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Does anyone still need testimonies like these to be convinced that Israel is systematically exterminating the Palestinians using kinetic force and starvation? W

Does anyone still need testimonies like these to be convinced that Israel is systematically exterminating the Palestinians using kinetic force and starvation? We're past that point now. Making Gaza unlivable by carpet-bombing the strip, telegraphing mass murder in unambiguous statements at the highest levels of government, dehumanizing the Palestinians and silencing anyone who dares to speak up? I, for one, am thankful this hasn't been taken down like any article remotely critical of Israel. And this has eliminated the whole Western bullshit about human rights maximalism - it's just the same damn thing every time. Like the atrocities in the Congo free State, the Scramble for Africa, etc. the West will sponsor unspeakable atrocities overseas and then act shocked when they actually happen. Many people in the West don't realize it, but Palestine will wreck severe damage on the West. Just like Gorbachev visiting a random store in the US and seeing insane abundance in a shop in the middle of nowhere while Soviet citizens starved, what killed the Soviet Union was disillusion; people at all levels realized that a system that couldn't provide its people the basics didn't deserve to exist. That's what happening in the West: American GWOT veterans are still feeling disillusioned about what they went to do in Iraq & Afg. (and Vietnam, before it), and now their kids are seriously asking, "Are we the baddies?" What's the point of this industrial capacity and wealth if all we do with it is bomb kids? No political system can survive disillusion, that is, the point where people across the spectrum start seeing their nation as hypocritical.

