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> What's going on in Gaza is an unacceptable humanitarian tragedy that is a reaction to an unacceptable attack. Why is one a humanitarian tragedy but the other

> What's going on in Gaza is an unacceptable humanitarian tragedy that is a reaction to an unacceptable attack. Why is one a humanitarian tragedy but the other an unnacceptable attack. You're trying to absolve Israel of its role in the killing of 30,000 civilians over 5 months, to the condemnation of the entire world. Israel is not entitled to kill civilians under any circumstances, not even if Hamas makes it hard to attack Hamas directly. If you look at the statements of Israeli leaders, it is clear that the killing of Palestinians is intentional [1]. As has been the long policy of apartheid and annexation of the West bank (where, you might remember, there is no Hamas). Finally, to be clear the protest is of a Google exec by a Google employee over a google policy/contract which is part of the IDF's murderous policy. [1] https://isitgenocide.com/ https://isitgenocide.com/

tptacek 3y ago
I don't think much of what Israel has done in Gaza is justifiable, but "cannot kill civilians under any circumstances" can't possibly be the standard; if it was, the Nazis might still control most of Europe.
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  [flagged]
- pbiggar 3y ago
  You twisted my words: I said "not entitled". Accidental civilian killings are not acceptable but yes of course they happen. Deliberate killing of civilians are war crimes. We must hold the IDF to the same standard as we hold Hamas. Neither is allowed kill civilians, neither is allowed starve a population, neither is allowed detain civilians (whether as "hostages" or "administrative detainees"), neither is allowed to commit rape, neither is allowed commit war crimes. The issue is that the IDF is much worse than Hamas on all these things: - Israel has killed 30,000 (though the number is suspected to be as high as 50,000 now, and it continues to increase), while Hamas killed 700 civilians (I'll leave aside the very credible claims that Israel killed a good number of it's own) - Israel has a much worse ratio of civilians to valid military targets (possibly between 5/1 and 8/1 ratio, while Hamas has 2/1 ratio during Hamas' attack, and it is believed many of those were killed by the IDF) - Hamas has only killed civilians during the Oct 7 attack. Israel is killing hundreds of civilians per day, and has used rhetoric that indicates this is deliberate [4]. Even Biden, who claims he is a zionist, called Israeli bombing of civilian areas "indiscriminate" [5]. There are plenty of videos online of the IDF killing civilians, including today an old deaf man was killed by a soldier, and congratulated by his squad [11]. - Hamas has apologized for killing civilians; Israel has justified killing and claims it can and will continue to do so, including by denying aid (a war crime) - Israel denies aid to civilians, directly causing a famine; Hamas does not starve civilians - Hamas has by all accounts treated its detainees well; Israel tortures and rapes and sexually abuses its detainees [1] - Israel is deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure (it claims Hamas is hiding there, which does not excuse it and this is a war crime) - Hamas has been alleged to have committed a total of 3 acts of sexual violence (this is heavily disputed, see [2]). However the IDF has committed dozens of acts of torture [9] and rape [1] (this is only counting since Oct 7, but Israel has been killing, torturing and committing sexual violence against Palestinians since 1948, eg [12] ) - Hamas took 250 detainees, Israel had over 1000 before Oct 7 [10] and it increased to over 2000 since Oct 7 [3]. After releasing detainees as part of the short ceasefire, Israel recaptured some of the same people. An Israeli sniper shot a child who celebrated the return of a family member. - There are multiple credible reports of execution of civilians by the IDF outside of combat situations (that is, they came into a place, expelled the women and children, and executed all the men and older boys) [6] [7] - Israel has been killing thousands of Palestinians for years, including thousands in Gaza in 2021 and 2014, and of course 15,000 killed and 750,000 displaced in the massacres during the original invasion of Palestine by the settlers who created Israel. [8] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/22/claims-of-israeli-sexual-assault-of-palestinian-women-are-credible-un-panel-says https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/22/claims-of-isra... [2] https://www.oct7factcheck.com/sexual-violence https://www.oct7factcheck.com/sexual-violence [3] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-horrifying-cases-of-torture-and-degrading-treatment-of-palestinian-detainees-amid-spike-in-arbitrary-arrests/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-ho... [4] https://isitgenocide.com/ https://isitgenocide.com/) [5] https://apnews.com/article/biden-israel-hamas-oct-7-44c4229d4c1270d9cfa484b664a22071 https://apnews.com/article/biden-israel-hamas-oct-7-44c4229d... [6] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/20/palestinians-accuse-israeli-forces-of-executing-19-civilians-in-gaza https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/20/palestinians-accuse... [7] https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/1/18/video-shows-aftermath-of-a-summary-execution-of-15-men-in-a-gaza-apartment