Everything else aside, this is an absolutely fantastic development and I really hope the ceasefire holds and all hostages are released.
I just fear this will cause western media and politicians to and declare the crisis to be over (after it had began on Oct. 7, of course absolutely out of the blue and without any context...) and go back to pretending everything is back to normal. Never mind that Gaza is still in ruins, the west bank is still being annexed, Israel still has the dual role of "all authority, no obligations" over the Palestinians, while making it pretty clear they have no vision for them at all, apart from "maybe they just vanish into thin air tomorrow".
And never mind that Israel still has a fundamentalist, authoritarian government that is actively at work undermining democratic structures and civil rights even inside the state - that too with no word of objection from its allies.
We'll see where all of that goes.
I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
Is this just his usual "appear unpredictable by all means" spiel or does he have a strategy there?
I graduated from an electrical engineering program at a big ten (U.S.) school in the mid '90s, and I am closing in on retirement. I spent today enrapt in an Oracle upgrade from 10g to 11g. Yes, our IT is COBOL-centric, and we are vastly behind the times. Much of today was spent (re)compiling C. The consensus is that I will have to think hard tomorrow about how to fix these problems.
While I was in school, I studied with many Palestinians in my college of engineering. I wonder often what happened to them.
At the same time, within Israel, Intel is the largest civilian employer. The Pentium M is an Israeli rework of the Pentium Pro legacy, and Israel is key to Intel's gains over the past two decades.
I wish that everyone that I knew from the Middle East was fully involved in the advances of Intel.
Perhaps my lost schoolmates' absence was precisely what Intel lacked, but such cultural divides are not easily bridged.
I've worked with a few teams based in Israel during my at Intel, namely in networking and transceiver technology space. I try to make a point of getting to know the people I work with through 1:1s, and you'll be pleased to know there is a good mix of Palestinans and Israelis working together. Everyone there was proud to have a very diverse team.
This is a great post. Thank you to share your personal experience. Do you think they were first generation Palestinians? Or multi-generation (parents or earlier immigrated)? I know that Michigan state (Detroit, etc.) has one of the largest Arab communities in the United States.
This is a one-sided description of the conflict. I am empathetic to Israel, because they also do not have a lot options.
Israel, as it it currently constituted (based on 1967 borders) is not a viable state if the West Bank is a hostile entity with a standing army, and funded to a similar extent as Hezbollah. The West Bank bulges into Israel and effectively cuts the country in half and places all strategic targets within shelling distance.
The Palestinian position seems to be "trust us that if you give us full, un-fettered independence, then we will not be a hostile entity" - but that's asking for Israel to place an enormous amount of trust in present and future Palestinian people and leaders, without any historical reasons to base this on, and highlighted by the worst case scenario of Hezbollah in the north, a foreign-controlled militia funded to the tune of 1 billion / year, and potential a hostile party in the West Bank (and Gaza) - effectively surrounding the country.
And it is more than just demilitarization. A demilitarized Palestine is not enough if, for example, Iran funnels hundreds of millions of dollars in arms to militia groups.
Hence we are where we are .. with Israel unable to disengage because doing so presents an existential risk to their nation.
> Israel, as it it currently constituted (based on 1967 borders) is not a viable state if the West Bank is a hostile entity with a standing army, and funded to a similar extent as Hezbollah. The West Bank bulges into Israel and effectively cuts the country in half and places all strategic targets within shelling distance.
This is exactly the same argument that Russia has been using to annex territories such as Crimea; "it's strategically important for us" isn't really sufficient justification for mass murder, and - on a purely geographic point - talking about the West Bank doesn't justify anything to do with Gaza, which is geographically separate.
And why the 1967 borders rather than the 1948 ones?
> Iran funnels hundreds of millions of dollars in arms to militia groups.
This is the side that's not really been raised enough in this whole discussion. If Israel's war is with Iran, why is that war not being carried out in Iran? Does this have something to do with the fact that Iran is 1000km away from having a land border with either Israel or Palestine?
Why is demilitarization always a unilateral affair? Has this solved anything in the past 50+ years?
It should be either be bilateral militarization (a miniaturized MAD if you will - similar with the Korean peninsula I guess), or bilateral demilitarization and extensive UN force deployment.
There is an international perspective on the borders that I think should be mentioned. I think it is also worth mentioning that most people who live now in West Bank and the broader Palestine area were not consulted in how power and might is distributed, whether they benefit or suffer from it.
> "trust us that if you give us full, un-fettered independence, then we will not be a hostile entity"
I don't agree, that's an optimistic view of things. Most Palestinians (Hamas for sure, Abbas as well) never agreed to give up on the 'Right of Return' so its not really independence in a 2 state solution that they're looking for, it's the abolishment of Israel.
There is a justifiable argument for Israel to occupy the west bank and/or the Gaza strip (whether one agrees or not is another matter that I will not get into). Settling it is another matter entirely, and this action is what causes so much grief.
But what Palestinian supporters continuously fail to grasp is that every time Israel has tried to give (and there were many attempts in the 1980s and 1990s), bad actors have caused violence. This violence was a huge cause in support shifting to right-wing parties in Israel.
The tragedy is that a plurality of Palestinians would otherwise love to have a peaceful (two state or otherwise) solution, but the "bad" ones are well funded by outsiders, in particular Iran. If a Gandhi/Martin Luther King/Nelson Mandela figure emerged, they'd almost certainly be killed by Hamas,Hezbollah,etc.
But at the end of the day, there's no way the extreme elements of either side will agree to a permanent and dignified peace, because even if it would work it would mean the end of either of them (and Israeli PM was assassinated by a far-right Jewish nationalist).
I'm sympathetic to both sides myself. I'm sympathetic to Israel's position, need for security, and the fact that hostility against them is a given. I'm also sympathetic to the fact that the Palestinian people were pushed off their land, often with violence to a level that can fit the definition of genocide, during Israel's independence and subsequent annexations.
But there will never be a true peace so long as the extremists on both sides have as much power as they do. I know most Iranians are fed up with their government. My Iranian colleagues all are commenting that even devoutly religious Iranians back home are getting fed up. A lot of this is a house of cards, so I guess we'll see.
While this is a good development. Everything in this part of the world is on a rinse snd repeat cycle ever since the Assyrians and the Babylonians - it hasn't changed much except maybe its actually a little more humane then it was in the past (which says something). Sorry for the cynical take but this just does a temporary stop.
