Comment by refulgentis
2 years ago
I don't know how you keep coming up with #s from the article that somehow indicate Israel's trying very hard to protect civilians. It's self-soothing but no one, absolutely no one, thinks the article is saying that.
n.b. not in their charter, not their stated goal. I'm a Zionist too, used to say stuff like this, I just had a wake up call in January about how I was unable to talk to other people anymore because I had walked too far down a path that was obviously us vs. them and the Likud-Gvir unholy alliance was doing truly evil things that made us vs. them look really, really, bad.
Well, October 7th Massacre wasn’t enough to wake you up from a 140 years long dream of peace. But some social lack of acceptance in January did. That’s telling. It is a zero sum game. It always was for the Arabs. Time to wake up and face the harsh reality, not invented idealistic dreams (that are admittedly much more comforting, but lead to massacres October 7th style).
>not in their charter
I can't tell if you're pretending or not. Are you?
ARTICLE 7: "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. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."
INTRODUCTION: "This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's victory is realised."
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
Etc. etc.
>coming up with numbers
They are accepting 10% casualties according to the article (probably bullshit). I didn't expect to have to explain this, but the % symbol implies it's divided by 100. That means there are 90% unacceptable casualties.
>absolutely no one, thinks the article is saying that.
I think most people here can subtract 10 from 100 and get 90. Am I the only genius on HN? I hope not. Help us all if I am.
Or are you talking about the 100% number for Gaza? I took it from their charter. I assume that "O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him" means that they want all of them dead. I didn't find any mention of rogue or rebel trees or stones that would allow Jews to hide behind them, so I have to assume they mean all of them.
But, I'm intrigued by your accusation. Where are you finding different numbers? I'd love to see even a single document that allows for saving a Jew authored by Gaza's government. Let me know where this document is.
For clarity, I'm no Zionist. I just don't understand why anyone would support a government blatantly claiming a hateful purpose in their founding documents.
If you want me to feel bad for people in Gaza, I do. I very much do. But this discussion is about governments, and you've made a comparison between governments where there is a very clear cut difference. One has the moral high ground and is attempting to minimize civilian casualties, while the other is blatantly maximizing them in practice and inarguably as their stated purpose.
They built shitty murderGPT and they think based on vetting a sample it can be 90% effective at picking out Hamas associates. In turn they are targeting homes and residential buildings with the stated goal of killing up to 20 people to get the lowest level flunky.
Their goal would allow them to kill 200 people to get 9 Hamas. 21 v 1
In fact
- Hamas is the local government many people who fulfill only civilian roles arent lawful targets.
- A dearth of smart bombs led to using dumb bombs which are less accurate and more likely to create collateral damage.
- There arent infinite lawful targets as the supply of lawful targets is smaller in relation to the pool of victims it is expected to get less accurate.
murderGPT is probably worse than specified.
1. The article is hearsay at best.
2. The article states that 10% is the absurd acceptable casualty rate. So I don't see how you got to 21 v 1. These are stark differences.
But anyway, let's assume Israel wants to kill ALL EXCEPT ONE enemy civilian.
That is still objectively better than wanting to kill ALL enemy civilians.
You made the comparison. I'm just pointing out how absurd it is.
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> think most people here can subtract 10 from 100 and get 90. Am I the only genius on HN? I hope not. Help us all if I am.
TLDR: You are the only HN genius who forgot to multiply by allowed collateral damage.
They suggest based on thin evidence that it selects 90% Hamas associates given relatively clean data at start of conflict. There are oh so many things wrong with this.
- Hamas is the local government. Those who don't participate in the fighting aren't lawful targets in the first place
- They preferentially strike homes during the night maximizing collateral damage in order to obtain a higher chance of killing the target. They set the acceptable losses at 20–100 based on rank and importance of the target.
- Their initial accuracy was assessed by vetting a small sample earlier in the conflict.
What happens to your targeting as the conflict proceeds? Your known targets die, flee, and move around. New soldiers are recruited but don't provide clear intelligence from a chaotic warzone of their present status. You would logically expect such a system's accuracy to decline towards randomness as such a conflict proceeds and intelligence and targets become thinner on the ground. There is no reason to accept the initial 90% targeting accuracy on faith.
Even where we accept we must not forget to multiply by acceptable collateral damage.
I'm apparently at least one genius on HN that doesn't multiply unrelated sources.
I took each claim as coming from a separate source because the article specifies that they did.
By itself, a claim of 10% allowance, implies a 10% allowed civilian casualty rate.
Also, if you down vote, it prevents me from commenting. If you just want to get the last word in, say so. You're not important enough for me to care if I do.
Neither is this hearsay article.
More telling, you completely dodged the racism in Gaza's charter. Swept it under the rug.
Israel is bad for using AI, but it doesn't bother you that Gaza wants to kill all civilians?
Really, I think that last one makes moot all of your points entirely.
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82% of the so-called “Palestinians” approved of October 7th Massacre back in October. 75% approve of it in March 2024. For every armed terrorist there were 5-10 Gazans perpetrating the atrocities on October 7th. Every other house in Gaza is full of weapons. “There are no innocents in Dresden”, Winston Churchill
> not in their charter.
18 August 1988.
2017: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full.
> They are accepting 10% casualties according to the article (probably bullshit).
I genuinely can't parse this. What does it mean to "accept 10% casualties". Casualties means injured/dead. Do you mean 10% of the total population injured? 10% of those injured in a strike are non-combatants? Steel-manning while gently guiding back to the material: lets ignore the 100:1 extreme in the material, and say 10:1. That would mean roughly 90% are non-combatants. Not the inverse.
I'm a Zionist and I'm shaking my head at the majority of what you wrote, there's no need to be this rude to anyone, ever. The condescension harms you more than them, you're trying to win them over, you shouldn't be ranting and pretending they don't know what a % mark means, its detrimental to your argument because it increases perception you're missing their point
More widely, at some point we have an obligation to engage with people and avoid silly side debates like "the charter says kill all the jews, here's the 1988 charter, oh you know they have a new charter? sure they revised it, but the revisions are stupid pandering to ignorant Western sympathizers" and "find me a document allows for saving a Jew authored by Gaza's government. Let me know where this document is."
There's a really unfortunate tendency to conflate any criticism of this war with "Hamas good" or even "Hamas okay" or "Hamas bad but not that bad" etc etc. Not claiming any of that. I'm on the right of Israel opinion polls because I want the war to continue until Hamas is eliminated because I do believe that the 1988 charter describes how they see Israelis to this day.
But I, like everyone else, contain multitudes, and see a straight through line from IDF concerns about targeting rules getting looser and looser and looser over the years since the 90s, what I've seen since October, and now this information we have in the TFA. I'd rather acknowledge that publicly and remain clearly morally superior than start long arguments over if its okay using things like 1988 charter.
What you're saying requires a belief that you are the official speaker of Hamas. And that they don't mean what they say, they mean whatever you say they mean.
It's a stretch. I can't say I believe you. I'll go with the documentation and official statements pending some more compelling evidence to establish your authority.
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