leosanchez 1y ago
> I, for one, am thankful this hasn't been taken down like any article remotely critical of Israel. Wait for few more hours to be thankful.
- churchill 1y ago
  Was flagged and restored just now, haha. Edit: And this comment is flagged to hell, as well, haha. I guess saying that the systematic murder of civilians is bad is now a controversial opinion, lmao.
  - johnisgood 1y ago
    People form beliefs and make judgments based on things they do not know, it is nothing surprising[1]. I would recommend reading the history of Israel (vs. Palestine, especially). Yeah, Hamzah has been making lots of videos of IDF soldiers (and other Israelites) saying that they want all Palestinian children to die, and that their lives are worth more than Palestinians' lives. I am not surprised by any of this, the media is probably controlled. They hear what the Government wants them to hear, which is this: they are the good guys. [1] I do not claim to know everything either, which should be very obvious, but I try to postpone forming a judgment.
    - churchill 1y ago
      I feel it's not going to last longer. With the advent of modern, mass media, young people across the West can see for themselves and they're taking a side. More specifically, they don't want their governments funding genocide with their taxes. This cannot be made to go away, which is why Zionist activists and their lackeys are pulling out all the stops: no one expected the outburst of disgust at Israel's actions would get this severe, so they're in nonstop damage control mode.
      - johnisgood 1y ago
        I only know the history, I do not know what exactly is happening today. It is still sickening (in my humble opinion) that many people straight out tell him that they want children to die, but only Palestinian children.
        speakfreely 1y ago
        That's why I say the war is already over. Hamas won. The Israeli public is too enraged by Oct 7 and it can't pursue a long term goal because it has to feed the need for vengeance. The only group that truly benefits from continued conflict is Hamas, everyone else is a victim of circumstance.
        1y ago
selimthegrim 1y ago
It was Yeltsin, not Gorbachev
elihu 1y ago
I think the thing that should have been a clear unambiguous sign (if nothing up to then were convincing enough) that Israel's intentions weren't just to defeat Hamas but cause severe harm to the civilian population of Gaza was when they blocked all food and aid into Gaza for months. I mean, why would you do that unless you want people to die? Even the stated explanation that they wanted to deprive Hamas of the ability to fundraise by stealing food and selling it back didn't make sense. Food shortages would cause the market value of hoarded food to rise, thus helping Hamas. Flooding the region with food would collapse the prices and deprive them of a revenue stream.
- Cyph0n 1y ago
  The intention was clearly communicated from day 1. But Western governments willingly decided to provide diplomatic cover & military support - some to this very day - with the backing of the Western media apparatus.
  - ainiriand 1y ago
    Not the spanish government at least, now we are horrible aparently.
    - Cyph0n 1y ago
      Yes, Spain, Ireland, and Belgium were/are outliers. I am generalizing because the vast majority are complicit. It is also much simpler to do this than qualify each and every statement by enumerating the list of good or bad countries :)
      - BergAndCo 1y ago
        [dead]
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  "destroy Hamas" has become "kill everyone with Hamas sympathies" -- but you can be sure that every boy who can carry a gun, who has seen family members die, who is living the destruction and desolation, is itching for a chance to join the next version of Hamas (which may not be Hamas itself, but something else built on the same shouldering fires that burn when people are oppressed, bombed, and starved, repeatedly for generations. They're not destroying Hamas -- they're just creating a new one (if anyone survives).
pfannkuchen 1y ago
Nit: Congo free state and Scramble for Africa were pretty different as I believe most Europeans didn’t realize and/or accept that sub Saharan Africans are humans at that point. They had an extremely different exposure to them (level and type) than we have today, and I don’t think we today can say whether we would have reacted differently to the Africans immediately post mass scale contact. Do people in the west today consciously consider Palestinians to be subhuman? I don’t think so? So this today is like much much worse actually IMO from a moral defensibility standpoint. This is orthogonal to your point, I agree with your point.
- runarberg 1y ago
  [flagged]
- churchill 1y ago
  I think your point has some merits, but ultimately, intent doesn't matter: action does. if the West keeps funding Israel's genocide in Gaza, then yes, it's because they believe the Palestinians are sub-human. Haven't you seen the outpouring of support for Ukraine since they were invaded? Yet, Western nations are funding (not overlooking, but actively paying for) something worse - a continuous, ongoing genocide - and it's supposed to be an oversight?
  - pfannkuchen 1y ago
    I disagree that intent does not matter when judging the morality of an action. I believe this is the supermajority view in the west. Which doesn’t make it right, of course, I just assumed we all thought that and if you don’t I’m not going to argue with you about it.
tim333 1y ago
I mostly agree except the "no political system can survive disillusion" bit. In most of the examples you give the political system survived.
- churchill 1y ago
  For now. Eventually, the injuries your system takes over time grinds your gears to a halt. And I can provide numerous examples: Portugal's colonial holdings (Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique) were unwound after the carnation revolution because the overseas wars were consuming 50% of the national budget while the Estado Novo at home was a corrupt, violent, authoritarian, corporatist state. The Brits could not square a global empire while their countrymen were rationing food, etc. at home. That had to go as well. Despite all the Cold War propaganda spread since the fall of the USSR, in 1991, the Soviet Union was still a first-rate military power, with 35k to 40k nuclear warheads and >150 divisions, totaling 3.4M troops. It could easily suppress any of those pro-democracy protests, and all the CIA's burrowing in the Sovbloc would come to nought. But there was no longer anything worth fighting for. Even people within the Party infrastructure had come to admit that they'd been living for a lie, lying for a lie, killing for a lie-all that for a lie! The Qing dynasty faced massive internal revolts (Taiping, Boxer), external invasions (Opium Wars), and technological stagnation. The empire resisted modernization too long, then tried too little, too late. Overwhelmed by foreign powers and internal revolution (1911), it died because it could no longer defend the illusion of legitimacy. In France's Ancien Regime, nobles were exempt from taxes while peasants starved; France had a bloated, corrupt court and massive debt (partly from helping America fight the British!), yet refused reforms. Nazi Germany claimed to be defending “Western civilization” while practicing industrial genocide and totalitarian control over - wait for it - Europeans! One contradiction doesn't bring down a political system, but it cascades, because a hypocritical system dives deeper into hypocrisy until it eventually collapses.