That's not true at all. The current conflict isn't some thousand year old feud. It was very much caused by the deliberate provocation and importation of European settlers via Zionism. It's easy to wave our hands and say "it's so complicated!" or "they've been doing this for thousands of years!" but it's not complicated, much like apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were not complicated. Colonialism and ethno-centric racism are never good.
Actually it goes back a bit further, basically to the dawn of civilization. The first battle in recorded history was between Egypt and the Hittites, the Battle of Megiddo, in what is today the state of Israel [1].
> Everything in this part of the world is on a rinse snd repeat cycle ever since the Assyrians and the Babylonians
That's an incredible statement, as if the rest of the world is somehow different. The only thing special about these regions is that they've had complex states for longer, so of course state-based warfare would go back farther.
On another level, there absolutely have been periods of stability in regions of the middle east, for periods of time we would consider long.
The conflicts with the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Hittites came down to geopolitical factors that don't exist anymore. Mostly, the Levant separated the empires of Mesopotamia and Anatolia from Egypt. The numerous battles that happened at Meggido occurred because that was a chokepoint of the Way of Horus, the principal land trade route from Egypt specifically and Africa generally to the rest of the world. Besides trade, the Levant had tended to serve as a buffer zone between pharaonic Egypt, which preferred hegemony over outright empire, and other empires who always seemed to want to expand towards Egypt. The Assyrian military campaigns in particular are a reaction to the 25th dynasty in Egypt convincing rulers in the Levant to ally themselves more closely with them at the expense of the Assyrians.
The current conflict is a different beast. The fall of the Ottoman Empire and the careless meddling of western powers in the aftermath. The Jewish diaspora, Zionism, and the Holocaust. The Sunni-Shia conflict.
I like how even in this thread, you have many people - almost certainly very few of whom have no real stake in the fight - bitterly arguing about who is right and wrong (turning it into a fight about US politics as a bonus). Human nature and tribalism really is a terrible thing sometimes.
I agree with you, although I certainly hope you and I are wrong. It would be nice to see people let go of past injustices on both sides long enough to have a lasting peace.
I am not smart enough to have an opinion on the situation in Gaza that's much more complicated than "people dying is bad", but I struggle to understand how the continued annexation of the West Bank by Israeli settlers, supported by the government and army, is anything other than clearly ethnic cleansing. If it had stopped ten years ago, and it was now a conversation about uprooting the established communities there, maybe then there's room for nuance and so on, but it didn't: it's ongoing.
>And never mind that Israel still has a fundamentalist, authoritarian government that is actively at work undermining democratic structures and civil rights even inside the state
As opposed to the neighboring states (and Hamas), which mostly have religiously tolerant, fully democratic governments that fully respect civil rights, and which of course have never openly stated that they want Israel to disappear from existence, not at all leaving it implicit that its millions of Jewish residents should be ethnically cleansed from the region.. Yes?
The further we are from a people, the more we tend to group them into monoliths. As monoliths, both sides are monsters, with the best one can argue being that one side's monstrosity is justified.
Break them down further and you can find the actual monsters--those self-interestedly seeking either their own aims, or, some random aim at any cost, even when the aim is impossible and its costs massive.
Israel has been hindering a democratic process in Palestine since forever. It was a borderline explicit policy to bolster hamas to split the Palestinian rule in two to be able to say "we have no negotiating partner". Netanyahu has been quoted saying that outright.
Very few of the Fatah concessions ever led anywhere despite promises from Israel, leading many palestinians to think that Fatah was weak. Which other "strong" democratic options were there? PNI? Third Way? They were never serious options.
Now, the Fatah party has been incompetent and corrupt. I am not saying democracy would have sorted itself out in Palestine, but I am saying that if Israel would have wanted a democratic development in Palestine, it would not have dealt with Fatah in such bad faith.
Nor, I must add, would they have killed any palestinian (Gaza) leaders opening up to peace with Israel. Ahmed Yassin was killed just months after started proposing a long term truce on the condition of a Palestinian state in the west bank and gaza. his successor (al-Rantisi) suffered a similar fate after a similar proposal. Then Jabari in 2012. Then they killed Haniyeh who was the principal negotiator during all recent peace talks.
None of these men were innocent cute bunnies by any means, but Israel has been sending a clear message for many many years: negotiation will be done by force.
This refers (I imagine) to internal Israeli politics - a certain portion of the Israeli populace fears that Netanyahu is attempting to make Israel less democratic by various means. This was a topic that caused mass protests in Israel before October 7th, and continues in some form even now.
> Never mind that Gaza is still in ruins, the west bank is still being annexed, Israel still has the dual role of "all authority, no obligations" over the Palestinians, while making it pretty clear they have no vision for them at all, apart from "maybe they just vanish into thin air tomorrow".
It was pretty much like that before. They're just being a lot more open about wanting to wipe them out.
> And never mind that Israel still has a fundamentalist, authoritarian government that is actively at work undermining democratic structures and civil rights even inside the state - that too with no word of objection from its allies.
Israel does not have a fundamentalist, authoritarian government! There are some fundamentalist and far-right parties in the current coalition but they have little power to push their own policies except to threaten to bolt the coalition. For all the talk of those 2-3 ministers to who belong to these more extreme parties to eg legitimise new settlements, repopulate gaza, they don't have enough power to actually pass such laws and none of these ministers none of whom hold the top 8 roles in government.
The most religious/fundementalist of the the parties UTJ believes in land for peace and have said so many times over the years (but like the majority of the Israeli public, they wont mention it, let alone push for it, during wartime so as not to reward terrorism) and was fully behind all the ceasefire proposals in the past 18 months.
And it's certainly not authoritarian. Israel has full powers of protest, free speech, and in fact it's generally the press that have the strongest voice not the government.
And "that is actively at work undermining democratic structures" is also wrong. They are trying to reform Israel's supreme court system which many legal scholars agree badly needs reform as the justices are largely self-selected yet have the power to override legislation without referring to existing law (the so-called reasonableness test which no other country has).
> And it's certainly not authoritarian. Israel has full powers of protest, free speech, and in fact it's generally the press that have the strongest voice not the government.
Israel maintained a prerogative from early in the war to assassinate essentially every known journalist in Gaza, and they did it by bombing their homes and killing their families. West Bank and pro-Arab Israeli journalists were merely arrested and held without charge.
