All: if you're going to post in this thread, please make sure you're up on the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and that your comment is strictly within them.
That especially means two things here: being kind, and not using the thread to do battle. If you're not able to stick to that, that's fine, but in that case please don't post.
What does be kind mean in a context like this? Many things, but here's one in my view: it means finding a place in your heart for the humanity of the other—whoever the other happens to be for you.
That isn't easy but it's the spirit we want here. If you can't find it in yourself, that's understandable, but on this topic, please only post if you can.
Dissents etc can be found in the case page: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192
- in particular the opinion of Judge Aharon Barak, the Israeli ad-hoc Judge (a peculiarity of the ICJ is that each side gets to add a judge, but it doesn't have much effect since there are 17 other judges). But interestingly Judge Barak ruled against Israel in the case of two measures, enforcement against Incitement and ensuring humanitarian aid.
I believe it's also available in French, for those more familiar with that language.
Since the comment that I replied to was flagged, I'm posting this here because it is simply a statement of facts.
- Judge Barak's numbers on civilian deaths on 7th october are simply wrong and could've been easily checked. 766 civilians were killed, 1200 was the total number of deaths (including armed forces).
- Israel's own numbers say "2 civilians killed for every one militant"[1], that's 66% in the Gaza offensive.
- 766 / 1200 = 63.8%
- 63.8% and 66% are indeed close numbers, don't see why would it be flagged.
Of course, the numbers claimed by other NGOs / UN make it worse. But Israel's numbers are sufficient to make that claim.
Regarding the people that died on October 7, one important detail is evidence surfaced it appears a sizeable fraction was killed due to Israeli military attacking militants and hostages without distinction, to avoid capture, following the so called Hannibal directive:
Barak is no fan of the current Israeli government. And they often attacked him publicly and organized demonstrations around his home. They truly sent the best international law expert the country has to offer
This is more nuanced. Some people in the government respect Barak. I don't know that Barak is active in politics (I haven't really heard him opine on the current government, but one can imagine he's not a fan). The more extreme parties in the government resent/oppose Barak. The "government" doesn't attack Barak or protest against him but certainly some (extreme/right-wing) political factions in Israel blame him for many things. I don't think he was sent because he's necessarily the best international law expert, but he's a very sharp and widely respected. His being sent while the government is trying to undermine the practices Barak established in the supreme court is a bit weird. Politics.
Not exactly. They sent the guy who controls the local judiciary because not doing so would be impossible due to his immense political power. The Israeli judiciary is unique in nominating itself and having given itself the power to cancel any law or demand any changes to laws/policy on any arbitrary basis; since this state of affairs is backed up by a sufficient number of powerful institutions, it is effectively impossible to challenge.
Barak ruling to resupply the enemy (it is widely documented that "humanitarian aid" goes first and foremost to Hamas) in an international court is entirely consistent with his lifelong tendency to gradually reduce Israeli independence and voters' impact on policy and to increase Israeli compliance to the policy of outside parties, first and foremost the US. (Resupplying the enemy was required by the US from the start. It is interesting to see other examples where civilians are prevented by the international community to leave the area of hostilities and instead they are supposed to be provided with resources in this area where the monopoly on the use of force belongs to one of the sides in the conflict.)
While the exact requirements placed on Israel by larger powers are somewhat unique, having highly influential people in the country effectively work in the interest of larger powers is a common condition for smaller powers. In this Barak is similar to many other high-profile people and organizations in many other countries enjoying limited sovereignty at best.
An important part of Barak’s involvement is the complete recognition of ICJ’s jurisdiction over the matter, which it found (and Barak didn’t disagree) it had.
Notably also voted against telling Israel to follow the raw key prohibitions of Genocide convention as written in the convention, something Israel agreed to in the past. Curious.
Also voted against asking Israel to preserve evidence of the crimes. Interesting perspective for a former judge.
Please don't post like this. It's against the intention of this site and especially against the intended spirit I tried to describe at the top of the thread.
The civilian death toll in Gaza has been tragically high but there hasn't been any independent verification. Regardless of what's on Wikipedia, we can't trust specific numbers.
My views on the situation aside, the clearest I saw anyone communicate the issues from a global angle was the former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin
Viewed from the angle of the West, I think the message it needs to avoid isolating itself from the world is very unusual for Western media and important.
Quote:
"Westerners must open their eyes to the extent of the historical drama unfolding before us to find the right answers."
And
"This Palestinian question will not fade. And so we must address it and find an answer. This is where we need courage. The use of force is a dead end. The moral condemnation of what Hamas did - and there's no "but" in my words regarding the moral condemnation of this horror - must not prevent us from moving forward politically and diplomatically in an enlightened manner. The law of retaliation is a never-ending cycle."
All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then?
Spend tons of money on iron dome to shoot down the rockets and hope that Hamas won't manage to conduct another massacre, even if "only" half the scope of October 7?
This mess features not one but two parties who currently reject the concept of a cease fire.
>All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then?
And then everyone who wants peace invests lots of money and expertise over a long time to build a modern, prosperous, stable Palestinian society, despite whatever setbacks, attacks, and sabotage occur from within and without.
The only way to have peace is to give people a better option than becoming terrorists.
People said Apartheid South Africa couldn't end without a bloodbath. People said peace in Northern Ireland was impossible. People thought the Cold War would never end.
Impossible things are impossible until they aren't. I'm not saying that any of these things are easy - they clearly are not. But history shows us again and again that change is possible when people work towards it in good faith.
From a practical point of view, I think that the international community needs to be allowed to help - both to maintain the peace and broker a way forward.
The status quo will not reach peace. Israel will never have peace and security until Palestine has peace and security.
If I knew the answer to that question I would be a high ranked politician. But for me it's important to keep in mind what he is saying here and also in another part explicitly: a diplomatic solution is possible and history proves that. So what I can do is reject the notion that what is happening is unavoidable.
Israel must face the reality that is an apartheid state that exists on occupied land. There is no solution until that happens. Just like apartheid South Africa was dismantled, Israel has to face the same fate or forever be locked into warfare and oppressing Palestinians.
> All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then?
It remains a mess, but less of a mess? Look, it's all bad guys running the show in that hell hole of a desert. There are no trusted entities anywhere able to run a government that isn't somewhere between actively antagonistic and actively genocidal toward half the local population.
Nonetheless a status quo with less shooting and death is better than a status quo with more. Hamas killed fewer people than Israel did/is, so... yeah, I guess. An occasional October 7th is a better choice than levelling Gaza is. Incrementally. But none of this is going to get better, likely within our lifetimes.
While I'm not a military expert, I think it would be reasonable to rule out the possibility of a similar massacre any time soon, for decades at least. It seems unlikely that Hamas would get away with it a second time? They put everything into a one-day surprise attack. The Israeli defense was caught unprepared despite being warned, but they have much more power and they can learn.
What happens in the wider conflict (with other Iran-backed militias) is another question.
Yes, that is exactly what Israel should do. The "dont let gazans interact with Israelis" strategy was icnredibly effective until Israel got soft on border security. Israel easily is capable of ensuring no Gazans ever escape again. The iron dome is largely succesful at keeping Israelis safe, certainly more so than a long term gazan invasion which would open up the Israelis in gaza to terrorist attacks.
"Today we are faced with an Islamist cause, led by Hamas. Obviously, this kind of cause is absolute and allows no form of negotiation."
Lost me there, because this is not the framing that matches reality. There were several instances where Hamas was willing to form unity government with Fatah/PLO, to share power, negotiate, to do things like that. It's first and foremost a national liberation movement. The movement itself would not even exist had not been for the occupation.
I didn't read further, because assuming lack of negotiation, lack of pragmatism, of being able to participate in politics semi-normally, etc. is just a crucial point.
Especially while not recognizing intense pressure by the West for this political process to not exist, to suppress it, for it to fail. If you suppress politics, you get violent conflict eventually.
Edit: My this comment is being downvoted despite stating just a plain fact. Hopefully the downvoters can do everyone a service by explaining what's wrong with it.
Like you said, HAMAS exists solely for the sake of resisting Jewish occupation [0], from the river to the sea, which also means the extermination of Israel and Jews [1]. And their conviction stems from their religion, Islam, which allows them to persist despite all the opposition on earth because they are hoping for a reward in heaven[2].
And of course Israel won't allow itself to be exterminated ( hopefully this point is clear enough, no citation needed). So how can there be negotiation?
He says exactly the same. There were in the past, but not today. He says the same thing for Israel - switched from secular to biblical and thus unable to compromise.
No. The fundamental flaw in this reasoning is the assumption that overwhelming victory is what established the current world order.
Rebuilding Europe via the Marshall plan, which involved humanization of individuals who fought on behalf of evil, is why there is peace in Europe. Likewise, the US reconstruction of Japan is why the US and Japan are at peace.
The US held the position of power and chose not to exercise it tyrannically. That is why there is peace.
The native American case is much closer to supporting your argument because genoicdal efforts were made against them and they were forced to submit, and then tyrannical power was exercised over them, maybe even to this day. However again, Native Americans participate in American civil society, there have been (probably insufficient) efforts for reparations, they do have land where they administer their own laws. In some locations native American heritage is celebrated and native American culture is promoted.
There is relative peace with native Americans because we are not particularly tyrannical, and I would say for the most part, modern Americans see Native Americans as humans not "savages."
Seeing your enemies as equally valid humans, who might have done things you would do if you grew up under their conditions, is what creates peace.
Peace is a function of humanization, not a function of victory. Victory without humanization does not end the cycle of violence.
Germany and Japan's peaceful modern history are less due to a clear, overwhelming victory than they were due to the recognition of an absolutely horrific chapter in their country's respective histories and a major cultural movement against the possibility of those kinds of atrocities happening again. Either country could easily come up with more than enough military might to win a war if they chose, but the horrors that they perpetrated live on as cultural scar tissue.
The last example is just... horrific. I don't have more to say on it except that we shouldn't use it as a positive example of anything.
That's exactly the point, at least how I'm reading it. Between the US and Japan peace and diplomacy was allowed to rule instead of constant violent retaliation. With France and Germany the same - the two countries have, in a pretty meaningful way, simply merged into a single country along with a lot of the rest of Europe.
When it comes to the US Government and Native Americans it's a far less good example - there have been militarized Native resistance groups at times since the 1900s and there has been open violence (see, for instance, Leonard Peltier and AIM)... in a large way America succeeded with erasing native peoples from their lands - and ditto with Canada - to the point where the groups are too fragmented to form any serious claims at independence. I also think Nixon (yes that Nixon) helped cool things off pretty seriously by, essentially, starting reparation programs to help reinject economic health into reservations - while those have had very underwhelming success at fully solving the problem America has been trying to uplift instead of suppress those communities.
All this stuff is really, really complicated - what defines a culture and a nation is extremely nebulous and subject to heavy revision as time passes. But we're all people and we need to be able to talk about peace even if we have deep historical wounds.
The US has fought many wars since WW2 and has basically failed to win any of them. Again from the interview:
The second thing is a targeted response. Let's define realistic political objectives. And the third thing is a combined response. Because there is no effective use of force without a political strategy. We are not in 1973 or in 1967. There are things no army in the world knows how to do, which is to win in an asymmetrical battle against terrorists. The war on terror has never been won anywhere. And it instead triggers extremely dramatic misdeeds, cycles, and escalations. If America lost in Afghanistan, if America lost in Iraq, if we lost in the Sahel, it's because it's a battle that can't be won simply, it's not like you have a hammer that strikes a nail and the problem is solved. So we need to mobilize the international community, get out of this Western entrapment in which we are.
The Marshall Plan and favorable trade agreements the allies gave Japan would never be extended by Israel the way it is and acts now, so there has to be another solution. Destruction didn't turn Germany and Japan around, the ability to uplift themselves did. The very thing which has been denied to Gaza since 2005 at least (and likely much longer)
In this situation I disagree. The world is overwhelmingly pro Palestine, and the Arab world obviously. They will not go away. Israel will not go away either.
Those who want to know the proper history and context of the current conflict, you really owe it to yourself to read this well researched book by Prof Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine [1]. In his latest book he even mentioned Israel - Palestinian latest major war (fifth war in chronological order) in the form of many years of blockade on the people of Gaza. The fact that this book was published several years (2017) before the event happened kind of foretelling that now we have an on-going all out war between one of mightiest army of the modern world against people without a country and no official army to its defense.
Imagine trying to extend and justify every land conflict way further before the Roman Empire, hence the Italian can claim back their ruling over most of England, and the Moroccan over most of Spain.
Are you literally judging a book by its title? I don't think dismissing books out of hand without actually engaging with anything they say, but rather by engaging with imagined arguments based on their titles, is not a good way of arriving at knowledge and truth.
> > The court ruled that Israel must do all it can to prevent genocide, including refraining from killing Palestinians or causing harm to them
> Sounds like a ceasefire to me. How else would they do this? Definitely not with any of the military tactics Israel is currently using.
Reading the actual icj ruling it seems like it only forbid it when done with genocidial intent. The court did not forbid collateral damage.
The specific wording included the line "...take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II..."
Earlier in paragraph 78 they said "The Court recalls that these acts fall within the scope of Article II of the Convention when they are committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a group as such (see paragraph 44 above)."
So basically it is only forbidden if the intent is specificly to kill Palestinians and not if it is collateral damage to some other military objective.
I don't think this order will affect anything israel is doing.
Except SA specifically asked the court to require a ceasefire, which would have immediate consequences via security council vote and no more munitions landing in Israel. And the judges voted it down
This isn't a read between the lines situation, because SA's request was specifically for the court to temporarily rule for a full immediate ceasefire until the larger case could be heard
What is interesting here is that by mis-reading the verdict like yourself, and Israel assuming the worst, both sides immediately came out saying today was a huge win. So at least we have that, everyone (but the Palestinians, who aren't a side in this case) is happy
From what i understand, the ceasefire was an extreme long shot by south africa and nobody really expected the icj to grant it. Particularly because the court cant order hamas to do anything and a one sided cease fire seems kind of unreasonable, but also the right to self defense is pretty fundamental in international law.
Honestly I'm not trying to mis-read the verdict which is why I asked the question. I think all of Israel's strategies to date include the death of Palestinians. Since that's explicitly forbidden with that ruling, how will they continue to fight? Will they just ignore the ruling or change tactics?
I believe the court reaffirmed Israel's right to defend itself. Presumably, the "all it can to prevent" wording is meant to work around things we expect a nation must do, such as defending itself from attack.
International law regulates war, but does not entirely prohibit it (that would be futile; wars of aggression are specifically prohibited by Briand-Kellogg pact, but nowadays even aggressors try to dress the situation as justified defense and often get away with it; few wars since 1945 were tried by a competent tribunal and judged unlawful).
It isn't unlawful per se to cause civilian casualties during military operations; any demand that the warring parties limit themselves to killing combatants only would be unrealistic, especially in urban settings.
It is unlawful to target civilians intentionally or to cause wanton damage to civilian infrastructure, though.
Quite the contrary - they have all the power, they are just choosing not to use it in this case. If the court ordered a ceasefire all weapon shipments to Israel would have to stop the same day.
Isn't this collateral damage of waging war with a terrorist organisation embedded in civilian population? I don't this this counts for genocide, as sad as the results are...
The technicality I see here is that the ICJ can call a ceasefire in an armed conflict, this would carry the implicit message that the civilian casualties are collateral damage. Instead they are asking to stop the genocidal acts. In a genocide the civilians are the target. It’s bad for the Palestinians in the short term, and bad for Israel in the long
The primary problem was always that there are too many parties who have an interest in the existence of Hamas.
Put differently, there are too many parties with an interest in using the Palestinians as pawns. Leaving aside the views of any specific Palestinian. As no serious person can dispute the ease of radicalizing destitute people without educations and with PTSD.
As long as this is the case, the Palestinians, on the whole, will present as radicalized.
The continued goal can't be to use them as pawns. The goal has to be to peacefully save every last remaning Palestinian life, at all costs. In spite of the interests of any of the people who use them.
Accomplishing that goal, at all peaceful costs, will be distasteful to both the people who want to sacrifice the Palestinians for Islamic land interests as well as to the people who see them as, at minimum, legitimate collateral damage.
But that is what will be required to take Palestinian civilians out of the middle of this endless nightmare.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” - Benjamin Netanyahu
The problem is tribalism. The primary goal is exclusive dominion, but a distant secondary goal of political and militaristic domination will suffice in the meantime. These aren’t my thoughts or conclusions but the stated goals of several of Israel’s most senior politicians, saying something to the effect of removing the inhabitants so that they can make the desert blossom.
The problems here can be solved peacefully and permanently if the dominant faction so wished. The most durable solution is to tear down the walls, annex the occupied territories, and make the Palestinian residents full and equal citizens of Israel. Israel has stated as much directly but refuses that solution because they fear their tribal identity will not longer be a numerical majority. Another less durable solution is a two state solution in opposition to military dominance, but Israel does not want that either. Tribalism. The parallels to the conflict in the Balkans, which was ruled a genocide, are many.
Your solution is to make Jews a minority in their own country?
The entire reason Israel was created is to have a safe place for Jews to exist and having the power to defend themselves.
Imagining that just “tearing down the walls”, and “why can’t we all just gel along” will work is pretty naive, especially considering history .
> dispute the ease of radicalizing destitute people without educations and with PTSD
Using the same broad stroke generalization and similarly de-humanizing moral compass; how do you judge the society these people celebrating child murder, arson, death, riots, mass executions, hateful incitement belong to: https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17237393892624344...
> But that is what will be required to take Palestinian civilians out of the middle of this endless nightmare
One might say, the chief among requirements is for the occupation of a people who have rejected it every step of the way to end. Everything else is a distraction.
What's the ICJ's actual ability to enforce this? "Orders" sounds like they have some sort of weight to throw around if Israel doesn't comply, but I'm not familiar with the ICJ or what possible consequences could arise if Israel simply decided it was going to do what it wanted.
In theory i think they are supposed to ask the security council to step in if the order is ignored. Which would be unlikely to do anything, so nothing.
I think its likely israel will comply. The order is pretty weak and mostly stuff israel already claims to be doing. It wouldn't be worth the PR hassle to ignore it.
Comply with "Don't genocide"? At best, they'll argue semantics while they keep doing what they've always done.
Nevermind. I read the article:
> Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the fact that the court was willing to discuss the genocide charges was a “mark of shame that will not be erased for generations.” He vowed to press ahead with the war.
Israel's government doesn't care about PR hassle from the usual suspect. We may notice that they've had plenty of that lately and it did not stop them at all.
Even if doing what the ICJ wants is easy, there's a strong reason not to (from their perspective) - it implies the ICJ should be obeyed and legitimizes them. But why should Israel do that? It's just another leftie NGO from Netenyahu's perspective. Start following what those guys want and soon they will have to do nothing even as Hamas attacks again and again.
> What's the ICJ's actual ability to enforce this?
Zero, the same as most courts.
Enforcement is a matter for (ordinarily) the Security Council, or, in the case of deadlock, potentially the GA acting under Uniting for Peace. Well, decisions on enforcement; actual enforcement is left to individual UN members, acting on direction of those UN bodies.
Note that enforcement in practice is often a problem, as with the provisional measures adopted against Russia in the Ukraine v. Russia genocide case.
Well, Israel is a treaty signatory. That means an ICJ ruling is executable under Israeli law.
That means jack shit right now. But every action taken hereonforth, by leadership or command or individual soldiers, carries with it the burden of future prosecution.
The ruling also ordered Hamas to release all hostages, and Hamas has previously claimed they would abide by any ruling of the court. I find it unlikely though that they will comply.
> Hamas has previously claimed they would abide by any ruling of the court
No, Hamas previously claimed that they would observe a ceasefire if the court imposed one on Israel, conditioned on Israeli compliance with the same. They didn't say they would do anything related to anything other than an ceasefire order.
Hamas is not a state. ICJ is a tribunal that adjudicates disputes between states. ICJ has no jurisdiction to rule in regards to Hamas. Neither can Hamas bring a case against Israel, as it has no standing, considering it is not a party to the international treaty.
If you had an inkling of a genocide going on and a chance to act, obviously you'd immediately do anything in your power to stop it? Despite the judges being appointed by their own countries*, I'm sure they have humanity. So this is an acquittal in all but name.
Oh, they'll keep monitoring and the case will take years, but the result is obvious even now.
* e.g. It's obvious the Russian judge has strong incentives to vote as Putin tells them to, otherwise they'd have to move to a windowless basement where the only access is by an elevator...
> If you had an inkling of a genocide going on and a chance to act, obviously you'd immediately do anything in your power to stop it?
Doesn’t seem people care about what’s going in Africa. People care here because this is a war of religion. And by that, I mean whether Western countries remain increasingly supreme (in terms of the world order).
Realistically this war is being fought politically in the worlds media. The fight is for public opinion.
So the orders of the IJC are about war.
The hair splitters may want to change the nature of war to "genocide" by one side rather than condemn BOTH sides in the conflict.
"but we can only take evidence from XYZ and only on matters ABC"
It seems to me to be a case of the UN wanting to have a seat at the table. They have become more & more irrelevant in matters of real importance or conflict. This ruling is pretty meaningless regardless of what your beliefs are. Its just more media circus.
We can argue about statistics and false testimony who is right and which side is credible but we are just adding to the noise.
Most terrorist organizations & actions are the direct result of one group having no political power. It ceases when that group obtains political power.
It seems to me the original attack by HAMAS was simply to ensure that there is more war and that war can be fought in the worlds media. This ruling and the whole procedure is just more of the same.
Wars usually continue to be prosecuted till one (or both) side loses the political will to continue. Does anyone here really believe Israel will lose that political will, regardless of world opinion? Hasn't in the past.
Just like Russia.
Here is an Israel Times article from the 28th that seems to prove that to be untrue for electricity (but true for water although severely reduced). Could you source that statement?
ICJ didn't reach any conclusions or positions except that IDF needs to be careful. No call for a ceasefire.
I'm curious what people in Tel Aviv see in media. In America, it's wall-to-wall "police say"-like IDF clips and Bill Maher condemnation, dehumanization, and equivocating Palestine supporters with Hamas terrorists. The talking heads cheerfully greet Netanyahu.
> In America, it's wall-to-wall "police say"-like IDF clips and Bill Maher condemnation, dehumanization, and equivocating Palestine supporters with Hamas terrorists. The talking heads cheerfully greet Netanyahu.
As someone who also consumes US news, this does not describe what I’ve seen.
I have found the exact opposite. NPR, for example, spends a lot of time humanizing Gazans and showing that Israel is terrorizing them, quite literally.
NPR also frequently talked about the right wing/nationalist power seizures leading up to this.
Before the war, I think a good number of Americans saw Israel blowing up the Associated Press offices. It hardly matters what the excuse was.
I feel like every week I've heard a story about Israel telling Gazans where to go, and then bombing that location.
I'm not sure I saw any news outlet that didn't report 70% women and children casualties, which pretty much speaks for itself.
Nobody I went to college with supports Israel at all. Genocide Joe is not just used by his oponents. That name didn't come out of nowhere. Many of the people who voted for him agree his genocidal support of Israel is unacceptable.
It's kind of funny reading HN comments comparing this to WWII. Israel was given the land after WWII as some sort of weird hand washing by western governments. People already lived there. The claims that Hamas is like "Germany" trying to eliminate Jews are laughably absurd. These are people without a military fighting with AK-47s and rocket launchers against one of the most sophisticated armies on the planet -- F-35 jets and laser guided munitions. How can we blame Hamas when it is Israel that is stealing Palestinian homes to add Jewish settlers? Imagine someone coming to your house with a bulldozer kicking you out and placing new people there. This is literally what a settlement is and it is condemned by most of the UN outside of the United States.
It is also important to remember that Israel did not exist before 1948. There was a lot of violence that occurred against Palestinians during it's formation -- within 2 generations of the current generation -- rapes, murders, displacement. I recommend watching the documentary film Tantura which outlines some of this. There is some pretty horrific stuff... 70 year old Israeli men laughing about old stories of raping women. Feeding men their own cut-off genitals etc. There is a reason the "Nakba" is not allowed to be mentioned in Israel.
There also seems to be only a very basic understanding of the political realities behind why Hamas exists in this forum. "Big bad boogeyman Islamic terrorists" vs "Secular free modernity" is a stupid way to look at this. The Israeli government does not want a Palestinian state. Hamas was very much uplifted by the Israeli government since as early as the 80s because they delegitimize the idea of a free Palestine in the international sphere. They are easy to negotiate against because they are extremists. Even given their extremism, Hamas does not want to "genocide Jews" -- this is another absurd claim that is propagated but has no basis.
Hamas is also not ISIS. They are a resistance movement against an occupying power that uses violent means to influence political realities. This is dirty dirty work and many horrible things happen when you give 20 year olds AK-47s. I don't support it. But the existence of Hamas is very much an expected outcome of military occupation. It is interesting to note that the founder of Hamas was 8 year old when he saw 15 Palestinian men executed at point blank range by Israeli soldiers. He is also a pediatrician and a geneticist.
In general, I think people on this forum view terrorism through a very childish lens. It's a bit like calling everything a "programming language" ... well yeah maybe C++ has some similarities to Typescript ... but they are very different beasts. Osama bin laden and Hamas may have shared political objectives and ideals but they are not completely equivalent.
To summarize my feelings: Israel has definitively built a great civilization -- but we musn't equate that with some sort of moral cleanliness. Hamas is a terrorist organization -- but we musn't equate that with a lack of real grievances.
The statistics don't lie: Israel has killed more women and children in 100 days than any other recent modern military conflict. It has used more munitions than the US did for the entirety of the Iraq war. It's a ridiculous response that, given the context above, is nothing short of genocide.
An important point that I don't think most people realize is that the Kibbutz that Hamas attacked on October 7th actually used to be Palestinian towns that they were expelled from during Nakba:
I do think that their future Feb ruling is going to call for a ceasefire. If they called for one now, Israel & especially the US were just going to ignore it and reduce the power of the court.
Israel has created a beast that I don't think they can control themselves. I do think that the court is going to get more legitimacy after they explicitly tell Israel to __chill__, for Israel not to chill, and then get the ceasefire ruling against them & potentially an intensification of the genocide case.
Meanwhile, unfortunately, real people are suffering so these political games can be played.
I am so deeply disappointed in the Biden administration here. They're throwing away a lot of the good work they've done, and are actively getting Trump elected. People, naturally, do not want to participate in an election that is giving them a choice between ${person_currently_helping_a_genocide} and ${person_that_will_intensify_genocide}. You're just going to get voter apathy, and the consequences from that.
> I am so deeply disappointed in the Biden administration here.
What do you expect him to do? With or without any assistance, Israel has more than enough weapons completely annihilate Gaza. Don't forget that they likely have nuclear capabilities. Israel believes they are demonstrating restraint and this restraint is the first thing to go if Israel feels like it's being backed into a corner.
I am not so sure. I believe Israel only exists by the mercy of support from their Allies. The minute they lose that support Israel is doomed. The country is surrounded by enemies on all sides. Sure their military could win a conventional war with their nukes against any of their neighbors. But on the long term a small country with a small population and limited natural resources needs friends to run an economy big enough to support the huge military it needs to defend itself. And Israel is running out of friends fast. Sympathy for Israel in the West is surely declining at lightning speed with the current situation, I would not be surprised if this conflict is the start of the end of the country
All the US has to do is: nothing. Stop sending over tank shells [1], Fighter jets and attack helicopters [2], deploying aircraft carriers [3] and stop vetoing UN Security Council resolutions trying to impose a ceasefire [4]
If they cared about the hostages, they wouldn't be bombing them to death on a daily basis, shooting those that escape, or gassing them in tunnels. The hostages are nothing more than political pawns to Netanyahu.
Keep in mind that Hamas reiterated their ceasefire deal recently, which includes the release of all hostages, and Israel rejected it.
Hostages are undesireable for Israel, as earlier they die/be killed the lesser leverage hamas will have. Besides, they will all be dangerous to official narrative, as they seem to have been treated ok by the militants.
Is that even possible procedurally? the preliminary hearing is done. They are meeting in feb to discuss the report on the things ordered, but i dont think they can just randomly make more orders at that point that aren't related to the granted orders.
From my understanding, if Israel doesn't show that they're able to reduce civilian deaths, they can grant South Africa's ask on the case which (from my understanding) is effectively ordering Israel to stop the attacks, and asking the world to help enforce it.
I don’t love Trump, but there’s no denying there was far less war, and especially US-funded war, when he was in office. Ukraine-Russia massively escalated as soon as someone in the pocket of the military industrial complex got put in power, as Putin knew it would, and Israel followed suit soon after.
I'm not sure what I will do, but I'm not voting for Trump either way.
There is a lot written about civil disobedience through not partaking in electoral politics, and that's _likely_ the direction I'm going to go if Biden does not change his tone (and hopefully actually do a proper apology for his actions so far).
This sucks, and I'll participate in local and even congressional elections, but for president I can not really find myself voting for Biden. I do not expect myself to agree 100% with any candidate, but there are certain red-lines that a candidate can not cross. I have a few of those, being anti-abortion is not something I can tolerate in any candidate. Being pro-mass-killing-looking-like-genocide is also one. I suspect this feeling is not unique to me.
Biden apparently wants to lose. Watch every single campaign event be protested (many protesters are Jews). Yeah, that's definitely going to lower turnout on the DEM side.
Biden is not only going to lose, Trump might even get a trifecta.
Calling it a Muslim ban is pretty disingenuous, and always was. The ban left out some very large Muslim countries, such as Indonesia and Pakistan for example.
Trump wouldn't intensify the genocide. Not just because Israel currently has carte blanche to do what it wants, but also because of personal animosity with Netanyahu.
