22 ms·

The dead children we must see

210 points by jbegley 3y ago

baz00 3y ago
I think it's dangerous to publish things like this at the moment due to the amount of dreadful journalism and carefully misquoted titles out there. We are literally in the middle of a misinformation war. Harsh reactions with consequences result every time the press print things. Adding dead children weaponsises this as the final taboo push. It takes one mistake, one misquoted image or one manipulation and there's just going to be more dead children. Edit: to clarify I am NOT against publishing these things. Just now is a really bad time due to rife misinformation and poor journalism. All it does is inflame already terrible situations for people all over the world. Its divisive and dangerous.
- ziddoap 3y ago
  This same argument could be made about publishing anything, at pretty much any time in history.
- simonw 3y ago
  If journalists can't talk about this, the only people who will talk about this are the propagandists.
  - baz00 3y ago
    The two are difficult to distinguish at the moment which is the problem.
- krunck 3y ago
  I'm sure propagandists(of which there are many) would love nothing more than to be able to show pictures(real or not) of dead babies. And so would truth tellers. What do do?
- adhamsalama 3y ago
  Are you implying there aren't any dead Palestinian children? Or are you saying that no one should talk about it?
  - baz00 3y ago
    No I'm saying that sources should be verified carefully rather than rushing photos of dead children to the front page and then correcting articles later quietly. The gap between these two events tends to result in more people getting hurt. This has actually happened from major press outfits in the last couple of years (not just Israel/Hamas conflict)
    - gillytech 3y ago
      100% agree. Right now, when something "happens" I leave it alone for a couple days until the real information comes out. Remember the "terrorist attack" at the Rainbow Bridge on the Canadian border a couple days ago?
      - 1letterunixname 3y ago
        Fox News never was and still isn't a reputable news source.
        baz00 3y ago
        The problem is that the BBC was and now isn't.
    - FireBeyond 3y ago
      The challenge there is that to some, there is "never a right time". After Columbine, "we need time to grieve", then "we need time to heal", then next thing you know it's 'ancient history' and "we shouldn't revisit it". Next thing you know, it happens again. Rinse, repeat. All of which is very convenient to ignoring the issue.
  - smegger001 3y ago
- firebaze 3y ago
  I think you have no idea how bad, utterly bad, this world can be. How much force is behind the hate that leads people to kill babies. I don't either. But I think it gets worse by not showing the reality.
  - jasmes 3y ago
    I think you're correct. This topic is breaking my soul. So much suffering and death. Why? Ungh. I need to watch Firefly and drink.
  - baz00 3y ago
    I don't think we shouldn't show it. Now is just a bad time. The social media misinformation networks are quite frankly more organised than the organised media and the organised media's press standards are low because they want to get the first story out of the door if it's accurate or not. It's a disaster zone.
    - megous 3y ago
      By "now" you mean sometime between 2010 and indefinite year in the future? Because social media manipulation will never stop, I'm afraid.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dralley 3y ago
  I agree with you in theory. In practice I wonder if the refusal of traditional media to publish these things surrenders too much ground to social media, which has zero restrictions on "weaponizing" these things to an a degree that would have been difficult to conceive of a few years ago. And on top of that, everything can be layered with the seductive narrative "here's what they refuse to show you", which is often just used as a primer to suck people down some rabbit hole of even worse conspiracy and propaganda.
  - baz00 3y ago
    Actually making social media networks and the posters accountable for misinformation rather than threatening it would be a first step.
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      How about just not having engagement self enforcing algorithm feeding people stuff from people they don't "follow" or don't want BS from? Censurship of "misinformation" will kill any actual discourse worth anything. Not that Twitter, Facebook et al. have it anymore. But before the algorithm changes discussions were actually sane.
- megous 3y ago
  What misquoted titles? What misinformation?
noirscape 3y ago
(speaking as a non-american) I don't think that the press publishing pictures of dead kids after school shootings will change anything in how the US views that issue specifically. All it will do is throw a bunch more gross photos out there on social media. People in the US are too politically encamped for pictures of dead kids to move the needle on gun rights at this point. It's not happening; it's been made clear over and over again that no matter the cost in human lives, "muh guns" is what triumphs over everything else for Americans. The consequences are obvious and the stalemate is so eternal that "a school shooting happened in the US" doesn't even make the local news here anymore in 99% of the cases. From an ethical perspective, publishing those pictures will only harm the relatives of the victims - once it's been normalized by a regular outlet to try and push this needle, there's a whole array of sleazeballs out there with less ethics that will do it for every shooting, regardless of the wishes of the family, whether that's to move the needle or to just be a dick to the relatives. It's also not comparable to the horrors of war in this case - there the needle can be moved with that kind of shock imagery because people are so used to the sanitized view of war. School shootings are already bloody - it won't move any needles.
- 01100011 3y ago
  I think the pro-gun side is convinced that there will be many more dead kids in a world without guns, so showing them pictures of actual dead kids isn't going to do much. > People in the US are too politically encamped I think politics is the wrong label for this. Politics is the forum in which the underlying worldviews express themselves. There are a few, strongly developed worldviews at play here and reducing it to just politics misses the depth of the disconnect.
  - 1letterunixname 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 3y ago
      Hey, could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments / name-calling / flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly (another example is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38438522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38438522). It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Your good comments are quite good, though, so if you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
r0ckarong 3y ago
So how many dead babies do I have to look at until they release Julian Assange for reporting on that same kind of shit?
- jasmes 3y ago
  Woof buddy.
- jtriangle 3y ago
  They'd kill him before they released him, just out of principle at this point.
  - mandmandam 3y ago
    Ha, as if they have principles.
jasmes 3y ago
I wasn't aware society had agreed that war journalism or photojournalism should be neutered. Maybe I challenge the premise of the article in the sense that... Yeah. No shit? Honestly... These days I'm so emotionally exhausted that I just see an article like this as a way to get a good by line. Shut up we know kids are being blown up. Right now I just want to eat maple syrup greek yogurt and listen to pop music while I browse HN. I just can't with the dead kids 24/7 any more.
- op00to 3y ago
  If you feel like that, an internet break could help.
  - jasmes 3y ago
    You're not wrong.
    - op00to 3y ago
      I need an internet break too.
- 63 3y ago
  Same here. I know the kids are dying, some of my closest friends share pictures every day and then denounce everyone who unfollows them for being against their existence. I'm sorry. What do all the journalists and activists want me to do? Odds are I've already done it. Please stop telling me about it, I know. I'm not turning away because I don't care about the kids, I'm turning away because the more we keep this up the less I'm able to care about anything. I just need a break but they make you feel like shit for it. And maybe I should feel like shit for choosing to ignore suffering because I can't keep looking idk. I'm just so tired. In any case, I thought the place with articles about the intricacies of pointers in C++ would be safe from the politics and dead children. Clearly I was wrong.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
gillytech 3y ago
Anything these papers publish has an associated agenda. Big Journalism is not simply funded, it's purchased as an investment product.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  All media has some sort of bias or agenda. This is pretty clearly an opinion piece, it isn’t as if they are hiding some secret anti-school-shooting agenda.
  - 1letterunixname 3y ago
    The biggest lie is whenever someone(s) claim to be "unbiased" or "neutral". Not all agendas are created equal. Some positions on issues are obviously existential essential: economic inequality, pollution, climate change, legal system reform, policing reform, and healthcare costs. There are many other issues that are lower priority than existential threats that are debatable. And finally there are partisan cause célèbres that largely amount to bikeshedding. It's when those who benefit from espousing a particular issue position deny reality and legitimacy of an existential threat or suffering of a group makes them intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt.
tptacek 3y ago
The choice of which dead children we must see is political and commercial. AP has many dozens of journalists staffed in Israel, and allegedly only a couple stringers in Syria, where over 300,000 civilians have died in the last 10 years. The children killed in Tigray (tens of thousands) are through the lens of this article less important for us to see than those of Uvalde.
- sockaddr 3y ago
  I suspect it isn't political but rather that being a journalist in Israel is safer than being a journalist in Syria. So naturally one will be represented more than the other. No politics there.
  - hubb 3y ago
    try telling the family of shireen abu akleh about how safe it was to be a journalist in israel
    - criddell 3y ago
      They didn’t say Israel is safe, just safer than Syria. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_during_the_Syrian_civil_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_dur...
      - tptacek 3y ago
        Syria is much less safe than Israel is, but millions of people live there, and newswires can buy information from them; that's what a stringer is. The allegations I've read are that, on a good day in 2018, AP might have had one stringer to get information from. That's a decision AP made, not a reality it had to conform to.
  - bhouston 3y ago
    It is safe to be a Western journalist in Israel, but if you are Arab reporting on Israel from an Arab perspective, it is quite dangerous. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/20/world/middleeast/palestian-journalist-killing-shireen.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/20/world/middleeast/palestia... https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/30/reuters-al-jazeera-journalists-targeted-in-lebanon-strike-press-group https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/30/reuters-al-jazeera... https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/widespread-targeting-journalists-gaza-amid-israeli-attacks-enar https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/...
throwawaybeets 3y ago
[flagged]
- 01100011 3y ago
  Because this is what the folks submitting and upvoting to HN feel is important, and the mods haven't removed it(yet). Online communities are more or less representations of the most active participants.
- pvaldes 3y ago
  Because is important And also because is relevant for us in the current discussion about AI regulation. Most of this children were killed by "allegedly smart machines" sent by humans. And "But the other did it also, so I want to kill children too" is not a valid excuse. We know where it leads. We need to stop and think if we want or not to normalize this system. If is a yes, the same treatment will be applied tor our own children in a near future. 100% of probability. We as species may want to discuss how to develop a way out to stop this machines if "insane people" hypothetically grab the power and starts commiting war crimes. If our "smart" machines are not smart enough to refuse to fall over an hospital or a refugee camp, or to obey the international war laws, then is imperative that we learn how to design better machines... ASAP. Laws of robotics were laminated in the last decades and are totally useless now.