In the recent conflict, as punishment for the (inexcusable and revolting) mass killing of Israelis by Hamas, Israel has killed vast numbers of innocent civilians -- 10s of thousands more than could possibly be justified by legitatimate military operations -- and has deliberately killed several journalists, destroyed healthcare infrastructure, and deliberately caused water and food shortages and mass civilian displacement. Its reputation is in tatters and will remain so for decades.
Be aware that this account has only one post (this one) and was created around 8 months ago when reports started to appear about Israeli influence on American public opinion online.
"Israeli State-sponsored Internet propaganda include the Hasbara, Hasbara Fellowships, Act.IL, and the Jewish Internet Defense Force. Supporters generally frame this "hasbara" as part of its fight towards improving their image abroad given continued Israeli human rights abuses, and also against anti-Israeli agitation and attempts to criticize it. There is substantive evidence that Israel heavily uses data-driven strategies, trolling and disinformation and manipulated media, as well as dedicating funds to state-sponsored media, for overt propaganda campaigns."[1]
"In June 2024, Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs was revealed to have paid $2 million to Israeli political consulting firm STOIC, to conduct a social media campaign, fueled by fake accounts and often employing misinformartion, targeting 128 American Congresspeople, with a focus on Democratic and African-American members of the House of Representatives. Websites were also created to provide young, progressive Americans with Gaza news with a pro-Israel spin. Among the objectives of the campaign was amplifying Israeli attacks on UNRWA staffers and driving a wedge between Palestinians and African-Americans to prevent solidarity between the two groups. "[2]
> His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable
His base and the people surrounding him have the habit of ostracizing anyone who doesn't fall in line behind him, rather than being guided by principle (Which is why Pence is no longer his VP pick, and why basically his whole cabinet is full of sycophants compared to last time).
Trump's whole shtick is to take whatever is happening, and spin it into "This was my whole plan all along", then take the credit for it. This is why you never see him give concrete policy proposals in interviews, and is also what will likely happen with the russia/ukraine war. Whatever happens is good, and was part of Trump's plan, and his base will fall in line or disappear politically.
Exactly. This war has really messed up the world and Israel for generations to come. Never mind the devastation in Gaza.
But the Palestinians cant keep living under occupation. Everyone should continue to exert pressure for a free Palestine or the cycle will continue. The fundamental goal of the current Israeli government is to never have a Palestinian state, which will always be a major barrier unless sanctions are introduced.
Trump was interesting.. Im sure we’ll find out one day what it was all about. But if he really was the catalyst in this I will take back my words and eat humble pie. Someone has suggested the ceasefire is just a show, so we watch carefully.
<< This war has really messed up the world and Israel for generations to come.
Possibly. There does seem to be an uptick in previously unvoicable sentiment that was quickly squashed anywhere it showed on social media. I will say this. My parents went out of their way not to discuss some political events with their children ( communism - different rules apply and kids are dumb ), but in 90s, when similar 'war' raged and newshead was convincingly telling me, who to root for, my father unusually said 'you may want to check how Israel came into existence.' For the longest time, I did not. October surprise was a reason to get some of the dust removed from those books. It is not a good look. One could argue it is worse than US colonization of Indian lands.
My understanding is that decades past when Israeli liberals tried being nice to Palestine and letting them self govern they were rewarded with more bombings and conflict. It isn’t a politically tenable position in Israel anymore to let Palestine (and Lebanon) “just be,” and that’s equally the fault of Palestinian behavior as it is Israel’s.
I am sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, but the truth of the matter is that Israel has a valid claim too and military superiority to back it. If Palestine is to self govern, it and the rest of the nations around it need to convince Israel that they won’t try to wipe Israel off the map (or, alternatively, to succeed at it, which I’m sure many Western protesters would celebrate). Until then Israel will just dominate them instead.
> Is this just his usual "appear unpredictable by all means" spiel or does he have a strategy there?
If you think a 78 year old alone is capable of such feats of planning, you have more faith in the elderly than most. Read any of his speeches that are off the cuff and you will see that Trump has incredibly poor working memory, vocabulary, and attention. This is to be expected from an elderly individual, but not from a great strategist. These are the results of large groups of people working towards goals, not heroic individual feats.
OK since no one else has said it yet, "according to a source familiar with the details"[1] (I know) Trump has basically told Netanyahu to agree to the ceasefire including the return of hostages. Then if they decide to break the ceasefire and go back to relentless bombings, Trump will still continue to support them.
So it could be a tactic to get Hamas to release whatever hostages are still alive, then get right back to the new status quo.
This actually makes perfect sense for Trump. He's only claimed to care about the Israeli hostages. I'm sure he feels great about taking credit for their return.
Sadly I suspect this will be the case… I don’t hold much hope on this whole thing actually ending… but I do have a glimmer of hope that they may have reached a tipping point due to one of the many slowly shifting parts of this tragedy… no idea what the tipping point is from the outside but it does kinda have the vibe of “maybe this is going to fall apart if they keep pushing”
Hamas broke the last ceasefire. Israel doesn’t need to do anything as it’s expected there will be a Hamas offshoot group who launches a rocket into Israeli civilian areas thus restarting the need for Israel to defend itself.
One not particularly obscure theory is that Netanyahu was prioritizing Trump coming to power over a peace/hostage deal and now that Trump has power, Netanyahu seeks to benefit from prioritizing the hostages. Trump is claiming credit for it and probably doesn't care about the timing.
Not obscure at all, as it wouldn't be the first time a hostage situation is used for a presidential campaign [1]:
> The timing of the release of the hostages gave rise to allegations that representatives of Reagan's presidential campaign had conspired with Iran to delay the release until after the 1980 United States presidential election to thwart Carter from pulling off an "October surprise".
Netanyahu was simply pushing his opportunity to do what Israel hardliners have wanted to do for as long as possible (basically aggressively lash out in every direction without consequences and red lines). It was always going to need to be wrapped up, even within Israel there was strong internal pressure. Waiting until is Trump is coming in gives Israel a free golden ticket with him by timing it right and Netanyahu's careers basically over after this anyway, so he has nothing to lose by doing it earlier, absent internal revolt.
Never mind that Hamas will STILL have hostages after the deal is done. That Gaza is ruled by an organization stating they’ll continue doing an Oct 7th again and again.
How are you proposing the deal could be made more fair?
