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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

#761

Post by chacham15 »

beeboobaa wrote: post #527
davesque wrote: post #410

It's really disappointing to see so many exceptions to the no politics rule right when we need that rule the most. There really isn't anything to be gained by discussing stories like this. We all know that atrocities are taking place. It's a war zone. A̶l̶s̶o̶,̶ ̶i̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶ ̶g̶l̶a̶r̶i̶n̶g̶l̶y̶ ̶ ̶b̶a̶d̶ ̶l̶o̶o̶k̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶t̶i̶c̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶e̶n̶t̶l̶y̶ ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶o̶w̶e̶d̶ ̶…

What's that supposed bias?

Theres tons of evidence for this. Heres an example of pg furthering conspiracy theories: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1733146138226614465 (note: Rashida Tlaib has extremist viewpoints and has even been censored by the house for those views). Here is a tweet with misinformation about Al-Shifa hospital that he retweeted: https://x.com/GhassanAbuSitt1/status/1722977553101562156?s=2... (and didnt correct the record). Here is him posting about Gaza not having fuel for hospitals (even though Hamas had copious stockpiles of it): https://x.com/Beltrew/status/1717247691455971742?s=20 Here is him reposting https://x.com/evanhill/status/1732567824160235800?s=20 which is an extremely unfair comparison (to be more fair, compare the casualties, and get better sources for the actual damage. using "high end estimate" is an obviously biased comparison). There are plenty more, but you can look at his twitter for yourself.

All of this, I'd be ok with saying may be coming from an entirely sympathetic perspective and trying to find a way back to peace...but where is the sympathy for the other side? There is certainly much to criticize when it comes to the actions of the israeli government, but where is the sympathy for its people? Where are the calls to return the israeli hostages? Where are the tweets denouncing Hamas for the murder and rape of civilians? Non-existant. This was a man I had deeply respected. I bought all his books, read all of his articles, been to startup school multiple times to hear him talk, but this incredibly unfair bias made me lose SO much respect for him. I really want to be wrong about this and would welcome another perspective, but at this point I've literally gone through all his tweets back to Oct 7 and there isnt a single one sympathetic to the israeli people. Please prove me wrong.

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

#762

Post by hef19898 »

edanm wrote: post #435
nerdponx wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A close friend of mine lived in Israel for a long time, and I got the sense that your feelings are echoed by many. It's too easy for people in America and Europe to sit at their desks and repost propaganda on social media in favor of "their side".

There are plenty of Israelis on all sides of this issue. There are also plenty of Israelis who frequent HN, btw (like me).

That the Israelian public is devided on the current Israelian government and its policies was reported on in Germany when it was about the judicative reforms.

Reporting this devide between religious hardliners and more liberal people stopped with the Hamas and Gaza attacks. Since then, it basically comes down to equating Israel as a nation (ignoring the fact that policy is made governments) with all Israelians (ignoring opposition to the current Israelian government) with all jews everywhere else. Ehy am I saying this? Because every critique of Israel as nation, and the policies of the current government, have been almost immediately been called out as being anti-semitic.

I think that does a disservice to everyone: jews, because it makes ever jew kind of a target for people oposing Israel (after all Israel is representative for each and every jew, if you believe certain articles). It makes it harder for Israelian opposition forces to get traction and it squarely devides Arabs / Muslims from jews, making dialogue extremely hard.

One can critizie Israel as a nation without being an anti-semite. One can also be supportive of Gazan civilians without supporting Hamas. By preventing this discourse, nobody is gaining anything.

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

#763

Post by ashirusnw »

scythe wrote: post #483
nahumfarchi wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think that is a reasonable take at all. 1. This is warfare, not civil law. Hamas, which is the sovereign in Gaza (there has been no Israeli military presence there for years), commited an act of war in which hundreds were killed, raped, and kidnapped. Israel, as a state, has the moral duty to fight back and make sure this never happens again. Otherwise, it breaks the most basic contract between citizen an…

>Finally, an honest question, what would you do? How would you respond in this situation? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/israel-hamas-ceas... There are plenty of cases of countries being attacked by terrorists and not responding like Israel has. PKK has carried out acts of terrorism in Turkey. FARC carried out attacks in Colombia for half a century .

None of those had a massacre like Oct 7 with 1200 dead (and as a proportion of Israeli population count that makes it proportionally more devastating than 9/11 for Israel, not too mention it was also more cold blooded and barbaric in methodology).

A better example is eg Mosul which had a far higher death toll, as well as other Isis warzones.

Plus none of those threats are anything like Gaza (and indeed Jenin) which is 5 minutes drive from Israeli towns and so a far greater persistent threat.

Plus those terrorists aren't part of a pattern of repeated wars by neighbouring countries for the same cause that Israel had to endure since its founding.

