I'll provide context too - I'm a Jewish Israeli. I'd probably be considered left (or even far-left) by Israeli standards, but I'm in the "pro-Israeli" camp as conventionally understood online.
This Haaretz article is very troubling. To the extent it's accurate, there's not much question that it reflects war crimes.
A few thoughts:
1. The article itself says there is an ongoing investigation into some of these accusations. I hope that, to whatever extent this is happening, it's not widespread, and anyone committing war crimes is very visibly and publicly tried in court.
2. There is clearly something broken with the GHF and the new aid delivery - dozens dead every day for weeks. We really need some answers on what's going on.
3. From Haaretz today:
> The U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on Saturday urged Israel to investigate reports that soldiers opened fire towards unarmed Palestinians near aid distribution sites, detailed in a Haaretz expose, calling the allegations "too grave to ignore," while denying that any such incidents occurred within its facilities.
> GHF Interim Director John Acree stated, "There have been no incidents or fatalities at or in the immediate vicinity of any of our distribution sites."
I don't like getting involved in political threads but on this I have to.
All information presented is mostly unverified testimony printed verbatim by the press from untrustworthy sources on both sides. It's difficult to tell what is fact and what is not. A lot of early reports in this war turned out to be false information and the rush to immediate news notification rather than quality journalism means that the headline changes context very quickly from the first cut to what people read and remember. (I wrote an extensive suite of software to track this)
Wait and see. Do not judge too early. Take nothing as verbatim from anyone without evidence.
Don't be unknowing partisans of an information war. Veracity takes time.
This has been one of the deadliest conflicts for journalists in history. The number of killed journalists is very safe data, since the names are known and the cause of death is typically relatively well researched.
The story told by the data is that these journalists are overwhelmingly killed by Israeli forces, in some cases with prior notice of the press being where it was.
So if the IDF wants the press to tell the true story on the ground maybe let them do their work without killing them? The quesrion is: at which point do we have to stop assuming incompetence and start to assume malice (at least in parts)? For me personally that point has been months in the past.
This will be a stain on Israel for the rest of history.
I don't disagree with you there at all. That again backs up my point. There is a lot of information and evidence to back those cases up. Which should be the universal standard that we hold everyone accountable to.
This information didn't just appear out of nowhere. It took time to collate, source and verify.
> This information didn't just appear out of nowhere. It took time to collate, source and verify.
Could you try to rely less on using vague innuendo on HN? If you have reasonable doubt in a theory and/or additional/missing information that isn't purely anecdotal that lead you to your statement consider sharing it on here. If you don't have any information consider the option that your opiniom might not be as much supported by the ground truth as you probably like it to be.
Journalists like these are professionals that are paid to work in a conflict zone, if they are killed, of course their death will be noted. It works like this in literally every conflict on earth and there are international organizations that monitor violence against journalists because they are an fundamentally important pillar of any free society.
The question is why the technologically advanced IDF kills journalists at rates higher than in any other conflict zone on earth. This isn't a statistical anomaly that can be simply hand-waved away. It describes the nature of this conflict with numbers that are written with blood.
Anybody who defends the killing of journalists in a war zone is on the wrong side of history, period.
Hamas member gets a press west by hamas newspaper or the muslim brotherhood (quatar) then participates in hamas warcrimes like using ambulances as troop transports and gets humused. Nobody believes those loud lies anymore.. that whole narrative is falling apart.
You are defending the killing of civillian journalists in a war zone using unchecked propaganda — if you make bold claims, you gotta bring the receipts as well.
Is a journalist still a journalist if he’s launching rockets, carry a gun and grenades? Hamas and PIJ has filmed themselves wearing “press” vests while doing these things.
Many of the journalists in Gaza are Hamas operatives until they die. When suddenly their twitter or fb account is used to claim they’re a journalist.
You’re being lied to on a regular basis about nearly everything that comes out of Gaza. Aside from 3rd party medic accounts we have zero evidence of any of these supposed crimes. This is the most filmed war in history and yet after 3 weeks of claims by Hamas that GHF is shooting and booby trapping aid there is literally zero actual evidence to support that.
Please amend the Wikipedia-list on the topic with sourced information if you have the strong evidence required by your extraordinary claim.
In such a conflict both sides have incentives to twist reality, but since the names of the killed journalists are public you can do research and provide a valuable service to the public by ensuring the truth is out there. But this means "trust me bro" isn't going to cut it.
This has nothing to do with the point discussed. Unless of course you want to infer from your (unsourced) allegation that because press freedom is problematic in certain regions it is therefore okay for a foreign nation to kill said journalists, since they weren't free anyways. We would have to ignore the international journalists that got killed for this train of thought to work.
I hope you realize that this would be genocidal rhetoric. The kind of thinking that lead to the worst atrocities humanity has ever committed. But hey as long as it is happening to the dehumanized subhumans it is okay, right?
I think that is what the parent is alluding to, when it comes to waiting for more facts.
One of those facts might be intent or misheard orders. It might just be that this actually happened (as a war crime) but it is probably too early to tell.
Regardless of what happened, it helps to wait until more info comes out.
The "nuanced" rhetoric to add doubt that things may not seem like what they are, is tiresome at this point. neepi's comments seem reasonable, innocent until proven guilty, but it's simply a strategy to exhaust onlookers with bureaucratic formalities of investigation and prosecution under the masquerade of reasonable justice.
It's a cop out and putting one's head in the sand to the real atrocities of zionistic ambitions of usurping Palestinian land.
In America, if someone trespasses into one's home and the home owner kills the trespasser, the vast majority of the time, the owner is justified and there are numerous court cases we can point to. Recently, it has become clear to me that Palestinians are simply trying to defend their own property/land/humanity.
Israel's trespasses are finally seeing the light in the latest set of conflicts and folks reading this comment that are unsure should spend 30 minutes looking up the videos of the conflict.
Israel blocking aid, murdering medical personnel with impunity, the before/after of Gaza, the list of crimes perpetuated by the government is undeniable at this point.