The US, under whichever administration, is in a very difficult position here. If the US stops all support immediately, this could be the end of Israel. Would that be just? I see a president carefully dancing on the thin line of supporting the Israel state while using the US leverage to stop the war (latest example: sending the CIA chief to the negotiating table). But this needs to be done without enabling Israel's biggest adversaries that support a Jihad against the people of Israel.
Israel has nuclear weapons. By the logic of even developing them, there's no reason not to deploy them if it faces conquest. Any existential crisis facing Israel will not come from outside.
I’m not a fan of Trump’s domestic policies, but I’m absolutely sure that he has the moral high-ground over Biden right now. Trump used to be a supporter of Israel and to some extent still is, but he did during his presidency see that the Palestinians want peace more than the other side. I can’t imagine Trump going behind Congress’ back to arm Israel as Biden has done.
> I can’t imagine Trump going behind Congress’ back to arm Israel as Biden has done.
I absolutely 100% can imagine it. I would go so far as to characterise him as:
1) Pro-Israel:
> On December 6, 2017, the United States of America officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital city of the State of Israel. American president Donald Trump, who signed the presidential proclamation, also ordered the relocation of the American diplomatic mission to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv [...]. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the decision and praised the announcement by the Trump administration.
> Trump's decision was rejected by the vast majority of world leaders; the United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting on December 7, where 14 out of 15 members condemned it, but the motion was overturned by U.S. veto power.
2) Non-cooperative with Congress:
> The United States federal government shutdown from midnight EST on December 22, 2018, until January 25, 2019 (35 days) was the longest government shutdown in history.
> The shutdown stemmed from an impasse over Trump's demand for $5.7 billion in federal funds for a U.S.–Mexico border wall.
3) Loving to go behind backs:
> Trump reportedly keeps finding a way to meet the Russian leader privately.
It's worth noting that the ICJ like pretty much all international bodies has no enforcement power and countries will routinely ingore the rulings they don't like.
Still, things like this matter. It adds to public pressure.
Another thing is that how judges rule will often align with national interests rather than any facts in any case. So in a case against Israel you might expect the US to side with Israel regardless of the facts. Likewise, China might side against a genocide case because it doesn't want to set a precedent given the history with the Uyghurs. Likewise, Turkey will be aware of how any precedent may affect their treatment of Kurds, and so on.
So what do you do if you're one of these countries and the facts are against you? You go through this dance of trying to bypass the facts and get your desired outcome on procedural grounds.
I mention this because regular courts (eg in the US) do the exact same thing. The Supreme Court may grant standing on tenuous grounds for a case they want to rule on or deny standing on procedural grounds to avoid making a ruling when the facts are "against" them. Likewise, they may make a narrow ruling to avoid a broad precedent or seek a broad precedent if it's the desired outcome.
"Standing" here means you're an affected party who is allowed to bring an action to court. There are lots of rules depending on the action to decide if you have standing. There's also historical tradition. For example, SCOTUS will tend to favor granting standing in First Amendment cases because government restraint on speech is viewed as having a chilling effect on freedom of expression.
Courts are political. They have always been political. The idea that judges are impartial scholars isolated from the world is a myth. This is what I want people to understand. I'm not even agreeing with or dismissing the ICJ's conclusions here. I'm talking about the judicial process.
The US judge seemed to go with the majority here. The Israeli judge concurred on some of the charges plausibility but not all. Only one judge disagreed with the court on all charges.
I don't think the judges had the kind of bias alleged by your comment (it's certainly possible they could have but their opinions don't seem to reflect that)
The US’s motivations are to maximize its power and profits, to think it is to keep the peace is naive. There are other, more economically valuable regions with conflicts in the world whose situations have higher probability of clean resolution than the Palestine conflict, so the US will focus on those instead until it is forced not to.
Anyway, there is no resolution to Israel/Palestine that won’t involve the probable demise of one of the two’s futures. Bloods being spilled and it will continue to be spilled.
Giving weapons to Ukraine wasn’t about helping Ukraine; it was about opposing Russia.
Israel is a strategic ally in the Middle East that also happens to have many high profile supporters in the US. There’s likely enormous pressure from within to do just about nothing and just let it play out.
Peace, unfortunately, is a conveniently flexible concept employed to conceal one’s motives and justify frivolous wars.
Have you read through their case? It's pretty weak in my opinion. They seem to think that any war with a high number of casualties and insufficient humanitarian aid counts as genocide. By their standard the US committed "genocide" against Japan in WW2, arguably Germany too.
> SA does not really present itself as an earnest or true actor in the sphere oh human rights.
Well, who does?
Among the major players in world politics I can't see any country with a clean reputation on human rights.
Disclaimer: I am Brazilian, a country with an horrible record of police brutality, of farmers killing indigenous people and environmental activists and an hypocritical ambivalence towards Putin's crimes. And that goes to the previous right-wing and current left-wing governments.
Arresting a head of a nuclear-armed state ? One that does not subscribe to the ICC ? How moronic would one have to be ?
Amusingly, the Biden govt had no issues officially supporting the ICC to deliver a ruling against Russia despite the US not being a party to the ICC themselves. That's like having your cake and eating it too.
None of China, India, Russia, and the United States are parties to the ICC.
> South Africa asks ICC to exempt it from Putin arrest
"to avoid war with Russia" was how the rest of that headline went, along with two quotes about how Russia said such an arrest would be considered an act of war.
While I would welcome Putin's arrest, I can't exactly fault South Africa for saying they'd rather not go to war.
> SA does not really present itself as an earnest or true actor in the sphere oh human rights.
Adversarial justice systems are an approach to dealing with the fact that individual actors in a system (including states in the international system) tend to be self-interested rather than earnest or true consistent advocates of the notional rules of the system.
> SA does not really present itself as an earnest or true actor in the sphere oh human rights.
If Putin is arrested in a foreign country, you'll have the largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world staring down at the very existence of that nation. No country would do this, however earnest they may be about human rights. Neither will it be fair to expect anyone to do this.
Well, we could conclude with this logic that all countries are politically motivated. After all, the countries that condemned the Russia's invasion of Ukraine were also the countries that abstained from supporting the South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.
Moreover, it should not be forgotten that there is a much bigger number of civilians deaths in Gaza than Ukraine. In one month the number of deaths surpassed civilian casualties in Ukraine war. There is a more serious problem there than in Ukraine.
This is the same government that was just months prior going to quit the ICC so they could host Putin. They have no credibility, and frankly, no fucking power for most of the day. Utterly failed state.
Hard for them not to when there were missiles fired at them the day of this ruling. It would be difficult for them to not pursuit the removal of Hamas. Although, I agree that they have been heavy-handed in their operations.
> Spin this any way you like but The International Court of Justice said there is no genocide
No, it didn't, that’s simply a lie.
It said that the pleadings were sufficient plausible and that conditions present a sufficient risk of irreparable harm to warrant provisional measures against Israel. It didn't say that there is no genocide, and it didn't say that there is a genocide.
The application for provisional measures it ruled on is analogous in the US system to a preliminary injunction, it enables the court to order measures judged necessary to prevent irreparable harm while a case is pending on the merits, and is not a ruling on the merits.
The case continues on the merits, which it would not if the court were already able to determine that no genocide took place. (And it wouldn't, in that case, order provisional measures.)
> and didn't demand a ceasefire or that Israel ends the war
This, OTOH, is true; the ICJ did not include in its provisional measures against Israel a demand for Israel to cease all military operations.
Yes, and we won't let HN turn into a current affairs site, but this site has always had a certain amount of political content, and that's why this particular thread is happening. For more information, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146184 and the links there.
A agree about this topic, but "technical"-politics (=tech related) should still belong here (eg. EU vs Apple, EU vs encryption, etc.). After all, who else than us nerds can understand the topic, and discuss it without the "only pedos need e2e encryption, if you are not a pedo, what are you hiding?".
It's common for people with strong feelings on a topic to leap to the conclusion that the mods are biased against their side and secretly supporting the opposite. This happens from every perspective on every divisive topic.
I complained a few months ago that HN was the other way about an article that was 'disappeared' from HN on the atrocities in Gaza at the hands of Israel, it had scholarly backing.
Your comment doesn't stand to any reason and discussion here on HN are highly moderated, in my opinion at times it's balanced towards Israel as the term 'anti-semitim' is thrown around to stop any discussion and valid criticism about the Gaza war.
You can't appease everyone and 'anti-Semitism' has been weaponised very successfully by people who know exactly what they're doing.
Perhaps I am unlearned in this area but I am unclear why the Jewish state, after its people experienced the atrocities of World War II, would act in this manner toward the Palestinians. Can anyone shed light on this? I understand completely the need to rid the world of Hamas terrorists, but in the process they have shown a reckless disregard (to put it mildly) for Palestinian people and their wellbeing.
> ... the Jewish state... its people experienced...
This is your error. States and peoples are not unitary entities with a single coherent outlook and will. The vast majority of the Israeli population is far too young to have directly experienced the Holocaust, which ended 80 years ago. There are plenty of people in Israel who do not want to commit atrocities against Palestinians. There are also people who feel that they have a (literally) god-given right to occupy the territories where Palestinians currently live. If you think of Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet as being basically the same people who survived Nazi concentration camps in World War 2, then nothing Israel is doing in 2024 will make much sense.
To my mind, Israel's actions toward Palestinians (both in Gaza and the West Bank) are powerful evidence that nationalism inherently leads to atrocity no matter who's involved. If the cultural memory of being targeted by the Holocaust won't stop an ethno-state from setting up an apartheid regime, what will?
It's under-remarked on, but for a majority of Israeli Jewish people, the nakba era might have more immediate salience than the Holocaust. That's because they're not, as the popular imagination has it, all colonists from Europe; they're the Jewish people of the Middle East and North Africa, all of whom were forcefully expelled from their own homes after 1948.
There's no question that the Holocaust has enormous salience to Israeli Jewish people. But if you trace your roots to rural Arab Jewish families from Yemen or Iraq, your more immediate concern would be your own family's immediate viability in a world without Israel. A new rise of European fascism wouldn't be your problem; the fact that you'd have literally no place to go would be. You're sure as shit not moving back to Yemen.
It's not self-evident that "the cultural memory of being targeted by the Holocaust [should] stop an ethno-state from setting up an apartheid regime". In Liberia, where the freed American slaves were sent to, they essentially enslaved the native population.
> after its people experienced the atrocities of World War II, would act in this manner toward the Palestinians.
That's part of why they're acting this way. Security fears. I'm telling you, the median Israeli isn't motivated by bloodlust or a desire for land, they're motivated by a high level of fear that they will one day be killed by Hamas/Hezbollah/etc. That fear causes them to demand complete "security control" of the West Bank and Gaza. That fear explains why they would not budge on allowing Palestinians an army as part of previous two-state negotiations. That fear explains why they would give back the Sinai but not the geographical high ground of the Golan Heights. That fear explains why the Israeli Left completely collapsed after the Second Intifada. They're happy to give part of the West Bank back in two state negotiations, but they would never, ever, allow Palestine an army. Because of security fears. The Palestine-Israeli conflict is this positive feedback loop caused by a desire for security conflicting with a desire for freedom. We're in the terminal doom spiral phase of this feedback loop right now.
If the lesson is "Everybody wants to kill us and the only solution to safety is to have a nation state and defend at all costs against any other group", well it just all make sense.
Of course this is not the conclusion of every jew in the world but I fully expect it to be the conclusion of post WWII zionists, even though it was not the case for a lot of them that were influenced by socialist ideas but lost influence and power with time.
Of course the strategy of always planning for aggression in order to come up on top is somewhat self realizing in that defending your dominant position will necessarily mean abuses of power and resistance to it.
So the lesson is "Better safe than sorry" although it's not that simple because there is actually a safety cost to pay to maintain such a strategy.
The problem with October 7th massacre was Israeli government with Netanyahu at the top ignored their own rules of "Better safe than sorry" and that led to a monster growing at their borders (both Hamas and Hizbollah). Well, now it's "better be late than never".
Israel's tactic has always been deterrence: I will inflict you so much pain that you will think twice before doing this again. Despite being proven wrong, a "realist politician' will automatically think of adding more (and then some) deterrence as the only solution.
I remember 20 years ago, during the first bombing of Gaza, they hit just ONE building and felt pressured enough to apologize for the handful of civilian deaths. Unfortunately, faced with larger threats (real or imaginary) and weak international pressure, Israel has been able to escalate the level of deterrence through the years to what we are witnessing now.
That is why any ruling to curb that "automatic" escalation (like today) is wholeheartedly welcomed.
IMO there are also subtler layers of racism coloring these policies. It's not as blatant as the far-right rhetoric, but a persistent undertone within elements of Israeli society justifies severe deterrence tactics and totally overide any empathy learnt from historical lessons.
No essentially it is as simple as how any abuser bully behaves. They will continue their behavior as long as they are allowed to. Look at US for enabling them.
If you look at the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention's statement [1], they call both the Hamas attack and the current Israeli action Genocidal. They characterise genocidal attacks in terms of not just their factual effect, but the intentional psychological effect of an "massacre of symbols of group life", in which the genocidaires deliberately try to symbolically erase the other group, in ways which are hugely traumatic: "inversion rituals, such as the killing of children in front of their family members; and desecration rituals, such as the massacre of entire families, the setting fire to homes with families still inside them, and the desecration of dead bodies", which they see evidence of in the Hamas attack. This is all magnified by the existing trauma of the Jewish people, in the holocaust but also events since, in living memory of more people - such as 9/11 (an attack on the city with the largest Jewish population).
So you have to realise that Israelis are not thinking normally right now. Even though the Hamas attack has in military terms "culminated", and Israel's military is many times more powerful, their trauma leads them to believe that there is a real, present threat of extinction of the Israeli state and their own nation and families. Under such conditions, it is very hard for them to see the suffering of 'the enemy' as relevent.
It also doesn't help that basically everyone else is just piling responsibility for a solution on the Israelis, despite the US, UK and Europe having enormous historic responsibility for setting up the situation.
[please note, this is explanation, not justification]
> So you have to realise that Israelis are not thinking normally right now. Even though the Hamas attack has in military terms "culminated", and Israel's military is many times more powerful, their trauma leads them to believe that there is a real, present threat of extinction of the Israeli state and their own nation and families.
I think that they think there is a real, persistent threat of Hamas continuing to make this kind of attack. Hamas has consistently said so, so Israel has reasonable grounds for thinking so. Hamas has even said that they won't settle for a two-state solution - they demand the destruction of Israel.
So if you're an Israeli, that leaves you very few choices: stay and accept being massacred every so often, shut down the country and leave, or destroy Hamas. Unsurprisingly, they choose the third option.
It's not about religion, it's about occupation. Zionists got permission to occupy the land from the British with The Balfour Declaration then started the invasion in full in 1948 with Nakba. When you occupy someone's land, there can never be peace until they get their land back or are fully exterminated or controlled militarily. This is why colonization most often leads to genocide or permanent apartheid.
>Zionists got permission to occupy the land from the British with The Balfour Declaration
This is not an accurate representation. Jewish people were given the legal ability to purchase land in Mandatory Palestine. The vast majority of Palestinian Arabs were tenant farmers or landless labourers. Jewish land purchases inevitably led to the displacement of these tenants, but this was the lawful outcome of a lawful land sale.
The issues surrounding occupation of land after the 1948 and 1967 wars are significantly more complex and arguably do involve violations of international law by Israel.
Zionists were living in the area long before British Mandatory Palestine or the Balfour Declaration - they bought land and legitimately immigrated there while it was under control of the Ottoman Empire. The UN chose to partition the region in 1947 due to ongoing violence on both sides - and the British actually voted against it I believe. The Arab states then chose to go to war against the newly formed Israel - not the other way around, as your comment implies.
I have read a bit about this and I understand the explanation but I still don’t understand how a group of people subject to genocide can turn around and a few generations later be behaving in many (obviously not all) of the same ways toward another group. I would think that if anything the Israeli people would have some empathy and try to find a two state solution that exists in peace.
> When you occupy someone's land, there can never be peace until they get their land back or are fully exterminated or controlled militarily.
I can certainly think of some other ethnicity in that region who had their land occupied and was cleansed from the region. They even somehow managed to survive an attempt to fully exterminate them! Surely there will be peace once they get all of their land back :)
> When you occupy someone's land, there can never be peace until they get their land back or are fully exterminated or controlled militarily
I don’t understand why people think this is a good argument. Lots and lots of places shifted in control since 1948. Poland moved half a country to the left, world empires got decolonized, India and Pakistan split and then the latter split once more, all with enormous population movements, the list is nearly endless. “All of that should revert to how it was before, even if at the cost of kicking out or killing everybody who live there” is a pretty extreme revisionist take.
In all these countries, “we should restore our borders to $maximumSizeEver” is widely understood to be a far right take (the Russians want Ukraine, the Greater Hungary people want Transylvania, the Greek neonazis want Trabzon (!), everybody wants Kashmir, etc etc etc). It’s a far right talking point. But for Palestine it’s somehow a mainstream opinion. I don’t get it.
I mean, there’s lots of good arguments to be made for the Palestinian case IMO but I don’t find “they once had more land and therefore they should get it all back no matter the consequences” very compelling.
> there can never be peace until they get their land back or are fully exterminated or controlled militarily.
I think you could add assimilation to this list. In this particular instance though, it looks almost entirely unlikely (due to Israel being fundamentally defined as a Jewish state).
I think this is rooted in a strangely common misconception that Israelis actually want any of this violence. There's a minority who does, but it's no where near as being as common as on the Palestinian side (around 60-70% of Palestinians support the October 7 massacre)
Urban warfare is an ugly and complicated thing. Many of the Israeli soldiers serving in Gaza are moderates risking their life to defend their home and bring back their people.
When individual cases of reckless disregard are discovered (like in videos shared by Israeli soldiers on groups that get leaked out), those soldiers are disciplined.
But globally, it's just not true that the IDF has complete disregard for Palestinians.
What you just saying, is pardon, BS. 50% of respondents of JPost poll said that Israel is not violent enough.
> When individual cases of reckless disregard are discovered (like in videos shared by Israeli soldiers on groups that get leaked out), those soldiers are disciplined.
Cultural and religious belief that the land belongs to them by divine right, and was stolen. WWII enabled them to resettle in their "home", but the principle of ownership didn't come out of WWII. The treatment of the Jewish people in WWII doesn't mitigate these beliefs, and may even strengthen them (ie, persistence and survival are further evidence of divine right)
(These aren't necessarily my opinions, and I am not Jewish. However I'm very closely connected to people who are, and I'm sharing the perspective I've been given)
In order to qualify for the protection of the rules of war, you must typically abide by them. This means that you don't get to prosecute when people kill your human shields or when they block humanitarian aid that you are stealing.
This is a question you need to ask Jewish people, not HN. The response you'll get here obviously won't answer this question, because the people responding are either not Jewish, or the format doesn't lend itself to a genuine answer.
But, a mistake you make in asking the question is two-fold, one - the Holocaust was not a lesson taught to Jews so they'll learn empathy. It was something horrible and traumatic that was done to them. Two - comparing the Holocaust to what happens in Gaza means you're not aware of what the Holocaust was. Maybe you know highlights such as gas chambers etc, but not what it really was (through no fault of your own I'm sure).
But, to attempt some semblance of an answer. In the same way you wouldn't ask Haitians why their gov did terrible things to the DR and their population - didn't they learn from slavery? Or about India/Pakistan, didn't they learn from the raj? Or any of the African states in conflict - didn't they learn from colonialism? Or Turkey and Syria, Iraq/Iran etc. Then why ask this from Israelis? I hope you get my rhetorical point.
> the Holocaust was not a lesson taught to Jews so they'll learn empathy. It was something horrible and traumatic that was done to them.
Well of course I am not suggesting that it was a lesson to teach empathy. My comment was merely that people who suffer traumas tend to have empathy for other people suffering similar traumas. I don’t think this is a particularly controversial observation.
> Two - comparing the Holocaust to what happens in Gaza means you're not aware of what the Holocaust was. Maybe you know highlights such as gas chambers etc, but not what it really was (through no fault of your own I'm sure).
Well I suppose you might be right. I’ve seen a number of the major films and documentaries and read Viktor Frankl, Eli Weisel and Anne Frank and visited Auschwitz, and I’ll be the first to admit this is merely a very basic overview of the atrocities rather than any form of academic investigation. But from this overview it seems like there are common threads of severe oppression based on immutable racial characteristics, no?
On your final paragraph, I probably would ask the same question!
The question we're discussing is about the attitudes of people of "the Jewish state", by which they clearly mean Israel. Almost half of the world's Jewish People are Americans, not Israelis. I think you'll get interesting answers about Palestine from Jewish Americans (I've sure learned a whole lot these past few months), but a casual reading of your comment suggests that those people have a responsibility to account for Israeli policy, and they don't. This is an extraordinarily common complaint about the Israeli/Palestine debate --- that charges of "antisemitism" are weaponized against those who criticize Israel --- and it seems that there may be a kernel of truth on both sides of that complaint.
I wrote a much more strident and knee-jerk response to this at first (I'm sorry about that, and I should have read through the whole comment instead of snagging at the first sentence), but that first sentence is quite a snag! It seemed to upset other people who replied, and I can't really blame them too much for that.
For what it's worth, I'm jewish and there are many jews who would disagree with my answer to the question you're responding to - just keep in mind how much diversity in thought exists. Though, the sentiment of your answer I do tend to agree with.
One more small point - people here mention how long ago the Holocaust was and far removed from memory. That's not really true. If you look at Pew 2013 poll of American Jews [0] they found:
> About three-quarters (73%) of American Jews say remembering the Holocaust is an essential part of being Jewish
I was in my 20s and remember the feeling in the air after Al Qaeda members hijacked commercial planes and flew them into WTC in 2001. Fear, Anger, A bit of revenge.
Many of Americans, including soviet immigrants, enlisted in the army driven by that feeling.
Israelis lost significantly more of their population percentage-wise during October 7 attack perpetrated by the official government of Gaza AND as we know now, some Gazan civilians. Over 200 Israelis were taken hostage.
With that in mind, its fairly simple for me to empathize with the Israeli public who are angry at the death of their fellow citizens and want Hamas to be punished.
Hamas barely scraped into victory in a power sharing agreement it then broke. Gazan at that time did not want this government. Half of Gaza's present population wasn't even born at the time of the last election. To blame Palestinians generally (including in the West Bank who are effectively being punished too) for this is exceedingly unfair.
Compare culpability with Israel's, which IS a functioning democracy, has had regular elections, a free press, a large population participating in the war and actively in favour of it - and blaming the average Gazan is even less fair.
> its fairly simple for me to empathize with the Israeli public who are angry at the death of their fellow citizens and want Hamas to be punished
Definitely. Conversely, it should also be fairly simple to empathize with the Palestinian public in the (just picking one fairly recent example) Operation Cast Iron aftermath.
A bit of a strange take considering every one of your points applies much more to Palestine than Israel.
>I was in my 20s and remember the feeling in the air after Al Qaeda members hijacked commercial planes and flew them into WTC in 2001. Fear, Anger, A bit of revenge
Yeah the people in Gaza feel that pretty much every day
>Many of Americans, including soviet immigrants, enlisted in the army driven by that feeling.
They also feel this, which leads to them joining Hamas and is part of the reason there are normal Palestinians who support Hamas. Terrorists don't come out of no where.
>Israelis lost significantly more of their population percentage-wise during October 7 attack perpetrated by the official government of Gaza AND as we know now, some Gazan civilians.
Yeah I mean again just flip that and the people in Gaza experience that at a much higher rate
>With that in mind, its fairly simple for me to empathize with the Israeli public who are angry at the death of their fellow citizens and want Hamas to be punished.
Same but I also empathize with all the Palestinians just trying to live their lives in an open air prison and want revenge. I think both Hamas and Israel have genocidal intent, but one has much more power and is actually carrying it out right now.
The human mind isn't rational. Don't expect just because they very well know what genocide is, that they can't convince themselves they aren't committing genocide.
You need to replace "after" with "because". Having experienced a mass genocide easily justifies committing one yourself in the name of self preservation.
Internally, denying humanitarian aid is seen as the legitimate and time-honoured strategy of "sieging the enemy state" though not all agree on how legitimate that is (I'm sure you can see the strangeness of sending food and medicine to enemy soldiers). Certainly supplying the enemy with fuel to use in their rockets, vehicles and armaments is seen as foolish (even if that would also provide fuel for the hospitals whose fuel was stolen by Hamas). There is zero desire in killing non-militants (outside of few extremists), but given the extremely horrible inhumane atrocities committed by Hamas (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_and_gender-based_violen... ), the acceptance of collateral casualties is higher than usual (and Israel already went extremely out of its way to minimize civilian casualties before the Oct 7 attack). Hamas' tactics that intend to maximize the deaths of their own civilians are also a contributing factor to that acceptance. If you believe there is genuine desire or action specifically to kill civilians outside of that then you believe in fake news.
In terms of non-homicidal genocide (i.e. genocide in the sense of dismantling the group without killing its members), certainly a lot more people are fine with something like a Transfer plan (for example, I've heard a proposal that Egypt will take Gazan Palestinians as refugees/civilians and similarly have Jordan absorb the Palestinians in Yehuda and Shomron) and don't see it as much of an atrocity, merely taking back the land those Arabs conquered and colonized starting at around 640AD, without actual harm to those individuals (in fact, their lives could be much improved!). There's also the fact that Israel is very tiny; Even from just the southern part of Gaza, Hamas already fires rockets at Israel's most populated cities, giving them the mountains of Shomron (incidentally, the capital of the Israeli kingdom), simple mortars could rain down on Israeli civilians without warning and could easily lead to an actual genocide of all Israeli Jews, so moving the people a few tens of kilometers east sounds like a peaceful resolution in comparison.
Naturally, there's also the element of a long conflict. Arabs have been killing Jews in Israel during the British Mandate as well as the Ottoman rule of the region (in fact the IDF traces its roots to what are essentially local militias the Jews had to create to defend themselves). Israel's scroll of independence (a document that is considered that closest thing Israel has to a constitution) actually includes two paragraphs calling for the Arab nations surrounding Israel to work together in peaceful cooperation, so literally the very first action Israel took as a state was to call for peace, and literally the first thing that happened in response was an attempt to destroy Israel. After 76 years of war, certainly there's lowered sympathy for the enemy, especially one that elected Hamas (see above) and rejected peace (I've somewhat recently learned that outside of Israel almost no one knows that the Annapolis Conference very nearly resulted in peace via a two-state solution that was refused by Mahmoud Abbas [which I've heard he has later come to regret, not sure how reliable that is]).
Rising anti-semitism around the world (especially how popular it is to call for a genocide against Israeli Jews is in the form of the "From the river to the sea" phrase) also creates a backlash - Israel must act strongly to defend itself since it is the only place in the world where Jews can be in charge of their own fate and their own defense. If the BBC publishes lies about what happens in Israel, and protesters in England are calling for a genocide unopposed, not only should we not listen to what the English want us to do, we should prioritize ourselves even further. This is why IMO something like BDS is counter-productive, it only causes further resentment and defiance in Israelis; If you want peace between Israel and Palestine you should instead work to make sure Israel feels safe enough to be able to relinquish territory to the Palestinians without having another October 7th instead of working to undermine Israel (unless your goal is the destruction of Israel of course).
I’ve been told stories of the German occupation of my grandparent’s village. My grandfather has been a slave worker on the German farm.
The thing is, I personally can’t relate to any of that. It’s just like reading a book or watching a movie. It’s just so far removed from my reality. I think you greatly overestimate the impact of the holocaust on modern day Jews.
First you need to understand that there's no genocide here. Genocide actually means "the murder of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group."[1] There is no question that the Israelis are not trying to kill everyone in Gaza and definitely not specifically because they are a part of an ethnic group.
Additionally, they have not shown "a reckless disregard for Palestinian people" and they would argue that unlike other conflicts in the region (Syria, Yemen, Kurdistan) they've been incredibly efficient in trying to avoid or limit civilian death.
Still, Gazan's have been dealt a pretty raw deal in that they have been ruled by a terrorist organization which has repeatedly stolen their aid to push their own agenda, and living amongst neighboring countries Egypt, Jordan, that are afraid to take them in lest they bring instability to those governments. Note that in the beginning of this conflict the Egyptians wouldn't open the Rafah border to allow refugees.
Rather, many of the holocaust survivors would instead say that the Israelis are being too nice and not defending the people living in the country from a government in Gaza that has the following in it's charter:
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" and "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees."(https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp)
Millenia of oppression have taught the jewish people that the only way to be treated with respect is through military strength. Theyre applying that lesson here.
My understanding is that the colossal tradegy of Holocaust made Jews realise that not fighting back is an existential threat for them.
When Israel was established then Arabs did not accept its existence nor the existence of Jews in the region. What followed was a genocidal war to exterminate Jews in Palestine and destroy Israel. We know this war today as Israel war of independence.
The Arabs who participated against Jews in this war fleed in fear of retribution and were not allowed by Israel to return. We know these people and their descendants today as Palestinian refugees (they have special inheritable status given by UN).
After the war Israel was established nearly within the borders of UN assigned Jewish territories and UN assigned Arab territories were annexed by Egypt (Gaza) and Jordan (West Bank). But it was still not tolerable for the Arabs who again in 1967 attempted to exterminate Jewish state with the war.
After the failure Isreal took control over larger territory that was then inhabited largely by Palestinian refugees (Palestinians) - West Bank and Gaza and also part of Egypt over the Suez canal and part of Syria called Golan Heights. The reasons where twofold. First the UN assigned territory was clearly not realistically defendable and second the large part of the previously not controlled territories like Bethlehem or Jerusalem were believed to be Jewish lands (historically Jewish lands were between Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea). Territories belonging to Egypt were later returned by bilateral treatis (but Israel kept control over Gaza).
