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Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

guardian.co.uk

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Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#81

Post by tlrobinson »

johnyzee wrote: post #73

I think the fact that this thread has 70+ comments, yet has not turned into a political flamefest, but rather an intelligent discussion on whether it belongs, is an almost unbelievably strong testament to the quality of the HN community. I say this as someone who has very strong views on the topic, yet hope and pray that issues this divisive will not be allowed to sow seeds of disunity in an otherwise harmonic and we…

Except most of the comments are debating whether or not this sort of thing should be on Hacker News in the first place.

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#83

Post by chaostheory »

ntoshev wrote: post #45
pg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this post is a violation of "the rules." HN is not supposed to be just about hacking, but about anything interesting to hackers-- anything interesting to the intellectually curious. There is not necessarily zero overlap between that and Reddit. E.g. Reddit users probably started posting earlier about the present recession, but when the matter became serious enough we started to have some stories about i…

This is politics, and it is not even news. Israel has been accused of using such weapons a couple of years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus#2006_Israel-Le... Clearly it is not more important now than it was then. I am all for a broad spectrum of topics covered here on HN, but this is just a controversial topic that is useless to discuss here.

HN has had plenty of political posts in the past without complaint regarding issues such as privacy and net-neutrality.

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#86

Post by anamax »

knieveltech wrote: post #78
anamax wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> WP as an incendiary against heavy concentrations of civilians. While you're at it feel free to discuss how WP artillery shells can be deployed in an urban environment without affecting "heavy concentrations of civilians". The rule isn't against the use of WP where there are heavy concentrations of civilians, it's against using WP as an incendiary where there are heavy concentrations of civilians. Using it as a smok…

"The rule isn't against the use of WP where there are heavy concentrations of civilians, it's against using WP as an incendiary where there are heavy concentrations of civilians." Classic military-industrial double-talk. WP doesn't come equipped with a non-incendiary mode.

> Classic military-industrial double-talk.

If you're going to claim a violation of law, surely the actual law matters. Then again, we seem to be ignoring whether said law applies to Israel and we're ignoring whether the other side bothers with such things. (Those laws also ban certain uses of civilians that Hamas does regularly.)

FWIW, I note that folks who rant about the "military-industrial" from Eisenhower's speech never seem to be concerned about the stronger warnings that he gave about "scientific-technological elite".

> WP doesn't come equipped with a non-incendiary mode.

That's like saying that metal doesn't come with a "non-hammer" mode. WP is a component. How it is packaged and what it is combined with significantly affect its effects on impact.

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#87

Post by anamax »

homme wrote: post #62
pg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussing the issue on internet forums is so close to "doing nothing" as to be virtually indistinguishable. I don't think that's true. People are very much influenced by things other people say, and there is nothing magic about the web that makes this stop working online. I've often been influenced by things I read in forums. And in this specific case, you're particularly mistaken, because the situation is so much i…

At the very least, rational U.S. taxpayers may start looking askance at why their money is being conscripted to support this slaughter. I know some here may take exception to my description of what going on here as slaughter, but all I see is the abridgment of human rights and respect of life on the basis of tribalism,mythology, and a past criminal genocide that the victims being attacked here played no part in. This…

> At the very least, rational U.S. taxpayers may start looking askance at why their money is being conscripted to support this slaughter.

Slaughter? If any European country (or the US) had been on the receiving end of the Hamas rocket attacks, Gaza and the surrounding areas would have been smoking piles of rubble years ago. And yes, Israel has the capability.

As to Israel's sins, they pale in comparison and they don't have a history of doing everything that they can to wipe out the Palestinians, something that is within their power. Meanwhile, Hamas' "kill all Jews" charter appears to be representative.

Interestingly enough, it's not just Jews. The reason why Arab countries don't allow significant numbers of political Palestinians has nothing to do with Israel.

The "plight of the Palestinians" is almost entirely self-inflicted. Israel was able to "make the desert bloom" without local help so it's absurd to claim that Israel is keeping the Palestinians down.

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#88

Post by unalone »

qw wrote: post #75
swombat wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably worth noting, now that this story has been on here for a few hours, that it has produced very little worthwhile discussion - just one mention of some interesting facts about white phosphorous weapons, and a bunch of flame wars about whether this topic is appropriate for HN. Imho that's a good indication that this topic was in fact not appropriate.

Perhaps the users value their karma points too much. A lot of votes are based on whether the user agrees with the post, and not based on the value it brings to the discussion.

Do people really value karma on this site?

I'd think that the lack of discussion is more because there's not much to be had. There's the anti-Israeli bigotry and the pro-Israeli bigotry, and beyond that there's not much else. You can't debate if it's right of them because most of the end results will be the same (Geneva-convention, no-they-didn't-sign-that-part-of-the-convention, I-still-think-it's-wrong, then the conversation ends). There's nothing much that civilians can discuss here, because none of us are in positions of big know.

That's why I'd prefer the discussion focus on other things. Not because these things aren't important, but because the userbase is more interesting discussing other topics.

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