8 ms·

Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

37 points by crocus 18y ago

rw 18y ago
This sort of story is important; I don't care if we call this "Hacker News" or not. [edit]: If you disagree, reply.
- timcederman 18y ago
  There are lots of important stories in the world, and each has its place depending on the news stream.
  - pg 18y ago
    Sometimes stories become big enough that they spill out of their ordinary stream. For example, there is a stream of news about Ebola fever that under normal circumstances is read mainly by infectious disease specialists. But if there is a really big Ebola outbreak somewhere, that starts to be relevant to everyone. What's happening in Gaza now seems pretty serious.
    - davidw 18y ago
      > What's happening in Gaza now seems pretty serious. Serious things have been happening in that part of the world for more than 2000 years, and will continue to happen long after we're all dead. I think they are given ample coverage on other sites, and there are plenty of other forums to discuss them on the internet. Or, put another way, say this site had some hawkish Israeli users and some Hamas-oriented Palistinians. Wouldn't it be nice if here, they could just stick to peacefully discussing the things this site is about, rather than getting sucked into an endless, fruitless discussion, which is what 99% of discussions about that area are?
      - azharcs 18y ago
        Serious things have been happening in that part of the world for more than 2000 years, and will continue to happen long after we're all dead. Your argument seems like "This is not my problem, Why do i care" kind of thing. It is very important for smart people to bring out a solution to this serious conflict which has continued for almost 60 years. We can clearly write it off as an conflict which cannot be solved and it will continue forever. I am pretty much sure there is a solution to this conflict and it has to come from a bunch of smart people who want to change world in a good way, HN community looks like that group. I think they are given ample coverage on other sites, and there are plenty of other forums to discuss them on the internet. There are tons of sites to discuss Ruby, Python, Erlang etc and there are bunch of other sites to discuss Google, Yahoo or the current Economic Situation. Why should that news even be discussed here? The answer is in HN, we get a different and rational perspective to certain news stories unlike other places. I would pretty much like to say, any news which is serious and impacts lot of people or a region should be discussed here for finding peaceful solutions. 'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing' - Edmund Burke
        palish 18y ago
        Okay guys, listen up. I think azharcs is on to something. SwellJoe, you're in charge of making contact with the Palestinian leadership. unalone, you'll be writing excellent-yet-slightly-sensational articles that will shake the belief system of the zealots perpetuating this conflict. stcredzero's job is to apply Buddhist techniques to invoke a general aura of well-being and connectedness. pg, you're going to set up an Arc-powered community for Israelis and Palestinians to have constructive dialogs about the pros and cons of calling a truce. And if you rename Arc to Ark then we can use the tag line "drowning hate, one comment at a time". By our powers combined, we can end this conflict once and for all! Let's do it, people!
        azharcs 18y ago
        ouch!!! When i said we can bring a solution, I certainly didn't keep in mind Power Rangers or Captain Planet. It was more like, why be a pessimist, when you can be optimist about things around which are not right.
      - aswanson 18y ago
        I share your fears on the flame war types this can attract, but we weathered a few hundred submissions on economics, libertarianism, etc ok, so maybe this area can be explored with rational, cogent dialogue.
    - fauigerzigerk 18y ago
      I agree that the Gaza events are very serious and deserve to spill out, but this article isn't particularly good. It's a rather low quality mainstream media article, quoting very biased sources without any mention about who these people are. It's not something that any specialist would read under normal circumstances.
  - chaostheory 18y ago
    Well this story does touch upon a potential chemical being used and its effects - if you're looking for a yc news slant
    - swombat 18y ago
      Sweet, let's start discussing whether white phosphorous could be a good basis for an online start-up. Or not.
      - chaostheory 18y ago
        not everything on yc is just startup/business centric; that ended a while back. That's why its named changed from startup news into hacker news (I still remember complaining to pg about the name change - though now I've changed my mind) What's wrong with discussing a chemical? We've been doing that a long time already on hacker news one more edit: another thing that hacker news brings is a dif perspective on an issue (as opposed to just flame wars like on other sites - I guess I am an idealist at heart) have you ever seen war/military geekery? http://exiledonline.com/the-day-americas-empire-died/ http://exiledonline.com/the-day-americas-empire-died/ (I'd post the Gaza article but it has some graphic images - though the content is very balanced / impartial - imo)