  - h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 1y ago
    I get that things are bad. But how do we fix it?
  - Der_Einzige 1y ago
LorenPechtel 1y ago
[flagged]
geysersam 1y ago
> And this has eliminated the whole Western bullshit about human rights maximalism That's the truth. "Never again". Clearly our politicians do not believe in human rights or international law. What do they believe in? Democracy? I doubt it. Money? Western exceptionalism? More likely. Where do we go from here? Why would anyone ever take any moral argument from a western nation seriously ever again?
- oezi 1y ago
  What we have learned again is that actions speak louder than words and that without action you can't achieve anything. Western nations aren't doing anything nor are middle eastern governments, nor asian governments. My takeaway is that the UN needs to be replaced with something without the 5 veto powers. Both Gaza now and Syria could have been prevented with peacekeeping missions if it weren't for the US and Russia and their vetos.
  - geysersam 1y ago
    > Western nations aren't doing anything nor are middle eastern governments, nor asian governments. On the other hand, middle Eastern nations and Asian nations are typically protesting loudly, they don't protect Israel in the UN, they recognize the Palestinian state, they don't sell weapons to Israel.
    - achierius 1y ago
      This is just untrue. Go look at what major Arab countries are doing right now, or look at how China is selling weapons to Israel. It's not on the same level as Western support, but it's still there.
      - geysersam 1y ago
        What's untrue? Most Asian and ME countries recognize Palestine, most European/Western countries don't: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_Palestine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of... About Chinese weapons exports it seems we have different sources. From what I can tell Israels arms imports are dominated by US and Germany, with scattered contributions from other European countries. Chinas arms imports to Israel are miniscule by comparison. On the other hand I'm sure China provides a lot of components to Israels military industry, but that's a different question.
bamboozled 1y ago
[flagged]
zahlman 1y ago
> I, for one, am thankful this hasn't been taken down like any article remotely critical of Israel. ????? I am generally not at all invested in this conflict and I cede that I have very little information about what is going on, and it's been like that for me for decades. But the information that is available to me, in the current context, from looking at HN, is: pro-Palestine and anti-Israeli sentiments are the norm in comment sections here; comments resisting this viewpoint are routinely downvoted and flagged; news stories about the conflict that make it to the HN front page (including this one) overwhelmingly are taking Palestine's side; and on occasions where I've tried to flag submissions that I felt were grossly uncharitable (making claims beyond what their evidence supports, and/or using inflammatory language) they have not been taken down (and I've only seen anti-Israel examples of such to flag). At any rate, your comment is a polemic that appears not to even consider reasons why other people might see the issue differently, and implicitly shames people for not coming to a conclusion you consider obvious. That is not up to the standard I understood HN political discussion to expect. (And since I have showdead on, I can see the replies to you that were flagged and killed. They are really not any worse from what I can tell, but they apparently have the wrong political polarity — the one you claim is endorsed, directly counter to the evidence available to me.) P.S. Whoever downvoted and flagged this, please explain your reasoning. I am happy to consider your point of view.
- ivape 1y ago
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  - zahlman 1y ago
    I don't know whether you are being sincere or sarcastic, but either way this is not a productive mode of discourse. If sincere: > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. If sarcastic: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
    - deleted 1y ago
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kevinventullo 1y ago
[flagged]
starik36 1y ago
> Anyone still need testimonies like these to be convinced that Israel You are operating until a false premise that Palestinians/Hamas are some sort of children and bear no responsibility for anything at all. Where in reality, the war could have been over in 5 minutes if they released the hostages at any time during the past 3 years. It still can be over in 5 minutes if they choose to do that. But no, they will put as many of their own people in harm's way as necessary to get to the world opinion to be what it is. And literally no one, including you, is questioning that. But please, do tell me that hostages have nothing to do with anything or Netanyahu bad or whatever else you can cook up. > while Soviet citizens starved As someone who grew up in the USSR, I can assure you - no one was starving. > what killed the Soviet Union was disillusion. People at all levels realized that a system that couldn't provide its people the basics didn't deserve to exist. That is such a simplistic view of what happened. I don't think that the system cared what its people thought at any time during the existence of the Soviet Union.
- ImPostingOnHN 1y ago
  > You are operating until a false premise that Palestinians/Hamas are some sort of children and bear no responsibility for anything at all. Where in reality, the war could have been over in 5 minutes if they released the hostages at any time during the past 3 years. It still can be over in 5 minutes if they choose to do that. But no, they will put as many of their own people in harm's way as necessary to get to the world opinion to be what it is. And literally no one, including you, is questioning that. Palestinians and Hamas are 2 different groups of people. Which 1 are you referring to when you say "they"? Only the Hamas can legally be punished as a result of Hamas's actions. Punishing Palestinians because you're mad at Hamas is a war crime.
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FabHK 1y ago
[flagged]
- protocolture 1y ago
  >About 2.5% of the inhabitants of Gaza have been killed in the ongoing war, constituting fewer than 0.5% of Palestinians worldwide. My understanding is that the agencies in Gaza have not only lost their ability to tally the dead, but have not been tracking deaths where a corpse has not been located. Not to mention that this is the tail end of a long process that began with the Nakba. The fact that theres a remnant refugee population that has been removed from their land and isolated to a small stateless fragment, is already in meeting with definitions of genocide. Bombing that remnant into the dust is underlining the issue.
  - FabHK 1y ago
    Sure, it's been going on for a long time. Close to a million Palestinians were expelled (or fled) from Israel after its founding, and close to a million Jews were expelled (or fled) from various Muslim-majority countries around that time. The former is known as the Nakba (as you highlight) and well known. The latter, not so much.
