charbroiled

> In some countries books are removed from the store if you say "Free Palestine".

What countries remove books from the store if you say “Free Palestine”?

Submitted title: “IDF Soldiers Confess: Ordered to Shoot Unarmed Gazans at Aid Site”

Article title: “IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid”

There is a difference between being ordered to “shoot someone,” which to me at least always signals intent to kill, and to “shoot at someone,” which does not always (and from what the article describes, does not in this case) signal intent to kill.

The body of the article describes warning shots. As described there seems to be callous disregard for casualties, and that’s worthy of condemnation. But especially for such an inflammatory topic, it is willfully dishonest for the submitter to change the title to something the article doesn’t say.

Good job uncritically posting a fake screenshot. It's edited from the public stats page you can find on third-party 4chan archives. You can even check the numbers at a given date from the Internet Archive.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201224040114/https://archive.4...

You do in some countries. For instance, knowingly possessing video of the Christchurch massacre is illegal in New Zealand, due to a ruling by NZ’s Chief Censor (yes, that’s the actual title), and punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Personally, I prefer the American way.

Well, there’s been a (tense) ceasefire for nearly the last 20 years, that was eventually broken on October 8 by Hezbollah:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...

He’s not referring to the Gazan attacks of October 7, but the Hezbollah rocket attacks that started on October 8 and continue to this day, flouting the 18-year ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah and causing the evacuation of over 95,000 Israelis from northern Israel.

Israel has had a “no comment” policy for many years. Why? I can think of a few reasons. One is that some operations, if acknowledged by Israel, would trigger a proportionate response by the target, but if not acknowledged would allow the target to save face by downplaying what happened, if neither side actually wants war.

That probably doesn’t apply to this case, but has occurred in the past. And no-comment policies are more effective when applied unconditionally.

There has been a UN-brokered ceasefire since the later 2006 war. Minor issues have occurred since then, but October 8 was the first major escalation between the two in almost twenty years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...

It says thousands were injured, not that the thousands injured were civilians. In fact, it’s likely that most casualties were Hezbollah operatives.

From the first link:

“Reports from Lebanon said Hezbollah recently received a new batch of imported pagers, which were being used to share information about possible Israeli drone strikes and other attacks.”

From the second link:

“The Lebanese armed group Hezbollah said the pagers belonged to the group’s officials and blamed Israel for orchestrating what appeared to be an unusual synchronized attack on Hezbollah’s communications system.”

Based on that, and the limited effective range of the blast (as visible in videos and the fact that the injuries are consistent with a pager in a hand or a pocket), it’s likely that the majority of injuries were of Hezbollah personnel.

> Are you a bot?

No.

Hamas may be the “legitimate” government of Gaza (or at least the most recently elected one), but Hezbollah is not the legitimate government of Lebanon; it’s a minority party with outsized influence in parts of Lebanon due to its militia and intelligence services.

What NPR report says thousands of civilians were injured? None of these do:

https://www.npr.org/2024/09/17/g-s1-23452/hezbollah-pagers-e...

https://www.npr.org/2024/09/17/g-s1-23406/scores-of-hezbolla...

Israel and Hezbollah have been at war since October 8, when Hezbollah started firing guided rockets at Israel.

Thousands were injured, yes. How many of the thousands injured belonged to Hezbollah? It’s a safe bet that the majority of injuries were sustained by owners of these Hezbollah-supplied pagers.

International law allows, to some extent, collateral damage during war (and Israel and Hezbollah are certainly at war). What percentage of collateral damage would you say is acceptable here? 50%? 20%? None?

Hezbollah started encouraging its operatives to switch to pagers months ago, out of fear that Israel would compromise or had compromised their cell phones.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/pagers-drones-how-...

It seems likely that a significant number of the thousands injured were Hezbollah militants. How significant? We’ll have to wait for the numbers.

I haven’t seen any indication that the exploding pagers were held by emergency responders in a significant quantity. Do you have a source for that?

> Of the deleted comments examined across platforms and countries, between 87.5% and 99.7%, depending on the sample, were legally permissible.

Even of the content that’s not “legally permissible,” it’s worth questioning what exactly is not permitted. It was mere months ago that the EU threatened YouTube for hosting “incitement to violence or propaganda for terrorist organizations”—a lot of which was actual real footage of massacres that is valuable and should not be suppressed in a free society, yet keeps getting taken down from platform after platform due to pressure from regulators. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37884292

This is a common practice in cultures that don’t believe in free speech according to the American standard. For example, videos of the Christchurch mosque shootings were banned by the New Zealand Chief Censor (yes, that’s a real title—https://www.classificationoffice.govt.nz/news/news-items/res...). Sharing the video can get you arrested. https://gizmodo.com/18-year-old-arrested-in-new-zealand-for-...

Surely it’s distasteful to keep these sordid videos available to and viewable by the general public, but when the government prohibits citizens from forming their opinions from stark video of real events, it drastically empowers inflammatory rhetoric on social media—more legally permissible according to their standards—to influence people’s opinions instead. That leaves society as a whole worse off.

Indeed. Consider this video, for example: https://twitter.com/Natsecjeff/status/1397186381756125184

This is certainly Hamas-created propaganda. I could see it inciting someone to join the cause. Yet it reveals that Hamas proudly digs up water pipes donated as humanitarian aid, to turn them into weapons of war. Is society better off if the government prevents this video from being shared?

Stated purpose of law: prohibits advocating genocide.

Actual effect of law: prohibits preserving evidence of genocide.

I know there’s, broadly speaking, a difference in how freedom of speech is defined in America versus Europe. The (slightly inflammatory) description above is why I personally find the “European” definition distasteful.