- colinplamondon 18y ago
  I think a lot of the value of HN is the perspective that the community here applies to stories. While the story itself may not be specifically about startups or hacking, the perspective that people bring to bear is almost always informative and thought-provoking. Something may not be Hacker News, but that something may also turn into a great hacker conversation in the course of a thread. I feel that with HN it's really about the evolving dialogue moreso than the news itself- the news is just a conversation starter.
  - tlrobinson 18y ago
    While I agree with you in general, in this case I don't think there's a whole lot of insight to be had, other than "is this illegal?" or "is this immoral?". A good "standard" for Hacker News material might be "would Hacker News users bring a different/better perspective than the average [relatively intelligent] person?" I don't really see that applying in this case.
- swombat 18y ago
  There can be no useful and constructive dialogue on this topic, and therefore, whether or not it is called Hacker News, it is pointless to post it here. It's important, certainly, but do you really think anyone here is not aware of what's happening in Gaza? So then, the only value of reporting this would be to create an interesting discussion - but on a topic so politically inflammatory no useful discussion will come out of this community, and no one will alter their behaviour in a way that will make any difference whatsoever to this conflict.
  - gommm 18y ago
    I don't completely agree with you, from the current discussion on this thread, I found Maktab comment interesting.. There were also interesting link to the wired article on the point of view of the UN, a link to the use of White phosphore during the irak war. And, most importantly there wasn't any flame war (except between maybe between those who think that there can't be any constructive dialogue and those who think that there can be).... Now, of course, I'm usually more interested in articles about startups, software, business and science but I also like Hacker news because I find the discussion interesting and the people well read. And reading the different points of view of people here on such a topic is interesting (as long as we don't get articles about Gaza every day, it's nice and as said it _is_ an important topic)
- cabalamat 18y ago
  I don't doubt that it is important. It still doesn't belong on HN. There are many issues that are important that don't belong on HN. If HN becomes a general news source, it will lose its usefulness for me, and no doubt for others.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
Rod 18y ago
"A woman described how on Tuesday Israeli forces "started to fire phosphorus bombs against the people" Please. Since when is a civilian woman a reliable source of information on weaponry? Gimme a break! Bad journalism. What else could one expect from the Guardian?
- gaius 18y ago
  Quite. WP weapons are very distinctive; the explosion they make doesn't look like anything else and they leave chemical traces. It would be easy for any investigator to bring back conclusive evidence if there were any. Incidentally we used WP (grenades) during GW1.
  - Rod 18y ago
    I have seen photos of WP being used against enemy soldiers in Vietnam. It's quite a unique explosion, indeed. Interesting that WP was used in GW1. Hadn't WP and Napalm been banned before 1991? I will believe in newspapers when they produce photos of WP being used against civilians in Gaza. Until then, it's nothing but fog of war, bad journalism and propaganda to me.
    - gaius 18y ago
      Indeed. Note that I am not making a comment either way on whether WP was used; my problem is the sloppy journalism. Esp. from the Guardian, which has a reputation for anti-Israel bias - they need to be meticulous in their reporting from there to escape those accusations, and they're not being at all.
  - DenisM 18y ago
    Or Iraq 2004: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_use_in_Iraq http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_use_in_Iraq
- gaius 18y ago
  And the video attached to that story is a trailer for Frost/Nixon! WTF!?
Maktab 18y ago