https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/1/18/video-s... [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba [9] https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6153/ https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6153/ [10] https://www.btselem.org/administrative_detention/statistics https://www.btselem.org/administrative_detention/statistics [11] https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1766404796909588637 https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17664047969095886... [12] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/10/anger-erupts-over-video-of-palestinian-shot-by-israeli-sniper https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/10/anger-erupts-over-v...
  - tptacek 3y ago
    There's all sorts of stuff in here I disagree with ("Hamas has by all accounts treated its detainees well"? There's video footage!) but it doesn't matter. We're not going to resolve Israel/Palestine on an HN thread. I have a very limited point to make here, which is that it can't possibly be the case that a party to a war can't kill civilians under any circumstances. If you agree with that, there's nothing for us to debate.
    - pbiggar 3y ago
      I addressed that in the first line! To restate: why is Hamas' attack on Oct 7 bad? It's because they killed civilians. If we condemn that, then we must condemn all the IDF killings of civilians. If we do not, what basis do we have to condemn Hamas? Israel's killing of civilians is a horrendous war crime. No we are not doing a carve-out because they really want to kill Hamas fighters. Absurd and horrific to suggest that.
      - tptacek 3y ago
        Hamas has an objective of killing civilians. You will of course argue that Israel does as well, but that will be an argument, not a plain statement of fact.
        bestcoder69 3y ago
        [flagged]
        tptacek 3y ago
        How do you expect to have a curious conversation when you phrase questions that way? If that's not what you're after on this topic, fair enough! I don't like that people are trying to hash this out on HN either. But that's the rule for this place.
        bestcoder69 3y ago
- UperSpaceGuru 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - tptacek 3y ago
    When you find yourself opening a comment with "not being ad hominem", consider just not writing the rest of it.
- tsol 3y ago
  [flagged]
wwweston 3y ago
> Why is one a humanitarian tragedy but the other an unnacceptable attack. You're trying to absolve Israel of its role in the killing of 30,000 civilians over 5 months, to the condemnation of the entire world. If you want to argue with someone who said any of that, find someone who actually said it. Pointing out that Israel is an inherently inequitable ethnostate should have made it pretty clear I'm hardly trying to "absolve" Israel of anything, and that's not the only clue in my comment. If you're having trouble parsing out what I actually said, you're welcome to ask actual questions rather than rhetorically leading ones (much less wildly putting words in my mouth). You might also find how I responded in another branch helpful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39662944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39662944 as well as meditating the difference between speaking in terms of the understandable and the excusable. > Finally, to be clear the protest is of a Google exec by a Google employee over a google policy/contract which is part of the IDF's murderous policy. You might imagine Google has leverage (that perhaps a sufficiently large number of employees could apply themselves to) with Israel to get them to abandon their current policy by threatening to withdraw from their contract. It's pretty likely that they don't, even assuming what Google provides isn't fungible. One of Hamas' goals is apparently to provoke Israel to continue to kill civilians in hopes that it ruins Israel's relations with various western institutions. If that starts to actually work even with smaller stakes players like Google, it's likely enough they'll do more of what works. And it actually gets traction fairly easily because there are people in the Israeli government who, as you point out, apparently prefer unrestrained aggression as a strategy for advancing various internal agendas. And some of them have the talent for actually consolidating internal power as international criticism and isolation increases. This conflict is happening both because real grievances provide the groundwork and because there are actors on both sides of the conflict who genuinely think they have something to gain from acting as they have since October, even in the face of unconscionable slaughter (which can, after all, be converted to grievance fuel). The United States government can barely bring to bear pressure that restrains it. The idea that Google can do much seems even thinner. (I agree, by the way, that Israel has responded in ways that are wrong morally and probably wrong strategically. It's similar in some ways to US mistakes post 9/11, and our eventual transition to more focused counterterrorism criminal and military ops seems to have worked out much better for us, though Israel has enough plausibly different problems I'm sure there are some apples and oranges.)

