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IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

haaretz.com

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Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#761
post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the start of Israel’s assault on Gaza, the vast majority of Israelis haven’t shown any concern about the suffering in Gaza. Those who campaign for an end to the war do so purely as a means to secure the release of the hostages.

That's not surprising. They remember the scenes of ecstatic celebration on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank on october 7. And the fact is that the people of Gaza could end the conflict whenever they want. All they need to do is surrender and hand over the hostages. You might think i'm oversimplifying but actually that's really it.

Imagine if your city was invaded by a powerful enemy. They bomb the place to rubble. They blow up every hospital. They enact a blockade and hinder aid organizations from providing basic food. They do this for nearly two years straight and show no sign of stopping.

They say, “just surrender and it will all be over.” Are you going to trust that?

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#762
post #720
post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> War crimes in this war should be dealt with. Nuremberg trials is really not the right analogy. War crimes for firing into a crowd of civilians, for both the one that ordered it, and those that executed it, should definitely be at the same levels as the nuremberg trials. The fact that it will never happen doesn’t detract from that. Happily, the ICC seems to already know so, which is why there’s warrants out for all…

The ICC is a political circus and Israel is not a signatory. It has no jurisdiction. Even if Israel was a signatory the ICC should only intervene after Israel has done its own investigation and if it failed to hold the relevant standards. If there were war crimes committed then people need to be held accountable. The scale of the alleged war crimes is totally different than the crimes persecuted in Nuremberg.

[flagged]

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#763
post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not ironic at all, it's democracy working as intended. It might superficially appear ironic because us in the west confuse being a democracy with being moderate. But that's not the case if a large fraction of your population are religious fundamentalists, which goes to my point. In Israel, the problem isn't just the government, it's also the culture of the majority of the population.

Considering ~50% of the Knesset is in opposition, I don't think it's proof that a politically large fraction of Israeli society is religiously fundamentalist. It's non-negligible, but the reasons ultra-right parties like Otzma Yehudit [0] have a voice in politics has more to do with election calculus by Netanyahu. The ideal 2+ party parliamentary system seems to be >2 but Below that, you get bad outcomes (US). Above…

> Considering ~50% of the Knesset is in opposition

You mean < 50% (strictly less than 50%) right? Otherwise the opposition would form a government

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#764
post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd probably be considered left (or even far-left) by Israeli standards, but I'm in the "pro-Israeli" camp as conventionally understood online. Would you consider ethno-nationalists of other nations (far) left, based on (speculating) their economic/women's rights/LGBT/other social stances? (Orthogonally, I can certainly empathize with being pro-something, but not pro-everything-that-something-does. There's certainl…

> Would you consider ethno-nationalists of other nations (far) left, based on (speculating) their economic/women's rights/LGBT/other social stances? If your implication is that I'm an ethno-nationalist, I don't think that characterizes Israel or my thoughts about it, however much "ethnostate" is a favorite slur of people to use against Israel.

I think it might be a slur on, say, reddit, but isn’t most of the world a bunch of ethnostates? Isn’t that kinda one of the things that makes the US stand out, is that it’s explicitly not one? I’m asking this unironically, but I guess I thought e.g. Ireland was pretty homogenous, as is Japan, Ethiopia, Cuba, Peru, and Denmark. (Maybe some of those examples aren’t perfect but you get my point I hope)

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#765
post #708
post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another Jewish Israeli I agree this is concerning. I do want you to consider the context here on Hacker News though. You and me have context, we understand the history, we understand at least something about wars and how they are fought. Most people here do not. The problem isn't whether firing on civilians with no reason when they come to get food is wrong or right. We all know it's wrong. The soldiers in Gaza kn…

> The entire strategy of Israel's opponents in the middle east is to engage in war crimes. I think war crimes are a lot more acceptable/understandable if they’re the only way you even potentially have a chance to get back at your agressors. Nobody blames the resistance during the Nazi occupation for what they did. Israel is very much not in a position they need to perpetrate war crimes to win the war. They have alrea…

This is probably what anti-Soviet groups in WWII thought when they allied with the Nazis and committed atrocities. Most people today don't seem to think they were justified in doing that.

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#766
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Swedish. Since I was a child, for decades, I was taught and never questioned the idea that Germany had learnt from their history, in the most admirable way. That it was really ingrained into the German culture to never let anything like the holocaust happen again. That the education system there was very good in really making people understand why it happened, what went wrong, and how to make sure there would be…

As a German, I think you should cut your colleague some slack. There's 8 billion people in the world who aren't German. If there's one topic that Germans don't chip in on, it won't move the needle. Whatever we as Germans say on Israel/Palestine will be taken the wrong way by someone. Critical of Israel? Still an antisemite! Supportive of Israel? Pathological guilt! It super sucks, but I too will leave it to others to…

> Whatever we as Germans say on Israel/Palestine will be taken the wrong way by someone. Critical of Israel? Still an antisemite! Supportive of Israel? Pathological guilt!

How does that distinguish Israel/Palestine from any other issue?

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#767

Some context first so my opinion isn't misconstrued as as leftist stereotype. This is within context of the behavior described in the article. - I'm a Jew in USA, and served in the military for more than a decade. - I used to get annoyed by the Palestinian protests I'd see in the years before this, and generally sided with Israel, and the operations its military performed in counter-Shia-militia operations etc in the…

They absolutely should face something similar to the Nuremberg trials. This is planned extermination of a group of people. Unfortunately the Israeli lobby has so much money and power they would silence anyone who says that publicly by accusing them of being antisemitic.

Arguably then, shouldn’t China be ahead of them in line for Uighur camps, and the US for the Japanese camps?

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#768
post #757
post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another Jewish Israeli I agree this is concerning. I do want you to consider the context here on Hacker News though. You and me have context, we understand the history, we understand at least something about wars and how they are fought. Most people here do not. The problem isn't whether firing on civilians with no reason when they come to get food is wrong or right. We all know it's wrong. The soldiers in Gaza kn…

> Where do we place Israel on that scale That is, I think, an excellent and pertinent question. For starters may I suggest applying straightforward quantification on a linear scale and observing the results? See the following two wiki articles / subsections: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_co... (see chart preceding the Gaza war (follow anchor)) 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties…

Wikipedia on this topic is incredibly biased to one side or the other. It’s not a valid source in this case.

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#769
post #190

I visited Israel for a sports seminar some ~10 years ago and met many nice people. I felt sympathetic to their reality of living in an ever-hostile environment from all sides, and struggle to keep their place in the world safe. I admired their resilience and strength. When this Gaza conflict started, I saw how the Israeli protested against their government and demanded peace, so I thought there is a semblance of an e…

I'm German and I really see a lot of the blame for this on our states as well - the US and the EU states (especially Germany, sadly). As horrible as the Israeli mindset is, their subjective viewpoint is at least somewhat relatable: An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else, just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead - and will with very high likelihood exper…

A quarter of Israeli citizens immigrated there, so probably quite a few of them do know something else.
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