White Phosphorus is not a banned substance, nor is there anything obviously illegal about Israel's use of it in this conflict. It's certainly not a chemical weapon or any other sort of WMD, despite what some of the more breathless reporting would imply. The only international convention which may regulate the use of White Phosphorus is Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, however as WP is designed primarily to be used as a smoke-generating agent it falls under Section 1(b)(i) of the Protocol for most uses, which states: (b) Incendiary weapons do not include: (i) Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signalling systems; If used as an incendiary weapon, other restrictions in the Protocol might apply. These include a prohibition on using WP as an incendiary weapon directly against civilians or by air-dropped shells against military targets in heavily civilian areas. But again, this does not apply when WP is used as a smoke-generating agent and it's perfectly legal to use WP as either a smoke-generating agent or an incendiary weapon against military targets if they are not located within heavy concentrations of civilians, such as in an open field. Israel (along with the US) is not a signatory to Protocol III of the CCW and so it's not subject to its restrictions in any case, but the IDF's military manuals instruct its soldiers to abide by its restrictions voluntarily. Thus far, there hasn't been any evidence that Israel has used it as anything other than a smoke-generating agent, which is absolutely necessary in this kind of urban fighting, or that it has intentionally been used as an incendiary weapon against civilians. In fact, the particular shell Israel uses (the US-made M825A1) is remarkable for having a much slower fall-time through the air than WP weapons of old like those used heavily in WWII, so it provides sufficient time for people to get out of its way and makes it a lot less effective as a weapon. So all indications are that Israel's use of White Phosphorus is well within the accepted and legally-permissible bounds that govern its use. That does not mean that groups like HRW should not keep a strict eye on the IDF's use of it in case there are transgressions and targeted attacks on civilians, but it does mean that we need to stop this ridiculous tendency to regard any use of WP as an illegal and barbaric action. It's a legitimate weapon with legitimate uses and NGOs and the media should recognise that. As an aside, the International Solidarity Movement used as a source by the Guardian is hardly an impartial source, having long been linked to Hamas and supportive of that organisation. Any video, witness interviews and photographs released by the ISM should be regarded as immediately suspect unless corroborated by other sources.
santacruz 18y ago
:) it's so lame
d0mine 18y ago
If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. </quote> http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- swombat 18y ago
  It's probably worth noting, now that this story has been on here for a few hours, that it has produced very little worthwhile discussion - just one mention of some interesting facts about white phosphorous weapons, and a bunch of flame wars about whether this topic is appropriate for HN. Imho that's a good indication that this topic was in fact not appropriate.
  - qw 18y ago
    Perhaps the users value their karma points too much. A lot of votes are based on whether the user agrees with the post, and not based on the value it brings to the discussion.
    - unalone 18y ago
      Do people really value karma on this site? I'd think that the lack of discussion is more because there's not much to be had. There's the anti-Israeli bigotry and the pro-Israeli bigotry, and beyond that there's not much else. You can't debate if it's right of them because most of the end results will be the same (Geneva-convention, no-they-didn't-sign-that-part-of-the-convention, I-still-think-it's-wrong, then the conversation ends). There's nothing much that civilians can discuss here, because none of us are in positions of big know. That's why I'd prefer the discussion focus on other things. Not because these things aren't important, but because the userbase is more interesting discussing other topics.
palish 18y ago
Okay, sorry, no. This story is ridiculously Reddit. "This sort of story is important; I don't care if we call this 'Hacker News' or not." pg once linked to a Reddit comment by a passionate Redditor who refused to follow the rules. The gist of the comment was, "I refuse to post this Ron Paul story to the Politics subreddit because I feel it's just too important." And now here we are about a year later and Ron Paul hype turned out not to be even remotely important, and so yes, maybe Israel is using phosphorous, or maybe the whole thing is staged to make Israel look bad, or maybe....! My point is, you can't know the whole truth, so please post this to some other community that values importance over intelligence!
- tlrobinson 18y ago
  Slightly OT, but I'm curious about the criteria for making submissions "dead". This one was briefly dead, but reappeared after a few minutes. Can posts be made "undead" by additional up votes, or was it explicitly brought back by a moderator?
  - ivankirigin 18y ago
    An editor killed it, then an editor unkilled it.
  - palish 18y ago
