The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete • Hacker News Board

Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#211

Post by bawolff » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 1:41 AM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #102

bawolff wrote: post #9

Dirupting enemy communications is a pretty standard goal of any army in a war. I'm more surprised it took this long.

When it happened in Iran the US opposed it: https://www.state.gov/joint-statement-on-internet-shutdowns-... Right now you can not call ambulances or firetrucks or anything. Not all 2M Palestinians in Gaza are combatants, but I think that some people consider them to be.

> When it happened in Iran the US opposed it: https://www.state.gov/joint-statement-on-internet-shutdowns-...

That's not comparable because that is not a military operation and there was no military advantage to the action.

> Right now you can not call ambulances or firetrucks or anything. Not all 2M Palestinians in Gaza are combatants, but I think that some people consider them to be.

I don't know what people think happens in a war, but generally innocents always pay the price. That's true in this conflict and it is true in literally every other conflict that has happened ever.

If only the guilty died in wars, we wouldn't say war is hell.

Generally from an international law perspective, the obligation is to ensure that civilian damage is porportional to military advantage. There is no obligation under the geneva convention to never do anything that could harm civilians, it just has to have enough of a military advantage to justify it (this is a gross over simplification)

Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#212

Post by culi » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 1:41 AM UTC

tradethedelta wrote: post #194

solarpunk wrote: post #61

how does Israel give evacuation warnings if Palestinian telcos are offline?

Total joke and misinformation that the IDF would call an entire building worth of people on their cellphones to warn them. Think about how difficult it is to do this accurately. And even if they had the technical capabilities to pinpoint cellphone users in a single building, how many are they calling? How many are answering? Total BS propaganda from the Israelis

Israel told a million people to evacuate. Literally impossible considering their blockade of any aid. Not only do Gazans know it's a trap and they'd likely be shot, but it's obviously a political excuse to pretend like they gave people a chance

Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#213

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 1:42 AM UTC

ovao wrote: post #174

enterprise_cog wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if Israel stopped killing Palestinians and normalized relations with Gaza? Israel could choose a different path.

Would you argue that the Hamas attack against Israeli non-military citizens on October 7th was an attempt by Palestinians to normalize relations?

Would it be asking too much for you to argue in good faith? That would stop the discussion from derailing. If you can't then maybe don't comment at all?

Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#214

Post by MisterBastahrd » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 1:43 AM UTC

djaro wrote: post #189

arp242 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, historically it's been fairly accurate and reliable. Does this guarantee they're accurate today? No. Do I blindly trust anything that's being said? No. But merely "it's Hamas, therefore the figures are false" also doesn't really cut it. See e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/26/can-we-trust-c...

A week ago, when Hamas dropped a rocket on THEIR OWN hospital, the "Health Ministry" said Israel killed 500 people. Despite it not being Israel, and it not killing 500 people. They are just straight up lying

What nonsense. You could sit 500 people directly on top of one of those Hamas rockets, detonate it, and it wouldn't kill 500 people. Those people are not dealing with state of the art military equipment.

Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#215

Post by culi » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 1:43 AM UTC

tachyons wrote: post #182

im3w1l wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm mourning their lives right now, but I have no idea what I could do about any of it.

Tell your senator to not use your taxes to fund a genocide.

Specifically, the US annually gives $3.8 billion in aid to the Israeli military. In the UN, the US has also utilized their veto power to overrule 34 different resolutions related to Israel/Palestine peace since 1954. This really is the US' creation in so many ways yet so few Americans know anything about the topic.

Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#216

Post by philistine » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 1:45 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #42

petertodd wrote: post #10

> Taking Gaza completely off the grid while launching an unprecedented bombardment campaign only means something atrocious is about to happen. A war is happening of course. Communications are critical to military operations, and Hamas has been happy to use civilian infrastructure for military purposes. Of course Israel is going to destroy it all. Sure, Hamas can still use older tech like radios. But that's a huge win…

If Hamas really relied on internet then they wouldn't have succeeded in the first place. What this will achieve: - information supremacy re. what goes out of Gaza - makes it harder for reporters to do their job - makes it impossible for the people who happen to live there to stay in touch with the rest of the world

If Hamas is getting info from Iran, it's possible there's a benefit here.

Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#217

Post by YZF » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 1:45 AM UTC

tachyons wrote: post #164

orionsbelt wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel has given repeated warnings for the north of Gaza to evacuate south for the past two weeks while Gaza has had internet. In addition, they have dropped leaflets all over the are stating the same thing.

Except it was just a an eyewash, people tried to move got killed on the way, people also got murdered in the so called safe areas by Israel.

Do you have a breakdown of how many civilian casualties were in the north vs. south? And how many were killed on the way?

Israel denies attacking anyone on the way. There was plenty of reporting showing people moving along the main arteries that were recommended and those look clear with no debris or any other evidence of attack. I'm aware of a single incident where it was claimed Israel attacked someone evacuating and this is still contested.

Israel has never said it will not attack in the south of the Gaza strip. It just said the bulk of its operation will be in the north. It explicitly said it would go after military targets in the south as well.

Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#218

Post by OfSanguineFire » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 1:46 AM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #122

petertodd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's estimated that Hamas has between 30,000 and 40,000 soldiers(1), which is about 6% to 8% of Gaza's entire adult male population. There's no way of getting around it: if Israel finishes the job of eradicating Hamas, a large percentage of the Gazan population will be killed or captured, purely because so many of them are actively involved in Hamas. Anyway, if Gazan citizens learn the lessons of their mistakes, they…

> Anyway, if Gazan citizens learn the lessons of their mistakes, they still have a future. Mistakes? To be clear, before I continue further: Hamas is a terrorist organization. Hamas also has a lot of support within Palestine. Now then, scenario 1) how, realistically, do you propose that the regular non-Hamas supporting Palestinian works to eradicate Hamas? Hamas have arms. (Let's not also forget how hard right Israel…

> how do you prevent legions of new Hamas supporters being 'born' every day?

Fully open the border with Egypt and provide documents usable internationally. Then many educated Gazans would happily leave for better opportunities elsewhere. It would make a dent large enough in Gazans’ demographics that Hamas would not longer be able to extract the same level of material support from the civilian population and camouflage its operations using that population.

Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#219

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 1:46 AM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #117

jacquesm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if Gazan citizens learn the lessons of their mistakes, they still have a future. What future would that be? The whole reason this conflict keeps going is because of faulty reasoning like this. Gazan citizens do not have a say in much of anything, they're either combatants, captives or hostages depending on what your perspective from outside Gaza is.

[flagged]

Hamas is as big as it is because there are a lot of people in Gaza who think that Hamas is their best chance of changing the situation. If it is as bad as it seems to be to me as an outsider then you have to understand that for someone with absolutely no future and nothing to lose living in what has been termed the worlds largest prison that a large fraction will end up being recruited. This is a reflection of the degree of hopelessness of the situation, not that Hamas is popular in any other way.

If - farfetched - Germany would occupy NL tomorrow and would bulldoze my house, kill one of my kids and settle a bunch of thoroughbred Germans on the former site of my house leaving me with no recourse I too would become a terrorist. When the extremists of what is on both sides a thinly veiled religious conflict refuse to give ground it will simply never end until the last one of them is dead on either side. And that's a horrific thing to contemplate.

Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#220

Post by solarpunk » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 1:47 AM UTC

petertodd wrote: post #198

solarpunk wrote: post #61

how does Israel give evacuation warnings if Palestinian telcos are offline?

They've been giving evacuation warnings for many days with both leaflets and the cell phone network: > Residents in Gaza reported that Israeli planes rained red leaflets on neighborhoods Saturday, urging residents to evacuate. Those with cell phones also received the message digitally, according to social media reports. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/21/idf-prepares-for-gr...

they're reduced to dropping leaflets at night?