Fast forward to today and it appears that Palestinians have not abolished the idea of genocide against Jews. It has been clearly established that the 7th October attack was a genocidal act to eliminate as many Jews as possible. Around 3000 Palestinian men took part in it, Hamas had around 40000 fighters. This demonstrates that they had wide support among Palestinians.
This leads us back to Holocaust. Jews promised to themselves that they will not let the genocide happen against themselves ever again. Yet it happened.
What is going on in Gaza is a systematic work to eliminate this threat.
They do this with minimal risk to their soldiers who are mainly reservist e.g. common people with military training. They can't afford to lose thousands of people. Palestinians in contrast value martyrdom and are willing to take very high risks (like attacking an armored vehicle with a RGP within a group of civilians next to the hospital entrance (this has been documented by the video evidence)).
It is not a police operation. It is a military operation against heavily armed and trained opponent. The weapons are chosen accordingly. The urban landscape makes it especially difficult and destructive. Regardless as far I have observed then Jewish military has made great efforts to systemically minimise civilian casualties.
What they did not realise first was that in addition to the military operation on the ground there is also sizeable information war against them and when the enemy can find many willing sympathisers then the enemy can produce what ever claims they please regardless of the truth as was demonstrated by the al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion.
I haven't observed the situation closely for months but by then Jewish armed forces evolved to be more open in their communication and to communicate more clearly the threats they had to fight against.
I can do my best to explain it, and I will do so with the assumption that people will approach any ensuing discussion in good faith. I'm not going to try and be wikipedia here, rather to just give a high level explanation of *why* a group of people, who were nearly exterminated, are acting this way. It will be very difficult to find the right words that can satisfy people who are very into this, but I will do my best, especially because I don't see a realistic geopolitical view being represented in the comments.
The question is "Why would Israel act like this?"
Israel has offered many times a two state solution. I think in '47, several times in the 90s, and the 2000s. They have all been rejected. The reason is that the Palestinian leadership wants more. How much do they want? They want all of it. "From the river to the sea" is the expression. They have said it over and over again that this is the only thing that matters to them, and they will sacrifice everything to get it.
That is more or less why Israel is doing this. For some, that is enough to explanation and a fair summary, but if you want to understand more details then read on.
The Israelis, obviously, are not going to just leave their country, and so that leaves the Palestinians with war as the only option. And war has happened, like 4-5 times, and each time the invading forces were defeated. Rather than deciding that the welfare of their people is what matters, Palestinian Leadership values complete, total restoration as the only goal and everything they do is to that end.
So, it can be debated from that point of view whether Israel should exist as a country or not. If you however think that Israel should be a country, even a little bit, then you are basically against the Palestinian leadership's raison d'être.
Even then though, I think most Israelis had a hard time believing that this is how it would be forever. Time after time, war after war, they have tried to 'do the right thing' short of just leaving Israel or dying. For example, they were invaded, the fought, the won, and the controlled Sinai, which was part of Egypt. Then they gave it back, and the Egyptians were reasonable and they signed a peace treaty.
The problem is the Palestinian leadership will never do this, and that is what the point of October 7 was. The point of it was to make peace impossible. Remember, just before the October 7th, there were the Abraham Accords. Basically, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel were take the first step in establishing a new direction for the Middle East, with those countries at the center of it. Boom, then you have the October 7th attack.
Let me take a step back and and try to address some things.
It's important to say that in 2005, Israel already militarily occupied Gaza. The corridor that has been used to smuggle in weapons for the terrorist was locked down. Then, due to international pressure, Israel withdrew from that region, and they removed any Israeli settlements. What happened? Immediately after, Hamas took over and there has not been an election since. Now, there is no governance, all of the money is stolen and funneled into weapons, and they're backed by Iran, along with Hezbollah, the Houthi, etc... and it is Iran who has a strategic interest in dividing influence in the Middle East.
So let me be clear. They don't want peace.
It's a very difficult situation because Israel would 100% prefer peace. The trouble is that they have a neighbor, who controls millions of people, that would rather be destitute and keep fighting than to govern responsibly.
A good analogy would be something along the lines of North Korea, but with a very different military strategy. Hamas uses guerrilla warfare, whereas North Korea is going for the long shot of a nuclear weapon.
The Palestinian Authority is not that different, other than strategy. They're also incompetent and they also want to see Israel eliminated. However, their strategy is to pretend to want peace, so they can negotiate territory, in anticipation of an invasion. How do I know this? Because every time that a two state solution has come on the table, they would only accept borders that were militarily impossibly for Israel to defend.
So there you have it. That is why this is happening. Because the Palestinians have these people as their leadership, and it's such a sunk cost at this point that they have nothing left but to fight for the total eradication of Israel. This is what happens when you lose 5 wars and still don't get the hint.
To add to this, OP if you want to learn more about why Israel is so callous to Palestinian life you need to learn about the Israeli right wing and how it came to power. I mean, this whole thing goes back further than that but for understanding today it really helps to understand the movement of ultra nationalism in Israel from the fringe into the majority.
Fascism does not "just stop". You can already hear the far right wingers claiming that Israel also has a right to expand into Lebanon and the Transjordan. Ironically looking at how Germany was radicalized is really useful for understanding how Fascism has taken hold in Israel.
Imagine you have a Gaza like area where you live. You want to live in peace but the other folk want to wipe out your state on the basis that Islam must rule your area and destroy its current government. Also they occasionally fire rockets at your schools and get out and murder and rape people. Do you not think you might get annoyed with them?
Zionism is an ideology that took inspiration from the British empire. It was intended to be "something colonial" and pre-dated the atrocities of WW2. The fascist atrocities in WW2 can be interpreted as colonial tactics applied to Europeans, after all the British had been doing extremely bloody concentration camps in Africa and starved India during WW2. For some reason, Africa doesn't get the same play. I wonder why.
So people that engage in colonialism end up doing similar crimes. Israel remains probably the only old school colonial project in the present day with present day technology, backed by the U.S. empire to secure geopolitical interests in the oil-rich region among other things.
Something to think about: America is also a genocidal settler-colonial project and is one of the only nations to back Israel in the UN. Our genocide is still ongoing: visit a native american reservation and witness the immense poverty. Similarly to Gaza, the US state will simply say that despite being an occupying power, these are autonomous zones and we have little responsibility.
Modern-day Zionism to me and many others means that Israel has the right to exist.
It does not absolve many, including self-proclaimed Zionists, from criticizing some of Israel policies.
On other hand, my interpretation of people who are self-proclaimed anti-Zionists logically flows from above statement that they believe that the present state of Israel DOES NOT have a right to exist. Which implies deportation of extermination of 6 million Jewish Israelis
In my opinion, the word Zionism has been hijacked by activists who know that being anti-Jewish is not good optics, but anti-Zionizm is still something that can be sold to the masses.
Respectfully, would you have made the same comment about 'finding a place in your heart for the humanity of the other' if we lived during the holocaust, where 'one side' was being maimed and killed by the other, more powerful side?
Would you have made the same comment if we were talking about apartheid in South Africa?
How about if we were talking about how slavery ought to be stopped prior to 1865?
Should we _always_ be looking to find the humanity in the other side, or is there something fundamentally different here?
Not trying to disrespect anyone here, but sometimes we need to ask ourselves tough questions.
I think you're missing the point. The battle of gaza is not fought on HN. We can only comment on the situation, and we can do this with equanimity and compassion even if we disagree.
Shouldn't we all be opposed to Nazism? Shouldn't we all be against slavery? Of course. But in the present discussion, I can be opposed to the atrocities of October 7th, while being sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians, just as I can be opposed to the destruction of Gaza while having compassion for the Israelis.
Being critical of either side doesn't mean I'm against them.
> Being critical of either side doesn't mean I'm against them.
The side that's now being maimed and killed in the tens of thousands with no recourse, had nothing to do with October 7. The sides that are relevant here in the context of this ICJ case are the civilians of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the Government of Israel.
Edit: I guess my basic response is that I'm skeptical of approaching these questions from that level of abstraction. None of us can say what we would have done in those horrible situations. We can only answer out of our own imagination about ourselves, which is likely to be completely unreliable.
What I do think is that on this site, we can and should be working with our own responses in a way that is more than just venting them onto a perceived other. That's in keeping with what HN is supposed to be for.
> Respectfully, would you have made the same comment about 'finding a place in your heart for the humanity of the other' if we lived during the holocaust, where 'one side' was being maimed and killed by the other, more powerful side?
Yes..
> Should we _always_ be looking to find the humanity in the other side, or is there something fundamentally different here?
Under the Rome Statute that set up the international criminal court, apartheid is defined as a crime where:
>inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them".
Netanyahu's approach to the Palestinians likely fits into this definition.
Important to understand that Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute and rejects the ICC’s jurisdiction (neither is the USA). On the other hand, the Geneva Convention is about as “universal” a treaty as you can find, Israel itself ratified the GV without any reservations, all UN members (US and Israel included) are subject to the authority of the ICJ/World Court, and there’s even a fsir consensus that the GC applies to everyone, even if a state weren’t a UN member and signatory.
(While the USA and Israel have shown immense disdain for the ICC and the USA has levied sanctions against it, its chief prosecutor, and The Hague in the past, the US officially sponsored Khan’s nomination for the post of chief prosecutor this past round and Israel has been extremely chummy with him and the ICC compared to under Bensouda. The ICC under Khan hasn’t done anything about Gaza.)
It's worth noting that system does not apply to 2 million Israeli Arabs (nearly all of whom self-identify as "Palestinian" from an ethnic/national perspective) of the exact same race as the Palestinians in the occupied territories.
The overt driver of the system - and the one that is agreed to across the whole Jewish-Israeli population - is the security issue of a Palestinian population that has held since 1948 that they are still at war with Israel, will never accept a Jewish state in the region, and will one day drive the Jews into the sea. This belief is propped up by constant propaganda from other Arab states and UNRWA (which has defined itself to exist because of a Right of Return that applies to 750k Palestinians and their descendants in perpetuity, but doesn't apply to the 14 millions Indians & Pakistanis, 12 million Germans, or 2-3 million Poles & Ukrainians who were also displaced by ethnic partitions established in 1947-1948).
Israel shows every day that they are willing and able to live closely with the Palestinians who accept their right to exist and aren't trying to murder their families, without using apartheid-like systems of control. Israeli Arabs certainly face suspicion and unofficial day-to-day discrimination, but if you asked Israelis how they would feel about an equal two-state system where West Bank and Gaza were a sovereign nation populated by Palestinians who were like the Israeli Arabs, they would largely be on board. There would be friction for a while, but it would be tolerable for both states to survive and thrive without the security apparatus that needs to be in place right now.
There is no doubt that Netanyahu's current governing coalition is made up of racists and religious extremists who would NOT be okay with that. Many of those secretaries want to use security issues as a pretext to fully take over "greater Israel," and use the border wall as much to keep their actions there hidden from the Israeli public as they use it to keep Hamas and IJ terror attacks to a minimum. But the PA - for all its collaboration and security partnership with the IDF - still pays bounties to the families of suicide bombers. And the reason more moderate Palestinian leaders have never been able to really negotiate a settlement is that they would be immediately overthrown by a populace who never accepted 1948 as the end of a decades-long attempt to throw the Jews out of Palestine.
This has not been adjudicated in court, but I think it's difficult to claim that the current system is primarily an ethnic or racial one when it doesn't apply to the millions of Palestinians who are accepting of their neighbors. Even if it is often abused by racists.
> Israel shows every day that they are willing and able to live closely with the Palestinians who accept their right to exist and aren't trying to murder their families, without using apartheid-like systems of control
This is very much not the case in the West Bank where expropriation and colonisation of Palestinian land by Israeli settlers continue, under the watchful eye of the Israeli army.
The Israeli state has done it's best to ensure that there can be no viable Palestinian state, condemning millions of Palestinians to eternal military occupation and second class status in their own homeland.
Any claim that Israel is acting in good faith towards Palestinians is very much undermined by these facts.
> is the security issue of a Palestinian population that has held since 1948 that they are still at war with Israel, will never accept a Jewish state in the region
Will Israelis accept a sovereign Palestinian state in the region? A clear NO.
Even the 1990s / 2000s two-state solutions were never meant from Israeli side as recognizing full sovereignty of Palestine - it was meant to be more like an Israeli protectorate with its own administration but without its own armed forces, no control over air space etc.
> and will one day drive the Jews into the sea
While many Israelis are eager to drive Palestinians to the sea. (check Daniela Weiss as a somewhat prominent example)
The current government seems to want to ethnically cleanse Gaza. The West Bank has to expect a similar fate, just way slower with expanding settlements.
> but I think it's difficult to claim that the current system is primarily an ethnic or racial one when it doesn't apply to the millions of Palestinians who are accepting of their neighbors
Still apartheid. You can't explain it away so easily.
The current title "ICJ genocide case: World court demands Israel limit deaths " isn't very accurate. I'd suggest reverting to the original "Top UN court orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza but stops short of ordering cease-fire"
It's the HTML doc title of the article, which is always an option for "original title" in the guidelines' sense of that term (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146163. We need those.)
Huh, firefox no longer displays that! I didn't realize that before.
Well, there is already discussion of the meaning of Measure 1) "take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this Convention, in particular" part a) "killing members of the group", at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39143094, so perhaps the confusion can be worked out there. I don't think it's as simple as "limit deaths" but perhaps I'm wrong, not being a lawyer.
Isn't there a rule about modifying inflamatory titles? The article title "Top UN court orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza but stops short of ordering cease-fire" is less inflamatory, and will help prevent comments from going sideways.
Thanks, I guess Hackernews generally is my 'safe haven' from politics. Really not intending to bite or insult, just a lot happier reading about Dijkstra being a pedantic nano-Dijkstrahole or someone dumping a GBA rom through audio. The stuff from OP I read everywhere else. My heart cries for the for the world and HN generally is one of my tissues. Much love anyways.
How is anything? One could argue that real estate occupancy in San Francisco isn't hackernews.
I think there's an intellectual interest here, but the line is very blurry with politics. It's probably as blurry as the articles posted about US being a surveillance state, cryptocurrency articles unrelated to the technology itself, etc.
Can you please stop posting in the flamewar style? It's against HN's rules, and especially against the intended spirit that I tried to describe at the top of this thread.
Obviously most of what gets discussed on HN is relatively unimportant in the world. If that weren't the case, HN would simply be a current affairs site, which it isn't. At the same time, that doesn't mean every political story is off topic here—the guidelines already make that clear by their use of the word "most": https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
There's a long and pretty consistent history to how HN handles the question of political topics.
I think the only way to handle this is by responding to bad arguments with better arguments and to false information with correct information—and to do this as neutrally as possible. Focus on clear information, and try not to let your feelings turn into aggression toward the other person. This is not easy, but it's in your interest to do it, because when commenters get aggressive with each other, fair-minded readers recoil.
For extra influence, if you can manage it: look for a way to connect with the other person, acknowledge some aspect of what they're saying, and implicitly make it clear that you're not trying to defeat or destroy them, but rather to understand. This is a big multiplier on how persuasive your comments become.
As for leaving bullshit unchallenged, I know it's hard to walk away from a thread that one feels is dominated by falsehood and distortion, but walking away is sometimes the most effective thing you can do. Here are a few thoughts which I try to remember in such situations:
(1) The internet is wrong about approximately everything. You can't change that, and you'll burn out trying.
(2) The one who walks away first usually comes across as stronger.
(3) Other people are not that different from you. When someone seems crazily wrong, they're most likely not bad or evil, but ignorant: they don't know what you know because they haven't experienced what you've experienced. For this reason, sharing your personal experience is probably the most effective thing you can do.
(4) When other people say things that produce strong feelings, try to let the feelings run their course in you before coming back to react. This is painful and hard, but it's in your interest.
Another point to consider is the old "don't feed the troll". Even if the other person is not really a troll (which I agree they usually aren't, they're just not thinking like you do) if you keep coming back for more you're just giving them the chance to argue their case for longer. So sometimes, if you want to promote your view, the best strategy is to let it drop and pick it up in another thread.
That's... not 100% honest, I guess, but at least it makes for easier to read and easier to handle conversations.
Conversely, arguing on HN has definitely helped me find the words to explain my own thinking to myself, so there's something in flogging a dead horse, sometimes.
It can be quite hard to be kind when it comes to a highly inflammatory topic such as Palestine–Israel. However, IMHO it’s not really a topic suited for HN. I find it hard to believe that whatever we say here on this topic will have any meaningful impact on the war.
Normally for political stuff I would agree, but the VCs have made this an issue that founders, engineers and everyone else in tech has to deal with because they've taken a hardline pro-Israel stance including firing people who so much as publicly state well known information. The battle between PG and the rest of the industry has ramifications for all of us. Even Paul Graham is barely powerful enough to offer a pro-Palestinian stance publicly.
yea I tried that. I posted links to all my sources as well as opinions from credible human rights organizations. they just play the game of being obtuse to the very end and then gaslight you about needing to backup my opinions as if there weren't at least 2-3 inks for every assertion I make.
one side of this debate is very much NOT acting in good faith because they rely on the status quo being maintained to continue what they are doing
5. Reporting blatant trolling and suspect motivations to HN mods does often work. Email to hn@ycombinator.com and link directly to the offending content and/or user, with a clear but succinct description of the problem.
6. Voting (up or down) and flagging also have their place. For sufficiently contentious threads this may well lead to something of a high-attrition zone, but often the really egregious crud does sink to the bottom. I find that higher-rated comments tend to be more anodyne than insightful, though occasionally truth does out.
7. I've found that rather than direct engagement, either supporting a counterthread, or writing your own well-reasoned and well-supported counter-thread, is often suprisingly effective. Remember that yours is always the last comment when you write it, though a thread may well have additional life. Sometimes my late efforts prove far more successful than I'd expected, and often I'll see that others have succeeded where I've either failed or failed to try. And again, supporting others' salient and productive engagement even where you don't have time or energy to contribute is highly underappreciated.
8. You don't have to attend every fight you're invited to.
9. Truth is not a popularity contest. Voting systems ultimately don't select for truth or importance, and expecting that from sites such as HN or Reddit will prove disappointing.
10. The meaningful audience is typically not who you're responding to directly, but the overwhelmingly silent majority reading rather than contributing to discussion.
I really hoped that a submission on ICJ ruling will pass the aggressive flagging. At least hoped that dang will keep his promise about allowing a submission about the case. This one could be it. I understand that once allowed there will be trove of hard liners will make it hell to moderate. But being difficult doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss a potential genocide in a making in front of our eyes.
EDIT: The title has been changed since and the discussion has been unflagged
The problem is that this is such a partisan issue than partisanship can be perceived in the smallest of details.
As someone who was staunchly pro-palestinian but as of recently came to have a more informed and I hope a more nuanced view of the whole situation, I can't help to see the title as potentially misleading :
Is the ICJ saying to prevent the Genocide (i.e recognizes that a genocide is happening) or to prevent a potential genocide (that is it believes the situation could escalate towards a genocide) ?
From what I have read this is the second option, so I believe the title could be misleading.
The more a topic has a loaded emotional and symbolic value, the more careful the wording must be.
Also I remember how annoying it was that people did not share my indignation and how I perceived such carefulness as a form of voluntary blindness.
It doesn't. Mosul's civilian population were Iraqi citizens, the conflict was much larger, lasted a lot longer, used smaller munitions, resulted in a lot more military deaths and significantly less civilian deaths. This is despite the enemy being significantly better trained, better equipped, better logistics, years of preparation and less intelligence by the anti-ISIL coalition.
"Better" is hard to judge, but mosul was about ten months and resulted in 10k civilian deaths. This one is already several times that count in a much shorter time span.
Historical comparisons aren't relevant when evaluating whether conduct today is acceptable, especially when we're talking about the deaths of innocents.
Every day is an opportunity to be better than our ancestors.
Looks very relevant to compare. Or in more practical terms, it's worth comparing to something as a reference that's similar in complexity of urban warfare but was handled better.
Peace is usually a product of avoiding "whataboutism". Humans of all shades and beliefs and origins have proven time and time again how barbaric we can be. True "justice" can probably only happen with the extinction of our species; to avoid that, someone has to say "enough" even if there are those who believe it isn't.
This is complete nonsense. Israel isn't pursuing genocide. They've killed less than 100,000 Palestinians out of several million. That's obvious restraint compared to what they could do if they really wanted to.
You may not like Israel but the word 'genocide' is being abused here, and this whole ICJ ruling is theater.
I would argue there has been massive condemnation of Russia by much of the west. The west is lobbing missiles at Russia. It's giving missiles to Israel to lob at Gaza.
Fully agreed. That the ICJ didn't order a ceasefire in this matter is honestly disgusting and just shows who's lives they value more.
As an American Jew (non-religious), I cannot express enough how sad this entire situation has made me. I grew up learning about the Holocaust and learning how important it is for people to stand up when a government turns in that direction. Those morals meant I always knew that Israel was wrong in the situation with Palestine but this conflict has definitely lifted any clouds that remained on the situation.
If you don't think Israel is a pure and simple apartheid state, I would very much recommend looking up the word in a dictionary. It's horrible that anyone has died on either side, but the imbalance at the current time in lives lost is just.. saddening. When it comes to genocide, it's one of those things where you know it when you see it and if you don't see it I say open your eyes.
Israel and the west can continue to label millions of people as terrorists to justify their acts, but history will hopefully look at this event with more understanding and empathy for those people Israel have shoved into small corners and starved of resources for decades. October 7 was terrible and should not have happened, but do you blame the oppressed people or do you blame the powerful government that has oppressed them?
I don't usually reply to meta posts, but I can't help but agree with this.
As much as I appreciate the work moderators do here any other day of the year, it was disappointing that there was no discussion allowed on October 7th - indeed, every thread was nuked - when 0.1% of the Jews in the world were murdered in a single day.
When Russia attacked Ukraine that was very much allowed to be discussed, and rightly so.
I had not realized submissions on 7 Oct were banned. Thank you for drawing attention to that. I threw the term "7 Oct" and "7 October" and there's pretty clearly no major threads about it, especially not in October. Even "Hamas" didn't reveal anything.
I don't think it's at all helpful to say "Every" thread in this conversation is "idiotic" alongside this, though. That just gives people room to dismiss your comment
> Every thread in this conversation is A+ idiotic. … Reddit crowd
I am not sure how this elitism is justified - when it comes to military or international law, there is no difference between asking on HN and a Joe off the street.
Add in the fact that many software developers are, my, how to put this, emotionally challenged, and of course each thread will be idiotic.
It's not elitism, it's conservatism. The people who will signup are the same ones who upvote every "Trump got slammed by XX" threads on reddit. Once they know that another and a more genuine reddit exists, they'll starting shovel that stuff here too.
Since you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly and egregiously and have ignored our request to stop, I've banned the account.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
A common sentiment I have heard in the US is that "TikTok causes antisemitism".
What I believe is actually happening is that TikTok debunks a lot of Hasbara talking points about the Israeli occupation of palestine (because people can see the violence with their own eyes), but then people are not educated further about the nuances of Zionism and Judaism, the different political movements within Israel like Gush Emunim and how they are not related to Judaism at large.
Because Israel has so successfully conflated Zionism (a political movement) with Judaism (a religious one), it increases the possibility that when westerners stop supporting Israel they can adopt antisemitic viewpoints.
> when westerners stop supporting Israel they adopt antisemitic viewpoints.
That is very definately not a given. There are many, a majority I hope, of "westerners" who oppose the actions of the state of Israel without becoming anti semetic
> when one side gives up.
> disproportionality of this conflict
Why is disproportionality meaningful at all? Clearly Israel is under attack. They have full right to subdue those attacks through all means necessary. I would hope every government provides the same for their people (and it is so easy to criticize Israel with all of us coming from countries that do protect our safety). Unfortunately Hamas has no regard for Palestinian lives, the best possible outcome for the Palestinians is Hamas giving up.
I don't believe that this would end if Hamas released their hostages. Ultimately, it would put Palestine back to where they were before October 7th except civilians would be much worse off. Still living under Israeli occupation with limited freedom of movement, limited external assistance, etc. Except now, they'd have no hospitals, no infrastructure, housing, etc. How can a place live Gaza possibly rebuild from that?
> All of this would end in an instant if Hamas would give up hostages and surrender.
No, it would not. There would still be 400,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Palestinians in the West Bank would still live under occupation. Do you think that situation will not also reach a boiling point and end in ethnic cleansing as fascist rhetoric in Israel increases?
Hamas is a terrorist organization deeply embedded in a dense area of 2m people. They also don't seem to care much about their people or even their own lives. If they decide to never surrender, shall Israel burn Gaza to the ground? Are those 2m people just going to become "collateral damage"?
Well thank god you'll be spared having colleagues from Gaza since Israel usually cuts off the internet there, because otherwise you'd have seen much worse than someone yelling rockets lol.
Also, I'm sure the Ukraine war would've ended if Ukraine would've just surrendered, what's your point? You realize that you could say that for basically every war ever, and that the enemy not surrendering doesn't allow you to commit war crimes? That's... literally the point.
Your comments in this thread have been crossing into flamewar and are particularly against the intended spirit that I tried to explain in the comment at the top. Please don't post more comments of this sort.
Why are many respectful yet pro-israel posts being flagged and removed, while there are vile pro-hamas posts being flagged and left here? Why was discussion not allowed on Oct 7 but is now?
I know you are trying but it does not seem even handed. I'm screenshotting a whole collection of them examples if seeing them together would be helpful.
I'd need to see links to specific comments, but certainly the flags aren't working any differently than they usually do. The only difference between [flagged][dead] and just [flagged] is the number of flags relative to upvotes; in the former case it would be higher than in the latter case.
Your several comments in this thread seem to be coming from a place of battling for one side against the other. I'm sure you have very good reasons for it, but it's not the intended spirit of discussion here, as I tried to explain at the top of the thread. In such cases, where people have (legitimately) strong feelings on a topic, the temptation to see the mods as biased in favor of the opposite side is almost irresistible. It happens from every perspective on every divisive topic, and this topic is one of the most divisive we've ever seen.
Personally I'd rather non-tech world news stay off HN completely but I'm calling it out because as someone who is up on world news I see quite a double standard unraveling here and that seems unfortunate.
We've had to warn you before not to post religious flamewar comments to HN (and also nationalistic and ideological flamewar comments). We end up having to ban accounts that do this repeatedly, because it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. I don't want to ban you! So pleae don't do this on HN.
Argh! I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to start a flamewar. And we have discussed this before, probably. (I have a 2 year old toddler. Sleep is... affected, I will just say that. And consequently, memory.)
I guess I do not yet understand the framework within which I can discuss this rationally (if at all), especially given this topic. If there is no such framework on HN, especially given the topic... That's what I'd like to understand.
I will try to remember this time :/ Sorry Dang!! Don't want to be an unnecessary burden!!
Question: If my comment had ONLY consisted of quotes from the Quran/Hadith, would that also be flagged?
I did my homework here (regarding the muslim thing) and the one unifying thing I found is the specific religious beliefs in Islam, which literally every terrorist quotes (here is one of many examples I found: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1481T5/). The difficulty I seem to be having here is me not understanding why this rational endeavour I undertook is somehow wrong. I feel like simply researching this was a mistake at this point, which is weird (and seemingly only applicable to this one topic- I have NOT found this to be the case with ANY other topic I've researched... but that is perhaps the nature and the danger with religious beliefs) https://newrepublic.com/article/81178/the-invention-islamoph...
Admittedly, some of my language was probably a bit edgy.
Both of these numbers pale in comparison to the civilian losses of Germany in WWII, and the Allies are not generally considered to have performed a genocide.
Clearly the absolute number of casualties (not even civilian casualties in this case, that is allegedly more like 15k) is not sufficient on its own to define a genocide.
The raw number of people killed isn't indicative of a genocide, it's intent and actions against a specific population. Over 1.5 million (out of 2 million) Gaza residents are displaced and facing starvation. Almost all of the hospitals in Gaza have been destroyed. Many would say Israel is committing genocide and the court today said they will continue the investigation because it's plausible.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the Allies did ethnically cleanse parts of Eastern Europe to remove as many Germans as possible into German borders or internment camps, and they weren't too fussed if they died as a result.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_German...
For example, look at the section for Czechoslovakia (selecting it since it's inarguable Germans had lived in the country formerly known as Bohemia for centuries) alone:
> Between 700,000 and 800,000 Germans were affected by irregular expulsions between May and August 1945.[108] The expulsions were encouraged by Czechoslovak politicians and were generally executed by order of local authorities, mostly by groups of armed volunteers and the army.[109] [...] Transfers of population under the Potsdam agreements lasted from January until October 1946. 1.9 million ethnic Germans were expelled to the American zone, part of what would become West Germany. [...] More than 1 million were expelled to the Soviet zone, which later became East Germany.[110] The West German government estimated the expulsion death toll at 273,000 civilians,[115] and this figure is cited in historical literature.[116] However, in 1995, research by a joint German and Czech commission of historians found that the previous demographic estimates of 220,000 to 270,000 deaths to be overstated and based on faulty information. They concluded that the death toll was between 15,000 and 30,000 dead, assuming that not all deaths were reported.[117][118][119][120]
It's just that 'forced population transfers' were historically considered not outside the bounds of propriety.
Don’t forget that these international laws and treaties were born out of a desire to prevent the horrors of WWII from occurring again. Lots of actors in that war including the Allies did terrible things that are prohibited by those laws. The genocide laws, as I understand, came about as a result of the Holocaust, but the use of WMDs against civilian targets (eg destroying a city with nuclear weapons) would not be legal either.