"Look, children may be dying and maybe we're killing them but we need to verify and we need more time. Because first of all what were they even doing there? Oh and also this is our Land anyways and there were no deaths nobody died there aren't even any children in gaza!"
at the point, advocating for neutrality in the face of overwhelming evidence of war crimes day after day after day is a pretty clear indication of not being concerned.
News outlets tell Israeli officers where their journalists intend to be, and they wear jackets that identify them as members of the press. Preventing the journalists from dying is really a matter of communicating to each other, and using visual identification before engaging in direct fire. Both the officers and enlisted have the opportunity to cancel an illegitimate fire mission. Something doctrinal is responsible for this behavior.
Given the unconscionable number of journalists who died at the IDF's hands, it seems like Israel is indeed using the transparency info from journalists to locate and target them with airstrikes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...
So if a journalist decides to wander away from the potemkin village they get denied access. The journalists going on these ridealongs are not doing journalism. This tactic, which america pioneered in response to vietnam war coverage, is designed to only allow journalists who will tell the right kind of narrative.
This person, a Palestinian, was not attacked for documenting something he wasn't supposed to. That's not the claim in the article. He is said to have documented the "the aftermath of Hamas’s massacre on the Gaza-border communities.” but that doesn't seem to be directly relevant.
The context is a protest: "Haruf says he was attacked without cause after leaving a prayer protest broken up by Israeli security forces in the Wadi Joz neighborhood." not the journalistic activities.
I'm not justifying this FWIW, just that it doesn't prove what you're trying to prove. If anything the publication of this article in Israel shows Israel has freedom of press.
also:
"The Border Police later announced that it had suspended the two officers involved in the incident and that the Department of Internal Police Investigations has opened a probe into the matter."
"The Union of Journalists in Israel condemned the incident and said it was “shocked by the violent attack” on Haruf.
The union said the incident was “the 37th attack on Arab journalists since the beginning of the war” on October 7, when Hamas-led terrorists launched their murderous assault on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking some 240 hostages of all ages.
The union, in a December 15 statement, said “most of the attacks [were] carried out by the security forces. This is a reality that dramatically harms freedom of the press and the ability of journalists to perform their duties.”"
Is this perfect? no. Is Israeli press generally free, attacks/criticizes the government, brings to light bad things that happen, and follow up on them? yes.
Haaretz is the last news organization I would expect to knowingly spread anti-israel disinformation. If these guys are telling you what Israel is doing is bad then it's bad.
Yes, and one of the more prominent ones at that. If they had a bias in this, I would expect them to be biased in favor of Israel not against it. If even they are saying Israel is committing these war crimes then I'm inclined to assume that the evidence must be very compelling.
Just for the record, this is almost certainly wrong in the sense you mean it.
Haaretz is a (far?) left, anti-current-government newspaper. It's not outside the mainstream or anything - it is considered largely credible, and its articles are taken seriously - but most people in Israel would find it funny that you assume it wouldn't be biased against Israel. Lots of Netanyahu supporters routinely consider it a "traitorous" publication.
I think its articles should be taken seriously, but you can't simply assume it's automatically right and not "biased". Think of it the way an American Democrat would think of Fox or something - the news org definitely has a viewpoint.
Lots of people still believe that "critical of the government" is not the same as "biased against the country." That's an explicitly authoritarian belief and a disastrous framework to work within. It's antithetical to the concept of human rights and notable historical documents such as the American Constitution.
The bias of a mainstream publication that's considered "traitorous" by genocidal authoritarian ethnonationalists is, given historical consideration, likely to be toward justice.
I don't think you can frame a media outlet based on which administration is currently in power. Anything and everything an administration says is propaganda, and hence untrustworthy.
I.e. your claim that it is leftist requires some justification.
Yeah, sure, if you are a Nazi, everything to the left of you is going to look "left", and likewise if you are a Communist, everything to the right is going to look "right", that doesn't make your viewpoint reality, however.
I don't think I'm framing Haaretz based on the current administration.
I'm a leftist - I identify far more with what Haaretz is doing than most other news orgs. I'm personally very angry that other orgs, even ones that are "centrist" or "anti-current-government", are not covering the stories that Haaretz is covering, and barely covering the tragedies happening in Gaza. It's common in most countries during wartime, but it's deeply wrong IMO.
That all said, saying Haaretz is on the left is like saying Fox News is on the right. It's common knowledge.
And here, I just looked it up, this is from Haaretz's own About section:
"Haaretz has built a reputation for in-depth reporting, insightful analysis, and a liberal and progressive editorial stance on domestic issues and international affairs."
So they are framing themselves as liberal and progressive.
This nutcase general has faced consistent accusations from soldiers under his own command over the last year for over a dozen incidents alone.
What is your holy threshold for evidence ? How can you "wait and see" if the press is not allowed at the food distribution site ? Basically, you are saying "wait and sweep it under the carpet".
Sorry, but the killing of unarmed civilians seeking aid has been reported half a dozen times by many different outlets. The IDF denials are getting quite absurd. The only one suffering from disinformation is you.
There is a point at which pleas to wait for "better" evidence can be construed as denials.
"There is ample evidence and this is not a new accusation, so your request to wait and see rings hollow and appears to be a de facto request to not pass judgement on Israeli crimes" is neither morally nor intellectually dishonest.
The lack of journalism in this conflict is a direct result of Israel forbidding press access and their targeting of Palestinian and other journalists. This deliberate effort enables them to then criticize the reporting which is done and cast doubt over sources.
Since October 7th sources from within Palestine have been accurate regarding deaths and actions. Often being attacked first and then quietly acknowledged later.
There is no reason to doubt the reporting of Israel’s paper of record, which though considered left wing writhing Israel, supports Netanyahu’s attacks on Gaza and applies rigorous journalistic standards.
I suggest you re-read it a few times. I am not defending any party in this conflict. I want the truth to be established carefully for the sake of everyone. Misinformation just ends up with more bodies stacked up on both sides.
So far all evidence points to bodies being piled on one side. With only few exceptions. Going on over year and half without clear rationale other than vaguely "butbutbut human shields butbutbut propaganda".
By avoiding to admit this you are indeed defending the attacker.
