Aggregates

Evidence: High: 10 Medium: 8 Low: 4 No Data: 9

Theme Radar

dang 2023-12-12 18:57 UTC link

All: if you're going to comment in this thread, please do not do so in the spirit of battle. The latter is off topic here, and the last thread HN had about this did not do well enough at keeping to the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Instead, ask first whether you can find a place of compassion in yourself before commenting. If you can't, that's understandable, but then please don't post. By compassion I mean something more spacious than angry identification.

I'm not saying that this is the purpose of HN (we're not aiming quite that high) but I do think it's the only way to touch a topic like this without destroying that purpose, which is thoughtful, curious conversation. It may be nearly impossible to relate to such a topic from such a place, but nearly != entirely, and it's part of HN's mandate to try. Consider this an experiment, or perhaps an advanced exercise, in community.

ameminator 2023-12-12 19:04 UTC link

I honestly don't think this subject should be on here. I don't think it's possible for a coherent or respectful or even useful conversation to happen here. I haven't seen any conversation about this topic that hadn't gone to hell.

banku_brougham 2023-12-12 19:13 UTC link

Im glad to see the community engage with this -- there couldnt be a more significant current event happening right now and its jarring that it would be so silent.

Edit: And why is it relevant here? At a minimum coworkers are suffering silently through it. The emotional damage just for internet bystanders is staggering.

blaufast 2023-12-12 19:19 UTC link

I think HN readers have a strong desire to speak the inconvenient or untouchable topics. I think this is a healthy impulse.

This topic is hard because so many commenters are triggered by it, for lack of a better word.

Could AI help here? What if a comment was given an automatic 'emotional temperature' score? We might be able to address the fact that a lot of the comments will be basically pure emotion, and we can discuss the emotions instead of being distracted by the content.

cassepipe 2023-12-12 19:42 UTC link

Those are the most serious allegations:

"The men and teenage boys were taken to a warehouse where they sat on a bare floor covered in scattered grains of rice. There they were beaten, interrogated and verbally abused. There was no sleep, and the grains of rice cut their skin as they sat there, undressed."

A man claims: "Some people didn’t return from the torture sessions. We would hear their screams and then nothing.”

From what I read, it seems typical of counterinsurgency war. A testimony is no proof but humiliation and torture is commonplace is counterinsurgency wars, whether systematic or an initiative of lower ranking soldiers operating on the ground, so it's not an extraordinary statement. And torture can obviously lead to death.

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

Now I am going to argue something polemic and I am arguing it in the spirit of discussion. I'd love to read well argued counter-arguments :

However supportive of Israel one may be and how repulsed one should be by Hamas, I'd say that we should not fool ourselves in that the military operation in Gaza is Israel defending itself ("Israel's right to defend itself" is now a commonplace phrase) rather than avenging itself. You may think it is justified in doing so but it still is payback imho.

In my country's law, individual self-defense is defined as such :

1. It has to happen in the same time as the agression

2. Its only purpose is to defend against the agression

3. The defense has to be proportionate

It seems that so 1. is not met since once all the militants having trespassed having been killed, Israel was no more defending itself. and it's hard to believe that the civilian collateral damage is just defending either. I'd say the third criteria is met in so far as Hamas has rockets and automatic weapons.

Is that an unreasonable take ?

hiddencost 2023-12-12 19:49 UTC link

My political awareness was forged by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the American response.

The core lesson: the point of a terrorist attack is to trigger an over reaction. America wildly over reacted and became fundamentally hostile to Arab and Muslim people.

This reaction led to some of the most successful recruiting of radicals in generations.