Given this historical context, we don’t need to “whatabout” with the Allies. Surely we can agree that we do not want a repeat of WWII.
In terms of whether Israel’s actions constitute genocide, we have yet to find out. Are they grossly disproportionate compared to Oct 7, and appalling in terms of their destruction of civilian life and property? I believe yes, and whether or not that is “genocide” is, to me, somewhat besides the point. Making it stop NOW is the point!
About the 25000 Gaza figure, Many places in the media ,it mentions the figure from the Health Ministry includes Hamas fighters. Elsewhere in media reports this is said to be several 1000, I've seen figures 7000-9000 quoted as number of Hamas fighters deaths. (FROM WSJ The Palestinian health ministry’s figures don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. )
You've been breaking the site guidelines badly in this thread and your comments are very much not in the intended spirit, as I tried to explain it at the top. Please stop posting like this. (In case anyone is worried: yes, the exact same thing applies to the commenters you disagree with.)
If this keeps up, we'll end up having to ban your account. (In case anyone is worried: yes, that this would work exactly the same way even if you were arguing for the opposite position.) We're not interested in enforcing views on this or any other divisive topic; only in protecting this site for its intended purpose.
Perhaps your comment would be more constructive if you could say how my comments break the rules. Help me grow and help me follow the rules by being specific.
- - -
You say that you’d equally critique the opposite viewpoint, but that’s been factually untrue before:
You censored people for pointing out in purely neutral terms, using videos of the people themselves giving interviews, that BLM was a Marxist organization — on the basis that it’s an “inherent flame war” to say true things the community is upset by.
- - -
Again, my comment doesn’t seem any different than many others here you didn’t feel the need to critique.
To me, that seems like the antisemitism we witnessed from Harvard et al — who censor speech on campus, then cry “free speech” when making calls for genocide.
Despite the name, HN has never been constrained to stories about IT, tech and startups.
It's the first sentence of the guidelines:
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
There's some good links to additional resources here. There is a "hide" option for the story if you don't want to see it. Personally I think if all we ever see is tech here we will lose sight of the bigger picture.
Huh? How would you accomplish this? Why wouldn’t the terrorists hide amongst the non-terrorists? Where would you take the non-terrorists? What about people who are terrorist-supporting non-terrorists, aren’t they a source of potential issues?
I think it's extremely sad that the measured and helpful comment that you are replying to was flagged. It suggests that the preponderance of HN commentors skews heavily one way on this issue (whether that skew is correct or not is another matter). To respond to your comment specifically: I'm proud to count myself in the overwhelming minority.
At the end of the day, the ICJ does not matter because it has no military, and the only major military power in the world, the United States of America, doesn't recognize its jurisdiction at all. Next time, they should try the Supreme Court if they actually want to make a difference (not that it'd work)
>
For example, the United States had previously accepted the court's compulsory jurisdiction upon its creation in 1946 but in 1984, after Nicaragua v. United States, withdrew its acceptance following the court's judgment that called on the US to "cease and to refrain" from the "unlawful use of force" against the government of Nicaragua. The court ruled (with only the American judge dissenting) that the United States was "in breach of its obligation under the Treaty of Friendship with Nicaragua not to use force against Nicaragua" and ordered the United States to pay war reparations.[21]
There is another player. China is interested in resolving the Gaza conflict.[1]
China's position is that, since the existing world order, the International Court of Justice and the United States, can't resolve this, China should become involved. Chinese container shipping lines COSCO and OOCL have suspended trade with Israel. China has already provided some aid to Gaza.[2]
Gaza has a sizable coastline, and China has a large number of amphibious assault ships available. They can defend themselves against Israel air attacks. If China decides to send humanitarian relief to Gaza, China can do it, and Israel can't stop them.[3] China would look like the good guys. Which their leadership knows.
This seems far fetched given China's traditional insistence that countries' internal affairs should not be subject to external overview, it's undeclared stance that subject populations should be suppressed by whatever means necessary and the still marginal effect of the conflict on its trade.
Amphibious landings are highly vulnerable, and almost impossible to pull off without air superiority. What gives the impression that China's amphibious landing ships are resistant to anti-shipping missiles? Every article on modern naval combat I've read highlights just how vulnerable surface vessels are to attack, and how crucial it is to keep them out of range. I am incredibly dubious that China would land military ships in Gaza.
I was with you until chinese contested amphibious landing in occupied gaza. China’s big picture strategy is to grow while not being drained by small conflicts the way the US is. This would be totally against that strategy.
> Gaza has a sizable coastline, and China has a large number of amphibious assault ships available. They can defend themselves against Israel air attacks
Sorry but this is goofy fan-fiction. No, China does not have the ability to forcibly land in Gaza without huge losses, and then being completely trapped there with no hope of resupply. That's an incredibly long supply line.
I think its extremely unlikely that china will go to war with israel. That would be an extremely bloody conflict for almost no benefit to china.
Additionally china's military currently has big corruption problems (e.g. the missle fuel water controversy). I doubt china really wants to put their reputation on the line until they sort that out, especially given what happened to russia in ukraine.
They might look like "the good guys" by doing that, but they'd also be dragging themselves into an open war Israel (and its allies). I'm not sure that would be a smart move.
I'm also unsure if this move would be seen well domestically. They have enough problems right now, and focusing resources on this doesn't sound like it would be met with high praise.
I think the idea is that they'd genuinely be providing humanitarian aid, with military presence genuinely being there for self-defense.
They would simply be stepping into the role on the world stage the US and other Western countries have fulfilled for the last few decades. Israel probably wouldn't be foolish enough to attack them, and their allies definitely wouldn't aid them.
And in the unlikely event Israel does attack their humanitarian convoy, it would only give China an opportunity to do some live-fire practice and score extra points on the world stage as the innocent defender.
Which other international conflicts has China resolved? The current Chinese state seems to be much better at fostering conflict (I.e. the ongoing Korean War) than resolving it.
So far, not much. Gaza is a good place to start. China wants more influence in the Middle East, and already owns or operates a large number of ports outside China.[1] Israel blockades the existing ports of Gaza. A China-run port in Gaza, protected by the PLAN, is a possibility.
> Gaza has a sizable coastline, and China has a large number of amphibious assault ships available. They can defend themselves against Israel air attacks.
Chinese warships will never be allowed anywhere near the Mediterranean in the first place - if there is one thing that even the split US Congress will agree on, it is that China already has too much influence and that they need to be stopped.
Additionally, China's army hasn't seen actual combat in a loooong time. It's likely that their army is in just as bad of a shape as Russia's is, and getting that demonstrated on the world stage before they have a chance to snack a piece or the whole of Taiwan would be pretty foolish.
China believes in soft power. So I doubt they'd come in guns blazing to rescue Gaza.
However, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by brokering some kind of peace using their supply chain supremacy.
Meanwhile US looks more and more like a paper tiger because they can't stop Yemen from blockading Israeli shipments and also refusing to do the one thing that would resolve the shipping issues: force Israel to the table for a ceasefire.
China has no ability to project much outside of its own territory. They might be able to invade taiwan, sure, but anything farther off is still out of reach for them (even if they wanted to, which I highly doubt). They really couldn't stage much from their one support base in Djibouti.
China would only get involved to extend their influence. China is very much tit-for-tat. But who will grant them anything in return? None of the neighboring countries likes the Palestinians. Egypt even holds the border closed.
Israel could (and probably would) prevent the fleet from delivering the aid even without help from the US.
In support of your "If China decides to send humanitarian relief to Gaza, China can do it, and Israel can't stop them," you link to a description of a ship designed for an invasion of an island 85 miles off China's coast, an invasion which China (correctly IMO) calculates would probably end in failure (or else it would've invaded by now).
Israel can't challenge China militarily in, e.g., the Pacific, but it is a wealthy competent state that takes security seriously.
You really think China wants to create a precedent where a foreign power comes and helps a smaller region to deter a bigger aggressor, with military force? I find that highly unlikely.
i don't think china wants having anything to do with hamas. For a first experience as a military-humanitarian adventure, the chances of appearing as a support for hostage-taking muslim terrorist is way too high.
Stop using unguided bombs in densely populated areas. Stop using poison gas. Stop killing people waving a white flag. Stop sniping people outside of a church. Stop planning and executing demolitions on universities. Stop starving people. Stop cutting water supplies.
Dang, everything I listed is widely reported on. I think I have the right to express this even on HN on an article about a genocide case.
Like the parent says, these have all been widely reported on. I think we have to come into this conversation with a base level of the events that are going on before commenting.
"After October 7, the Israeli government shut off the pipes that supply Gaza with water. It has since only resumed piping water to some parts of southern Gaza while some water has entered via Egypt, but it’s not reaching everyone and is not nearly enough to meet the needs of Gaza’s population, requiring many to rely on the local water supply."
Israel controls all water in the West Bank. Palestinians in the West Bank are not allowed to even collect rainwater because all water infra must be approved by Israel, and they don't approve much.
I assume this is fresh water pumped into Gaza. What of the desalination plants? Cutting off all fuel surely ensures that that water source is also cut off. I would not be surprised to learn that this infrastructure has been targeted for destruction.
Hi All, I am a combat soldier and commander in the IDF currently fighting in Gaza.
We are not committing any genocide. The give away for Genocide is that there are mass graves, which in Gaza there are not.
Yes there is collateral damage because Hamas uses civilians as human shields, so we have no choice but to kill them too, but we do not specifically target them.
We risk ourselves and our soldiers to ensure that the fewest number of non-combatants get killed. We have lost many of our own soldiers because of this. It would be much easier for us to just bomb everything from the air but we dont, because it's less precise than going in on foot.
Personally, as a commander, I would like to say that I have no ill feelings towards the Palestinian people, but we need to get as many of the hostages back as possible, and we cannot allow Hamas to continue ruling Gaza and attacking our civilians as they did on October 7th.
We will continue the fight with them until our military objectives are met, and we will also engage Hizbollah on the northern border for exactly the same reasons (Hamas actually stole their plan and used it on October 7th - Hezbollah had planned to do it in the north but much worse).
Israel is the canary in the coal mine. What happens to us today will happen to you tomorrow, so before you give your full throated support to Hamas, let me ask you, would you want October 7th to happen to your family and friends? If Hamas aren't stopped, that same attack will happen around the world.
Please support us and help rid the world of violent terrorism, and maybe one day, we can all live in peace.
>> The give away for Genocide is that there are mass graves, which in Gaza there are not.
According to Omer Bartov, scholar of genocide, the criterion for genocide is that there is intent to commit genocide:
The crime of genocide was defined in 1948 by the United Nations as “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”
> but we need to get as many of the hostages back as possible
And how many hostages has the war gotten back so far?
> we cannot allow Hamas to continue ruling Gaza
There is no realistic plan for ending Hamas. The more Hamas fighters you kill the more Gazans join. You can take temporary control of the government, but Isarelis in Gaza and anyone who works with them will be targeted by terrorists until the end of time. Eventually israel will get sick of the attacks and pull out, and Hamas will immediately regain control of the government.
The obvious end game here is a return to the pre october 7th status quo with increased border security to ensure oct. 7th doesnt happen again. When will we admit that the hostages can not be saved and move to that end game?
>Personally, as a commander, I would like to say that I have no ill feelings towards the Palestinian people, but we need to get as many of the hostages back as possible, and we cannot allow Hamas to continue ruling Gaza and attacking our civilians as they did on October 7th.
I'm curious about this - the idea that both goals are achievable is a fiction. You either get the hostages, or you eliminate Hamas. Do y'all talk about this?
Why can't we do both? We talk about it a lot. Until now, we have not succeeded, but maybe we can pressure Hamas to let them go, and then eliminate Hamas in a future round of fighting?
Hi there, I personally admire the work you do, I fully support Israel in it's war against evil, I hope you eradicate Hamas (ideally they would all surrender, but that's unlikely, so the other option is they get killed) as soon as you can. If you doubt any of these words, check out my tweets/likes (@tomprimozic)
However, there's 3 "contentious" points that I want to ask (my go-to Jewish (& very pro-Israel) close friend is currently very far away and has his own issues - not that you don't, but since you posted here...)
1. What's your comment on "Hamas headquarters below Al Shifa hospital"?
2. Why do IDF soldiers shoot (and post) videos of them "mocking"/"disrespecting" Palestinian homes/mosques/schools?
3. What's the steelman argument of why Israel is "occupying" the West Bank? The best I can come up with is "they didn't occupy Gaza and look what happened", but (a) that wasn't known before Oct7, and (b) they would have IMO gained a lot of goodwill abroad if they had given it more autonomy...
Thank you for the kind words. Will reach out when I get home next. Been a long day - we did a big mission today and I'm wiped so please excuse the short answers.
1. Hamas was located in a significant want under Al-shifa. Israel released video of our commando unit raiding it. You can find that video online. Hard to watch.
2. Because they're angry and they're being stupid and reacting emotionally. Please understand, they raped our women, tortured them and then murdered them. They did the same to our men, old people and children. Imagine for a second if a specific group did all that to lots of people that you loved and cared for. How would you feel? What would you post as you took your revenge? Israel is a tiny country. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone is related to everyone, or is at least friends with them on some way. So the disrespect is because they are furious with our enemy, and our enemy identifies specifically as religious muslims and arabs. Hard stuff.
3. Oh wow that's a hard one. It's complicated. We're in a war to claim territory with the Palestinians. I mean, you could reverse the question and ask "why are the Palestinians occupying Israeli land". The Palestinians arent a people, per se. They are the random groups of different arab families that were living in the area at the time of the creation of the state of israel. Some are from iran, some from
Syria, some from Jordan, egypt, etc. so we are not "occupying" their land because there is no "them".
Really what needs to happen is that we need to be separated. We can't continue to live in an intermingled fashion like this because it's too messy and unsustainable.
But.... that's a problem for another day. For today we just need to deal with Hamas and Hezbollah.
There's no need to guess like that. Just search for "mass graves gaza", there are plenty of reports of actual mass graves, from Reuters, NYT, SkyNews, The Guardian, etc etc, with pictures and all. See my other comments in this theread for links.
Nope. Those are just buildings. Without people, they are just structures. Again, if Hamas was firing at us from behind civilians (which they do a lot), then we had no choice. You can't just call anything a mass grave for the sake of convenience.
> there is collateral damage because Hamas uses civilians as human shields
When you say things like this, I know that you are either spreading IDF propaganda or have been wired to believe IDF propaganda. Either way it is telling what soldiers are experiencing.
None of the things you stated are any different than what IDF associated press has stated. This makes your post incredibly suspect.
As this is HN, and we welcome on-the-ground views, we are not finding too much info about what is actually happening from the ground view in your post.
> We are not committing any genocide. The give away for Genocide is that there are mass graves, which in Gaza there are not.
How many Hamas terrorists have you killed compared to the now over 10 000 children?
The fact that there is no one to bury them doesn't mean it's not a genocide, come on..
> so we have no choice but to kill them too
When you fire at children playing in the streets, you had a choice. If you can't see that, you've lost all humanity..
> but we do not specifically target them
Hundreds of videoes proves otherwise. Where fleeing civilians are gunned down.
> Personally, as a commander, I would like to say that I have no ill feelings towards the Palestinian people
But your leaders have. And your peers, judging by videoes they posts about the cruelty they do.
> but we need to get as many of the hostages back as possible
You say that, but then you bomb every structure you find, and even shoot the fleeing hostages yourself. It doesn't really seem you care too much for them, they're merely a convenient excuse to do your horrors.
> Please support us and help rid the world of violent terrorism
You can start by laying down your weapon. What you're doing to Palestinian civilians is terrorism.
>> Yes there is collateral damage because Hamas uses civilians as human shields, so we have no choice but to kill them too, but we do not specifically target them.
I struggle to believe this is really a comment by a "commander in the IDF". Such a person should know that the use of civilians as human shields by one side does not absolve the other side from taking every precaution to minimise harm coming to those civilians.
Risk to civilians does not bar military action, but the principle of proportionality requires that precautions be taken to minimize the harm to these protected persons. This analysis includes considerations like whether circumstances permit the attacker to time a military action to minimize the presence of civilians at the location.[16]
Specifically, saying the IDF doesn't target them, they're just in the way, is a cynical denial of that responsibility.
Further, a commander of the IDF would remember the proverb about throwing stones when living in a glass house: there is extensive documentation of the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields by the IDF. See for example the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead (2009):
10. The use of Palestinian civilians as human shields
55. The Mission investigated four incidents in which Israeli forces coerced Palestinian civilian
men at gun point to take part in house searches during the military operations (Chapter XIV).
The Palestinian men were blindfolded and handcuffed as they were forced to enter houses ahead
of the Israeli soldiers. In one of the incidents, Israeli forces repeatedly forced a man to enter a
house in which Palestinian combatants were hiding. Published testimonies of Israeli soldiers who
took part in the military operations confirm the continued use of this practice, in spite of clear
orders from Israel’s High Court to the armed forces to put an end to it and repeated public
assurances from the armed forces that the practice had been discontinued. The Mission
concludes that this practice amounts to the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields and is
therefore prohibited by international humanitarian law.
Despite Israel's claims Hamas does not use civilians in this way. Instead they fight from built-up areas and make it difficult to distinguish combatant from non-combatant. They "hide among civilians" but they don't "use them as shields".
We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamewar comments (not just in this thread but in many others). That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
It's especially in violation of the intended spirit that I tried to explain at the top of the current thread.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
You can't attack another user like this on HN, no matter how wrong they are or you feel they are.
You may not feel you owe the other person better, but you owe this community better if you're participating it; especially given the intended spirit that I attempted to describe at the top of this thread.
Denouncing others as monsters without humanity is what fuels this entire horror. The least we can do is not allow that on Hacker News.
> Yes there is collateral damage because Hamas uses civilians as human shields, so we have no choice but to kill them too, but we do not specifically target them.
> we have no choice but to kill them too, but we do not specifically target them
The ruling is a joke, how can you rule against the defendant and yet order the defendant to monitor themselves?
The ICJ knew if it found against Israel it would loose all credibility outside the West, but it also had too much political pressure from the West to rule for Israel.
No, it didn't. It ruled on what amounts to (in the parlance of the US legal system) a preliminary injunction, ordering one because the pleadings and supporting evidence on initial review warrant it, while the process of a trial on the merits will take longer.
> The ruling is a joke, how can you rule against the defendant and yet order the defendant to monitor themselves?
The only people the ICJ can order are the parties. External monitoring and enforcement is a matter for, primarily, the UN Security Council.
> The ICJ knew if it found against Israel it would loose all credibility outside the West, but it also had too much political pressure from the West to rule for Israel.
The process by which the ICJ might rule for or against Israel, rather than ordering provisional measures, is much longer. This is just an early part of the case.
South Africa asked for something analogous to a preliminary injunction. The ICJ declined to order a preliminary ceasefire. Instead, the case will be tried as usual.
There's so much wiggle room within the statement. For example
78 - Israel must... take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of... acts... in particular: ... (d) imposing measures
intended to prevent births within the group.
Bombing or evacuating hospitals will have that effect, but it would be extremely difficult to prove intention. So they can keep doing what they say is necessary.
Many governments have issued vague calls to minimise civilian deaths etc. If Israel rejected those, it's hard to see it treating this differently.
All: if you're going to post in this thread, please make sure you're up on the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and that your comment is strictly within them.
That especially means two things here: being kind, and not using the thread to do battle. If you're not able to stick to that, that's fine, but in that case please don't post.
What does be kind mean in a context like this? Many things, but here's one in my view: it means finding a place in your heart for the humanity of the other—whoever the other happens to be for you.
That isn't easy but it's the spirit we want here. If you can't find it in yourself, that's understandable, but on this topic, please only post if you can.
The actual rulings can be found at https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192...
and a summary is: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192...
Dissents etc can be found in the case page: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192 - in particular the opinion of Judge Aharon Barak, the Israeli ad-hoc Judge (a peculiarity of the ICJ is that each side gets to add a judge, but it doesn't have much effect since there are 17 other judges). But interestingly Judge Barak ruled against Israel in the case of two measures, enforcement against Incitement and ensuring humanitarian aid.
I believe it's also available in French, for those more familiar with that language.
Since the comment that I replied to was flagged, I'm posting this here because it is simply a statement of facts.
- Judge Barak's numbers on civilian deaths on 7th october are simply wrong and could've been easily checked. 766 civilians were killed, 1200 was the total number of deaths (including armed forces).
- Israel's own numbers say "2 civilians killed for every one militant"[1], that's 66% in the Gaza offensive.
- 766 / 1200 = 63.8%
- 63.8% and 66% are indeed close numbers, don't see why would it be flagged.
Of course, the numbers claimed by other NGOs / UN make it worse. But Israel's numbers are sufficient to make that claim.
[1] - https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/05/middleeast/israel-hamas-m...
> 63.8% and 66% are indeed close numbers, don't see why would it be flagged…Israel's numbers are sufficient to make that claim
What claim?
As far as civilian casualty rates go, mid 60s is nothing to be proud of, but square in the middle of the pack when it comes to modern wars [1].
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8581199/#B12
Regarding the people that died on October 7, one important detail is evidence surfaced it appears a sizeable fraction was killed due to Israeli military attacking militants and hostages without distinction, to avoid capture, following the so called Hannibal directive:
https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-army-ordered-mass-hann...
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/25/israels-october-7-propaga...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive
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Barak is no fan of the current Israeli government. And they often attacked him publicly and organized demonstrations around his home. They truly sent the best international law expert the country has to offer
This is more nuanced. Some people in the government respect Barak. I don't know that Barak is active in politics (I haven't really heard him opine on the current government, but one can imagine he's not a fan). The more extreme parties in the government resent/oppose Barak. The "government" doesn't attack Barak or protest against him but certainly some (extreme/right-wing) political factions in Israel blame him for many things. I don't think he was sent because he's necessarily the best international law expert, but he's a very sharp and widely respected. His being sent while the government is trying to undermine the practices Barak established in the supreme court is a bit weird. Politics.
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Not exactly. They sent the guy who controls the local judiciary because not doing so would be impossible due to his immense political power. The Israeli judiciary is unique in nominating itself and having given itself the power to cancel any law or demand any changes to laws/policy on any arbitrary basis; since this state of affairs is backed up by a sufficient number of powerful institutions, it is effectively impossible to challenge.
Barak ruling to resupply the enemy (it is widely documented that "humanitarian aid" goes first and foremost to Hamas) in an international court is entirely consistent with his lifelong tendency to gradually reduce Israeli independence and voters' impact on policy and to increase Israeli compliance to the policy of outside parties, first and foremost the US. (Resupplying the enemy was required by the US from the start. It is interesting to see other examples where civilians are prevented by the international community to leave the area of hostilities and instead they are supposed to be provided with resources in this area where the monopoly on the use of force belongs to one of the sides in the conflict.)
While the exact requirements placed on Israel by larger powers are somewhat unique, having highly influential people in the country effectively work in the interest of larger powers is a common condition for smaller powers. In this Barak is similar to many other high-profile people and organizations in many other countries enjoying limited sovereignty at best.
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An important part of Barak’s involvement is the complete recognition of ICJ’s jurisdiction over the matter, which it found (and Barak didn’t disagree) it had.
> a peculiarity of the ICJ is that each side gets to add a judge, but it doesn't have much effect since there are 17 other judges
There are 15 ICJ judges, plus the two ad hoc judges appointed by the parties.
Yes, my error. 17 is the total number of judges in this case.
Notably also voted against telling Israel to follow the raw key prohibitions of Genocide convention as written in the convention, something Israel agreed to in the past. Curious.
Also voted against asking Israel to preserve evidence of the crimes. Interesting perspective for a former judge.
> Interesting perspective for a former judge
Do you have a link to Barak’s dissent on those questions?
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Please don't post like this. It's against the intention of this site and especially against the intended spirit I tried to describe at the top of the thread.
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The civilian death toll in Gaza has been tragically high but there hasn't been any independent verification. Regardless of what's on Wikipedia, we can't trust specific numbers.
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My views on the situation aside, the clearest I saw anyone communicate the issues from a global angle was the former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin
Translated here: https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1718201487132885246
Viewed from the angle of the West, I think the message it needs to avoid isolating itself from the world is very unusual for Western media and important.
Quote:
"Westerners must open their eyes to the extent of the historical drama unfolding before us to find the right answers."
And
"This Palestinian question will not fade. And so we must address it and find an answer. This is where we need courage. The use of force is a dead end. The moral condemnation of what Hamas did - and there's no "but" in my words regarding the moral condemnation of this horror - must not prevent us from moving forward politically and diplomatically in an enlightened manner. The law of retaliation is a never-ending cycle."
All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then?
Spend tons of money on iron dome to shoot down the rockets and hope that Hamas won't manage to conduct another massacre, even if "only" half the scope of October 7?
This mess features not one but two parties who currently reject the concept of a cease fire.
>All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then?
And then everyone who wants peace invests lots of money and expertise over a long time to build a modern, prosperous, stable Palestinian society, despite whatever setbacks, attacks, and sabotage occur from within and without.
The only way to have peace is to give people a better option than becoming terrorists.
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People said Apartheid South Africa couldn't end without a bloodbath. People said peace in Northern Ireland was impossible. People thought the Cold War would never end. Impossible things are impossible until they aren't. I'm not saying that any of these things are easy - they clearly are not. But history shows us again and again that change is possible when people work towards it in good faith. From a practical point of view, I think that the international community needs to be allowed to help - both to maintain the peace and broker a way forward. The status quo will not reach peace. Israel will never have peace and security until Palestine has peace and security.
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If I knew the answer to that question I would be a high ranked politician. But for me it's important to keep in mind what he is saying here and also in another part explicitly: a diplomatic solution is possible and history proves that. So what I can do is reject the notion that what is happening is unavoidable.
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> All correct and yet, what should happen?
Happy, fed, employed people do not become terrorists. They have too much to lose.
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Israel must face the reality that is an apartheid state that exists on occupied land. There is no solution until that happens. Just like apartheid South Africa was dismantled, Israel has to face the same fate or forever be locked into warfare and oppressing Palestinians.
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> All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then?
It remains a mess, but less of a mess? Look, it's all bad guys running the show in that hell hole of a desert. There are no trusted entities anywhere able to run a government that isn't somewhere between actively antagonistic and actively genocidal toward half the local population.
Nonetheless a status quo with less shooting and death is better than a status quo with more. Hamas killed fewer people than Israel did/is, so... yeah, I guess. An occasional October 7th is a better choice than levelling Gaza is. Incrementally. But none of this is going to get better, likely within our lifetimes.
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While I'm not a military expert, I think it would be reasonable to rule out the possibility of a similar massacre any time soon, for decades at least. It seems unlikely that Hamas would get away with it a second time? They put everything into a one-day surprise attack. The Israeli defense was caught unprepared despite being warned, but they have much more power and they can learn.
What happens in the wider conflict (with other Iran-backed militias) is another question.
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You need an anti Hamas Palestinian force that credibly fights against Hamas and has the support of the Palestinians but it is too late for that now.
Yes, that is exactly what Israel should do. The "dont let gazans interact with Israelis" strategy was icnredibly effective until Israel got soft on border security. Israel easily is capable of ensuring no Gazans ever escape again. The iron dome is largely succesful at keeping Israelis safe, certainly more so than a long term gazan invasion which would open up the Israelis in gaza to terrorist attacks.
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"Today we are faced with an Islamist cause, led by Hamas. Obviously, this kind of cause is absolute and allows no form of negotiation."
Lost me there, because this is not the framing that matches reality. There were several instances where Hamas was willing to form unity government with Fatah/PLO, to share power, negotiate, to do things like that. It's first and foremost a national liberation movement. The movement itself would not even exist had not been for the occupation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah%E2%80%93Hamas_reconcilia...
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full
I didn't read further, because assuming lack of negotiation, lack of pragmatism, of being able to participate in politics semi-normally, etc. is just a crucial point.
Especially while not recognizing intense pressure by the West for this political process to not exist, to suppress it, for it to fail. If you suppress politics, you get violent conflict eventually.
Edit: My this comment is being downvoted despite stating just a plain fact. Hopefully the downvoters can do everyone a service by explaining what's wrong with it.
Like you said, HAMAS exists solely for the sake of resisting Jewish occupation [0], from the river to the sea, which also means the extermination of Israel and Jews [1]. And their conviction stems from their religion, Islam, which allows them to persist despite all the opposition on earth because they are hoping for a reward in heaven[2].
And of course Israel won't allow itself to be exterminated ( hopefully this point is clear enough, no citation needed). So how can there be negotiation?
0. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/ha...
1. https://www.ajc.org/translatehate/From-the-River-to-the-Sea
2. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL03124515/
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He says exactly the same. There were in the past, but not today. He says the same thing for Israel - switched from secular to biblical and thus unable to compromise.
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I think the premise of "the law of retaliation is a moral dead end" is just a high minded pathway to endless violence and anarchy.
... and on the other pathway, there's no fight because everyone's already dead. We fight because we're alive. It's just how life goes.
israel has already created more terrorists than those it took down. "An eye for an eye" never works
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> The law of retaliation is a never-ending cycle
How many wars have the US and Japan fought after WWII?
Or France and Germany after WWII?
How many wars have the US Government and Native Americans fought after 1900?
Sometimes a clear, overwhelming victory ends cycles of violence.
No. The fundamental flaw in this reasoning is the assumption that overwhelming victory is what established the current world order.
Rebuilding Europe via the Marshall plan, which involved humanization of individuals who fought on behalf of evil, is why there is peace in Europe. Likewise, the US reconstruction of Japan is why the US and Japan are at peace.