- lazyasciiart 1y ago
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Aunche 1y ago
> Does anyone still need testimonies like these to be convinced that Israel is systematically exterminating the Palestinians using kinetic force and starvation? Before October 7, activists insisted that Gaza’s border restrictions were driven purely by hatred rather than any legitimate security concerns. That view was completely discredited by the attacks on October 7, so forgive me for being skeptical of similarly absolutist claims being made now. To be clear, preventing famine should take far greater priority than intercepting a few more rockets with Iron Dome. The suffering in Gaza is undeniable. But I see Israel’s actions as driven more by indifference or strategic rigidity than by a calculated intent to exterminate. Maybe that distinction doesn't matter to you, since it doesn't change how people are dying needlessly, but how we interpret Israel’s intent shapes how we respond. Backing Israel into a corner tends to make things worse, not better. That’s why the Biden administration’s approach of supporting military aid while applying diplomatic pressure was the only viable path to avoid even greater catastrophe.
- elzbardico 1y ago
  Border restrictions: Blockade. Given the brutal blockade of Gaza, the continuous encroachment of settlers in the occupied territory, the continued refusal of a two-state solution, what exactly Israel expects to happen? It is not like the Palestinians have F-35s and Abrahams tanks paid by the US in order to wage a proper war against Israel. Israel, given its own history (google for Irgun, Stern Gang, Lehi, Hagannah, etc) should be able to predict the end result of its actions.
  - Aunche 1y ago
    > Given the brutal blockade of Gaza, the continuous encroachment of settlers in the occupied territory, the continued refusal of a two-state solution, what exactly Israel expects to happen? Are you implying that this "blockade" was unnecessary for security purposes? You're painting this as inevitable due to the circumstances, yet of the two regions, the one given more autonomy and decolonized was the one that attacked.
solidsnack9000 1y ago
One reason to doubt that Israel is systematically exterminating the Gazan population is simply that the population is not decreasing or projected to decrease, which is to say, the excess deaths due to the conflict are not all that great relative to the natural rate of increase of the population. Israel should be as aware of the statistics as anyone, especially when undertaking the systematic extermination of a population. If Israel actually intended this, don't you think it would go much faster, with the tremendous amount of ordnance that has been expended and the overwhelming military force Israel has in place? It just doesn't add up.
- t-3 1y ago
  Who is it that you expect to be doing the counting? I've seen estimates of anywhere from 50k-500k dead, but nobody is sure because outsiders aren't being allowed to enter and the people inside have enough trouble staying alive and little time to be doing headcounts and statistics. Israel hasn't been releasing any numbers at all from what I can tell.
somedude895 1y ago
> Israel is systematically exterminating the Palestinians This would be the dumbest way to do this. It would take centuries to exterminate them at this rate. The genocide narrative makes no sense to any person with a brain.
- TFYS 1y ago
  I don't think the definition of genocide includes a time frame during which the whole group must be killed.
- BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
  Why’s it gotta be quick? Israel has them contained and holds every card. Its government could speed it up tomorrow if they wanted to, but that might look bad enough to lose them the support of the US and much of their population. Why hurry?
- elzbardico 1y ago
  Actually, they are going pretty fast. Proportionally, it is going even a bit faster than the Darfur genocide. Israel would need to use their nukes to be more efficient. But this would severely damage the real estate potential of the strip.
- avoutos 1y ago
  And the war would have to carry on centuries to maintain the current rate. If there is a subtle insidious plot to erode the population of Gaza over time, it is a huge flop. The first mistake would be Israel's unilateral withdraw from Gaza in 2005, ethnically cleansing its own citizens from the region to make way for the Palestinians. The population of Gaza has increased by roughly a million since then, which I must say isn't great for the Zionist plot.
DaveExeter 1y ago
Israeli is implementing a final solution to the Palestinian problem, and that solution is...genocide! Some might argue it's not genocide but simply mass-murder. That's an awful lot of mass-murdering going on. The Bret Stephens hasbara is that it's not a genocide because of how slow the killing is. Obviously the IDF could dig in machine guns in hidden trenches, lure starving Palestinians with the bait of food, and gun down thousands at once. The problem with that approach is that such a strategy would risk rousing the conscience of the world. It's much safer to murder a few hundred a day and have slow starvation take thousands. While pictures of starving Palestinian children are evocative of the Holocaust, or at least of the end of the Holocaust when cameras were allowed into liberated concentration camps, the world seems not to have a problem with Holocaust 2.0
YeGoblynQueenne 1y ago
Yeah, sorry but that's wishful thinking. As long as the people in the West have a relatively high quality of life and political stability -relative to everyone else, that is- they will not shake the foundation of their national institutions. That is even more so the case when they see how everyone else fares, who doesn't live in the West. In a sense, seeing what happens to Palestinians, Sudanese, Somalis, Syrians, Afghans, Lebanese, Pakistanis, etc etc, is a great motivator for the citizen of the EU, USA, and friends. If you look, you'll notice that the major political flare point in the West these days is ... immigration. Who cares what happens outside our borders? Our main preoccupation is protecting our borders. Because we are convinced everything outside them sucks.
sneak 1y ago
> Israel is systematically exterminating the Palestinians using kinetic force and starvation? If this were the goal, they could do it in hours. Why is the body count so low given the duration of the war? This isn’t rhetoric. It might be they want plausible deniability. It seems to me however that everyone knows they aren’t really fooling anyone with their narrative, which really draws into focus: why aren’t they killing tens of thousands of Palestinians every day? They have the means, motive, and opportunity. They have the technology and are in position to do so. They have not. We know what systematic genocide looks like. This is mass murder, sure, but if they wanted to commit genocide, it would be done and over with by now. Instead, they have killed less than 5% of the population of Gaza. Why is that?
- buyucu 1y ago
  Israel kills as many Palesitinians as it thinks it can get away with. They have the means the kill faster, but they are mindful of the international backlash.
msohailshah 1y ago
Now you know all the antisemitism accusations were in bad faith, just to drown out any coverage of war crimes and suppress any opposition to the streamed genocide.