Israel's response to this crisis seems to have failed to learn from that mistake.

throwaway48r7r 2023-12-12 20:44 UTC link

It would be nice if people in the region at least pretended to be working towards peaceful solutions.

xyzelement 2023-12-12 20:59 UTC link

I have mixed feelings about this topic appearing on HN as I feel like folks are entrenched one way or the other and information isn't going to sway anyone. If this were a discussion we want to have here, this feels like a very bad article as by it's nature it's a one-sided subjective narrative with very little light to shed on the depth of the conflict. An interesting differentiator left unsaid in this article is that Israel released these guys upon investigation which by wartime standards is good behavior (in contrast to hostages kidnapped and held by Hamas still)

A thing that makes this conflict difficult to talk about is that the prevalence of coverage makes so many people take sides, while the depth of their understanding is basically just hearing the repetition of a word and applying the emotion of that word to the conflict. For example people hear "genocide in Gaza" and their opinion is simple: genocide is bad. It takes a little digging that most people don't bother to realize the population of Gaza has continued to grow exponentially [1] which is basically the opposite of genocide.

Sometimes reading about this conflict feels like seeing someone outraged at an oncologist because of what the radiation treatment is doing to a patient. Yes its bad, yes it's hurting them, but you can't really make sense of that unless you understand cancer and the greater danger that necessitates this kind of response.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/gaza-populati...

davesque 2023-12-12 22:11 UTC link

It's really disappointing to see so many exceptions to the no politics rule right when we need that rule the most. There really isn't anything to be gained by discussing stories like this. We all know that atrocities are taking place. It's a war zone.

A̶l̶s̶o̶,̶ ̶i̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶̶g̶l̶a̶r̶i̶n̶g̶l̶y̶̶ ̶b̶a̶d̶ ̶l̶o̶o̶k̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶t̶i̶c̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶e̶n̶t̶l̶y̶ ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶o̶w̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶c̶i̶r̶c̶u̶m̶v̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶p̶o̶l̶i̶t̶i̶c̶s̶ ̶r̶u̶l̶e̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶p̶p̶e̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶i̶a̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶P̶G̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶a̶p̶p̶e̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶s̶s̶u̶e̶.̶

Update: Actually, I went back and took a closer look at the couple examples I thought supported my argument that PG had some kind of bias on the issue. On second glance, I don't feel like I can honestly claim that he does. Perhaps he does, but I don't have any evidence on hand to support it. I don't want to be adding to the confusion here so I'm going to have to walk back that claim. However, I still don't feel like this topic really belongs on HN. It's a tragedy all around and very important on the world stage. But it seems like there are too many groups that have an interest in steering the conversation one way or another for reasons that have nothing to do with the rights of the victims.

blaufast 2023-12-12 22:21 UTC link

I suspect a very large number of people are too smart to speak up, but also resentful of the forces that work to prevent actual nuanced dialogue. That's certainly the sentiment in my bubble.

As somebody who isn't fond of the idea of an ethnostate and sees atrocities coming from all of the actors here, I don't feel comfortable speaking up due to the lack of nuance in public forums.

xchip 2023-12-12 22:37 UTC link

Glad to see so many civil and enriching conversations, you are an example to the internet on how to have respectful and productive discussions on controversial topics.

Thanks.

theonething 2023-12-12 22:52 UTC link

Voices from the other side:

https://www.october7.org/

xg15 2023-12-12 22:57 UTC link

I don't want to start another top-level thread on this topic, as it is contentious enough already - but just as an aside, the UN General Assembly just passed a (symbolic) resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire with 153 to 10, an even stronger majority than the last resolution.

Of course UN votes are always subject to all kinds of political considerations and power dynamics and the saying "nations have no friends, only interests" still applies, but when such a wide range of countries from completely different geopolitical alignments vote for this (e.g. pro-palestinian but strongly anti-Hamas Egypt together with hosts of Hamas Turkey, Qatar and Iran, together with pro-Israel western countries such as France and Switzerland), this does give a strong hint how the world opinion on the matter seems to be.

