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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]

#481

Post by frahs »

School-Cotton wrote: post #340
bamboozled wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

In the West Bank, whose Palestinian population is administered by an organization that fully collaborates with the Israeli occupation and does not engage in armed struggle, Israeli repression continues unabated (statelessness, restriction on freedom of movement, expansion of Jewish-only colonial settlements, arbitrary detention under Israeli military law, etc.) Sure, maybe if Hamas surrendered there wouldn’t be a blo…

Ah yes, the west bank, where they have a leader who's graduate thesis is in holocaust denial[0] and where they incentivize murdering innocent civilians[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Abbas [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_Martyrs_...

Until these things lose popular support among the west bank, I don't have a ton of sympathy. Yes we can get into tracing back the chain of causation -- these people grew up in an echo chamber and they had no outside source of information, and Israeli soldiers likely killed family members of theirs unfairly when they were little, so of course they're going to say things like Death to Israel [2] and have a countdown timer until when they want to genocide the entire country [3]

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_Israel [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Square_Countdown_Clo...

(These examples actually stem from Iran, where most of the funding for Hamas comes from)

But don't you think it's a little unfair to only defend one side with fatalistic determinism? Israelis are treated as humans who are making horrible decisions. Mahmoud Abbas is treated as a poor innocent bystander who is just the product of his environment, so of course he's going to think those things. I think he's a human too, and he has made very bad decisions too.

Somehow western people always forget this stuff, but luckily the religious fanatics just love to do religious fanatical things, so it makes it easy to point to examples.

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

#482

Post by protocolture »

YZF wrote: post #446
mjevans wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These terrorists, yield? Already faulty logic. Their proclaimed goals and historic record show that will never happen and their budget for violence knows no limit. It's as tough as desalinating water, but removing the civilians from the terrorists must happen. Otherwise the result will either be genocide of the 'salt water', or of the 'plants' the salt in that water is bent on destroying. What is an acceptable plan f…

I'll give you my honest opinion here and a criticism of Israeli government all at once. Israel should have moved the Palestinians civilians into Israel proper, e.g. the Negev. It should have created refugee camps for them there and provided them with all the support/aid while it went after Hamas. They'd be able to filter the people going in, make them surrender their weapons etc. No tunnels, no weapons caches, etc. I…

>I'll give you my honest opinion here and a criticism of Israeli government all at once. Israel should have moved the Palestinians civilians into Israel proper, e.g. the Negev. It should have created refugee camps for them there and provided them with all the support/aid while it went after Hamas. They'd be able to filter the people going in, make them surrender their weapons etc. No tunnels, no weapons caches, etc.

It should have simply returned the refugees to their land. But then they wouldnt be stateless individuals, they would have (minimal, as second class subjects) rights, and present a greater challenge to settlement like those in the west bank. Ultimately this is a settlement project, and distracting from that, and the right of those refugees in gaza to return to their land, is the ultimate point of the conflict.

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

#483

Post by jibal »

bamboozled wrote: post #335
School-Cotton wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel has been blockading the Gaza Strip by air and sea for 18 years. The Gaza Strip is, as far as I know, the only place in the world whose fishermen can't fish in the full extent of its territorial waters. This has been true since way before Oct. 7th 2023.

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

#484

Post by webstrand »

asddubs wrote: post #454
carefulfungi wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what does winning actually look like today? Sure. Run against these people and support their political opposition in the next election. But take the win on the short term and get food to Gaza.

it's worth noting that joe biden lied about trying to get a ceasefire, as we now know. So it's worth being skeptical, though of course I agree that ultimately what matters are results.

Do you have a source for your claim? The Biden administration did present a ceasefire plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Gaza_war_ceasefire>. If not that, then I don't know enough about the situation to find what you're referring to.

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

#485

Post by Scramblejams »

dang wrote: post #439
hughlomas wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect, allowing political posts that clearly violate the HN guidelines will normalize such posts, incentivize them in the future due to karma, and attract the type of people that want to soapbox to the community.

This post doesn't violate the site guidelines, nor does having it on HN's frontpage. There's long precedent here, going back at least to 2008 ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 ). Here's a memorable (to me at least) case from 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426 . If you want to understand how we think about and approach moderation of political stories on HN, probably the best set of explan…

I guess with polarizing topics it comes down to the ratio of "intellectually interesting" (quote from your first link) comments, and those that engage with them in good faith, versus all the yelling and condemnation, right? And there's some fuzzy line that you want the thread to stay on one side of.

I will freely admit my view may be too dismissive and that I should change my ways, but these kinds of threads almost never feel to me like the juice is worth the squeeze. In other words, that ratio I mentioned seems out of whack. Too many good-faith comments that don't go with the thread mainstream get flagged and dead, not enough people vouch for 'em (I'm sometimes guilty of that), and the amount of invective and judgment they're met with just seems to depend on how fast they got downvoted or flagged to oblivion.

I realize I'm shouting into the wind, and you have no obligation to change any of this for me. But I really do not see how this sort of thing is good for the site long-term. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there's a certain set that needs to scream about something every month or they start vandalizing less controversial threads and it's net positive to let them have their moment. Maybe I'll go write something that auto-hides threads for me when there's been a certain proportion of flagging and downvoting.

Anyway, you've got a tough job and do it with grace. No reply necessary, but thanks for all you do.