Keep in mind:
Israel killed 100x more civilians than Palestine during this conflict, and more damage was done to Gaza than any European city during wwii. 90% of the population is displaced. 10% are casualties. Israel intentionally blew up all the civil infrastructure (hospitals, doctors, engineers) first.
There are > 17,000 children that have no adults to care for them any more. That’s 10 orphaned kids for every Israel civilian casualty in the middle of a famine with no support infrastructure.
Trump wanted the war to end, and I'm sure Netanyahu was doing his Netanyahu thing.
Posting that video was Trump's way of telling Netanyahu that he will burn him by turning him into public enemy #1 with his base. That's how he got him to agree.
Netanyahu destroyed his reputation within the Democratic base and it did not concern him in the slightest. Because Israel stopped truly needing the approval of the US a long time ago.
And so the idea that he is suddenly worried about what the Trump base thinks has no basis in fact. Especially when the Trump base is not 1-1 with the Republican base i.e. the majority of the Congress still supports Israel.
> I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
Because you weren't listening to Trump. Throughout all of his campaigns he's been pretty clear he doesn't want to be paying for other country's defense/military spending.
> ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire
There is no evidence of this.
Every single time Trump has blustered about doing something e.g. turning Canada into a 51st, buying Greenland the parties have been concerned but not particularly worried. Because he doesn't follow through.
So the idea that we should credit Trump for his words and ignore the months of diplomacy and pressure from not just the US but Middle Eastern countries is bizarre to me. Ceasefires are always far more complex and nuanced than they look from the outside.
The broad outlines of the deal as well as all the work in pushing together the various parties is from Brett McGurk and his team, and he deserves the lion's share of the credit. That being said, there's probably some contribution as to the timing of the US inauguration, and Trump giving the nod to Steve Witkoff throw support behind McGurk, though.
> I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
> Is this just his usual "appear unpredictable by all means" spiel or does he have a strategy there
He thinks past a certain point it looks bad to the median American and isn’t ideological enough to push it past that.
> I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
It's not odd, considering that most pro-Israel figures (and most Israelis themselves) are not pro-Netanyahu.
>I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd.
It doesn't seem odd at all. Trump just went up against the mainstream Israeli-American power structure and won. He was very open that he supports Israel, but not this war. He ran on a premise that he would end the war before he took office. Appointing hard-line pro-Israel people is par for the course. It shows he supports Israel, but it makes those people beholden to him. In one of his books Trump talks about how he would give people
he didn't like / wasn't sure about promotions. If they did a good job and impressed him great. If not he would fire them and felt that firing someone from a higher position was more meaningful and had a greater impact for the people below them.
Trump understands what American power is he doesn't really give the context that other world leaders are looking for, he just goes about it with the premise of comply, or we will make things difficult for you.
Trump basically tells Israel, you can do what you want, but you can't do it like this because it looks bad. The average person just doesn't like what they are seeing with regard to Palestine. Trump isn't ideological about Israel so he's not hellbent on the destruction of Palestine like so many. He gives the same attitude to most of our allies, in that you can be our friend, but you can't make us look bad.
> His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire
Only Nixon could go to China [1].
To the degree the Israel-Palestine war could have helped America, it already has. Hezbollah has given way to a power-sharing government in Lebanon. Syria, miraculously, is a wild card--with major implications for Russia and Iran. Hamas has been downgraded from a threat to a nuisance. And not only is Iran on its back foot, we also got a free PR campaign for the efficacy of American weapons and worthlessness of post-Soviet Russian air defences.
Realpolitikally speaking, any more war is an expensive distraction. (Potent for a media-time savvy guy.) I'm sure Netanyahu could find something new to bomb in Gaza. But it's not a bad time for him to consolidate gains, politically and geopolitically, and possibly re-aim Washington's eye towards Iran.
(On a human level, it does seem Trump gets moved by images of war deaths. Maybe the carnage actually touched him.)
> To the degree the Israel-Palestine war could have helped America, it already has
Idk, what we had to watch Israel do and fund with our own money may not have been worth all those achievements. Only time will tell... We made a lot of advancements in Iraq and Afghanistan too, and that was nowhere near as careless about human suffering as this latest flare up. And we lost all that progress extremely rapidly due to the hatred the local populace and neighboring countries had due to our actions. I think Israel (and us, since we are tied together) might face the same unforced error.
> To the degree the Israel-Palestine war could have helped America, it already has.
Fifty thousand people are dead, many of whom were underage, and most of the universities and hospitals in Gaza are destroyed. Like the Iraq war or Tianamen Square, this is something people are going to keep bringing up for decades.
Syria is arguably the only good outcome, and it's not clear whether that was anything to do with Israel/US action at all?
> I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
Trump just wanted a deal - he loves being the "deal guy". Frankly, I'm shocked he didn't push Bibi into waiting until after the inauguration. Guess he felt like it was close enough that he could still take credit for it.
> Frankly, I'm shocked he didn't push Bibi into waiting until after the inauguration
If you read between the lines it was clear Biden was also pushing hard to wrap it up before his term ends to add it to his legacy (that's how NYT spun it at least). But Trump also had his people negotiating there as well and enough of add a hard-line persuasive influence to force Bibi to show up in Doha last-minute on a weekend during Sabbath [1]. While Biden really didn't seem to have much influence there in the last yr.
But ultimately they both get to take credit.
The cease-fire ending will eventually need a conclusion during Trumps term as well.
> Netanyahu is a deeply racist genocidal maniac who cynically used this conflict to try and save his own political career.
What makes you think this causes Trump to think lesser of Netanyahu? Seems like the kind of person Trump fawns over as being "tough".
Oh, and like a sibling pointed out -- Trump wasn't mad at Netanyahu for being a racist, opportunistic genocidal maniac. He was mad that Netanyahu was the first to congratulate Biden on his election victory in 2020.
One of the major problems is that across the Arab world it is politically useful for internal politics for there not to be peace between Israel and Palestine. It is a very “good” issue for politicians/kings to have an enemy, a struggle for their peoples to be passionate about. Everything that’s being done by the Arab neighbor governments is calculated for their own political benefit. They don’t want peace or a solution because that would deprive them of something that keeps them in power.
So those who would be terrorists are funded and encouraged, the fight is promoted, and the Palestinian people are manipulated into greater belligerency instead of a peaceful equitable resolution.