News bulletin: https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144717

Votes by nation: https://twitter.com/UN_News_Centre/status/173468680169949197...

aluminum96 2023-12-13 00:11 UTC link

Al Jazeera is an exceptionally disreputable source for coverage on this particular issue. It's not just their primary source of funding -- the Qatari state -- but also their abhorrent track record of running stories with no factual basis (such as in the wake of the Al-Ahli incident).

I can't point to anything specifically incorrect about this reporting. But you have to take a lot of primary-source-based reporting on faith, and why would I trust a source that has such a non-neutral track record?

We'd all be better served by sticking to sources that don't have obvious conflicts of interest.

Edit: I want to be clear that I don't have any specific evidence that the article contains falsehoods, and I'm not excusing any of the conduct alleged in the article. I just think Al Jazeera is a terrible way to start a constructive discussion, given its reputation.

rq1 2023-12-13 00:45 UTC link

One should read (again?) Hannah Arendt and the mechanics of dehumanisation and propaganda in genocides.

Beyond the dehumanisation of the victims by the perpetrators, one should not dehumanise the latter in response. There were no monsters.

She was recalling that, it was ordinary men killing ordinary men, and ordinary men being killed by ordinary men.

And one of these ordinary men could have been your neighbour, or yourself.

kossTKR 2023-12-13 01:00 UTC link

Let me know if i’m reading the sources at the bottom wrong.

Israel supported Hamas as a tactic to destroy their neighbours without restraint as classical war strategy called divide and conquer as most history or war nerds know it.

It's unsurprising classical geopolitics as known from academia 25 years ago before 9/11.

This is an important aspect when people support the measures, the 6000+ bombed kids or that palestinians just voted for them with other options.

In reality the Hamas support, blockades, and forced poverty in Gaza were part of a military plan to create desperation, hellish conditions and radicalisation from constant oppression to eventually weaken or annex depending on sources.

This has been known for long internally in the Israeli press, even mentioned in Wall Street Journal and other mainstream media in the past then called "conspiracy", before again surfacing today with the NYT articles.

Examples below with lots of sources:

The New York Times (today): https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...

Wall Street Journal (2008/2023): https://web.archive.org/web/20090926212507/http:/online.wsj.... https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-gaza-humanitaria...

The Intercept (2018): https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-c...

Haaretz (2023): https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-20/ty-article-op...

jonathanstrange 2023-12-13 09:26 UTC link

Flagging this submission should lead to its removal. I'm very disappointed that HN allows political topics now. It's well-known that discussion of one-sided articles like this one doesn't lead to good discussions. It's clearly political, and, even worse, based on a one-sided submission pointing to Al Jazeera, which is driven by ideology and known for publishing way more radical articles in Arabic than in English. The best thing is to remove the whole submission.

In the absence of removing the thread, I feel morally obliged to represent the other side. According to a recent survey in the West Bank around 80% of all Palestinians in the West Bank support the October 7 attacks.[1] This may explain why the IDF is not always friendly towards Gaza prisoners and by default assumes they're Hamas members or sympathizers.

[1] https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public%20...

arp242 2023-12-13 12:38 UTC link

Both Jews and Palestinian have legitimate grievances, going back over a hundred years, and they are so numerous that it seems pointless to enumerate them here. And these grievances have consistently been used by both sides to trivialize of deny the grievances of the other side. Its is the ultimate Oppression Olympics.

The problems are also much deeper than just "Netanyahu and Hamas". Not only does Netanyahu keep getting re-elected, these ultra hard-right Religious Zionist people have also gained quite a lot of ground, and these people are utterly bonkers, having expressed views that are nothing short of genocidal (even before the current war). And at the same time Hamas also has fairly wide-spread support among the people of Gaza, and Hamas has also expressed views that are nothing short of genocidal.

In short, it's a cultural problem, not a "Netanyahu and Hamas"-problem. Conflicts like this ends when people get tired of the violence and stop caring about who did what to who, and just want it to stop. This is why the Good Friday Accords in Northern Ireland have held, in spite of some opposition, as well as lingering grievances and even outright hatred, from both sides.