tptacek 3y ago

I don't think much of what Israel has done in Gaza is justifiable, but "cannot kill civilians under any circumstances" can't possibly be the standard; if it was, the Nazis might still control most of Europe.

Gibbon1 3y ago
[flagged]
pbiggar 3y ago
You twisted my words: I said "not entitled". Accidental civilian killings are not acceptable but yes of course they happen. Deliberate killing of civilians are war crimes. We must hold the IDF to the same standard as we hold Hamas. Neither is allowed kill civilians, neither is allowed starve a population, neither is allowed detain civilians (whether as "hostages" or "administrative detainees"), neither is allowed to commit rape, neither is allowed commit war crimes. The issue is that the IDF is much worse than Hamas on all these things: - Israel has killed 30,000 (though the number is suspected to be as high as 50,000 now, and it continues to increase), while Hamas killed 700 civilians (I'll leave aside the very credible claims that Israel killed a good number of it's own) - Israel has a much worse ratio of civilians to valid military targets (possibly between 5/1 and 8/1 ratio, while Hamas has 2/1 ratio during Hamas' attack, and it is believed many of those were killed by the IDF) - Hamas has only killed civilians during the Oct 7 attack. Israel is killing hundreds of civilians per day, and has used rhetoric that indicates this is deliberate [4]. Even Biden, who claims he is a zionist, called Israeli bombing of civilian areas "indiscriminate" [5]. There are plenty of videos online of the IDF killing civilians, including today an old deaf man was killed by a soldier, and congratulated by his squad [11]. - Hamas has apologized for killing civilians; Israel has justified killing and claims it can and will continue to do so, including by denying aid (a war crime) - Israel denies aid to civilians, directly causing a famine; Hamas does not starve civilians - Hamas has by all accounts treated its detainees well; Israel tortures and rapes and sexually abuses its detainees [1] - Israel is deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure (it claims Hamas is hiding there, which does not excuse it and this is a war crime) - Hamas has been alleged to have committed a total of 3 acts of sexual violence (this is heavily disputed, see [2]). However the IDF has committed dozens of acts of torture [9] and rape [1] (this is only counting since Oct 7, but Israel has been killing, torturing and committing sexual violence against Palestinians since 1948, eg [12] ) - Hamas took 250 detainees, Israel had over 1000 before Oct 7 [10] and it increased to over 2000 since Oct 7 [3]. After releasing detainees as part of the short ceasefire, Israel recaptured some of the same people. An Israeli sniper shot a child who celebrated the return of a family member. - There are multiple credible reports of execution of civilians by the IDF outside of combat situations (that is, they came into a place, expelled the women and children, and executed all the men and older boys) [6] [7] - Israel has been killing thousands of Palestinians for years, including thousands in Gaza in 2021 and 2014, and of course 15,000 killed and 750,000 displaced in the massacres during the original invasion of Palestine by the settlers who created Israel. [8] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/22/claims-of-israeli-sexual-assault-of-palestinian-women-are-credible-un-panel-says https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/22/claims-of-isra... [2] https://www.oct7factcheck.com/sexual-violence https://www.oct7factcheck.com/sexual-violence [3] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-horrifying-cases-of-torture-and-degrading-treatment-of-palestinian-detainees-amid-spike-in-arbitrary-arrests/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-ho... [4] https://isitgenocide.com/ https://isitgenocide.com/) [5] https://apnews.com/article/biden-israel-hamas-oct-7-44c4229d4c1270d9cfa484b664a22071 https://apnews.com/article/biden-israel-hamas-oct-7-44c4229d... [6] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/20/palestinians-accuse-israeli-forces-of-executing-19-civilians-in-gaza https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/20/palestinians-accuse... [7] https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/1/18/video-shows-aftermath-of-a-summary-execution-of-15-men-in-a-gaza-apartment https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/1/18/video-s... [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba [9] https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6153/ https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6153/ [10] https://www.btselem.org/administrative_detention/statistics https://www.btselem.org/administrative_detention/statistics [11] https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1766404796909588637 https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17664047969095886... [12] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/10/anger-erupts-over-video-of-palestinian-shot-by-israeli-sniper https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/10/anger-erupts-over-v...
- tptacek 3y ago
  There's all sorts of stuff in here I disagree with ("Hamas has by all accounts treated its detainees well"? There's video footage!) but it doesn't matter. We're not going to resolve Israel/Palestine on an HN thread. I have a very limited point to make here, which is that it can't possibly be the case that a party to a war can't kill civilians under any circumstances. If you agree with that, there's nothing for us to debate.
  - pbiggar 3y ago
    I addressed that in the first line! To restate: why is Hamas' attack on Oct 7 bad? It's because they killed civilians. If we condemn that, then we must condemn all the IDF killings of civilians. If we do not, what basis do we have to condemn Hamas? Israel's killing of civilians is a horrendous war crime. No we are not doing a carve-out because they really want to kill Hamas fighters. Absurd and horrific to suggest that.
    - tptacek 3y ago
      Hamas has an objective of killing civilians. You will of course argue that Israel does as well, but that will be an argument, not a plain statement of fact.
      - bestcoder69 3y ago
        [flagged]
        tptacek 3y ago
        How do you expect to have a curious conversation when you phrase questions that way? If that's not what you're after on this topic, fair enough! I don't like that people are trying to hash this out on HN either. But that's the rule for this place.
        bestcoder69 3y ago
UperSpaceGuru 3y ago
[flagged]
- tptacek 3y ago
  When you find yourself opening a comment with "not being ad hominem", consider just not writing the rest of it.
tsol 3y ago
[flagged]

