Plenty of Palestinians oppose Hamas and want peace and a free Palestinian state according to the '67 borders. These would be the equivalents on the other side.
Plenty of Palestinians oppose Hamas and want peace and a free Palestinian state according to the '67 borders. These would be the equivalents on the other side.
Al Jazeera is an exceptionally disreputable source for coverage on this particular issue. It's not just their primary source of funding -- the Qatari state -- but also their abhorrent track record of running stories with no factual basis (such as in the wake of the Al-Ahli incident).
I can't point to anything specifically incorrect about this reporting. But you have to take a lot of primary-source-based reporting on faith, and why would I trust a source that has such a non-neutral track record?
We'd all be better served by sticking to sources that don't have obvious conflicts of interest.
Edit: I want to be clear that I don't have any specific evidence that the article contains falsehoods, and I'm not excusing any of the conduct alleged in the article. I just think Al Jazeera is a terrible way to start a constructive discussion, given its reputation.
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 when HN has a thread about a Daily Mail link, but occasionally a good (for HN) article does appear there; and of course many bad (for HN) articles appear there too. If you don't like that example, substitute any other major source—they all have a mixture of good and bad articles, good and bad information. It's therefore important to make finer-grained distinctions about these things—e.g. article scope rather than site scope.
This is one of those cases where it's super helpful to have a single principle that one is optimizing for: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... – the moderation strategy I just outlined is derived from it.
Wow, thanks for responding dang! It's like a fleeting encounter with a celebrity.
I see the HN policy, and understand it generally. But I am vocally lodging my objection in this particular case.
To put a finer point on it: I don't think I'm the only person in my community who has an extremely negative opinion of Al Jazeera, and its historical lack of neutrality on this issue. Having a balanced and nuanced discussion underneath an article from Al Jazeera is, in my sincere opinion, impossible. So why choose this source, when many more reputable sources have covered the suffering in Gaza?
So why choose this source, when many more reputable sources have covered the suffering in Gaza?
I am of the understanding that the people posting in the comments to this article did so because they chose to, not because dang decided this is what people should read.
Users should, of course, post on whatever threads they like. But I am implying that the OP's selection of publication serves one particular perspective, and readers should be aware of Al Jazeera's historical affiliation with that perspective.
It’s common knowledge that Al Jazeera is owned by the Qatari government, and that fact is brought up routinely in response to articles about Israel posted here. I’m not sure why anyone would assume that readers would be blind to that, especially considering how the discussions in the comments on these articles tend to go.
Thanks for the kind reply! (but please don't prize my comments that highly, they don't merit it)
Re your point: I hear you, but given the nature of this particular article, I assume there isn't a more primary source with this material, which mostly consists of quotations. No one has mentioned any evidence (so far as I know) that the quotes are falsified. (And yes, this is different from whether the things the quotes are saying are true, whether they've been selectively edited, and other things.)
I know it's easy for me to post things like my GP comment without understanding the impact that it can have on readers. I've been trained through thousands of iterations (if not tens of thousands by now) to think this way, when in fact it's not obvious and is even counterintuitive to most people. When the underlying topic is as painful as this one, that's a problem.
Just to be clear -- I'm not alleging that the quotes in the article are falsified or manipulated, as I have no evidence of that either.
I think my most salient argument is that this selection of article is not conducive to a constructive discussion, because some (many?) Jews have a reflexive distrust of Al Jazeera. Don't take that to minimize the substance of the article.
(Yes, that was clear, and sorry if I gave the impression otherwise)
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.com, imgur.com, medium.com, quora.com, qz.com, reddit.com, rt.com, stackexchange.com, theguardian.com, theregister.com, theverge.com, torrentfreak.com, youtube.com."
It probably still does. (yes I know you're mod)
(PG) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044
https://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-reall...
https://www.righto.com/2009/06/how-does-newsyc-ranking-work....
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).
I can't point to anything specifically incorrect about this reporting.
Then your comment is a genetic fallacy. You're highlighting a potential motive or potential for bias, but without anything substantive to say.
I absolutely said something substantive. But I'll make it even more explicit: Al Jazeera has an untrustworthy track record, and their unverifiable primary-source reporting should not be assumed impartial.
This is only the "genetic fallacy" if you assume that the trustworthiness of Al Jazeera articles is uncorrelated. My entire argument is that this publication is systematically not impartial, and wants to convince you of a particular (Pro-Palestinian) position.
Do you think the current report at all incredible given Israel abysmal track record concerning human rights versus the Palestinian people?
I don't want to start another top-level thread on this topic, as it is contentious enough already - but just as an aside, the UN General Assembly just passed a (symbolic) resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire with 153 to 10, an even stronger majority than the last resolution.
Of course UN votes are always subject to all kinds of political considerations and power dynamics and the saying "nations have no friends, only interests" still applies, but when such a wide range of countries from completely different geopolitical alignments vote for this (e.g. pro-palestinian but strongly anti-Hamas Egypt together with hosts of Hamas Turkey, Qatar and Iran, together with pro-Israel western countries such as France and Switzerland), this does give a strong hint how the world opinion on the matter seems to be.
News bulletin: https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144717
Votes by nation: https://twitter.com/UN_News_Centre/status/173468680169949197...
There was a ceasefire. IDF ended it because Hamas fired rockets and didn't hold up their end of the hostage release bargain. There was a ceasefire before that, which Hamas broke by invading Israel and torturing, raping and murdering over a thousand innocent civilians.
Thats not completely true. By the time Hamas fired that rocket the time has already ended of the truce (7:00 am of that day), and Hamas was clear that it could not meet the extension criteria (brining out 10 more hostages from the category being exchanged (children and women)), it even proposed moving to another criteria (elderly), but Israel refused
Again watch your language and only claim what has been proved (rape has not). I do agree atrocities were committed tho, but to stay partial and critical in this assessment we must be clear with ourselves on what has been proven to have happened, and what didn't. For instance we know Israel is also responsible for a portion of the killing of Israeli civilians on the 7th of October. Many burned bodies for instance turned out to be Hamas operatives hit with hellfire missiles. So let's be careful
That's a bold usage of "watch your language" coming from shill account.
What does this have to do with the question of who broke the ceasefire?
Nothing, because I was not replying to that. I was replying to the statement that "rape has not been proved" and everyone stating otherwise should "watch their language".
It's amazing how some people keep repeating the rape accusation when there is literally not only zero evidence for it, but evidence of the contrary, israeli forces raping Palestinian women.
Do you have sources for both claims?
I saw no reason not to believe the rape accusations of Hamas - many women came forward with this and it would absolutely fit with all the other things Hamas did on Oct. 7 - how they paraded around Shani Louk and then later killed her.
Unfortunately, rape by Israeli guards of Palestinian captives would also be believable from the reports you hear about treatments of captives.