I'm not seeing this willingness here. The last time this was really present was the 90s, a hopeful period in general, and the Oslo accords between Rabin and Arafat seemed to be the start of the end of the conflict. It was not to be, and things didn't end well for either men: one got murdered by one of his own religious nutjobs and the other eventually got side-tracked by his own religious nutjobs, and things have only gotten worse since then.

I'm not hopeful for a resolution any time soon. Solutions for fundamental problems like "Gaza has been an open air prison for 15 years and we need to do something with these people" are barely being asked, and even the question itself is met with hostility by some.

Maybe someone still has a savegame from a few decades ago and we can try again? That seems the most plausible solution.

YeGoblynQueenne 2023-12-13 17:41 UTC link

If we're gonna have a curious conversation I must say that I don't understand the distinction between civlians and non-civilians (combatants?).

Isn't the whole point of war to kill the enemy's civilians and destroy their infrastructure, so that their nation can't support a standing army to defend whatever natural resources the attacker wants in the first place?

I wonder if there is any example from history, modern and not, where an invading army simply disabled the inveded nation's standing army and then just ... turned around left.

Or if there is any example where a nation was occupied and the civilian population did _not_ take arms, meaning that at least some of the civilians turned into combatants.

In the end, I don't get the logic of giving different status to civilians and combatants, in war. If it's illegal to kill enemy civilians, then it should be illegal to kill enemy combatants, too. After all, why should we value the combatants' lives less?

Of course, making it illegal to kill enemy combatants would effectively make war illegal. Well, yes. I can't see how war can still be legal in the current stage of our civilisation. I don't understand how we can still accept that some of us will kill others, destroy their homes and take their stuff. I don't understand how that can be seen as ethical, let alone legal.

"Dispense with the war, learn from the past" - Sodom, Ausgebombt.

Agraillo 2023-12-13 20:07 UTC link

Mosab Hassan Yousef [1] in his book "Son of Hamas" described what it was like to be in Moscobiyeh [2].

"I have been sitting on this chair for three weeks," he said finally. "They let me sleep for four hours every week." I was stunned. That was the last thing I wanted to hear. Another man told me he had been arrested about the same time I was. I guessed there were about twenty of us in the room. Our talking was suddenly interrupted when someone struck me in the back of the head-hard. Pain shot through my skull, forcing me to blink back tears inside the hood. "No talking!" a guard shouted.

( you can find this text with the search https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=%22I+have+been+sitti... )

After reading the book and about him in other places, I think he is very unlikely source of fakes.

I think that any nation might be in a state when it is semi-aware of such practices. It's when on those allegations many reply not by questioning them, but by telling how bad the other side is. In many cases after cooling off, the nation might start questions about questionable practices. The problem with Israel is that the country in in permanent state of war and I suspect (correct me) that many citizens are really semi-aware of all of this. I just hope that the moment when the questions are asked will come.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosab_Hassan_Yousef

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscovia_Detention_Centre

dang 2023-12-12 19:09 UTC link

Yes, you're of course right—and at the same time, if I ask myself how to follow HN's core principle [1] in relation to this topic, I can't see "don't touch it at all" as right either. It may be an impossible quandary—but it's not in the spirit of this place to take an easy way out; or to put it differently, the easy way out (if one exists) is not in the spirit of this place.

What does "curiosity" mean in a context like this? It certainly needs to be more than just a technical dissection of details. I think it has to do with being open to learning. For that we have to be open to each other. And for that, we have to first find some space for the other within ourselves. Comments that have to do with annihilating the other (including in virtual form, such as by defeating them in internet battle) are therefore off-topic in a thread like this, as I posted above.

(Edit: there's also a kind of curiosity in walking into the impossible to find out what's doable; and also in taking a different approach with each attempt—which is why my pinned comment in this thread is different from last time.)