The US held the position of power and chose not to exercise it tyrannically. That is why there is peace.
The native American case is much closer to supporting your argument because genoicdal efforts were made against them and they were forced to submit, and then tyrannical power was exercised over them, maybe even to this day. However again, Native Americans participate in American civil society, there have been (probably insufficient) efforts for reparations, they do have land where they administer their own laws. In some locations native American heritage is celebrated and native American culture is promoted.
There is relative peace with native Americans because we are not particularly tyrannical, and I would say for the most part, modern Americans see Native Americans as humans not "savages."
Seeing your enemies as equally valid humans, who might have done things you would do if you grew up under their conditions, is what creates peace.
Peace is a function of humanization, not a function of victory. Victory without humanization does not end the cycle of violence.
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Germany and Japan's peaceful modern history are less due to a clear, overwhelming victory than they were due to the recognition of an absolutely horrific chapter in their country's respective histories and a major cultural movement against the possibility of those kinds of atrocities happening again. Either country could easily come up with more than enough military might to win a war if they chose, but the horrors that they perpetrated live on as cultural scar tissue.
The last example is just... horrific. I don't have more to say on it except that we shouldn't use it as a positive example of anything.
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That's exactly the point, at least how I'm reading it. Between the US and Japan peace and diplomacy was allowed to rule instead of constant violent retaliation. With France and Germany the same - the two countries have, in a pretty meaningful way, simply merged into a single country along with a lot of the rest of Europe.
When it comes to the US Government and Native Americans it's a far less good example - there have been militarized Native resistance groups at times since the 1900s and there has been open violence (see, for instance, Leonard Peltier and AIM)... in a large way America succeeded with erasing native peoples from their lands - and ditto with Canada - to the point where the groups are too fragmented to form any serious claims at independence. I also think Nixon (yes that Nixon) helped cool things off pretty seriously by, essentially, starting reparation programs to help reinject economic health into reservations - while those have had very underwhelming success at fully solving the problem America has been trying to uplift instead of suppress those communities.
All this stuff is really, really complicated - what defines a culture and a nation is extremely nebulous and subject to heavy revision as time passes. But we're all people and we need to be able to talk about peace even if we have deep historical wounds.
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The US has fought many wars since WW2 and has basically failed to win any of them. Again from the interview:
The second thing is a targeted response. Let's define realistic political objectives. And the third thing is a combined response. Because there is no effective use of force without a political strategy. We are not in 1973 or in 1967. There are things no army in the world knows how to do, which is to win in an asymmetrical battle against terrorists. The war on terror has never been won anywhere. And it instead triggers extremely dramatic misdeeds, cycles, and escalations. If America lost in Afghanistan, if America lost in Iraq, if we lost in the Sahel, it's because it's a battle that can't be won simply, it's not like you have a hammer that strikes a nail and the problem is solved. So we need to mobilize the international community, get out of this Western entrapment in which we are.
The US Government continues to employ militarized forces to suppress Indigenous resistance to this very day.
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That France and Germany are now good neighbors is a miracle.
It's possible because wise humans on both sides realized that the law of retaliation would cause a never ending cycle.
I worry that this sort of wisdom might be in short supply these days.
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The Marshall Plan and favorable trade agreements the allies gave Japan would never be extended by Israel the way it is and acts now, so there has to be another solution. Destruction didn't turn Germany and Japan around, the ability to uplift themselves did. The very thing which has been denied to Gaza since 2005 at least (and likely much longer)
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> The law of retaliation is a never-ending cycle.
Well, there are ways to end it. Historically there have been thousands of cyclical conflicts that eventually ended without a diplomatic solution.
In this situation I disagree. The world is overwhelmingly pro Palestine, and the Arab world obviously. They will not go away. Israel will not go away either.
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Those who want to know the proper history and context of the current conflict, you really owe it to yourself to read this well researched book by Prof Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine [1]. In his latest book he even mentioned Israel - Palestinian latest major war (fifth war in chronological order) in the form of many years of blockade on the people of Gaza. The fact that this book was published several years (2017) before the event happened kind of foretelling that now we have an on-going all out war between one of mightiest army of the modern world against people without a country and no official army to its defense.
[1] The Hundred Years' War on Palestine (2017):
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781627798556/thehundredyears...
And a recent interview on the same author: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/20/this_is_a_colonial_w...
> one of mightiest army of the modern world
Technologically advanced, sure. Mighty? They have a pretty small population compared to most countries in Asia.
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Imagine trying to extend and justify every land conflict way further before the Roman Empire, hence the Italian can claim back their ruling over most of England, and the Moroccan over most of Spain.
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Are you literally judging a book by its title? I don't think dismissing books out of hand without actually engaging with anything they say, but rather by engaging with imagined arguments based on their titles, is not a good way of arriving at knowledge and truth.
Huh, bemusing to note this is, with a VERY wide brush, Rome v Parthia all over again.
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A great article from an international law prof explaining the finding can be found here: https://www.ejiltalk.org/icj-indicates-provisional-measures-...
The blog has articles on the topic from both sides from numerous lawyers
Finally, this is the first article I've seen that really explains the ruling.
Ditto for JustSecurity: https://www.justsecurity.org/91457/top-experts-views-of-intl... / https://archive.is/l4Du7
Thanks, that was extremely helpful in understanding not just the ruling, but the remit of the court.
Glad to see Israel face some responsibility for its horrific acts against civilians.
> The court ruled that Israel must do all it can to prevent genocide, including refraining from killing Palestinians or causing harm to them
Sounds like a ceasefire to me. How else would they do this? Definitely not with any of the military tactics Israel is currently using.
> > The court ruled that Israel must do all it can to prevent genocide, including refraining from killing Palestinians or causing harm to them
> Sounds like a ceasefire to me. How else would they do this? Definitely not with any of the military tactics Israel is currently using.
Reading the actual icj ruling it seems like it only forbid it when done with genocidial intent. The court did not forbid collateral damage.
The specific wording included the line "...take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II..."
Earlier in paragraph 78 they said "The Court recalls that these acts fall within the scope of Article II of the Convention when they are committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a group as such (see paragraph 44 above)."
So basically it is only forbidden if the intent is specificly to kill Palestinians and not if it is collateral damage to some other military objective.
I don't think this order will affect anything israel is doing.
The ruling is so politically ambiguous, so israel will probably be digesting it for awhile. Perhaps lowering the military activities.
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Except SA specifically asked the court to require a ceasefire, which would have immediate consequences via security council vote and no more munitions landing in Israel. And the judges voted it down
This isn't a read between the lines situation, because SA's request was specifically for the court to temporarily rule for a full immediate ceasefire until the larger case could be heard
What is interesting here is that by mis-reading the verdict like yourself, and Israel assuming the worst, both sides immediately came out saying today was a huge win. So at least we have that, everyone (but the Palestinians, who aren't a side in this case) is happy
From what i understand, the ceasefire was an extreme long shot by south africa and nobody really expected the icj to grant it. Particularly because the court cant order hamas to do anything and a one sided cease fire seems kind of unreasonable, but also the right to self defense is pretty fundamental in international law.
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> Except SA specifically asked the court to require a ceasefire, which would have immediate consequences via security council vote
The US would block anything against Israel anyway. The UN has no power when it comes to the security council members or their satellites.
Honestly I'm not trying to mis-read the verdict which is why I asked the question. I think all of Israel's strategies to date include the death of Palestinians. Since that's explicitly forbidden with that ruling, how will they continue to fight? Will they just ignore the ruling or change tactics?
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I believe the court reaffirmed Israel's right to defend itself. Presumably, the "all it can to prevent" wording is meant to work around things we expect a nation must do, such as defending itself from attack.
It explicitly says they must stop killing Palestinians. None of their current military tactics satisfy this demand.
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International law regulates war, but does not entirely prohibit it (that would be futile; wars of aggression are specifically prohibited by Briand-Kellogg pact, but nowadays even aggressors try to dress the situation as justified defense and often get away with it; few wars since 1945 were tried by a competent tribunal and judged unlawful).
It isn't unlawful per se to cause civilian casualties during military operations; any demand that the warring parties limit themselves to killing combatants only would be unrealistic, especially in urban settings.
It is unlawful to target civilians intentionally or to cause wanton damage to civilian infrastructure, though.
When the UN told the US not to go to war with Irak, they just ignored it.
Those bodies have zero power and countries that want to massacre will kill no matter what.
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Quite the contrary - they have all the power, they are just choosing not to use it in this case. If the court ordered a ceasefire all weapon shipments to Israel would have to stop the same day.
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Not at all. It simply instructed Israel to try and hit fewer people. Which is what we all expect from every army.
Isn't this collateral damage of waging war with a terrorist organisation embedded in civilian population? I don't this this counts for genocide, as sad as the results are...
The technicality I see here is that the ICJ can call a ceasefire in an armed conflict, this would carry the implicit message that the civilian casualties are collateral damage. Instead they are asking to stop the genocidal acts. In a genocide the civilians are the target. It’s bad for the Palestinians in the short term, and bad for Israel in the long
>Instead they are asking to stop the genocidal acts.
No, they have ordered Israel not to commit genocidal acts. The court has made no ruling on whether Israel has or has not committed genocidal acts.
No, if they wanted a ceasefire they would have asked for a ceasefire.
The primary problem was always that there are too many parties who have an interest in the existence of Hamas.
Put differently, there are too many parties with an interest in using the Palestinians as pawns. Leaving aside the views of any specific Palestinian. As no serious person can dispute the ease of radicalizing destitute people without educations and with PTSD.
As long as this is the case, the Palestinians, on the whole, will present as radicalized.
The continued goal can't be to use them as pawns. The goal has to be to peacefully save every last remaning Palestinian life, at all costs. In spite of the interests of any of the people who use them.
Accomplishing that goal, at all peaceful costs, will be distasteful to both the people who want to sacrifice the Palestinians for Islamic land interests as well as to the people who see them as, at minimum, legitimate collateral damage.
But that is what will be required to take Palestinian civilians out of the middle of this endless nightmare.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” - Benjamin Netanyahu
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/20/benjam...
The problem is tribalism. The primary goal is exclusive dominion, but a distant secondary goal of political and militaristic domination will suffice in the meantime. These aren’t my thoughts or conclusions but the stated goals of several of Israel’s most senior politicians, saying something to the effect of removing the inhabitants so that they can make the desert blossom.
The problems here can be solved peacefully and permanently if the dominant faction so wished. The most durable solution is to tear down the walls, annex the occupied territories, and make the Palestinian residents full and equal citizens of Israel. Israel has stated as much directly but refuses that solution because they fear their tribal identity will not longer be a numerical majority. Another less durable solution is a two state solution in opposition to military dominance, but Israel does not want that either. Tribalism. The parallels to the conflict in the Balkans, which was ruled a genocide, are many.
Your solution is to make Jews a minority in their own country? The entire reason Israel was created is to have a safe place for Jews to exist and having the power to defend themselves.
Imagining that just “tearing down the walls”, and “why can’t we all just gel along” will work is pretty naive, especially considering history .
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> dispute the ease of radicalizing destitute people without educations and with PTSD
Using the same broad stroke generalization and similarly de-humanizing moral compass; how do you judge the society these people celebrating child murder, arson, death, riots, mass executions, hateful incitement belong to: https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17237393892624344...
> But that is what will be required to take Palestinian civilians out of the middle of this endless nightmare
One might say, the chief among requirements is for the occupation of a people who have rejected it every step of the way to end. Everything else is a distraction.
The primary problem has been a brutal occupation, apartheid state, and blockade
What's the ICJ's actual ability to enforce this? "Orders" sounds like they have some sort of weight to throw around if Israel doesn't comply, but I'm not familiar with the ICJ or what possible consequences could arise if Israel simply decided it was going to do what it wanted.
In theory i think they are supposed to ask the security council to step in if the order is ignored. Which would be unlikely to do anything, so nothing.
I think its likely israel will comply. The order is pretty weak and mostly stuff israel already claims to be doing. It wouldn't be worth the PR hassle to ignore it.
> I think its likely israel will comply.
Comply with "Don't genocide"? At best, they'll argue semantics while they keep doing what they've always done.
Nevermind. I read the article:
> Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the fact that the court was willing to discuss the genocide charges was a “mark of shame that will not be erased for generations.” He vowed to press ahead with the war.
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They have already said they will continue their operation in Gaza, _despite_ the ICJ
Israel's government doesn't care about PR hassle from the usual suspect. We may notice that they've had plenty of that lately and it did not stop them at all.
Even if doing what the ICJ wants is easy, there's a strong reason not to (from their perspective) - it implies the ICJ should be obeyed and legitimizes them. But why should Israel do that? It's just another leftie NGO from Netenyahu's perspective. Start following what those guys want and soon they will have to do nothing even as Hamas attacks again and again.
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> What's the ICJ's actual ability to enforce this?
Zero, the same as most courts.
Enforcement is a matter for (ordinarily) the Security Council, or, in the case of deadlock, potentially the GA acting under Uniting for Peace. Well, decisions on enforcement; actual enforcement is left to individual UN members, acting on direction of those UN bodies.
Note that enforcement in practice is often a problem, as with the provisional measures adopted against Russia in the Ukraine v. Russia genocide case.
> Zero, the same as most courts
Well, Israel is a treaty signatory. That means an ICJ ruling is executable under Israeli law.
That means jack shit right now. But every action taken hereonforth, by leadership or command or individual soldiers, carries with it the burden of future prosecution.
Am I to understand then that a member of the UN could decide that intervene? Or would they need to be “allowed” to intervene on behalf of the ICJ?
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None, but what this does is create a rather significant pressure, one of many. If it didn't, you wouldn't see so much defense of Israeli state action.
Here is the actual court order: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192...
The measures to be taken are specified in paragraphs 78–82 on page 23.
The ruling also ordered Hamas to release all hostages, and Hamas has previously claimed they would abide by any ruling of the court. I find it unlikely though that they will comply.
The ruling didn't, and couldn't given the ICJ’s jurisdiction, order Hamas to do anything: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39149823
> Hamas has previously claimed they would abide by any ruling of the court
No, Hamas previously claimed that they would observe a ceasefire if the court imposed one on Israel, conditioned on Israeli compliance with the same. They didn't say they would do anything related to anything other than an ceasefire order.
Hamas is not a state. ICJ is a tribunal that adjudicates disputes between states. ICJ has no jurisdiction to rule in regards to Hamas. Neither can Hamas bring a case against Israel, as it has no standing, considering it is not a party to the international treaty.
Palestine is considered occupied territory and is not a part of the UN
They probably claimed it because in their delusion they thought the court would unconditionally side with them.
Unlikely that they will release the hostages just because a court said so.
If you had an inkling of a genocide going on and a chance to act, obviously you'd immediately do anything in your power to stop it? Despite the judges being appointed by their own countries*, I'm sure they have humanity. So this is an acquittal in all but name.
Oh, they'll keep monitoring and the case will take years, but the result is obvious even now.
* e.g. It's obvious the Russian judge has strong incentives to vote as Putin tells them to, otherwise they'd have to move to a windowless basement where the only access is by an elevator...
> If you had an inkling of a genocide going on and a chance to act, obviously you'd immediately do anything in your power to stop it?
Doesn’t seem people care about what’s going in Africa. People care here because this is a war of religion. And by that, I mean whether Western countries remain increasingly supreme (in terms of the world order).
The UN has no power to exercise binding laws over sovereign states.
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/south-africa-will-win-order-...
Has anyone read about how the UN itself had thousands of its employees support and celebrate the October 7th murder and raped of innocent Israelis?
Do not trust their anti-semitic statements.
Firstly, the conflict in the GAZA strip is war.
Pure and simple.
Realistically this war is being fought politically in the worlds media. The fight is for public opinion. So the orders of the IJC are about war. The hair splitters may want to change the nature of war to "genocide" by one side rather than condemn BOTH sides in the conflict. "but we can only take evidence from XYZ and only on matters ABC"
It seems to me to be a case of the UN wanting to have a seat at the table. They have become more & more irrelevant in matters of real importance or conflict. This ruling is pretty meaningless regardless of what your beliefs are. Its just more media circus.
We can argue about statistics and false testimony who is right and which side is credible but we are just adding to the noise.
Most terrorist organizations & actions are the direct result of one group having no political power. It ceases when that group obtains political power.
It seems to me the original attack by HAMAS was simply to ensure that there is more war and that war can be fought in the worlds media. This ruling and the whole procedure is just more of the same.
Wars usually continue to be prosecuted till one (or both) side loses the political will to continue. Does anyone here really believe Israel will lose that political will, regardless of world opinion? Hasn't in the past. Just like Russia.
let's start by turning the water and electricity back on
Let's start by returning the Israeli hostages
Water and electricity were both resumed in oct. 15th.
Here is an Israel Times article from the 28th that seems to prove that to be untrue for electricity (but true for water although severely reduced). Could you source that statement?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-concern-for-humanitarian-...
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ICJ didn't reach any conclusions or positions except that IDF needs to be careful. No call for a ceasefire.
I'm curious what people in Tel Aviv see in media. In America, it's wall-to-wall "police say"-like IDF clips and Bill Maher condemnation, dehumanization, and equivocating Palestine supporters with Hamas terrorists. The talking heads cheerfully greet Netanyahu.
> In America, it's wall-to-wall "police say"-like IDF clips and Bill Maher condemnation, dehumanization, and equivocating Palestine supporters with Hamas terrorists. The talking heads cheerfully greet Netanyahu.
As someone who also consumes US news, this does not describe what I’ve seen.
Local news or networks? Which ones?
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I have found the exact opposite. NPR, for example, spends a lot of time humanizing Gazans and showing that Israel is terrorizing them, quite literally.
NPR also frequently talked about the right wing/nationalist power seizures leading up to this.
Before the war, I think a good number of Americans saw Israel blowing up the Associated Press offices. It hardly matters what the excuse was.
I feel like every week I've heard a story about Israel telling Gazans where to go, and then bombing that location.
I'm not sure I saw any news outlet that didn't report 70% women and children casualties, which pretty much speaks for itself.
Nobody I went to college with supports Israel at all. Genocide Joe is not just used by his oponents. That name didn't come out of nowhere. Many of the people who voted for him agree his genocidal support of Israel is unacceptable.
You live in a bubble and do not see coverage from Fox, CNN, or NYT.
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It's kind of funny reading HN comments comparing this to WWII. Israel was given the land after WWII as some sort of weird hand washing by western governments. People already lived there. The claims that Hamas is like "Germany" trying to eliminate Jews are laughably absurd. These are people without a military fighting with AK-47s and rocket launchers against one of the most sophisticated armies on the planet -- F-35 jets and laser guided munitions. How can we blame Hamas when it is Israel that is stealing Palestinian homes to add Jewish settlers? Imagine someone coming to your house with a bulldozer kicking you out and placing new people there. This is literally what a settlement is and it is condemned by most of the UN outside of the United States.
It is also important to remember that Israel did not exist before 1948. There was a lot of violence that occurred against Palestinians during it's formation -- within 2 generations of the current generation -- rapes, murders, displacement. I recommend watching the documentary film Tantura which outlines some of this. There is some pretty horrific stuff... 70 year old Israeli men laughing about old stories of raping women. Feeding men their own cut-off genitals etc. There is a reason the "Nakba" is not allowed to be mentioned in Israel.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16378034/
There also seems to be only a very basic understanding of the political realities behind why Hamas exists in this forum. "Big bad boogeyman Islamic terrorists" vs "Secular free modernity" is a stupid way to look at this. The Israeli government does not want a Palestinian state. Hamas was very much uplifted by the Israeli government since as early as the 80s because they delegitimize the idea of a free Palestine in the international sphere. They are easy to negotiate against because they are extremists. Even given their extremism, Hamas does not want to "genocide Jews" -- this is another absurd claim that is propagated but has no basis.
Hamas is also not ISIS. They are a resistance movement against an occupying power that uses violent means to influence political realities. This is dirty dirty work and many horrible things happen when you give 20 year olds AK-47s. I don't support it. But the existence of Hamas is very much an expected outcome of military occupation. It is interesting to note that the founder of Hamas was 8 year old when he saw 15 Palestinian men executed at point blank range by Israeli soldiers. He is also a pediatrician and a geneticist.
In general, I think people on this forum view terrorism through a very childish lens. It's a bit like calling everything a "programming language" ... well yeah maybe C++ has some similarities to Typescript ... but they are very different beasts. Osama bin laden and Hamas may have shared political objectives and ideals but they are not completely equivalent.
To summarize my feelings: Israel has definitively built a great civilization -- but we musn't equate that with some sort of moral cleanliness. Hamas is a terrorist organization -- but we musn't equate that with a lack of real grievances.
The statistics don't lie: Israel has killed more women and children in 100 days than any other recent modern military conflict. It has used more munitions than the US did for the entirety of the Iraq war. It's a ridiculous response that, given the context above, is nothing short of genocide.
An important point that I don't think most people realize is that the Kibbutz that Hamas attacked on October 7th actually used to be Palestinian towns that they were expelled from during Nakba:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_towns_and_villages_dep...
I do think that their future Feb ruling is going to call for a ceasefire. If they called for one now, Israel & especially the US were just going to ignore it and reduce the power of the court.
Israel has created a beast that I don't think they can control themselves. I do think that the court is going to get more legitimacy after they explicitly tell Israel to __chill__, for Israel not to chill, and then get the ceasefire ruling against them & potentially an intensification of the genocide case.
Meanwhile, unfortunately, real people are suffering so these political games can be played.
I am so deeply disappointed in the Biden administration here. They're throwing away a lot of the good work they've done, and are actively getting Trump elected. People, naturally, do not want to participate in an election that is giving them a choice between ${person_currently_helping_a_genocide} and ${person_that_will_intensify_genocide}. You're just going to get voter apathy, and the consequences from that.
> I am so deeply disappointed in the Biden administration here.
What do you expect him to do? With or without any assistance, Israel has more than enough weapons completely annihilate Gaza. Don't forget that they likely have nuclear capabilities. Israel believes they are demonstrating restraint and this restraint is the first thing to go if Israel feels like it's being backed into a corner.
I am not so sure. I believe Israel only exists by the mercy of support from their Allies. The minute they lose that support Israel is doomed. The country is surrounded by enemies on all sides. Sure their military could win a conventional war with their nukes against any of their neighbors. But on the long term a small country with a small population and limited natural resources needs friends to run an economy big enough to support the huge military it needs to defend itself. And Israel is running out of friends fast. Sympathy for Israel in the West is surely declining at lightning speed with the current situation, I would not be surprised if this conflict is the start of the end of the country
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All the US has to do is: nothing. Stop sending over tank shells [1], Fighter jets and attack helicopters [2], deploying aircraft carriers [3] and stop vetoing UN Security Council resolutions trying to impose a ceasefire [4]
1. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/09/biden-admini... 2. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-25/ty-article/.p... 3. https://www.voanews.com/a/us-aircraft-carrier-to-remain-in-m... 4. https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-un-resolution...
>> Israel believes they are demonstrating restraint
From the section of the ICJ ruling dealing with dehumanizing language used by Israeli officials:
> "I have released all restraints . . . You saw what we are fighting against. We are fighting human animals"
-- Mr Yoav Gallant, Defence Minister of Israel
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> What do you expect him to do?
At least as much as Ronald Regan: https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/08/12/A-shocked-and-outrag...
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Things like this are bad: https://apnews.com/article/us-israel-gaza-arms-hamas-bypass-...
More public denouncement of what Israel is doing.
Get the Department of State to start sanctioning heads of state of Israel that are actively calling for a genocide.
He's effectively done nothing other than "handling it in private."
I can assure you Israel will most likely ignore any resolution that does not involve the hostages returning.
If they cared about the hostages, they wouldn't be bombing them to death on a daily basis, shooting those that escape, or gassing them in tunnels. The hostages are nothing more than political pawns to Netanyahu.
Keep in mind that Hamas reiterated their ceasefire deal recently, which includes the release of all hostages, and Israel rejected it.
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Hostages are undesireable for Israel, as earlier they die/be killed the lesser leverage hamas will have. Besides, they will all be dangerous to official narrative, as they seem to have been treated ok by the militants.
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Does Hamas have to adhere to an ICJ ordered ceasefire?
No. Because they are a terrorist organisation.
Israel is expected to because they are not.
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Hamas/Al-Qassam Brigades outright said today that they would willingly comply with a ceasefire order.
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Is that even possible procedurally? the preliminary hearing is done. They are meeting in feb to discuss the report on the things ordered, but i dont think they can just randomly make more orders at that point that aren't related to the granted orders.
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From my understanding, if Israel doesn't show that they're able to reduce civilian deaths, they can grant South Africa's ask on the case which (from my understanding) is effectively ordering Israel to stop the attacks, and asking the world to help enforce it.
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Lol yeah George w bush at least just focused on killing 1m people in the middle east instead of being yucky!
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I don’t love Trump, but there’s no denying there was far less war, and especially US-funded war, when he was in office. Ukraine-Russia massively escalated as soon as someone in the pocket of the military industrial complex got put in power, as Putin knew it would, and Israel followed suit soon after.
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I'm not sure what I will do, but I'm not voting for Trump either way.
There is a lot written about civil disobedience through not partaking in electoral politics, and that's _likely_ the direction I'm going to go if Biden does not change his tone (and hopefully actually do a proper apology for his actions so far).
This sucks, and I'll participate in local and even congressional elections, but for president I can not really find myself voting for Biden. I do not expect myself to agree 100% with any candidate, but there are certain red-lines that a candidate can not cross. I have a few of those, being anti-abortion is not something I can tolerate in any candidate. Being pro-mass-killing-looking-like-genocide is also one. I suspect this feeling is not unique to me.
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Biden apparently wants to lose. Watch every single campaign event be protested (many protesters are Jews). Yeah, that's definitely going to lower turnout on the DEM side.
Biden is not only going to lose, Trump might even get a trifecta.
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Calling it a Muslim ban is pretty disingenuous, and always was. The ban left out some very large Muslim countries, such as Indonesia and Pakistan for example.
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Trump wouldn't intensify the genocide. Not just because Israel currently has carte blanche to do what it wants, but also because of personal animosity with Netanyahu.
Netanyahu and Trump been best friends since the '80s. Netanyahu was even friends with Trump's dad.
I wouldn't put too much stock in any kayfabe between them.
The US, under whichever administration, is in a very difficult position here. If the US stops all support immediately, this could be the end of Israel. Would that be just? I see a president carefully dancing on the thin line of supporting the Israel state while using the US leverage to stop the war (latest example: sending the CIA chief to the negotiating table). But this needs to be done without enabling Israel's biggest adversaries that support a Jihad against the people of Israel.
> If the US stops all support immediately, this could be the end of Israel.
How would Israel disappear? Palestine is clearly no match for them - who else is expected to suddenly move in?
I certainly think we could stop funding their military while still pledging to support them if someone actually tries to invade.
Keep in mind, Israel has it's own defense budget - it's not like it's military just disappears when US funding dries up
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Israel has nuclear weapons. By the logic of even developing them, there's no reason not to deploy them if it faces conquest. Any existential crisis facing Israel will not come from outside.
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>If the US stops all support immediately, this could be the end of Israel
I doubt it, Israel would nuke Iran before letting this happen.
I’m not a fan of Trump’s domestic policies, but I’m absolutely sure that he has the moral high-ground over Biden right now. Trump used to be a supporter of Israel and to some extent still is, but he did during his presidency see that the Palestinians want peace more than the other side. I can’t imagine Trump going behind Congress’ back to arm Israel as Biden has done.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-i-thought-israelis-would....
Apparently, those still supporting Biden will throw human lives under the bus for a more comfortable home life.
> I can’t imagine Trump going behind Congress’ back to arm Israel as Biden has done.
I absolutely 100% can imagine it. I would go so far as to characterise him as:
1) Pro-Israel:
> On December 6, 2017, the United States of America officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital city of the State of Israel. American president Donald Trump, who signed the presidential proclamation, also ordered the relocation of the American diplomatic mission to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv [...]. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the decision and praised the announcement by the Trump administration.
> Trump's decision was rejected by the vast majority of world leaders; the United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting on December 7, where 14 out of 15 members condemned it, but the motion was overturned by U.S. veto power.
2) Non-cooperative with Congress:
> The United States federal government shutdown from midnight EST on December 22, 2018, until January 25, 2019 (35 days) was the longest government shutdown in history.
> The shutdown stemmed from an impasse over Trump's demand for $5.7 billion in federal funds for a U.S.–Mexico border wall.
3) Loving to go behind backs:
> Trump reportedly keeps finding a way to meet the Russian leader privately.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_recognition_of_J...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_United_State...
[3] https://www.vox.com/2019/1/29/18202515/trump-putin-russia-g2...
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It's worth noting that the ICJ like pretty much all international bodies has no enforcement power and countries will routinely ingore the rulings they don't like.
Still, things like this matter. It adds to public pressure.
Another thing is that how judges rule will often align with national interests rather than any facts in any case. So in a case against Israel you might expect the US to side with Israel regardless of the facts. Likewise, China might side against a genocide case because it doesn't want to set a precedent given the history with the Uyghurs. Likewise, Turkey will be aware of how any precedent may affect their treatment of Kurds, and so on.
So what do you do if you're one of these countries and the facts are against you? You go through this dance of trying to bypass the facts and get your desired outcome on procedural grounds.
I mention this because regular courts (eg in the US) do the exact same thing. The Supreme Court may grant standing on tenuous grounds for a case they want to rule on or deny standing on procedural grounds to avoid making a ruling when the facts are "against" them. Likewise, they may make a narrow ruling to avoid a broad precedent or seek a broad precedent if it's the desired outcome.