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

#486

Post by cypherpunks01 »

actionfromafar wrote: post #455
LorenPechtel wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because UNRWA gives the aid to Hamas, no fighting. GHF doesn't give Hamas power, Hamas attacks the GHF, Hamas shoots people trying to pick up food.

What is your argument? That if Hamas could eat, nobody can?

I think the most common string of arguments is that Hamas steals all the food being brought into Gaza, causing extreme food scarcity. Then Hamas corners the market on all food, raises food prices with its monopoly, and extracts big profits from the rest of the Gaza population. The claim, in conclusion, is that well-intentioned aid organizations bringing food into Gaza to feed starving people are actually funding Hamas.

The argument has proven totally wrong, because as every single humanitarian organization that operates in Gaza has repeatedly warned in recent months, famine conditions are the direct result of Israel generally disallowing food and other aid into Gaza since March. Had Hamas actually diverted billions of dollars into their food storage tunnels, then logically they would've continued selling it at market price when demand is high now. But actually in reality, there's nothing to buy. [1]

The market solution to prevent Hamas from profiting off food is to first allow in enough food to Gaza such that babies are no longer starving to death, and to then bring in so much food supply that prices decrease until it's no longer economically profitable to resell food, because it's widely available. That solution is never brought up for some reason.

[1] ‘There is nothing to buy’: Gaza’s descent into mass starvation https://www.ft.com/content/e5d7bcbb-4c9d-47b8-b716-6bd58ad57...

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

#487

Post by protocolture »

FabHK wrote: post #467
churchill wrote: post #3

Does anyone still need testimonies like these to be convinced that Israel is systematically exterminating the Palestinians using kinetic force and starvation? We're past that point now. Making Gaza unlivable by carpet-bombing the strip, telegraphing mass murder in unambiguous statements at the highest levels of government, dehumanizing the Palestinians and silencing anyone who dares to speak up? I, for one, am thankf…

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>About 2.5% of the inhabitants of Gaza have been killed in the ongoing war, constituting fewer than 0.5% of Palestinians worldwide.

My understanding is that the agencies in Gaza have not only lost their ability to tally the dead, but have not been tracking deaths where a corpse has not been located.

Not to mention that this is the tail end of a long process that began with the Nakba. The fact that theres a remnant refugee population that has been removed from their land and isolated to a small stateless fragment, is already in meeting with definitions of genocide. Bombing that remnant into the dust is underlining the issue.

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

#488

Post by lazyasciiart »

maroonblazer wrote: post #333
giraffe_lady wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was clear to me and many other people from the first days after oct 7 that the actions taken by israel in gaza did not align with their stated goals, and that genocide was the likely outcome. I hope people changing their view of it now will reflect on at what point they could have seen that, and what prevented them from seeing it, and what prevented them from taking seriously the people who did see it. Does everyo…

Israel didn't take any actions until Oct 13. What actions 'from the first days' are you referring to?

Israel was launching air strikes before noon on October 7, killing hundreds of people with those strikes that day alone. Israeli news reports on Sunday morning variously mentioned 800 strikes and more than 16 tons of munitions dropped on the Gaza Strip. https://www.timesofisrael.com/we-are-at-war-netanyahu-says-a...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/08/israel-gaza-ha...

On October 8 they cut all imports to Gaza, and cut off the electricity and gas supplies to the entire civilian population. That was probably a war crime by itself, as collective punishment. Palestinian hospitals reported being overwhelmed by Sunday morning. Netanyahu said civilians should all leave Gaza - without opening any exits - and promised to inflict an unprecedented price in response to the attacks.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/08/middleeast/israel-gaza-attack...

What on earth does “no actions” mean to you!?!?

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

#489

Post by protocolture »

dismalaf wrote: post #79

Criticizing Israel is in vogue but what's the solution? Gazans still hold Israeli hostages, Hamas has publicly stated that more civilian deaths helps their cause [1], they're still fighting, the UN refused to distribute aid because they were getting attacked [2], and Israel unilaterally pulling out of Gaza and leaving them to govern themselves is literally what led to October 7th... 1 - https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/11…

>Criticizing Israel is in vogue but what's the solution?

Return the refugees to their land and disband the settlements (west bank too). Cash payouts for palestinian refugees to rebuild their homes whether returned to previously occupied lands or just needing to rebuild gaza itself.

After reintegrating the civilian population they can go on an anti hamas witch hunt. And Hamas can be put on trial at the hague next to bibi and gvir. Easy.

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

#490

Post by tayo42 »

ajb wrote: post #426
dismalaf wrote: post #79

Criticizing Israel is in vogue but what's the solution? Gazans still hold Israeli hostages, Hamas has publicly stated that more civilian deaths helps their cause [1], they're still fighting, the UN refused to distribute aid because they were getting attacked [2], and Israel unilaterally pulling out of Gaza and leaving them to govern themselves is literally what led to October 7th... 1 - https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/11…

This is actually a valid question*, although you probably won't like the answer. One side will concede in a war if there are no gains to be had, and conceding will stem the losses. So at a minimum, the side that wants a victorious peace has to credibly promise not to kill the women and children of the other side. At the moment, Israel is unable to credibly promise that, and it's difficult to see how in the short term…

Why? It would be terrible politically for Israel to keep attacking Palestine if Palestine and hamas agreed to peace. All of the ambiguity of right and wrong would be gone.
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