leosanchez 1y ago

> I, for one, am thankful this hasn't been taken down like any article remotely critical of Israel. Wait for few more hours to be thankful.

churchill 1y ago
Was flagged and restored just now, haha. Edit: And this comment is flagged to hell, as well, haha. I guess saying that the systematic murder of civilians is bad is now a controversial opinion, lmao.
- johnisgood 1y ago
  People form beliefs and make judgments based on things they do not know, it is nothing surprising[1]. I would recommend reading the history of Israel (vs. Palestine, especially). Yeah, Hamzah has been making lots of videos of IDF soldiers (and other Israelites) saying that they want all Palestinian children to die, and that their lives are worth more than Palestinians' lives. I am not surprised by any of this, the media is probably controlled. They hear what the Government wants them to hear, which is this: they are the good guys. [1] I do not claim to know everything either, which should be very obvious, but I try to postpone forming a judgment.
  - churchill 1y ago
    I feel it's not going to last longer. With the advent of modern, mass media, young people across the West can see for themselves and they're taking a side. More specifically, they don't want their governments funding genocide with their taxes. This cannot be made to go away, which is why Zionist activists and their lackeys are pulling out all the stops: no one expected the outburst of disgust at Israel's actions would get this severe, so they're in nonstop damage control mode.
    - johnisgood 1y ago
      I only know the history, I do not know what exactly is happening today. It is still sickening (in my humble opinion) that many people straight out tell him that they want children to die, but only Palestinian children.
      - speakfreely 1y ago
        That's why I say the war is already over. Hamas won. The Israeli public is too enraged by Oct 7 and it can't pursue a long term goal because it has to feed the need for vengeance. The only group that truly benefits from continued conflict is Hamas, everyone else is a victim of circumstance.
        1y ago

selimthegrim 1y ago

It was Yeltsin, not Gorbachev

elihu 1y ago

I think the thing that should have been a clear unambiguous sign (if nothing up to then were convincing enough) that Israel's intentions weren't just to defeat Hamas but cause severe harm to the civilian population of Gaza was when they blocked all food and aid into Gaza for months. I mean, why would you do that unless you want people to die? Even the stated explanation that they wanted to deprive Hamas of the ability to fundraise by stealing food and selling it back didn't make sense. Food shortages would cause the market value of hoarded food to rise, thus helping Hamas. Flooding the region with food would collapse the prices and deprive them of a revenue stream.

Cyph0n 1y ago
The intention was clearly communicated from day 1. But Western governments willingly decided to provide diplomatic cover & military support - some to this very day - with the backing of the Western media apparatus.
- ainiriand 1y ago
  Not the spanish government at least, now we are horrible aparently.
  - Cyph0n 1y ago
    Yes, Spain, Ireland, and Belgium were/are outliers. I am generalizing because the vast majority are complicit. It is also much simpler to do this than qualify each and every statement by enumerating the list of good or bad countries :)
    - BergAndCo 1y ago
      [dead]
insane_dreamer 1y ago
"destroy Hamas" has become "kill everyone with Hamas sympathies" -- but you can be sure that every boy who can carry a gun, who has seen family members die, who is living the destruction and desolation, is itching for a chance to join the next version of Hamas (which may not be Hamas itself, but something else built on the same shouldering fires that burn when people are oppressed, bombed, and starved, repeatedly for generations. They're not destroying Hamas -- they're just creating a new one (if anyone survives).

pfannkuchen 1y ago

Nit: Congo free state and Scramble for Africa were pretty different as I believe most Europeans didn’t realize and/or accept that sub Saharan Africans are humans at that point. They had an extremely different exposure to them (level and type) than we have today, and I don’t think we today can say whether we would have reacted differently to the Africans immediately post mass scale contact. Do people in the west today consciously consider Palestinians to be subhuman? I don’t think so? So this today is like much much worse actually IMO from a moral defensibility standpoint. This is orthogonal to your point, I agree with your point.