"Standing" here means you're an affected party who is allowed to bring an action to court. There are lots of rules depending on the action to decide if you have standing. There's also historical tradition. For example, SCOTUS will tend to favor granting standing in First Amendment cases because government restraint on speech is viewed as having a chilling effect on freedom of expression.
Courts are political. They have always been political. The idea that judges are impartial scholars isolated from the world is a myth. This is what I want people to understand. I'm not even agreeing with or dismissing the ICJ's conclusions here. I'm talking about the judicial process.
The US judge seemed to go with the majority here. The Israeli judge concurred on some of the charges plausibility but not all. Only one judge disagreed with the court on all charges.
I don't think the judges had the kind of bias alleged by your comment (it's certainly possible they could have but their opinions don't seem to reflect that)
https://globalthreat.info
What would happen if they did order a ceasefire? Who would enforce this?
I feel this is where the world is seeing the failure of US.
When US have Ukraine weapons to defend themselves, we were the good guys.
When US gives Israel the weapons to attack and airbomb Palestinians in daylight it puts US in a very bad light.
US should be the ones enforcing a cease fire. Where no side gets to airbomb each other.
Every life is valuable. Israelis or Palestinians.
The failure of US policy is to be the gatekeeper of world peace. We have the largest army by far. We spend an obscene amount of our taxes on defense.
Yet we failed to keep peace.
The US’s motivations are to maximize its power and profits, to think it is to keep the peace is naive. There are other, more economically valuable regions with conflicts in the world whose situations have higher probability of clean resolution than the Palestine conflict, so the US will focus on those instead until it is forced not to.
Anyway, there is no resolution to Israel/Palestine that won’t involve the probable demise of one of the two’s futures. Bloods being spilled and it will continue to be spilled.
Israel is a close military ally and Palestine is... not.
There are no true neutral countries in the world. Everyone has allies who they treat differently than enemies.
There are no good guys or bad guys. There are only countries which do good and bad things.
Whether its in Palestine or Congo or China or Ukraine, the most even a superpower can do is leverage power to reduce killing and fatalities.
Giving weapons to Ukraine wasn’t about helping Ukraine; it was about opposing Russia.
Israel is a strategic ally in the Middle East that also happens to have many high profile supporters in the US. There’s likely enormous pressure from within to do just about nothing and just let it play out.
Peace, unfortunately, is a conveniently flexible concept employed to conceal one’s motives and justify frivolous wars.
I usually refrain from making much political commentary.
I will say this: SA is a deeply troubled country, but for once I think the ruling government has actually done a good thing by pursuing this.
Have you read through their case? It's pretty weak in my opinion. They seem to think that any war with a high number of casualties and insufficient humanitarian aid counts as genocide. By their standard the US committed "genocide" against Japan in WW2, arguably Germany too.
By todays standard it would be a genocide. How do you think people would react if e.g. Russia nuked 2 large cities in Ukraine leading to 100K+ deaths?
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> By their standard the US committed "genocide" against Japan in WW2, arguably Germany too.
Germany, yes? That's the primary example of genocide in the 20th century.
"The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II." (First sentence of Wikipedia.)
(I think widespread bombing of cities is a different crime.)
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That isn't my reading of the case
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Or they’re just trying to gain brownie points from the people who support Hamas.
Is there anyone who supports Hamas? I think most people just want Palestinians to live free.
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> South Africa asks ICC to exempt it from Putin arrest
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2YY1E6/
SA does not really present itself as an earnest or true actor in the sphere oh human rights.
> SA does not really present itself as an earnest or true actor in the sphere oh human rights.
Well, who does?
Among the major players in world politics I can't see any country with a clean reputation on human rights.
Disclaimer: I am Brazilian, a country with an horrible record of police brutality, of farmers killing indigenous people and environmental activists and an hypocritical ambivalence towards Putin's crimes. And that goes to the previous right-wing and current left-wing governments.
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Arresting a head of a nuclear-armed state ? One that does not subscribe to the ICC ? How moronic would one have to be ?
Amusingly, the Biden govt had no issues officially supporting the ICC to deliver a ruling against Russia despite the US not being a party to the ICC themselves. That's like having your cake and eating it too.
None of China, India, Russia, and the United States are parties to the ICC.
> South Africa asks ICC to exempt it from Putin arrest
"to avoid war with Russia" was how the rest of that headline went, along with two quotes about how Russia said such an arrest would be considered an act of war.
While I would welcome Putin's arrest, I can't exactly fault South Africa for saying they'd rather not go to war.
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> SA does not really present itself as an earnest or true actor in the sphere oh human rights.
Adversarial justice systems are an approach to dealing with the fact that individual actors in a system (including states in the international system) tend to be self-interested rather than earnest or true consistent advocates of the notional rules of the system.
And the US had threatened military force and sanctions should ICC ever decide to go after American. So what's your point?
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> SA does not really present itself as an earnest or true actor in the sphere oh human rights.
If Putin is arrested in a foreign country, you'll have the largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world staring down at the very existence of that nation. No country would do this, however earnest they may be about human rights. Neither will it be fair to expect anyone to do this.
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True
Nation states are often immoral and hypocritical
The outrage from the USA at the invasion of Ukraine, when the invasion of Iraq is a crime of the same magnitude - both dreadful stains on humanity
Most recently the international support for the actions of the IDF whilst condemning Russian actions in Ukraine
SA is just normal in this regard
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Well, we could conclude with this logic that all countries are politically motivated. After all, the countries that condemned the Russia's invasion of Ukraine were also the countries that abstained from supporting the South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.
Moreover, it should not be forgotten that there is a much bigger number of civilians deaths in Gaza than Ukraine. In one month the number of deaths surpassed civilian casualties in Ukraine war. There is a more serious problem there than in Ukraine.
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When has SA ever been quiet about apartheid?
There isnt a genocide going on in Ukraine. Both sides have made the accusation but there's nothing meeting the legal threshold like there is in Gaza.
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This is the same government that was just months prior going to quit the ICC so they could host Putin. They have no credibility, and frankly, no fucking power for most of the day. Utterly failed state.
> host Putin. They have no credibility
and they’d credible if they hosted Joe Biden?
Something tells me that Israel will just ignore them.
Hard for them not to when there were missiles fired at them the day of this ruling. It would be difficult for them to not pursuit the removal of Hamas. Although, I agree that they have been heavy-handed in their operations.
That strategy has indeed worked for Israel in the past, and it will work now.
The ruling was kind of vague really. Keep fighting but avoid genocidey stuff I guess.
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> Spin this any way you like but The International Court of Justice said there is no genocide
No, it didn't, that’s simply a lie.
It said that the pleadings were sufficient plausible and that conditions present a sufficient risk of irreparable harm to warrant provisional measures against Israel. It didn't say that there is no genocide, and it didn't say that there is a genocide.
The application for provisional measures it ruled on is analogous in the US system to a preliminary injunction, it enables the court to order measures judged necessary to prevent irreparable harm while a case is pending on the merits, and is not a ruling on the merits.
The case continues on the merits, which it would not if the court were already able to determine that no genocide took place. (And it wouldn't, in that case, order provisional measures.)
> and didn't demand a ceasefire or that Israel ends the war
This, OTOH, is true; the ICJ did not include in its provisional measures against Israel a demand for Israel to cease all military operations.
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Stopped short of.... exposing how powerless the ICJ actually is.
All courts are powerless. Ever seen a judge enforcing anything?
Enforcement organ here is Security Council and in particular individual countries.
I wish politics articles wouldn't make it to the top page of Hacker News. There's already enough political discussion in a million other places.
Yes, and we won't let HN turn into a current affairs site, but this site has always had a certain amount of political content, and that's why this particular thread is happening. For more information, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146184 and the links there.
Is there a reason why Oct 7th (the massacre that started this escalation) was not discussed?
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1696896000&dateRange=custom&...
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Yet you waded in to comment, when you could have clicked on any of the other 29 links?
A agree about this topic, but "technical"-politics (=tech related) should still belong here (eg. EU vs Apple, EU vs encryption, etc.). After all, who else than us nerds can understand the topic, and discuss it without the "only pedos need e2e encryption, if you are not a pedo, what are you hiding?".
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That's not accurate.
It's common for people with strong feelings on a topic to leap to the conclusion that the mods are biased against their side and secretly supporting the opposite. This happens from every perspective on every divisive topic.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
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I complained a few months ago that HN was the other way about an article that was 'disappeared' from HN on the atrocities in Gaza at the hands of Israel, it had scholarly backing.
Your comment doesn't stand to any reason and discussion here on HN are highly moderated, in my opinion at times it's balanced towards Israel as the term 'anti-semitim' is thrown around to stop any discussion and valid criticism about the Gaza war.
You can't appease everyone and 'anti-Semitism' has been weaponised very successfully by people who know exactly what they're doing.
People don't have to hide being anti-Israel. It's fine. You can be anti-Uganda, anti-France. Be anti-whatever country you like.
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Perhaps I am unlearned in this area but I am unclear why the Jewish state, after its people experienced the atrocities of World War II, would act in this manner toward the Palestinians. Can anyone shed light on this? I understand completely the need to rid the world of Hamas terrorists, but in the process they have shown a reckless disregard (to put it mildly) for Palestinian people and their wellbeing.
> ... the Jewish state... its people experienced...
This is your error. States and peoples are not unitary entities with a single coherent outlook and will. The vast majority of the Israeli population is far too young to have directly experienced the Holocaust, which ended 80 years ago. There are plenty of people in Israel who do not want to commit atrocities against Palestinians. There are also people who feel that they have a (literally) god-given right to occupy the territories where Palestinians currently live. If you think of Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet as being basically the same people who survived Nazi concentration camps in World War 2, then nothing Israel is doing in 2024 will make much sense.
To my mind, Israel's actions toward Palestinians (both in Gaza and the West Bank) are powerful evidence that nationalism inherently leads to atrocity no matter who's involved. If the cultural memory of being targeted by the Holocaust won't stop an ethno-state from setting up an apartheid regime, what will?
It's under-remarked on, but for a majority of Israeli Jewish people, the nakba era might have more immediate salience than the Holocaust. That's because they're not, as the popular imagination has it, all colonists from Europe; they're the Jewish people of the Middle East and North Africa, all of whom were forcefully expelled from their own homes after 1948.
There's no question that the Holocaust has enormous salience to Israeli Jewish people. But if you trace your roots to rural Arab Jewish families from Yemen or Iraq, your more immediate concern would be your own family's immediate viability in a world without Israel. A new rise of European fascism wouldn't be your problem; the fact that you'd have literally no place to go would be. You're sure as shit not moving back to Yemen.
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It's not self-evident that "the cultural memory of being targeted by the Holocaust [should] stop an ethno-state from setting up an apartheid regime". In Liberia, where the freed American slaves were sent to, they essentially enslaved the native population.
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> after its people experienced the atrocities of World War II, would act in this manner toward the Palestinians.
That's part of why they're acting this way. Security fears. I'm telling you, the median Israeli isn't motivated by bloodlust or a desire for land, they're motivated by a high level of fear that they will one day be killed by Hamas/Hezbollah/etc. That fear causes them to demand complete "security control" of the West Bank and Gaza. That fear explains why they would not budge on allowing Palestinians an army as part of previous two-state negotiations. That fear explains why they would give back the Sinai but not the geographical high ground of the Golan Heights. That fear explains why the Israeli Left completely collapsed after the Second Intifada. They're happy to give part of the West Bank back in two state negotiations, but they would never, ever, allow Palestine an army. Because of security fears. The Palestine-Israeli conflict is this positive feedback loop caused by a desire for security conflicting with a desire for freedom. We're in the terminal doom spiral phase of this feedback loop right now.
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Depends of the lesson you took from it.
If the lesson is "Everybody wants to kill us and the only solution to safety is to have a nation state and defend at all costs against any other group", well it just all make sense. Of course this is not the conclusion of every jew in the world but I fully expect it to be the conclusion of post WWII zionists, even though it was not the case for a lot of them that were influenced by socialist ideas but lost influence and power with time.
Of course the strategy of always planning for aggression in order to come up on top is somewhat self realizing in that defending your dominant position will necessarily mean abuses of power and resistance to it.
So the lesson is "Better safe than sorry" although it's not that simple because there is actually a safety cost to pay to maintain such a strategy.
The problem with October 7th massacre was Israeli government with Netanyahu at the top ignored their own rules of "Better safe than sorry" and that led to a monster growing at their borders (both Hamas and Hizbollah). Well, now it's "better be late than never".
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Israel's tactic has always been deterrence: I will inflict you so much pain that you will think twice before doing this again. Despite being proven wrong, a "realist politician' will automatically think of adding more (and then some) deterrence as the only solution.
I remember 20 years ago, during the first bombing of Gaza, they hit just ONE building and felt pressured enough to apologize for the handful of civilian deaths. Unfortunately, faced with larger threats (real or imaginary) and weak international pressure, Israel has been able to escalate the level of deterrence through the years to what we are witnessing now.
That is why any ruling to curb that "automatic" escalation (like today) is wholeheartedly welcomed.
IMO there are also subtler layers of racism coloring these policies. It's not as blatant as the far-right rhetoric, but a persistent undertone within elements of Israeli society justifies severe deterrence tactics and totally overide any empathy learnt from historical lessons.
Note that the least you can say is that escalation is happening on both sides. Oct 7 level of atrocities has never been seen before in israel.
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No essentially it is as simple as how any abuser bully behaves. They will continue their behavior as long as they are allowed to. Look at US for enabling them.
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If you look at the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention's statement [1], they call both the Hamas attack and the current Israeli action Genocidal. They characterise genocidal attacks in terms of not just their factual effect, but the intentional psychological effect of an "massacre of symbols of group life", in which the genocidaires deliberately try to symbolically erase the other group, in ways which are hugely traumatic: "inversion rituals, such as the killing of children in front of their family members; and desecration rituals, such as the massacre of entire families, the setting fire to homes with families still inside them, and the desecration of dead bodies", which they see evidence of in the Hamas attack. This is all magnified by the existing trauma of the Jewish people, in the holocaust but also events since, in living memory of more people - such as 9/11 (an attack on the city with the largest Jewish population).
So you have to realise that Israelis are not thinking normally right now. Even though the Hamas attack has in military terms "culminated", and Israel's military is many times more powerful, their trauma leads them to believe that there is a real, present threat of extinction of the Israeli state and their own nation and families. Under such conditions, it is very hard for them to see the suffering of 'the enemy' as relevent.
It also doesn't help that basically everyone else is just piling responsibility for a solution on the Israelis, despite the US, UK and Europe having enormous historic responsibility for setting up the situation.
[please note, this is explanation, not justification]
[1] https://www.lemkininstitute.com/statements-new-page/statemen...
> So you have to realise that Israelis are not thinking normally right now. Even though the Hamas attack has in military terms "culminated", and Israel's military is many times more powerful, their trauma leads them to believe that there is a real, present threat of extinction of the Israeli state and their own nation and families.
I think that they think there is a real, persistent threat of Hamas continuing to make this kind of attack. Hamas has consistently said so, so Israel has reasonable grounds for thinking so. Hamas has even said that they won't settle for a two-state solution - they demand the destruction of Israel.
So if you're an Israeli, that leaves you very few choices: stay and accept being massacred every so often, shut down the country and leave, or destroy Hamas. Unsurprisingly, they choose the third option.
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It's not about religion, it's about occupation. Zionists got permission to occupy the land from the British with The Balfour Declaration then started the invasion in full in 1948 with Nakba. When you occupy someone's land, there can never be peace until they get their land back or are fully exterminated or controlled militarily. This is why colonization most often leads to genocide or permanent apartheid.
>Zionists got permission to occupy the land from the British with The Balfour Declaration
This is not an accurate representation. Jewish people were given the legal ability to purchase land in Mandatory Palestine. The vast majority of Palestinian Arabs were tenant farmers or landless labourers. Jewish land purchases inevitably led to the displacement of these tenants, but this was the lawful outcome of a lawful land sale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_land_purchase_in_Palest...
The issues surrounding occupation of land after the 1948 and 1967 wars are significantly more complex and arguably do involve violations of international law by Israel.
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This isn't an accurate accounting of history.
Zionists were living in the area long before British Mandatory Palestine or the Balfour Declaration - they bought land and legitimately immigrated there while it was under control of the Ottoman Empire. The UN chose to partition the region in 1947 due to ongoing violence on both sides - and the British actually voted against it I believe. The Arab states then chose to go to war against the newly formed Israel - not the other way around, as your comment implies.
I have read a bit about this and I understand the explanation but I still don’t understand how a group of people subject to genocide can turn around and a few generations later be behaving in many (obviously not all) of the same ways toward another group. I would think that if anything the Israeli people would have some empathy and try to find a two state solution that exists in peace.
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> there can never be peace until they get their land back or are fully exterminated or controlled militarily
That's very much not true.
Compromises are possible and are often the only way. Do I need to start listing examples?
> When you occupy someone's land, there can never be peace until they get their land back or are fully exterminated or controlled militarily.
I can certainly think of some other ethnicity in that region who had their land occupied and was cleansed from the region. They even somehow managed to survive an attempt to fully exterminate them! Surely there will be peace once they get all of their land back :)
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> When you occupy someone's land, there can never be peace until they get their land back or are fully exterminated or controlled militarily
I don’t understand why people think this is a good argument. Lots and lots of places shifted in control since 1948. Poland moved half a country to the left, world empires got decolonized, India and Pakistan split and then the latter split once more, all with enormous population movements, the list is nearly endless. “All of that should revert to how it was before, even if at the cost of kicking out or killing everybody who live there” is a pretty extreme revisionist take.
In all these countries, “we should restore our borders to $maximumSizeEver” is widely understood to be a far right take (the Russians want Ukraine, the Greater Hungary people want Transylvania, the Greek neonazis want Trabzon (!), everybody wants Kashmir, etc etc etc). It’s a far right talking point. But for Palestine it’s somehow a mainstream opinion. I don’t get it.
I mean, there’s lots of good arguments to be made for the Palestinian case IMO but I don’t find “they once had more land and therefore they should get it all back no matter the consequences” very compelling.
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> there can never be peace until they get their land back or are fully exterminated or controlled militarily.
I think you could add assimilation to this list. In this particular instance though, it looks almost entirely unlikely (due to Israel being fundamentally defined as a Jewish state).
By this logic I should be driving a tank into Polish Silesia. But no, some 20yo in Gaza is not a refugee of a war lost shortly after WW2.
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I think this is rooted in a strangely common misconception that Israelis actually want any of this violence. There's a minority who does, but it's no where near as being as common as on the Palestinian side (around 60-70% of Palestinians support the October 7 massacre)
Urban warfare is an ugly and complicated thing. Many of the Israeli soldiers serving in Gaza are moderates risking their life to defend their home and bring back their people.
When individual cases of reckless disregard are discovered (like in videos shared by Israeli soldiers on groups that get leaked out), those soldiers are disciplined.
But globally, it's just not true that the IDF has complete disregard for Palestinians.
What you just saying, is pardon, BS. 50% of respondents of JPost poll said that Israel is not violent enough.
> When individual cases of reckless disregard are discovered (like in videos shared by Israeli soldiers on groups that get leaked out), those soldiers are disciplined.
Really? Do you want us to believe it?
Cultural and religious belief that the land belongs to them by divine right, and was stolen. WWII enabled them to resettle in their "home", but the principle of ownership didn't come out of WWII. The treatment of the Jewish people in WWII doesn't mitigate these beliefs, and may even strengthen them (ie, persistence and survival are further evidence of divine right)
(These aren't necessarily my opinions, and I am not Jewish. However I'm very closely connected to people who are, and I'm sharing the perspective I've been given)
In order to qualify for the protection of the rules of war, you must typically abide by them. This means that you don't get to prosecute when people kill your human shields or when they block humanitarian aid that you are stealing.
Or use of hospitals as military command posts, combatant use of civilian clothes ... etc.
This is a question you need to ask Jewish people, not HN. The response you'll get here obviously won't answer this question, because the people responding are either not Jewish, or the format doesn't lend itself to a genuine answer.
But, a mistake you make in asking the question is two-fold, one - the Holocaust was not a lesson taught to Jews so they'll learn empathy. It was something horrible and traumatic that was done to them. Two - comparing the Holocaust to what happens in Gaza means you're not aware of what the Holocaust was. Maybe you know highlights such as gas chambers etc, but not what it really was (through no fault of your own I'm sure).
But, to attempt some semblance of an answer. In the same way you wouldn't ask Haitians why their gov did terrible things to the DR and their population - didn't they learn from slavery? Or about India/Pakistan, didn't they learn from the raj? Or any of the African states in conflict - didn't they learn from colonialism? Or Turkey and Syria, Iraq/Iran etc. Then why ask this from Israelis? I hope you get my rhetorical point.
> the Holocaust was not a lesson taught to Jews so they'll learn empathy. It was something horrible and traumatic that was done to them.
Well of course I am not suggesting that it was a lesson to teach empathy. My comment was merely that people who suffer traumas tend to have empathy for other people suffering similar traumas. I don’t think this is a particularly controversial observation.
> Two - comparing the Holocaust to what happens in Gaza means you're not aware of what the Holocaust was. Maybe you know highlights such as gas chambers etc, but not what it really was (through no fault of your own I'm sure).
Well I suppose you might be right. I’ve seen a number of the major films and documentaries and read Viktor Frankl, Eli Weisel and Anne Frank and visited Auschwitz, and I’ll be the first to admit this is merely a very basic overview of the atrocities rather than any form of academic investigation. But from this overview it seems like there are common threads of severe oppression based on immutable racial characteristics, no?
On your final paragraph, I probably would ask the same question!
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The question we're discussing is about the attitudes of people of "the Jewish state", by which they clearly mean Israel. Almost half of the world's Jewish People are Americans, not Israelis. I think you'll get interesting answers about Palestine from Jewish Americans (I've sure learned a whole lot these past few months), but a casual reading of your comment suggests that those people have a responsibility to account for Israeli policy, and they don't. This is an extraordinarily common complaint about the Israeli/Palestine debate --- that charges of "antisemitism" are weaponized against those who criticize Israel --- and it seems that there may be a kernel of truth on both sides of that complaint.
I wrote a much more strident and knee-jerk response to this at first (I'm sorry about that, and I should have read through the whole comment instead of snagging at the first sentence), but that first sentence is quite a snag! It seemed to upset other people who replied, and I can't really blame them too much for that.
For what it's worth, I'm jewish and there are many jews who would disagree with my answer to the question you're responding to - just keep in mind how much diversity in thought exists. Though, the sentiment of your answer I do tend to agree with.
One more small point - people here mention how long ago the Holocaust was and far removed from memory. That's not really true. If you look at Pew 2013 poll of American Jews [0] they found:
> About three-quarters (73%) of American Jews say remembering the Holocaust is an essential part of being Jewish
that's above any other option.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/08/13/70-years-...
>This is a question you need to ask Jewish people, not HN.
Please don't tell people to harass random jews wherever they live about political stuff they aren't involved in. Thanks.
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I was in my 20s and remember the feeling in the air after Al Qaeda members hijacked commercial planes and flew them into WTC in 2001. Fear, Anger, A bit of revenge.
Many of Americans, including soviet immigrants, enlisted in the army driven by that feeling.
Israelis lost significantly more of their population percentage-wise during October 7 attack perpetrated by the official government of Gaza AND as we know now, some Gazan civilians. Over 200 Israelis were taken hostage.
With that in mind, its fairly simple for me to empathize with the Israeli public who are angry at the death of their fellow citizens and want Hamas to be punished.
Hamas barely scraped into victory in a power sharing agreement it then broke. Gazan at that time did not want this government. Half of Gaza's present population wasn't even born at the time of the last election. To blame Palestinians generally (including in the West Bank who are effectively being punished too) for this is exceedingly unfair.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/was-hamas-electe...
Compare culpability with Israel's, which IS a functioning democracy, has had regular elections, a free press, a large population participating in the war and actively in favour of it - and blaming the average Gazan is even less fair.
Feeling like revenge isn't good enough.
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> its fairly simple for me to empathize with the Israeli public who are angry at the death of their fellow citizens and want Hamas to be punished
Definitely. Conversely, it should also be fairly simple to empathize with the Palestinian public in the (just picking one fairly recent example) Operation Cast Iron aftermath.
A bit of a strange take considering every one of your points applies much more to Palestine than Israel.
>I was in my 20s and remember the feeling in the air after Al Qaeda members hijacked commercial planes and flew them into WTC in 2001. Fear, Anger, A bit of revenge
Yeah the people in Gaza feel that pretty much every day
>Many of Americans, including soviet immigrants, enlisted in the army driven by that feeling.
They also feel this, which leads to them joining Hamas and is part of the reason there are normal Palestinians who support Hamas. Terrorists don't come out of no where.
>Israelis lost significantly more of their population percentage-wise during October 7 attack perpetrated by the official government of Gaza AND as we know now, some Gazan civilians.
Yeah I mean again just flip that and the people in Gaza experience that at a much higher rate
>With that in mind, its fairly simple for me to empathize with the Israeli public who are angry at the death of their fellow citizens and want Hamas to be punished.
Same but I also empathize with all the Palestinians just trying to live their lives in an open air prison and want revenge. I think both Hamas and Israel have genocidal intent, but one has much more power and is actually carrying it out right now.
The human mind isn't rational. Don't expect just because they very well know what genocide is, that they can't convince themselves they aren't committing genocide.
You need to replace "after" with "because". Having experienced a mass genocide easily justifies committing one yourself in the name of self preservation.
Internally, denying humanitarian aid is seen as the legitimate and time-honoured strategy of "sieging the enemy state" though not all agree on how legitimate that is (I'm sure you can see the strangeness of sending food and medicine to enemy soldiers). Certainly supplying the enemy with fuel to use in their rockets, vehicles and armaments is seen as foolish (even if that would also provide fuel for the hospitals whose fuel was stolen by Hamas). There is zero desire in killing non-militants (outside of few extremists), but given the extremely horrible inhumane atrocities committed by Hamas (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_and_gender-based_violen... ), the acceptance of collateral casualties is higher than usual (and Israel already went extremely out of its way to minimize civilian casualties before the Oct 7 attack). Hamas' tactics that intend to maximize the deaths of their own civilians are also a contributing factor to that acceptance. If you believe there is genuine desire or action specifically to kill civilians outside of that then you believe in fake news.
In terms of non-homicidal genocide (i.e. genocide in the sense of dismantling the group without killing its members), certainly a lot more people are fine with something like a Transfer plan (for example, I've heard a proposal that Egypt will take Gazan Palestinians as refugees/civilians and similarly have Jordan absorb the Palestinians in Yehuda and Shomron) and don't see it as much of an atrocity, merely taking back the land those Arabs conquered and colonized starting at around 640AD, without actual harm to those individuals (in fact, their lives could be much improved!). There's also the fact that Israel is very tiny; Even from just the southern part of Gaza, Hamas already fires rockets at Israel's most populated cities, giving them the mountains of Shomron (incidentally, the capital of the Israeli kingdom), simple mortars could rain down on Israeli civilians without warning and could easily lead to an actual genocide of all Israeli Jews, so moving the people a few tens of kilometers east sounds like a peaceful resolution in comparison.
Naturally, there's also the element of a long conflict. Arabs have been killing Jews in Israel during the British Mandate as well as the Ottoman rule of the region (in fact the IDF traces its roots to what are essentially local militias the Jews had to create to defend themselves). Israel's scroll of independence (a document that is considered that closest thing Israel has to a constitution) actually includes two paragraphs calling for the Arab nations surrounding Israel to work together in peaceful cooperation, so literally the very first action Israel took as a state was to call for peace, and literally the first thing that happened in response was an attempt to destroy Israel. After 76 years of war, certainly there's lowered sympathy for the enemy, especially one that elected Hamas (see above) and rejected peace (I've somewhat recently learned that outside of Israel almost no one knows that the Annapolis Conference very nearly resulted in peace via a two-state solution that was refused by Mahmoud Abbas [which I've heard he has later come to regret, not sure how reliable that is]).
Rising anti-semitism around the world (especially how popular it is to call for a genocide against Israeli Jews is in the form of the "From the river to the sea" phrase) also creates a backlash - Israel must act strongly to defend itself since it is the only place in the world where Jews can be in charge of their own fate and their own defense. If the BBC publishes lies about what happens in Israel, and protesters in England are calling for a genocide unopposed, not only should we not listen to what the English want us to do, we should prioritize ourselves even further. This is why IMO something like BDS is counter-productive, it only causes further resentment and defiance in Israelis; If you want peace between Israel and Palestine you should instead work to make sure Israel feels safe enough to be able to relinquish territory to the Palestinians without having another October 7th instead of working to undermine Israel (unless your goal is the destruction of Israel of course).
I’ve been told stories of the German occupation of my grandparent’s village. My grandfather has been a slave worker on the German farm.
The thing is, I personally can’t relate to any of that. It’s just like reading a book or watching a movie. It’s just so far removed from my reality. I think you greatly overestimate the impact of the holocaust on modern day Jews.
First you need to understand that there's no genocide here. Genocide actually means "the murder of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group."[1] There is no question that the Israelis are not trying to kill everyone in Gaza and definitely not specifically because they are a part of an ethnic group.
Additionally, they have not shown "a reckless disregard for Palestinian people" and they would argue that unlike other conflicts in the region (Syria, Yemen, Kurdistan) they've been incredibly efficient in trying to avoid or limit civilian death.
Still, Gazan's have been dealt a pretty raw deal in that they have been ruled by a terrorist organization which has repeatedly stolen their aid to push their own agenda, and living amongst neighboring countries Egypt, Jordan, that are afraid to take them in lest they bring instability to those governments. Note that in the beginning of this conflict the Egyptians wouldn't open the Rafah border to allow refugees.