I’m amazed at how you managed to trivialise the deaths of 1915 people in that comment. All people matter on both sides and everyone deserves justice. That only comes if we make accurate prosecutions which requires evidence and due process.
And how dare you make accusations along those lines. Your attitude contributes to the problem.
Fine, what steps were taken to accurately prosecute these 1915 deaths? Are there any people indicted and undergoing fair trial for that? Can you name them? ICC did, but then got practically canceled. So who is to do it and when?
Oh you can't answer that easily without trivializing these deaths yourself. Accusing others, that are suspicious of all of this, of "attitude" is easier.
I haven’t accused anyone less than everyone. There are bad actors on all sides (this spans more than “both sides”).
As for enforcement and prosecution the ICC warrants were justified and the situation that remains is tragic. You can thank the US for throwing a spanner in those works.
I’m not sure why you keep trying to put words in my mouth. Perhaps to justify your partisan position rather than my entirely neutral one? Sure feels like it.
It’s only unlikely because it’s politically inconvenient for it to be unlikely as the nations preventing it don’t want to be judged by the same standards.
That is "only" the strongest motivation in politics. And it ensures any fair justice will happen long after it would have mattered. So deferring to it is not really morally neutral here.
So because Israel has a "long history of humanitarianism", we can dismiss evidence of Israeli war crimes as fictitious hit jobs? And once we've dismissed all evidence of Israeli war crimes, we can conclude that Israel has a "long history of humanitarianism"? Rinse, repeat — do I have that right?
The source is one of the biggest Israeli newspapers, by the way.
> The source is one of the biggest Israeli newspapers, by the way.
I think that's a bit misleading. Per Wikipedia, it has a ~5% readership, as opposed to the bigger papers that have a ~22% readership. It is one of the older and most established papers though, that is true.
Anecdotally, I don't think Haaretz is very widely read among the "average" populace, though I think it has a lot of cachet in intellectual (and of course Leftist) circles.
Thank you for your unbiased opinion shedding objective light on this incident and reporting. You have brought forth excellent evidence for dismissing this evidence.
I'm as prone to it as the next tech-influenced millennial, but we really need to consider the legibility of deadpan sarcastic mockery in an environment where people are inclined to sincerely hold outrageous beliefs.
Credulity is boundless, even (especially) in this world of open information warfare. Messages that require side-channels and discrimination with intentionally limited information are guaranteed to be misperceived and likely to have harmful memetic impact.
That's fair feedback! I struggled to tamp down on a snarkier response that read more like: "I am a direct beneficiary of one side of this debate. If we are to be intellectually honest then we need to be sure to cast as much skepticism as we can muster onto the other side."
Agreed though, earnestness is one of our most urgent shortages.
This rhetoric of “terrorists” is getting quite tiresome.
The world has been watching for over 2 years the atrocities occurring in Gaza and Israel and its people have has lost its credibility to its victimhood on the world stage.
This article is simply 1 extra reporting on a million of Israel’s offenses in the name of terrorism.
>GHF Interim Director John Acree stated, "There have been no incidents or fatalities at or in the immediate vicinity of any of our distribution sites."
Isn't there a video of dismembered body parts after the mortar shell hit and killed a few dozen?
It sounds like if he is making such a clear statement as this, there should be an investigation, and, if it turns out there were such fatalities, then Acree (and many others) should be tried for covering up war crimes.
Note that this response is from a cynical American sick of Israel always Getting Away With It. I have no problem with Jewish people, but I strongly distrust the state of Israel and believe that it's a force that makes Jewish people less safe as the state screams it is doing what it is doing to protect Jewish people. One of my close college friends is a rabbi, and we've been talking about this since the start of the hostage crisis.
> 1. The article itself says there is an ongoing investigation into some of these accusations. I hope that, to whatever extent this is happening, it's not widespread, and anyone committing war crimes is very visibly and publicly tried in court.
There is zero chance that happens as long as Netanyahu, Likud, Trump, or the Reupublicans are in power. Trump would immediately offer asylum in the US to anybody accused of such a thing.
Even if Israel did investigate, there's nothing more classic than Israel going "we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong".
So if you want accountability, drive that internally with your politicians and get Netanyahu/Likud out of office
> There is zero chance that happens as long as Netanyahu, Likud, Trump, or the Reupublicans are in power. Trump would immediately offer asylum in the US to anybody accused of such a thing.
This is untrue - Israel has investigated war crimes, e.g. famously things like what happened at the Sde Teiman prison.
> So if you want accountability, drive that internally with your politicians and get Netanyahu/Likud out of office
Many have been trying for years. It's not trivial. (About half of Americans dislike {current_president}, whomever that is, but there's very little they can do about it in between elections.)
This article isn't really about whether there's some situation where there were some wrong doings, but it's yet another piece adding to the overall body of Israel's offenses against humanity.
As a random bystander with no real skin in this conflict, other than being American, what I can say is that for a while, it did seem that Israel the country had to unfairly deal with hate and war and it seemed quite unfortunate.
Most of the horrifying stories that would occasionally rise up seemed unbelievable, if not overblown.
Though in recent weeks, social media & news has provided another perspective.
1. Numerous Israeli citizens mocking Palestinians and having the gall to upload it to social media.
2. Numerous classrooms and children being taught that non-Israeli's do no deserve the same human rights as Israelis, and the children from a young age reveling in their superiority.
3. Videos showing citizens in normal cars being a nuisance to Palestinian medical vehicles.
4. Videos showing the absolute decimation of Gaza.
5. Israeli news articles reporting 70% and more of the population supporting certain war actions.
6. Ex-IDF soldiers whistleblowing the atrocious acts they needed to commit.
7. Citizens barbequing and hanging out right along the Gaza's border as Palestinian folks on the other side starve.
8. The video of Palestinian medics getting murdered on the side of the highway.
9. Pictures of the logos on IDF uniforms showing "our promised land" with a map showing borders that claim the land of Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon.
I don't think there is something "broken" in aid delivery. It appears that there is a systemic and concerted effort by the bulk of the government and citizens (100% of who have to serve in the IDF) to colonize and usurp Palestinian land and beyond.
And it seems that the latest set of conflicts have pulled back the curtain on the attitudes held by both the Israeli citizens and government.