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

ameminator 2023-12-12 19:19 UTC link

In my experience, the "benefit of the doubt" has been lost in relation to this subject. I no longer believe it is possible to have any thread about this remain civil. It's tragic and a tragic subject, although I dispute the "there couldn't be a more significant current event" - lots of events are equally (or more) significant and relevant. I hope to be proven wrong, but I have doubts.

dang 2023-12-12 19:35 UTC link

Sentiment analysis tools haven't yet proved accurate enough to be useful for HN moderation; traditionally they misclassify too many things because they don't have access to intent. It does seem like LLMs have a chance at doing this better, though, and if anyone wanted to work on that, I'd certainly be interested in what they find.

srackey 2023-12-12 19:36 UTC link

This is a highly politically charged conflict that’s mainly relevant for being a sort of rhetorical proxy conflict (see all the other conflicts going on that receive a fraction of the attention). The point of discussing this topic is to rhetorically battle.

Unlike say, the current civil war in Burma or Sudan, or the Azeri-Armenian war, basically everyone who clicks on this will have an opinion that’s not, well, academic let’s say.

ido 2023-12-12 19:39 UTC link

Thank you, Dang.

As someone on the Israeli left I feel like I'm between a rock and a hard place- I do not condone Netanyahu and his government and am indeed very critical of Israeli governments of the past decades. But on the other side, my 78 year old mother is fleeing to shelter every couple hours as my hometown (not anywhere near the west bank or the Gaza strip) gets hit by rockets, as do my young nieces and nephews, some of which developed psychological issues from the stress. And the stories from what people experienced on the October 7th attacks wrench my gut.

At the same time I'm also sorry for the Palestinians suffering during this war, the vast majority of them civilians. I wish instead of people treating it like a football match where you to support "your side", they could process the nuance of opposing any violence towards civilians and support peace (with the goal of a two state solution with Israel and Palestine co-existing according to the 1967 borders and UN resolution 242).

IMO this would require that both Netanyahu and Hamas do not stay in power.

jerpint 2023-12-12 19:48 UTC link

I found the silence on HN around these events deafening when the Oct 7th attacks first happened (before Israeli retaliation). What is depicted here is tragic. There were many other tragic depictions then too. It seems fair to discuss both tragedies yet here only one instance is used as the “testbed” for HN discussions, from a generally biased source. I’m hoping we will find some nuance in these tough conversations and the ability to empathize as much as possible

NoMoreNicksLeft 2023-12-12 19:55 UTC link

You usually nuke stories that are political. I'm not being critical, it clearly leads to significant improvement over similar sites.

What makes this one different? When I see a headline like this, I usually assume I managed to see it before you did, and if I refresh the page that it will probably disappear. So again, and without accusation, what's different?

Bad things happen all over the world, nearly constantly or at least it seems to a cynic like myself. Some of those bad things seem... if not fixable, then at least not intractable. Those stories don't seem welcome here though. Surely the situation in Israel and Palestine is as intractable as any, and so much more than most.

PoignardAzur 2023-12-12 19:57 UTC link

To misquote Bryan Cantrill, one should not make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Netanyahu.

When a nationalist politician like him is faced with an event like this, long-term international diplomacy considerations barely enter the picture.

The violence just comforted him in his previous worldviews, all he saw was that his nationalistic policies were justified and the only viable answer was to be even more of a nationalist.

I don't see any reality where he didn't have the most violent response he could get away with.

dubcanada 2023-12-12 20:00 UTC link

Israel's response tends to stem from a history of oppression which is where it gets touchy. Jewish have not exactly been treated well for most of the 20th century. Not saying that is a reason to invoke that upon someone else, but it tends to be where most thoughts come from. A sense of if we don't do something we'll lose "our" home.

barrkel 2023-12-12 20:03 UTC link

As I wrote on September 14th, 2001, 3 days after 9/11, "Just don't act rashly".

https://groups.google.com/g/borland.public.delphi.non-techni...

pgeorgi 2023-12-12 20:13 UTC link

> 1. It has to happen in the same time as the agression

There are still rockets flying out of Gaza into Israel.