As far as I'm aware, there is no single first person testimony of the rape, let alone any independently verified forensic reports. We've seen so many debunked stories coming out of israeli side. Remember the 40 beheaded babies that biden supposedly saw then the white house had to quickly back out of? Or the story that pregnant women were cut up alive and their fetuses extracted? Or that babies were thrown in the ovens? Let's also not forget their many lies before, like how they denied killing Shireen Abu Akleh.
These outrageous claims are fitting with the panic then overreaction we're seeing on the israeli side, resulting in them shelling their own kibutzes, and now murdering tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in cold blood, after announcing terrible things like they're not looking for accuracy, but damage, and that they're fighting "human animals". Not only that, but some stories like the last two in the previous paragraph have actually been documented to have been done by israelis during previous massacres like Der Yassin and Sabra and Shatila.
As far as the abuse done by israel on Palestinian women and even children
[1] https://jordantimes.com/opinion/ramzy-baroud/untold-story-ab...
[2] https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-cr...
[3] https://www.cair.com/cair_in_the_news/israeli-guards-rape-pa...
Before that there was a ceasefire and the Zionists came in and murdered and displaced all the people living there and took their land and livelihoods and shunted everyone into an open air prison.
It doesn’t really say anything. Why? Because the cost of voting is zero. The UN is toothless.
In fact, you’ll see many countries who are actively benefiting from the conflict through arms sales voting for a ceasefire.
In fact, the UN often nicely provides political cover for countries. It lets them do whatever they want behind the scenes then vote for peace and then trumpet it in their domestic media.
In fact, you’ll see many countries who are actively benefiting from the conflict through arms sales voting for a ceasefire.
Which ones specifically do you mean here? This would be a really interesting information in this whole topic.
My impression is that leaders of both militaries have a goal to remove the civilians of the other side from the borders of Israel, permanently.
When you consider Netanyahu, for years, propped up and funded Hamas, it makes everything more confusing to understand
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
FTA:
> Hamas was also included in discussions about increasing the number of work permits Israel granted to Gazan laborers, which kept money flowing into Gaza, meaning food for families and the ability to purchase basic products.
>
> Israeli officials said these permits, which allow Gazan laborers to earn higher salaries than they would in the enclave, were a powerful tool to help preserve calm.
I understand the benefit extra work permits would've brought to Gaza's economy but removing the blockade would do a lot more to help Gaza's economy. Work permits are just a bandaid over a much wider occupation.
The blockade didn't originate from some Israeli hatred towards Gaza, it had very clear and objective reasons, so far we only see confirmations of why it was necessary.
So far we see confirmations of why the US needs to cut foreign aid to Israel. While the US is trying so hard to focus their efforts on their "pivot to the Asia-Pacific", Israel is pulling it back to expending resources on the Middle East.
Letting Netanyahu and the Likud party undermine Palestinian statehood isn't a long term strategy and, if the US state dep have any sense, they'll aim for a real resolution to this conflict, not just promises of "working towards a two state solution"
The only thing that cutting US supplies to Israel is going to accomplish is increase in deaths of innocent Palestinians as Israel will be forced to use less precise munition ‾\_(ツ)_/‾
No, Israel will be forced to an actual peace settlement because those iron dome interceptors don't come cheap. It's only a matter of time before they run out, Hamas rockets actually start hitting Israel, and Israel actually legitimately comes to the negotiating table instead of trying to undermine and bomb its way to its objectives. Golan Heights will probably be returned to Syria, Lebanon will see some returned land, and we might see the 1967 borders in real life instead of just the history books.
Yeah, the moment Hamas rockets start actually hitting civilians en masse the brakes would be off.
You can’t negotiate with Hamas.
The Asia pivot ended after Obama left. America doesn’t give a fk about what’s going on in Myanmar anymore (compare this to Obama pissing off his wife circa 2012 by kissing Aung San Suu Kyi and compelling the military junta to give up power for 12 years)
The stated objective of the blockade was mass punishment to keep the Gazan economy "on the brink of collapse".
That reminds me of "The Onion Explains: The Israel-Palistine Conflict."
Flagging this submission should lead to its removal. I'm very disappointed that HN allows political topics now. It's well-known that discussion of one-sided articles like this one doesn't lead to good discussions. It's clearly political, and, even worse, based on a one-sided submission pointing to Al Jazeera, which is driven by ideology and known for publishing way more radical articles in Arabic than in English. The best thing is to remove the whole submission.
In the absence of removing the thread, I feel morally obliged to represent the other side. According to a recent survey in the West Bank around 80% of all Palestinians in the West Bank support the October 7 attacks.[1] This may explain why the IDF is not always friendly towards Gaza prisoners and by default assumes they're Hamas members or sympathizers.
[1] https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public%20...
Politics threads are common here and allowed. I see several right now on the front page.
To quote HN's guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
That's not the complaint, though, me and many others are complaining that flagging that particular story seems to have been overridden manually, since it's almost certain that the story has been flagged very often. I surely have flagged it because of the above guideline, and many similar stories have been flagged and removed in the past. Luckily. HN is not the right medium for discussions of such topics. It's sad that Dang chose the most flamebait topic possible for an already dubious experiment.
HN moderators do often protect legitimate threads against flag-brigades. HN is the right medium for those topics circumstantially, as the rule says, and as reported by moderator. Please stop pretending to be an authority on rules out of your personal displeasure. I don't appreciate being called out for rule-breaking when moderation has clarified that it is acceptable per standards.
It's just the personal opinion of one moderator, contradicting published rules, and I disagree with the decision and your opinions about it. It's ruining everything I like about HN, and I don't want another social medium going down the drain after the /. debacle.
Please don't cross into personal attack.
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.
Some political topics have always been allowed on HN.
If you want to know how we think about this, there are lots of past explanations at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... If you look at some of those and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a look.
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38617796 in this thread, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 for the history of "HN is getting too political" perceptions.
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 ̶̶g̶l̶a̶r̶i̶n̶g̶l̶y̶̶ ̶b̶a̶d̶ ̶l̶o̶o̶k̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶t̶i̶c̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶e̶n̶t̶l̶y̶ ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶o̶w̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶c̶i̶r̶c̶u̶m̶v̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶p̶o̶l̶i̶t̶i̶c̶s̶ ̶r̶u̶l̶e̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶p̶p̶e̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶i̶a̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶P̶G̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶a̶p̶p̶e̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶s̶s̶u̶e̶.̶
Update: Actually, I went back and took a closer look at the couple examples I thought supported my argument that PG had some kind of bias on the issue. On second glance, I don't feel like I can honestly claim that he does. Perhaps he does, but I don't have any evidence on hand to support it. I don't want to be adding to the confusion here so I'm going to have to walk back that claim. However, I still don't feel like this topic really belongs on HN. It's a tragedy all around and very important on the world stage. But it seems like there are too many groups that have an interest in steering the conversation one way or another for reasons that have nothing to do with the rights of the victims.
