I Can't Sleep

> I am defending no one

Careful then with words like "broader context".

> Paul cherry-picked the worst description of the events.

IDF has never declassified its report on the massacre? If anything we don't know whats biased and whats not.

Apparently, Benny Morris (who I quote above) had access once, and doesn't appear to disagree that much with the UN report, despite his pro-Israel bias. I mean, Benny Morris is the kind of guy who thinks ethnic cleansing of Pals would have been moral and just answer to the Question of Palestine.

Of course expressions of anger can be necessary and correct. (I don't think I'd use the word "correct" for this—I don't think of feelings as correct or incorrect, because if a feeling exists, it's always for a good reason—but I suppose that's a tangent.) It's not clear to me why you'd ask this, since the answer is obvious and I don't think I implied otherwise. Perhaps it is the frequency with which I ask people not to engage in flamewar on HN? But internet flamewar is something different from expression of anger in general.

As for your other questions: I do not view myself as being "more devoted to order than justice", and no I don't understand it that way—not at all. Does that answer your questions?

These things can look totally different from different positions and it's easy to arrive at inaccurate perceptions when all we have to go on are tiny blobs of text online. I'm happy to try to clarify my perspective as best I can, as long as I can feel that the questions are coming in good faith and not as a cross-examination. I confess to wavering a bit on that latter point when I read your comment.

I wish more people in tech could quit their jobs in companies that build the software and equipment used in the weapons being employed.

A lot of my colleagues in the US object to it, but are on H1 visas and can’t easily quit.

> So this is going to seem very one sided, but if you look prior to Oct 7, you can't have peace where one side controls everything, has all the resources, and uses them to keep the other population "occupied". That is always going to breed resistance.

Except that that's not quite true. Gaza could have continued maintenance of the existing water treatment plant (for example) that was working when Israel pulled out in 2005. Instead, they elected Hamas a year or two later and began firing rockets at Israel.

It's not as simple as you're making it out to be.

> Very simply, for peace Israel should pull all the settlements out of the West Bank, pull back 50 miles from Gaza for a number of years, remove all checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza, invest in the development of both areas, rebuild the airport they destroyed, stop and sign definitive peace accords allowing free movement and Right of Return for Palestinians, pay reparations for the destruction of Gaza and the damage to the West Bank (plus many other things that I won't list here), and finally on top of that invest in Palestine's future.

They pulled out completely, including removing every single settler, in 2005. Rebuilding is important, I agree, but if Gaza is going to run its own government, they need to, I don't know, not elect Hamas as perhaps a first-order approximation to "reasonable discourse."

Israel isn't going anywhere, no matter what hopes and dreams anyone has. That means they need someone to negotiate with, and Hamas ain't it.

In addition, the current government of Israel is garbage and I'm not sure has much interest in a two-state solution at all - but that is a separate (and important!) issue; there have been plenty of years and decades where Israel was committed to a two-state solution, and Gaza... wasn't.

Even if Israel did rebuild the airport, allow freedom of movement and right of return, and all that - what guarantees do you have that Hamas would not then just flood into Israel and partake in the destruction of every Jew? None.

And that, my friend, is the problem. It is complicated. It is not simple. You are not the first person to have suddenly found the 'secret' to this problem. To think you are, or to think that it is immensely simple, is honestly a bit arrogant, but more importantly, it's also incorrect.

The current situation is awful and absolutely terrible; but sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that only Israel is the aggressor, and that suddenly if they pulled out the problem wouldn't exist anymore, is naive at best, and misguided on avaerage.

I think it’s interesting to equate Ukraine and Palestine, given that there are massive differences between the two.

For one thing, Ukraine hadn’t spent the last few decades shooting dozens or hundreds of rocket into Russia every day.

Putin’s war was precipitated by exactly nothing.

Israel’s war was precipitated by the worst terror attack Israel has ever seen, along with hostages taken back to what is clearly an enemy state (from their perspective).

Sure, both are wars. But that’s roughly where the similarities end.