> 2. Its only purpose is to defend against the agression

The people sending those rockets are in Gaza, so to stop them, Israel has to go there.

> 3. The defense has to be proportionate

That one is regularly the most difficult point of contention in individual self-defense. Hamas essentially goes by this playbook: https://imgur.com/XX6HVrn

So, moving it back to individual self-defense (or coming to somebody's aid, which is covered by approximately the same rules): what should be done about the guy holding a loaded gun at his hostage's head while covering himself in babys?

acdha 2023-12-12 20:14 UTC link

> However supportive of Israel one may be and how repulsed one should be by Hamas, I'd say that we should not fool ourselves in that the military operation in Gaza is Israel defending itself ("Israel's right to defend itself" is now a commonplace phrase) rather than avenging itself.

I’ve felt that as well, and I would add that even if you feel every action is justified I am skeptical that it’s not counterproductive. Each civilian killed by mistake has family, friends, and neighbors who might be inclined to avenge them and it’s hard for me to see how this doesn’t end up giving Hamas more recruits than they’re losing.

I especially liked this FP piece where the author mentioned that the big driver they saw for terrorism was loss of land. That’s forced so much conflict and it seems likely to keep this raging for years to come.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/israels-failed-bombing...

nahumfarchi 2023-12-12 20:26 UTC link

No, I don't think that is a reasonable take at all.

1. This is warfare, not civil law. Hamas, which is the sovereign in Gaza (there has been no Israeli military presence there for years), commited an act of war in which hundreds were killed, raped, and kidnapped. Israel, as a state, has the moral duty to fight back and make sure this never happens again. Otherwise, it breaks the most basic contract between citizen and state ("I give up on violence and in turn you protect me from violence").

2. The aggressors (both in the field and leadership) are still largely out there, and holding kidnapped civilians and soldiers. They don't get a pass just because the "aggression is over" (whatever that means, rockets are still being fired indiscriminately at Israeli cities and towns, which is a war crime by the way...)

3. The responsibility for the safety of the Gazan civilians is that of Hamas since, again, they are the sovereign in Gaza. We shouldn't absolve them of responsibility for picking a fight with a better armed opponent. The defense does not have to be proportionate since that would mean Israel cannot use it's Tanks, warplanes, etc. To imply that Israel should fight with it's hands tied behind its back is ridiculous since war is not fair. There are some international laws intended to reduce the suffering of those that are uninvolved. For example, what does have to be proportionate is the harm caused to civilians when attacking a military target on a case by case basis, to the best of your knowledge (note that, according to international law, the target can in fact be a hospital/school/etc if it's used for military purposes).

Finally, an honest question, what would you do? How would you respond in this situation?

belorn 2023-12-12 20:37 UTC link

They sound eerily similar to the reporting done by Wikileaks over what the Americans did over in Iraq and Afghanistan.

1: Define all males killed or captured as combatants and thus valid military target.

2: Either redefine torture or outsource it.

3: Define every military operation as critical to counter terrorism and part of self defense.

The media response back then was that this is just normal part of the horrors of war, and that this kind of reporting "don't tell us much that we didn't already know in broad outline".

Nathanba 2023-12-12 20:57 UTC link

> the point of a terrorist attack is to trigger an over reaction

I don't agree with that at all, the point of a terrorist attack is to continue a war of attrition. An overreaction is actually the worst thing that can happen to terrorists: It nullifies their attempt to win via small incremental attritional steps. The reason why the US didn't win the war against terror is because it didn't attack the core ideology that causes the terror. For example in their fight against Nazi ideology in post war Germany the US "overreacted" hard and made sure that Germany was forced to make the nazi ideology wholly illegal and every depiction of a nazi symbol in public illegal.

barryrandall 2023-12-12 21:04 UTC link

It shouldn't be jarring or even surprising that people won't talk about this specific subject, given what frequently happens to people who talk about this specific subject.

tmnvix 2023-12-12 21:34 UTC link

I appreciate the willingness of HN to allow discussion on this topic.

