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‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

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Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#321

I see an increasing number of politicians taking the position: "I supported Israel's government's actions when they first attacked, given the goals of destroying Hamas' leadership and freeing hostages, but now that it has turned into a brutal siege with mass civilian casualties on a horrific scale, I'm strongly against their actions." E.g. Macron, Angus King, and many people I know personally. And I think we need to…

It's good to be honest about all the horrors going on in the world, not just when they're committed by jewish people (I'm not jewish btw). For example there are recents vids of syrian muslims going door to door in villages in Syria and asking people if they are muslims or of the Druze faith: those answering they're from the Druze faith are shot on the spot. This qualify as war crimes too to me. But you don't get to r…

> Why is that? How comes it's so selective?

The main reason is that Israel is materially supported by the West, so Westerners feel morally responsible for what it does.

It has little to do with whether the perpetrators are Jewish or not[1]. There were gigantic protests against the Iraq war, whose main perpetrators (e.g. Bush) were not Jewish.

1: I edited this from "nothing" to "little". I concede it might have something to do with anti-Semitism, because there is some non-zero group of people whose opposition to Israel is purely motivated by anti-Semitism, but I don't get the sense that they're the majority, at least among Westerners.

Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#322
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The downvotes and flagged comments in this post are clearly not "organic" FWIW the downvotes and flags in threads like this, including this thread, do seem largely organic to me, and well within the range of what one expects from a divisive and emotional topic. People often use words like "clearly" in making such descriptions (I don't mean to pick on you personally! countless users do this, from all sides of all is…

> a divisive and emotional topic. I strongly suspect that this "divisive" nature of the topic is precisely the illusion being created. That's exactly what I am challenging here. In my non-online life I've known many vaccine skeptics, climate skeptics, crypto enthusiasts, extreme right/left-wingers, people with complex view of trans issues, divisions on BLM topics, gun fanatics, gun abolitionists etc, etc. But the opi…

I live in Westchester County NY, quite possibly the living breathing heart of Reform Judaism in the US (outside the UES anyway). Plenty of genuine supporters of Israel here, even among the Gentiles. I try hard to avoid the topic even with friends. I don’t really want to hear a defense or denial of genocide.

Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#323
post #156

The UN definition is quoted here: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: - Killing members of the group; - Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; - Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction…

You can very easily reach the opposite conclusion too. See https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/im-a-war-scholar-there-is-no-gen...

Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#324
post #233

I see an increasing number of politicians taking the position: "I supported Israel's government's actions when they first attacked, given the goals of destroying Hamas' leadership and freeing hostages, but now that it has turned into a brutal siege with mass civilian casualties on a horrific scale, I'm strongly against their actions." E.g. Macron, Angus King, and many people I know personally. And I think we need to…

Pretty much my take. I thought Israel's actions were reasonable at first but out of hand now.

Israel's response was obvious as soon as the attack happened. "Oh, looks like they've got that excuse they've been wanting."

Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#326
post #117

[flagged]

The genocide is done in the name of the Zionist ideology, not Judaism, and Jewish people don‘t have to have any special opinion about it different from the rest of us. Zionists however have a lot to answer for, and they sure do need to find a lot of excuses if they want to keep their ideology.

If a Jewish person condemns the Gaza genocide, that just means they are human and follow the news and empathize with victims of horrible mass atrocities (like any normal person). However, if a Zionist (Jewish or not) condemns the Gaza genocide, while claiming to belief in the Zionist ideology, they are going to have to explain to me how on earth they can still call them self a Zionist during all these horrors.

Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#327
post #48

As someone who went to US high school in the 90s, a good 1/3 of our curriculum seemed to be "never again" studies of the holocaust and other genocides throughout history. Which makes it completely incomprehensible to me that suddenly "don't talk about genocide" has become the basically law. What's worse is I actually feel openly saying "I don't support this genocide and I'm critical of the state committing it" is a r…

> The downvotes and flagged comments in this post are clearly not "organic" FWIW the downvotes and flags in threads like this, including this thread, do seem largely organic to me, and well within the range of what one expects from a divisive and emotional topic. People often use words like "clearly" in making such descriptions (I don't mean to pick on you personally! countless users do this, from all sides of all is…

Over the past few months, I’ve been dejected to see a large number of articles that were politics-adjacent, but otherwise thoughtful and topical, get flagged and remain that way. The mods told us that HN is not supposed to be a news aggregator. Begrudgingly, I accepted the justification, since fostering intelligent discussion in a diverse community can be incredibly challenging.

So… why were the flags on the article covering Hulk Hogan’s (tech-irrelevant) death turned off? The article was flagged, then inexplicably came back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44672329

And it's not the first time I've seen this happen with various news fluff.

I’ll be frank: I’ve had faith in the mod team in the past, but the lack of consistency is becoming offensive to me. Celebrity gossip is OK, but not most things ICE or Musk related for example, even when there's direct involvement from SV elites? I'm finding it hard to see the throughline here. What am I missing?

Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#328
post #156

The UN definition is quoted here: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: - Killing members of the group; - Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; - Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction…

[flagged]

I would not debase myself by causing the starvation of children.

Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#329
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much my take. I thought Israel's actions were reasonable at first but out of hand now.

Israel's response was obvious as soon as the attack happened. "Oh, looks like they've got that excuse they've been wanting."

It's hard to describe to people who don't have family there, but this exactly. The goal is similar to American "manifest destiny". They want to, through whatever means necessary, displace (at best) the existing Palestinian population and take their land.

Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#330
post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no one really believes such stuff anymore. Israel really the invader according to UN and many other organization. see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci... and many other examples of how israel really ignored the internatinal law, the agreements it signed etc.

Um. The UN approved the original 1947 Partition Plan, which called for a Jewish State and an Arab state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_...

The UN General Assembly does not make legally binding decisions, they express majority opinions. Only the Security Council can make legally binding decisions. There is also the question whether the UN General Assembly even has the legitimation to suggest the partitioning of some land against the will of its population. There was an attempt to decide on this but that did not get the necessary votes. And even the partition plan was only accepted because several countries where pressured or incentivized to vote for it.
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