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Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

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Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#411

Post by kaba0 »

eropple wrote: post #347
mschuster91 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The framing of Gazans as a whole as "Hamas's people" is at best problematic I fully agree with you on everything you said. Doesn't change the fact though that the blame for all the Palestinian casualties cannot be laid on Israel, not even by international law - as Hamas, the (more or less) legitimate government of Gaza, abused civilian infrastructure, they stripped it from the legal protection against military acti…

Look, I am both ideologically and morally more aligned with Israel (or the pre-Otzma-Yehudit-getting-an-ounce-of-power Israel anyway) than I ever could be with regards to Hamas. But "what's the alternative to doing an ethnic cleansing?" is "not doing a ethnic cleansing". Yes, that's harder. It involves more work, it involves more risk, and when the book closes, you don't get every last inch of what you want. It also…

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Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#412

Post by Jiro »

wolverine876 wrote: post #284
givemeethekeys wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> Another possibility is that they also had a second job working for Hamas - so, on a list of "not really journalists". I think we need less baseless speculation in this discussion. Another commenter posted links to the Times of Israel, which of course is very imperfect, but it's a start.

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Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#413

Post by throwawayhate »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #6

I appreciate that this is on here and I hope we can collectively handle it. Tech isn't isolated from this situation, as difficult as it is to admit and talk about with civility and care. A US military software engineer even self immolated recently in protest of what's happening. I don't see what's happening in Gaza as being culturally particular to the specific identity groups involved here. It's a very human situati…

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Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#414

Post by AtlasBarfed »

wolverine876 wrote: post #299
screye wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a remarkably small number. It makes me think journalists weren't present in the warzone at all. Irrespective of which side you support, Hamas is notorious for colocating themselves among civilians. An elevated civilian death count, including journalists is to be expected. However, the numbers being THIS high in this short a time is alarming and tragic.

> Hamas is notorious for colocating themselves among civilians. I despise Hamas, but this claim is disingenuous propaganda (by the leaders who make it, not the parent who repeats it): First, Hamas is 'notorious' for it because it's endlessly repeated by their enemies. That rhetoric doesn't make anything true. (Haven't we had the Internet long enough that people know it well by now?) Second, Hamas is an assymetric, ir…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q36f2TqaD30

I found this interview pretty thought provoking. I think it is still pro-Israel, but it provides a view of Hamas's strategy that I haven't seen anywhere else.

Basically, what I think Hamas leadership was thinking was to mirror the Hezbollah-Israel conflict from, what, 10 years ago, on a much bigger scale. According to this CIA officer, Hamas had 30,000 soldiers ready to engage in fighting with Israel in an urban environment, and the initial terror attack was trying to sucker the Israelis into rushing in and suffering huge casualties. Not 30,000 soldiers in uniforms and formations to your point, but nonetheless a large force. (This part starts at about 7:30 into the video).

According to the intel officer in the interview, Israel did NOT rush in, and is engaging in effective counterattacks per the Intelligence officer. I understand everyone thinks the press is owned by Israel, but in the failed conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon there was plenty of stories about the Israeli army failing.

I have not heard those stories. Just desperate stories from the Palestinian side, which tells me the Israelis are being quite effective.

Hamas is embedded with civilians by default: the Gaza strip is stuffed full of people, it has very high population density due to the insane 8 children-per-woman population expansion of the Palestinians over the last 60-70 years.

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#415

Post by throwawayhate »

bawolff wrote: post #384
hersko wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Dang, huge fan of HN. How do you reconcile HN's political neutrality and the fact that almost every overtly political story that hits the front page about certain subjects[1] are blatantly biased on one side? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324

I think part of it is the current situation lends itself to more pro-gaza headlines. For starters the situation is evolving more on that front. Every new action is a potential headline for palestine. On the other hand Israel's position is much more static: They want to prevent the slaughter on oct 7 from happening again, and are using force to do so. That hasn't changed. You can't make new headlines out of it. Its pr…

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Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#416

Post by kaba0 »

tacomonstrous wrote: post #237
sgift wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and if you look up the rules of war you will see that if you base your operations there the enemy is allowed to attack it. Besides a desire to not kill your civilian population that's another reason countries don't do that. But Hamas doesn't care for civilians.

>But Hamas doesn't care for civilians. Neither does the IDF by all available evidence.

IDF cares for their civilians more, and to protect them they unfortunately have to accept Palestinian civilian casualties, there are no other way.

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#417

Post by throwawayhate »

dang wrote: post #132
hersko wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Dang, huge fan of HN. How do you reconcile HN's political neutrality and the fact that almost every overtly political story that hits the front page about certain subjects[1] are blatantly biased on one side? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324

I think it's a legit concern and it worries me too. We can only go by the articles that users submit, and then only the subset we see, which is a function of (a) randomness and (b) users bringing specific cases to our attention. If there's a bias in the stories that have made HN's front page, that bias is present in the underlying data (I mean this stream of articles) to begin with. Why might that be? Well, there are…

Thank you for explaining this a bit more.

There are things sometimes that don't have two sides to balance out perspectives.

Not a lot of them, but there are for sure.

Difficult conversations often require the ability to reflect and contemplate on one's own understanding before being quick to validate it and reinforce it by putting it on others.

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#418

Post by kaba0 »

archagon wrote: post #165
psunavy03 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protected sites lose their protected status under the law of armed conflict if they are used to hide/support combatants. Agree or disagree with Israel's targeting policies; that's still the law and has been for decades.

If the law permits thousands of innocents to be slaughtered, then maybe it needs to change.

The very reason these laws are there is to protect civilians. A hospital can more or less safely operate in a war zone if both parties play by the rules and actually care for their people. If you exploit these very rules for military advantage, then why not just put red crosses on your attack helicopters as well? There aren’t too many laws to war, but this just fundamentally makes sense.

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#419

Post by kaba0 »

archagon wrote: post #302
samatman wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Things are very simple in my eyes. If tens of thousands of innocents are dying without an end in sight, there is a bleed that needs to be stemmed immediately. It does not matter who started it or whether the crisis is being used as propaganda or leverage. The truth is on the ground. It would be great to "defeat Hamas" as a solution, but I'm not sure how that's feasible at this point without razing Gaza.

Are you sure that stopping it will actually minimize the number of deaths in the long run? Is it better to kill 20000 people in a short time to reach permanent peace, or to save some of those people and then repeat the whole ordeal each 2 years, with more and more bloodshed?

I don’t pretend to have an answer, but war brings up very hard to answer moral questions.

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#420

Post by kaba0 »

someotherperson wrote: post #255
immibis wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of hiding soldiers among civilian targets if Israel is just going to bomb the civilian targets? The point of any fighter using human shields is that the enemy doesn't fire because they don't want to hurt the human shields . If they're willing to kill the human shields, they don't help you, so why bother with them? This apparent myth rubs me the same way as "there's no food because Hamas is stealing i…

It's just noise. Scaling this to other examples: if there was a school shooter inside a school, should the school be bombed? The answer is a resounding no, but with Gaza it turns into a yes. This is why the common rhetoric given from politicians and jingoists is that all of them are guilty and that no one is innocent. Using the same example, the workers and students of that school are de facto responsible because the…

The scales are so completely different that that analogy is just done in bad faith.
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