451–460 of 1001 posts
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And if they keep the border shut tight, aren't they complicit in Hamas's use of civilians as human shields?
(Then Cairo could start receiving air deliveries of either hamas bombs or hamas hunter bombs; neither is nice)
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.…
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…
In general, the overall solution would be for Israel to allow Palestine to be an independent state, recognized in the UN, with full control of its own borders. It is fully within its rights to keep its border with Gaza closed, of course, but there is no right whatsoever to blockade Gaza's access by sea. There is also a good argument to be made for paying reparations to Palestine for the occupied territories and for the entire illegal blockade duration - though that is ultimately secondary. The thornier question is of course how to connect Gaza to the West Bank.
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And if they keep the border shut tight, aren't they complicit in Hamas's use of civilians as human shields?
https://x.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1733627762085183877
To the point Israelis have recognized the truth, it's an apartheid. https://x.com/Robert_Martin72/status/1734436437825839539
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I don’t think your take is entirely unreasonable, but I do think you’ve missed a critical detail: Hamas continues to attack Israel. So Israel’s military operation is contemporaneous with a threat, and does at least serve some degree of self-defense purpose. As I understand it (and wow, the press coverage is incomplete in so many ways), Hamas has a very large number of, approximately, these things: https://en.m.wikipe…
I think the rockets being fired into Israel is one threat, but the far greater threat is just Hamas repeating the October 7th invasion again. They've said, numerous times, that they will do it - invade Israel again and again, killing as many Israelis as they can. (Leaders have also said they will kill Jews anywhere in the world, btw.) If Israel doesn't take out Hamas, it is entirely unclear if it will be able to prev…
I'm curious, is your claim that one of the current leaders of Hamas said this? If so I'd love to read the quote.
> If Israel doesn't take out Hamas, it is entirely unclear if it will be able to prevent them from carrying out more attacks in the future.
One counterargument is that taking out Hamas, if they succeed (I'm not bullish), is likely to just result in another possibly more radical group rising to power. Doubly so when we've seen something like 20,000 casualties in the last two months, overwhelmingly civilian, which is very obviously going to breed another generation that is full of hatred and vengeance.
Anyway, moving on I frankly think it should be possible for Israel to prevent another October 7 even in a universe where Hamas is still in power. They have enormous technological and economic superiority as well as the full backing of the US government. It seems like dysfunctional organizational dynamics are a problem here, because Israel had all the intel it could possibly have needed to see this attack coming and stop it, but it didn't. So personally I think looking internally rather than externally is the most likely way to secure the safety of the Israeli populace into the future.
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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…
IMO this would require that both Putin and Zelensky do not stay in power.
I suspect a very large number of people are too smart to speak up, but also resentful of the forces that work to prevent actual nuanced dialogue. That's certainly the sentiment in my bubble. As somebody who isn't fond of the idea of an ethnostate and sees atrocities coming from all of the actors here, I don't feel comfortable speaking up due to the lack of nuance in public forums.
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> I'd say that we should not fool ourselves in that the military operation in Gaza is Israel defending itself ("Israel's right to defend itself" is now a commonplace phrase) rather than avenging itself. You may think it is justified in doing so but it still is payback imho. This is absolutely not the case. A few other people have written about why your numbered list makes this clear, but I want to take a different ta…
> It's because Israelis truly feel, to their core, that Hamas has proven themselves to be an enemy that must be destroyed, otherwise Israelis are just never going to be safe again. Has there been public debate in Israel wheter: 1. It is realistic to eradicate Hamas. 2. To what extent Israel's operation will sow new hate and resistance among the Palestinians, so that the risk of future attacks increases, whether that…
2. Yes, there is a bit of talk about "the day after" and how to keep the peace. No one really knows or has good answers here. (I have my answers for what should happen short-term and long-term, but luckily I have no part in this government!)
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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…
You seem to be arguing from a bizarre perspective that Israel is the defender here. In reality, Israel is the aggressor, and Palestine is the state that has been under occupation and illegal blockade for decades. October 7th was an (illegal, abhorrent and criminal!) act of retaliation against previous Israeli aggressions, not an unprovoked attack. If Ukraine were to bomb a Russian city during the current war, no one…
This by the way is an important fact to bring up when the claim that "Israel left Gaza many years ago and the problem didn't improve". In actuality, they withdrew their occupying army but still kept up a blockade, including a literal cap to the number of calories allowed to enter the country, which I can only interpret as a population control measure. That's of course in addition to all the other stuff they kept doing, but that's probably a discussion for another day.
I'd note that the GP was careful to specifically mention Israel having withdrawn its military from Gaza which is true, so I'm not disputing the veracity of their claim on that specifically.