Despite the inevitable low-quality or even overly-biased comments, I find the comments from both sides of the discussion to be generally informative and thoughtful. Certainly more-so than in any other online context that I'm aware of. I come here to learn and reading opinions that I haven't considered before is essentially how that works (especially when those opinions are well founded and backed up with sources).

In short, I find HN to be a relatively knowledgeable and thoughtful community and I appreciate the opportunity to hear this community's thoughts on what is a very important and complex topic.

amluto 2023-12-12 21:38 UTC link

I don’t think your take is entirely unreasonable, but I do think you’ve missed a critical detail: Hamas continues to attack Israel. So Israel’s military operation is contemporaneous with a threat, and does at least serve some degree of self-defense purpose.

As I understand it (and wow, the press coverage is incomplete in so many ways), Hamas has a very large number of, approximately, these things:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket

And they fire them, on an ongoing basis, from civilian sites, at Israel. And Israel could, arguably, feel that it defending itself, contemporaneously, from ongoing attacks, thus satisfying #1 and #2. And, while the defense might not be proportionate per se, it’s not that easy to see how, from a purely tactical perspective, Israel is supposed to defend itself more proportionately. Certainly firing an equal number of rockets back at random civilian sites would make no sense. Although Israel could probably find a way for their soldiers to treat people in a much less dehumanizing way.

(And I think this situation is horrible. And I suspect it’s intentional on Hamas’s part — see my other comment.)

arminiusreturns 2023-12-12 21:38 UTC link

My political awareness was forged by participating in the Iraq war on the US side after falling for the massive propaganda before. I've literally never been the same person since, and have spent most of my waking free hours in between the jobs I can barely hold down for my PTSD trying to understand the details behind the global geopolitical situation.

The truth is this is likely just a continuation of the same playbook, and until one understands the true reasons behind the GWOT one will not be able to understand why it seems those "mistakes" haven't been learned from. When I started asking Cui Bono about Iraq (I did not participate in Afghanistan) and the various real results of the war I keep returning to Israel. For example, I know a person who was in the Green Zone when an Iraqi general came and said "I have 40k military men about to have no job, what do you want to do with them, please hire them." and the top-down directive that every boot-on-the-ground with half a brain knew would result in majorly increased chaos was to tell them to f-off! My conclusion after tons of reading is that balkanization was part of the intention as part of prepping for Oded Yinon. (I won't even start on the various secret societies (ancient mystery religions) obsession with Solomons temple and rebuilding the third temple, which would require the destruction of Al Aqsa)

Then as I started truly analyzing 9/11 and doing what the intel bubbas call "threat finance", I keep ending up at deep state actors heavily tied to Israel (and the UK) even within my (US) government. For an example that is even mirrored in this recent escalation, are indicators of pre-knowledge via trading that occurred prior. This happened on 9/11 (by a firm formerly chaired by AB Buzzy Krongard, A.B. Brown, acquired by Banker's Trust turned Banker's Trust-AB Brown) and before 10/7, and in a way that is mathematically provable to be major outliers.

My point is that there are much deeper things going on that surface analysis will fail to provide understanding for. If I went into further detail, I would for sure be seen as a "crazy conspiracy theorist"...

I riff on Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean "You'd best start believing in ghost stories, because you're in one!"

wolverine876 2023-12-12 21:47 UTC link

> I feel like folks are entrenched one way or the other and information isn't going to sway anyone

People like to profess doom and hopelessness but I see productive conversations, in this thread and another recent one. Why, in the face of the evidence, is it important to believe and convince people that it's hopeless?