- Probiotic6081 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    If I wanted to not engage with posts, I'd use 4chan.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    Cause we don't want this site going down the crapper
xoa 3y ago
This argument is not at all a new one, and I think dates back to the dawn of modern media, the idea that "if only the public knew the horrors something more would be done". Frankly I'm really skeptical. Humans have known intimately the horrors of far more death and violence throughout the majority of our history, and still do in much of the world. It's only very recently that some areas have happily managed to make it to the point where "the vast majority of us have never seen actual carnage". And looking back through millennia of history, I don't see any particular sign that knowing it made it particularly less likely. On the contrary, mass exposure to any stimulus physiologically and psychologically tends to have an inuring effect. Outrage and shock are (and to maintain a healthy state of mind need to be) transient in nature. If it's just steady state it's not special it becomes the new normal. As with many things there's probably a spectrum not binary, and there are legitimate debates around to what extent people get disconnected from physical reality basics. I can perfectly well believe getting too abstracted is bad, but at the same time getting too close seems to clearly be not good either, resulting in higher stress or flat out PTSD and then cynicism/nihilism on top if no progress can be made because the situation simply isn't reactive to individual outrage. In general I'd say the biggest hardest aspects of politics and geopolitics are that way precisely because they're incredibly complex with large numbers of powerful competing very entrenched interests and arguments, good arguments on multiple sides even, it's not something where the public being upset for awhile necessarily means it just all gets cleanly resolved. And even if public outrage and shock does manage to spark some political movement, that absolutely may or may not be a positive thing. Plenty of horrors in history have been committed in response to "DO SOMETHING!!!" -- Edit to add: Despite having commented and upvoted, I do agree with others that while in principle there are interesting intellectual and more specifically technological discussions to be had here, this prompt in particular is not a productive one and doesn't look to be producing something good for HN. A lot of the same well worn circles, ignoring complexity, adding a helping of mutual flagrant disrespect and condescension that turns people off, done in at least one case while also actively decrying people being too "politically encamped" without a shred of irony. So here I am having commented, upvoted, and then flagged. Doh :(
- smegger001 3y ago
  "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." --William Randolph Hearst before the Spanish American war
zthrowaway 3y ago
[flagged]
- asynchronous 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- drivers99 3y ago
  That's what the flag feature is for.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    Let's get more people to click that.
- Loughla 3y ago
  I'm with you. And the comments here are very quickly devolving into unrelated, or unproductive political nonsense.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mistermann 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - postalrat 3y ago
    Well maybe the social engineering type.
- dangasaurus 3y ago
  [flagged]
rationalfaith 3y ago
[dead]
KaiserPro 3y ago
Its not about seeing pictures of dead people, its about empathy. Large parts of the USA cannot empathise with their own dead children in their own school shootings. Not because they don't have empathy, because its been shaped to not allow any kind of dissent from "accepted"(accepted by which team you support) view points. There are almost no uniting subjects for the USA anymore. It is far to profitable to seek division than unity for almost anything, be that guns, health, education, the constitution, the supreme court, equality, civil rights. the Democrats are incompetent, and the GOP has ceased to be a political organisation.
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  America has too much anomie and normalization of violence. Australia addressed the matter while America insists on putting intransigent philosophical utopian ideals ahead of solidarity and life.
  - throwawa14223 3y ago
    I think you'll find solidarity isn't an American value, from unions to this issue.
- mandmandam 3y ago
  > the Democrats are incompetent They're reasonably competent when undermining progressives, feathering their nests, and holding on to power.
  - smegger001 3y ago
    i thinks its more they are willing to make slow steady progress than try and push bills that wont make it through a split congress and only serve to make their opposition more intransigent. whats the point of failing to pass a bill that will alienate moderate swing voters loosing you seats in the next election. when you can pass bills that get you some of what you want now and more the next and after each election.
    - 3y ago
1letterunixname 3y ago
In mainstream Western media, it largely depends on group victim and privilege points of individual actual victims. You're not going to hear about the suffering of any individual Palestinian child while you are going to see a 30-minute biopic of an Israeli child playing nonstop. And "Support for Palestinians is antisemitism" screams Likud and ADL, while Jewish Voice for Peace and Combatants for Peace urging nonviolent solidarity and peace are banned, silenced, and ignored. This is the insanity of so-called liberal neoliberal left media beating the drums to war with authoritarian hardliner war hawks who want endless cycles of violence where only a political solution can lead to the lasting peace ordinary people need and deserve. This response to the "third intifada" is repeating the historical failures of America in Afghanistan and Iraq by a corrupt leader who was on his way to prison with a convicted racist in tow. Every civilian life lost is a tragedy, but unfortunately some lives are deemed more equal than others in the eyes of the mainstream media who have the power to put their thumb on the scale.
at_a_remove 3y ago
People have an enormous inertia for almost anything, no matter how trivial. It's a wonder anything gets done. I'll pick an issue out of a hat. Let's say I show your average member of the United States a photo array of one hundred seventeen (117) dead infants. I tell you they all died of a single cause. People make sounds. I say "This happens every year, to roughly this degree." Wow! More noises are made. People sound like they want to do something about it. Write to senators, pass laws, protest. But when I get down to brass tacks and say, "Hey, those are all boys. That's how many die from circumcision each year, roughly, in the United States. And by the way, the NNT (number needed to treat) is pretty high, you need a least a hundred circumcisions to prevent just one urinary tract infection." And it all will just stop. New noises, about religious freedoms, and tradition, and the son looking like his father, and "won't he be made fun of?" appear in place of the original noises. And I could say, "It's only done maybe one in ten times in Europe, civilization hasn't ended there" and it won't make a lick of difference. It's not about guns or anything else, people just don't like to change, even over some fairly trivial business. I'd be willing to lay odds that nobody reading this comment who was pro-circumcision has changed their minds. And I would not be shocked for almost any issue that I selected would have a similar outcome. Are people more callous than they are unwilling to change? Perhaps. Are they burned out from hearing Sarah McLachlan's voice starting off an ASCPA commercial, and, in a parallel to Terror Management Theory, most people will, to some degree or another, shut themselves off from a vast and bewildering array of suffering against which they could make only the most ineffectual showing, knowing that for every bit of effort they expend, it will not reach millions of humans and other creatures whose life is primarily one of grim endurance and a kind of mute hope? I could not tell you.
porcoda 3y ago
These articles feel like articles written by journalists for other journalists so they can give awards to each other for “shining a light” on something that they’ve decided isn’t getting illuminated enough. I’m somewhat cynical about a lot of journalism today simply because it feels like a large cohort of that profession has just gotten trapped in a social-media-attention fueled circle of journalists just doing things to generate praise from other journalists. Interestingly, this pattern seems to be independent of the politics of the involved individuals or venues: they all do it. I’m not sure how useful it is to the consumers of the journalism: it’s not like anyone is unaware of what’s going on. If anything, most of us are resigned to the fact that we can’t really do much about it other than be angry and frustrated, since people from all kinds of different places and with different motivations just get in the way.
- jasmes 3y ago
  Well put.
- nitwit005 3y ago
  Yes, I'm always a bit dubious of this sort of stance where people position themselves as a hero. Rushing out stories without verifying basic facts? We can't wait, the public deserves to know!
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Racing0461 3y ago
  This ^. I love big brain responses.
myth_drannon 3y ago
"The past six weeks have made it clear that the world will respond to images of slaughtered children, and it’s worth asking why it’s taken this long for people to see what that looks like. " Well, despite hundreds of thousands of children being killed in Syria and Yemen wars and currently in Sudan, the question never came up. Why? Because Israelis defending themselves and in this war, Hamas uses Palestinian children as human shields. No one likes Jews who hit back, they wish only to pity them.
- seagullz 3y ago
  In the case of butchering Palestinians, unlike the others, key elements are US murder weapons (material assistance) and Vetos at UN SC to shield from international consequences. An US newspaper has naturally extra newsworthiness in that. No less than they had with “collateral murder” video (cf. Wikileaks).
  - myth_drannon 3y ago
    So the core issue is the US support/weapons, not the death of children? Why then the children that are dying in Yemen are ignored? This is US weapons and US support of Saudi Arabia. But I somewhat agree with you. There is a huge disinformation campaign to stop US supporting Israel. Iran/Russia and the rest are working extra hard to isolate Israel and then to be completely overrun by its enemies around. It's similar to the same campaign Russia was spreading to stop NATO involvement in Ukraine-Russia war.
    - seagullz 3y ago
      You are responsible for your own actions (or the predictable consequences thereof) — that’s the basic rule at play here. Any normal court would deem providing murder weapons to the murderer and shielding the murderer from the law an offense. US taxpayers are privy to knowing what they are sponsoring with their tax dollars. The newspapers are supposed to be part of that process.
  - ashirusnw 3y ago
    The UN SC votes are merely levelling out an entirely disproportionate UN SC focus of Israeli-Palestinian conflict whilst largely ignoring all the rest of middle East conflict that he mentions. And it's US weapons used all over the globe in bloody conflicts.(others here have already put paid to the myth of Israeli dependence on usa military aid as a proportion of Israeli military spending.)
mortallywounded 3y ago
It seems the focus of these articles are dead children in Gaza. You don't see raw footage and photos of the dead children in Israel unless you go looking for it. Why is that?
- mandmandam 3y ago
  It's subtle and powerful propaganda. If showing 'the other' people dying on tv/print/web is generally normal, and showing 'our people' dying is generally tragic, there's a deep suggestion that 'the others' are less worthy of dignity than 'ours'. Though, statistically speaking, one might expect to see a lot more murdered Gazan children, given that so, so many more have been horrifically killed, every year.
- 23B1 3y ago
  The second photo in that article is of an Israeli child's blood-stained bunk bed.
- megous 3y ago
  Because there are not nearly as many of them. Haaretz documents 12 children under age of 12, incl. as killed during Oct 7. So if you have 12 kids on one side, and thousands on the other, you'll see more footage of Gazan children, assuming no bias in reporting.
  - YZF 3y ago