    The story was explicitly brought back. You can upvote a dead story, but I'm not sure whether the submitter gains karma for that, and whether that causes the story to move higher up the front page. But the story will remain dead unless necromanced. This seems like a good time to share some thoughts about killing submissions. The troubling aspects of the current "dead submission" implementation are: - You can't comment on the submission itself, only reply to existing comments. I understand the motivation for this, but it feels too close to censorship. - After a submission is killed, there is no way to visit it. It is good that dead stories are no longer clickable, but I wish there were some way to reconstruct its URL for the highly motivated. - No reason is given for killing a story. Sometimes a reason is posted in comments, but it's not mandatory. Requiring a one-line justification from the executioner would be both educational and personal. Also, given that this unabashedly-political article is apparently supported by Management, it seems really hypocritical to disable dantheman's long-standing account without warning, apparently for submitting one off-topic political story: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=434666 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=434666 ... It would be "important" if courts were using evidence despite police errors, right? Then why is Gaza "important enough" to be featured on Hacker News, but the US isn't? I wish I could be certain that there's actually a double-standard in play here, but it's not mandatory to provide a reason for disabling an account (or for killing a story), so there's no way to find out unless I ask. More mysteriously, dantheman's off-topic submission was never killed; his account was simply disabled. So what's going on here? Has he emailed yet? On a personal note, I'm not looking to pick a fight. I'm just concerned about my fellow users and about the direction of the community. It would be great if dantheman's account wasn't actually disabled for submitting a political story, and all of this was just a misunderstanding.
axiom 18y ago
Fantastic. I'll start posting stories about Hamas storing weapons in mosques, schools and hospitals. And firing rockets at civilian centres in Israel. Then we'll have ourselves an old fashioned reddit party! first one to invoke godwin's law wins!!
- ksvs 18y ago
  When Hamas kills 1100 people you can.
  - axiom 18y ago
    It's all so simple and one sided isn't it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hamas_suicide_attacks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hamas_suicide_attacks Seriously let's have a debate on this. This being a hacker forum is the perfect place to do it isn't it?
    - qw 18y ago
      I'm not supporting Hamas and am not supporting any attacks against civilians from either side. But you also have to look at what has happened the last 60 years. Israel is not without blood on their hands either. Let's face it. The last 60 years have been a disaster for the Middle East, and any action from either side can be "justified" with pointing at something the other side has done. There have been attempts to make peace, but there have been too many demands that the other side can't accept. This can only be solved by one of the sides letting history be history and try to make a real attempt at peace. I think Israel, as the dominant party, should withdraw to the borders of 1967 and that the Palestinians should accept a multi-national peace keeping force that would stabilize the region and prevent further attacks on Israel. It might take a couple of generations for the two sides to forgive each other, but it is worth a try.
      - axiom 18y ago
        Look, my point is not one way of the other (although I do have strong opinions on the matter.) My point is that when you mix politics and controversy in an anonymous public forum, you get a lot more heat than light. I'm amazed that this story hasn't been killed yet (it really seems to go against a lot of previous editorial decisions here, which I thought were a really good idea.) Can you imagine a story about Hamas using human shields on the front page? it would be nuts, whether you think it's an important issue or not. These kinds of stories are a magnet for trolls.
malkia 18y ago
Face it! Lots of people would just blindly support Israel, as much as Palestine... Problem is their distribution
johnyzee 18y ago
I think the fact that this thread has 70+ comments, yet has not turned into a political flamefest, but rather an intelligent discussion on whether it belongs, is an almost unbelievably strong testament to the quality of the HN community. I say this as someone who has very strong views on the topic, yet hope and pray that issues this divisive will not be allowed to sow seeds of disunity in an otherwise harmonic and well functioning community.
- tlrobinson 18y ago
  Except most of the comments are debating whether or not this sort of thing should be on Hacker News in the first place.
endtime 18y ago
HN is better than reddit because it doesn't have politics, plain and simple. Let's please keep it that way.
known 18y ago
Everything is fair in love, war and business.
known 18y ago
Governments must step-in and give incentives to Inter-Faith marriages between Jews and Arabs. This will prevent terrorism.

