Earlier quoted context omitted.
Israel's response tends to stem from a history of oppression which is where it gets touchy. Jewish have not exactly been treated well for most of the 20th century. Not saying that is a reason to invoke that upon someone else, but it tends to be where most thoughts come from. A sense of if we don't do something we'll lose "our" home.
That explains what happened in 50s and 60s. Leveling Gaza in 2023 doesn't fall in that category, Hamas never had the power to do anything about Israel's existence as a state.
'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
#152Taken in isolation there is nothing wrong with this type of reporting, the IDF should be held to high standards. In the context of the Israeli/Palestine conflict, there is a tendency to hold Israel to a much higher standard and excuse the Palestine side as if they were naive children. I don't see how that could possibly set up any lasting peace. Israel will become more deaf to outsiders, and Palestinians will not be…
Similarly, it was awful, but not really surprising when the Taliban were torturing people but it was a shock when the US troops in Afghanistan did so.
This isn't an excuse or justification for Hamas. But indeed I think our expectations of Israel should be higher.
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
In your opinion what are the chances of having an early election to replace Netanyahu? AFAICT it requires a non-confidence vote in the Knesset, but how likely do you think this could happen?
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#154I 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.
Yes, you're of course right—and at the same time, if I ask myself how to follow HN's core principle [1] in relation to this topic, I can't see "don't touch it at all" as right either. It may be an impossible quandary—but it's not in the spirit of this place to take an easy way out; or to put it differently, the easy way out (if one exists) is not in the spirit of this place. What does "curiosity" mean in a context li…
There is real harm in spreading this information. As you may or may not know, mobs and individuals around the world are fed such false narratives that demonize Israelis/Jews. Combine this with either mental illness or religious fundamentalism and you get the kinds of lynching, hateful speech, violence threats, etc. against Israelis/Jews and sympathizers.
Is whatever "intellectual curiosity" you think you're promoting with this piece worth the health and lives of innocent people?
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#155Those 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.…
1. This is warfare, not civil law. Hamas, which is the sovereign in Gaza (there has been no Israeli military presence there for years), commited an act of war in which hundreds were killed, raped, and kidnapped. Israel, as a state, has the moral duty to fight back and make sure this never happens again. Otherwise, it breaks the most basic contract between citizen and state ("I give up on violence and in turn you protect me from violence").
2. The aggressors (both in the field and leadership) are still largely out there, and holding kidnapped civilians and soldiers. They don't get a pass just because the "aggression is over" (whatever that means, rockets are still being fired indiscriminately at Israeli cities and towns, which is a war crime by the way...)
3. The responsibility for the safety of the Gazan civilians is that of Hamas since, again, they are the sovereign in Gaza. We shouldn't absolve them of responsibility for picking a fight with a better armed opponent. The defense does not have to be proportionate since that would mean Israel cannot use it's Tanks, warplanes, etc. To imply that Israel should fight with it's hands tied behind its back is ridiculous since war is not fair. There are some international laws intended to reduce the suffering of those that are uninvolved. For example, what does have to be proportionate is the harm caused to civilians when attacking a military target on a case by case basis, to the best of your knowledge (note that, according to international law, the target can in fact be a hospital/school/etc if it's used for military purposes).
Finally, an honest question, what would you do? How would you respond in this situation?
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#156All: 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…
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you provide examples where they've been debunked?
Where it crystalized for me was watching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ahli_Arab_Hospital_explosio... as it happened live. The AJ coverage: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/10/16/israel-ha... From reading the AJ coverage, you would believe that Israel bombed a hospital and killed hundreds. An inexcusable atrocity, obviously, if it were true. But on Wikipedia, you can see the actual impact of the bombin…
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/19/what-hit-ahli-hosp...
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 conflic…
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#159The 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...
Name a conflict or intervention by the US in that region that has made use of US assets based in Israel. Hint: there aren't any. We instead use assets in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, etc. Using anything based in Israel would cause more problems than would be solved. Israel isn't really an asset to the US, it is more of a liability that we tolerate.
We give them aid to prevent another attempt at conquest by neighbors. The other prong of that fork is that we also pay Egypt (check out the list of top US aid recipients over the last few decades) to keep them out of any war-coalition of Israel’s neighbors, significantly reducing any such move’s likelihood of success.
Why we do that, I’m not sure. I’ve not dug enough into the situation to have a solid answer. Anyone can think of some, but I’m not sure what the actual reasons are. I don’t think it’s anything like “to buy a base in the Levant” though.
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#160I have reached a point where I question and doubt any news that comes out of this conflict. Both sides and their proxies are waging massive propaganda campaigns. I only feel contempt for the leaders on both sides, and pity for all the regular people caught in the carnage. But of course, their suffering will be fodder for yet more propaganda…