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Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

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Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#491

Post by throwawaygmbno »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #375
GoatInGrey wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People didn't flip to red so much as blue voters in swing states sitting on their hands and abstaining from voting. Now they're looking down the barrel of authoritarianism and they're still unwilling to vote unless Gaza is a fully solved problem. The cruel irony is that this behavior is worsening the situation in Gaza.

Couldn't the Democrats change their positions so that they align with and accommodate popular positions and win elections. I don't think most of the (rather large block) of folks I know who abstained wanted a fully solved problem, they wanted the US to stop funding Israel and that is a position that the Democratic party could have taken if they had chosen to do so.

Black people have known for decades, you vote for the people that don't actively hate you.

Sitting out of the process does absolutely nothing, whether its a protest vote, pretending that politics don't affect you, or just giving up completely. The people who get elected in those situations always 100% ignore you.

When people are in office that are at least willing to listen, you then make a lot of noise and put on pressure. You might get ignored mostly, since you are a minority voting block, but you can make incremental gains and even sometimes big wins.

Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#494

Post by TheFreim »

revlolz wrote: post #462
nakamoto_damacy wrote: post #444

[flagged]

[flagged]

The Holocaust does not justify committing a genocide against another population. Some people having inaccurate, or even immoral, views about what occurred on October 7th does not justify genocide. The fact that Hamas engages in evil acts does not justify genocide perpetrated against innocents.

In short: Two wrongs do not make a right.

It is also worth noting that you are not portraying the matter fairly. You are transposing certain radical elements, i.e. those who actively defend Hamas, on to people who simply oppose the ethnic cleansing and genocide being perpetrated by Israel. I don't support Hamas, and I also don't support Israel.

Furthermore, you falsely assume that people are generally ignoring the evil actions perpetrated by Hamas, which is not the case. It is a false dichotomy to present the issue as supporting either Israel or Hamas. Hamas undeniably has engaged in terrorism, but that has no bearing on whether or not Israel is acting properly in response. The fact of the matter is that Israel hasn't merely been attacking Hamas targets that happen to also have civilians present, but rather that Israel is going beyond that to willfully engage in a near-indiscriminate extermination campaign against unjustifiable targets.

Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#495

Post by metalcrow »

throwawaygmbno wrote: post #491
scarecrowbob wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't the Democrats change their positions so that they align with and accommodate popular positions and win elections. I don't think most of the (rather large block) of folks I know who abstained wanted a fully solved problem, they wanted the US to stop funding Israel and that is a position that the Democratic party could have taken if they had chosen to do so.

Black people have known for decades, you vote for the people that don't actively hate you. Sitting out of the process does absolutely nothing, whether its a protest vote, pretending that politics don't affect you, or just giving up completely. The people who get elected in those situations always 100% ignore you. When people are in office that are at least willing to listen, you then make a lot of noise and put on pr…

what do you do if both sides actively hate you? voting for the lesser of the two evils seems to just guarantee evil forever, and they have no reason to listen to you if they know you'll always vote for them.

Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#496

Post by dlubarov »

sporkxrocket wrote: post #434
dlubarov wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we expect any desirable outcome in this hypothetical though? So the US flips, Israel is pressured into withdrawing, Hamas regains control of the strip and resumes rocket attacks, Israel is forced to respond eventually. It doesn't seem like a path toward a real solution.

The US and all other nations sanction Israel. If that doesn't work, military intervention. Israel will fall, it's just a matter of time.

What would you demand Israel do to be released from these hypothetical sanctions?

Military intervention meaning invade a nuclear power?

Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#497

Post by neom »

dang wrote: post #326
thegrim33 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the official HN guidelines, it states that "Most stories about politics" is off-topic , and "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic ". Is the Isreal/Gaza debate not political, and not mainstream news? How does a story like this not directly violate those guidelines? Furthermore, the guidelines state that stories should be what "good hackers" find "intellectually satisfying". A political deb…

Yes, but as pg once put it, "note those words most and probably" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426 ). That was in 2012, btw, which shows how far back HN's approach to this goes. That leaves open the question of which stories to treat as on topic, but the links in my GP comment go into detail about how we handle that. I'm not saying we always make the correct call about individual stories. There will neve…

fwiw I think y'all do a fine enough job of dealing with this difficult nuanced stance. I've noticed that when they stick around, it appears to be a combo of: this seems important enough, the community can probably have a civil conversation around this, people who don't participate will find learnings through the comments still. These 3 things always seem well satisfied, personally I appreciate the measured nature of this community and thank you and tom for the genuine work of trying to maintain the balances.

Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#498

Post by Invictus0 »

sirreal14 wrote: post #379
Invictus0 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally wrote "AI summary" at the top because I copy and pasted it from google. If there was a genocide there would be many more palestinians dead, full stop. There would not be evacuation zones, humanitarian corridors, leaflets, announced bombings, etc. It would be trivial to simply kill everyone in Gaza, it is very obviously within their power.

Israel is fully dependent on the support it receives from western governments, and it knows that support will vanish if it wages a loud open genocide and brags about it. So no, it's not trivially in their power to kill everyone in Gaza, as Israel would cease to exist if they did that.

...Hence why it is very obviously not waging a genocide.

Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#499

Post by Invictus0 »

jcranmer wrote: post #373
machina_ex_deus wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even according to Hamas own numbers, 60,000 Palestinians died, 200 from starvation. That's very low compared to real genocides. That's very low considering Israel killed an estimated 10,000 of Hamas soldiers. That's pretty good accuracy in all modern standards of war.

A 1:6 ratio for civilian deaths is not a good civilian casualty ratio by the standards of modern warfare. Russia in Ukraine is currently achieving a rate of about 1:3, and that's a country that's currently considered rather brutal as far as civilian casualty rates go. The US in the Iraq War managed urban operations with kill ratios better than 1:1.

Have you seen how small and remote the villages are where Russia and Ukraine are fighting? Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on earth and the fighters are not wearing uniforms and are directly embedded in civilian population centers.

Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#500

Post by const_cast »

zpeti wrote: post #93
leonixyz wrote: post #85

Hopefully we are at the beginning of a change, but I doubt this will come only from the UN. The UN is the only international democratic institution that - even with its many imperfections - prevents the world to fall into complete anarchy. It's quite telling that it gets ignored since so many years by the country that elevates itself as the world defender of democracy, the US. The UN has voted for decades for ending…

What people fail to understand about dynamics between countries, is ultimately there is no supreme court or arbiter of truth. The UN doesn't have authority over any powerful country (or non powerful country for that matter). People seem to have this concept that there is some supra national legal system, or even moral system that can hold a higher truth than what powerful countries want, but there isn't. When it come…

Its important to note that most of those "irrelevant" countries are only irrelevant because they're perpetually under the thumb of world powers. Hence why they petition the UN. And, hence why empires and somewhat-formally colonial nations ignore them.

Ultimately, a lot of the wealth of the West comes from core countries siphoning wealth from the periphery and propping up psueodo governments to place their thumbs on the scale of world politics. Exhibit A: Israel.

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