'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture • Hacker News Board

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

#991

Post by mqp » Fri, Dec 15, 2023, 6:17 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #586

whycome wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been in touch with HNers on the other side of the conflict as well This thinking kind of reinforces what you're trying to stay away from. There are not just 'two sides' to this. And I'm not sure what you would envision as an HNer from the "other side": someone in support of Hamas? In support of the Palestinian people? I'm only commenting here because I think the bias you fear expressing can still kind of appea…

There are two sides - ordinary people on both sides, who mostly just want it all to stop, and the leaders on both sides, who want it to continue. (As do arms dealers.) The ordinary people have far more in common with each other than they do with the leaders who are keeping this war running.

There are no 2 sides. There is an oppressor and the oppressed. The coloniser and the colonised. The occupation and the occupied.

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

#992

Post by dang » Fri, Dec 15, 2023, 9:04 PM UTC

wyiske wrote: post #987

dang wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not the only point of discussing this topic, and definitely not the point of discussing it here. This follows from HN's core principle* because curiosity and battle can't be active at the same time. I agree with you about this: > everyone who clicks on this will have an opinion that’s not, well, academic let’s say ... but as I've explained elsewhere in this thread, I don't think suppressing the topic outright…

The problem is that while al jazeera can be balanced about certain topics, fact is it is entirely government funded by an authoritarian undemocratic state and on this topic in particular it seeks to purposefully take a prejudiced anti Israeli stance. It has also been criticised for biased to the Syrian dictator, and takes various stances according to the foreign ministry. We therefore cannot be certain if the claims…

You can make a similar case against any media organization. They all publish true things and false things. They all have biases that highlight certain things that are happening while occluding others.

On HN, we go by article quality rather than site quality. This has been the case for many years: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....

I attempted to give a detailed explanation of how that relates to the current thread in these comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38620928

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38618471

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38617464

If you read those and still have a question that isn't answered there, I can take a crack at it.

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

#993

Post by YeBanKo » Sat, Dec 16, 2023, 4:30 AM UTC

Al Jazeera is not an unbiased source and it a one sided view, yet it made it to the top. It has nothing to do with tech. What I have not seen made it this far: * Stories documenting intentional atrocities against Israeli civilians.

* Vile propaganda calling for violence against Jews and Israeli, plentifully available on everywhere.

* Stories about how Hamas still were firing rockets into Israel, while complaining that Gaza needs fuel, food, etc.

* Mind blowing testimonies in Congress by the heads of some of the most prestigious universities in the world, where they said that it depends on the context if calling for genocide of Jewish is a violation of the code. Their hypocrisy has been exposed. Their academic excellence has been reasonable questioned. This is far more relevant to the tech, and yet, it gained very little traction, though it is very relevant to tech sector.

* Ukraine has been pummeled by Russia continuously for more than a year. Everything from killing civilians, to destruction of critical infrastructure, descrying schools, murdering and tortureiung civilians and POWs, to hacking Ukrainian IT infrastructure, yet the highest rated submission about massacre in Bucha gained 164 points with 100 comments.

The article makes multiple very strong claims about kids being killed by an Israeli sniper, soldiers with the American accent and Biden's sanction genocide. This is not a journalism.

Btw, this is Al Jazeera's guide to Hamas that they published on Oct 8th, 2023: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/8/what-is-the-group-h.... By this time some Telegram channels had already been flooded with videos of Israeli civilians murdered, mutilated and paraded among cheering Gazan civilians.

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

#994

Post by mbs159 » Sat, Dec 16, 2023, 6:55 AM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #254

I have mixed feelings about this topic appearing on HN as I feel like folks are entrenched one way or the other and information isn't going to sway anyone. If this were a discussion we want to have here, this feels like a very bad article as by it's nature it's a one-sided subjective narrative with very little light to shed on the depth of the conflict. An interesting differentiator left unsaid in this article is tha…

> It takes a little digging that most people don't bother to realize the population of Gaza has continued to grow exponentially [1] which is basically the opposite of genocide.

This is a very common and unfortunately completely irrelevant point that the far-right mentions when somebody brings up the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and does not show any "depth of understanding". By no internationally recognized definition of genocide is general population size considered. Something can be considered genocide even if the population grows in the end.