Look I get that you're annoyed by the GP post's simplification but you are currently arguing that the women and children living in a hellscape deserve it. The typos in your post make it clear to me that there's a lot of emotion behind it, so I'd advise you to take it slow and be more measured.
"Social media showing people how incredibly biased traditional media is towards Israel"
I learned how incredibly biased social media is against Israel.
"Polls showing people now recognizing Israel are the bad guys and Hamas are the good guys"
The same Hamas that murdered over 200 young people at a concert on Oct 7 2023? And paraded the dead body of a woman like a hunting trophy. The one thing that Hamas is NOT is "the good guys". They are utterly amoral Islamic supremacists.
> And also that TRUMP turned out to be the lesser of the evils.
You’re talking about the guy who moved the US embassy into contested territory essentially justifying Israel’s expansion? Something no previous president would even consider because they knew it would result in an escalation in the region and set peace talks back even further? That’s the guy you think is looking out for Palestinians?
> people now recognizing Israel are the bad guys and Hamas are the good guys
Hamas kidnapped and tortured innocent civilians, and has help them in captivity for `~18 months, and you think they are the good guys? There are no good guys.
Tons of stories I've seen on CNN or BBC or CBC about this war had Muslim (edit: or Arab) authors and were very anti-Israel in bias. Traditional media is incredibly biased against Israel which is not surprising given its general left leaning. But I'm sure you've found some bubble that more out there.
Random examples of CNN Arab reporters on the topic:
This is what happens when there is an unchecked Affirmative Action program for zionists in many industries like tech and Media.
Microsoft employees get fired for calling for a ceasefire meanwhile their Israeli counterparts get to gloat about continued slaughter of children with a mere investigation, in Apple, they provide extra support for employees doing time for the IDF while Palestinian employees get fired and Muslim support slack channels get shut down.
Unfortunately, the Contrarian Club in the tech industry is yet to reckon with the pernicious AA program for zionists meanwhile bleating about the joke of meritocracy and crying about H1Bs.
Hamas’ main goal is killing every single Israeli. Israel defends themselves. Hamas are the good guys? Honestly this take being seriously considered is a truly horrible sign for dem electability. The vast majority of Americans see right through it.
To this day we still have no idea how many of those 1200 people were killed by Hamas and how many were killed by the IDF under the Hannibal Directive.
There likely are thousands upon thousands of hours of footage from October 7th from private/personal security cameras and also from the camera equipment on the attack helicopters and tanks.
Yet, despite all the footage that likely exists, a total of 46 minutes has been screened for the purpose of hasbara.
We could easily have an actual accounting of which of the 1200 were killed by Hamas and which were killed by the IDF if there was actual transparency and all the footage was released instead of selectively released to insinuate that 100% of the deaths were committed by Hamas.
Absent transparency, I'm inclined to place most of the 1200 deaths on IDF. There's more than enough footage of testimonials from IDF soldiers afterwards talking about how they engaged on October 7th to know for certain that they killed many of their own either due to the fog of war or due to the Hannibal Directive.
Personally, I would not be surprised if more than half of the 1200 were killed by the IDF given the ratio between how much footage has been shown relative to how much footage exists.
Absent transparency, the only fair thing to due is assume an intent to maximally deceive the public about what actually happened on October 7th.
In many ways, this is comparable to how the United States was misled about January 6th, 2021. A lot of the footage released in March 2023 contradicted much of the narrative that was spun in the weeks following Jan 6th, 2021. Even now, a lot of the footage still has yet to be released and we still have no idea how many undercover agents and other agent provocateurs were in the crowd that day.
> it's all Israel's fault, after the 1200 people slaughtered on October 7
This did not start on oct 7th. I too was ignorant about the situation in palestine but its obvious after just a bit of research that israel isn't a good faith actor here.
> And never mind that Israel still has a fundamentalist, authoritarian government that is actively at work undermining democratic structures and civil rights even inside the state
And never mind that Hamas is still the same old non compromising, cut throat, maximalist and some would say genocidal terrorist organization it has always been. You forgot to mention that. The PLO is only slightly better.
Trump needed some way to counter the "Zion Don" counter-programming that 4chan tried and failed to get into the hearts of the anti-zionists that have become the norm among Zoomers. That's why he acts like this.
> Never mind that Gaza is still in ruins, the west bank is still being annexed, Israel still has the dual role of "all authority, no obligations" over the Palestinians, while making it pretty clear they have no vision for them at all, apart from "maybe they just vanish into thin air tomorrow".
Israel doesn't want to annex Yehuda and Shomron (the place you call West Bank). This is a complete misunderstanding of the people in the West about Israeli politics. Israel wants to have nothing to do with Arab population. Never wanted it, and doesn't see it wanting it in the future. It's completely antithetical to what the absolute majority of Israeli population (and the politicians who represent it) want.
The reason why Israel holds that territory is that after one of the wars, Israel tried to use it as a bargaining chip to convince its Arab neighbors to recognize Israel as a country and to sign a peace treaty, once the territory is returned (so-called "land for peace" series of UN treaties). But, the Arab neighbors outsmarted Israel by abandoning their people in occupied territories, and, essentially, handing Israel an armed grenade that it now has no idea what to do with.
With respect to this problem, Israel has different approaches to its solution, that range from the "transfer" (the idea that Israel will force / subsidize the Arab population to migrate out of the occupied territories, this is the extreme right-wing position, assassinated "Gandhi" was one of the major proponents of it.) to the two-state solution on the far left, where Israel makes territorial concessions, esp. in Jerusalem and around.
But there's no political force that wants annexation (including the population), and nobody would realistically dare to vanquish / force to move the whole population of Gaza / Yehuda and Shomron. Of course, you could probably find some oddball idiot declaring "death to all Arabs" or similar, but they don't hold any real political power. But even these people wouldn't want annexation if it meant they have to put up with the people from annexed territories.
In the interests of comprehensiveness, the 'other bunch' have AIPAC, the Shomrim, and will get legislation passed enshrining Orwellian Newspeak. Anti-Zionism is now categorised as Anti-Semitism in American discourse. Insanity.