What's that supposed bias?
You know what? I went searching just now for examples that I thought could support my argument. But I honestly couldn't find any that really seemed unambiguous or like they couldn't be interpreted in another way. And the ones I had in mind didn't seem like they clearly were arguing for one side of things when I looked at them a second time. So yeah...going to have to walk that particular claim back it seems. But I still don't think we really should be discussing the topic on HN. Seems too fraught to really get any value out of it.
I appreciate your good faith here.
I'd just like to add that this highlights an issue that comes up again and again in highly charged topics: impressions so easily overshadow facts and many people put a lot of effort into propagating impressions to the point that they become accepted and commented on as if they are facts.
Ironically (given your original comment), you are exactly the type of person whose thoughts on this topic I would like to hear and the presence of people like you is why I do appreciate that some allowance for this topic has been made. That said, I know that it is a balancing act and I wouldn't like HN to become more tilted toward general politics.
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.
“Back to Oct 7”
Oct 7 isn’t when history started. Just a few days earlier, Israeli people were storming a mosque in Jerusalem. Seventy five years earlier, they were ethnically cleansing Palestine.
If you’d like to be biased, at least be open about it.
There is no "no politics" rule. There is only a discouragement about posting uninteresting politics.
No, you are correct, there was no need for update - trivial scroll through his tweet history proves the accuracy of crossed out text (unless he deleted it).
As vore's reply points out, HN does not have a no politics rule. If you want to know how we think about this, there are lots of past explanations at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... If you look at some of those and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a look.
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 for the history of "HN is getting too political" perceptions.
Just need one side to surrender to end a war.
A group like hamas cannot functionally surrender. Nor does it have any incentive to.
Why can't hamas surrender? Why would you grant hamas exception to basic actions such as laying down arms?
Of course hamas can surrender. It involves dropping weapons, raising hands, and submitting to the forces who have you out-gunned. That's how surrendering works.
Surrendering and releasing hostages would go a long way towards the peace that so many want.
Hamas could stop fighting, or it could technically dissolve itself in some nonsense world. But it does not derive legitimacy from overt, visible structures. Polite surrender is antithetical to its existence.
Hamas does not want peace. It benefits from violent conflict. Let alone the fact that Iran sits there too in the mix
'Polite surrender'
Shirtless men surrendered so others can. Gaza is crumbling so the more shirtless men the better to encourage an end to violence.
Israel should make sure not to disrespect those who surrender if they want more to follow. Maybe incentivise surrender beyond "we will bomb you otherwise". Regarding the shirtless thing, I was surprised to learn Hamas imposed laws ban men in Gaza from swimming topless (wikipedia). Before even getting to military Hamas, the "civil Hamas" has a long list of horrendous attributes.
'Hamas does not want peace. It benefits from violent conflict.'
Where's the benefit of dying or losing resources? The benefit of brutally targeting civilians? Unless we really are dealing with lesser humans? I've seen fictional zombies on TV behave with more restraint than jihad terrorists. Zombies would actually be easier to deal with when confined to an area, not yet spread over the world. IDF are undoubtedly fighting terror with terror, exactly like most of us would fighting against zombies.
Where's the benefit of dying
This is what happens when your religion rewards you for dying in war.
I see a lot of similarities between Hamas and other violent insurgent groups.
They are intransigent and will always chose violence over any other more reasonable option[1]. And take decades of concerted effort to stamp out. The Muslim Brotherhood still exists despite decades of efforts to suppress it.
[1] The sad thing is the road of violence is where the Palestinians are weakest. And the road of using shaming is where they are strongest.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38617257.
it's important to me to remind people that the US destroyed Iraq in response to 9/11
That is not true. I remember Bush’s address: https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/iraq/new...
I would say that US military doctrine has successfully created the most peaceful era in human history as measured by mortality rate due to conflict, and a fundamental part of that is the willingness to confront adversaries with overwhelming force. The alternative is generations of tribal conflicts. Coming from a family with many war deaths over the past several hundred years, I’m thankful the violence ended with my generation.
The military doctrine, plans, aims we talked about publicly were unfortunately quite different from the reality of what happened. I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing - I'm talking about the unnecessary and unjustified invasion of Iraq. Yes there hasn't been a world war - but in Iraq there are continuing tribal conflicts. We didn't create an era of peace there.
This article says 300k civilians died in the immediate wartime, more died in the aftermath. For example, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/20/iraq-broken-...:
With little doubt, the United States broke Iraq. U.S. forces succeeded in the campaign to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein... But what followed turned into a debacle for U.S. grand strategy, and a traumatic nightmare for much of Iraqi society.
The war, driven by the hubris of the Bush administration and a supportive Washington establishment — as well as what has to be described at this point as a vengeful post-9/11 bloodlust that permeated American society — is now widely seen as a generational American mistake. ... According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, many of the 306,000 estimated deaths in the Iraq war were of civilians killed by “direct war related violence” between 2003 and 2019, a span of time that saw Iraq convulsed by waves of insurgencies and counterinsurgencies, and its cities ravaged by terrorist attacks and airstrikes.
The consensus now, even among formerly hawkish Republicans, is that the United States should never have invaded Iraq 20 years ago. ...
“Iraq quickly fell prey to chaos, conflict and instability, experienced an uncountable number of deaths and displacements, and the erosion of health, education and basic services,” wrote Iraqi academic Balsam Mustafa. “Behind the statistics, there are untold stories of agony and suffering. The structural and political violence would spill into social and domestic violence, affecting women and children. With every life lost, a whole family is shattered. From day one, the conditions were forming for the emergence of terrorist groups and militias.”
And a couple more points:
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationale_for_the_Iraq_War
* 9/11 members were known to be in Iraq (we ignored the significant Saudi presence in actuality for the 9/11 attack)
* In the days immediately following 9/11, the Bush administration national security team actively debated an invasion of Iraq.
* The false claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
* "A study coauthored by the Center for Public Integrity found that in the two years after September 11, 2001, the president and top administration officials had made 935 false statements, in an orchestrated public relations campaign to galvanize public opinion for the war, and that the press was largely complicit in its uncritical coverage of the reasons adduced for going to war.[70][71] PBS commentator Bill Moyers had made similar points throughout the lead-up to the Iraq War, and prior to a national press conference on the Iraq War[72] Moyers correctly predicted "at least a dozen times during this press conference he [the President] will invoke 9/11 and al-Qaeda to justify a preemptive attack on a country that has not attacked America."
The most peaceful era? Since WW2 we had, just naming the major ones with US participation, Korea, Vietnam (twice, first the French with US help and the US one), the Second Gulf War, the War on Terror, with highlights in Iraq and Afghanistan (it spanned the globe, earbing the name "global war on terror", and took 20+ years to end with a withdrawal frok Afghanistan). Feel free to count the casualty estimates from wikipedia. Peacefull is sometjing different.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38620493.