    At least 36 Israeli children killed in Oct 7th: https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/by65800qmt https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/by65800qmt Is there a source for "thousands of Gazan children under the age of 12 dead"? I'm sure many were (killed) but thousands seems on the high side of that estimate. Gaza's population is extremely young so unfortunately civilian casualties will include a lot of children. I'm not sure what "no bias in reporting" can even mean in these situations. The loss of any child is a tragedy. The whole situation is just a tragedy. I'm not sure what the media is trying to do with footage of the dead. Maybe we should start running footage of children killed in car accidents to encourage people to drive more safely? Maybe we should do a few takes to find the best "dead".
graphe 3y ago
Newspapers are beholden to their puppeteers and their profit incentive. It is good business to show dead palastinians, and bad business to show dead US citizens, not only of children but everyone. Death is sterilized for the American taste, it happens everywhere except here. If it was good for business to show dead children who have been shot, wed see more.
honeybadger1 3y ago
[flagged]
Georgelemental 3y ago
[flagged]
- alistairSH 3y ago
  [flagged]
pkkm 3y ago
Everyone already knows what the words "bombing" and "shooting" mean, and it would be hard to find someone who considers war to be a good thing. The entire question is which dead children and whose misery we pay attention to. This article doesn't help answer it. It's just a journalist trying to justify a more emotionally powerful and eye-catching form of journalism in a world where a huge number of people are already addicted to doomscrolling. If anything, we need mutual disarmament in the area of giving people an endless stream of depressing and enraging news in ever more optimized ways. I would treat this piece similarly to an oil industry worker explaining the benefits of using more fossil fuels, or an alcohol industry executive expounding on the positives of drinking.
- dclowd9901 3y ago
  > The entire question is which dead children and whose misery we pay attention to. It does. > Images of dead children have great emotional and political power because most people in the world rightfully agree that their deaths are intolerable. All of them. How is this not obvious?
  - handy2000 3y ago
    > All of them. How is this not obvious? Not sure if you are in agreement with the comment you are replying to or challenging it. If the latter - your stance does not address the question. All unjust deaths are tragic, we could have thick magazines published daily listing details of unjust deaths of children just in the US. So the question is what do we pay attention to? (Apologies if I misunderstood your comment.)
    - dclowd9901 3y ago
      Not all deaths are unjust, and ergo, not all deaths are tragic. We collectively believe child murder to be beyond the pale. I don’t think it’s rhetorical but I also don’t think it’s debatable. So, the essence of my comment is this, to be clear: if a child dies due to some consequence of society we’re capable of changing, we should be forced to look upon those images.
idkdotcom 3y ago
[dead]
LAC-Tech 3y ago
My guess is that this war’s lasting legacy may not be some geopolitical break after years of conflict but the images of the innocents we’ve seen, including children, killed in almost every imaginable way. I think this war will be seen as the beginning of the end for the western worlds support for Israel. The director of the ADL was recorded as saying: "The issue of the United States’ support of Israel is not left and right. It is young and old.”[1] It may take a few years or even a couple of decades but eventually there will be a viable US presidential candidate who is more tempted by the votes on the table than by the pro-Israel lobby. [1] https://justicereport.news/articles/2023/11/14/adl-director-blames-tiktok-and-gen-z-for-shocking-and-terrifying-support-of-hamas-in-leaked-phone-call/ https://justicereport.news/articles/2023/11/14/adl-director-...
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  Doubt it. I can see you have picked a side in this debate. In this case: Palestinians, or at least not-Israel. Warning, what follows is an everything-sucks-and-there-really-is-no-solution. Here are some basic facts as I understand about the long-term situation. First, how messed up is the Gaza strip? - Gaza is an open air prison that has no functioning economy and Israel controls all electricity, food, water, etc to a practical extent. It has no real jobs or industry, it survives on humanitarian aid from the UN and in particular Qatar. - To underscore that, Gaza really has no economy. They have no resources. Their population isn't particularly educated, they have no high-tech, they have zero relevance in the world economy. - Gaza is run by a terrorist group and is effectively a mafia state. Remember when I said no jobs? Welllll, actually the only jobs are with 1) the government (run by Hamas) or 2) as a terrorist... in Hamas. The only money that DOES flow into Gaza (of the legitimate sort) must flow through a government state, and Hamas maintains that grip with violence and intimidation. - Gaza was once run by Egypt for about 25 years in the latter part of the 20th century. They eventually said "no thanks" and handed it effectively back to Israel. They Egyptians HATE the Palestinians. This means, no immigration, no leaving Gaza through Egypt, no settling/expanding into Sinai. ZERO CHANCE. The Egyptians will let the Palestinians starve. - Gaza will not get any territory from Israel. That is not happening, not now, not ever. - Gaza has, over the last 75 years of becoming an open air prison and totally dependent on outside help, gone from 340,000 people in 1970 to about 1.5 million in 2010 or so and still growing. Keep in mind, this is an area with no real economy, no jobs, no trade, no means of self support. This isn't some Malthusian complaint. By going from 300,000 something to 1.5 million, the sheer scale of the problem is much greater. The threat the Gaza population poses is far greater. The amount of money that would be needed to fix Gaza is 500% greater. It basically guarantees they can't grow food for themselves, that there probably isn't enough water longer term. It basically is an unsustainable population for the area and region they live in. It makes EVERYTHING far worse. Basically, the largesse needed to modernize a country of 350,000 people is far different that the amount of political will/influence it takes to fund 4-5x more people. - to make things worst, the only real function Gaza has geopolitically to be a thorn in Israel's side. Currently, Iran is funding this because Israel is quietly aligning with Sunni Arab states (Saudis, etc) who are the blood enemies of the Shiites/Iranians. Thus the only other money that flows into Gaza is for proxy war, which ... goes through Hamas and cements them. This means there will NEVER be peace, because the only jobs in Gaza are Hamas foot soldiers, and the only money that really flows through is because Hamas keeps up the fight with Israel. - For the Palestinians, they have always survived because oil was important, and it provided money to the Arab world, and the Palestinians were a proxy to keep Israel in check. But oil will "soon" (in the geopolitical sense) NOT be important. EVs and alternative energy will vastly undercut demand in oil, and when the extra money stops to the arab states AND the rest of the world decides that paying attention to the Arabian peninsula they have no other use for is dumb, the money will run out for the Palestinians. - A bit longer term, Global Warming is heating up, and to survive it you need a functioning grid, a good economy (aka you need money). The Palestinians are in a prison, and it'll start getting hot. But in terms of predicted population movements/displacements from Global Warming, the Palestinians are small fry. - A separate state for Gaza with the current leadership and stated goals of destroying Israel is meaningless, and probably counterproductive. First off, it means Israel can cut off all water / electric / communications to Gaza as a hostile state. Then, when-not-if Gaza pops off rockets across the border AKA an Act of War, it isn't an interaction between a captive wards of Israel, this is Gaza-the-soverign-country vs Israel-the-sovereign-country who outguns them vastly and they can carpet bomb them. - "Pressure Israel for Peace" is just a bandaid on the current situation, and gets it to the previous state of "holy shit there is no solution". Israel is facing a demonstrated terrorist state, and has no reason to surrender territory, concessions, independence, or ANYTHING to Gaza. Not because I like Israel, it's simply historical fact. They would be colossally stupid to do so, and would only do it for vast sums of money. Gaza is their enemy, Palestinians are their enemy, and not in the European sense of "these two royal houses hate each other but they people are just peasants that want to work on the farms and don't care about the royal games". The Palestinians at the ground level hate Israel to a fundamental core, and unfortunately there's no way to undo that. - "Stop supporting them militarily" is also a fantasy. Even if you did, Israel is a fairly wealthy economy and trading partner. They are practically a member of NATO/EU. You think Israel would dry up without US aid? Look, what stops the extreme right of Israel, who have effectively controlled Israel since the failed Camp David talks of 2000, from carpet bombing the Palestinians in response to rocket bombing acts of war and possibly using nuclear weapons on Iran, is that we give them a lot of money. If we stop giving them money, their patience with the current stalemate ends and they explore a "final solution" and yes I know what that implies on all levels. Is there a non-final solution? Do you think the collective, young, ignorant, radicalized population will wake up one day in Gaza and realize "man, fighting Israel is pointless" to the point that Israel actually agrees they are peaceful and lets them build an economy? I would sooner believe in the old testament's wildest fantastical stories than that happening. Do you think that some country desperate for people allows a million plus Gazas to move to, say, Siberia, and that the Gazans would do it? I mean, uh, maybe? Seems pretty unlikely. Or what will probably happen, is that oil money dries up, so all the money to Gaza dries up, the Israelis refuse to help, the Egyptians refuse to help, so then they plead with the UN for enough assistance, but no one does anything besides token/publicity based support, and the (likely at this point 2-2.5 million people) Gazans starve en masse. Look, the UN is not a world government, the international court of justice is a joke. There is no group of nations with real influence that will do anything to Israel, it's a functioning Western government with a good economy. Nobody is messing with that, because it is good business.
Qem 3y ago
If taxpayer dollars are being used to kill those children, I'm totally favorable people see in graphic detail what their taxes are buying them overseas. It's a matter of public transparency and accountability. Otherwise democracy doesn't work.
- dundarious 3y ago
  Yes, "you are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions" is the most elementary moral principle. Here, "you" is those deciding and implementing US foreign policy, which overwhelmingly supports the slaughter in Gaza (via Israel), and the depredation that preceded it (via Egypt and Israel).
  - xdennis 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - dannyfreeman 3y ago
      Yes! It's the Palestinians slaughtering their own children by the thousands! Definitely not the occupying army that is bombing all the schools and hospitals.
      - hbt 3y ago
        [flagged]
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    Israel would be far more violent toward Gaza if they had no western support. Ironically the US military aid is actually whats stopping them from flattening Gaza here.
    - dundarious 3y ago
      I disagree, and the history of US presidential influence (Reagan, GH Bush) suggests otherwise.
pard68 3y ago
All war is an unneeded evil. I do not need to look at dead and mangled children to know that war should not exist.
- selestify 3y ago
  So when your enemies bring war to your doorstep, you refuse to fight it? Or you will fight it only until your enemy retreats, and then you’ll let them regroup?
  - megous 3y ago
    They'd probably prefer an honest work towards a political solution, like https://www.972mag.com/hamas-fatah-elections-israel-arrogance/ https://www.972mag.com/hamas-fatah-elections-israel-arroganc...
    - selestify 3y ago
      Sure, I would prefer that too. But when that falls through, do you still insist on avoiding war at all costs to you and your own?