runarberg 1y ago
[flagged]
churchill 1y ago
I think your point has some merits, but ultimately, intent doesn't matter: action does. if the West keeps funding Israel's genocide in Gaza, then yes, it's because they believe the Palestinians are sub-human. Haven't you seen the outpouring of support for Ukraine since they were invaded? Yet, Western nations are funding (not overlooking, but actively paying for) something worse - a continuous, ongoing genocide - and it's supposed to be an oversight?
- pfannkuchen 1y ago
  I disagree that intent does not matter when judging the morality of an action. I believe this is the supermajority view in the west. Which doesn’t make it right, of course, I just assumed we all thought that and if you don’t I’m not going to argue with you about it.

tim333 1y ago

I mostly agree except the "no political system can survive disillusion" bit. In most of the examples you give the political system survived.

churchill 1y ago
For now. Eventually, the injuries your system takes over time grinds your gears to a halt. And I can provide numerous examples: Portugal's colonial holdings (Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique) were unwound after the carnation revolution because the overseas wars were consuming 50% of the national budget while the Estado Novo at home was a corrupt, violent, authoritarian, corporatist state. The Brits could not square a global empire while their countrymen were rationing food, etc. at home. That had to go as well. Despite all the Cold War propaganda spread since the fall of the USSR, in 1991, the Soviet Union was still a first-rate military power, with 35k to 40k nuclear warheads and >150 divisions, totaling 3.4M troops. It could easily suppress any of those pro-democracy protests, and all the CIA's burrowing in the Sovbloc would come to nought. But there was no longer anything worth fighting for. Even people within the Party infrastructure had come to admit that they'd been living for a lie, lying for a lie, killing for a lie-all that for a lie! The Qing dynasty faced massive internal revolts (Taiping, Boxer), external invasions (Opium Wars), and technological stagnation. The empire resisted modernization too long, then tried too little, too late. Overwhelmed by foreign powers and internal revolution (1911), it died because it could no longer defend the illusion of legitimacy. In France's Ancien Regime, nobles were exempt from taxes while peasants starved; France had a bloated, corrupt court and massive debt (partly from helping America fight the British!), yet refused reforms. Nazi Germany claimed to be defending “Western civilization” while practicing industrial genocide and totalitarian control over - wait for it - Europeans! One contradiction doesn't bring down a political system, but it cascades, because a hypocritical system dives deeper into hypocrisy until it eventually collapses.
- h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 1y ago
  I get that things are bad. But how do we fix it?
- Der_Einzige 1y ago

LorenPechtel 1y ago

[flagged]

geysersam 1y ago

> And this has eliminated the whole Western bullshit about human rights maximalism That's the truth. "Never again". Clearly our politicians do not believe in human rights or international law. What do they believe in? Democracy? I doubt it. Money? Western exceptionalism? More likely. Where do we go from here? Why would anyone ever take any moral argument from a western nation seriously ever again?

oezi 1y ago
What we have learned again is that actions speak louder than words and that without action you can't achieve anything. Western nations aren't doing anything nor are middle eastern governments, nor asian governments. My takeaway is that the UN needs to be replaced with something without the 5 veto powers. Both Gaza now and Syria could have been prevented with peacekeeping missions if it weren't for the US and Russia and their vetos.
- geysersam 1y ago
  > Western nations aren't doing anything nor are middle eastern governments, nor asian governments. On the other hand, middle Eastern nations and Asian nations are typically protesting loudly, they don't protect Israel in the UN, they recognize the Palestinian state, they don't sell weapons to Israel.
  - achierius 1y ago
    This is just untrue. Go look at what major Arab countries are doing right now, or look at how China is selling weapons to Israel. It's not on the same level as Western support, but it's still there.
    - geysersam 1y ago
      What's untrue? Most Asian and ME countries recognize Palestine, most European/Western countries don't: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_Palestine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of... About Chinese weapons exports it seems we have different sources. From what I can tell Israels arms imports are dominated by US and Germany, with scattered contributions from other European countries. Chinas arms imports to Israel are miniscule by comparison. On the other hand I'm sure China provides a lot of components to Israels military industry, but that's a different question.

