Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Can you define what you mean by genocide exactly?
Not op, but my guess would be: mass killings based on genes.
'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
441–450 of 1001 posts
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#442Earlier 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…
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>When you're on the side of women and children, who lose in every conflict, everyone else gets confused because they expect you to pick one of the men's teams.
So men don't lose in every conflict? Countries are "men's teams"?
I'm sorry but this is infantilizing as well as brutally sexist.
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#443Earlier 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 can empathize with this, and hope your family remains safe. But I'm afraid Netanyahu and Hamas are just tips of icebergs, and criticism at that level will not be even remotely sufficient to resolve the underlying issues. I'd love to be corrected, but it seems to me that _all_ religions (not only Judaism or Islam) are plagued by supremacist beliefs about their own ethnic group. At the ethnic group level, religion se…
Judaism is very different to other religions in some ways. It is not a proselytizing religion - it's not looking to convert anyone to Judaism.
It has certain supremacist beliefs - the Jews are the "chosen people" of God, giving them certain duties and certain privileges. But it's not necessarily a "Jews are better" line of thinking. Though of course many religious Jews may phrase it in those terms.
Worth mentioning that the majority of Israelis are secular, so the religious view on this, whatever it is, is a minority view in Israel.
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#444Earlier 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 thought you were joking for moment; it's easy to find the truth.
https://volunteerinpalestine.org/purchasing-a-sim-card/
"Internet Access High-speed Wi-Fi is available throughout the country in homes and in cafes and restaurants throughout the city. Additionally, local banks have publicly available WIFI that can be accessed 24/7 from outside the building. The Wi-Fi is stable and reliable and 3G is also available in the West Bank, Palestine."
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#445Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I think Israel has to ask itself why there is such a large militant force on its borders, embedded in the civilian population. Why the population support it and why it is hell bent on destroying Israel. Why for example does this problem not occur for other nations? Could Israel be responsible in some way for the situation it is in? The alternative might lie some way from addressing that.
Being located in the Middle East is their main mistake. Being a Jewish state in the Middle East makes it even worse.
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#446All: 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…
Israelis can potentially vote out Netanyahu in the next election. But how exactly would you propose to remove Hamas from power without a lot of civilian deaths? Hamas leadership prefers the current state of affairs because it has made them wealthy by taxing the populace and embezzling foreign aid. They have no incentive to agree to a peace deal or allow new multiparty elections. There doesn't appear to be any realistic solution short of a massive, forceful intervention by a neutral foreign coalition.
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Worth noting this isn't an absolute position. There are many Gazans posting on Telegram. They have food, water and internet access. But they seem to be the ones shooting at Israel and other Gazans... Edit: suspiciously this is downvoted suddenly as well as lots of other unrelated posts of mine. Looks like you can't have a responsible discussion on the internet these days...
I would have upvoted you but for your last para. Don't react to downvotes immediately. Let it simmer for a while.
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since the source is AlJazeera can you at least take these testimonies with a grain of doubt?
what's wrong with al jazeera?
They are mostly (or fully, based on their banner) funded by Qatar, which is kinda allied with Hamas.
For stuff unrelated to Qatar, they are pretty unbiased. But that changes when their owners actually have an interest in the matter.
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#449All: 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 this thread being allowed on HN. I consider HN to have very high quality discussions and high quality people, and as an Israeli, I believe it is my duty to both:
1. Try to offer smart people an insight into my thinking on this topic, given that I usually have insights they lack.
2. Try to seriously consider other viewpoints to help me better think through my own view of the current war.
I don't really like that an Al Jazeera story is the "prompt" for this, since I think that's a heavily biased source that we may as well ignore, but I'm mostly here for the comments anyway.
I don't quite understand the many people here who think it's such a problem to allow this thread. If you don't want to argue about this topic or be exposed to it - you can always just leave this thread alone! Nothing is forcing you to take part in it.
Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture
#450Those 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.…
Individual self-defense is legally restricted in your (and my) country because you can rely on the state to take up the fight once the immediate threat has passed. If someone tells you that they're going to come and shoot you at some point in the future, you call the police, and the police will pre-emptively use force against them by putting them in jail. At least that's the theory.
I agree that Israel are probably being recklessly indifferent to civilian lives and likely committing war crimes, but Hamas explicitly has the genocide of the Jews as their founding principle. For Israel to be safe, Hamas has to go. I can't see any other way this ends, and with the way Hamas embeds themselves within the civilian population, collateral damage is inevitable. Although, to repeat, I do think Israel need to do more to minimise it.