The only news in the article is the way civilians are murdered. The Israeli government already kills far more people per day through deliberately induced starvation.
These events are hard to believe, not because of the cruelty, but because they now happen without a shred of deniability.
As another Jewish Israeli I agree this is concerning.
I do want you to consider the context here on Hacker News though. You and me have context, we understand the history, we understand at least something about wars and how they are fought. Most people here do not.
The problem isn't whether firing on civilians with no reason when they come to get food is wrong or right. We all know it's wrong. The soldiers in Gaza know it's wrong. We all know this is a war crime.
Most cases of war crimes during war are not prosecuted at all and not visibly. This is true for US wars in the middle east. It's true for the war the West wages against ISIS. It's true for Ukraine and Russia. It's a sad but unfortunate reality of our world. The current political climate and government in Israel are also not the best for the kind of outcome you are describing.
Iran and Hamas firing missiles and rockets into population centers is a war crime too. So is their embedding and use of civilians. The entire strategy of Israel's opponents in the middle east is to engage in war crimes.
Where do we place Israel on that scale? Is there more attention on Israel vs. other similar world events? Why? Do we see similar public debate and discussion of the morality of those wars in other countries? Again, where is Israel on that scale (not of idealistic fantasy world of justice but in the real world)?
That is, I think, an excellent and pertinent question.
For starters may I suggest applying straightforward quantification on a linear scale and observing the results? See the following two wiki articles / subsections:
Do you mean the data sources it lists in those two articles are not valid? (I am referring to raw figures and not to actual textual content even). The charts themselves (and the proportions thereof) have been observed everywhere incl. in the mainstream media?
Can you present one counterexample as regards quantities / proportions of figures please? One source. (More of course if you'd like)
(My implicit point is that the proportions are so one-sided (orders of magnitude in difference; yes plural) that you will not find one; but please do find one (with actual quantities) and we can all check veracity of your source)
P.S. edit here is one of the sources the first wiki article lists (of multiple):
Lappin, Yaakov (2009). "IDF releases Cast Lead casualty numbers". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on 26 March 2013. Retrieved 5 January 2024. =>
> Where do we place Israel on that scale? Is there more attention on Israel vs. other similar world events?
I’d flip that around: why shouldn’t we expect Israel to be better than a terrorist group like Hamas or the deeply evil Iranian government? When some Americans complained that they were being held to a higher standard than Al-Qaeda or ISIL, they were rightly criticized for betraying our national aspiration to leading rather than trailing the world, and the same is happening here. Israel has rightly set its standards higher than its neighbors when it comes to democracy and civil rights, but that entails criticism where it fails to live up to that self-selected standard.
> Iran and Hamas firing missiles and rockets into population centers is a war crime too. So is their embedding and use of civilians. The entire strategy of Israel's opponents in the middle east is to engage in war crimes.
Where do we place Israel on that scale?
I feel like you're moving the target now. Those are your words above.
But yes, if your scale is that of the western world then harsh criticism of Israel's war crimes should be expected and welcome.
I don't mean to put words in your mouth, maybe you did mean something along those lines and I'm misinterpreting.
It it absolutely fair to criticize Israel the same way that e.g Canada, the US, the UK, France etc. were criticized during their war on the Islamic State.
Let's get some scale here.
- Probably more than 160K killed in this war. Maybe half civilians.
- Siege and constant bombardment/destruction of cities like Mosul.
- Millions of civilians displaced.
- Many war crimes by western powers.
This was in response to what? A few westerners beheaded? Terrorist attacks killing a few dozen people?
Can you really say honestly that the amount of criticism Israel is attracting due to its war in Gaza and the circumstances are comparable? This might just be me but I don't recall huge rallies against the war. I don't recall much negative media coverage. I don't recall anyone held accountable for war crimes. I don't recall the ICC being involved.
Yes, the US bombings of random weddings in Afghanistan with Predator drones and air to surface missiles, or bombing hospitals has occasionally drawn some weak protest. Nothing at the scale of the anti-Israeli sentiment.
This isn't what-about-ism. It's not ok to bomb a wedding and it's not ok to fire into a crowd of people trying to get food. But there is no comparison of the sentiment and focus.
You can’t talk about ISIS in isolation from the U.S. invasion of Iraq which gave Zarqawi the ability to grow so much. That had enormous protests, tons of criticism for the massive civilian death toll, and plenty of negative media coverage. By the time the Islamic system was at its height, most of the reaction was muted in the backdrop of Syria’s civil war and the U.S. failure in Iraq leaving few people jumping to commit more troops into unfriendly territory. In contrast, Israel controls Gaza and has no willingness to give up that control and ownership follows that.
Yes, everything can be litigated to the beginning of time, WW-2, WW-1, the Romans. But the fact still stands that all those "moral" countries didn't hesitate to lay siege, starve people, bomb civilians, for tbh little reason. I don't recall hearing even crickets protest.
Why can't the "Islamic State" have their own country? Sure their culture of beheading and kidnapping Yazidi as slaves is a bit weird but come on.
If you read your own link, note how Israel has a near-total blockade and maintains military control. I have absolutely no love for Hamas but I also recognize that there are a ton of civilians caught between the hammer of Israeli and the anvil of Hamas with zero opportunity for self-determination. They have no control over Hamas - the last election was in 2006 so the majority of the Palestinian population has literally never once been able to vote – and they have even less influence with the Israeli government. That is a tragedy by any measure, and Israel’s wanton killing and collective punishment is a recipe for continued conflict because it ensures that there’s a constant supply of people who have a personal grudge because they know someone innocent whose life has been tragically altered.
> If you read your own link, note how Israel has a near-total blockade and maintains military control
For most of the period since 2005, it has been a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade, not an exclusively Israeli one. That has recently changed now that Israel has militarily occupied the Gaza side of the Egypt-Gaza border
But I do find it interesting how Israel gets exclusively blamed for something which Egypt also had a hand in - and they weren’t doing it because “Israel made us”, they had their own security reasons - they feared Hamas would support Islamist rebels in Egypt.