bamboozled 1y ago

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zahlman 1y ago

> I, for one, am thankful this hasn't been taken down like any article remotely critical of Israel. ????? I am generally not at all invested in this conflict and I cede that I have very little information about what is going on, and it's been like that for me for decades. But the information that is available to me, in the current context, from looking at HN, is: pro-Palestine and anti-Israeli sentiments are the norm in comment sections here; comments resisting this viewpoint are routinely downvoted and flagged; news stories about the conflict that make it to the HN front page (including this one) overwhelmingly are taking Palestine's side; and on occasions where I've tried to flag submissions that I felt were grossly uncharitable (making claims beyond what their evidence supports, and/or using inflammatory language) they have not been taken down (and I've only seen anti-Israel examples of such to flag). At any rate, your comment is a polemic that appears not to even consider reasons why other people might see the issue differently, and implicitly shames people for not coming to a conclusion you consider obvious. That is not up to the standard I understood HN political discussion to expect. (And since I have showdead on, I can see the replies to you that were flagged and killed. They are really not any worse from what I can tell, but they apparently have the wrong political polarity — the one you claim is endorsed, directly counter to the evidence available to me.) P.S. Whoever downvoted and flagged this, please explain your reasoning. I am happy to consider your point of view.

ivape 1y ago
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- zahlman 1y ago
  I don't know whether you are being sincere or sarcastic, but either way this is not a productive mode of discourse. If sincere: > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. If sarcastic: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
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kevinventullo 1y ago

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starik36 1y ago

> Anyone still need testimonies like these to be convinced that Israel You are operating until a false premise that Palestinians/Hamas are some sort of children and bear no responsibility for anything at all. Where in reality, the war could have been over in 5 minutes if they released the hostages at any time during the past 3 years. It still can be over in 5 minutes if they choose to do that. But no, they will put as many of their own people in harm's way as necessary to get to the world opinion to be what it is. And literally no one, including you, is questioning that. But please, do tell me that hostages have nothing to do with anything or Netanyahu bad or whatever else you can cook up. > while Soviet citizens starved As someone who grew up in the USSR, I can assure you - no one was starving. > what killed the Soviet Union was disillusion. People at all levels realized that a system that couldn't provide its people the basics didn't deserve to exist. That is such a simplistic view of what happened. I don't think that the system cared what its people thought at any time during the existence of the Soviet Union.

ImPostingOnHN 1y ago
> You are operating until a false premise that Palestinians/Hamas are some sort of children and bear no responsibility for anything at all. Where in reality, the war could have been over in 5 minutes if they released the hostages at any time during the past 3 years. It still can be over in 5 minutes if they choose to do that. But no, they will put as many of their own people in harm's way as necessary to get to the world opinion to be what it is. And literally no one, including you, is questioning that. Palestinians and Hamas are 2 different groups of people. Which 1 are you referring to when you say "they"? Only the Hamas can legally be punished as a result of Hamas's actions. Punishing Palestinians because you're mad at Hamas is a war crime.
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FabHK 1y ago

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protocolture 1y ago
>About 2.5% of the inhabitants of Gaza have been killed in the ongoing war, constituting fewer than 0.5% of Palestinians worldwide. My understanding is that the agencies in Gaza have not only lost their ability to tally the dead, but have not been tracking deaths where a corpse has not been located. Not to mention that this is the tail end of a long process that began with the Nakba. The fact that theres a remnant refugee population that has been removed from their land and isolated to a small stateless fragment, is already in meeting with definitions of genocide. Bombing that remnant into the dust is underlining the issue.
- FabHK 1y ago
  Sure, it's been going on for a long time. Close to a million Palestinians were expelled (or fled) from Israel after its founding, and close to a million Jews were expelled (or fled) from various Muslim-majority countries around that time. The former is known as the Nakba (as you highlight) and well known. The latter, not so much.
lazyasciiart 1y ago
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Aunche 1y ago

> Does anyone still need testimonies like these to be convinced that Israel is systematically exterminating the Palestinians using kinetic force and starvation? Before October 7, activists insisted that Gaza’s border restrictions were driven purely by hatred rather than any legitimate security concerns. That view was completely discredited by the attacks on October 7, so forgive me for being skeptical of similarly absolutist claims being made now. To be clear, preventing famine should take far greater priority than intercepting a few more rockets with Iron Dome. The suffering in Gaza is undeniable. But I see Israel’s actions as driven more by indifference or strategic rigidity than by a calculated intent to exterminate. Maybe that distinction doesn't matter to you, since it doesn't change how people are dying needlessly, but how we interpret Israel’s intent shapes how we respond. Backing Israel into a corner tends to make things worse, not better. That’s why the Biden administration’s approach of supporting military aid while applying diplomatic pressure was the only viable path to avoid even greater catastrophe.

elzbardico 1y ago
Border restrictions: Blockade. Given the brutal blockade of Gaza, the continuous encroachment of settlers in the occupied territory, the continued refusal of a two-state solution, what exactly Israel expects to happen? It is not like the Palestinians have F-35s and Abrahams tanks paid by the US in order to wage a proper war against Israel. Israel, given its own history (google for Irgun, Stern Gang, Lehi, Hagannah, etc) should be able to predict the end result of its actions.
- Aunche 1y ago
  > Given the brutal blockade of Gaza, the continuous encroachment of settlers in the occupied territory, the continued refusal of a two-state solution, what exactly Israel expects to happen? Are you implying that this "blockade" was unnecessary for security purposes? You're painting this as inevitable due to the circumstances, yet of the two regions, the one given more autonomy and decolonized was the one that attacked.

