Live data from Hacker News

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

aljazeera.com

621–630 of 1001 posts

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

#621
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: 1. the aggression is still happening, Hamas is still launching rockets into Israel, so I'd personally say this is Israel defending itself

They have been firing rockets for decades. They killed 28 people over 20 years with 20k+ rockets[1]. Israel killed 17 000 people in two months. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_...

What do you mean? Hamas said 500 people were killed when that hospital was hit. Everyone agrees it was a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket, so...

Additionally, around 30% of those rockets land in Gaza.

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

#622
post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And some support the war Hamas rages despite the effect on the Palestinian people/civilians. Is that an other other side? This is complex, and we really can't describe this conflict as just having two sides.

Just like some Israelis support expelling all Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan and settling these territories with Israelis. The only "side" that's not wrong (IMO) is the one that condemns violence against civilians and is for peace and the two state solution, this "side" exists among both Israelis and Palestinians (but is the minority for both).

[deleted]

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

#623
post #474
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However supportive of Israel one may be and how repulsed one should be by Hamas, 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. I’ve felt that as well, and I would add that even if you feel every action is justified I am skeptical that it’s not counterproductive.…

>>Each civilian killed by mistake has family, friends, and neighbors who might be inclined to avenge them and it’s hard for me to see how this doesn’t end up giving Hamas more recruits than they’re losing. Both Japan and Germany have been pretty well behaved since the Allies ground them to the dust during WW2 - why do you think it couldn't work here?

I’m not saying it’s impossible but that it’s a numbers game: if you have a messy battle with Hamas and kill a dozen people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s a dozen lotto tickets for the n% chance that one of the people who knew them succumbs to the propaganda saying the answer is to join Hamas and strike back. Angry people make rash decisions, especially if they think they don’t have choices.

I would highly recommend reading the FP article I linked. The author has researched this for years and one of the things which has made this so depressing for me is more cogently discussed in their work about what causes people to resort to violence. Japan and Germany had their share of angry losers, but they also had productive opportunities for most people – the U.S. wasn’t taking their land for American settlers and crowding them onto reservations. If you’re a Palestinian teenager aware of the outside world but resigned to a life of subsistence farming or living on foreign aid, and then someone destroys your family’s farm and says that the land they stole is theirs now, violence is going to look more reasonable because pretty much everything else has been removed. That’s completely unlike WWII, or even Vietnam, and I don’t think we’ll see anything good come from it.

Now, imagine some fantasy where Israel leaves occupied Palestine to a UN peacekeeping mission or, say, the United States gives a big chunk of BLM land to anyone who wants to emigrate (not saying this is politically possible, just for the sake of argument). You’re that same Palestinian teenager who’s been shat on your entire life but now you have the option of likely being killed fighting on behalf of people you couldn’t vote for and clearly don’t care about you … or you could do literally anything else with your life and have a much better chance of living to age 30. Having options is hugely transformative and I think any path out of this has to involve finding one.

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

#624
post #237

Plenty of Palestinians oppose Hamas and want peace and a free Palestinian state according to the '67 borders. These would be the equivalents on the other side.

And some support the war Hamas rages despite the effect on the Palestinian people/civilians. Is that an other other side? This is complex, and we really can't describe this conflict as just having two sides.

Every person has a unique perspective in human interactions, implying diverse viewpoints. Discussions often generalize these complexities, as comprehending every nuance is impossible for one individual

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

#625
post #606
post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because there's a huge difference between deliberately targeting civilians vs collateral damage. Genocide, which is the intent and actions to destroy an entire people, is never justified, because it presupposes you'll target and kill many civilians to achieve it.

> Genocide, which is the intent and actions to destroy an entire people, is never justified, because it presupposes you'll target and kill many civilians to achieve it And that’s exactly what Israel is doing to Palestinians Many government officials, including Netanyahu, have openly made genocidal statements, like calling Palestinians Amalek, calling them sub-human/animals, saying there are no innocent civilians in G…

The only genocide in history with massive population growth.