Rather, many of the holocaust survivors would instead say that the Israelis are being too nice and not defending the people living in the country from a government in Gaza that has the following in it's charter: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" and "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees."(https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp)
[1]https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/eng...
Millenia of oppression have taught the jewish people that the only way to be treated with respect is through military strength. Theyre applying that lesson here.
This is a very good question.
My understanding is that the colossal tradegy of Holocaust made Jews realise that not fighting back is an existential threat for them.
When Israel was established then Arabs did not accept its existence nor the existence of Jews in the region. What followed was a genocidal war to exterminate Jews in Palestine and destroy Israel. We know this war today as Israel war of independence.
The Arabs who participated against Jews in this war fleed in fear of retribution and were not allowed by Israel to return. We know these people and their descendants today as Palestinian refugees (they have special inheritable status given by UN).
After the war Israel was established nearly within the borders of UN assigned Jewish territories and UN assigned Arab territories were annexed by Egypt (Gaza) and Jordan (West Bank). But it was still not tolerable for the Arabs who again in 1967 attempted to exterminate Jewish state with the war.
After the failure Isreal took control over larger territory that was then inhabited largely by Palestinian refugees (Palestinians) - West Bank and Gaza and also part of Egypt over the Suez canal and part of Syria called Golan Heights. The reasons where twofold. First the UN assigned territory was clearly not realistically defendable and second the large part of the previously not controlled territories like Bethlehem or Jerusalem were believed to be Jewish lands (historically Jewish lands were between Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea). Territories belonging to Egypt were later returned by bilateral treatis (but Israel kept control over Gaza).
Fast forward to today and it appears that Palestinians have not abolished the idea of genocide against Jews. It has been clearly established that the 7th October attack was a genocidal act to eliminate as many Jews as possible. Around 3000 Palestinian men took part in it, Hamas had around 40000 fighters. This demonstrates that they had wide support among Palestinians.
This leads us back to Holocaust. Jews promised to themselves that they will not let the genocide happen against themselves ever again. Yet it happened.
What is going on in Gaza is a systematic work to eliminate this threat.
They do this with minimal risk to their soldiers who are mainly reservist e.g. common people with military training. They can't afford to lose thousands of people. Palestinians in contrast value martyrdom and are willing to take very high risks (like attacking an armored vehicle with a RGP within a group of civilians next to the hospital entrance (this has been documented by the video evidence)).
It is not a police operation. It is a military operation against heavily armed and trained opponent. The weapons are chosen accordingly. The urban landscape makes it especially difficult and destructive. Regardless as far I have observed then Jewish military has made great efforts to systemically minimise civilian casualties.
What they did not realise first was that in addition to the military operation on the ground there is also sizeable information war against them and when the enemy can find many willing sympathisers then the enemy can produce what ever claims they please regardless of the truth as was demonstrated by the al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion.
I haven't observed the situation closely for months but by then Jewish armed forces evolved to be more open in their communication and to communicate more clearly the threats they had to fight against.
Homo homini lupus.
I can do my best to explain it, and I will do so with the assumption that people will approach any ensuing discussion in good faith. I'm not going to try and be wikipedia here, rather to just give a high level explanation of *why* a group of people, who were nearly exterminated, are acting this way. It will be very difficult to find the right words that can satisfy people who are very into this, but I will do my best, especially because I don't see a realistic geopolitical view being represented in the comments.
The question is "Why would Israel act like this?"
Israel has offered many times a two state solution. I think in '47, several times in the 90s, and the 2000s. They have all been rejected. The reason is that the Palestinian leadership wants more. How much do they want? They want all of it. "From the river to the sea" is the expression. They have said it over and over again that this is the only thing that matters to them, and they will sacrifice everything to get it.
That is more or less why Israel is doing this. For some, that is enough to explanation and a fair summary, but if you want to understand more details then read on.
The Israelis, obviously, are not going to just leave their country, and so that leaves the Palestinians with war as the only option. And war has happened, like 4-5 times, and each time the invading forces were defeated. Rather than deciding that the welfare of their people is what matters, Palestinian Leadership values complete, total restoration as the only goal and everything they do is to that end.
So, it can be debated from that point of view whether Israel should exist as a country or not. If you however think that Israel should be a country, even a little bit, then you are basically against the Palestinian leadership's raison d'être.
Even then though, I think most Israelis had a hard time believing that this is how it would be forever. Time after time, war after war, they have tried to 'do the right thing' short of just leaving Israel or dying. For example, they were invaded, the fought, the won, and the controlled Sinai, which was part of Egypt. Then they gave it back, and the Egyptians were reasonable and they signed a peace treaty.
The problem is the Palestinian leadership will never do this, and that is what the point of October 7 was. The point of it was to make peace impossible. Remember, just before the October 7th, there were the Abraham Accords. Basically, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel were take the first step in establishing a new direction for the Middle East, with those countries at the center of it. Boom, then you have the October 7th attack.
Let me take a step back and and try to address some things.
It's important to say that in 2005, Israel already militarily occupied Gaza. The corridor that has been used to smuggle in weapons for the terrorist was locked down. Then, due to international pressure, Israel withdrew from that region, and they removed any Israeli settlements. What happened? Immediately after, Hamas took over and there has not been an election since. Now, there is no governance, all of the money is stolen and funneled into weapons, and they're backed by Iran, along with Hezbollah, the Houthi, etc... and it is Iran who has a strategic interest in dividing influence in the Middle East.
So let me be clear. They don't want peace.
It's a very difficult situation because Israel would 100% prefer peace. The trouble is that they have a neighbor, who controls millions of people, that would rather be destitute and keep fighting than to govern responsibly.
A good analogy would be something along the lines of North Korea, but with a very different military strategy. Hamas uses guerrilla warfare, whereas North Korea is going for the long shot of a nuclear weapon.
The Palestinian Authority is not that different, other than strategy. They're also incompetent and they also want to see Israel eliminated. However, their strategy is to pretend to want peace, so they can negotiate territory, in anticipation of an invasion. How do I know this? Because every time that a two state solution has come on the table, they would only accept borders that were militarily impossibly for Israel to defend.
So there you have it. That is why this is happening. Because the Palestinians have these people as their leadership, and it's such a sunk cost at this point that they have nothing left but to fight for the total eradication of Israel. This is what happens when you lose 5 wars and still don't get the hint.
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To add to this, OP if you want to learn more about why Israel is so callous to Palestinian life you need to learn about the Israeli right wing and how it came to power. I mean, this whole thing goes back further than that but for understanding today it really helps to understand the movement of ultra nationalism in Israel from the fringe into the majority.
Fascism does not "just stop". You can already hear the far right wingers claiming that Israel also has a right to expand into Lebanon and the Transjordan. Ironically looking at how Germany was radicalized is really useful for understanding how Fascism has taken hold in Israel.
Imagine you have a Gaza like area where you live. You want to live in peace but the other folk want to wipe out your state on the basis that Islam must rule your area and destroy its current government. Also they occasionally fire rockets at your schools and get out and murder and rape people. Do you not think you might get annoyed with them?
Zionism is an ideology that took inspiration from the British empire. It was intended to be "something colonial" and pre-dated the atrocities of WW2. The fascist atrocities in WW2 can be interpreted as colonial tactics applied to Europeans, after all the British had been doing extremely bloody concentration camps in Africa and starved India during WW2. For some reason, Africa doesn't get the same play. I wonder why.
So people that engage in colonialism end up doing similar crimes. Israel remains probably the only old school colonial project in the present day with present day technology, backed by the U.S. empire to secure geopolitical interests in the oil-rich region among other things.
Something to think about: America is also a genocidal settler-colonial project and is one of the only nations to back Israel in the UN. Our genocide is still ongoing: visit a native american reservation and witness the immense poverty. Similarly to Gaza, the US state will simply say that despite being an occupying power, these are autonomous zones and we have little responsibility.
Modern-day Zionism to me and many others means that Israel has the right to exist.
It does not absolve many, including self-proclaimed Zionists, from criticizing some of Israel policies.
On other hand, my interpretation of people who are self-proclaimed anti-Zionists logically flows from above statement that they believe that the present state of Israel DOES NOT have a right to exist. Which implies deportation of extermination of 6 million Jewish Israelis
In my opinion, the word Zionism has been hijacked by activists who know that being anti-Jewish is not good optics, but anti-Zionizm is still something that can be sold to the masses.
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Respectfully, would you have made the same comment about 'finding a place in your heart for the humanity of the other' if we lived during the holocaust, where 'one side' was being maimed and killed by the other, more powerful side?
Would you have made the same comment if we were talking about apartheid in South Africa?
How about if we were talking about how slavery ought to be stopped prior to 1865?
Should we _always_ be looking to find the humanity in the other side, or is there something fundamentally different here?
Not trying to disrespect anyone here, but sometimes we need to ask ourselves tough questions.
I think you're missing the point. The battle of gaza is not fought on HN. We can only comment on the situation, and we can do this with equanimity and compassion even if we disagree.
Shouldn't we all be opposed to Nazism? Shouldn't we all be against slavery? Of course. But in the present discussion, I can be opposed to the atrocities of October 7th, while being sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians, just as I can be opposed to the destruction of Gaza while having compassion for the Israelis.
Being critical of either side doesn't mean I'm against them.
> Being critical of either side doesn't mean I'm against them.
The side that's now being maimed and killed in the tens of thousands with no recourse, had nothing to do with October 7. The sides that are relevant here in the context of this ICJ case are the civilians of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the Government of Israel.
I'll try to respond to this in a minute but in the meantime have detached it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146010.
Edit: I guess my basic response is that I'm skeptical of approaching these questions from that level of abstraction. None of us can say what we would have done in those horrible situations. We can only answer out of our own imagination about ourselves, which is likely to be completely unreliable.
What I do think is that on this site, we can and should be working with our own responses in a way that is more than just venting them onto a perceived other. That's in keeping with what HN is supposed to be for.
> Respectfully, would you have made the same comment about 'finding a place in your heart for the humanity of the other' if we lived during the holocaust, where 'one side' was being maimed and killed by the other, more powerful side?
Yes..
> Should we _always_ be looking to find the humanity in the other side, or is there something fundamentally different here?
Yes..
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Under the Rome Statute that set up the international criminal court, apartheid is defined as a crime where:
>inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them".
Netanyahu's approach to the Palestinians likely fits into this definition.
Important to understand that Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute and rejects the ICC’s jurisdiction (neither is the USA). On the other hand, the Geneva Convention is about as “universal” a treaty as you can find, Israel itself ratified the GV without any reservations, all UN members (US and Israel included) are subject to the authority of the ICJ/World Court, and there’s even a fsir consensus that the GC applies to everyone, even if a state weren’t a UN member and signatory.
(While the USA and Israel have shown immense disdain for the ICC and the USA has levied sanctions against it, its chief prosecutor, and The Hague in the past, the US officially sponsored Khan’s nomination for the post of chief prosecutor this past round and Israel has been extremely chummy with him and the ICC compared to under Bensouda. The ICC under Khan hasn’t done anything about Gaza.)
It's worth noting that system does not apply to 2 million Israeli Arabs (nearly all of whom self-identify as "Palestinian" from an ethnic/national perspective) of the exact same race as the Palestinians in the occupied territories.
The overt driver of the system - and the one that is agreed to across the whole Jewish-Israeli population - is the security issue of a Palestinian population that has held since 1948 that they are still at war with Israel, will never accept a Jewish state in the region, and will one day drive the Jews into the sea. This belief is propped up by constant propaganda from other Arab states and UNRWA (which has defined itself to exist because of a Right of Return that applies to 750k Palestinians and their descendants in perpetuity, but doesn't apply to the 14 millions Indians & Pakistanis, 12 million Germans, or 2-3 million Poles & Ukrainians who were also displaced by ethnic partitions established in 1947-1948).
Israel shows every day that they are willing and able to live closely with the Palestinians who accept their right to exist and aren't trying to murder their families, without using apartheid-like systems of control. Israeli Arabs certainly face suspicion and unofficial day-to-day discrimination, but if you asked Israelis how they would feel about an equal two-state system where West Bank and Gaza were a sovereign nation populated by Palestinians who were like the Israeli Arabs, they would largely be on board. There would be friction for a while, but it would be tolerable for both states to survive and thrive without the security apparatus that needs to be in place right now.
There is no doubt that Netanyahu's current governing coalition is made up of racists and religious extremists who would NOT be okay with that. Many of those secretaries want to use security issues as a pretext to fully take over "greater Israel," and use the border wall as much to keep their actions there hidden from the Israeli public as they use it to keep Hamas and IJ terror attacks to a minimum. But the PA - for all its collaboration and security partnership with the IDF - still pays bounties to the families of suicide bombers. And the reason more moderate Palestinian leaders have never been able to really negotiate a settlement is that they would be immediately overthrown by a populace who never accepted 1948 as the end of a decades-long attempt to throw the Jews out of Palestine.
This has not been adjudicated in court, but I think it's difficult to claim that the current system is primarily an ethnic or racial one when it doesn't apply to the millions of Palestinians who are accepting of their neighbors. Even if it is often abused by racists.
> Israel shows every day that they are willing and able to live closely with the Palestinians who accept their right to exist and aren't trying to murder their families, without using apartheid-like systems of control
This is very much not the case in the West Bank where expropriation and colonisation of Palestinian land by Israeli settlers continue, under the watchful eye of the Israeli army.
The Israeli state has done it's best to ensure that there can be no viable Palestinian state, condemning millions of Palestinians to eternal military occupation and second class status in their own homeland.
Any claim that Israel is acting in good faith towards Palestinians is very much undermined by these facts.
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> is the security issue of a Palestinian population that has held since 1948 that they are still at war with Israel, will never accept a Jewish state in the region
Will Israelis accept a sovereign Palestinian state in the region? A clear NO.
Even the 1990s / 2000s two-state solutions were never meant from Israeli side as recognizing full sovereignty of Palestine - it was meant to be more like an Israeli protectorate with its own administration but without its own armed forces, no control over air space etc.
> and will one day drive the Jews into the sea
While many Israelis are eager to drive Palestinians to the sea. (check Daniela Weiss as a somewhat prominent example)
The current government seems to want to ethnically cleanse Gaza. The West Bank has to expect a similar fate, just way slower with expanding settlements.
> but I think it's difficult to claim that the current system is primarily an ethnic or racial one when it doesn't apply to the millions of Palestinians who are accepting of their neighbors
Still apartheid. You can't explain it away so easily.
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Your claim that Israel does not use an apartheid system of control and discrimination is false
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-...
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> Netanyahu's approach to the Palestinians likely fits into this definition.
Indeed that understanding is corroborated by several human rights organizations, like HRW and Amnesty international:
https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra...
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2022/02/qa-israel...
The current title "ICJ genocide case: World court demands Israel limit deaths " isn't very accurate. I'd suggest reverting to the original "Top UN court orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza but stops short of ordering cease-fire"
It's the HTML doc title of the article, which is always an option for "original title" in the guidelines' sense of that term (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146163. We need those.)
Huh, firefox no longer displays that! I didn't realize that before.
Well, there is already discussion of the meaning of Measure 1) "take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this Convention, in particular" part a) "killing members of the group", at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39143094, so perhaps the confusion can be worked out there. I don't think it's as simple as "limit deaths" but perhaps I'm wrong, not being a lawyer.
Isn't there a rule about modifying inflamatory titles? The article title "Top UN court orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza but stops short of ordering cease-fire" is less inflamatory, and will help prevent comments from going sideways.
Or you can switch to https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-braces-worl... if you want the title to match the HTML title.
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How is this hackernews?
HN's approach to stories with political overlap has been stable for many years*. I've written about it many times: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869
Thanks, I guess Hackernews generally is my 'safe haven' from politics. Really not intending to bite or insult, just a lot happier reading about Dijkstra being a pedantic nano-Dijkstrahole or someone dumping a GBA rom through audio. The stuff from OP I read everywhere else. My heart cries for the for the world and HN generally is one of my tissues. Much love anyways.
Yet you banned all the posts on Oct 7?
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How is anything? One could argue that real estate occupancy in San Francisco isn't hackernews.
I think there's an intellectual interest here, but the line is very blurry with politics. It's probably as blurry as the articles posted about US being a surveillance state, cryptocurrency articles unrelated to the technology itself, etc.
Like everything else on this site, you are welcome to ignore it if the topic does not interest you.
I guess the same goes for comments :)
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You are ok to talk about pizza recipes on github but not about most important geopolitical events in the world?
Can you please stop posting in the flamewar style? It's against HN's rules, and especially against the intended spirit that I tried to describe at the top of this thread.
Obviously most of what gets discussed on HN is relatively unimportant in the world. If that weren't the case, HN would simply be a current affairs site, which it isn't. At the same time, that doesn't mean every political story is off topic here—the guidelines already make that clear by their use of the word "most": https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
There's a long and pretty consistent history to how HN handles the question of political topics.
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What is the guidance regarding commenters who are obvious trolls, propagandists and bad faith actors?
Being kind to them is completely wasted effort.
Replying to them is also wasted effort as they won't be persuaded.
However leaving bullshit unchallenged might make trusting bystanders believe that this is actually the truth.
(I detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932851.
I think the only way to handle this is by responding to bad arguments with better arguments and to false information with correct information—and to do this as neutrally as possible. Focus on clear information, and try not to let your feelings turn into aggression toward the other person. This is not easy, but it's in your interest to do it, because when commenters get aggressive with each other, fair-minded readers recoil.
For extra influence, if you can manage it: look for a way to connect with the other person, acknowledge some aspect of what they're saying, and implicitly make it clear that you're not trying to defeat or destroy them, but rather to understand. This is a big multiplier on how persuasive your comments become.
As for leaving bullshit unchallenged, I know it's hard to walk away from a thread that one feels is dominated by falsehood and distortion, but walking away is sometimes the most effective thing you can do. Here are a few thoughts which I try to remember in such situations:
(1) The internet is wrong about approximately everything. You can't change that, and you'll burn out trying.
(2) The one who walks away first usually comes across as stronger.
(3) Other people are not that different from you. When someone seems crazily wrong, they're most likely not bad or evil, but ignorant: they don't know what you know because they haven't experienced what you've experienced. For this reason, sharing your personal experience is probably the most effective thing you can do.
(4) When other people say things that produce strong feelings, try to let the feelings run their course in you before coming back to react. This is painful and hard, but it's in your interest.
Another point to consider is the old "don't feed the troll". Even if the other person is not really a troll (which I agree they usually aren't, they're just not thinking like you do) if you keep coming back for more you're just giving them the chance to argue their case for longer. So sometimes, if you want to promote your view, the best strategy is to let it drop and pick it up in another thread.
That's... not 100% honest, I guess, but at least it makes for easier to read and easier to handle conversations.
Conversely, arguing on HN has definitely helped me find the words to explain my own thinking to myself, so there's something in flogging a dead horse, sometimes.
It can be quite hard to be kind when it comes to a highly inflammatory topic such as Palestine–Israel. However, IMHO it’s not really a topic suited for HN. I find it hard to believe that whatever we say here on this topic will have any meaningful impact on the war.
Normally for political stuff I would agree, but the VCs have made this an issue that founders, engineers and everyone else in tech has to deal with because they've taken a hardline pro-Israel stance including firing people who so much as publicly state well known information. The battle between PG and the rest of the industry has ramifications for all of us. Even Paul Graham is barely powerful enough to offer a pro-Palestinian stance publicly.
Polite factual refutation probably works.
I wish this was true. It usually leads to those super long reply-battles dang was referring to.
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yea I tried that. I posted links to all my sources as well as opinions from credible human rights organizations. they just play the game of being obtuse to the very end and then gaslight you about needing to backup my opinions as if there weren't at least 2-3 inks for every assertion I make.
one side of this debate is very much NOT acting in good faith because they rely on the status quo being maintained to continue what they are doing
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Some late thoughts on this (I've been AFK for a few days):
1. xkcd 386: Someone is wrong on the Internet: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39023516>.)
5. Reporting blatant trolling and suspect motivations to HN mods does often work. Email to hn@ycombinator.com and link directly to the offending content and/or user, with a clear but succinct description of the problem.
6. Voting (up or down) and flagging also have their place. For sufficiently contentious threads this may well lead to something of a high-attrition zone, but often the really egregious crud does sink to the bottom. I find that higher-rated comments tend to be more anodyne than insightful, though occasionally truth does out.
7. I've found that rather than direct engagement, either supporting a counterthread, or writing your own well-reasoned and well-supported counter-thread, is often suprisingly effective. Remember that yours is always the last comment when you write it, though a thread may well have additional life. Sometimes my late efforts prove far more successful than I'd expected, and often I'll see that others have succeeded where I've either failed or failed to try. And again, supporting others' salient and productive engagement even where you don't have time or energy to contribute is highly underappreciated.
8. You don't have to attend every fight you're invited to.
9. Truth is not a popularity contest. Voting systems ultimately don't select for truth or importance, and expecting that from sites such as HN or Reddit will prove disappointing.
10. The meaningful audience is typically not who you're responding to directly, but the overwhelmingly silent majority reading rather than contributing to discussion.
I really hoped that a submission on ICJ ruling will pass the aggressive flagging. At least hoped that dang will keep his promise about allowing a submission about the case. This one could be it. I understand that once allowed there will be trove of hard liners will make it hell to moderate. But being difficult doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss a potential genocide in a making in front of our eyes.
EDIT: The title has been changed since and the discussion has been unflagged
The problem is that this is such a partisan issue than partisanship can be perceived in the smallest of details.
As someone who was staunchly pro-palestinian but as of recently came to have a more informed and I hope a more nuanced view of the whole situation, I can't help to see the title as potentially misleading :
Is the ICJ saying to prevent the Genocide (i.e recognizes that a genocide is happening) or to prevent a potential genocide (that is it believes the situation could escalate towards a genocide) ?
From what I have read this is the second option, so I believe the title could be misleading. The more a topic has a loaded emotional and symbolic value, the more careful the wording must be.
Also I remember how annoying it was that people did not share my indignation and how I perceived such carefulness as a form of voluntary blindness.
Isn't this the kind of discussion we should be having though? Why flag it?
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To answer your question though. It’s neither. The court found that allegations of genocide are plausible.
That is, especially some of the statements by senior officials could be understood as genocidal.
What I gleaned from reading blogs: It is likely that the actus reus for genocide is there but intent will be very hard to prove if it exists
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It doesn't. Mosul's civilian population were Iraqi citizens, the conflict was much larger, lasted a lot longer, used smaller munitions, resulted in a lot more military deaths and significantly less civilian deaths. This is despite the enemy being significantly better trained, better equipped, better logistics, years of preparation and less intelligence by the anti-ISIL coalition.
> resulted in a lot more military deaths
Yeah, they lost a lot of infantry forces and it's probably the reason there were less civilian deaths.
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The issue in this case is (possible) genocide, which is a different question.
"Better" is hard to judge, but mosul was about ten months and resulted in 10k civilian deaths. This one is already several times that count in a much shorter time span.
Iraqi army also lost almost half of their anti-terrorist Golden division in that battle, so that's possibly related.
Historical comparisons aren't relevant when evaluating whether conduct today is acceptable, especially when we're talking about the deaths of innocents.
Every day is an opportunity to be better than our ancestors.
Looks very relevant to compare. Or in more practical terms, it's worth comparing to something as a reference that's similar in complexity of urban warfare but was handled better.
Peace is usually a product of avoiding "whataboutism". Humans of all shades and beliefs and origins have proven time and time again how barbaric we can be. True "justice" can probably only happen with the extinction of our species; to avoid that, someone has to say "enough" even if there are those who believe it isn't.
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>Sponsors nations of Israel are now been warned
Warned of what? That's what I don't understand. What possible consequences could there be for the US, UK, Germany etc.?
You can't economically sanction a majority of the world economy, you are basically just sanctioning yourself.
Not to mention what a war would look like.
This is complete nonsense. Israel isn't pursuing genocide. They've killed less than 100,000 Palestinians out of several million. That's obvious restraint compared to what they could do if they really wanted to.
You may not like Israel but the word 'genocide' is being abused here, and this whole ICJ ruling is theater.
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I would argue there has been massive condemnation of Russia by much of the west. The west is lobbing missiles at Russia. It's giving missiles to Israel to lob at Gaza.
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It’s not an apartheid nation. Over 20% of Israelis are Arab.
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Fully agreed. That the ICJ didn't order a ceasefire in this matter is honestly disgusting and just shows who's lives they value more.
As an American Jew (non-religious), I cannot express enough how sad this entire situation has made me. I grew up learning about the Holocaust and learning how important it is for people to stand up when a government turns in that direction. Those morals meant I always knew that Israel was wrong in the situation with Palestine but this conflict has definitely lifted any clouds that remained on the situation.
If you don't think Israel is a pure and simple apartheid state, I would very much recommend looking up the word in a dictionary. It's horrible that anyone has died on either side, but the imbalance at the current time in lives lost is just.. saddening. When it comes to genocide, it's one of those things where you know it when you see it and if you don't see it I say open your eyes.
Israel and the west can continue to label millions of people as terrorists to justify their acts, but history will hopefully look at this event with more understanding and empathy for those people Israel have shoved into small corners and starved of resources for decades. October 7 was terrible and should not have happened, but do you blame the oppressed people or do you blame the powerful government that has oppressed them?
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I don't usually reply to meta posts, but I can't help but agree with this.
As much as I appreciate the work moderators do here any other day of the year, it was disappointing that there was no discussion allowed on October 7th - indeed, every thread was nuked - when 0.1% of the Jews in the world were murdered in a single day.
When Russia attacked Ukraine that was very much allowed to be discussed, and rightly so.
I had not realized submissions on 7 Oct were banned. Thank you for drawing attention to that. I threw the term "7 Oct" and "7 October" and there's pretty clearly no major threads about it, especially not in October. Even "Hamas" didn't reveal anything.
I don't think it's at all helpful to say "Every" thread in this conversation is "idiotic" alongside this, though. That just gives people room to dismiss your comment
> Every thread in this conversation is A+ idiotic. … Reddit crowd
I am not sure how this elitism is justified - when it comes to military or international law, there is no difference between asking on HN and a Joe off the street.
Add in the fact that many software developers are, my, how to put this, emotionally challenged, and of course each thread will be idiotic.
It's not elitism, it's conservatism. The people who will signup are the same ones who upvote every "Trump got slammed by XX" threads on reddit. Once they know that another and a more genuine reddit exists, they'll starting shovel that stuff here too.
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Since you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly and egregiously and have ignored our request to stop, I've banned the account.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
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This comes up a lot, but the answer has been stable for many years. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146184 for more information.
Study of Law is in the framework of HN.
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A common sentiment I have heard in the US is that "TikTok causes antisemitism".
What I believe is actually happening is that TikTok debunks a lot of Hasbara talking points about the Israeli occupation of palestine (because people can see the violence with their own eyes), but then people are not educated further about the nuances of Zionism and Judaism, the different political movements within Israel like Gush Emunim and how they are not related to Judaism at large.
Because Israel has so successfully conflated Zionism (a political movement) with Judaism (a religious one), it increases the possibility that when westerners stop supporting Israel they can adopt antisemitic viewpoints.
> when westerners stop supporting Israel they adopt antisemitic viewpoints.
That is very definately not a given. There are many, a majority I hope, of "westerners" who oppose the actions of the state of Israel without becoming anti semetic
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> confiscation of Palestinian land
why would they have pulled out in 2006?
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What you are suggesting is happening, the collective punishment of a nation for terrorist acts, is a war crime:
https://guide-humanitarian-law.org/content/article/3/collect...
Hamas is the ruling party/government of Gaza.
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Is it a terrorist act if it was performed by a democratically elected government?
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All wars end when one side gives up.
Attacks and land theft on West Bank Palestinians are at a record high too. This will only end with the creation of a viable Palestinian state.
"This is war, there will be loss of life" is such a callous way to dismiss the disproportionality of this conflict.
> when one side gives up. > disproportionality of this conflict
Why is disproportionality meaningful at all? Clearly Israel is under attack. They have full right to subdue those attacks through all means necessary. I would hope every government provides the same for their people (and it is so easy to criticize Israel with all of us coming from countries that do protect our safety). Unfortunately Hamas has no regard for Palestinian lives, the best possible outcome for the Palestinians is Hamas giving up.
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I don't believe that this would end if Hamas released their hostages. Ultimately, it would put Palestine back to where they were before October 7th except civilians would be much worse off. Still living under Israeli occupation with limited freedom of movement, limited external assistance, etc. Except now, they'd have no hospitals, no infrastructure, housing, etc. How can a place live Gaza possibly rebuild from that?
> where they were before October 7th except civilians would be much worse off. Still living under Israeli occupation with limited freedom of movement
Israel hasn't had any presence in Gaza for nearly 20 years.
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> All of this would end in an instant if Hamas would give up hostages and surrender.
No, it would not. There would still be 400,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Palestinians in the West Bank would still live under occupation. Do you think that situation will not also reach a boiling point and end in ethnic cleansing as fascist rhetoric in Israel increases?
Hamas is a terrorist organization deeply embedded in a dense area of 2m people. They also don't seem to care much about their people or even their own lives. If they decide to never surrender, shall Israel burn Gaza to the ground? Are those 2m people just going to become "collateral damage"?
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It isn't war. War is when two nation states fight.
This is shooting fish in a barrel with a full on propaganda campaign attached.
I think 10/7 counts as a fight, don’t you?
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Well thank god you'll be spared having colleagues from Gaza since Israel usually cuts off the internet there, because otherwise you'd have seen much worse than someone yelling rockets lol.
