IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites • Hacker News Board

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#541

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 5:14 PM UTC

Newtonip wrote: post #516

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People were already living there when settlers came to create an ethno-state for themselves Including a sizeable Jewish minority. The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region. But it’s a continuation of outsiders (in particular Westerners, though the Iranians also bought this settler-colonialist nonsense which led to their recent miscalculations) with no connectio…

> Including a sizeable Jewish minority. There was a Jewish community in Palestine (mostly centered around Jerusalem) but they did not come up with the Zionist project. Actually, many were opposed and some of their descendants still do so to this day. > The ethnic cleansing/settler-colonialist paradigm is easy for outsiders to project on the region The (European) architects of the Zionist project literally called it c…

> Ze'ev Jabotinsky literally compared the Zionist project to other colonial projects

The Zionist Project is comparable to colonialism. That doesn’t make it settler-colonialism. (And Jabotinsky isn’t the final word on anything other than himself.)

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#542

Post by blablabla123 » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 5:14 PM UTC

Newtonip wrote: post #310

alluro2 wrote: post #177

I visited Israel for a sports seminar some ~10 years ago and met many nice people. I felt sympathetic to their reality of living in an ever-hostile environment from all sides, and struggle to keep their place in the world safe. I admired their resilience and strength. When this Gaza conflict started, I saw how the Israeli protested against their government and demanded peace, so I thought there is a semblance of an e…

It's a state founded on ethnic cleansing. People were already living there when settlers came to create an ethno-state for themselves. In late 1947, their militias begun a campaign of massacring and expelling Palestinians from mostly defenseless villages. These refuges pouring into neighboring Arab countries is what prompted the 1948 war. When the war ended, they murdered any civilians trying to return to their homes…

I don't think it's possible to understand the whole issue without taking into account how people fled into Israel, both because of genocide in Europe as well as prosecution in multi-ethnic yet predominantly Arab states. Germany being in an awkward position of being an economically dominant state but also having contributed to the whole misery. Also the US is far from neutral probably due to deeper ties that are just part of reality. You cannot undo the past but I don't think it's possible to unroll the whole problem without properly confronting it. The increasingly horrific escalations have obviously completely detached from any reason

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#543

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 5:15 PM UTC

msgodel wrote: post #94

perlgeek wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Israel's perspective, Palestinians are a problem. Long term, they have a few options: 1) Give them their own state. This is difficult for quite many reasons, and Israel (by which I mean the current government) doesn't want that 2) Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation, and let them participate in the regular political processes. The cur…

You'd think given Israel's history they'd do everything they could to not make 4) acceptable.

[deleted]

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#544

Post by cassepipe » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 5:16 PM UTC

judahmeek wrote: post #463

xg15 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, we want to end it through the Two-State Solution (though even what this means is vague - certainty not the borders of 1967 that Palestinians and Arabs are demanding) But yeah, in practice, we seem to want it to end with full Israeli dominance, and the Palestinians either emigrating to Egypt and Jordan or vanishing into thin air, I suppose.

At this point, I think the Two-State Solution has proven to be incredibly naive. As long as there are outside forces, such as Iran, willing to embed & fund militants among the Gazan population, the -only- practical solution towards peace is assimilation: have Gazans broken up & spread out through Israel until law enforcement can be practically achieved. Now assimilation sucks & will likely result in all sorts of soci…

Even assimilation seems hard at this point. If I were a gazan I'd ask the international community to have Israel buy me decent housing somewhere safe in an arab speaking country. Like, I get it you are stronger and don't want me here but give me.somewhere decent to go. I often wonder what are the options for Palestinians and especially gazans who do want to get out of there.

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#545

Post by catlover76 » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 5:17 PM UTC

OhioMan2943 wrote: post #115

niemandhier wrote: post #108

This comment thread is the most civilised online discussion I have seen in a long while about this particular topic, despite people coming from diverse backgrounds and disagreeing. In this sense, hackernews gives me hope that online culture is not lost yet.

It's because realistically hn is an oasis of educated people that has been overlooked by astroturfers and foreign interests (very strongly including the government in this piece), and hasn't expanded its core demographic for profit. This is what the rest of the internet would be like without manipulation. Imagine how much better things would be

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Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#546

Post by edanm » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 5:22 PM UTC

nozzlegear wrote: post #290

wakeupcaller wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What do you mean by "most likely be banned soon"? Banned from where, and by who?

I think he's referring to actions taken in Israel against Haaretz, e.g. cutting off government contact from Haaretz, etc.