      - megous 3y ago
        Avoiding political solution by a stronger party in the conflict led to the attack. I suggest to not avoid political solution in the first place. Political solution would have costs to Israel. So does war/oppression/occupation. Political solution did not just fell through, it was actively rejected by Israel time and time again. Israel basically invited the attack. In no world can you expect violently oppressed people to never eventually violently fight back. Israel's government just thought that it would always be able to control this with force, with just a victim here or there. It was mistaken. I still prefer Israel to go back to political solution, and away from "annihilation" solution.
  - pard68 3y ago
    Not quite sure my statement and yours must be at odds. There is a diplomatic solution to all wars. Likewise, there is virtually always a political reason for every war. If those in power wished, war could be avoided in nearly every situation. That said the evil, greed, and/or anger of our leaders ensures wars will always be around. But I don't have to participate in them. In the face of an equal force, I'm happy to stand my ground. In the face of an overwhelming force, I am not too proud to flee.
RecycledEle 3y ago
I agree. Adults need to he able to force other adults to see the consequences of their choices.
kazinator 3y ago
I'm reminded of a quote from John LeCarré's _The Spy Who Came In From The Cold_: Thus we do disagreeable things, but we are defensive. That, I think, is still fair. We do disagreeable things so that ordinary people here and elsewhere can sleep safely in their beds at night. Is that too romantic? Of course, we occasionally do very wicked things"; he grinned like a schoolboy. "And in weighing up the moralities, we rather go in for dishonest comparisons; after all, you can't compare the ideals of one side with the methods of the other, can you, now? We should examine the methods used by all sides in the conflicts, as one topic, and their ideals as another topic.
gyudin 3y ago
Egyptians men “standing tall” with the Palestinians probably feel proud for refusing to provide a temporal shelter for at least women and children. This situation literally wouldn’t be possible if just 1 side out of 3 wouldn’t behave like an asshole.
- amrocha 3y ago
  Why is it ok to kill men but not women and children
  - gyudin 3y ago
    Why Hamas built so many bomb shelters and tunnels but literally 0 of them were used to protect the citizens? It’s literally the opposite of what any other government in the world would do.
    - megous 3y ago
      Is this some bizarre rhetorical question or did you actually spent any time thinking about how this would work practically as a defense for 2.5mil people against a state with access to unlimited amount of precisely targeted bunker buster bombs? Want to know how well public air-raid bunkers work against advanced bombing technology? Check: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiriyah_shelter_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiriyah_shelter_bombing and that's 30 year old tech.
      - YZF 3y ago
        Israel doesn't have an unlimited amount of bunker busters. I think a lot of the destruction is from more conventional precision munitions. The bunker busters are reserved for bunkers, deep tunnels, etc. This question is one of the talking points of the Pro-Israel side. It's not that bizarre. But yeah, as talking points go, it's shallow/simplistic. The idea is to demonstrate that Hamas couldn't care less about Palestinian lives. They don't invest in any shape or form in protecting the citizenry or making the lives of Palestinians better. It's also meant to contrast with how Israel invests in protecting its population- lots of shelters for a much larger population, Israel has been building shelters in various forms forever. During most of the cold war Israel has been facing enemies with fairly unlimited resources as well, rockets, ballistic missiles, large air forces, even artillery (the north of Israel used to be regularly shelled by Syria way back). So it is actually possible to use shelters as a layer of defense. Israel's more recent strategy of reinforced spaces in every house/apartment (started IIRC when Saddam Hussein decide to lob Scud missiles at Israel) has worked fairly well so that could be replicated in Gaza. Israeli buildings have taken direct hits by rockets from Lebanon and Gaza with pretty decent survival rates even when the building itself was practically demolished. Though that might require using the concrete for something else than tunnels. Oh no, another talking point. The better strategy though is not to get into a situation where you're being attacked with bunker busters or try to separate civilian infrastructure from military infrastructure. Other ideas is that when you're warned about an area becoming a subject to aerial bombardments you move away. Sorry, more talking points.
dangasaurus 3y ago
[flagged]
deadbabe 3y ago
[flagged]
indigo0086 3y ago
Just the kind of ghoulish take from such a self righteous upper echelon rag.
Racing0461 3y ago
NYorker: Shows dead pics of isreali children and colombine shootings. Definitely no agenda here. Why not also show images of dead palistine children and homeowners who died during home invasions with nothing to protect themselves?
- mortehu 3y ago
  Isn't the photo you request the first and only picture of a child in the article?
  - Racing0461 3y ago
    I thought the one in the article was from isreal.
Aeolun 3y ago
I don’t want to see any dead children. Why must we see them at all? Just… don’t kill them? Please?
asylteltine 3y ago
Okay New Yorker you first. Show a picture of a dead child that’s not palaestinean challenge 2023 (impossible) The media is literally fueling anti semitic sentiments. They are disgustingly complicit in what’s going to inevitably happen to Jews across the world
anon-3988 3y ago
Its interesting to me why dead children somehow matters more than the average dead person. In fact, I would argue that 30-40 year old person dying is worse than a dead children because of the opportunity cost. It seems to me children dying is worse because there's a perception that they are pure, and that the older dead person have probably "sinned" and deserved it anyway. You see it all the time, "40 dead children, how could they do this? these are just innocent kids!". What? And those 40 adults weren't innocent?
- panza 3y ago
  Do you actually believe what you've just written here?
  - anon-3988 3y ago
    Yes, 40 dead people is equally horrible regardless of what age group they represent. Is this difficult to believe?
  - will4274 3y ago
    Not who you replied to, but for the first 15 years of my life, if I was killed in a war by any nation, it was considered a war crime, a human rights violation. The day I turned 15*, in the estimate of the United States, the leader of the free world, if I was killed by a drone, I was an enemy solider and a legitimate target, regardless of what I did with my life (ignoring my citizenship for a moment). This level of value will continue until I turn 50 or so, at which point it will once again be considered a war crime to kill me. As somebody who has never fired a weapon or built a bomb, the reality that virtually every government in the world, even those from the Western world that are seen as human rights advocates, would look at my corpse and say "enemy combatant" to avoid taking responsibility for killing civilians - it's just one of many strange realities of the modern world. * Some sources say 18 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-i... 2. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-obama-men-killed-by-drones-are-presumed-to-be-terrorists/257749/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-o...
- 3y ago
0dayz 3y ago
Personally I see showing dead corpses in general as a likely immoral idea due to the fact that it might "commodify" real tragedy. Or at the very least open up Pandora's box.
Balgair 3y ago
It seems many commenters are stuck on the Israel-Hamas angle. The article itself is about more than just that conflict. I encourage others to read the full article (there are not many images of dead kids, for those fearing that this is a slide show of gore). I think the last paragraph is well written: "The past six weeks have made it clear that the world will respond to images of slaughtered children, and it’s worth asking why it’s taken this long for people to see what that looks like. There is no question that images of dead children carry an immense amount of weight, which, in turn, must be handled responsibly. But that does not mean that any attempt to get the public to see them is automatically manipulative or propagandistic. It is far more manipulative to edit out the dead children or to hide them under a veil of solemnity and manners."
aristofun 3y ago
This article just like most others like that is yet another example of manipulation and bias. Why, for instance, the author didn't start the story from children killed on oct 7 and jumped right away to following steps of that nightmare? Etc.
hamasisterror 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- keefle 3y ago
  > We need to stop losing our minds or using "women and children" as excuses for doing the right thing > "The context is a terror group raping and killing women, beheading children" To be frank, aren't you doing the same thing? Or even maybe a worse thing? At least we have pictures for the deaths of women and children in Gaza, we do not have evidence for beheading babies or raping women. I do agree atrocities have been committed, but the way they are framed is vital, and it seems throwing around claims of extreme barbarism when there are no valid proofs of it is quite manipulative itself Not to mention your username is quite concerning given what we know about Israeli propaganda units
  - throwaway0a 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - keefle 3y ago
      Look you seem to be throwing around alot of assumptions, including saying "Jews as a whole is more civilized in their attacks". I think it's really dangerous to say "Jews" are the ones attacking, in fact personally I think it's antisemitic to say that. The Israeli military is. Sayig "Jews" is risking their reputation to cover up for Israeli military actions and allows the Israeli military to hide behind anti-Semitism whenever critism comes their way So I will not indulge with a discussion with you further as it does not seem you are genuine, but I'll note to the readers that you did not address the contradiction of using the same "manipulative" statements you yourself critisied
rdtsc 3y ago
> The dam—which currently is held in place by the standards of news organizations and by law-enforcement organizations who, for understandable reasons, have tightly guarded these crime-scene photos—will inevitably break. Read between the lines: “We used to control the types of dead children we wanted you to see. But the darned social media is ruining it for us. Now you might see some dead children you weren’t supposed to”
keefle 3y ago
I think further nuance needs to be added here. There is a difference between pictures of dead children that are shared as proof of atrocities, and pictures that are shared to garner sympathy I doubt many would doubt a school shooting did kill children, maybe some would but not the majority. In this case I can see how sharing the pictures of dead children could produce manipulative outputs (regardless of intent), especially since few to no people doubt their deaths Whereas when it comes to wars overseas, and one side is downplaying or downright denying the death of children, then here I think it's vital to examine the pictures
chakintosh 3y ago
I never had a problem seeing dead children, maybe it's my morbid curiosity at play but it hardly did nothing to me. Until my son was born. Now I try to avoid seeing dead children like the plague. This article didn't help, the main picture is for a torn up baby and it ruined my day ...
beezlewax 3y ago
As a non-American looking at your society from Europe I've often wondered how you think you're perceived abroad? How did you think George Bush's and Tony Blair's war in Iraq was perceived? It's 2023 and the world is still in a state of constant conflict - Jokes aside American has positioned itself as the world police with the largest military ever conceived. Funding militant groups when it serves your goals, destabilising nations. Invading nations on the flimsiest of premises. Etc. Huge portions of popular westeen media portrays the American military action as heroic. But how do Americans actually feel about it? And how do you think the rest of us feel?
- Ycombigatorz 3y ago
  [dead]
- junofan 3y ago
  It’s generally known that American politics is broadcast overseas to promote democracy and peace, especially since the 90s in Europe. We don’t really care as long as you keep holding elections and not starting wars.