What violence ended because of the Iraq campaign?
I suspect a very large number of people are too smart to speak up, but also resentful of the forces that work to prevent actual nuanced dialogue. That's certainly the sentiment in my bubble.
As somebody who isn't fond of the idea of an ethnostate and sees atrocities coming from all of the actors here, I don't feel comfortable speaking up due to the lack of nuance in public forums.
I’m actually really glad to see that this is the first Israeli conflict where its actually easy to keep our jobs, its been awkward for decades in the US on this one topic.
The needle needed to move to show where that soft power has waned and where it really stands
To show that we never agreed about labeling everything antisemitism in an antiquated 20th century way, when everyone involved are semites
Every call for a statement was met with laughter, every kneejerk lobbing of the word antisemitism was met with more laughter. Every liberal Jewish American has to reconcile the perception we’ve all had of their of their pride and joy country their whole lives, and now has to consider being a Trump supporter after all that social justice work, c’mon that’s admittedly hilarious.
I get that most of this everyone with ties to this conflict feeling isolated and traumatized. Along with an algorithm fueled echo chamber where they only see the other side getting attention and empathy, no matter which side that is. These are problems for a therapist.
Regardless, that needle needed to move. I dont agree with how it did, Hamas was accurate in noticing that it would move.
For balance, Hamas is already on the sanctions list. Israeli leadership and military and settlers and financiers should be too. I dont think every comment needs every disclaimer.
This comment reminds me of the poem, ‘on the fifth day’.
I hear you. While reading your comment, I had the thought "'atrocities coming from all of the actors'? Are you saying they're equally bad?" Of course, that's not what you said and there are far better responses if one is concerned about debating the relative moral standings of Israel and Hamas. It was more of a kneejerk reaction, and I quickly dismissed that from rational consideration, but the fact that I thought it nonetheless (and, in a different world, just replied with that) is a bit unsettling. Especially when we can't be certain what's a truth or lie when it comes to coverage of this conflict, it's far too easy to lose sight of the nuance.
I don't know what to tell you except fighting against something that is wrong but widespread and established cannot be comfortable.
There's nothing really new here. It was not comfortable to be a e.g. civil rights activist in the US during segregation, or a dissident in the eastern block. The question is, what is right and what is wrong. You either accept wrong out of comfort as many people did in the past or reject it.
I suspect a very large number of people are too smart to speak up, but also resentful of the forces that work to prevent actual nuanced dialogue. That's certainly the sentiment in my bubble.
There is some of that, and a mainstream "which side are you on" attitude. I previously wrote that the US could sit this one out. Provide humanitarian aid only, provide no military aid, and try to pressure both sides into not killing each other in large numbers. Which is what most of the rest of the world is doing.[1]
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/12/middleeast/ceasefire-vote-gaz...
It would be nice if people in the region at least pretended to be working towards peaceful solutions.
Well I think most people in the region want peace, Israelis included. However if Hamas is dedicated to war the basis of religious beliefs what are you going to do?
Far right leaders advertise maps of a "greater Israel" from the Nile to the Euphrates, that is a huge provocation. Not something a "peace loving" nation would do.
Netanyahu presents a map of Israel that includes West Bank and Gaza at a UN speech and you think he "wants peace". Blatant provocations like desecrating religious sites, arresting thousands of Palestinians without charge, limiting water access, allowing and protecting settlers as they kick Palestinians from their homes in West Bank are all provocations. And that's just a short list
Massacring hundreds of people in the March of Return in 2018 during a peaceful demonstration is not the act of a "peace loving Israel".
You can't stampede into a room, guns blazing and expect people not to respond. There is no peace in the region with the status quo
How better to respond to a decade's long violent oppression than to start a violent revolt against the conditions?
Hard to do when most of the middle east is run by autocratic regimes that either get military aid from the US or the US is their security guarantor. You have to seem Pro-Palestinian to please the masses but ultimately undermine the cause to please the US
@dang This article might be “interesting” but so is porn. And both are off-topic, and not about satisfying our intellectual curiosity
The technical difficulties in digital porn distribution at least offer some points of on-topic discussion.
I personally would be curious to find out why that entire industry is on the cutting edge of technology in many respects, such as 4K, 3D, and VR but has completely avoided HDR?
Meanwhile Hollywood and streaming companies like Netflix have embraced HDR, but ignored VR, dropped 3D, and still often doing special effects in 2K!
That's a pretty awful comparison, but let me point you to some explanations of why this article spent time on HN's front page today, and in what sense the words "interesting" and "curious" apply to it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616662
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616823
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38617223
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38618804
If you read those and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be interested to hear what it is.
Al-Jazeera English operates under the ownership of the Al Jazeera Media Network, which, in turn, is funded by the government of Qatar.
Up to you if you trust them or not. I do not. Swedish.
I've understood that this topic hasn't been allowed to be discussed here, and I think I've preferred that.
But this is the first time I've seen a thread allowed, and a bit personally perplexed to see that it's an Al-Jazeera post.
Zero trust. Australian.
I agree that it's weird to see the discussion open with this timing (late) and this topic (a weird side-note compared to the terrorist attack and bombin) and this source (state source from Qatar, which is Hamas-friendly.)
Re the timing (late): see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38619097
Re the site, see these explanations I posted earlier today. The short version is that on HN we go by article, not by site. Most media sites are mostly bad (for HN) articles, with occasional good (for HN) ones.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38617464
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 that Israel released these guys upon investigation which by wartime standards is good behavior (in contrast to hostages kidnapped and held by Hamas still)
A thing that makes this conflict difficult to talk about is that the prevalence of coverage makes so many people take sides, while the depth of their understanding is basically just hearing the repetition of a word and applying the emotion of that word to the conflict. For example people hear "genocide in Gaza" and their opinion is simple: genocide is bad. 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.
Sometimes reading about this conflict feels like seeing someone outraged at an oncologist because of what the radiation treatment is doing to a patient. Yes its bad, yes it's hurting them, but you can't really make sense of that unless you understand cancer and the greater danger that necessitates this kind of response.
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/gaza-populati...
I feel like folks are entrenched one way or the other and information isn't going to sway anyone
People like to profess doom and hopelessness but I see productive conversations, in this thread and another recent one. Why, in the face of the evidence, is it important to believe and convince people that it's hopeless?
The trend to despair just pisses me off. Nobody ever taught me to embrace despair; I don't know about you. Let's get off our asses and make sh-t happen.
Except nobody does. How many people got off their asses, came to the region and took a look with their own eyes? How many went to work for the NSA in the Palestinian department to understand what's actually going on? How many have spoken to both sides with open eyes and open minds, gathered all the actual evidence and testimonies, systematically categorized them, confronted liars with their proven lies, and so on, and formed a concrete opinion based on actual proper research?
The bombing of power targets, according to intelligence sources who had first-hand experience with its application in Gaza in the past, is mainly intended to harm Palestinian civil society: to “create a shock” that, among other things, will reverberate powerfully and “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas,” as one source put it.