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#547

Post by xg15 » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 5:24 PM UTC

dghlsakjg wrote: post #468

xg15 wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience, the history of Israel as discussed in the media usually begins in 1948. A standard phrase is "The state was founded and immediately declared war at". Sometimes discussion goes back a bit further about how the area was a "League of Nations Mandatory Area" before, that was for some reason was administered by the British. That's usually it. An interesting detail is that the legitimacy of Israel here…

That's a whole other fork of the story. I was basically getting at how does Europe see its role in the fact that a big part of what made Israel possible was the more or less complete displacement of European jewry during the war, and the complete lack of will to create a place in post-war europe for their own Jewish community. This perspective comes from my own family history where a few relatives managed to survive…

That's a very good question, and thank you for sharing the experience of your family.

I can't really say.

From what I see here, there is not a lot of discussion in that area. (That was the first time I heard about those refugee camps, but that may just be me)

From what I understand, the discussion for a long time was more about whether Jews would even want to come back to.Germany, after all the other Germans did to them.

German reflection on the Nazi period also happened in multiple stages. From what I know, the initial phase, right after the war, was quite inadequate. Yes, there were the Nuremberg Trials, but both Allies and Germans were interested in quickly getting back to some kind of "normal" and rebuilding the country - the US and the Soviets in particular in preparation for the imminent conflict between them. So a lot of Nazi personnel stayed in office.

I believe, support of Israel in that time was seen as a sort of reparation that conveniently made it unnecessary to engage with the Nazi past on a deeper level. (I did wonder when learning more about the conflict recently, why the Allies didn't designate some are inside former Germany as a Jewish state - let's say the Rhineland. That would have been entirely justified IMO. But of course the question of Israel was already settled at that time.)

There was a sort of "second stage" a generation later, during the Civil Rights movement, where students forced a revisit of the Nazi past. I believe, a lot of the currently known details of the Holocaust are coming from that phase. But I think they didn't say a lot about Israel and just saw it as an emancipatory, left-wing project.

Today, people here are enormously proud that Jewish communities exist again in Germany, though it's understood that it's still a lot less than before the war.

It would be an interesting question how the sentiment of German leadership towards Jews was in the 50s and 60s.

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#548

Post by SantalBlush » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 5:26 PM UTC

barbazoo wrote: post #348

wat10000 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m becoming very skeptical of the “bad government, good people” idea. Governments need popular support. This goes even for horrible dictatorships. There are degrees, of course. An oppressive state can survive with less popular support than a democracy. But it still needs a decent amount. The machinery of dictatorship is as much about keeping popular support as it is about forcing people to suppress their opposition.

These people are manipulated by the media and by their government and by their spiritual leaders.

I sometimes wonder if a section of the public just wants plausible deniability for committing atrocities, and their government is happy to provide that for them.

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#549

Post by rixed » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 5:26 PM UTC

hidingfearful wrote: post #206

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont disagree with anything you said, but isn't that the role of elected leaders ? Actually making the difficult decisions that may be unpopular, but necessary ? Or is it the leader class in most western countries have no sense of duty , are effectively cowards, and are in it just to have a profitable, white-collar career ?

> Or is it the leader class in most western countries have no sense of duty , are effectively cowards, and are in it just to have a profitable, white-collar career ? They are cowards who are just in it to enrich themselves by bribery, theft, and extortion. You are looking in the right direction and not seeing just how far our society has gone.

And they may even find it comforting that it's OK to bomb innocent civilians for years because that's the only solution they can think of to deal with their own dissatisfied populace ultimately, when things will predictably get worse in Europe as well...?

It's not Russia or terrorism they are afraid of.

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#550

Post by edanm » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 5:27 PM UTC

IAmGraydon wrote: post #381

I’m not going to claim a side in this, but I do have a question to pose. When you have two ideologies which are so diametrically opposed to each other that they cannot coexist in the same space at the same time, what is the alternative outcome? One must destroy the other for peace to exist - this is the nature of war. To think that there is some world where everyone comes away from this with a handshake and an agreem…

I disagree that there are two driving ideologies here that are diametrically opposed.

Hamas's ideology is certainly opposed to Israel existing, but they are not the only Palestinians, and other ideologies can take hold and be supported by the populace (I hope). The Palestinian Authority has been working together with Israel since its founding, after all, and with all the problems it has, it still represents a model that could work, in theory, and they pursue largely diplomatic ways to gain recognition.