Also, I'm sure the Ukraine war would've ended if Ukraine would've just surrendered, what's your point? You realize that you could say that for basically every war ever, and that the enemy not surrendering doesn't allow you to commit war crimes? That's... literally the point.
Your comments in this thread have been crossing into flamewar and are particularly against the intended spirit that I tried to explain in the comment at the top. Please don't post more comments of this sort.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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Why are many respectful yet pro-israel posts being flagged and removed, while there are vile pro-hamas posts being flagged and left here? Why was discussion not allowed on Oct 7 but is now?
I know you are trying but it does not seem even handed. I'm screenshotting a whole collection of them examples if seeing them together would be helpful.
(I've detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146010.)
I'd need to see links to specific comments, but certainly the flags aren't working any differently than they usually do. The only difference between [flagged][dead] and just [flagged] is the number of flags relative to upvotes; in the former case it would be higher than in the latter case.
Your several comments in this thread seem to be coming from a place of battling for one side against the other. I'm sure you have very good reasons for it, but it's not the intended spirit of discussion here, as I tried to explain at the top of the thread. In such cases, where people have (legitimately) strong feelings on a topic, the temptation to see the mods as biased in favor of the opposite side is almost irresistible. It happens from every perspective on every divisive topic, and this topic is one of the most divisive we've ever seen.
Well for instance, why is the news about UNWRA being censored here? I can find links to posts via google but they've all been removed, for example:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39160571
Personally I'd rather non-tech world news stay off HN completely but I'm calling it out because as someone who is up on world news I see quite a double standard unraveling here and that seems unfortunate.
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We've had to warn you before not to post religious flamewar comments to HN (and also nationalistic and ideological flamewar comments). We end up having to ban accounts that do this repeatedly, because it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. I don't want to ban you! So pleae don't do this on HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Argh! I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to start a flamewar. And we have discussed this before, probably. (I have a 2 year old toddler. Sleep is... affected, I will just say that. And consequently, memory.)
I guess I do not yet understand the framework within which I can discuss this rationally (if at all), especially given this topic. If there is no such framework on HN, especially given the topic... That's what I'd like to understand.
I will try to remember this time :/ Sorry Dang!! Don't want to be an unnecessary burden!!
Question: If my comment had ONLY consisted of quotes from the Quran/Hadith, would that also be flagged?
I did my homework here (regarding the muslim thing) and the one unifying thing I found is the specific religious beliefs in Islam, which literally every terrorist quotes (here is one of many examples I found: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1481T5/). The difficulty I seem to be having here is me not understanding why this rational endeavour I undertook is somehow wrong. I feel like simply researching this was a mistake at this point, which is weird (and seemingly only applicable to this one topic- I have NOT found this to be the case with ANY other topic I've researched... but that is perhaps the nature and the danger with religious beliefs) https://newrepublic.com/article/81178/the-invention-islamoph...
Admittedly, some of my language was probably a bit edgy.
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We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146010.
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Both of these numbers pale in comparison to the civilian losses of Germany in WWII, and the Allies are not generally considered to have performed a genocide.
Clearly the absolute number of casualties (not even civilian casualties in this case, that is allegedly more like 15k) is not sufficient on its own to define a genocide.
The raw number of people killed isn't indicative of a genocide, it's intent and actions against a specific population. Over 1.5 million (out of 2 million) Gaza residents are displaced and facing starvation. Almost all of the hospitals in Gaza have been destroyed. Many would say Israel is committing genocide and the court today said they will continue the investigation because it's plausible.
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I don't think it's controversial to say that the Allies did ethnically cleanse parts of Eastern Europe to remove as many Germans as possible into German borders or internment camps, and they weren't too fussed if they died as a result. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_German...
For example, look at the section for Czechoslovakia (selecting it since it's inarguable Germans had lived in the country formerly known as Bohemia for centuries) alone:
> Between 700,000 and 800,000 Germans were affected by irregular expulsions between May and August 1945.[108] The expulsions were encouraged by Czechoslovak politicians and were generally executed by order of local authorities, mostly by groups of armed volunteers and the army.[109] [...] Transfers of population under the Potsdam agreements lasted from January until October 1946. 1.9 million ethnic Germans were expelled to the American zone, part of what would become West Germany. [...] More than 1 million were expelled to the Soviet zone, which later became East Germany.[110] The West German government estimated the expulsion death toll at 273,000 civilians,[115] and this figure is cited in historical literature.[116] However, in 1995, research by a joint German and Czech commission of historians found that the previous demographic estimates of 220,000 to 270,000 deaths to be overstated and based on faulty information. They concluded that the death toll was between 15,000 and 30,000 dead, assuming that not all deaths were reported.[117][118][119][120]
It's just that 'forced population transfers' were historically considered not outside the bounds of propriety.
Don’t forget that these international laws and treaties were born out of a desire to prevent the horrors of WWII from occurring again. Lots of actors in that war including the Allies did terrible things that are prohibited by those laws. The genocide laws, as I understand, came about as a result of the Holocaust, but the use of WMDs against civilian targets (eg destroying a city with nuclear weapons) would not be legal either.
Given this historical context, we don’t need to “whatabout” with the Allies. Surely we can agree that we do not want a repeat of WWII.
In terms of whether Israel’s actions constitute genocide, we have yet to find out. Are they grossly disproportionate compared to Oct 7, and appalling in terms of their destruction of civilian life and property? I believe yes, and whether or not that is “genocide” is, to me, somewhat besides the point. Making it stop NOW is the point!
About the 25000 Gaza figure, Many places in the media ,it mentions the figure from the Health Ministry includes Hamas fighters. Elsewhere in media reports this is said to be several 1000, I've seen figures 7000-9000 quoted as number of Hamas fighters deaths. (FROM WSJ The Palestinian health ministry’s figures don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. )
Genocide isn't about kill counts, it's about goals and the way you go about achieving them.
That's almost 1 death per bomb dropped. Pretty ineffective genocide?
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You've been breaking the site guidelines badly in this thread and your comments are very much not in the intended spirit, as I tried to explain it at the top. Please stop posting like this. (In case anyone is worried: yes, the exact same thing applies to the commenters you disagree with.)
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34191063 (Dec 2022)
If this keeps up, we'll end up having to ban your account. (In case anyone is worried: yes, that this would work exactly the same way even if you were arguing for the opposite position.) We're not interested in enforcing views on this or any other divisive topic; only in protecting this site for its intended purpose.
Perhaps your comment would be more constructive if you could say how my comments break the rules. Help me grow and help me follow the rules by being specific.
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You say that you’d equally critique the opposite viewpoint, but that’s been factually untrue before:
You censored people for pointing out in purely neutral terms, using videos of the people themselves giving interviews, that BLM was a Marxist organization — on the basis that it’s an “inherent flame war” to say true things the community is upset by.
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Again, my comment doesn’t seem any different than many others here you didn’t feel the need to critique.
To me, that seems like the antisemitism we witnessed from Harvard et al — who censor speech on campus, then cry “free speech” when making calls for genocide.
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> The ICJ disgraces itself condemning a nation not engaged in genocide on behalf of a nation that is.
There's no condemnation in the text. It shows you didn't read the ICJ order.
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Despite the name, HN has never been constrained to stories about IT, tech and startups.
It's the first sentence of the guidelines:
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
There's some good links to additional resources here. There is a "hide" option for the story if you don't want to see it. Personally I think if all we ever see is tech here we will lose sight of the bigger picture.
HN has always had some amount of political content—not much, but some. For more information, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146184 and the links there.
Feel free to. You can easily ignore this one thread out of hundreds.
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Said terrorists will just melt into the general population and walk out with them, and then return with them and repeat the next cycle.
What do you propose to stop that?
> From a logical perspective, ignoring all of the politics possible, there is a clear best solution
Any solution that "ignores all of the politics" is not a solution at all.
> evacuate the innocent people from Gaza
Evacuation and forced migration look awfully similar, and the latter is genocide. And how do you determine who is innocent?
> free and de-militarized
Not impossible, but extremely hard. Especially when their rival is heavily militarized. Is there any example in history of this besides Japan?
> Clearly a war began when one or more terrorist groups physically based in Gaza invaded Israel
That was but a skirmish, they've been "at war" since the 1960s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Gaza#Israeli_contro...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun
Huh? How would you accomplish this? Why wouldn’t the terrorists hide amongst the non-terrorists? Where would you take the non-terrorists? What about people who are terrorist-supporting non-terrorists, aren’t they a source of potential issues?
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The overwhelming majority of people on Earth disagrees with what the government of Israel is doing.
I think it's extremely sad that the measured and helpful comment that you are replying to was flagged. It suggests that the preponderance of HN commentors skews heavily one way on this issue (whether that skew is correct or not is another matter). To respond to your comment specifically: I'm proud to count myself in the overwhelming minority.
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What are you basing your second statement on?
At the end of the day, the ICJ does not matter because it has no military, and the only major military power in the world, the United States of America, doesn't recognize its jurisdiction at all. Next time, they should try the Supreme Court if they actually want to make a difference (not that it'd work)
America recognizes ICJ. It even has a judge in it, which presides the court currently.
https://icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/donoghue_en.pdf
It has an American on it, but the United States no longer accepts its jurisdiction:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Court_of_Justice
> For example, the United States had previously accepted the court's compulsory jurisdiction upon its creation in 1946 but in 1984, after Nicaragua v. United States, withdrew its acceptance following the court's judgment that called on the US to "cease and to refrain" from the "unlawful use of force" against the government of Nicaragua. The court ruled (with only the American judge dissenting) that the United States was "in breach of its obligation under the Treaty of Friendship with Nicaragua not to use force against Nicaragua" and ordered the United States to pay war reparations.[21]
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There is another player. China is interested in resolving the Gaza conflict.[1] China's position is that, since the existing world order, the International Court of Justice and the United States, can't resolve this, China should become involved. Chinese container shipping lines COSCO and OOCL have suspended trade with Israel. China has already provided some aid to Gaza.[2]
Gaza has a sizable coastline, and China has a large number of amphibious assault ships available. They can defend themselves against Israel air attacks. If China decides to send humanitarian relief to Gaza, China can do it, and Israel can't stop them.[3] China would look like the good guys. Which their leadership knows.
[1] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/chinas-game-gaza
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-wa...
[3] https://www.newsweek.com/china-amphibious-assault-ship-type-...
This seems far fetched given China's traditional insistence that countries' internal affairs should not be subject to external overview, it's undeclared stance that subject populations should be suppressed by whatever means necessary and the still marginal effect of the conflict on its trade.
Good cop, bad cop theatre of what I call the establishment division.
I don't see how military operations outside of a country's legal territory is considered an "internal affair"
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Amphibious landings are highly vulnerable, and almost impossible to pull off without air superiority. What gives the impression that China's amphibious landing ships are resistant to anti-shipping missiles? Every article on modern naval combat I've read highlights just how vulnerable surface vessels are to attack, and how crucial it is to keep them out of range. I am incredibly dubious that China would land military ships in Gaza.
Do you think Israel would fire on those ships?
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I was with you until chinese contested amphibious landing in occupied gaza. China’s big picture strategy is to grow while not being drained by small conflicts the way the US is. This would be totally against that strategy.
> Gaza has a sizable coastline, and China has a large number of amphibious assault ships available. They can defend themselves against Israel air attacks
Sorry but this is goofy fan-fiction. No, China does not have the ability to forcibly land in Gaza without huge losses, and then being completely trapped there with no hope of resupply. That's an incredibly long supply line.
Indeed, anyone who knows anything about China’s long-range logistics knows that direct military conflict would be suicidal for China.
Their only chance would be to make a bet that attacking them would be politically unacceptable.
I think its extremely unlikely that china will go to war with israel. That would be an extremely bloody conflict for almost no benefit to china.
Additionally china's military currently has big corruption problems (e.g. the missle fuel water controversy). I doubt china really wants to put their reputation on the line until they sort that out, especially given what happened to russia in ukraine.
They might look like "the good guys" by doing that, but they'd also be dragging themselves into an open war Israel (and its allies). I'm not sure that would be a smart move.
I'm also unsure if this move would be seen well domestically. They have enough problems right now, and focusing resources on this doesn't sound like it would be met with high praise.
I think the idea is that they'd genuinely be providing humanitarian aid, with military presence genuinely being there for self-defense.
They would simply be stepping into the role on the world stage the US and other Western countries have fulfilled for the last few decades. Israel probably wouldn't be foolish enough to attack them, and their allies definitely wouldn't aid them.
And in the unlikely event Israel does attack their humanitarian convoy, it would only give China an opportunity to do some live-fire practice and score extra points on the world stage as the innocent defender.
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Which other international conflicts has China resolved? The current Chinese state seems to be much better at fostering conflict (I.e. the ongoing Korean War) than resolving it.
So far, not much. Gaza is a good place to start. China wants more influence in the Middle East, and already owns or operates a large number of ports outside China.[1] Israel blockades the existing ports of Gaza. A China-run port in Gaza, protected by the PLAN, is a possibility.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/china-...
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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/21/china-brokered-saud...
Iran and Saudi Arabia
Pointlessly going to war with Israel would be so far out of character for China that I can't even imagine why you are suggesting this possibility.
> Gaza has a sizable coastline, and China has a large number of amphibious assault ships available. They can defend themselves against Israel air attacks.
Chinese warships will never be allowed anywhere near the Mediterranean in the first place - if there is one thing that even the split US Congress will agree on, it is that China already has too much influence and that they need to be stopped.
Additionally, China's army hasn't seen actual combat in a loooong time. It's likely that their army is in just as bad of a shape as Russia's is, and getting that demonstrated on the world stage before they have a chance to snack a piece or the whole of Taiwan would be pretty foolish.
> Chinese warships will never be allowed anywhere near the Mediterranean in the first place
There have been Chinese navy visits to the Mediterranean. You can sail in on international water. (Edit: Nope, it's to narrow)
"Chinese naval ships visit Morocco"
http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/CHINA_209163/Exchanges/News_20918...
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China has been skirmishing with India pretty recently
China believes in soft power. So I doubt they'd come in guns blazing to rescue Gaza.
However, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by brokering some kind of peace using their supply chain supremacy.
Meanwhile US looks more and more like a paper tiger because they can't stop Yemen from blockading Israeli shipments and also refusing to do the one thing that would resolve the shipping issues: force Israel to the table for a ceasefire.
China has no ability to project much outside of its own territory. They might be able to invade taiwan, sure, but anything farther off is still out of reach for them (even if they wanted to, which I highly doubt). They really couldn't stage much from their one support base in Djibouti.
China would only get involved to extend their influence. China is very much tit-for-tat. But who will grant them anything in return? None of the neighboring countries likes the Palestinians. Egypt even holds the border closed.
That is preposterous.
Israel could (and probably would) prevent the fleet from delivering the aid even without help from the US.
In support of your "If China decides to send humanitarian relief to Gaza, China can do it, and Israel can't stop them," you link to a description of a ship designed for an invasion of an island 85 miles off China's coast, an invasion which China (correctly IMO) calculates would probably end in failure (or else it would've invaded by now).
Israel can't challenge China militarily in, e.g., the Pacific, but it is a wealthy competent state that takes security seriously.
You really think China wants to create a precedent where a foreign power comes and helps a smaller region to deter a bigger aggressor, with military force? I find that highly unlikely.
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This has exactly zero chances of happening. Israel would never let anyone they don’t approve of get anywhere near Gaza.
That is definitely Israel’s intention, but suppose China did go for it.
Does Israel have the stones for direct airstrike on Chinese fleet? It’s gonna get messy. It’s a big game of chicken, I am not sure who I would bet on.
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China doesn’t like things that cause revolts. Because rebellions can be infectious.
i don't think china wants having anything to do with hamas. For a first experience as a military-humanitarian adventure, the chances of appearing as a support for hostage-taking muslim terrorist is way too high.
Stop using unguided bombs in densely populated areas. Stop using poison gas. Stop killing people waving a white flag. Stop sniping people outside of a church. Stop planning and executing demolitions on universities. Stop starving people. Stop cutting water supplies.
Dang, everything I listed is widely reported on. I think I have the right to express this even on HN on an article about a genocide case.
Please share your sources
Bombs: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/13/politics/intelligence-assessm...
White flag: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-palestinian-israel-w... (there is more than one instance of this)
Poison gas is a claim from the family of a dead hostage. They said the pathology report of the death indicated poison gas was being used to clear tunnels. So not confirmed. https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2024-01-22/ty-arti...
Destroying schools: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/24/how-israel-has-dest...
Everything else, including these, are pretty easily searchable if you desire to learn more. I’m phone posting so sorry if this is messy.
Like the parent says, these have all been widely reported on. I think we have to come into this conversation with a base level of the events that are going on before commenting.
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Church killing: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/18/women-mother-d...
Killing of white flag wavers: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-palestinian-israel-w...
Did you know that Israel controls a whopping 13% of Gaza's water? Maybe that wasn’t widely reported for some reason.
"After October 7, the Israeli government shut off the pipes that supply Gaza with water. It has since only resumed piping water to some parts of southern Gaza while some water has entered via Egypt, but it’s not reaching everyone and is not nearly enough to meet the needs of Gaza’s population, requiring many to rely on the local water supply."
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/16/israeli-authorities-cutt...
Israel controls all water in the West Bank. Palestinians in the West Bank are not allowed to even collect rainwater because all water infra must be approved by Israel, and they don't approve much.
I assume this is fresh water pumped into Gaza. What of the desalination plants? Cutting off all fuel surely ensures that that water source is also cut off. I would not be surprised to learn that this infrastructure has been targeted for destruction.
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Hi All, I am a combat soldier and commander in the IDF currently fighting in Gaza.
We are not committing any genocide. The give away for Genocide is that there are mass graves, which in Gaza there are not.
Yes there is collateral damage because Hamas uses civilians as human shields, so we have no choice but to kill them too, but we do not specifically target them.
We risk ourselves and our soldiers to ensure that the fewest number of non-combatants get killed. We have lost many of our own soldiers because of this. It would be much easier for us to just bomb everything from the air but we dont, because it's less precise than going in on foot.
Personally, as a commander, I would like to say that I have no ill feelings towards the Palestinian people, but we need to get as many of the hostages back as possible, and we cannot allow Hamas to continue ruling Gaza and attacking our civilians as they did on October 7th.
We will continue the fight with them until our military objectives are met, and we will also engage Hizbollah on the northern border for exactly the same reasons (Hamas actually stole their plan and used it on October 7th - Hezbollah had planned to do it in the north but much worse).
Israel is the canary in the coal mine. What happens to us today will happen to you tomorrow, so before you give your full throated support to Hamas, let me ask you, would you want October 7th to happen to your family and friends? If Hamas aren't stopped, that same attack will happen around the world.
Please support us and help rid the world of violent terrorism, and maybe one day, we can all live in peace.
Shabbat Shalom!
>> The give away for Genocide is that there are mass graves, which in Gaza there are not.
According to Omer Bartov, scholar of genocide, the criterion for genocide is that there is intent to commit genocide:
The crime of genocide was defined in 1948 by the United Nations as “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/opinion/israel-gaza-genoc...
There are numerous articles in the press reporting on mass graves of Palestinians killed in the war, in Gaza. For example:
Palestinians digging mass graves inside al-Shifa hospital, health official says (14 November 2023, Al Shifa hospital)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/14/people-flee-no...
Bodies are being buried in a mass grave at Gaza City’s largest hospital, health officials say. (14 November, Al Shifa)
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/14/world/israel-hamas-g...
More than 100 Palestinian bodies buried in mass grave in Gaza (22 November, Khan Younis)
https://news.sky.com/video/more-than-100-palestinian-bodies-...
"All the cemetaries are full': Palestinians buried in a mass grave in Gaza (23 November, Khan YOunis)
https://www.reuters.com/pictures/all-cemeteries-are-full-pal...
Israel Gaza: Drone shots show Palestinians buried in Rafah mass grave (26 December, Rafah)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-middle-east-67825385
etc etc.
Itv filmed Palestinian civilians waving a white flag being shot and killed by Israel this week.
"No intention to kill civilians" says this "soldier". Just pure lies.
> but we need to get as many of the hostages back as possible
And how many hostages has the war gotten back so far?
> we cannot allow Hamas to continue ruling Gaza
There is no realistic plan for ending Hamas. The more Hamas fighters you kill the more Gazans join. You can take temporary control of the government, but Isarelis in Gaza and anyone who works with them will be targeted by terrorists until the end of time. Eventually israel will get sick of the attacks and pull out, and Hamas will immediately regain control of the government.
The obvious end game here is a return to the pre october 7th status quo with increased border security to ensure oct. 7th doesnt happen again. When will we admit that the hostages can not be saved and move to that end game?
>Personally, as a commander, I would like to say that I have no ill feelings towards the Palestinian people, but we need to get as many of the hostages back as possible, and we cannot allow Hamas to continue ruling Gaza and attacking our civilians as they did on October 7th.
I'm curious about this - the idea that both goals are achievable is a fiction. You either get the hostages, or you eliminate Hamas. Do y'all talk about this?
Why can't we do both? We talk about it a lot. Until now, we have not succeeded, but maybe we can pressure Hamas to let them go, and then eliminate Hamas in a future round of fighting?
Hi there, I personally admire the work you do, I fully support Israel in it's war against evil, I hope you eradicate Hamas (ideally they would all surrender, but that's unlikely, so the other option is they get killed) as soon as you can. If you doubt any of these words, check out my tweets/likes (@tomprimozic)
However, there's 3 "contentious" points that I want to ask (my go-to Jewish (& very pro-Israel) close friend is currently very far away and has his own issues - not that you don't, but since you posted here...)
1. What's your comment on "Hamas headquarters below Al Shifa hospital"?
2. Why do IDF soldiers shoot (and post) videos of them "mocking"/"disrespecting" Palestinian homes/mosques/schools?
3. What's the steelman argument of why Israel is "occupying" the West Bank? The best I can come up with is "they didn't occupy Gaza and look what happened", but (a) that wasn't known before Oct7, and (b) they would have IMO gained a lot of goodwill abroad if they had given it more autonomy...
Thank you for the kind words. Will reach out when I get home next. Been a long day - we did a big mission today and I'm wiped so please excuse the short answers.
1. Hamas was located in a significant want under Al-shifa. Israel released video of our commando unit raiding it. You can find that video online. Hard to watch.
2. Because they're angry and they're being stupid and reacting emotionally. Please understand, they raped our women, tortured them and then murdered them. They did the same to our men, old people and children. Imagine for a second if a specific group did all that to lots of people that you loved and cared for. How would you feel? What would you post as you took your revenge? Israel is a tiny country. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone is related to everyone, or is at least friends with them on some way. So the disrespect is because they are furious with our enemy, and our enemy identifies specifically as religious muslims and arabs. Hard stuff.
3. Oh wow that's a hard one. It's complicated. We're in a war to claim territory with the Palestinians. I mean, you could reverse the question and ask "why are the Palestinians occupying Israeli land". The Palestinians arent a people, per se. They are the random groups of different arab families that were living in the area at the time of the creation of the state of israel. Some are from iran, some from Syria, some from Jordan, egypt, etc. so we are not "occupying" their land because there is no "them".
Really what needs to happen is that we need to be separated. We can't continue to live in an intermingled fashion like this because it's too messy and unsustainable.
But.... that's a problem for another day. For today we just need to deal with Hamas and Hezbollah.
Good night =)
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Why is the IOF committed to a salted earth(genocidal) policy in gaza?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/01/world/middlee...
> The give away for Genocide is that there are mass graves, which in Gaza there are not.
The rubble of the numerous civilian homes and buildings you've leveled are the mass graves.
There's no need to guess like that. Just search for "mass graves gaza", there are plenty of reports of actual mass graves, from Reuters, NYT, SkyNews, The Guardian, etc etc, with pictures and all. See my other comments in this theread for links.
Nope. Those are just buildings. Without people, they are just structures. Again, if Hamas was firing at us from behind civilians (which they do a lot), then we had no choice. You can't just call anything a mass grave for the sake of convenience.
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> would you want October 7th to happen to your family and friends?
Obviously not. I just believe you are going about it the entirely wrong way if you want to prevent it.
How many Oct 7’s do you think this one-sided conflict will spawn?
What is your proposed alternative that you're alluding to? That seems oddly missing in your comment.
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In general when there is an accusation of genocide, is a statement of denial from a soldier of the accused side considered good evidence?
The whole his post feel so righteous and cliche prpaganda, I am almost feeling bad for him.
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> We are not committing any genocide.
The ICJ seems to disagree with you.
> so before you give your full throated support to Hamas, let me ask you
This is a straw man. Condemning IDFs slaughtering of children isn't the same as supporting Hamas. I condemn both.
Even extremely-biased NYT (which had to retract an article built on lies from Israel officials) has noticed your army destroying neighborhoods.
Just like the Nazis destroyed Jewish homes.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/01/world/middlee...
> there is collateral damage because Hamas uses civilians as human shields
When you say things like this, I know that you are either spreading IDF propaganda or have been wired to believe IDF propaganda. Either way it is telling what soldiers are experiencing.
None of the things you stated are any different than what IDF associated press has stated. This makes your post incredibly suspect.
As this is HN, and we welcome on-the-ground views, we are not finding too much info about what is actually happening from the ground view in your post.
> We are not committing any genocide. The give away for Genocide is that there are mass graves, which in Gaza there are not.
How many Hamas terrorists have you killed compared to the now over 10 000 children?
The fact that there is no one to bury them doesn't mean it's not a genocide, come on..
> so we have no choice but to kill them too
When you fire at children playing in the streets, you had a choice. If you can't see that, you've lost all humanity..
> but we do not specifically target them
Hundreds of videoes proves otherwise. Where fleeing civilians are gunned down.
> Personally, as a commander, I would like to say that I have no ill feelings towards the Palestinian people
But your leaders have. And your peers, judging by videoes they posts about the cruelty they do.
> but we need to get as many of the hostages back as possible
You say that, but then you bomb every structure you find, and even shoot the fleeing hostages yourself. It doesn't really seem you care too much for them, they're merely a convenient excuse to do your horrors.
> Please support us and help rid the world of violent terrorism
You can start by laying down your weapon. What you're doing to Palestinian civilians is terrorism.
>> Yes there is collateral damage because Hamas uses civilians as human shields, so we have no choice but to kill them too, but we do not specifically target them.
I struggle to believe this is really a comment by a "commander in the IDF". Such a person should know that the use of civilians as human shields by one side does not absolve the other side from taking every precaution to minimise harm coming to those civilians.
Risk to civilians does not bar military action, but the principle of proportionality requires that precautions be taken to minimize the harm to these protected persons. This analysis includes considerations like whether circumstances permit the attacker to time a military action to minimize the presence of civilians at the location.[16]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_shield_(law)#Legal_doctr...
Specifically, saying the IDF doesn't target them, they're just in the way, is a cynical denial of that responsibility.
Further, a commander of the IDF would remember the proverb about throwing stones when living in a glass house: there is extensive documentation of the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields by the IDF. See for example the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead (2009):
https://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/20... (page 19 of the pdf).
Despite Israel's claims Hamas does not use civilians in this way. Instead they fight from built-up areas and make it difficult to distinguish combatant from non-combatant. They "hide among civilians" but they don't "use them as shields".
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We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamewar comments (not just in this thread but in many others). That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
It's especially in violation of the intended spirit that I tried to explain at the top of the current thread.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
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You can't attack another user like this on HN, no matter how wrong they are or you feel they are.
You may not feel you owe the other person better, but you owe this community better if you're participating it; especially given the intended spirit that I attempted to describe at the top of this thread.
Denouncing others as monsters without humanity is what fuels this entire horror. The least we can do is not allow that on Hacker News.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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> Yes there is collateral damage because Hamas uses civilians as human shields, so we have no choice but to kill them too, but we do not specifically target them.
> we have no choice but to kill them too, but we do not specifically target them
> we have no choice but to kill them too
bruh...
Those are war crimes according to the UN
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/war-crimes.shtml
> which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;
You can't just put a single civilian in every military base and be protected by international law. Collateral damage isn't necessarily a war crime.
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Please allow this. I love what pg is saying regarding this topic on X. He is again on the right side.
The ICJ punted.
The ruling is a joke, how can you rule against the defendant and yet order the defendant to monitor themselves?
The ICJ knew if it found against Israel it would loose all credibility outside the West, but it also had too much political pressure from the West to rule for Israel.
> The ICJ punted.
No, it didn't. It ruled on what amounts to (in the parlance of the US legal system) a preliminary injunction, ordering one because the pleadings and supporting evidence on initial review warrant it, while the process of a trial on the merits will take longer.
> The ruling is a joke, how can you rule against the defendant and yet order the defendant to monitor themselves?
The only people the ICJ can order are the parties. External monitoring and enforcement is a matter for, primarily, the UN Security Council.
> The ICJ knew if it found against Israel it would loose all credibility outside the West, but it also had too much political pressure from the West to rule for Israel.
The process by which the ICJ might rule for or against Israel, rather than ordering provisional measures, is much longer. This is just an early part of the case.
The ICJ could, however, order a ceasefire that is a freezing of the conflict.
This process will take years that the Palestinians do not have.
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> ICJ punted
Yes. But this isn’t the final ruling.
South Africa asked for something analogous to a preliminary injunction. The ICJ declined to order a preliminary ceasefire. Instead, the case will be tried as usual.
Which will take years that the Palestinians do not have
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There's so much wiggle room within the statement. For example
78 - Israel must... take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of... acts... in particular: ... (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
Bombing or evacuating hospitals will have that effect, but it would be extremely difficult to prove intention. So they can keep doing what they say is necessary.
Many governments have issued vague calls to minimise civilian deaths etc. If Israel rejected those, it's hard to see it treating this differently.