It does seem to support the claim that Israel gets “picked on”, when a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade gets presented as an exclusively Israeli one
Yes, Egypt has some control (imports still require Israeli approval) but they also do not have a great reputation internationally. Israelis are objecting to being seen like Egypt when they aspire to being seen like a western democracy rather than an authoritarian state.
> Israel did give up Gaza and gave Palestinians full control of it
From the very first paragraph in your own link:
> Since then, the United Nations, many other international humanitarian and legal organizations, and most academic commentators have continued to regard the Gaza Strip as being under Israeli occupation ...
"Full control" - except over their border, their imports, their airspace, their electromagnetic frequencies, their coastline, their construction industry, etc etc.
> WW-2, WW-1, the Romans. But the fact still stands that all those "moral" countries didn't hesitate to lay siege, starve people, bomb civilians, for tbh little reason.
... If you're taking the Romans and WW-2 as your baseline for morality, that would start to explain things.
I'm sorry but you're just wrong. The reasons the UN and others still regarded Gaza as under Israeli occupation are either political or technical. In practice when Israel left Gazans got full control. They had a border with Egypt, not to mention tunnels for smuggling goods under that border. They had enough control to build a large army, tunnels, rockets etc. I.e. they had control. They were able to send people to train in Iran.
This anti-Israeli argument that somehow Israel dismantled its settlements and left but yet still "occupied" Gaza is nonsense. It does not stand any minimal scrutiny.
Yes, as a result of Gazans making a choice to engage in war with Israel there was a blockade over that territory. That's about it. Do you expect Israel to allow them to import tanks and jets?
And build and train a large military force. And build an extensive tunnel network in the entirety of the Gaza strip. Complete control over every day to day aspect of their lives, government, healthcare, police force. Elections. Extensive weapons manufacturing. Control of the borders with Israel and Gaza.
Israel has been blockading and controlling Gaza since the 90s. To argue that they've had complete control is just historically and factually wrong. Israel has been gradually tightening the screws on the region for decades.
Nobody has complete control over anything but the true story is that Israel withdrew in good faith wanting to give Palestinians a chance to build their own lives. Israel did exactly what all the good people here want it to do so badly. Stop the "occupation". Since the outcome of that doesn't fit the narrative (10's of thousands of rockets on Israel, suicide bombing attacks, Hamas taking over, leading to Oct 7th) then we need to do some mental gymnastics to somehow claim that despite Israel no longer occupying Gaza it somehow still was.
The "tightening of the screws" is a result of Palestinians deciding to wage war against Israel, build rockets, fire them into civilian populations.
It's really pretty simple. Palestinians want to destroy Israel. They have and had no interest having a "Singapore" in Gaza.
I'm not sure how you get to the 90's. We are talking about the disengagement in 2005.
I lived in Israel during this time and I know very well what the mood was. I've also seen interviews with people who were in the loop who say Ariel Sharon (who architected the withdrawal) sincerely wanted to see Palestinians succeed and use this as a blue print to also end the conflict in the west bank. International donors even bought equipment from Israel (like greenhouses) so they can leave it for the Palestinians who promptly proceeded to destroy them.
Nobody has "complete control", sure, but there's a reason Gaza doesn't have an airport (destroyed by the IDF) and can't receive aid by sea (intercepted by the IDF).
Thunberg's flotella isn't a very good example of Israel preventing aid. The flotella carried a symbolic bit of aid, and Israel didn't reject it, they just insisted that it go through proper channels rather than violate a blockade which is in place for justifiable security reasons.
They bombed the first boat. In international waters.
Extremist ideology makes people say some strange things, but the intellectual contortion dlubarov asks the reader to endure in order to see Israel as a bonafide example of “proper channels” is tantamount to lobotomy.
> The movement, founded in 2006 by activists during Israel’s war on Lebanon, went on to launch 31 boats between 2008 and 2016, five of which reached Gaza despite heavy Israeli restrictions.
> Since 2010, all flotillas attempting to break the Gaza blockade have been intercepted or attacked by Israel in international waters.
I don't quite get the point you're getting at; we're all in agreement that there is a blockade. The flotella doesn't really add anything to our understanding of the situation - we already knew there was a blockade and that unauthorized ships wouldn't be allowed to pass.
That doesn't imply much about aid; it's not a total blockade and there are mechanisms for importing aid. One can argue that the aid distribution mechanisms are bad, and it might be reasonable to propose various changes (different aid mechanisms, a relaxation of the blockade, etc), but it wouldn't really make sense for Israel to make exceptions and allow certain unauthorized ships to just circumvent its blockade.
The devil is in the details. From the river to the sea is different. There are some moderate Palestinians and then there are Hamas and other extremists. So the goal of destroying Israel has different interpretations. Moderates just want Palestine instead of Israel and Jews out "back to Europe" ( or whatever the came from) and extremists just want to slaughter (aka October 7th but their buddies Hizballah and Iran failed to help them, the "Khaiber, Khaiber" crowd that wants what ISIS did to Yezidis )
You keep repeating things that are simply not historically true. We know factually that Israel was blockading and enforcing their will in Gaza as early as 1991.
I don't see a need to engage with you further, especially as you increasingly use dog whistles to tacitly support the actions of Israel while repeating clear propaganda. Your arguments are not helping as much as you think, and only increasingly turning people against Israel as their actions become more and more obvious.
The was on ISIS wasn't waged exclusively or even mainly by the West. It was waged on the ground primarily by the local armed forces - Iraqi army in Iraq, YPG militias in both Iraq and Syria etc - who were actively resisting the attempts to take over their communities by force and in some cases outright genocide them. The West provided active military support including air strikes and occasional on-the-ground assistance, but you can't reduce the reasons for that war to "a few westerners beheaded"; you have to look at the totality of crimes against humanity perpetrated by ISIS on its occupied territories to get a comprehensive casus belli on behalf of the opposing forces primarily responsible for all the destruction.
- Yoav Gallant called the Palestinians "human animals", which, ironically, is similar to what the Nazis were calling the Jews during WW2: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ReZEJPwrM1k
> Israeli soldiers, attacks Israeli civilians (there are still occasional rockets fired out of Gaza).