Hamas was offered a ceasefire under exactly the same terms in May, and refused it. Since then:
* Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Hamas political wing, was killed in Tehran
* Yahyah Sinwar, the leader of the Al-Qassam Brigades, was killed in Gaza
* Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanese Hezbollah, was killed in Beirut
* Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah's successor, was killed a week later
* Large swathes of Hezbollah's command and control were wiped out in the pager attack
* Bashar al-Assad, Iran's most important military client, fled Syria
The Al-Qassam Brigades are shattered. Mohammad Sinwar, its current leader, is reported by ISW not to have communications with most of its new recruits, who are scavenging improvised weapons from unexploded ordinance. Iran's "Axis of Resistance" lies in tatters, their foreign/military strategy, of which Hamas was a key component, now seems totally repudiated. Hamas has lost most of its remaining infrastructure, supply chains, and support.
They should have taken the deal when it was first offered.
Someone briefly left a comment here saying this summary was inaccurate, because of news reporting about Hamas having accepted ceasefire terms in May. I understand the confusion.
At the end of April (iirc), Israel agreed to a set of terms; Qatar and Egypt then gave Hamas a different set of terms, which Israel hadn't agreed to. Note that stories about Hamas "accepting" a ceasefire date from May 6th. The terms today are the same as those of May 27th.
If it helps, it seems like it wouldn't be worth arguing, and easy to stipulate, that Hamas had accepted ceasefire terms prior to May 27th. You could say that the Qatar switcheroo never happened, and it was Israel being intransigent up to that point. That's not the reporting I read, but fine, ok. The only point my comment makes is that the terms they received on May 27th were ultimately the ones they ended up accepting. Given that: they should have accepted on May 27th.
I've read a lot of reporting over that time period and all of it said Hamas was holding out for a final agreement that would include a permanent cessation of hostilities, while Netanyahu (who, to be clear, I believe to be a war criminal) is publicly on the record saying he would sign a temporary deal that exchanged hostages for prisoners.
If you can cite a source clearly stating Hamas accepted these terms, the May 27/today terms, I'd like to read it. Thanks in advance!
Later
I want to be clear: I'm not saying Hamas didn't offer alternate terms, many many times, over the last year. But you can't "take" a deal your counterparty refuses. What's important about the May 27 terms is that Hamas was forced to accept them anyways. As a descriptive statement, based on the facts of what happened: they should have taken that deal.
>Hamas was offered a ceasefire under exactly the same terms in May, and refused it.
This is complete opposite of actual facts which is often the case with Israeli apologia. Hamas wanted a permanent ceasefire and full withdrawal from Gaza. Israel wants a temporary ceasefire - which if one comprehends english - is not actually a ceasefire at all. Quoting Netanyahu (in June) : “Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel,” which translates to "Return the hostages and we will kill you all at a time of our choosing". Even then Netanyahu never had any intention of pursuing a ceasefire deal to completion at the time because his cabinet members publicly threatened to withdraw from his coalition and collapse the government which would likely lead to Netanyahu's impending trial and incarceration.
Whatever you think of the terms Hamas just accepted, they were offered them on May 27, and they should have taken them then, because the intervening months have been just awful for them.
You can think those terms are dreadfully unfair; that's fine, that has nothing to do with the argument I made.
> They should have taken the deal when it was first offered
It is a foregone conclusion that (the despots in charge of) Hamas aren't operating on the same trade-offs as you & I. Despite the toll, they'll consider it a victory if the IDF withdraws from all its positions.
Not taking the deal has indeed caused more mayhem, but on the flipside, Likud+ are being dragged through the mud, and for some, they were made to look every bit the "terrorists" they seem to hate with a vengeance.
Why are you using scare quotes for "terrorists"? Do you dispute that Hamas are terrorists?
Do you think that the Hamas' attacks aimed at civilians, such as Oct 7th, or indiscriminate launching of missiles it performed for decades, are not terror attacks?
There was a lot of contradictory reporting about negotiations and which said had accepted/rejected the deal. But one thing I think is undisputed is that Israel signed because they were pressured to, and is generally not happy with the deal. At least that's what they're saying publicly. Because of that I find it more credible that they were the bigger impediment to getting a deal done.
That's kind of how deals work. You take a compromise because of the constraints you are under. Hamas took the deal because they are feeling the pressure, Israel did too.
Obviously if everything went unambigiously right for Israel, hamas would be offering an unconditional surrender not a ceasefire. If everything went well for Hamas they would be negotiating a very different deal.
I think that's a hopeless discussion to have on HN, but I think it's possible to have a clear-eyed and objective take on what Hamas should have done back in May, because we can see what happened. If the ceasefire terms had been substantially different today, the analysis would be complicated; they aren't, so it's pretty simple.
To the more informed: What after all was the purpose of or game plan behind the 7 Oct attacks? Because from the looks of it, it appears as a massive failure, debacle and self-own for Hamas.
Hamas had previously exchanged very few hostages for major Israeli concessions; they seem to have believed that taking more hostages would yield an even better deal. Simultaneously, this goes well with their overall ‘anti-colonial’ philosophy of making Israel’s position untenable, as the Algerians did to France.
I suppose if we are to digress to the land of "shoulds", Israel should not have decided to delete tens of thousands of Gazan children in the interim.
Even if we grant that Israel offered this ceasefire deal in good faith in May, a bungled deal by Qatar/Egypt/Hamas does nothing to justify the ethnic cleansing they conducted in 2024.
Unrelated to your central point but, I suspect these types of things never really die? Where philosophy (be it social, religious or otherwise) is the driver. Al Qaeda is back on the rise in a meaningful way and it's been how long? Do we have examples from history where terrorist groups like Hamas or Al Qaeda actually fully died? Even in Japan Aum Shinrikyo converted to Aleph and I think(?) is still running. I really do pray we can one day come to a peaceful and harmonious understanding of each other, regardless of our differing perspectives, it often makes me quite sad.
Actually all these deaths are just transitory feel goods for the Israeli side. By killing more civilians than ever before, Hamas is able to recruit the same (maybe more) fighters back. They will have different leaders with different names, but these fighters who have had innocent family killed and now want revenge will be blowing themselves up at some point in the next decade or 2 and Israel is equally or less safe as a result.
Pager attack is a notable exception here, that was actually targeted badassery.
This completely misapprehends the conflict. Hamas wasn't simply a terrorist organization; it was a organized, well-armed military adversary, supported by other large irregular armed forces in the region as well as by Iran, with extensive infrastructure and supply chains, and a command and control structure with decades of experience and training. Netanyahu bears significant responsibility for allowing them to develop those capabilities! He positioned them against the PA to derail the two-state outcome.
