the basics didn't deserve to exist.
That is such a simplistic view of what happened. I don't think that the system cared what its people thought at any time during the existence of the Soviet Union.
Where in reality, the war could have been over in 5 minutes if they released the hostages at any time during the past 3 years. It still can be over in 5 minutes if they choose to do that. But no, they will put as many of their own people in harm's way as necessary to get to the world opinion to be what it is. And literally no one, including you, is questioning that.
Palestinians and Hamas are 2 different groups of people. Which 1 are you referring to when you say "they"? Only the Hamas can legally be punished as a result of Hamas's actions. Punishing Palestinians because you're mad at Hamas is a war crime.
That's like saying in WW2, we can't attack Berlin because there are innocent Germans who don't support Nazis.
So how exactly do you propose to fight Hamas in an urban environment when it's blending in to the population that largely supports them (and only put on a uniform during propaganda events like hostage handovers)?
Likewise, to this day, majorities of israelis support the israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
> That's like saying in WW2, we can't attack Berlin because there are innocent Germans who don't support Nazis.
There's a difference between collateral damage and the israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine. That said, the intentional firebombing of German civilians was arguably a war crime, so you're arguing against your point here. Indeed, the geneva conventions are partially motivated by the atrocities that occurred during WWII, with the aim of making sure they happened "never again".
> So how exactly do you propose to fight Hamas in an urban environment when it's blending in to the population that largely supports them
That's not my problem, but ethnic cleansing is obviously an illegal and wrong way to go about it. Still though, an answer to your request can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44718080
That is simply nonsense. Provide a link to a poll stating that. You can't.
> difference between collateral damage and the israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine
More nonsense. You are just throwing out words. There is no ethnic cleansing. Palestinians are still there - no one is kicking them out. In fact, their population increased. And since there is no ethnic cleansing, your point is moot. What is happening is a modern war, door to door fighting - with collateral damage. The situation is grim.
> So how exactly do you propose to fight Hamas >> That's not my problem
Of course, it isn't. You just like to throw big words and feel good about yourself, while providing zero solutions to anything.
This talking point is very-much dated now.. Israel has said that they will not stop until Hamas is "eliminated". Netanyahu also threw in another condition to end the war: implementation of Donald Trump's plan to relocate Gaza's civilians [0]. So now I guess it doesn't end until ethnic cleansing is complete? That's lovely.
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-implementation-of-tr...
The Palesinians don't want a state, they want no Israel.
I could on and on with historical examples, but it doesn't seem many here are interested in that sort of thing.
The legal definition of genocide is not predicated on numbers, but I do want to bring some context:
The Nazis killed more than 90% of Jews in Poland during WW II, and 1/3 of Jews worldwide. That was genocide.
Nazi Germany lost some 10% of its population in WW II. Is it appropriate to say that the Allies committed genocide against the Nazis? Of course not, it was a legitimate defense against a murderous regime.
About 2.5% of the inhabitants of Gaza have been killed in the ongoing war, constituting fewer than 0.5% of Palestinians worldwide.
In 1950, there were about 1m Palestinians in the Palestinian Territories, now there are more than 5m.
Is that "systematic extermination"?
Just for further context: There are some 50 Muslim-majority countries (vs 1 Jewish-majority, so factor of 50), with some 1.8 bn people (vs 10 m, factor >100), and an area of some 30 million km^s (vs 20 k, factor >1000).
It turns out that even little massacres like 8000 Bosnian boys is “systematic extermination” when you do it with the express intent of wiping out their people.
My understanding is that the agencies in Gaza have not only lost their ability to tally the dead, but have not been tracking deaths where a corpse has not been located.
Not to mention that this is the tail end of a long process that began with the Nakba. The fact that theres a remnant refugee population that has been removed from their land and isolated to a small stateless fragment, is already in meeting with definitions of genocide. Bombing that remnant into the dust is underlining the issue.
The former is known as the Nakba (as you highlight) and well known. The latter, not so much.
Before October 7, activists insisted that Gaza’s border restrictions were driven purely by hatred rather than any legitimate security concerns. That view was completely discredited by the attacks on October 7, so forgive me for being skeptical of similarly absolutist claims being made now.
To be clear, preventing famine should take far greater priority than intercepting a few more rockets with Iron Dome. The suffering in Gaza is undeniable. But I see Israel’s actions as driven more by indifference or strategic rigidity than by a calculated intent to exterminate.
