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'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

aljazeera.com

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Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#161

Post by leereeves »

pgeorgi wrote: post #121
cassepipe wrote: post #56

Those 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. It has to happen in the same time as the agression There are still rockets flying out of Gaza into Israel. > 2. Its only purpose is to defend against the agression The people sending those rockets are in Gaza, so to stop them, Israel has to go there. > 3. The defense has to be proportionate That one is regularly the most difficult point of contention in individual self-defense. Hamas essentially goes by this pla…

> what should be done about the guy holding a loaded gun at his hostage's head while covering himself in babys?

It's a difficult situation, but I doubt the answer would be to shoot the guy and two babies, which is analogous to Israel's response, if you believe their claim that 1/3 of the people they've killed were Hamas.

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#162

Post by bushbaba »

LtWorf wrote: post #146
lossolo wrote: post #54

Israel has also been imposing apartheid on Palestinians for years, a fact that high-ranking officials themselves admit [1][2], and which human rights reports confirm[3]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/06/israel-imposin... [2] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-08-13/ty-article/ex... [3] https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra...

It seems that in Israel there are (very small) quotas for non jewish people to be admitted at university. I've met muslim israeli who have learnt italian to go to study medicine in italy (where there is a notoriously extremely difficult entrance exam) because all of this was easier than going to a local university.

Source in that?

Here’s a source countering https://www.timesofisrael.com/number-of-arab-students-in-isr...

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#163

Post by ido »

dang wrote: post #120
ido wrote: post #48

Earlier 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…

I have not lived in Israel for most of the last 20 years, but I do have family and friends there. I also know plenty of both Israelis and Palestinians moderates, but they are unfortunately the small minority on both sides.

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#164

Post by liorsbg »

lossolo wrote: post #135
tomp wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: 1. the aggression is still happening, Hamas is still launching rockets into Israel, so I'd personally say this is Israel defending itself

They have been firing rockets for decades. They killed 28 people over 20 years with 20k+ rockets[1]. Israel killed 17 000 people in two months. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_...

This doesn't make it OK.

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#165

Post by nicoburns »

iddan wrote: post #136

[flagged]

Other wars are discussed. There have been threads on Russia vs. Ukraine in recent months.

Perhaps Israel look bad in the press because they are acting badly. It seems to me that Israel are unambiguously the stronger power in this conflict: they have are much stronger military, and additionally have the backing of the US and a bunch of other nations that would step in were Israeli territory under threat. And they are using that power to aggressively attack the weaker power in the conflict with little regard for civilian casualties (“collateral damage”) or proportionality of response.

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#166

Post by thefaux »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #108

[flagged]

Hitchens was brilliant but also seemingly rather unselfconscious of how his atheistic zealotry mirrored the religious dogmatism that he constantly railed against. This is the paradox of religious criticism: the more you accuse of others of ignorant dogmatism, the more you become exactly what you accuse the other of.

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#167

Post by ido »

stoorafa wrote: post #158
dang wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You’ve been in touch with Palestinians use HN? Not to seem one-sided, I didn’t realize Gazans had sufficient internet access, let alone food or water, to browse HN.

I've been in contact with Palestinians, you may be aware of millions of them living abroad (same as Israelis, like myself) and millions more living in the west bank (the total Palestinian population world-wide numbers 14.3 million, Gaza only houses 2.3M). You don't have to be on ground zero in Gaza to be a Palestinian.

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#168

Post by hef19898 »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #151
hef19898 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Zionist project began long before WW2 (and before WW1)

Not sure what that has to do with it. The current conflict between Palsetinians and Israel roots back to the foubdation of Israel as a state after WW2. Which I get, jews came pretty close to extinction, and arguably not a lot of people actually cared about that. Hence the need for a state of their own.

80 years and a bunch of wars, insurgencies, counter-insurgencies, terror and air campaigns later, interseded with a handful of peace initiatives, the situation is truely FUBAR. I am not convinced so that leveling Gaza actually does a lot to solve that problem.

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#169

Post by lornemalvo »

ardit33 wrote: post #50
ameminator wrote: post #9

Earlier 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.

[flagged]

Do you really think that the Russo-Ukrainian war has 10x LESS civilian fatalities than the current Gaza war?

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#170

Post by edanm »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #85
ido wrote: post #48

Earlier 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?

I'll be a bit more pessimistic than others here. Netanyahu knows that elections won't go favorably for him, but he's very smart and has survived this long - and he's still in charge; he'll be putting a lot of effort towards fending off early elections, certainly until he can show some win for Israel here (not that I think it's possible at this point).

We're also in a situation where he knows that dragging out the war might be the best strategy for him personally, which worries me greatly.

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