The trend to despair just pisses me off. Nobody ever taught me to embrace despair; I don't know about you. Let's get off our asses and make sh-t happen.

seabird 2023-12-12 21:53 UTC link

I've been reading this site for 5+ years at this point and I hope that this experiment/exercise does not continue. This is an issue where those demanding commentary are generally not doing so in good faith, and acknowledging the reality of the situation is something that is best not done in polite company. There are plenty of places where you can discuss this content as much as you'd like, and nobody's life will be improved by this becoming yet another one of them.

kamikazeturtles 2023-12-12 22:16 UTC link

Hard to do when most of the middle east is run by autocratic regimes that either get military aid from the US or the US is their security guarantor. You have to seem Pro-Palestinian to please the masses but ultimately undermine the cause to please the US

vacuity 2023-12-12 22:30 UTC link

I hear you. While reading your comment, I had the thought "'atrocities coming from all of the actors'? Are you saying they're equally bad?" Of course, that's not what you said and there are far better responses if one is concerned about debating the relative moral standings of Israel and Hamas. It was more of a kneejerk reaction, and I quickly dismissed that from rational consideration, but the fact that I thought it nonetheless (and, in a different world, just replied with that) is a bit unsettling. Especially when we can't be certain what's a truth or lie when it comes to coverage of this conflict, it's far too easy to lose sight of the nuance.

doom2 2023-12-12 22:43 UTC link

> I don't think it's possible for a coherent or respectful or even useful conversation to happen here.

I've seen some variation of this sentiment both here on HN and elsewhere. It makes me wonder: is the topic so toxic that no conversation can happen at all? If that's the case, what's the appropriate forum for debate?

I'd argue that meatspace gathering places tend to not be much better (see: current debate about how this is playing out on college campuses), which has the net effect of chilling any discussion anywhere. That leaves op-ed pages, blog posts, Substacks, places where people can broadcast their opinion to the world...but not have to engage on it whatsoever. That doesn't feel like a great alternative to at least attempting to create space to talk about it.

emmelaich 2023-12-12 22:45 UTC link

Mostly agree but this particular discussion seems ok. Well done @dang.

beeboobaa 2023-12-12 22:58 UTC link

What's that supposed bias?

Animats 2023-12-12 23:14 UTC link

> I suspect a very large number of people are too smart to speak up, but also resentful of the forces that work to prevent actual nuanced dialogue. That's certainly the sentiment in my bubble.

There is some of that, and a mainstream "which side are you on" attitude. I previously wrote that the US could sit this one out. Provide humanitarian aid only, provide no military aid, and try to pressure both sides into not killing each other in large numbers. Which is what most of the rest of the world is doing.[1]

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/12/middleeast/ceasefire-vote-gaz...

locallost 2023-12-12 23:29 UTC link

I don't know what to tell you except fighting against something that is wrong but widespread and established cannot be comfortable.

There's nothing really new here. It was not comfortable to be a e.g. civil rights activist in the US during segregation, or a dissident in the eastern block. The question is, what is right and what is wrong. You either accept wrong out of comfort as many people did in the past or reject it.

refurb 2023-12-12 23:46 UTC link

It doesn’t really say anything. Why? Because the cost of voting is zero. The UN is toothless.

In fact, you’ll see many countries who are actively benefiting from the conflict through arms sales voting for a ceasefire.

In fact, the UN often nicely provides political cover for countries. It lets them do whatever they want behind the scenes then vote for peace and then trumpet it in their domestic media.

epgui 2023-12-13 00:19 UTC link

> I can't point to anything specifically incorrect about this reporting.

Then your comment is a genetic fallacy. You're highlighting a potential motive or potential for bias, but without anything substantive to say.

Epistemic Quality

Propaganda Flags

1 techniques detected

Solution Orientation

Emotional Tone

Stakeholder Voice

Temporal Framing

Geographic Scope

Complexity

Transparency