Maybe that distinction doesn't matter to you, since it doesn't change how people are dying needlessly, but how we interpret Israel’s intent shapes how we respond. Backing Israel into a corner tends to make things worse, not better. That’s why the Biden administration’s approach of supporting military aid while applying diplomatic pressure was the only viable path to avoid even greater catastrophe.
Given the brutal blockade of Gaza, the continuous encroachment of settlers in the occupied territory, the continued refusal of a two-state solution, what exactly Israel expects to happen?
It is not like the Palestinians have F-35s and Abrahams tanks paid by the US in order to wage a proper war against Israel.
Israel, given its own history (google for Irgun, Stern Gang, Lehi, Hagannah, etc) should be able to predict the end result of its actions.
Are you implying that this "blockade" was unnecessary for security purposes? You're painting this as inevitable due to the circumstances, yet of the two regions, the one given more autonomy and decolonized was the one that attacked.
Israel should be as aware of the statistics as anyone, especially when undertaking the systematic extermination of a population. If Israel actually intended this, don't you think it would go much faster, with the tremendous amount of ordnance that has been expended and the overwhelming military force Israel has in place? It just doesn't add up.
This would be the dumbest way to do this. It would take centuries to exterminate them at this rate. The genocide narrative makes no sense to any person with a brain.
Israel would need to use their nukes to be more efficient. But this would severely damage the real estate potential of the strip.
The first mistake would be Israel's unilateral withdraw from Gaza in 2005, ethnically cleansing its own citizens from the region to make way for the Palestinians.
The population of Gaza has increased by roughly a million since then, which I must say isn't great for the Zionist plot.
Some might argue it's not genocide but simply mass-murder. That's an awful lot of mass-murdering going on.
The Bret Stephens hasbara is that it's not a genocide because of how slow the killing is. Obviously the IDF could dig in machine guns in hidden trenches, lure starving Palestinians with the bait of food, and gun down thousands at once.
The problem with that approach is that such a strategy would risk rousing the conscience of the world. It's much safer to murder a few hundred a day and have slow starvation take thousands.
While pictures of starving Palestinian children are evocative of the Holocaust, or at least of the end of the Holocaust when cameras were allowed into liberated concentration camps, the world seems not to have a problem with Holocaust 2.0
In a sense, seeing what happens to Palestinians, Sudanese, Somalis, Syrians, Afghans, Lebanese, Pakistanis, etc etc, is a great motivator for the citizen of the EU, USA, and friends.
If you look, you'll notice that the major political flare point in the West these days is ... immigration. Who cares what happens outside our borders? Our main preoccupation is protecting our borders. Because we are convinced everything outside them sucks.
If this were the goal, they could do it in hours. Why is the body count so low given the duration of the war?
This isn’t rhetoric. It might be they want plausible deniability.
It seems to me however that everyone knows they aren’t really fooling anyone with their narrative, which really draws into focus: why aren’t they killing tens of thousands of Palestinians every day? They have the means, motive, and opportunity. They have the technology and are in position to do so.
They have not.
We know what systematic genocide looks like. This is mass murder, sure, but if they wanted to commit genocide, it would be done and over with by now.
Instead, they have killed less than 5% of the population of Gaza.
Why is that?
I, for one, am thankful this hasn't been taken down like any article remotely critical of Israel.
And this has eliminated the whole Western bullshit about human rights maximalism - it's just the same damn thing every time. Like the atrocities in the Congo free State, the Scramble for Africa, etc. the West will sponsor unspeakable atrocities overseas and then act shocked when they actually happen.
Many people in the West don't realize it, but Palestine will wreck severe damage on the West. Just like Gorbachev visiting a random store in the US and seeing insane abundance in a shop in the middle of nowhere while Soviet citizens starved, what killed the Soviet Union was disillusion; people at all levels realized that a system that couldn't provide its people the basics didn't deserve to exist.
That's what happening in the West: American GWOT veterans are still feeling disillusioned about what they went to do in Iraq & Afg. (and Vietnam, before it), and now their kids are seriously asking, "Are we the baddies?"
What's the point of this industrial capacity and wealth if all we do with it is bomb kids? No political system can survive disillusion, that is, the point where people across the spectrum start seeing their nation as hypocritical.