Maybe don't use your civilians as human shields then. Why is your military next to your civilians? See how that works?
> Israel does not "annex territories" not belonging to them. Israel e.g. returned Sinai to Egypt. Israel gave Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005. Israel in negotiations with Palestinians created the Palestinian Authority and gave it control of large swaths of territory.
Exactly. It’s fair to criticize Israel for civilian casualties just like all of those countries have been criticized for failing to live up to their stated standards. Countries like Russia or Iran are recognized as being worse but don’t get criticized for being hypocritical because nobody expected them to be good.
Countries like Russia (and probably Iran) still claim to be paragons of human rights in diplomatic settings - just that most are used to ignoring them because of the immense scale and sheer audacity of their hypocrisy.
> Exactly. It’s fair to criticize Israel for civilian casualties just like all of those countries have been criticized for failing to live up to their stated standards.
Russia doesn't target civilian population to the extent Israel does. There is a reason only Israel is charged with genocide, and not Russia. Don't get me wrong, both the countries' governments are run by bunch of homicidal dictators, but only Isreal systematically does enough war crimes and human rights violations to fit the criteria of genocide.
This is entirely incorrect. Putin's arrest warrant is for the mass kidnapping of Ukrainian children. The legal definition of genocide explicitly calls out such a situation as an example. There are other reasons why your comparison is flawed.
> instead of just saying random stuff like a coward.
You can't comment like this on HN, no matter what you're replying to.
You've posted many comments in this thread that are inflammatory and risk breaking the guidelines. On a topic like this one, this guideline is especially important:
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
You've been asked before to make an effort to observe the guidelines. Please remind yourself of them and keep them in mind when commenting here.
Attacking the Qirya, Israel's HQ, with some sort of accuracy is a legitimate military target. It's a pretty large target. Soldiers wear uniform. There are no civilians mixed into that camp.
This is very different than lobbing rockets at Beer-Sheba, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ramat Gan. The casualties from Iran's attacks, minus one off-duty soldier, were all civilians and the targets were nowhere near anything military. The intentionally aim at population centers.
Frankly, you need to understand some things - people, especially on this site are beyond conversations - they are guided by their beliefs. Those beliefs are not going to change - they will die with them. Humans are very violent in their minds. And pretty much the intensity of that insanity is the only signal that is a warning for imminent global conflict, that has been postponed for some time.
> The entire strategy of Israel's opponents in the middle east is to engage in war crimes.
I think war crimes are a lot more acceptable/understandable if they’re the only way you even potentially have a chance to get back at your agressors. Nobody blames the resistance during the Nazi occupation for what they did.
Israel is very much not in a position they need to perpetrate war crimes to win the war. They have already won. It’s like a cat playing with the mouse it killed.
> Nobody blames the resistance during the Nazi occupation for what they did.
Because the Nazis lost. Had the Nazis won, alternative history and all that, the argument would probably be the other way around, how, faced with overwhelmingly strong enemies, they "had to" create death camps to "get back" at their aggressors.
This is probably what anti-Soviet groups in WWII thought when they allied with the Nazis and committed atrocities. Most people today don't seem to think they were justified in doing that.
Fair point. Collective punishment has a way of making people feel like that, which is of course entirely the point. Of course, collective punishment isn’t any less of a crime.
The fantasy of using civilians as a means to say this is a war crime is out the window. In order to stop one country from killing your population, most often the revers effect is the same. neither of which are justified. in order to stop the third Reich the majority of Germany was destroyed along with the mass civilian death. Attacking promptly and aggressively carries civilian death in most cases (U.S. attacking japan). This is a cycle that happens in humanity every so often, one can say we tend to take life for granted over-time. Then some big event or catastrophe happens and a group of nations put some international body in place to reduce big wars and conflicts, this usually hinders large scale conflicts for about 50-80 years until that generation forgets and or history is no longer connected to them some way and the same thing repeats again. Remember that The U.S. and some of the European nations carried the actions, in which there-after developed international body's to protect them from a similar attack like nuclear or mass genocide. The one's affected are the ones that repeat the cycle, if they were the victim last time in the cycle then they will be the perpetrator this tine around.
> I'd probably be considered left (or even far-left) by Israeli standards, but I'm in the "pro-Israeli" camp as conventionally understood online.
Would you consider ethno-nationalists of other nations (far) left, based on (speculating) their economic/women's rights/LGBT/other social stances?
(Orthogonally, I can certainly empathize with being pro-something, but not pro-everything-that-something-does. There's certainly nothing intrinsic to a Jewish state that would require firing at unarmed crowds.)
> Would you consider ethno-nationalists of other nations (far) left, based on (speculating) their economic/women's rights/LGBT/other social stances?
If your implication is that I'm an ethno-nationalist, I don't think that characterizes Israel or my thoughts about it, however much "ethnostate" is a favorite slur of people to use against Israel.
Ethnostate is an ambiguous word. Does it mean ethnically homogenous? Israel is certainly not that. Does it mean, essentially, a nation-state whose "national group" is an ethnicity? Israel is that - but so is much of Europe and some parts of Asia.
Edit: I asked ChatGPT "How many nations have declared themselves to be the Nation-State of a people?" earlier and got the same answer as you. I asked again just now and got "Israel is the only nation in the world that has legally declared itself the “Nation‑State of the Jewish People.”" [I didn't specify Jewish]
I think it might be a slur on, say, reddit, but isn’t most of the world a bunch of ethnostates? Isn’t that kinda one of the things that makes the US stand out, is that it’s explicitly not one? I’m asking this unironically, but I guess I thought e.g. Ireland was pretty homogenous, as is Japan, Ethiopia, Cuba, Peru, and Denmark. (Maybe some of those examples aren’t perfect but you get my point I hope)
> I’m asking this unironically, but I guess I thought e.g. Ireland was pretty homogenous
In the 2022 census, only 76.5% of people in Ireland were ethnically Irish. Over 20% of the population are foreign-born, with the most common countries of foreign birth being Poland, the UK, India, Romania and Lithuania.
So Ireland is far less homogeneous than you perceive it to be.