Whatever else Hamas is now, whatever improvised explosives they blow up in Tel Aviv or Haifa or Jerusalem, they are as a military force with a complex and carefully designed order of battle done, utterly broken. WSJ reports Al-Qassam isn't even communicating with the Hamas political branch. Of course they're going to recruit terrorists. There's no such thing as stopping that kind of activity.
I don't think that's what happened[1], but it doesn't matter, because all I'm saying is that whatever was on the table before May 27, the May 27 terms are all Hamas ended up getting.
I agree that most reporting, and most statements from US officials, put the blame squarely on Hamas for not having accepted a deal earlier.
But there is also at least some sense, definitely reported on in Israel, that this time Israel was far more serious about getting a deal done - ergo, in the past rounds of negotiations Israel was not pursuing a deal as seriously.
In particular, Ben Gvir (a right-wing extremist Israeli politician) a couple of days ago took credit for causing the previous ceasefire deals to not happen. This has been talked about a bunch in Israel.
I think you're right in thinking of it as Hamas should've called Israel's bluff and had a deal sooner, but let's also be realistic in understanding that they might've correctly seen Israel as not really trying to get a deal.
While that's indeed true that all these people were monsters, for the record this deal wasn't only rejected by Hama's but by Netanyahu himself as well. The key difference here is that Trump put pressure on him when Bidden always refused to do so.
So I suppose it's just back to the status quo? What has really changed that will make a difference in 2-3 years from now? Israel has sowed a whole fresh generation of "I will sacrifice everything to wipe Israel" Palestinian youth.
The entirety of Hamas leadership is gone, Hamas will most likely not going to have control in Gaza (still being debated which mechanism will govern, this is part of the deal), the crossing to Egypt will be handled by foreign countries which will prevent weapon smuggling. And in the broader spectrum, hizballah is not more, Assad is no more, all of Iran’s proxies can no longer support Hamas’ ambitions which basically means the “mokawamma” is dead.
So in short, the entire Middle East have changed.
You still have millions of people in Gaza and Lebanon who got bombed by Israel. Whether it's the existing groups or new groups going forward, the grievances are still there and bigger than ever. Let's wait a few before we declare anything changed.
> What has really changed that will make a difference in 2-3 years from now?
The whole Iranian anti Israel coalition has been badly beaten!
Hezbollah barely exists anymore. The Assad regime is toppled. Iran itself has learned that Israel can attack them at will. The Houthis are still active, but too far away to do real damage.
Hamas itself still exists, but in a deeply degraded form. Their leaders are dead. Their armed forces have taken huge losses. Their amazing tunnel network is destroyed.
Israel will never again be invaded by surprise.
Hamas will probably start shooting rockets into Israel again, and kill the occasional civilian, but Israel is used to that and can deal with it.
Of any of Israel's wars in recent history none has decimated their regional enemies as much as this. Every way you cut it they are in a much more secure position militarily. Iran (aka Lebanon/Syria) losing so badly is more important than Hamas surviving because that was the cludgle that threatened them from punishing Gaza too harshly (for ex: America pushed Israel very hard not to provoke Lebanon after Oct 7 and we saw how that turned out).
Any future Hamas actions will inherently be less secure as their external help is now crippled.
Ignoring that Hamas is still in power, the best outcome of this war is destruction of Hizbollah. That was a boogie man that everyone was afraid. Of course it took decades of preparation but the outcome is magical. It's hard to believe that only 1 year ago IDF was afraid to touch a tent that Hizbollah setup right on the border and now it freely bombs them without any response.
Israel was in an extremely secure position on October 6th. They blew it by getting soft on border security, a mistake they won’t make again. There was absolutely zero reason a single hamas fighter should’ve been able to escape Gaza.
Israel is weaker politically and internationally than it has ever been, dramatically so. It can only have military superiority as long as western nations are supplying it with weapons and political cover.
I don't think this is a symmetrical situation. Life in Israel is quite comfortable. Young people have hopes and dreams beyond sacrificing themselves in an eternal war. Palestinians in Gaza have an extremely bleak outlook on the future and effectively no hope that anything meaningful will change in their lifetime, and they feel collectively humiliated by decades of occupation. Sacrificing "everything" is a lot easier when everything looks a lot like nothing.
Honest question, but why haven't there been "I will sacrifice everything to wipe [country]" generations sowing havoc on neighbors after Dresden, Nagasaki, Nanjing or others?
Dresden and Nagasaki, we managed to convince them they were at fault to some degree.
Nanjing, well, Chinese sentiment is still very anti-Japan because of that and all the other atrocities. And proportionally to size/population, the destruction visited on Gaza in the past year and a quarter goes far beyond what Japan did in China.
I believe the reason was that the Nazis were forced to repent due to the Allied occupation. They also had to pay billions in reparations to Jews affected by the Holocaust. If that hadn't happened and the NSDAP had been allowed to continue to dominate German politics, I bet millions of Jews who lost their loved ones in the Holocaust would seek revenge on the Germans. Similarly, if the Zionist regime were toppled and replaced with one that treated Palestinians as humans, rather than as animals, feelings of deep hatred would dissipate.
Oh because the a lot of the apparatchiks of the Nazi and Imperial Japanese regimes were absorbed into the western countries (operation paperclip, unit 731 amnesties, ratlines => colonia dignidad, jakarta method masterminded by Nazis mindset in the CIA) and the remaining nazis were propped up by the allies in west germany to continue their reign after all the dust was settled after which they eventually and successfully absorbed east germany. Note; Germany was never denazified.
Ok now a double honest question, why do zionists have unlimited justifications for committing a holocaust over the last 15 months+? And how many oceans of Palestinian children's blood does it take to wash away German guilt?
Realistically, West Bank will be gone (totally settled, all Palestinians removed) in 15 years. Gaza will further be ghettoized and, pessimistically, will be basically gone in 50 years or so.
That's indeed the current trajectory, but then what exactly will happen with the Palestinian population in that scenario? All 5+ million crammed into Gaza? Driven into Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan by force? (which are already refusing to take them today, by threat of military action) What else?
That's not realistic at all. Israel has no apparent plans to settle the major Palestinian population centers in the West Bank like Nablus, Ramallah etc. and evict Palestinians from there.
Indeed, life will probably continue getting worse for West Bank Palestinians under the Israeli apartheid regime, but there's no reason to believe they'll be literally exterminated.