solidsnack9000 1y ago

One reason to doubt that Israel is systematically exterminating the Gazan population is simply that the population is not decreasing or projected to decrease, which is to say, the excess deaths due to the conflict are not all that great relative to the natural rate of increase of the population. Israel should be as aware of the statistics as anyone, especially when undertaking the systematic extermination of a population. If Israel actually intended this, don't you think it would go much faster, with the tremendous amount of ordnance that has been expended and the overwhelming military force Israel has in place? It just doesn't add up.

t-3 1y ago
Who is it that you expect to be doing the counting? I've seen estimates of anywhere from 50k-500k dead, but nobody is sure because outsiders aren't being allowed to enter and the people inside have enough trouble staying alive and little time to be doing headcounts and statistics. Israel hasn't been releasing any numbers at all from what I can tell.

somedude895 1y ago

> Israel is systematically exterminating the Palestinians This would be the dumbest way to do this. It would take centuries to exterminate them at this rate. The genocide narrative makes no sense to any person with a brain.

TFYS 1y ago
I don't think the definition of genocide includes a time frame during which the whole group must be killed.
BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
Why’s it gotta be quick? Israel has them contained and holds every card. Its government could speed it up tomorrow if they wanted to, but that might look bad enough to lose them the support of the US and much of their population. Why hurry?
elzbardico 1y ago
Actually, they are going pretty fast. Proportionally, it is going even a bit faster than the Darfur genocide. Israel would need to use their nukes to be more efficient. But this would severely damage the real estate potential of the strip.
avoutos 1y ago
And the war would have to carry on centuries to maintain the current rate. If there is a subtle insidious plot to erode the population of Gaza over time, it is a huge flop. The first mistake would be Israel's unilateral withdraw from Gaza in 2005, ethnically cleansing its own citizens from the region to make way for the Palestinians. The population of Gaza has increased by roughly a million since then, which I must say isn't great for the Zionist plot.

DaveExeter 1y ago

Israeli is implementing a final solution to the Palestinian problem, and that solution is...genocide! Some might argue it's not genocide but simply mass-murder. That's an awful lot of mass-murdering going on. The Bret Stephens hasbara is that it's not a genocide because of how slow the killing is. Obviously the IDF could dig in machine guns in hidden trenches, lure starving Palestinians with the bait of food, and gun down thousands at once. The problem with that approach is that such a strategy would risk rousing the conscience of the world. It's much safer to murder a few hundred a day and have slow starvation take thousands. While pictures of starving Palestinian children are evocative of the Holocaust, or at least of the end of the Holocaust when cameras were allowed into liberated concentration camps, the world seems not to have a problem with Holocaust 2.0

YeGoblynQueenne 1y ago

Yeah, sorry but that's wishful thinking. As long as the people in the West have a relatively high quality of life and political stability -relative to everyone else, that is- they will not shake the foundation of their national institutions. That is even more so the case when they see how everyone else fares, who doesn't live in the West. In a sense, seeing what happens to Palestinians, Sudanese, Somalis, Syrians, Afghans, Lebanese, Pakistanis, etc etc, is a great motivator for the citizen of the EU, USA, and friends. If you look, you'll notice that the major political flare point in the West these days is ... immigration. Who cares what happens outside our borders? Our main preoccupation is protecting our borders. Because we are convinced everything outside them sucks.

sneak 1y ago

> Israel is systematically exterminating the Palestinians using kinetic force and starvation? If this were the goal, they could do it in hours. Why is the body count so low given the duration of the war? This isn’t rhetoric. It might be they want plausible deniability. It seems to me however that everyone knows they aren’t really fooling anyone with their narrative, which really draws into focus: why aren’t they killing tens of thousands of Palestinians every day? They have the means, motive, and opportunity. They have the technology and are in position to do so. They have not. We know what systematic genocide looks like. This is mass murder, sure, but if they wanted to commit genocide, it would be done and over with by now. Instead, they have killed less than 5% of the population of Gaza. Why is that?

buyucu 1y ago
Israel kills as many Palesitinians as it thinks it can get away with. They have the means the kill faster, but they are mindful of the international backlash.

msohailshah 1y ago

Now you know all the antisemitism accusations were in bad faith, just to drown out any coverage of war crimes and suppress any opposition to the streamed genocide.