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

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

#751

Post by lolinder »

doom2 wrote: post #605
ameminator wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, you're argument strongly resonated with me. However: >It makes me wonder: is the topic so toxic that no conversation can happen at all? I believe that the topic is so toxic and emotionally charged that it's almost impossible to have meaningful conversation about it. It's the "abortion" of geopolitics, where everyone is emotionally invested in their own way, distrusts/hates the other side or has suc…

> I see Hacker News as a tech-related with some general interest forum. I appreciate the high standards of dialogue and commentary on this website as well as the "intellectual exploration"-esque philosophy behind it. I think this is a more convincing argument to me of why a topic may not be appropriate for this forum. As for the rest of the thread, there are obviously some very low quality comments/sub-threads. But o…

I suspect that's largely because of the flagging system and constant moderator attention, not because we're naturally doing better than other forums.

That said, it doesn't especially matter why it's better—it is better here than elsewhere. But that's a separate question from whether it's on topic.

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

#752

Post by selimthegrim »

edanm wrote: post #224
hiddencost wrote: post #70

My political awareness was forged by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the American response. The core lesson: the point of a terrorist attack is to trigger an over reaction. America wildly over reacted and became fundamentally hostile to Arab and Muslim people. This reaction led to some of the most successful recruiting of radicals in generations. Israel's response to this crisis seems to have failed to learn from that…

This is a common, but very flawed misunderstanding of the situation in Israel, by analogizing it to 9/11. (Many Israelis were pushing this narrative at the start of this, btw, but that doesn't make it true.) This wasn't just a terror attack, like 9/11 was. It was an invasion . Thousands of armed militants breached the border and invaded Israel, then killed more than a thousand Israelis. The militants were inside Isra…

Haven’t we been here before in 1956?

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

#753

Post by whatshisface »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #628
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…

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…

It is deeply ironic how Israeli ultranationalists and Hamas are fighting on the same side of the war that would destroy both of them, the fight in people's minds for peace.

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

#754

Post by SauciestGNU »

ashirusnw wrote: post #661
covercash wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t take out Hamas with military force unless you eliminate every Palestinian in Gaza. “Hamas” is just the current name for oppressed people pushed to their limits who are using the scraps at their disposal to fight back against decades of abuse. So long as there is an apartheid state there will be people who fight back with whatever they can get their hands on, no matter what they call themselves. Israel has a…

Israelis don't view them as less than human, that's ridiculous and refuted by numerous polls and surveys of Israeli society. Israeli Arabs are represented in the knesset and have equal rights to any Israeli citizens. (Although in places like East Jerusalem which is neither Israeli nor West Bank, they are treated halfway in terms of security restrictions or building rights, which is where most of the accusations of di…

I've got a question for you. When you say that Israeli Arabs are represented and citizens, why do you ignore the residents of Gaza and the West Bank, who are subject to Israeli military rule and/or blockade and have no representation in the government.

Palestinians have been made stateless by Israel, but if they are functionally subject to Israeli apartheid and martial law within their "own borders" then sovereignty is a fiction is it not?

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

#755

Post by selimthegrim »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #720
jgeada wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name a conflict or intervention by the US in that region that has made use of US assets based in Israel. Hint: there aren't any. We instead use assets in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, etc. Using anything based in Israel would cause more problems than would be solved. Israel isn't really an asset to the US, it is more of a liability that we tolerate.

Bullshit. Isreal has the urban warfare training school where US soldiers, especially spec ops, train in a 1-1 replica of a city. It’s literally one of the most important military training installations in the entire world and you bet your ass that American troops training there are “US assets based in isreal” https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2018-03-14/ty-article-ma...

The US has an early warning radar in the Negev not too far from Gaza aimed at Iran.

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

#756

Post by ignoramous »

jerpint wrote: post #65
banku_brougham wrote: post #5

Im glad to see the community engage with this -- there couldnt be a more significant current event happening right now and its jarring that it would be so silent. Edit: And why is it relevant here? At a minimum coworkers are suffering silently through it. The emotional damage just for internet bystanders is staggering.

I found the silence on HN around these events deafening when the Oct 7th attacks first happened (before Israeli retaliation). What is depicted here is tragic. There were many other tragic depictions then too. It seems fair to discuss both tragedies yet here only one instance is used as the “testbed” for HN discussions, from a generally biased source. I’m hoping we will find some nuance in these tough conversations an…

> I found the silence on HN around these events deafening when the Oct 7th attacks first happened (before Israeli retaliation.

Tech Twitter is where the debate is at. I've been very surprised by some of the takes, to the say the least: Racist, fascist, supremacist undertones in all their glory, tweeted / retweeted ad nauseum (this one, for example, retweeted by Garry Tan https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1733687649414869349)

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

#757

Post by seanmcdirmid »

whatshisface wrote: post #753
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is deeply ironic how Israeli ultranationalists and Hamas are fighting on the same side of the war that would destroy both of them, the fight in people's minds for peace.

That’s true. Stuck in the middle are lots of innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians.

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

#758

Post by ashirusnw »

bjornsing wrote: post #656
nahumfarchi wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've tried defense, didn't work out. Which laws of armed conflict are you specifically referring to?

As it’s not clear to me how this goal could possibly be accomplished I can’t refer to any specific international law. But the spirit of the law does not allow for the indefinite subjugation of a neighboring people, regardless of what some of them have done.

It's impossible to describe Gaza 2005-2022 as indefinite subjugation. Quite the opposite. It could have become Singapore if not for Hamas.

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

#760

Post by 38529977thrw »

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.…

John J. Mearsheimer has weighed in on characterizing what Israel is doing against the Palestinians.

"I do not believe that anything I say about what is happening in Gaza will affect Israeli or American policy in that conflict. But I want to be on record so that when historians look back on this moral calamity, they will see that some Americans were on the right side of history.

What Israel is doing in Gaza to the Palestinian civilian population – with the support of the Biden administration – is a crime against humanity that serves no meaningful military purpose. As J-Street, an important organization in the Israel lobby, puts it, “The scope of the unfolding humanitarian disaster and civilian casualties is nearly unfathomable.”

Let me elaborate [...]"

source: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/death-and-destruction-in-...

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