Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

aljazeera.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 1001 posts

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

#341

Post by kevingadd »

megaman821 wrote: post #119
forty wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Israel has a proven ability to do precision strikes on apartment buildings that would basically only target the terrorist - we've seen them do this - but they choose to level entire buildings instead. You can probably figure out why they choose that option.

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

#342

Post by EvgeniyZh »

qwertthrowway wrote: post #210
nahumfarchi wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think that is a reasonable take at all. 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 an…

I think an honest answer would be to end occupation and oppression of the Palestinians by Israel. Any occupying force has an interest to silence and stop indigenous people from claiming their land rights. For example, Gaza had been described as an open air prison for almost 2 decades because its borders, imports, sea usage, had all been controlled by Israel. This is not what we call “sovereign rule”. The West Bank ha…

Gaza has border with Egypt not controlled by Israel. In fact, ~150k people left Gaza in 2022, and numbers from 2023 are of similar scale [1]. I wouldn't call it a prison

[1] https://twitter.com/Aizenberg55/status/1665745935589076992

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

#343

Post by tgv »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #220
lornemalvo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Framing it as some kind of "(post-)colonial" conflict inevitably leads to skewing/biasing the whole analysis and is theoretically flawed.

Generalized bias aside, is the UN similarly biased specifically in officially classifying Israel as a (colonial) occupying force and the Palestinian population as refugee?

I'm not going to defend Israel's actions of the last weeks, but

Israel cannot be called a colonizer. That's stretching the meaning of the word too far, only for demagogic effect.

And yes, the UN are biased. The number of resolutions against Israel is absurd. From wikipedia: "Since the UNHRC's creation in 2006, it has resolved almost as many resolutions condemning Israel alone than on issues for the rest of the world combined." I don't think any Israeli loses sleep over UN resolutions, nor does it give any Palestinian hope.

Hamas cannot win the conflict with Israel, at least not in the foreseeable future. So they'll keep suppressing Palestinians (because they've got quite a tyrannic regime in Gaza), and do stupid things against Israel. Which then retaliates, and has also taken it as an excuse for other policies.

That cycle is not broken by some contorted, meaningless analysis using fashionable terminology. It will only make enemies in both camps. In a recent interview, John Gray said (about climate change, but it fits here too): "I think that’s the politics of narcissism: “I want to feel good.” But in the meantime, you’re wasting resources and you’re wasting time."

This conflict needs actions by a party with enough power to provoke a change on both sides. Ok, that's my bedside analysis, but the politically correct name calling (colonizer, fascist, terrorist) only widens the divide.

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

#344

Post by edanm »

shihab wrote: post #329
nahumfarchi wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think that is a reasonable take at all. 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 an…

Israel absolutely has the right to fight Hamas. But on the question of whether it's really defense vs avenge on entire population, I urge you to go through recent nytimes article titled "Gaza After Nine Weeks of War" with an open mind [1]. Entire neighborhoods has been bombed to rubbles, parks and roads have been bulldozed. Every single civilian structures, hotels, homes, playgrounds, port- on a large stretch beside…

Every time somebody says this, I always ask the same question - what is the alternative? What should Israel do instead?

This is war. War is horrible and tragic, and far more so because Hamas hides within civilian buildings and used human shields.

What should Israel do instead to protect itself and to fight Hamas?

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

#345

Post by mistermann »

ameminator wrote: post #310
mistermann wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I no longer believe it is possible to have any thread about this remain civil. I bet almost no one in this thread is able to juggle three balls either, even though learning how to do so doesn't take all that much practice. But it does take some practice. Should we be surprised when people are unable to do something that requires practice and education , when they lack both?

I (and many other users of this forum) have expectations on the minimum quality of discourse. Moreover, I am happy this forum exists with its quality of discussion. I am interested in preserving this high level of civilized interactions. Time and time again, when it comes to the subject of Israel and Palestine, it has been shown that the discourse never meets the minimum standards I usually enjoy here. To the point w…

> I am interested in preserving this high level of civilized interactions.

