The more I read about war the shittier it gets. This sounds like a lot of the others.
I keep reading about wars, though. It seems more dangerous to look away.
'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
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Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Why is Israel’s reaction worse? They seem to be reacting to an unprovoked attack by an openly genocidal neighbor with a pretty big-standard conventional war to eliminate the problem regime. I’m not saying that Israel couldn’t be more mindful of optics or civilian casualties, but how is this war not justified?
That's interesting. Do you have any thoughts on Nakba-denialism?
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
There aren't any that would have access to Gaza. If you are reporting from the Palestinian side, much of your data/facts are going to come straight from Hamas spokespeople. If you report from the Israeli side, its going to be IDF spokespeople. The fog of war prevents anything but propaganda from coming out of this conflict.
Note that it is Israel which prohibits international press from accessing Gaza - they monitor the Rafah crossing and have prohibited any journalists from contacting Palestinians via any means available or releasing reporting without going through Israeli censors first. And that there are civilian journalists on the ground who are certainly not “all hamas”
Here is an article with a bit more detail on the subject:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/12/hugely-frustra...
It seems like Israel has closed some border crossings to journalists, and Egypt has done the same on their side.
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#114Meanwhile, Egypt seems to get a free pass, minimal criticism for keeping its border locked down while being adjacent to a terrible conflict? They could at least let the most vulnerable/sick/injured flee.
Egypt prefers dead Palestinians within Gaza over Palestinians living elsewhere and Israel, maybe, controlling the Gaza strip.
Al-Sisi, as reported in https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2023/10/12/Ga...:
> But the case of Gazans “is different”, he said, because their displacement would mean “the elimination of the (Palestinian) cause.”
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#115I honestly don't think this subject should be on here. I don't think it's possible for a coherent or respectful or even useful conversation to happen here. I haven't seen any conversation about this topic that hadn't gone to hell.
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There are so few places to talk about it because one side always has a higher footing then the other. There does not exist a place where both sides are taken at 50/50, that doesn't exist for anything politically motivated. So what you get is people who tend to be around the middle, accepting that both sides are at fault. And then you get the extremist views, and those get comments so they jet up to the top.
HackerNews is proportionally North American, so you tend to get larger view set from English speaking North Americans. And non-English articles are largely ignored. And neither of these two populations speak English as their first language. So limiting yourself to English limits your view to English speaking view.
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#116The only take that made any sense to me about what's going on there - https://michael-hudson.com/2023/11/israel-as-a-landed-aircra...
That may have made sense once, but we have landed carriers all throughout the ME since before the Gulf Wars. Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman. KSA, Kuwait, Iraq and Diego Garcia as needed. We're not going to ever use an Israeli base to attack Iran so unsure what purpose it serves tactically or strategically. Turkey/KSA are happy to support our projects in Syria.
These facilities are huge, each capable of supporting squadrons of US aircraft.
https://www.americansecurityproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2...
Not even complete. Cairo West isn't on there. https://www.google.com/maps/@30.116667,30.916667,5961m/data=...
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience, the "benefit of the doubt" has been lost in relation to this subject. I no longer believe it is possible to have any thread about this remain civil. It's tragic and a tragic subject, although I dispute the "there couldn't be a more significant current event" - lots of events are equally (or more) significant and relevant. I hope to be proven wrong, but I have doubts.
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I'll let your comment speak for itself.
We did give lots of aid to Ukraine and we somehow were able to have discussions about whether we should continue to do so, in a relatively civilized manner. [0]
Somehow, when it comes to Israel and/or Palestine, all nuance gets lost, my "side" is "right", and the other "side" is an unholy abomination, morally disgusting or some other thing without room for earnest discussion.
I'll let the rest of this thread speak for itself.
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#118Meanwhile, Egypt seems to get a free pass, minimal criticism for keeping its border locked down while being adjacent to a terrible conflict? They could at least let the most vulnerable/sick/injured flee.
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Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#119Those are the most serious allegations: "The men and teenage boys were taken to a warehouse where they sat on a bare floor covered in scattered grains of rice. There they were beaten, interrogated and verbally abused. There was no sleep, and the grains of rice cut their skin as they sat there, undressed." A man claims: "Some people didn’t return from the torture sessions. We would hear their screams and then nothing.…
Isn't defense also supposed to be targeted against an aggressor? How could the millions of innocent civilians that Israel is displacing, destroying all their houses and belongings and killing (and maybe torturing as described in this article), be considered in any way as aggressor? if a terrorist hid in an appartement building, and the police came, start killing all the inhabitants of the building and destroyed the b…
What if that terrorist was launching rockets from that apartment? Would it be justified then? These things aren't black-and-white. I don't want to be the person who says how much collateral damage is okay.
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#120All: if you're going to comment in this thread, please do not do so in the spirit of battle. The latter is off topic here, and the last thread HN had about this did not do well enough at keeping to the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . Instead, ask first whether you can find a place of compassion in yourself before commenting. If you can't, that's understandable, but then please don'…
Thank you, Dang. As someone on the Israeli left I feel like I'm between a rock and a hard place- I do not condone Netanyahu and his government and am indeed very critical of Israeli governments of the past decades. But on the other side, my 78 year old mother is fleeing to shelter every couple hours as my hometown (not anywhere near the west bank or the Gaza strip) gets hit by rockets, as do my young nieces and nephe…
I've been in touch with several Israeli HNers who are in much the same position as you describe, and I admire their, and your, capacity to stay open despite being under orders of magnitude more pressure than most of us here. This is the spirit I'm asking for commenters to find in themselves before posting.
(Edit: Lest this seem like an expression of bias: I've been in touch with HNers on the other side of the conflict as well and can say similar things about them.)