210 points by jbegley 3y ago

I think it's dangerous to publish things like this at the moment due to the amount of dreadful journalism and carefully misquoted titles out there. We are literally in the middle of a misinformation war. Harsh reactions with consequences result every time the press print things. Adding dead children weaponsises this as the final taboo push. It takes one mistake, one misquoted image or one manipulation and there's just going to be more dead children. Edit: to clarify I am NOT against publishing these things. Just now is a really bad time due to rife misinformation and poor journalism. All it does is inflame already terrible situations for people all over the world. Its divisive and dangerous.

ziddoap 3y ago
This same argument could be made about publishing anything, at pretty much any time in history.
simonw 3y ago
If journalists can't talk about this, the only people who will talk about this are the propagandists.
- baz00 3y ago
  The two are difficult to distinguish at the moment which is the problem.
krunck 3y ago
I'm sure propagandists(of which there are many) would love nothing more than to be able to show pictures(real or not) of dead babies. And so would truth tellers. What do do?
adhamsalama 3y ago
Are you implying there aren't any dead Palestinian children? Or are you saying that no one should talk about it?
- baz00 3y ago
  No I'm saying that sources should be verified carefully rather than rushing photos of dead children to the front page and then correcting articles later quietly. The gap between these two events tends to result in more people getting hurt. This has actually happened from major press outfits in the last couple of years (not just Israel/Hamas conflict)
  - gillytech 3y ago
    100% agree. Right now, when something "happens" I leave it alone for a couple days until the real information comes out. Remember the "terrorist attack" at the Rainbow Bridge on the Canadian border a couple days ago?
    - 1letterunixname 3y ago
      Fox News never was and still isn't a reputable news source.
      - baz00 3y ago
        The problem is that the BBC was and now isn't.
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    The challenge there is that to some, there is "never a right time". After Columbine, "we need time to grieve", then "we need time to heal", then next thing you know it's 'ancient history' and "we shouldn't revisit it". Next thing you know, it happens again. Rinse, repeat. All of which is very convenient to ignoring the issue.
- smegger001 3y ago
firebaze 3y ago
I think you have no idea how bad, utterly bad, this world can be. How much force is behind the hate that leads people to kill babies. I don't either. But I think it gets worse by not showing the reality.
- jasmes 3y ago
  I think you're correct. This topic is breaking my soul. So much suffering and death. Why? Ungh. I need to watch Firefly and drink.
- baz00 3y ago
  I don't think we shouldn't show it. Now is just a bad time. The social media misinformation networks are quite frankly more organised than the organised media and the organised media's press standards are low because they want to get the first story out of the door if it's accurate or not. It's a disaster zone.
  - megous 3y ago
    By "now" you mean sometime between 2010 and indefinite year in the future? Because social media manipulation will never stop, I'm afraid.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dralley 3y ago
I agree with you in theory. In practice I wonder if the refusal of traditional media to publish these things surrenders too much ground to social media, which has zero restrictions on "weaponizing" these things to an a degree that would have been difficult to conceive of a few years ago. And on top of that, everything can be layered with the seductive narrative "here's what they refuse to show you", which is often just used as a primer to suck people down some rabbit hole of even worse conspiracy and propaganda.
- baz00 3y ago
  Actually making social media networks and the posters accountable for misinformation rather than threatening it would be a first step.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    How about just not having engagement self enforcing algorithm feeding people stuff from people they don't "follow" or don't want BS from? Censurship of "misinformation" will kill any actual discourse worth anything. Not that Twitter, Facebook et al. have it anymore. But before the algorithm changes discussions were actually sane.
megous 3y ago
What misquoted titles? What misinformation?

noirscape 3y ago

(speaking as a non-american) I don't think that the press publishing pictures of dead kids after school shootings will change anything in how the US views that issue specifically. All it will do is throw a bunch more gross photos out there on social media. People in the US are too politically encamped for pictures of dead kids to move the needle on gun rights at this point. It's not happening; it's been made clear over and over again that no matter the cost in human lives, "muh guns" is what triumphs over everything else for Americans. The consequences are obvious and the stalemate is so eternal that "a school shooting happened in the US" doesn't even make the local news here anymore in 99% of the cases. From an ethical perspective, publishing those pictures will only harm the relatives of the victims - once it's been normalized by a regular outlet to try and push this needle, there's a whole array of sleazeballs out there with less ethics that will do it for every shooting, regardless of the wishes of the family, whether that's to move the needle or to just be a dick to the relatives. It's also not comparable to the horrors of war in this case - there the needle can be moved with that kind of shock imagery because people are so used to the sanitized view of war. School shootings are already bloody - it won't move any needles.

01100011 3y ago
I think the pro-gun side is convinced that there will be many more dead kids in a world without guns, so showing them pictures of actual dead kids isn't going to do much. > People in the US are too politically encamped I think politics is the wrong label for this. Politics is the forum in which the underlying worldviews express themselves. There are a few, strongly developed worldviews at play here and reducing it to just politics misses the depth of the disconnect.
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 3y ago
    Hey, could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments / name-calling / flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly (another example is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38438522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38438522). It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Your good comments are quite good, though, so if you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

r0ckarong 3y ago

So how many dead babies do I have to look at until they release Julian Assange for reporting on that same kind of shit?

jasmes 3y ago
Woof buddy.
jtriangle 3y ago
They'd kill him before they released him, just out of principle at this point.
- mandmandam 3y ago
  Ha, as if they have principles.

jasmes 3y ago

I wasn't aware society had agreed that war journalism or photojournalism should be neutered. Maybe I challenge the premise of the article in the sense that... Yeah. No shit? Honestly... These days I'm so emotionally exhausted that I just see an article like this as a way to get a good by line. Shut up we know kids are being blown up. Right now I just want to eat maple syrup greek yogurt and listen to pop music while I browse HN. I just can't with the dead kids 24/7 any more.

op00to 3y ago
If you feel like that, an internet break could help.
- jasmes 3y ago
  You're not wrong.
  - op00to 3y ago
    I need an internet break too.
63 3y ago
Same here. I know the kids are dying, some of my closest friends share pictures every day and then denounce everyone who unfollows them for being against their existence. I'm sorry. What do all the journalists and activists want me to do? Odds are I've already done it. Please stop telling me about it, I know. I'm not turning away because I don't care about the kids, I'm turning away because the more we keep this up the less I'm able to care about anything. I just need a break but they make you feel like shit for it. And maybe I should feel like shit for choosing to ignore suffering because I can't keep looking idk. I'm just so tired. In any case, I thought the place with articles about the intricacies of pointers in C++ would be safe from the politics and dead children. Clearly I was wrong.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

gillytech 3y ago

Anything these papers publish has an associated agenda. Big Journalism is not simply funded, it's purchased as an investment product.

bee_rider 3y ago
All media has some sort of bias or agenda. This is pretty clearly an opinion piece, it isn’t as if they are hiding some secret anti-school-shooting agenda.
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  The biggest lie is whenever someone(s) claim to be "unbiased" or "neutral". Not all agendas are created equal. Some positions on issues are obviously existential essential: economic inequality, pollution, climate change, legal system reform, policing reform, and healthcare costs. There are many other issues that are lower priority than existential threats that are debatable. And finally there are partisan cause célèbres that largely amount to bikeshedding. It's when those who benefit from espousing a particular issue position deny reality and legitimacy of an existential threat or suffering of a group makes them intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt.

tptacek 3y ago

The choice of which dead children we must see is political and commercial. AP has many dozens of journalists staffed in Israel, and allegedly only a couple stringers in Syria, where over 300,000 civilians have died in the last 10 years. The children killed in Tigray (tens of thousands) are through the lens of this article less important for us to see than those of Uvalde.

sockaddr 3y ago
I suspect it isn't political but rather that being a journalist in Israel is safer than being a journalist in Syria. So naturally one will be represented more than the other. No politics there.
- hubb 3y ago
  try telling the family of shireen abu akleh about how safe it was to be a journalist in israel
  - criddell 3y ago
    They didn’t say Israel is safe, just safer than Syria. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_during_the_Syrian_civil_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_dur...
    - tptacek 3y ago
      Syria is much less safe than Israel is, but millions of people live there, and newswires can buy information from them; that's what a stringer is. The allegations I've read are that, on a good day in 2018, AP might have had one stringer to get information from. That's a decision AP made, not a reality it had to conform to.
- bhouston 3y ago
  It is safe to be a Western journalist in Israel, but if you are Arab reporting on Israel from an Arab perspective, it is quite dangerous. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/20/world/middleeast/palestian-journalist-killing-shireen.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/20/world/middleeast/palestia... https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/30/reuters-al-jazeera-journalists-targeted-in-lebanon-strike-press-group https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/30/reuters-al-jazeera... https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/widespread-targeting-journalists-gaza-amid-israeli-attacks-enar https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/...

throwawaybeets 3y ago

[flagged]