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

#626
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However supportive of Israel one may be and how repulsed one should be by Hamas, 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. I’ve felt that as well, and I would add that even if you feel every action is justified I am skeptical that it’s not counterproductive.…

> Each civilian killed by mistake has family, friends, and neighbors who might be inclined to avenge them and it’s hard for me to see how this doesn’t end up giving Hamas more recruits than they’re losing. I am not so sure about that. I don't recall a bunch of anti-British terrorist Germans out for revenge for Dresden after WWII. Nor have there been a bunch of anti-American terrorist Japanese out for revenge for Hiro…

I addressed the same point in a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38620617

Basically, I think it comes down to options. After WWII, the average person in Germany or Japan wasn’t forced out of their home and livelihood, and the Marshall plan was quite effective at giving people peaceful options to be proud of. What I’m not seeing now is how Palestinians get something similar, and if you push people into a corner even non-violent people will conclude they have no alternative.

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

#627
post #511
post #48

Earlier 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…

But what about reparations? Israel has destroyed most of Gaza's infrastructure and housing. Israel is responsible for this act of genocide.

[flagged]

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

#628
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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…

Wasn't this Hamas's goal all along? They were losing their reason for existing, so they figured out a way reinvigorate hostilities? It looks like they succeeded.

> If I lost a loved one at the hands of Israel in such malicious and careless manner, I'm never going to not consider Israel as nothing but an enemy.

You could rewrite this as: If I lost a loved one at the hands of Hamas/Israel in such malicious and careless manner, I'm never going to not consider Hamas/Israel as nothing but an enemy.

And so this cycle looks like it will never end.

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

#629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an honest answer would be to end occupation and oppression of the Palestinians by Israel. Any occupying force has an interest to silence and stop indigenous people from claiming their land rights. For example, Gaza had been described as an open air prison for almost 2 decades because its borders, imports, sea usage, had all been controlled by Israel. This is not what we call “sovereign rule”. The West Bank ha…

This statement is very uninformed. Isreal left Gaza very logn time ago. They had an election and Hamas came to power, and they never hold an election after. There is no land dispute between Isreal and Gaza (Unlike Westbank where there are serious disputes). The main problem is that Hamas and its supporter Iran consistentnly in word and in practice declared that want to wipe out and destroy Isreal. It is not about som…

Israel may have left but they have had a blockade since then, not just on their border but sea and air as well. UN considers it to be occupied territory, Israel controls food and water. Human rights organisations calls it an open air prison. Doesn't sound like a situation that would be fruitful for peace?

Hamas was elected as Bush pushed for elections too early as he wanted to solve the situation before his term ended, PA was unpopular due to corruption. When Hamas won the US pushed PA to do a coup which failed, this caused Hamas to take over Gaza completely and push out PA and stopping future elections.

Hamas is certainly the main problem now, but the situation was caused by typical US fuckery, Netanyahu supporting Hamas didn't help either. Others big problems are the apartheid state of Israel and their systematic stealing of land in the West Bank. If what they have in the West Bank is the kind peace that Israel wants then I can see why people are resisting them.

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

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Jew, I have quite a few qualms with the comparison to Warsaw. I'm not denying the suffering in Gaza in any way, but it's far fetched to put this on the same grounds as Warsaw, in which an estimated 300-400k Jews were murdered, and which was just one of an industrial system of mass murder. I agree that the settlements are an obstacle to peace, no argument there. But there are solid reasons why the border between…

1, this is a human issue above all. One does not have to be Jewish or non-Jewish to recognize the extreme human toll being exacted on Gaza. When I see bombs collapse buildings of innocent residents, hospitals invaded with entire ICU units dying, mass starvation due to a blockade, and a death toll with over 40% being children; I think all of this warrants comparisons with industrial mass murder. Just because it is bei…

> would propose a way to move forward for Israel would be a one-state solution: to recognize Palestinians as equal people with human rights, give them citizenship in a democratic rule, and allow them to return to their land. All of this without any military occupations.

I second this. South Africa managed to end apartheid without the need to split in a white-people country and a black-people country. The same can be done in Israel too.

Post reply on HN