... amongst many other differences

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

#764

Post by nico »

aluminum96 wrote: post #722
nicoburns wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other wars are discussed. There have been threads on Russia vs. Ukraine in recent months. Perhaps Israel look bad in the press because they are acting badly. It seems to me that Israel are unambiguously the stronger power in this conflict: they have are much stronger military, and additionally have the backing of the US and a bunch of other nations that would step in were Israeli territory under threat. And they are…

The problem with asking Israel to unilaterally tolerate rocket attacks, invasions, and attempted annihilations, is that that have already been doing that for 70 years . The never-ending attacks are a huge part of the reason Israel's political posture has become so radicalized, and the military response is so intense.

Israel has most definitely not been unilaterally tolerating rocket attacks

Israel has bombed Gaza multiple times, way before Oct 7, it’s killed people in peaceful protests, it has boasted Hamas to avoid a peaceful resolution of a Palestinian state and it continues to expand illegal settlements with the help of the IDF in the West Bank. All of that on top of forcefully taking over the land to establish the country in the first place

If anything, Israel has been the main aggressor, attacker and killer for over 70 years

To pretend otherwise is incredibly ahistorical

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

#765

Post by dang »

rayiner wrote: post #696

[flagged]

Please don't post in the battle style in this thread, as I explained at the top of the thread. It's particularly important with this painful and volatile topic.

You shouldn't be doing that generally on HN, either, and unfortunately your comments (as I've been attempting to communicate to you) have swung too far in the flamewar direction in recent months (or maybe the last year or two, I'm not sure). You've been a good HN contributor for a long time before that, so if you'd please revert to status quo ante, we'd appreciate it.

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

#766

Post by selimthegrim »

megaman821 wrote: post #400
password54321 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Excuse the Palestine side as if they were naive children. I am not seeing this anywhere, unless being treated as civilians (which they mostly are) is now equivalent to being treated as "naive children".

It depends on the characterization you give Palestinian citizens; are they captives of Hamas, are they complicit in Hamas holding hostages and firing rockets at civilians, or are they just part of Hamas?

Hamas has said that civilians are responsibility of UNRWA and ICRC. This has gotten them in for some criticism from said civilians.

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

#767

Post by dang »

awesomeMilou wrote: post #683
dang wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What does "curiosity" mean in a context like this? It certainly needs to be more than just a technical dissection of details. But then allowing this discussion on here is already misguided. Call me biased, but I don't think you're going to find a ton of experts on international law and the law of nations on a site aimed at technical discussion. Even in qualified circles, this discussion is already heavily biased. I…

I don't think a topic like this can be left to experts, and in any case we don't treat any other topic on HN like that. Of course that means people can be wrong; most of us are mostly wrong about most everything.

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

#768

Post by dang »

reducesuffering wrote: post #688
dang wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On HN, we've always gone by article quality, not site quality: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... . Having a HN thread about an article does not imply endorsement of everything, or even anything, on the site. In my experience, it's a mistake to make reliability judgements about major sources (such as news organizations) at site scope. To pick an unrelated example, we often get criticisms…

> On HN, we've always gone by article quality, not site quality: I don't think that's true, per the word of PG himself. HN has had site blacklisting and downranking. "Some submissions get automatically penalized based on the title, and others get penalized based on the domain. I observed that many websites appear to automatically get a penalty of .25 to .8: arstechnica.com, businessinsider.com, easypost.com, github.c…

Sure, some sites are banned and some are downweighted. Most media sites, for example, are downweighted, including aljazeera.com. I've posted extensively about this over the years (sorry I don't have time atm to dig up links).

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

#769

Post by ashirusnw »

lossolo wrote: post #195
lornemalvo wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are reading very selectively (and I think fir a reason): > From 2004 to 2014, these attacks have killed 27 Israeli civilians, 5 foreign nationals, 5 IDF soldiers, and at least 11 Palestinians[11] and injured more than 1900 people.[12] Their main effect is their creation of widespread psychological trauma and disruption of daily life among the Israeli populace. Please at least try to stay true to the facts, even i…

> You are reading very selectively (and I think fir a reason): I've wrote what is in Overview section in the article. Which is "The rockets have killed 28 people and injured hundreds more." > Please at least try to stay true to the facts, even if you are not willing to steelman the other's arguments. Please don't imply intentions that were not mine. When I skimmed the article, I literally didn't see the information y…

difference of 5000 fighters vs 12000 embedded civilians

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

#770

Post by ashirusnw »

dragonwriter wrote: post #478
emmelaich wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing "3. The defense has to be proportionate" but how does that make sense? The point is to remove Hamas from a position of power. If that happens with fewer casualties, do they then continue war and kill a few more just to be "proportionate"? That makes no sense. Also regard 2, if you genuinely feel your cause is just, the result you want is unconditional surrender.

> The point is to remove Hamas from a position of power. If that happens with fewer casualties, do they then continue war and kill a few more just to be "proportionate"? Proportionality is a maximum limitation in just war theory, not a measure of minimum acceptable violence. (The same is generally true in more personal law when proportionality is a component of self-defense provisions.) > Also regard 2, if you genuin…

proportionality in laws of conflict also doesn't relate to numbers comparison at all
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