01100011 3y ago
Because this is what the folks submitting and upvoting to HN feel is important, and the mods haven't removed it(yet). Online communities are more or less representations of the most active participants.
pvaldes 3y ago
Because is important And also because is relevant for us in the current discussion about AI regulation. Most of this children were killed by "allegedly smart machines" sent by humans. And "But the other did it also, so I want to kill children too" is not a valid excuse. We know where it leads. We need to stop and think if we want or not to normalize this system. If is a yes, the same treatment will be applied tor our own children in a near future. 100% of probability. We as species may want to discuss how to develop a way out to stop this machines if "insane people" hypothetically grab the power and starts commiting war crimes. If our "smart" machines are not smart enough to refuse to fall over an hospital or a refugee camp, or to obey the international war laws, then is imperative that we learn how to design better machines... ASAP. Laws of robotics were laminated in the last decades and are totally useless now.
Probiotic6081 3y ago
[flagged]
- paulddraper 3y ago
  If I wanted to not engage with posts, I'd use 4chan.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Cause we don't want this site going down the crapper

xoa 3y ago

This argument is not at all a new one, and I think dates back to the dawn of modern media, the idea that "if only the public knew the horrors something more would be done". Frankly I'm really skeptical. Humans have known intimately the horrors of far more death and violence throughout the majority of our history, and still do in much of the world. It's only very recently that some areas have happily managed to make it to the point where "the vast majority of us have never seen actual carnage". And looking back through millennia of history, I don't see any particular sign that knowing it made it particularly less likely. On the contrary, mass exposure to any stimulus physiologically and psychologically tends to have an inuring effect. Outrage and shock are (and to maintain a healthy state of mind need to be) transient in nature. If it's just steady state it's not special it becomes the new normal. As with many things there's probably a spectrum not binary, and there are legitimate debates around to what extent people get disconnected from physical reality basics. I can perfectly well believe getting too abstracted is bad, but at the same time getting too close seems to clearly be not good either, resulting in higher stress or flat out PTSD and then cynicism/nihilism on top if no progress can be made because the situation simply isn't reactive to individual outrage. In general I'd say the biggest hardest aspects of politics and geopolitics are that way precisely because they're incredibly complex with large numbers of powerful competing very entrenched interests and arguments, good arguments on multiple sides even, it's not something where the public being upset for awhile necessarily means it just all gets cleanly resolved. And even if public outrage and shock does manage to spark some political movement, that absolutely may or may not be a positive thing. Plenty of horrors in history have been committed in response to "DO SOMETHING!!!" -- Edit to add: Despite having commented and upvoted, I do agree with others that while in principle there are interesting intellectual and more specifically technological discussions to be had here, this prompt in particular is not a productive one and doesn't look to be producing something good for HN. A lot of the same well worn circles, ignoring complexity, adding a helping of mutual flagrant disrespect and condescension that turns people off, done in at least one case while also actively decrying people being too "politically encamped" without a shred of irony. So here I am having commented, upvoted, and then flagged. Doh :(

smegger001 3y ago
"You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." --William Randolph Hearst before the Spanish American war

zthrowaway 3y ago

[flagged]

asynchronous 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
drivers99 3y ago
That's what the flag feature is for.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Let's get more people to click that.
Loughla 3y ago
I'm with you. And the comments here are very quickly devolving into unrelated, or unproductive political nonsense.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mistermann 3y ago
[flagged]
- postalrat 3y ago
  Well maybe the social engineering type.
dangasaurus 3y ago
[flagged]

rationalfaith 3y ago

[dead]

KaiserPro 3y ago

Its not about seeing pictures of dead people, its about empathy. Large parts of the USA cannot empathise with their own dead children in their own school shootings. Not because they don't have empathy, because its been shaped to not allow any kind of dissent from "accepted"(accepted by which team you support) view points. There are almost no uniting subjects for the USA anymore. It is far to profitable to seek division than unity for almost anything, be that guns, health, education, the constitution, the supreme court, equality, civil rights. the Democrats are incompetent, and the GOP has ceased to be a political organisation.

1letterunixname 3y ago
America has too much anomie and normalization of violence. Australia addressed the matter while America insists on putting intransigent philosophical utopian ideals ahead of solidarity and life.
- throwawa14223 3y ago
  I think you'll find solidarity isn't an American value, from unions to this issue.
mandmandam 3y ago
> the Democrats are incompetent They're reasonably competent when undermining progressives, feathering their nests, and holding on to power.
- smegger001 3y ago
  i thinks its more they are willing to make slow steady progress than try and push bills that wont make it through a split congress and only serve to make their opposition more intransigent. whats the point of failing to pass a bill that will alienate moderate swing voters loosing you seats in the next election. when you can pass bills that get you some of what you want now and more the next and after each election.
  - 3y ago

1letterunixname 3y ago

In mainstream Western media, it largely depends on group victim and privilege points of individual actual victims. You're not going to hear about the suffering of any individual Palestinian child while you are going to see a 30-minute biopic of an Israeli child playing nonstop. And "Support for Palestinians is antisemitism" screams Likud and ADL, while Jewish Voice for Peace and Combatants for Peace urging nonviolent solidarity and peace are banned, silenced, and ignored. This is the insanity of so-called liberal neoliberal left media beating the drums to war with authoritarian hardliner war hawks who want endless cycles of violence where only a political solution can lead to the lasting peace ordinary people need and deserve. This response to the "third intifada" is repeating the historical failures of America in Afghanistan and Iraq by a corrupt leader who was on his way to prison with a convicted racist in tow. Every civilian life lost is a tragedy, but unfortunately some lives are deemed more equal than others in the eyes of the mainstream media who have the power to put their thumb on the scale.

at_a_remove 3y ago

People have an enormous inertia for almost anything, no matter how trivial. It's a wonder anything gets done. I'll pick an issue out of a hat. Let's say I show your average member of the United States a photo array of one hundred seventeen (117) dead infants. I tell you they all died of a single cause. People make sounds. I say "This happens every year, to roughly this degree." Wow! More noises are made. People sound like they want to do something about it. Write to senators, pass laws, protest. But when I get down to brass tacks and say, "Hey, those are all boys. That's how many die from circumcision each year, roughly, in the United States. And by the way, the NNT (number needed to treat) is pretty high, you need a least a hundred circumcisions to prevent just one urinary tract infection." And it all will just stop. New noises, about religious freedoms, and tradition, and the son looking like his father, and "won't he be made fun of?" appear in place of the original noises. And I could say, "It's only done maybe one in ten times in Europe, civilization hasn't ended there" and it won't make a lick of difference. It's not about guns or anything else, people just don't like to change, even over some fairly trivial business. I'd be willing to lay odds that nobody reading this comment who was pro-circumcision has changed their minds. And I would not be shocked for almost any issue that I selected would have a similar outcome. Are people more callous than they are unwilling to change? Perhaps. Are they burned out from hearing Sarah McLachlan's voice starting off an ASCPA commercial, and, in a parallel to Terror Management Theory, most people will, to some degree or another, shut themselves off from a vast and bewildering array of suffering against which they could make only the most ineffectual showing, knowing that for every bit of effort they expend, it will not reach millions of humans and other creatures whose life is primarily one of grim endurance and a kind of mute hope? I could not tell you.

porcoda 3y ago

These articles feel like articles written by journalists for other journalists so they can give awards to each other for “shining a light” on something that they’ve decided isn’t getting illuminated enough. I’m somewhat cynical about a lot of journalism today simply because it feels like a large cohort of that profession has just gotten trapped in a social-media-attention fueled circle of journalists just doing things to generate praise from other journalists. Interestingly, this pattern seems to be independent of the politics of the involved individuals or venues: they all do it. I’m not sure how useful it is to the consumers of the journalism: it’s not like anyone is unaware of what’s going on. If anything, most of us are resigned to the fact that we can’t really do much about it other than be angry and frustrated, since people from all kinds of different places and with different motivations just get in the way.

jasmes 3y ago
Well put.
nitwit005 3y ago
Yes, I'm always a bit dubious of this sort of stance where people position themselves as a hero. Rushing out stories without verifying basic facts? We can't wait, the public deserves to know!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Racing0461 3y ago
This ^. I love big brain responses.

myth_drannon 3y ago

"The past six weeks have made it clear that the world will respond to images of slaughtered children, and it’s worth asking why it’s taken this long for people to see what that looks like. " Well, despite hundreds of thousands of children being killed in Syria and Yemen wars and currently in Sudan, the question never came up. Why? Because Israelis defending themselves and in this war, Hamas uses Palestinian children as human shields. No one likes Jews who hit back, they wish only to pity them.

seagullz 3y ago
In the case of butchering Palestinians, unlike the others, key elements are US murder weapons (material assistance) and Vetos at UN SC to shield from international consequences. An US newspaper has naturally extra newsworthiness in that. No less than they had with “collateral murder” video (cf. Wikileaks).
- myth_drannon 3y ago
  So the core issue is the US support/weapons, not the death of children? Why then the children that are dying in Yemen are ignored? This is US weapons and US support of Saudi Arabia. But I somewhat agree with you. There is a huge disinformation campaign to stop US supporting Israel. Iran/Russia and the rest are working extra hard to isolate Israel and then to be completely overrun by its enemies around. It's similar to the same campaign Russia was spreading to stop NATO involvement in Ukraine-Russia war.
  - seagullz 3y ago
    You are responsible for your own actions (or the predictable consequences thereof) — that’s the basic rule at play here. Any normal court would deem providing murder weapons to the murderer and shielding the murderer from the law an offense. US taxpayers are privy to knowing what they are sponsoring with their tax dollars. The newspapers are supposed to be part of that process.
- ashirusnw 3y ago
  The UN SC votes are merely levelling out an entirely disproportionate UN SC focus of Israeli-Palestinian conflict whilst largely ignoring all the rest of middle East conflict that he mentions. And it's US weapons used all over the globe in bloody conflicts.(others here have already put paid to the myth of Israeli dependence on usa military aid as a proportion of Israeli military spending.)

mortallywounded 3y ago

It seems the focus of these articles are dead children in Gaza. You don't see raw footage and photos of the dead children in Israel unless you go looking for it. Why is that?

mandmandam 3y ago
It's subtle and powerful propaganda. If showing 'the other' people dying on tv/print/web is generally normal, and showing 'our people' dying is generally tragic, there's a deep suggestion that 'the others' are less worthy of dignity than 'ours'. Though, statistically speaking, one might expect to see a lot more murdered Gazan children, given that so, so many more have been horrifically killed, every year.
23B1 3y ago
The second photo in that article is of an Israeli child's blood-stained bunk bed.
megous 3y ago
Because there are not nearly as many of them. Haaretz documents 12 children under age of 12, incl. as killed during Oct 7. So if you have 12 kids on one side, and thousands on the other, you'll see more footage of Gazan children, assuming no bias in reporting.
- YZF 3y ago
  At least 36 Israeli children killed in Oct 7th: https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/by65800qmt https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/by65800qmt Is there a source for "thousands of Gazan children under the age of 12 dead"? I'm sure many were (killed) but thousands seems on the high side of that estimate. Gaza's population is extremely young so unfortunately civilian casualties will include a lot of children. I'm not sure what "no bias in reporting" can even mean in these situations. The loss of any child is a tragedy. The whole situation is just a tragedy. I'm not sure what the media is trying to do with footage of the dead. Maybe we should start running footage of children killed in car accidents to encourage people to drive more safely? Maybe we should do a few takes to find the best "dead".