Several of the sources, who spoke to +972 and Local Call on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the Israeli army has files on the vast majority of potential targets in Gaza — including homes — which stipulate the number of civilians who are likely to be killed in an attack on a particular target. This number is calculated and known in advance to the army’s intelligence units, who also know shortly before carrying out an attack roughly how many civilians are certain to be killed.
In one case discussed by the sources, the Israeli military command knowingly approved the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in an attempt to assassinate a single top Hamas military commander. “The numbers increased from dozens of civilian deaths [permitted] as collateral damage as part of an attack on a senior official in previous operations, to hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral damage,” said one source.
“Nothing happens by accident,” said another source. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”
According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”
https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-cal...
a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically
Do we have any example of popular open-source software with a license that restricts military usage?
Technically, licenses are not free/open source if they restrict usage.
Some have created licenses against commercial or unethical uses but they are not widely used in software, as they open a can of worms - these restrictions are subjective and as such hard to enforce.
Sorry, but I can only laugh at Aljazeera, an outlet from Qatar, and Qatar is the main sponsor of Hamas terrorists. It's something close to "crocodile tears", when they show these "tortures" after saluting beheadings of Israelis. If they want to destroy Israel and do ethnic cleansing, why do they keep complaining about being bombed and detained.
They are the main channel operating from Gaza, and their reputation is better than many western media channels, especially when it comes to this conflict. We wouldn't have seen many of the atrocities committed live by the IDF if it weren't for them.
In addition what they are claiming matches with previously known habits of the IDF, matches with deaths of Palestinian hostages that occurred in Israeli jails, so its not that unimaginable
Their reputation is terrible. They've picked a side, long ago, and have been continuously working PR for it.
i've not heard from anyone on the anti-israeli side what israel should have done after 10/7 other than "leave"
its just such a confusing discussion, what kind of retaliation would someone of that mindset find appropriate for those 1000+ killed/tortured/raped from the initial attack? i can't find any steelmanned positions of this
And people seem to ignore Israel's stated goal. They no longer find it possible to live next to Hamas and are fighting a war of unconditional surrender and occupation.
So it is confusing when people claim Israel has far surpassed any proportional response as Israel was never attempting tit-for-tat, but unconditional surrender.
What is this doing on HN?
Keep politics off HN please/
I attempted to answer this in these comments:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616662
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616823
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38617223
Re politics on HN: see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... and if you still have a question I haven't already answered there, I'd be interested to know what it is.
Why is this on hacker news?
I attempted to answer this in these comments:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616662
Al Jazeera on the front of HN? Is Alex Jones and Enquirer coming up next?
There have been many posts from that domain on HN over the years.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
It's not one of the primary media sites here but it has its place. That doesn't mean that everything there is true or good (for HN). For more explanation on this point, see these comments I posted earlier today:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38617464
Yea there is no surprise that those traumatized people will seek revenge in their later years I'd do the same. The cycle of violence continues
Thanks to HN for not banning this topic.
Glad to see so many civil and enriching conversations, you are an example to the internet on how to have respectful and productive discussions on controversial topics.
Thanks.
damn that's crazy Al jazeera would say that
Why is this being discussed in Hackernews?
I pity both sides.
Wonder what the end game is going to be with this conflict - two state is dead afaik and definitely a single state solution is off the cards due to demographics and fear of the Jewish people.
The best scenario would be that Gaza is incorporated into Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan.
Removing Hamas will simply bring about a worse player like ISIS to the fore.
Voices from the other side:
One should read (again?) Hannah Arendt and the mechanics of dehumanisation and propaganda in genocides.
Beyond the dehumanisation of the victims by the perpetrators, one should not dehumanise the latter in response. There were no monsters.
She was recalling that, it was ordinary men killing ordinary men, and ordinary men being killed by ordinary men.
And one of these ordinary men could have been your neighbour, or yourself.
Let me know if i’m reading the sources at the bottom wrong.
Israel supported Hamas as a tactic to destroy their neighbours without restraint as classical war strategy called divide and conquer as most history or war nerds know it.
It's unsurprising classical geopolitics as known from academia 25 years ago before 9/11.
This is an important aspect when people support the measures, the 6000+ bombed kids or that palestinians just voted for them with other options.
In reality the Hamas support, blockades, and forced poverty in Gaza were part of a military plan to create desperation, hellish conditions and radicalisation from constant oppression to eventually weaken or annex depending on sources.
This has been known for long internally in the Israeli press, even mentioned in Wall Street Journal and other mainstream media in the past then called "conspiracy", before again surfacing today with the NYT articles.
Examples below with lots of sources:
The New York Times (today): https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...
Wall Street Journal (2008/2023): https://web.archive.org/web/20090926212507/http:/online.wsj.... https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-gaza-humanitaria...
The Intercept (2018): https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-c...
Haaretz (2023): https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-20/ty-article-op...
I don't want to pick sides in this sad generational conflict and I can see each side has their points but I want this parasitic Israel-US relationship to end.
AIPAC has worked hard over the years to make any politicians with the slightest opposition to Israel to be unelectable. I don't see how that's ok. They pretty much own the US government at federal and state levels. They have passed laws at the state level where boycotting Israeli goods are now illegal (how is that law even constitutional?)
So the first step for ordinary citizens is to make anyone supported by AIPAC unelectable. The billions of dollars / year of aid to Israel, Egypt, etc. that could be spent domestically instead also needs to be cut.
This sort of thing is a commonplace occurrence: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/jul/17/the-rape-of-..., additionally only men being legally required to remain in Ukraine, drafted, etc. Usually it's only men who are systematically tortured/killed when Russian soldiers enter Ukrainian villages. Of course women are at risk of being raped, but so are men - and things so much worse than rape.
But the worst thing is that because of the way that men are still positioned within society, we're both targeted for these things, but are also refused any support/understanding when it does happen.
Both Jews and Palestinian have legitimate grievances, going back over a hundred years, and they are so numerous that it seems pointless to enumerate them here. And these grievances have consistently been used by both sides to trivialize of deny the grievances of the other side. Its is the ultimate Oppression Olympics.
The problems are also much deeper than just "Netanyahu and Hamas". Not only does Netanyahu keep getting re-elected, these ultra hard-right Religious Zionist people have also gained quite a lot of ground, and these people are utterly bonkers, having expressed views that are nothing short of genocidal (even before the current war). And at the same time Hamas also has fairly wide-spread support among the people of Gaza, and Hamas has also expressed views that are nothing short of genocidal.
In short, it's a cultural problem, not a "Netanyahu and Hamas"-problem. Conflicts like this ends when people get tired of the violence and stop caring about who did what to who, and just want it to stop. This is why the Good Friday Accords in Northern Ireland have held, in spite of some opposition, as well as lingering grievances and even outright hatred, from both sides.