But the real issue here isn’t how diverse the state’s population is in practice, it is how the state defines itself in its own founding documents (such as the constitution) - as a state for all its citizens, or as a state for a people (ethnos) which is only a subset of the state’s citizens? Israel is (2) but essentially all Western nations nowadays are (1).
Even though the French and German constitutions still express the idea of a “national people” for whom the state exists, they consider anyone who is naturalised as a citizen as joining that people (“ethnos”). By contrast, a non-Jew can immigrate to Israel and become an Israeli citizen-but the state will still not consider them a member of the people for whom the state exists-only conversion to Judaism does that, and only if their conversion is accepted as valid by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate-non-Orthodox conversions will not be accepted, but they sometimes even reject conversions by overseas Orthodox Rabbis whom they don’t consider “rigorous” enough.
So Israel is actually unique in this regard - no Western nation makes becoming “not just a citizen of the state, but a member of the people for whom it exists” contingent on religious conversion. If you want a parallel, you’d have to look at the Islamic world, where non-Muslims are sometimes (not always) permitted citizenship, but are denied membership in the category of “nation for whose sake the state exists”
>In the 2022 census, only 76.5% of people in Ireland were ethnically Irish. Over 20% of the population are foreign-born, with the most common countries of foreign birth being Poland, the UK, India, Romania and Lithuania.
And there is alot of tension right now because of that. Not just in Ireland, but much of the West.
But really, why do you think states exist if not to protect the interests of its underlying culture/ethnicty/group. If not, why Canada refuse to join USA as a 51st state? From an economic perspective it would be logical, fron a political perspective they would have decisive power due to their relative population. What is the fundamental reasoning behind the refusal to join?
> If not, why Canada refuse to join USA as a 51st state?
Trump’s idea of Canada as a US state is constitutionally ludicrous, because it ignores the fact that Canada is already a federation of provinces - which are essentially equivalent to states, choosing a different name was fundamentally a branding exercise not a difference of substance-indeed, when Britain’s colonies in Australia federated, they decided to be called “states” not “provinces”, because their greater physical distance from the US made them feel less of a need to distinguish themselves from the US. So Canada as a 51st state would create the globally near-unprecedented scenario of a federation within a federation, states within a state. [0] Why would anyone wish to experience such a constitutional novelty?
If you were serious about merging the US and Canada, a more sensible way to do it would be to admit Canada’s provinces as US states. But the problem with that proposal, is not only do most Canadians not want that, I doubt most Americans would either. Sure, Republicans might seem open to the idea as long as it remains a Trump thought bubble with zero chance of ever being implemented - but actually adding Canada’s provinces as US states would fundamentally upset the balance between Republicans and Democrats in the US, most of Canada’s provinces would act like blue states in the US-even many conservatives in Canada are closer to conservative Democrats than liberal Republicans-and would probably shift US politics as a whole in a more “progressive” direction. I think if it actually started to seem like a realistic prospect, Republicans would turn against it out of their own political self-interest and block it.
I think the most realistic scenario in the long-run, is a sort of “exchange” in which Canada loses some provinces to the US (most likely Alberta) but then progressive-leaning areas of the US secede to join Canada. North America might end up reorganised along ideological lines, “Blue-America+Canada” vs “Red-America+Alberta”. Not happening any time soon, but over a century or two I don’t think the possibility can be ruled out.
[0] not totally unprecedented, in that Soviet-era Russia was a federation within the larger federation of the USSR-but the Soviet Union’s authoritarian political system made its federalism more nominal than real, nobody knows how a federation-within-a-federation would work in practice in combination with a genuinely democratic political system
Israel really is unique among Western nations. Can you point to a Western nation where there is a constitutional distinction between "citizens" and "the nation for whom the state exists", such that you can belong to the former without belonging to the later?
And it isn't "essentially limited to Western Europe". The same is true of the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand – naturalisation as a citizen automatically makes you an official member of the "nation for whom the state exists". I believe it is true for most or all Latin American nations as well.
Now, Israel is not unique globally speaking – I think Malaysia's bumiputera status is a rather close parallel. But I doubt that's a comparison most Zionists are keen to draw attention to.
> "civic" nation-states) and non-nation-states
If you are going to argue that "Germany is a civic nation state, the US is a non-nation-state", that is a false and arbitrary distinction. Because American nationalism is an entirely real thing – but in its mainstream contemporary manifestation it is civic nationalist, not ethnic nationalist, just like how mainstream contemporary German nationalism is civic nationalist not ethnic nationalist. Now, historically America was arguably racial nationalist – America was a nation, not necessarily for any particular White ethnicity, but for White people [0] – but it has evolved from racial nationalism into civic nationalism
[0] The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited US citizenship by naturalization to "free white persons". The Naturalization Act of 1870 made people of African descent eligible for citizenship by naturalization, but people who were categorised as neither "white" nor "African" remained ineligible for citizenship by naturalisation until the The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (the McCarran-Walter Act) removed all racial restrictions on naturalisation. So US nationality law arguably was explicitly racially nationalist from 1790 to 1870, and remained so in a somewhat watered down sense from 1870 to 1952.
Yes, I hold the "America is not a nation-state" perspective. I generally like the analysis by Bret Devereaux on this topic (https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-...), but if that's not convincing I don't have anything to argue this point on beyond my own experiences that "American" is a "civic group" but not a "national group". So, we'll just have to agree to disagree there.
It doesn't really take away from my main point. Yes, Western Europe and pretty much all New World countries are "civic" oriented. No Western state, Israel included I am pretty sure, has in their constitution or equivalent that a subset of citizens has legal rights other citizens do not. The closest I can think of to what you asked for is actually the Baltics - not a citizen-subgroup distinction, but where there is a complex situation due to not having granted most non-ethnic residents at the time of independence automatic citizenship. Otherwise, we are primarily talking about symbolism in the legal documents and cultural norms in the population. Japan is pretty clearly an ethnic nation-state. Eastern European states were generally ethnic nation-states at the time of independence, but some are moving closer to civic nation-states now.