graphe 3y ago

Newspapers are beholden to their puppeteers and their profit incentive. It is good business to show dead palastinians, and bad business to show dead US citizens, not only of children but everyone. Death is sterilized for the American taste, it happens everywhere except here. If it was good for business to show dead children who have been shot, wed see more.

honeybadger1 3y ago

[flagged]

Georgelemental 3y ago

[flagged]

alistairSH 3y ago
[flagged]

pkkm 3y ago

Everyone already knows what the words "bombing" and "shooting" mean, and it would be hard to find someone who considers war to be a good thing. The entire question is which dead children and whose misery we pay attention to. This article doesn't help answer it. It's just a journalist trying to justify a more emotionally powerful and eye-catching form of journalism in a world where a huge number of people are already addicted to doomscrolling. If anything, we need mutual disarmament in the area of giving people an endless stream of depressing and enraging news in ever more optimized ways. I would treat this piece similarly to an oil industry worker explaining the benefits of using more fossil fuels, or an alcohol industry executive expounding on the positives of drinking.

dclowd9901 3y ago
> The entire question is which dead children and whose misery we pay attention to. It does. > Images of dead children have great emotional and political power because most people in the world rightfully agree that their deaths are intolerable. All of them. How is this not obvious?
- handy2000 3y ago
  > All of them. How is this not obvious? Not sure if you are in agreement with the comment you are replying to or challenging it. If the latter - your stance does not address the question. All unjust deaths are tragic, we could have thick magazines published daily listing details of unjust deaths of children just in the US. So the question is what do we pay attention to? (Apologies if I misunderstood your comment.)
  - dclowd9901 3y ago
    Not all deaths are unjust, and ergo, not all deaths are tragic. We collectively believe child murder to be beyond the pale. I don’t think it’s rhetorical but I also don’t think it’s debatable. So, the essence of my comment is this, to be clear: if a child dies due to some consequence of society we’re capable of changing, we should be forced to look upon those images.

idkdotcom 3y ago

[dead]

LAC-Tech 3y ago

My guess is that this war’s lasting legacy may not be some geopolitical break after years of conflict but the images of the innocents we’ve seen, including children, killed in almost every imaginable way. I think this war will be seen as the beginning of the end for the western worlds support for Israel. The director of the ADL was recorded as saying: "The issue of the United States’ support of Israel is not left and right. It is young and old.”[1] It may take a few years or even a couple of decades but eventually there will be a viable US presidential candidate who is more tempted by the votes on the table than by the pro-Israel lobby. [1] https://justicereport.news/articles/2023/11/14/adl-director-blames-tiktok-and-gen-z-for-shocking-and-terrifying-support-of-hamas-in-leaked-phone-call/ https://justicereport.news/articles/2023/11/14/adl-director-...

AtlasBarfed 3y ago
Doubt it. I can see you have picked a side in this debate. In this case: Palestinians, or at least not-Israel. Warning, what follows is an everything-sucks-and-there-really-is-no-solution. Here are some basic facts as I understand about the long-term situation. First, how messed up is the Gaza strip? - Gaza is an open air prison that has no functioning economy and Israel controls all electricity, food, water, etc to a practical extent. It has no real jobs or industry, it survives on humanitarian aid from the UN and in particular Qatar. - To underscore that, Gaza really has no economy. They have no resources. Their population isn't particularly educated, they have no high-tech, they have zero relevance in the world economy. - Gaza is run by a terrorist group and is effectively a mafia state. Remember when I said no jobs? Welllll, actually the only jobs are with 1) the government (run by Hamas) or 2) as a terrorist... in Hamas. The only money that DOES flow into Gaza (of the legitimate sort) must flow through a government state, and Hamas maintains that grip with violence and intimidation. - Gaza was once run by Egypt for about 25 years in the latter part of the 20th century. They eventually said "no thanks" and handed it effectively back to Israel. They Egyptians HATE the Palestinians. This means, no immigration, no leaving Gaza through Egypt, no settling/expanding into Sinai. ZERO CHANCE. The Egyptians will let the Palestinians starve. - Gaza will not get any territory from Israel. That is not happening, not now, not ever. - Gaza has, over the last 75 years of becoming an open air prison and totally dependent on outside help, gone from 340,000 people in 1970 to about 1.5 million in 2010 or so and still growing. Keep in mind, this is an area with no real economy, no jobs, no trade, no means of self support. This isn't some Malthusian complaint. By going from 300,000 something to 1.5 million, the sheer scale of the problem is much greater. The threat the Gaza population poses is far greater. The amount of money that would be needed to fix Gaza is 500% greater. It basically guarantees they can't grow food for themselves, that there probably isn't enough water longer term. It basically is an unsustainable population for the area and region they live in. It makes EVERYTHING far worse. Basically, the largesse needed to modernize a country of 350,000 people is far different that the amount of political will/influence it takes to fund 4-5x more people. - to make things worst, the only real function Gaza has geopolitically to be a thorn in Israel's side. Currently, Iran is funding this because Israel is quietly aligning with Sunni Arab states (Saudis, etc) who are the blood enemies of the Shiites/Iranians. Thus the only other money that flows into Gaza is for proxy war, which ... goes through Hamas and cements them. This means there will NEVER be peace, because the only jobs in Gaza are Hamas foot soldiers, and the only money that really flows through is because Hamas keeps up the fight with Israel. - For the Palestinians, they have always survived because oil was important, and it provided money to the Arab world, and the Palestinians were a proxy to keep Israel in check. But oil will "soon" (in the geopolitical sense) NOT be important. EVs and alternative energy will vastly undercut demand in oil, and when the extra money stops to the arab states AND the rest of the world decides that paying attention to the Arabian peninsula they have no other use for is dumb, the money will run out for the Palestinians. - A bit longer term, Global Warming is heating up, and to survive it you need a functioning grid, a good economy (aka you need money). The Palestinians are in a prison, and it'll start getting hot. But in terms of predicted population movements/displacements from Global Warming, the Palestinians are small fry. - A separate state for Gaza with the current leadership and stated goals of destroying Israel is meaningless, and probably counterproductive. First off, it means Israel can cut off all water / electric / communications to Gaza as a hostile state. Then, when-not-if Gaza pops off rockets across the border AKA an Act of War, it isn't an interaction between a captive wards of Israel, this is Gaza-the-soverign-country vs Israel-the-sovereign-country who outguns them vastly and they can carpet bomb them. - "Pressure Israel for Peace" is just a bandaid on the current situation, and gets it to the previous state of "holy shit there is no solution". Israel is facing a demonstrated terrorist state, and has no reason to surrender territory, concessions, independence, or ANYTHING to Gaza. Not because I like Israel, it's simply historical fact. They would be colossally stupid to do so, and would only do it for vast sums of money. Gaza is their enemy, Palestinians are their enemy, and not in the European sense of "these two royal houses hate each other but they people are just peasants that want to work on the farms and don't care about the royal games". The Palestinians at the ground level hate Israel to a fundamental core, and unfortunately there's no way to undo that. - "Stop supporting them militarily" is also a fantasy. Even if you did, Israel is a fairly wealthy economy and trading partner. They are practically a member of NATO/EU. You think Israel would dry up without US aid? Look, what stops the extreme right of Israel, who have effectively controlled Israel since the failed Camp David talks of 2000, from carpet bombing the Palestinians in response to rocket bombing acts of war and possibly using nuclear weapons on Iran, is that we give them a lot of money. If we stop giving them money, their patience with the current stalemate ends and they explore a "final solution" and yes I know what that implies on all levels. Is there a non-final solution? Do you think the collective, young, ignorant, radicalized population will wake up one day in Gaza and realize "man, fighting Israel is pointless" to the point that Israel actually agrees they are peaceful and lets them build an economy? I would sooner believe in the old testament's wildest fantastical stories than that happening. Do you think that some country desperate for people allows a million plus Gazas to move to, say, Siberia, and that the Gazans would do it? I mean, uh, maybe? Seems pretty unlikely. Or what will probably happen, is that oil money dries up, so all the money to Gaza dries up, the Israelis refuse to help, the Egyptians refuse to help, so then they plead with the UN for enough assistance, but no one does anything besides token/publicity based support, and the (likely at this point 2-2.5 million people) Gazans starve en masse. Look, the UN is not a world government, the international court of justice is a joke. There is no group of nations with real influence that will do anything to Israel, it's a functioning Western government with a good economy. Nobody is messing with that, because it is good business.

Qem 3y ago

If taxpayer dollars are being used to kill those children, I'm totally favorable people see in graphic detail what their taxes are buying them overseas. It's a matter of public transparency and accountability. Otherwise democracy doesn't work.

dundarious 3y ago
Yes, "you are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions" is the most elementary moral principle. Here, "you" is those deciding and implementing US foreign policy, which overwhelmingly supports the slaughter in Gaza (via Israel), and the depredation that preceded it (via Egypt and Israel).
- xdennis 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dannyfreeman 3y ago
    Yes! It's the Palestinians slaughtering their own children by the thousands! Definitely not the occupying army that is bombing all the schools and hospitals.
    - hbt 3y ago
      [flagged]
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Israel would be far more violent toward Gaza if they had no western support. Ironically the US military aid is actually whats stopping them from flattening Gaza here.
  - dundarious 3y ago
    I disagree, and the history of US presidential influence (Reagan, GH Bush) suggests otherwise.

pard68 3y ago

All war is an unneeded evil. I do not need to look at dead and mangled children to know that war should not exist.

selestify 3y ago
So when your enemies bring war to your doorstep, you refuse to fight it? Or you will fight it only until your enemy retreats, and then you’ll let them regroup?
- megous 3y ago
  They'd probably prefer an honest work towards a political solution, like https://www.972mag.com/hamas-fatah-elections-israel-arrogance/ https://www.972mag.com/hamas-fatah-elections-israel-arroganc...
  - selestify 3y ago
    Sure, I would prefer that too. But when that falls through, do you still insist on avoiding war at all costs to you and your own?
    - megous 3y ago
      Avoiding political solution by a stronger party in the conflict led to the attack. I suggest to not avoid political solution in the first place. Political solution would have costs to Israel. So does war/oppression/occupation. Political solution did not just fell through, it was actively rejected by Israel time and time again. Israel basically invited the attack. In no world can you expect violently oppressed people to never eventually violently fight back. Israel's government just thought that it would always be able to control this with force, with just a victim here or there. It was mistaken. I still prefer Israel to go back to political solution, and away from "annihilation" solution.
- pard68 3y ago
  Not quite sure my statement and yours must be at odds. There is a diplomatic solution to all wars. Likewise, there is virtually always a political reason for every war. If those in power wished, war could be avoided in nearly every situation. That said the evil, greed, and/or anger of our leaders ensures wars will always be around. But I don't have to participate in them. In the face of an equal force, I'm happy to stand my ground. In the face of an overwhelming force, I am not too proud to flee.

