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'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

aljazeera.com

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Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#551

Post by seo-speedwagon »

amluto wrote: post #355
cassepipe wrote: post #56

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.…

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 could just as easily turn that around and say Hamas (which is the legitimately elected government of Gaza) is responding to continuous attacks from Israel. Gaza is the world’s largest concentration camp, blockaded from land, sea and air. In 2018 and 2019 they held continual peaceful protests, which Israel responded to by killing 223 Palestinians and maiming many more.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_Gaza_borde...

Hell, one of the co-founders of Hamas watched his uncle get murdered in front of him by the IDF in the Khan Younis massacre; he described it a very formative experience, as you might imagine.

History did not begin on October 7, 2023 with the Al-Aqsa Flood.

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#552

Post by vacuity »

edanm wrote: post #339
nielsbot wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a longer version of "Israel has the right to defend itself". Maybe Israel shouldn't exist but since it does I think we can agree it has a right to defend itself since if it doesn't innocents will be harmed/killed/raped. That said, even in war, there are long established rules of engagement in war designed to protect (as possible) non-combatants. Israel is not respecting these rules at all. And beyond the insa…

> That said, even in war, there are long established rules of engagement in war designed to protect (as possible) non-combatants. Israel is not respecting these rules at all. Israel absolutely should be respecting the rules of war. As far as I know, it is. People often like to claim that it's not, hinting at some vague "war crimes" or claiming that Israel is targeting civilians, but there is no proof of that happenin…

Whether Israel is proportionately attacking Gaza remains to be seen. Just because Hamas doesn't care about Gazans doesn't mean that Israel is giving them a reasonable opportunity to thrive, though. That's without mentioning the settler colonialism debacle, which is not as one-sided as some people claim but still an injustice to Palestinians.

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#553

Post by emmelaich »

skyyler wrote: post #11

The things I've read about happening in Gaza are horrific. I'm ashamed that my taxes are funding this. It doesn't feel like there's much that can be done to change that. AIPAC has a very serious influence on our government and I worry that its impact is just leading to more deaths and more suffering.

Your comment is ambiguous. The USA has been a major donor to aid for Gaza.

But I suspect you're referring to aid to Israel.

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#554

Post by neoromantique »

bjourne wrote: post #456
dang wrote: post #120

Earlier 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…

Let's also not forget the unbearable plight of all Russian HNers, who due to circumstances beyond their control are now isolated from the rest of the world. Many of them suffer greatly and fear for their own lives as Ukrainian drone attacks hit deep into Russian territory. We shouldn't treat this situation as a football match, where people only support "their" side. Instead, peaceful coexistence with both sides fulfi…

You might be coming from a good place, but you are word for word posting Kremlin talking points currently being pushed all over the place through their think tanks.

Minsk agreements were impossible to uphold and Russia never attempted to do so from the beginning, it was showed upon then much weaker Ukraine as Ukraine was in no position to defend itself then, it is different now.

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#555

Post by [deleted] »

blaufast wrote: post #437

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.

[deleted]

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#556

Post by edanm »

tmnvix wrote: post #409
edanm wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they are using that power to aggressively attack the weaker power in the conflict with little regard for civilian casualties (“collateral damage”) or proportionality of response. It is certainly aggressively attacking Hamas, but that's because, despite Hamas being weaker, they've shown themselves capable of invading Israel and killing thousands of citizens. You write "little regard for civilian casualties", but…

> the best-known numbers we have - which place the civilian-to-combatant kill ration at 2:1, meaning 2 civilians killed per 1 militant Could you share any source for these numbers? The majority of the reporting I have seen is that around 17-18,000 people have died in Gaza since October 7 and that the majority have been women and children. If we take that at face value, it seems that we would almost have to assume tha…

No source offhand and can't look now, but it's just statements made by IDF spokespersons.

The 18k number is from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, and doesn't break down the numbers into civilians vs combatants.

I didn't quite understand your calculation or last sentence.

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#557

Post by pbadams »

dang wrote: post #4
ameminator wrote: post #3

I honestly don't think this subject should be on here. I don't think it's possible for a coherent or respectful or even useful conversation to happen here. I haven't seen any conversation about this topic that hadn't gone to hell.

Yes, you're of course right—and at the same time, if I ask myself how to follow HN's core principle [1] in relation to this topic, I can't see "don't touch it at all" as right either. It may be an impossible quandary—but it's not in the spirit of this place to take an easy way out; or to put it differently, the easy way out (if one exists) is not in the spirit of this place. What does "curiosity" mean in a context li…

I think you might be right that encouraging curious discussion of these topics is important to the mission of HN.

However, if the moderation approach is going to change, I think it would be better to do so explicitly through changes to the site guidelines rather than in an ad-hoc way. I don't think that this article is covering an 'interesting _new_ phenomenon' (emph. mine) as discussed in the guidelines, and indeed most of the comments are talking about moderation policy or the conflict in general as opposed to the details presented in the article. Perhaps it would be better to have a thread explicitly focused on members of the community engaging with each other as individuals, such as a hypothetical 'Ask HN: How has conflict personally affected you?' or 'Ask HN: How/why have your views on this conflict changed over time?'

The stories that the article has to tell are important, but they aren't the thing that people are discussing here. And moderating submissions instead of explicitly discussion-focused posts invites some of the concerns about sourcing and bias that have been raised in other comments.

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#558

Post by Animats »

blaufast wrote: post #437

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.

> 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.

There is some of that, and a mainstream "which side are you on" attitude. I previously wrote that the US could sit this one out. Provide humanitarian aid only, provide no military aid, and try to pressure both sides into not killing each other in large numbers. Which is what most of the rest of the world is doing.[1]

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/12/middleeast/ceasefire-vote-gaz...

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#559

Post by neoromantique »

bjourne wrote: post #506
edanm wrote: post #344

Earlier 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?

[flagged]

>Refaat Alareer

>Poet

Ah. One of the most known Hamas propagandists is now a mere poet.

Re: 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

#560

Post by jmprspret »

prewett wrote: post #472
theautist wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So Israel’s military operation is contemporaneous with a threat, and does at least serve some degree of self-defense purpose There really is no self-defense purpose in my mind to what Israel is doing. It's more self-avenging as others mentioned. You can argue it's a preventative operation to prevent future attack by taking out Hamas, but the approach they're taking does not indicate that since it's completely counte…

How do you expect Israel to defend itself against an enemy that lives next door and is indistinguishable from the citizenry? Doing nothing is not an option: Hamas' explicit, public goal is the annihilation of Israel, and they are right next door. An analogous situation would be if some member(s) of the family next door publicly wanted you dead, and randomly shot at you, your family, and your house. But you don't know…

How do you expect Palestine to defend itself against an enemy that lives next door and is indistinguishable from the citizenry? Doing nothing is not an option: Israel's explicit, public goal is the annihilation of Palestine, and they are right next door.

The reality is, there is no good solution. Because Israel has engineered it that way, not Palestine, not Hamas.

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