> Yes, I hold the "America is not a nation-state" perspective. I generally like the analysis by Bret Devereaux on this topic (https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-...), but if that's not convincing I don't have anything to argue this point on beyond my own experiences that "American" is a "civic group" but not a "national group". So, we'll just have to agree to disagree there.
But that's defining the word "nation" in a sense which deliberately skews it towards "ethnic nationalism" and away from "civic nationalism". If you are going to insist on defining it in that narrow way, then arguably France and Germany aren't "nation states" any more either, even though they used to be.
And while contemporary mainstream American self-definition is predominantly civic, 19th century Americans commonly viewed their nation in racial terms, as a state for the white race – so, if France and Germany have become "non-nation states" by transforming ethnic nationalism into civic nationalism, then in fundamentally the same way, America has become a "non-nation state" by transforming racial nationalism into civic nationalism
> No Western state, Israel included I am pretty sure, has in their constitution or equivalent that a subset of citizens has legal rights other citizens do not
Israel's constitution insists that all citizens are formally equal in the rights of citizenship, but at the same time officially relegates non-Jewish citizens to the symbolic status of "second class citizens" – what Western state has a constitution that does that? And, the reality on the ground is – there are complaints of real discrimination in practice against non-Jewish citizens of Israel, and unless you are going to argue that none of those complaints are valid, the idea that official symbolic discrimination in the constitution has no causal role to play in sustaining practical discrimination on the ground is rather implausible
> The closest I can think of to what you asked for is actually the Baltics - not a citizen-subgroup distinction, but where there is a complex situation due to not having granted most non-ethnic residents at the time of independence automatic citizenship
The Baltics do not have any legally recognised category of "citizens of the state but not members of the nation for whom it exists"; Israel does. The complex issue of long-term residents who lack citizenship you point to is real, but it isn't the same thing as what Israel does
> Japan is pretty clearly an ethnic nation-state
De jure, it isn't. Japanese law and court decisions are very clear: naturalised Japanese citizens are officially just as Japanese as anyone else. Membership in Japan's historical ethnic supermajority (the Yamato people) has no formal constitutional significance
Now, no denying the social reality that there is a lot of informal discrimination against non-Yamato Japanese citizens. But that social reality has no constitutional basis.
So you are comparing a state which officially declares in its constitution that some of its citizens are "not members of the nation for whom it exists", to a state whose constitution and laws never officially say that, even though it arguably remains a widespread informal belief/attitude amongst its population. Both de jure and de facto "second class citizenship" are bad, but there is an important sense in which the former is a lot worse
I do not use it as a slur, nor do I think Israel is an exception in this regard - China, Japan, Korea, Ukraine, Poland, Sudan, Finland, Egypt, are all effectively ethno-states. They may host a few minorities, but they are primarily vessels for the self-determination and preservation of their nations.
If you're not an ethno-nationalist, would you be okay with Jews becoming a minority in Israel? The usual retort is that you can't because all your neighbors hate you - but there's no requirement immigrants come from neighbor countries, as immigration to England, Germany, and France shows.
The answer is - no, I wouldn't want Jews being a minority in Israel; I think Jews need at least one homeland where they are a majority, especially given how Jews have been treated throughout history. But also, it's complicated, and really depends on how we get there.
France, US, England etc allow immigration. But all of them put caps and conditions on immigration. All of them also have fierce internal debates around the topic of immigration, because of the fear of a fundamental change in the character of the country.
And indeed, most "nations" have their own homeland. That's exactly what happened in the 19th and 20th century - a new nationalism was taking hold in the world, and many nations created a national homeland - hence the creation of so many countries in the 20th century.
The Zionist movement started because early Jewish leaders saw this phenomenon gaining traction, and understood that as these national identities were created and states started being created for them, many wouldn't consider Jews part of their "nationality", therefore Jews also needed a national homeland. This was, in retrospect, the exactly correct analysis, given the pogroms that happened in the 19th century and given the Holocaust.
Despite so many people claiming otherwise, there's not much different about Israel than many other European nations.
Nationalism could be seen as a "left" movement in the first place in that it often served as an ideology of revolution against the (imperial) powers that be. There have been many prominent leftist nationalist movements and parties, from Sinn Fein to the PKK.
"ethnonationalism" is a redundancy, ethne and natio are just the Greek and Latin words for the same concept
> I hope that, to whatever extent this is happening, it's not widespread, and anyone committing war crimes is very visibly and publicly tried in court.
Sorry but you’re either dishonest or totally delusional. Tens of thousands of children murdered, nobody even thinks of putting a stop on this, and you say « it’s not widespread ». What?
There has been so so many atrocities, even before Oct 7th committed by both the Israeli army and armed settlers in the West Bank. There is never, NEVER, anyone being held accountable. Snipers shoot kids on the beach? All good. Torture and rape in your prisons? Fine.
Dude, you should fix your society. You are simply heading towards your own destruction, morally, on the side of public sympathy, and merely as people capable of living with other people peacefully.
That would be too impractical. The fact of the matter is that the only effective way is basically how the GHF is doing it already. It's sad that the UN and western media are running with the pro hamas anti GHF narrative. They are giving hamas every incentive to disrupt aid distribution as much as possible. At the very least the shocking fact that UNWRA are against Gazans getting aid when it's not done through them exposes the lie that they care about palestinians.
The GHF undermines Hamas and UNWRA like nothing else has. It terrifies them and they are pulling all the propoganda stops to delegitimise them.
This Haaretz article is very troubling. To the extent it's accurate, there's not much question that it reflects war crimes.
A few thoughts:
1. The article itself says there is an ongoing investigation into some of these accusations. I hope that, to whatever extent this is happening, it's not widespread, and anyone committing war crimes is very visibly and publicly tried in court.
2. There is clearly something broken with the GHF and the new aid delivery - dozens dead every day for weeks. We really need some answers on what's going on.
3. From Haaretz today:
> The U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on Saturday urged Israel to investigate reports that soldiers opened fire towards unarmed Palestinians near aid distribution sites, detailed in a Haaretz expose, calling the allegations "too grave to ignore," while denying that any such incidents occurred within its facilities.
> GHF Interim Director John Acree stated, "There have been no incidents or fatalities at or in the immediate vicinity of any of our distribution sites."