I'm not seeing this willingness here. The last time this was really present was the 90s, a hopeful period in general, and the Oslo accords between Rabin and Arafat seemed to be the start of the end of the conflict. It was not to be, and things didn't end well for either men: one got murdered by one of his own religious nutjobs and the other eventually got side-tracked by his own religious nutjobs, and things have only gotten worse since then.
I'm not hopeful for a resolution any time soon. Solutions for fundamental problems like "Gaza has been an open air prison for 15 years and we need to do something with these people" are barely being asked, and even the question itself is met with hostility by some.
Maybe someone still has a savegame from a few decades ago and we can try again? That seems the most plausible solution.
Heartbreaking story. Truly heartbreaking.
“It does not belong to man to direct his own step.”
If we're gonna have a curious conversation I must say that I don't understand the distinction between civlians and non-civilians (combatants?).
Isn't the whole point of war to kill the enemy's civilians and destroy their infrastructure, so that their nation can't support a standing army to defend whatever natural resources the attacker wants in the first place?
I wonder if there is any example from history, modern and not, where an invading army simply disabled the inveded nation's standing army and then just ... turned around left.
Or if there is any example where a nation was occupied and the civilian population did _not_ take arms, meaning that at least some of the civilians turned into combatants.
In the end, I don't get the logic of giving different status to civilians and combatants, in war. If it's illegal to kill enemy civilians, then it should be illegal to kill enemy combatants, too. After all, why should we value the combatants' lives less?
Of course, making it illegal to kill enemy combatants would effectively make war illegal. Well, yes. I can't see how war can still be legal in the current stage of our civilisation. I don't understand how we can still accept that some of us will kill others, destroy their homes and take their stuff. I don't understand how that can be seen as ethical, let alone legal.
"Dispense with the war, learn from the past" - Sodom, Ausgebombt.
People calling themselves civilized do in 21st century what nazis did in 20th century. Such a sad moment for humanity.
If they're being tortured that's a real problem I'd hope is investigated but at the same time, suicide bombers are a thing. I see no issue with being asked to strip.
Having served in Afghanistan it is blatantly obvious that most of HN doesn't have the faintest idea what war is like and how a terrorist insurgency fights.
I mean, even Hamas currently calls for the '67 borders in their charter:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170510123932/http://hamas.ps/e...
Adding to show that the '67 borders are pretty generally supported. There's even support for them among some of the "from the river to the sea" crowd since the '67 borders touch both the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
That's quite a bit of selective reading there. Where you see "'67 borders", I see "Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea".
River = the Jordan River
Sea = the Mediterranean sea
=> calling for the destruction of Israel. But sure, we'll take '67 as an intermediate step.
I don't know how to read that except the willingness to compromise on 1967 borders, as long as those ejected in 1948 can return to their land and become Israeli citizens.
What about the Jews who were ejected from neighboring Arab countries during these various wars? Do they get to go back home? Do you truly believe a compromise can be reached with an organization that committed a massacre on the scale of October 7th? Personally, I'm willing to compromise a lot for peace (divide Jerusalem, give up the west bank, whatever. Fighting over land/religion is absurd), but I honestly don't believe that's what Hamas is aiming for. Their actions at least indicate otherwise.
Yes, they should also be allowed back and several countries have explicitly allowed such a thing.
I don't think compromise is an option that has legitimately been tried.
This is a ridiculous comment. Do you really think the decedents of 150k Iraqis are going to go back to Iraq for example???
In what world would that ever happen? Would those people ever be safe there?
And that’s just one of a dozen countries that tortured and killed Jews in the name of Allah.
Unfortunately for the general tenor of this thread, you're repeating propaganda which has been widely debunked by Iraqi Jews themselves.
For example: [Avi Shlaims book "Three Worlds"](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62918049-three-worlds)
There has been a longstanding and unsinkable narrative that, frustrated by the refusal of Jewish communities in Arab lands to move to the early Israel, an active campaign of bombings etc was launched by Israel itself, surreptitiously, in order to exarcerbate tensions already caused by 1948.
Of course, the fact that these communities had existed within the Arab world for centuries itself belies the notion that the Arabs wanted to exterminate them "for Allah". As anyone with even a passing knowledge of history can attest to.
Let’s apply that argument to eg mid 20th century Europe. Let me ask you this directly: are you denying the holocaust?
Oh, go to hell with that fake question. What I said was DIRECTLY about Jewish communities living in the Muslim world, for centuries. Any half-decent professor of history would agree with what I said. It's not even remotely controversial nor contested by any serious historian, Jewish, Christian or Muslim.
You're desperately clutching at straws, trying to imply that anyone here denied the centuries long EUROPEAN history of pogroms and expulsions, from Britain and Spain in the 14th to 15th centuries, to the repeated pogroms throughout Western, Central and Eastern Europe, culminating in the 20th century where much of Europe COLLABORATED with the Germans to butcher 8+ million people far away from any front lines, 6 million of whom were Jews.
Why are you so desperate to put your words in other people's mouth? Are YOU trying to deny the Holocaust? Hmm ...
My apologies, I thought you were simply mistaken rather than trolling.
I asked you a direct question that followed from your argument, where you proposed essentially a global jewish conspiracy, based on strawman arguments.
As an answer, I got an angry rant attacking me personally, citing an unknown authority (“Any half decent professor”) as your source in an attempt to bully and discredit me.
Much Appreciated.
You discredited yourself. I didn't have to.
LOL. I discredit myself? I made no claims to discredit here, whereas you are repeating conspiracy theories and spewing hate all over this thread.
Sibling comment gave a direct example from personal experience countering your claim.
You are right. I shouldn’t have used that phrase. It was wrong and I agree with you 100% that isn’t the real reason, just a very poor abbreviation of a deeper reason.
It was for the more common reasons. To scapegoat the Jews while the government steals and does horrible things to its citizens.
Jraby, you need to distinguish between sectarian tensions which were deliberately inflamed
(campaign of Mossad bombings targeting Jewish communities elsewhere in the Middle East, to force sectarian fault lines to implode - documented BY an Iraqi Jew whose father left Iraq, served in the IDF, then left for London where the daughter wrote a book detailing this very thing),
vs the long tradition of Muslims and Jews living peacefully side by side. The Caliph Umar, when he took control of Jerusalem from the Byzantine's, actually invited the scattered Jews BACK to Jerusalem. When Jews were being banished from Al-Andalus (Spain) after the Christian reconnaissance (Spanish Inquisition and all that), the Ottoman Sultan actually sent multiple ships to RESCUE them, which is why there was such a large Jewish presence in N Africa.
There is simply NO comparison between the Jewish experience under Muslim rule, and the Jewish history of repression under European rule. None.
And then Zionism came along. If not for that, you would be Iraqi today. That's the sad truth.