37 points by crocus 18y ago

rw 18y ago

This sort of story is important; I don't care if we call this "Hacker News" or not. [edit]: If you disagree, reply.

timcederman 18y ago
There are lots of important stories in the world, and each has its place depending on the news stream.
- pg 18y ago
  Sometimes stories become big enough that they spill out of their ordinary stream. For example, there is a stream of news about Ebola fever that under normal circumstances is read mainly by infectious disease specialists. But if there is a really big Ebola outbreak somewhere, that starts to be relevant to everyone. What's happening in Gaza now seems pretty serious.
  - davidw 18y ago
    > What's happening in Gaza now seems pretty serious. Serious things have been happening in that part of the world for more than 2000 years, and will continue to happen long after we're all dead. I think they are given ample coverage on other sites, and there are plenty of other forums to discuss them on the internet. Or, put another way, say this site had some hawkish Israeli users and some Hamas-oriented Palistinians. Wouldn't it be nice if here, they could just stick to peacefully discussing the things this site is about, rather than getting sucked into an endless, fruitless discussion, which is what 99% of discussions about that area are?
    - azharcs 18y ago
      Serious things have been happening in that part of the world for more than 2000 years, and will continue to happen long after we're all dead. Your argument seems like "This is not my problem, Why do i care" kind of thing. It is very important for smart people to bring out a solution to this serious conflict which has continued for almost 60 years. We can clearly write it off as an conflict which cannot be solved and it will continue forever. I am pretty much sure there is a solution to this conflict and it has to come from a bunch of smart people who want to change world in a good way, HN community looks like that group. I think they are given ample coverage on other sites, and there are plenty of other forums to discuss them on the internet. There are tons of sites to discuss Ruby, Python, Erlang etc and there are bunch of other sites to discuss Google, Yahoo or the current Economic Situation. Why should that news even be discussed here? The answer is in HN, we get a different and rational perspective to certain news stories unlike other places. I would pretty much like to say, any news which is serious and impacts lot of people or a region should be discussed here for finding peaceful solutions. 'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing' - Edmund Burke
      - palish 18y ago
        Okay guys, listen up. I think azharcs is on to something. SwellJoe, you're in charge of making contact with the Palestinian leadership. unalone, you'll be writing excellent-yet-slightly-sensational articles that will shake the belief system of the zealots perpetuating this conflict. stcredzero's job is to apply Buddhist techniques to invoke a general aura of well-being and connectedness. pg, you're going to set up an Arc-powered community for Israelis and Palestinians to have constructive dialogs about the pros and cons of calling a truce. And if you rename Arc to Ark then we can use the tag line "drowning hate, one comment at a time". By our powers combined, we can end this conflict once and for all! Let's do it, people!
        azharcs 18y ago
        ouch!!! When i said we can bring a solution, I certainly didn't keep in mind Power Rangers or Captain Planet. It was more like, why be a pessimist, when you can be optimist about things around which are not right.
    - aswanson 18y ago
      I share your fears on the flame war types this can attract, but we weathered a few hundred submissions on economics, libertarianism, etc ok, so maybe this area can be explored with rational, cogent dialogue.
  - fauigerzigerk 18y ago
    I agree that the Gaza events are very serious and deserve to spill out, but this article isn't particularly good. It's a rather low quality mainstream media article, quoting very biased sources without any mention about who these people are. It's not something that any specialist would read under normal circumstances.
- chaostheory 18y ago
  Well this story does touch upon a potential chemical being used and its effects - if you're looking for a yc news slant
  - swombat 18y ago
    Sweet, let's start discussing whether white phosphorous could be a good basis for an online start-up. Or not.
    - chaostheory 18y ago
      not everything on yc is just startup/business centric; that ended a while back. That's why its named changed from startup news into hacker news (I still remember complaining to pg about the name change - though now I've changed my mind) What's wrong with discussing a chemical? We've been doing that a long time already on hacker news one more edit: another thing that hacker news brings is a dif perspective on an issue (as opposed to just flame wars like on other sites - I guess I am an idealist at heart) have you ever seen war/military geekery? http://exiledonline.com/the-day-americas-empire-died/ http://exiledonline.com/the-day-americas-empire-died/ (I'd post the Gaza article but it has some graphic images - though the content is very balanced / impartial - imo)
colinplamondon 18y ago
I think a lot of the value of HN is the perspective that the community here applies to stories. While the story itself may not be specifically about startups or hacking, the perspective that people bring to bear is almost always informative and thought-provoking. Something may not be Hacker News, but that something may also turn into a great hacker conversation in the course of a thread. I feel that with HN it's really about the evolving dialogue moreso than the news itself- the news is just a conversation starter.
- tlrobinson 18y ago
  While I agree with you in general, in this case I don't think there's a whole lot of insight to be had, other than "is this illegal?" or "is this immoral?". A good "standard" for Hacker News material might be "would Hacker News users bring a different/better perspective than the average [relatively intelligent] person?" I don't really see that applying in this case.
swombat 18y ago
There can be no useful and constructive dialogue on this topic, and therefore, whether or not it is called Hacker News, it is pointless to post it here. It's important, certainly, but do you really think anyone here is not aware of what's happening in Gaza? So then, the only value of reporting this would be to create an interesting discussion - but on a topic so politically inflammatory no useful discussion will come out of this community, and no one will alter their behaviour in a way that will make any difference whatsoever to this conflict.
- gommm 18y ago
  I don't completely agree with you, from the current discussion on this thread, I found Maktab comment interesting.. There were also interesting link to the wired article on the point of view of the UN, a link to the use of White phosphore during the irak war. And, most importantly there wasn't any flame war (except between maybe between those who think that there can't be any constructive dialogue and those who think that there can be).... Now, of course, I'm usually more interested in articles about startups, software, business and science but I also like Hacker news because I find the discussion interesting and the people well read. And reading the different points of view of people here on such a topic is interesting (as long as we don't get articles about Gaza every day, it's nice and as said it _is_ an important topic)
cabalamat 18y ago
I don't doubt that it is important. It still doesn't belong on HN. There are many issues that are important that don't belong on HN. If HN becomes a general news source, it will lose its usefulness for me, and no doubt for others.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

