531–540 of 629 posts
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You don't get to "resist" your neighbors existence because you want to claim their territory for yourself.
Start with the Wikipedia entry on the subject and then make your way down slowly to what Israeli historians have to say on the subject. Ilan Pappé Avi Shlaim Simha Flapan
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Some facts about that number: 1) It's the total death toll from all causes, including natural causes. 2) The majority of those "journalists and media workers" were Hamas propaganda people. 3) UNRWA had a higher proportion of it's people identified as terrorists than the population at large. 4) It's what Hamas claimed, without any means of verification. Israel showed about 4k were unquestionably false. Hamas also clai…
1) It's not. In fact, most scholars agree these numbers are way lower than the real one, as those are only the confirmed deaths. 2) Source? The only places where I can read about it are in far right Israeli or American communications. 3) Source? It seems like Israel was interested in labelling UNRWA as a terrorist organization at some point, but there is no evidence to back up their claim. After all, the IDF is known…
You guys have been arguing in good faith and interestingly. You undermine your credibility with insults.
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> Jewish flight/migration to Palestine, neglecting the reality to one extent or another that Palestinian Arabs were there and had aspirations to form a state I don't think there was any aspirations to form a state in 1880-1900 or at least I haven't seen it.
Yeah, "form a state" isn't relevant. It's the remains of the Ottoman Empire. People were reorganizing into new countries but the Palestinians were in no way a separate population. After 1948 Egypt and Jordan stepped in and annexed Gaza and the West Bank specifically to avoid the formation of a Palestinian state.
lovely quote on this topic from one of PLO commanders that shows actual state of mind of Palestinians
The Palestinian people does not exist … there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of one people, the Arab nation [...] Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons[...] Once we have acquired all our rights in all of Palestine, we must not delay for a moment the reunification of Jordan and Palestine
Personally I think that defensive technology like this is fantastic. It means that innocent citizens will be protected from constant bombardment or thread of bombardment by cheap mass produced rockets or drones. Israeli civilians have faced bombardment by tens of thousands of rockets from Gaza for the last 20 years [1]. Outside the Middle East there's many areas threatened by combatants with similar cheap missiles. P…
Three thoughts: 1. Just to repeat myself from another comment on this thread, there is no such thing as a defensive weapon. Were it not for the various missile shields, the Israeli state wouldn't act with wanton abandon against its own citizens and its neighbours. All of the various war crimes and terror attacks are a direct consequence of the effectiveness of a "defensive" missile shield. Let me pose this question t…
Israel build in Ukraine early warning system for missile defense and transferred to Ukraine it's stock of patriot missiles and batteries
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> why is it so hard to say "killing tens of thousands of civilians is barbaric"?? Because it’s not true unless we’re just saying war is barbaric. Which I agree with. But it’s not useful when trying to delineate justified versus excessive force. I agree Israel is using excessive force in Gaza. I also think Hamas is a terrorist organisation that seems committed to continuing to do terrorism. I genuinely haven’t figured…
At some point, you have to call out a genocide for what it is. Many are still quick to rationalize it away, or relay Israeli propaganda about the many killed journalists being Hamas terrorists, or humanitarian aid workers also being Hamas terrorists, or the UN orgs also being Hamas terrorists, etc. You get the gist. This doesn't excuse any crime that Hamas has committed, but anyone still not calling for Israel to mov…
Maybe. I’ll admit, on this first day of 2026 I am thoroughly confused as to the boundary between hybrid/guerilla warfare and genocide.
More pointedly, the debate becomes alienating when we’re calling each other genociders and anti-Semites.
> This in turn will create a new generation of "terrorists" who see violence as the only escape. This is also how Hamas was created
This is not a great argument for peace in Palestine. One, lots of oppressed populations don’t resort to terrorism. Two, it suggests an independent Palestine would continue to be a security threat to Israel.
> Israel is interested in cleansing the Gaza strip
Let’s be blunter since “cleansing” has similarly been semantically obliterated. Members of Israel’s leadership have expressed views that sound like they want to exterminate Palestinians. Others want to move them to away places, which is bad, but categorically different from the first. Plenty of others, however, just don’t want their kids kidnapped at raves or are angry and polarised in the face of violence.
We can do the same for Hamas. Exterminating Israelis and Jews is an explicit aim of Hamas. I don’t think that means everyone in Gaza who supports Hamas is bent on genocide. I do think that makes them—like Israelis pushing to keep bombing Gaza—relatively unsympathetic. (Them and them specifically. Not their whole group.)
> it first involves stopping Israel immediately and getting the IDF out of Gaza. There is no equation to balance here
Israel has a security imperative. If getting out of Gaza means Hamas reärms over a population that supports another October 7th attack, withdrawal is not in their interest. (If you aren’t using violence, which to be clear, means people continent away deciding—again—how borders in the Middle East should be drawn because they know better than the folks on the ground, you need a solution that’s in both parties’ interests. I don’t think Likud and Hamas are interested in negotiating. I do think Gazans and Israelis are.)