Putting aside your barrage of disinformation, conspiracy theories and plain lies, it wouldn’t really matter /even if/ jews lived peacefully as equals to muslims in the muslim world before the 20th century (which they absolutely did not).
The fact is, they were expelled from those countries. EVEN IF it was “safe” being an iraqi jew in 1850, it was not in 1950, and it is definitely not today. So what is your point?
I was born in Iraq where the Jewish community there was ethnically cleansed.
Way before the foundation of Israel, my father and uncles were restricted in numerous ways because of their Jewish ancestry. For example there were quotas on the number of Jews allowed in universities.
Jews were frequently imprisoned there (including my father and his brothers) for the sole reason of being Jewish.
I simply think they should be given the option. They should be welcome to choose not to take it as well.
Compromise has been tried. The creation of Israel was a compromise. Rejected by the Arab states. Oslo was a compromise. Rejected by Arafat. Camp David 2000 was a compromise. Rejected again by Arafat.
The Palestinian position is that Oslo and Camp David were not good faith compromises by Israel, but even if so Arafat made no counter-offer. He rejected the offers out of hand. Then the second Intifada started and ushered in Likud and Netanyahu which led us to where we are today.
As far as a Palestinian right-of-return to within Israel's borders. It would be the demographic end of a Jewish democratic Israel. It's the one thing that Israel absolutely will not and cannot compromise on. It's an unreasonable demand.
To my mind: Palestinians have never had effective leadership and they've been used as pawns by the other Arab nations. The lack of Palestinian leadership is not entirely the Palestinians' doing, at least since Arafat anyway. Israel has intentionally kept West Bank and Gaza leadership divided. Nonetheless, Palestinians are going to need to figure out a way to have effective leadership. Someone who is motivated and empowered to negotiate for peace, recognizing that Palestinians are not negotiating from a position of strength.
Note no promise of peace. So they just continue the war. Besides, return just means they can take over 100% from within. Either way it's not a 'compromise'.
So in other words, a willingness to "compromise" while actually taking a complete victory: https://vimeo.com/36854424
I posted this perspective previously ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38071749 ) but it was immediately flagged out: https://libcom.org/article/voices-front-line-against-occupat...
Additional friendly reminder that Bush Jr is responsible for Hamas.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/was-hamas-electe...
Don't treat the Palestinians like they have no agency...
Never said that they were saints. It's important to know what you're actually dealing with though.
From the article:
"In other words, Hamas’ absolute rule of Gaza is not what the Palestinians voted for back in 2006. In fact, since the median age of Gazans is 18, half of Hamas’ subjects weren’t even born when the election took place."
I cannot help but see most of the arguments that people make equating Hamas with Palestinians as bad faith. Explanations are not excuses and knowing why things are happening is the first real step towards fixing anything.
And, for the same reason, the ones that were born largely couldn't vote.
Yes, it's inferrable with some caution.
There's also the obvious elephant in the room that Israel is executing a disproportional response to the terror attacks and the conditions they're creating will only extend this conflict and create more terror. As the article states, it's pretty well understood that citizens need stable material conditions before voting really works well, otherwise they tend to trend towards the reactionary.
Based on what I know about Palestinians, they appear to be close to having no agency. They don't control what crosses their border, the Israeli government may well be trying to destroy them and their politics are the plaything of regional and non-regional powers. For example, Israel played a role in incubating Hamas [0, 1].
Now if I were in Gaza my opinion is that what they are doing is stupid. They don't really have a choice but to like it and make the best of their situation with charity, tolerance and love. All the other plays lead to worse results. But there aren't many political bodies with less agency.
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/30...
They have no power, and israel and hamas are killing them in the middle of their war. That is just a misleading comment. They have very very very little power to change things right now. It looks like people are just hoping not to die, and people are dieing all around them.
Israeli policy during the occupation is responsible for Hamas, and it existed before W had any foreign policy influence.
Blaming Bush for Hamas because he was somehow responsible for the elections happening is stupid. The elections happening was a good thing. Fatah stupidly rejecting the idea of a national unity government was a bad thing. Israel deliberately seeking to assure a Hamas victory by interfering with campaigning, and voter registration, conducting a targeted campaign of arrests of Palestinian politicians, and doing everything possible to make the Fatah-led PA look weak, complicit, and corrupt in Israel's favor in the immediate runup to the elections was horrible -- but predictable given the entire history of Israel actively promoting Hamas, from its founding, as a tool to divide Palestinians and assure that there was a public face of opposition less sympathetic to, particularly, the population of Israel's Western Allies (particularly the US) than the more secular nationalists of the PLO during the height of occupation, and Fatah as a political party once there was an entity to have political parties.
Sorry, it was an oversimplification, but the article here is pretty decent. The major takeaway is that conditions were not right and the whole election cycle was a bit ham fisted. Your break down is appreciated as it's got a lot of moving parts!
To me a smoking gun here is that Biden's administration wants the Palestinian Authority to rule Gaza "after Hamas" (as an aside, I sincerely doubt Israel will be successful in destroying Hamas, but ofc even if they do there will just be a more radical group taking its place anyway); history shows pretty well that the US only installs a power when they know they will be a vassal/puppet of US interests. There's many examples but the most recent one is when we (I'm American) propped up the bogus Afghanistan "Government" only for it to instantly collapse and be replaced again by the Taliban the moment we withdrew.
Really hope there's a path forward that gives the Palestinians real autonomy and an end to the bloodshed. In reality, I expect this conflict to continue indefinitely and us to just continue supporting the occupation, which I find heartbreaking but my rational mind is convinced is the most likely outcome.
Instead of coming up with conspiracy theories we could consider what other options there are. There are effectively only three powers which could control Gaza if/when Hamas is defeat: Egypt, Israel and the PA.
Egypt certainly doesen't want anything to do with the region or Palestinians anymore. So US can only chose between supporting a direct Israeli occupation or a semi-indirect one (through the Palestinian Authority). I don't think the US government wants to install a puppet regime in Gaza, they'd rather have absolutely nothing to do with at all.
Tangential but when it comes to Afghanistan I'm almost certain that stupidity and incompetence (and one might guess a good dose of corruption) rather than outright malice or imperialism were to blame for that entire disaster.
Well to some extent Hamas was the closest they got to that for decades.
I'm sorry, but the US installing powers that are favorable to it is not a conspiracy theory. It's a conspiracy fact. How do you think Pinochet and others happened? It certainly wasn't organic (at least not entirely so).
Anyway, regarding the options, there's technically a few more like Jordan or other arab states, or a new organization arising (albeit in reality the US and others would intervene to stop them taking power). But beyond those quibbles I don't disagree with you that there's no good options, I'm just stating my belief that if we support organization X, it's because organization X is directly controlled by us or indirectly its incentives align well with our own.
Agreed fully, and that's one of the problems.
Why not both? Imperialism is a pretty stupid ideology, at least if one's goal is to keep one's country safe and powerful. If one's goal is to extract resources from one's own country at the cost of lots of bloodshed of your citizens and others', then it achieves the goal fine.