Rod 18y ago

"A woman described how on Tuesday Israeli forces "started to fire phosphorus bombs against the people" Please. Since when is a civilian woman a reliable source of information on weaponry? Gimme a break! Bad journalism. What else could one expect from the Guardian?

gaius 18y ago
Quite. WP weapons are very distinctive; the explosion they make doesn't look like anything else and they leave chemical traces. It would be easy for any investigator to bring back conclusive evidence if there were any. Incidentally we used WP (grenades) during GW1.
- Rod 18y ago
  I have seen photos of WP being used against enemy soldiers in Vietnam. It's quite a unique explosion, indeed. Interesting that WP was used in GW1. Hadn't WP and Napalm been banned before 1991? I will believe in newspapers when they produce photos of WP being used against civilians in Gaza. Until then, it's nothing but fog of war, bad journalism and propaganda to me.
  - gaius 18y ago
    Indeed. Note that I am not making a comment either way on whether WP was used; my problem is the sloppy journalism. Esp. from the Guardian, which has a reputation for anti-Israel bias - they need to be meticulous in their reporting from there to escape those accusations, and they're not being at all.
- DenisM 18y ago
  Or Iraq 2004: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_use_in_Iraq http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_use_in_Iraq
gaius 18y ago
And the video attached to that story is a trailer for Frost/Nixon! WTF!?