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Country A attacks vastly more powerful neighbor. They have no defensive infrastructure (for civilians), no plans for minimizing civilian deaths, no hope of actually winning the war they started. There strategy is to fight in a dense urban environment among their own civilians while firing thousands of unguided rockets at their enemy, knowing the retaliation is going to be horrific with no way for them to stop it (oth…
Country A is resisting a 75 year violent occupation and apartheid (see stats posted earlier) and currently suffering genocide. Anyone denying that is no different than anyone denying the holocaust - equally vile and reprehensible. But everyone somehow seems to conveniently forget that part. Don't take my word for it, list of apartheid and genocide reports below. The reason this doesn't make the discourse, even on com…
Apartheid is race based discrimination, not citizenship based like what happens in Israel/Palestine. Making an accusation of genocide does not mean there actually is a genocide.
> Anyone denying that is no different than anyone denying the holocaust - equally vile and reprehensible.
Comparing the holocaust(an actual genocide) as something "equally vile and reprehensible" to the situation in Israel/Palestine is equivalent to a form of holocaust denial IMO.
Claims like these are a rather overt display of antisemitic propaganda.[0]
> Don't take my word for it, list of apartheid and genocide reports below.
There is a long list of organizations that have thrown away their credibility with dubious accusations for various reasons.
> The reason this doesn't make the discourse, even on communities like Hacker News which are supposed to be "smart", is because of decades of the West being brainwashed to the point where Islamophobia is normalized and ubiquitous.
It seems you're trying to downplay the very real threat from Islamic extremists that Israel faces.
[0] https://www.ajc.org/news/the-gaza-auschwitz-comparison-a-mor...
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It's been possible for a long time. For antipersonnel use, guns are perfectly adequate and guns on tracking turrets have been widely deployed (for example, CIWS). The underlying technology is a ballistic calculator and a fast panning turret. Modern ballistic calculators, weather stations (a small device about the size of a cellphone), and good quality ammunition allows for incredible precision with small arms -- hitt…
CWIS is pretty massive, not that this isn't still big, but I think this is taking a miniaturization turn, is upping the accuracy and number of engagements it can handle significantly and potentially upping the range especially in urban environments. CWIS in an urban environment would cause chaos and a lot of collateral damage to buildings but you can now be very sure that only your intended target is being hit so peo…
Range is limited in urban environments because of obstructions -- even the range of CIWS is far too great to be useful.
There hasn't been a real possibility for a long time, I don't think -- it's just not an easy use case.
Are you a male older than 13? You are a combatant and will be killed once you are in sight.
This is exactly the kind of thing that is unworkable.
(A) You don't want to shoot all those people. It's rare if ever the case that even 10% of those males are actually combatants. Even in Germany at the end of the WW2, I doubt it was that high.
(B) What if your own people make a breakthrough and take control of an area, and have all these machines with wildly nonspecific rules shooting at them?
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I was bored so I did the math and you are not correct. Even if you don't care about the people themselves, a normal citizen in an industrialized society like Israel has about 40 years of working life. Let's assume for simplicity that some rockets would hit children but others would hit retired people, on average hitting people when they're halfway through their career and would have 20 years of productive work left.…
One life can cost as much as you calculated. However, if the attack will kill an unproductive (elderly, disabled or other) person then it could be a net gain instead of loss for the economy.
In any case, elderly and disabled are not as useless to the economy as you might suppose. There are many disabled who are economically productive. One of the most capable colleagues I've ever had was a blind programmer. Grandparents often provide things like babysitter services that don't show up in formal GDP measurements but are very valuable nonetheless. Don't count out the contribution of people to society just because they don't have a normal job.
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Country A is resisting a 75 year violent occupation and apartheid (see stats posted earlier) and currently suffering genocide. Anyone denying that is no different than anyone denying the holocaust - equally vile and reprehensible. But everyone somehow seems to conveniently forget that part. Don't take my word for it, list of apartheid and genocide reports below. The reason this doesn't make the discourse, even on com…
> Country A is resisting a 75 year violent occupation and apartheid (see stats posted earlier) and currently suffering genocide. Apartheid is race based discrimination, not citizenship based like what happens in Israel/Palestine. Making an accusation of genocide does not mean there actually is a genocide. > Anyone denying that is no different than anyone denying the holocaust - equally vile and reprehensible. Compari…
The sign of a brainwashed person is to equate this occupation with Islamic terrorism. Unfortunately, you have fallen to propaganda by even bringing that up. Jews and Muslims have lived together peacefully for hundreds of years prior to 1948. There has been nothing but respect between those two religions going back for as long as one can remember. The change is Zionism. That’s what the problem is, not radical Islam or radical Judaism. Zionism != Judaism.
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Start with the Wikipedia entry on the subject and then make your way down slowly to what Israeli historians have to say on the subject. Ilan Pappé Avi Shlaim Simha Flapan
Why did you leave out Benny Morris[0] from your list of New Historians[1]? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Morris [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Historians