wwweston 3y ago

> Why is one a humanitarian tragedy but the other an unnacceptable attack. You're trying to absolve Israel of its role in the killing of 30,000 civilians over 5 months, to the condemnation of the entire world. If you want to argue with someone who said any of that, find someone who actually said it. Pointing out that Israel is an inherently inequitable ethnostate should have made it pretty clear I'm hardly trying to "absolve" Israel of anything, and that's not the only clue in my comment. If you're having trouble parsing out what I actually said, you're welcome to ask actual questions rather than rhetorically leading ones (much less wildly putting words in my mouth). You might also find how I responded in another branch helpful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39662944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39662944 as well as meditating the difference between speaking in terms of the understandable and the excusable. > Finally, to be clear the protest is of a Google exec by a Google employee over a google policy/contract which is part of the IDF's murderous policy. You might imagine Google has leverage (that perhaps a sufficiently large number of employees could apply themselves to) with Israel to get them to abandon their current policy by threatening to withdraw from their contract. It's pretty likely that they don't, even assuming what Google provides isn't fungible. One of Hamas' goals is apparently to provoke Israel to continue to kill civilians in hopes that it ruins Israel's relations with various western institutions. If that starts to actually work even with smaller stakes players like Google, it's likely enough they'll do more of what works. And it actually gets traction fairly easily because there are people in the Israeli government who, as you point out, apparently prefer unrestrained aggression as a strategy for advancing various internal agendas. And some of them have the talent for actually consolidating internal power as international criticism and isolation increases. This conflict is happening both because real grievances provide the groundwork and because there are actors on both sides of the conflict who genuinely think they have something to gain from acting as they have since October, even in the face of unconscionable slaughter (which can, after all, be converted to grievance fuel). The United States government can barely bring to bear pressure that restrains it. The idea that Google can do much seems even thinner. (I agree, by the way, that Israel has responded in ways that are wrong morally and probably wrong strategically. It's similar in some ways to US mistakes post 9/11, and our eventual transition to more focused counterterrorism criminal and military ops seems to have worked out much better for us, though Israel has enough plausibly different problems I'm sure there are some apples and oranges.)