Are you opposed in principle to even higher levels?

> Time and time again, when it comes to the subject of Israel and Palestine, it has been shown that the discourse never meets the minimum standards I usually enjoy here. To the point where I am not sure if it's even theoretically possible.

How much compute did you apply to the proposition, and what set of algorithms are you personally working with?

> To use your metaphor - if this were a forum about juggling, I would generally expect people to have an honest interest in juggling, and to have discussions about juggling.

Agreed. This site is, to some degree, about systems and programming, which involves analysis and logic. I would therefore expect that people would at least have at least some interest in the exercise of sound analysis and logic....and yet, as you note, on certain topics our normal standards within this system (HN forums) cannot be met. Is this not a rather curious phenomenon? Do you believe that it is perhaps worthy of some analysis (especially considering lives are literally in the balance)?

> If every discussion about curling, on my juggling forum, devolved into abuse - it would be reasonable to avoid discussing curling (at a certain point).

A problem: that which can be "reasoned" is not necessarily true.

Another problem: sometimes action (and inaction) has deadly consequences. If it was you living in Israel or Gaza, do you think you would be advising complacency and disinterest on this matter?

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

#346

Post by dang »

bitcurious wrote: post #307
dang wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users usually flag them, but yes, moderators often downweight them too—and then there are times that we turn off the flags. The answer to your question goes like this: (1) some stories with political overlap are on topic (see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... (2) we try to be careful about which those are, so the site doesn't go down in flames; (3) I think it follows from HN's core princ…

I got the impression that stories about the Ukraine/Russia was have been consistently suppressed, including stories about the tech side of the war - drones, hacking, etc. Is this impression mistaken?

It was similar. Users flagged many posts, and we applied the same principles as I've described in this thread, as best we could. That involved turning off flags on certain stories. Unfortunately, the threads did not go well.

That experience is one reason why I'm taking a different approach in the current thread. We're trying to learn over time how to support some discussion (but not too much) of these difficult topics, while remaining within the intended spirit of the site.

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

#347

Post by tmnvix »

dang wrote: post #2

All: 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'…

I appreciate the willingness of HN to allow discussion on this topic.

Despite the inevitable low-quality or even overly-biased comments, I find the comments from both sides of the discussion to be generally informative and thoughtful. Certainly more-so than in any other online context that I'm aware of. I come here to learn and reading opinions that I haven't considered before is essentially how that works (especially when those opinions are well founded and backed up with sources).

In short, I find HN to be a relatively knowledgeable and thoughtful community and I appreciate the opportunity to hear this community's thoughts on what is a very important and complex topic.

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

#348

Post by 4gotunameagain »

psipisi wrote: post #246
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…

[flagged]

This is silly, and it reduces women to beings without agency. It is a cultural thing, and sex has nothing to do with it. One could even argue that it is women who raise those boys like that (which is of course not correct).

It is the dominator culture, which feminism until the third wave was trying to abolish. Fourth wave feminism is a product of it.

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

#349

Post by kif »

anovick wrote: post #180
hiddencost wrote: post #70

My political awareness was forged by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the American response. The core lesson: the point of a terrorist attack is to trigger an over reaction. America wildly over reacted and became fundamentally hostile to Arab and Muslim people. This reaction led to some of the most successful recruiting of radicals in generations. Israel's response to this crisis seems to have failed to learn from that…

One big difference: Israel lives by the border of Gaza, right next to the terrorists that forged the October 7th attack. Meanwhile, the US had no border with the belligerent terrorist organization's societies (Iraq, Syria, ME). Would the US allow a terrorist organization that both DECLARES, has CAPABILITIES to, and HAS DEMONSTRATED INTENT to harm its citizens to live by its borders, and threaten with continued assaul…

The US does have a history of helping fund terrorist organizations, just like Netanyahu has helped fund Hamas.
Post reply on HN