You portray a extremely obvious pro-Israel bias in this topic while thinking that you have a more nuanced opinion than others. Please stop misleading others.

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

#995

Post by limbojunkie » Sat, Dec 16, 2023, 12:13 PM UTC

I come here to read tech news, not to care about two ideologically obnoxious sides who cannot throw their millennia old outdated beliefs away and live like how civilized people all around the world do.

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

#996

Post by magic123_ » Sat, Dec 16, 2023, 10:35 PM UTC

jonathanstrange wrote: post #931

magic123_ wrote: post #918

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the logic here is, because 80% of a population living in an open air prison for several decades support attacks on the people oppressing them, they deserve to be tortured?

What a weird way to misinterpret what I've stated. Of course, I'm against torturing people, even if they support burning whole families alive, kidnapping children and elderly, raping women, shooting parents in front of their children, etc.

Ironic that you describe what's been going on in gaza for years.

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

#997

Post by pimpampum » Mon, Dec 18, 2023, 1:41 PM UTC

ImJamal wrote: post #393

pimpampum wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDF kills more innocent people, woman and children (percentwise and in amount) than Hamas.

Maybe? We are trusting Hamas' numbers on the number of people in Palestine who died. Not exactly the most objective source...

Historically casualties reported by Gaza authorities have been reliable. We are also trusting Israeli casualty numbers while reports now are coming out showing many friendly fire victims.

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

#998

Post by iddan » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 2:45 AM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #361

slibhb wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Israel is stronger doesn't seem especially relevant. We're not talking about a couple kids fighting during recess. The weaker side isn't automatically right and the stronger side can't be expected to moderate its response when we're talking about the murder of ~1000 civilians. It's also absurd to think Israel should chill out and let the US handle its defense. As if an occasional murder-raid and constan…

> the stronger side can't be expected to moderate its response when we're talking about the murder of ~1000 civilians. A fundamental principle of the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) is distinguishing military and civilian targets, and minimizing harm to the latter. That applies to all sides in every war. [0] In warfare, generally all sides are outraged, filled with hatred and revenge. They wouldn't be killing each othe…

The Israeli army is making a huge of effort to reduce harm to civilians. Including notifying in advance before striking buildings and giving proper time for evacuation of civilians from Northern Gaza. In many cases, Hamas forces Gazan people to stay in the danger zone despite IDFs warnings for people to die in their holy war. It is super hard to act morally when your enemy is using their own people as human shields

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

#999

Post by iddan » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 2:48 AM UTC

lossolo wrote: post #301

qwerpy wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you put it, it sounds like Israel got up in the morning one day and for reasons no one can understand, decided to start inflicting civilian casualties on Palestinians.

Someone else might say the same about the Hamas attack on October 7th. As the UN Secretary-General said, "This most recent violence does not occur in a vacuum. It stems from a long-standing conflict, a 56-year-long occupation, and the absence of a political solution in sight."[1] Whichever side you are on (if any), responding to atrocities with further atrocities is not justifiable. It doesn't matter who commits thes…

Do you know Israel was trying to strike peace deals with the Palestinians multiple times and faced stagnation and rejection from their leadership? Also, the only reason Hamas exists is Israel completely pulled out from the Gaza Strip in 2007 letting it be self governed like an independent state. So no, it doesn’t matter what happened 56 years ago. Things have changed, there were many, many opportunities to change course and nothing justifies the horrific vicious terror attack of October 7th.

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

#1000

Post by iddan » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 3:04 AM UTC

edanm wrote: post #287

iddan wrote: post #136

[flagged]

Iddan - I get where you're coming from, and it's a very valid criticism to say that the West in general pays far more attention to Israel than to much worse conflicts. That said, I don't think this is a valid criticism of HN. There have been plenty of threads about other wars, and there have been very few threads about Israel, actually.

I’m a long time reader of HN and don’t recall many threads about other wars, especially in the ME (but I’m open to be proven wrong).

The news coverage of Israel’s war in western media is huge. And while other ongoing wars in the ME, many of them led by dictators that are not even trying to seem democratic or just BTW, Israel gets the spotlight every single time. And HN definitely showed more interest in this than many other bloody conflicts in the ME.