Yes, it was certainly a fact during the cold war however foreign policy is not static and changes pretty often. Even Iraq and to some extent Iraq (and certainly Afghanistan) didn't really fit the pattern that well. Considering that no other country benefited more from the US toppling Saddam than Iran did (considering it was a Shia majority state ruled by a Sunni minority, the inverse of Syria for instance).
The invasion of Afghanistan on the other hand was justifiable both on defensive and humanitarian grounds. While the aftermath was mostly botched, US had no interest in somehow subjugating it it long-term (IMHO imposing a "colonial" administration directly controlled by NATO/Western powers would've been the least bad option).
None of them would ever accept that (after all Jordan willingly gave up the West Bank back in the 80s and I don't see why would they ever want to take it back even if Israel had no objections).
Again before the US and other count stop it you need some regional powers who are willing to support this.
At this point it seems to me that from the perspective of the US the middle east is more of a distraction. They don't have that many vital strategic interest in the region since US+Canada alone produce produce significantly more oil than all the Arab states combined.
And some support the war Hamas rages despite the effect on the Palestinian people/civilians. Is that an other other side? This is complex, and we really can't describe this conflict as just having two sides.
Then how would you refer to the different groups/entities and/or populations involved in this conflict?
I'd say there is of course a range of opinions and different narratives on both sides (from from actively seeking coexistence to humanitarian to pragmatic to nationalist to religious fundamentalist to having a deep personal hate for the other side).
Then you have all kinds of different groups, factions and third parties with their own allegiances and motivation.
However all of those pieces arrange themselves around a central conflict which does have exactly two sides in my opinion, which are the Israeli and Palestine people, respectively their claims to live on the land. You can see this rather easily by observing which groups view each other as mortal enemies and which merely as a nuisance.
There are - thankfully - lots of people trying to bridge the divide and not aligning themselves only with one side. This is where we all should be headed, but it doesn't change the fact that currently there are sides.
We're talking here about the conflict that has happened as a result of the Hamas attacks on October 7. Take a look at how CNN vs BBC vs The Guardian categorize the conflict. CNN describes it as the "Israel-Hamas War" (Reuters similarly uses "Israel and Hamas at war") while the BBC and Guardian list it as the "Israel-Gaza war" (and I'm pretty sure the Guardian previously used the same terminology as CNN). And you've described it as "Israeli people-Palestine people".
https://www.theguardian.com/world/israel-hamas-war
https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-ga...
https://www.reuters.com/world/israel-hamas/
https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c2vdnvdg6xxt
I was referring to the entire 100 year long middle east conflict, of which the Israel-Hamas war is a part.
speaking of complex, half of the reason I absolutely laughed at the call for statements and the idea that “your silence is noted” here in the US is because I didn't want my Lebanese and Egyptian friends calling for statements too. It wasnt clear if they and their families would be roped in a few weeks with conscription or not-discriminate-enough bombing.
Its even funnier when that silence is interpreted as wishing for a pogrom, like, see a therapist? If there is 1,000 years to support that view of every society turning against you, the common denominator isn’t us!
Every person has a unique perspective in human interactions, implying diverse viewpoints. Discussions often generalize these complexities, as comprehending every nuance is impossible for one individual
Just like some Israelis support expelling all Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan and settling these territories with Israelis. The only "side" that's not wrong (IMO) is the one that condemns violence against civilians and is for peace and the two state solution, this "side" exists among both Israelis and Palestinians (but is the minority for both).
In fact, public opposition to Hamas[0][1] is frequently cited[2] as a primary motivation for the 10/7 attack. Gazans widely viewed Hamas as corrupt and the main reason for their destitution, and overwhelmingly preferred Fatah leaders over Hamas (despite having installed Hamas primarily due to Fatah's perceived corruption).
The theory goes: if Hamas were to embarrass Israel on the public stage with a humiliating attack, this might provoke an overwhelmingly disproportionate response by Israel against Gaza, cementing the public perception of Gazans as the victims in the conflict even in light of the 10/7 aggression - and Hamas as their freedom fighters. This in turn would attract public sympathy for Hamas, bolstering their political prospects in Palestine, meanwhile derailing Saudi peace talks that might have resulted in formal recognition of the Palestinian Authority as the legitimate sovereigns. (Neutralizing peace talks between the two greatest enemies of one of Hamas's greatest benefactors, Iran, could only be viewed as a nice "plus").
[0] https://www.arabbarometer.org/media-news/survey-sheds-light-... [1] https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/polls-sh... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMxHU34IgyY
Alternatively, it could be viewed as the whole purpose behind the attack.
Heck, even at the time of the 2006 elections, an overwhelming majority of Palestinians including Hamas supporters also supported a peace agreement with Israel, and moderation of what was then Hamas's platform. (The latter occurred, the former not so much -- in large part because Israel stopped negotiating when the executive of the PA wanted Hamas -- the party that won a majority in the legislative elections -- involved in the negotiations.)
What were the contours of this peace agreement? Would it be real peace, or “peace until the next time we attack you?”
What exactly is their conception of the Jewish state that exists within those borders? Something that exists until the next time the Arabs try to wipe Israel off the map?
How do you think the 1967 borders became the current borders? Egypt shut down Israel’s access to the Red Sea and massed troops on Israel’s border. Then Jordan and Iraq sent troops. And then Israel kicked everybody’s ass and occupied the Sinai, the Gaza Strip (which had been occupied by Egypt) and the West Bank (which had been annexed by Jordan).
Plenty Palestinians oppose the war and want peace. This is the equivalent.
In their eyes, to rid of kahanists like Netanyahu and his cronies, who have subjugated them for decades, subjected them to a death by a thousand paper-cuts, they don't demand Jordan and Turkey besiege and bomb Tel Aviv.
Given the population density in the Strip and lack of trust in Israel by Egypt on refugees, smaller-scale military solution followed by a political solution must have been pursued but instead the majority sentiment in Israel was all-out revenge (and collective punishment very much okay: https://archive.is/t9pmT). It has been downhill from there.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38618262. (There was nothing wrong with your comment; I'm just trying to prune the top-heavy subthread.)
How is that the other side? Israeli- and Palestinian-Americans, for example, don’t have any real reason to be on opposite sides here. (Not to mention all the American Jews who aren’t actually Israeli.)
I’m reminded of an excellent Middle Eastern restaurant in California that I went to on occasion during the Second Intifada. The had Hebrew- and Arabic language newspapers. The patrons (I assume) mostly had some form of Middle Eastern or Jewish heritage, but I don’t really know which. The falafel sandwiches were fantastic. The only sides were things like tahini and harissa. As far as I know, basically everyone who ate there wanted peace and didn’t really want any particular group to “win” the ongoing conflict.
I think the owners were Lebanese-American, but it didn’t matter.