RecycledEle 3y ago

I agree. Adults need to he able to force other adults to see the consequences of their choices.

kazinator 3y ago

I'm reminded of a quote from John LeCarré's _The Spy Who Came In From The Cold_: Thus we do disagreeable things, but we are defensive. That, I think, is still fair. We do disagreeable things so that ordinary people here and elsewhere can sleep safely in their beds at night. Is that too romantic? Of course, we occasionally do very wicked things"; he grinned like a schoolboy. "And in weighing up the moralities, we rather go in for dishonest comparisons; after all, you can't compare the ideals of one side with the methods of the other, can you, now? We should examine the methods used by all sides in the conflicts, as one topic, and their ideals as another topic.

gyudin 3y ago

Egyptians men “standing tall” with the Palestinians probably feel proud for refusing to provide a temporal shelter for at least women and children. This situation literally wouldn’t be possible if just 1 side out of 3 wouldn’t behave like an asshole.

amrocha 3y ago
Why is it ok to kill men but not women and children
- gyudin 3y ago
  Why Hamas built so many bomb shelters and tunnels but literally 0 of them were used to protect the citizens? It’s literally the opposite of what any other government in the world would do.
  - megous 3y ago
    Is this some bizarre rhetorical question or did you actually spent any time thinking about how this would work practically as a defense for 2.5mil people against a state with access to unlimited amount of precisely targeted bunker buster bombs? Want to know how well public air-raid bunkers work against advanced bombing technology? Check: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiriyah_shelter_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiriyah_shelter_bombing and that's 30 year old tech.
    - YZF 3y ago
      Israel doesn't have an unlimited amount of bunker busters. I think a lot of the destruction is from more conventional precision munitions. The bunker busters are reserved for bunkers, deep tunnels, etc. This question is one of the talking points of the Pro-Israel side. It's not that bizarre. But yeah, as talking points go, it's shallow/simplistic. The idea is to demonstrate that Hamas couldn't care less about Palestinian lives. They don't invest in any shape or form in protecting the citizenry or making the lives of Palestinians better. It's also meant to contrast with how Israel invests in protecting its population- lots of shelters for a much larger population, Israel has been building shelters in various forms forever. During most of the cold war Israel has been facing enemies with fairly unlimited resources as well, rockets, ballistic missiles, large air forces, even artillery (the north of Israel used to be regularly shelled by Syria way back). So it is actually possible to use shelters as a layer of defense. Israel's more recent strategy of reinforced spaces in every house/apartment (started IIRC when Saddam Hussein decide to lob Scud missiles at Israel) has worked fairly well so that could be replicated in Gaza. Israeli buildings have taken direct hits by rockets from Lebanon and Gaza with pretty decent survival rates even when the building itself was practically demolished. Though that might require using the concrete for something else than tunnels. Oh no, another talking point. The better strategy though is not to get into a situation where you're being attacked with bunker busters or try to separate civilian infrastructure from military infrastructure. Other ideas is that when you're warned about an area becoming a subject to aerial bombardments you move away. Sorry, more talking points.

dangasaurus 3y ago

[flagged]

deadbabe 3y ago

[flagged]

indigo0086 3y ago

Just the kind of ghoulish take from such a self righteous upper echelon rag.

Racing0461 3y ago

NYorker: Shows dead pics of isreali children and colombine shootings. Definitely no agenda here. Why not also show images of dead palistine children and homeowners who died during home invasions with nothing to protect themselves?

mortehu 3y ago
Isn't the photo you request the first and only picture of a child in the article?
- Racing0461 3y ago
  I thought the one in the article was from isreal.

Aeolun 3y ago

I don’t want to see any dead children. Why must we see them at all? Just… don’t kill them? Please?

asylteltine 3y ago

Okay New Yorker you first. Show a picture of a dead child that’s not palaestinean challenge 2023 (impossible) The media is literally fueling anti semitic sentiments. They are disgustingly complicit in what’s going to inevitably happen to Jews across the world

anon-3988 3y ago

Its interesting to me why dead children somehow matters more than the average dead person. In fact, I would argue that 30-40 year old person dying is worse than a dead children because of the opportunity cost. It seems to me children dying is worse because there's a perception that they are pure, and that the older dead person have probably "sinned" and deserved it anyway. You see it all the time, "40 dead children, how could they do this? these are just innocent kids!". What? And those 40 adults weren't innocent?

panza 3y ago
Do you actually believe what you've just written here?
- anon-3988 3y ago
  Yes, 40 dead people is equally horrible regardless of what age group they represent. Is this difficult to believe?
- will4274 3y ago
  Not who you replied to, but for the first 15 years of my life, if I was killed in a war by any nation, it was considered a war crime, a human rights violation. The day I turned 15*, in the estimate of the United States, the leader of the free world, if I was killed by a drone, I was an enemy solider and a legitimate target, regardless of what I did with my life (ignoring my citizenship for a moment). This level of value will continue until I turn 50 or so, at which point it will once again be considered a war crime to kill me. As somebody who has never fired a weapon or built a bomb, the reality that virtually every government in the world, even those from the Western world that are seen as human rights advocates, would look at my corpse and say "enemy combatant" to avoid taking responsibility for killing civilians - it's just one of many strange realities of the modern world. * Some sources say 18 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-i... 2. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-obama-men-killed-by-drones-are-presumed-to-be-terrorists/257749/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-o...
3y ago

0dayz 3y ago

Personally I see showing dead corpses in general as a likely immoral idea due to the fact that it might "commodify" real tragedy. Or at the very least open up Pandora's box.

Balgair 3y ago

It seems many commenters are stuck on the Israel-Hamas angle. The article itself is about more than just that conflict. I encourage others to read the full article (there are not many images of dead kids, for those fearing that this is a slide show of gore). I think the last paragraph is well written: "The past six weeks have made it clear that the world will respond to images of slaughtered children, and it’s worth asking why it’s taken this long for people to see what that looks like. There is no question that images of dead children carry an immense amount of weight, which, in turn, must be handled responsibly. But that does not mean that any attempt to get the public to see them is automatically manipulative or propagandistic. It is far more manipulative to edit out the dead children or to hide them under a veil of solemnity and manners."

aristofun 3y ago

This article just like most others like that is yet another example of manipulation and bias. Why, for instance, the author didn't start the story from children killed on oct 7 and jumped right away to following steps of that nightmare? Etc.

hamasisterror 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
keefle 3y ago
> We need to stop losing our minds or using "women and children" as excuses for doing the right thing > "The context is a terror group raping and killing women, beheading children" To be frank, aren't you doing the same thing? Or even maybe a worse thing? At least we have pictures for the deaths of women and children in Gaza, we do not have evidence for beheading babies or raping women. I do agree atrocities have been committed, but the way they are framed is vital, and it seems throwing around claims of extreme barbarism when there are no valid proofs of it is quite manipulative itself Not to mention your username is quite concerning given what we know about Israeli propaganda units
- throwaway0a 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - keefle 3y ago
    Look you seem to be throwing around alot of assumptions, including saying "Jews as a whole is more civilized in their attacks". I think it's really dangerous to say "Jews" are the ones attacking, in fact personally I think it's antisemitic to say that. The Israeli military is. Sayig "Jews" is risking their reputation to cover up for Israeli military actions and allows the Israeli military to hide behind anti-Semitism whenever critism comes their way So I will not indulge with a discussion with you further as it does not seem you are genuine, but I'll note to the readers that you did not address the contradiction of using the same "manipulative" statements you yourself critisied

rdtsc 3y ago

> The dam—which currently is held in place by the standards of news organizations and by law-enforcement organizations who, for understandable reasons, have tightly guarded these crime-scene photos—will inevitably break. Read between the lines: “We used to control the types of dead children we wanted you to see. But the darned social media is ruining it for us. Now you might see some dead children you weren’t supposed to”

keefle 3y ago

I think further nuance needs to be added here. There is a difference between pictures of dead children that are shared as proof of atrocities, and pictures that are shared to garner sympathy I doubt many would doubt a school shooting did kill children, maybe some would but not the majority. In this case I can see how sharing the pictures of dead children could produce manipulative outputs (regardless of intent), especially since few to no people doubt their deaths Whereas when it comes to wars overseas, and one side is downplaying or downright denying the death of children, then here I think it's vital to examine the pictures

chakintosh 3y ago

I never had a problem seeing dead children, maybe it's my morbid curiosity at play but it hardly did nothing to me. Until my son was born. Now I try to avoid seeing dead children like the plague. This article didn't help, the main picture is for a torn up baby and it ruined my day ...

beezlewax 3y ago

As a non-American looking at your society from Europe I've often wondered how you think you're perceived abroad? How did you think George Bush's and Tony Blair's war in Iraq was perceived? It's 2023 and the world is still in a state of constant conflict - Jokes aside American has positioned itself as the world police with the largest military ever conceived. Funding militant groups when it serves your goals, destabilising nations. Invading nations on the flimsiest of premises. Etc. Huge portions of popular westeen media portrays the American military action as heroic. But how do Americans actually feel about it? And how do you think the rest of us feel?

Ycombigatorz 3y ago
[dead]
junofan 3y ago
It’s generally known that American politics is broadcast overseas to promote democracy and peace, especially since the 90s in Europe. We don’t really care as long as you keep holding elections and not starting wars.