Maktab 18y ago

White Phosphorus is not a banned substance, nor is there anything obviously illegal about Israel's use of it in this conflict. It's certainly not a chemical weapon or any other sort of WMD, despite what some of the more breathless reporting would imply. The only international convention which may regulate the use of White Phosphorus is Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, however as WP is designed primarily to be used as a smoke-generating agent it falls under Section 1(b)(i) of the Protocol for most uses, which states: (b) Incendiary weapons do not include: (i) Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signalling systems; If used as an incendiary weapon, other restrictions in the Protocol might apply. These include a prohibition on using WP as an incendiary weapon directly against civilians or by air-dropped shells against military targets in heavily civilian areas. But again, this does not apply when WP is used as a smoke-generating agent and it's perfectly legal to use WP as either a smoke-generating agent or an incendiary weapon against military targets if they are not located within heavy concentrations of civilians, such as in an open field. Israel (along with the US) is not a signatory to Protocol III of the CCW and so it's not subject to its restrictions in any case, but the IDF's military manuals instruct its soldiers to abide by its restrictions voluntarily. Thus far, there hasn't been any evidence that Israel has used it as anything other than a smoke-generating agent, which is absolutely necessary in this kind of urban fighting, or that it has intentionally been used as an incendiary weapon against civilians. In fact, the particular shell Israel uses (the US-made M825A1) is remarkable for having a much slower fall-time through the air than WP weapons of old like those used heavily in WWII, so it provides sufficient time for people to get out of its way and makes it a lot less effective as a weapon. So all indications are that Israel's use of White Phosphorus is well within the accepted and legally-permissible bounds that govern its use. That does not mean that groups like HRW should not keep a strict eye on the IDF's use of it in case there are transgressions and targeted attacks on civilians, but it does mean that we need to stop this ridiculous tendency to regard any use of WP as an illegal and barbaric action. It's a legitimate weapon with legitimate uses and NGOs and the media should recognise that. As an aside, the International Solidarity Movement used as a source by the Guardian is hardly an impartial source, having long been linked to Hamas and supportive of that organisation. Any video, witness interviews and photographs released by the ISM should be regarded as immediately suspect unless corroborated by other sources.

santacruz 18y ago

:) it's so lame

d0mine 18y ago

If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. </quote> http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

swombat 18y ago
It's probably worth noting, now that this story has been on here for a few hours, that it has produced very little worthwhile discussion - just one mention of some interesting facts about white phosphorous weapons, and a bunch of flame wars about whether this topic is appropriate for HN. Imho that's a good indication that this topic was in fact not appropriate.
- qw 18y ago
  Perhaps the users value their karma points too much. A lot of votes are based on whether the user agrees with the post, and not based on the value it brings to the discussion.
  - unalone 18y ago
    Do people really value karma on this site? I'd think that the lack of discussion is more because there's not much to be had. There's the anti-Israeli bigotry and the pro-Israeli bigotry, and beyond that there's not much else. You can't debate if it's right of them because most of the end results will be the same (Geneva-convention, no-they-didn't-sign-that-part-of-the-convention, I-still-think-it's-wrong, then the conversation ends). There's nothing much that civilians can discuss here, because none of us are in positions of big know. That's why I'd prefer the discussion focus on other things. Not because these things aren't important, but because the userbase is more interesting discussing other topics.

palish 18y ago

Okay, sorry, no. This story is ridiculously Reddit. "This sort of story is important; I don't care if we call this 'Hacker News' or not." pg once linked to a Reddit comment by a passionate Redditor who refused to follow the rules. The gist of the comment was, "I refuse to post this Ron Paul story to the Politics subreddit because I feel it's just too important." And now here we are about a year later and Ron Paul hype turned out not to be even remotely important, and so yes, maybe Israel is using phosphorous, or maybe the whole thing is staged to make Israel look bad, or maybe....! My point is, you can't know the whole truth, so please post this to some other community that values importance over intelligence!

tlrobinson 18y ago
Slightly OT, but I'm curious about the criteria for making submissions "dead". This one was briefly dead, but reappeared after a few minutes. Can posts be made "undead" by additional up votes, or was it explicitly brought back by a moderator?
- ivankirigin 18y ago
  An editor killed it, then an editor unkilled it.
- palish 18y ago
  The story was explicitly brought back. You can upvote a dead story, but I'm not sure whether the submitter gains karma for that, and whether that causes the story to move higher up the front page. But the story will remain dead unless necromanced. This seems like a good time to share some thoughts about killing submissions. The troubling aspects of the current "dead submission" implementation are: - You can't comment on the submission itself, only reply to existing comments. I understand the motivation for this, but it feels too close to censorship. - After a submission is killed, there is no way to visit it. It is good that dead stories are no longer clickable, but I wish there were some way to reconstruct its URL for the highly motivated. - No reason is given for killing a story. Sometimes a reason is posted in comments, but it's not mandatory. Requiring a one-line justification from the executioner would be both educational and personal. Also, given that this unabashedly-political article is apparently supported by Management, it seems really hypocritical to disable dantheman's long-standing account without warning, apparently for submitting one off-topic political story: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=434666 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=434666 ... It would be "important" if courts were using evidence despite police errors, right? Then why is Gaza "important enough" to be featured on Hacker News, but the US isn't? I wish I could be certain that there's actually a double-standard in play here, but it's not mandatory to provide a reason for disabling an account (or for killing a story), so there's no way to find out unless I ask. More mysteriously, dantheman's off-topic submission was never killed; his account was simply disabled. So what's going on here? Has he emailed yet? On a personal note, I'm not looking to pick a fight. I'm just concerned about my fellow users and about the direction of the community. It would be great if dantheman's account wasn't actually disabled for submitting a political story, and all of this was just a misunderstanding.

axiom 18y ago

Fantastic. I'll start posting stories about Hamas storing weapons in mosques, schools and hospitals. And firing rockets at civilian centres in Israel. Then we'll have ourselves an old fashioned reddit party! first one to invoke godwin's law wins!!

ksvs 18y ago
When Hamas kills 1100 people you can.
- axiom 18y ago
  It's all so simple and one sided isn't it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hamas_suicide_attacks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hamas_suicide_attacks Seriously let's have a debate on this. This being a hacker forum is the perfect place to do it isn't it?
  - qw 18y ago
    I'm not supporting Hamas and am not supporting any attacks against civilians from either side. But you also have to look at what has happened the last 60 years. Israel is not without blood on their hands either. Let's face it. The last 60 years have been a disaster for the Middle East, and any action from either side can be "justified" with pointing at something the other side has done. There have been attempts to make peace, but there have been too many demands that the other side can't accept. This can only be solved by one of the sides letting history be history and try to make a real attempt at peace. I think Israel, as the dominant party, should withdraw to the borders of 1967 and that the Palestinians should accept a multi-national peace keeping force that would stabilize the region and prevent further attacks on Israel. It might take a couple of generations for the two sides to forgive each other, but it is worth a try.
    - axiom 18y ago
      Look, my point is not one way of the other (although I do have strong opinions on the matter.) My point is that when you mix politics and controversy in an anonymous public forum, you get a lot more heat than light. I'm amazed that this story hasn't been killed yet (it really seems to go against a lot of previous editorial decisions here, which I thought were a really good idea.) Can you imagine a story about Hamas using human shields on the front page? it would be nuts, whether you think it's an important issue or not. These kinds of stories are a magnet for trolls.

malkia 18y ago

Face it! Lots of people would just blindly support Israel, as much as Palestine... Problem is their distribution

johnyzee 18y ago

I think the fact that this thread has 70+ comments, yet has not turned into a political flamefest, but rather an intelligent discussion on whether it belongs, is an almost unbelievably strong testament to the quality of the HN community. I say this as someone who has very strong views on the topic, yet hope and pray that issues this divisive will not be allowed to sow seeds of disunity in an otherwise harmonic and well functioning community.

tlrobinson 18y ago
Except most of the comments are debating whether or not this sort of thing should be on Hacker News in the first place.

endtime 18y ago

HN is better than reddit because it doesn't have politics, plain and simple. Let's please keep it that way.

known 18y ago

Everything is fair in love, war and business.

known 18y ago

Governments must step-in and give incentives to Inter-Faith marriages between Jews and Arabs. This will prevent terrorism.