The problem is unsolvable. You have two sets of people with sets of claims on the same land. Both sides have an unshakable resolve that they are in the right and nothing is going to change that.
~20k civilians dead in this war (started by the Palestinians, all civilians were collateral damage thanks to Palestinian militants using civilians as shields) vs 12 million killed in Nazi camps. Maybe you shouldn't diminish far greater horrors in order to attack Israel.
How does this square with the Palestinians inside Israel with citizenship having the same rights as Jewish Israeli ones? Execution issues and favoritism of the ethnostate majority aside.
Assad fell as a result of Israeli actions. Leadership of the entire axis of resistance is dead. Syria, Lebanon, and the West Bank learned what the price will be for “FAFO”. Gazan citizens have started to have a negative sentiment in Hamas, but do not express it given they and their families will be killed
Don't think I'm taking sides. I'm trying to simply look at it from a neutral bird point of view.
I think this cease fire somehow legitimises, to the public eye, Netanyahu's strategy of intense attack.
It gives the message of "we won't stop until we get the hostages back" and gives the world a reminder of what this is all about, at least according to what he claims.
I still remember the other time when rumor spread there was a ceasefire. Gaza streets were celebrating.
Bibi did not force the Palestinians into a ceasefire. He was the bottleneck behind it. Trump effectively threatened no more weapons. Which is why we have a ceasefire.
Yes, eventually.
I have tears in my eyes. Enduring more than a year with a preposterous populist government and endless deaths, this nightmare is finally over.
This was genocide, supported and endorsed by the US.
The moral standing of the US and Europe has, in the eyes of the rest of the nonaligned world, plunged to new depths because of this and that has been a massive, MASSIVE help to Putin and China.
IDF 100% should cease to exist as well. It's long overdue. I don't know how an organization can officially be labelled as genocidal and be allowed to continue functioning as they do
I don't mean to be pessimistic, but how sure are we its over? They're still bombing as we speak - and yea, I know the cease-fire doesn't come into effect sunday, but doesn't that signal something? Many times Israel has said something in these scenarios they've changed their minds. Cease-fire is not "peace," either. I think for some unfortunate people that survived this, the nightmare may just be beginning. I truly hope I am wrong. We live in dark times.
Unfortunately in the Middle East we aren’t used to peace, when I say the end of the killings I mean the scale of the killings will plummet, unfortunately this region will not see peace yet.
This is by far too much for Netanyahu to backtrack, the next president of the USA already made promises that the deal is sealed, and Netanyahu spent the last 15 months telling his base that this kind of deal is not worth it, to go all of this way angering his base and putting his coalition in that risk for nothing will be very odd for me even for Netanyahu
I recommend engaging in this thread with the caveat that HN is obviously a technology community, and Israel has one of the world's most engaged technology communities.
That's the normal during peace periods, no? Hamas does what hamas does, IDF does what IDF does. Unless there's a permanent solution this conflict will keep getting active. Looking at the state of affairs, there will to be no end to occupation and apartheid from Israel. Feeble PA will not gain more political capital all of a sudden. Hamas made themselves a pariah with October 7 attacks. All parties will race to the bottom it seems. Palestinians and Israelis will keep suffering.
“Hamas has reneged on parts of the agreement reached with the mediators and Israel in an effort to extort last-minute concessions,” [Netanyahu’s] Office said. The statement said that the cabinet will not convene until Hamas has accepted all the terms of the agreement.”
Israel bombing Gaza after the ceasefire deal. At least 81 people were killed and at least 188 people were injured. I don't know if those 81 deaths includes the 45 deaths Israel killed from another bombing shortly after the ceasefire was announced.
On Israel's side, Israel claimed Hamas has reneged on parts of the agreement. I can't find any specifics.
Why did it take for the incoming arrival of a new US president (Trump) and for the existing president (Biden) to LOSE to get this ceasefire deal to happen when the first proposal was rejected? [0]
Of course it "needs to be take longer" since lots of money was made by government contractors in this war and why would it need to end earlier if Biden was throwing money on Israel instead of reaching a ceasefire deal much earlier with the first deal.
All would have been avoid had it not been for Biden's weak leadership which was shown on display in-front of the world for the last 4 years.
> We don't have a new US President until next week.
You do realize that this war happened under this existing president and since November, Trump will be the "new US President"? Both Hamas and Israel both also knew this.
Even with this existing president (Biden), only until he lost the election this deal was reached and it started under his term and he prolonged to fund and waste money on Israel in this war even when the first ceasefire deal was rejected with an excessive amount of lives lost.
So why wasn't this stopped earlier with the first deal? Why did Biden (the existing president) wait until the very end to reach a deal when the first was rejected?
Can you not answer the above instead of dodging the question(s)?
I credit Trump's pressure on Hamas - Hamas eventually softened a lot of their positions because they realized they had no choice.
And I wish Biden had done a better job of supporting Israel, this war could have ended a lot sooner if Hamas had realized that the entire world was pressuring them to surrender. Instead the message got diluted with support for Palestinians, which Hamas interpreted as support for themselves.
Did you hear a single call by any country for Hamas to surrender? I didn't.
Edit: I got a very quick -4 mod on this, I assume because people don't like to realize Trump is doing more for both Israel and the Palestinians than Biden, and the Democrats lost the election partly because of their lack of support for Israel.
Except for the Sec of State no other article is calling for a surrender.
The first one condemns the attacks two days after. The second one is "Humanitarian cease-fire", and condemning Hamas for attacks - Not a call to surrender. The third one is sanctions.
I'm not seeing the call to surrender in your links. I'm seeing sanctions. I think parent is asking for explicit calls that Hamas surrenders (i.e. lays down their arms and returns the hostages). Not a ceasefire, a surrender.
The first two links are just weak platitudes. The 3rd link is a year old and the sanctions never happened. The last one is just Blinken talking, not a serious demand.
* Allow Israel to patrol the Philadelphi corridor.
* Allow Israel troops to remain in a buffer zone
* Provided an actual list of hostages which they refused originally
* Agreed to a temporary ceasefire with hopes of negotiated a permanent one (they wanted the whole thing in one shot).
Israel on the other hand changed nothing except possible the specifics of who would be released (Israel will releases murderers, which earlier they did not want to do).
Trump started posting Jeffrey D Sachs videos on Truth Social and the chosen people got Hamas (which the chosen people also largely control, by the way) to accept the deal.
> And I wish Biden had done a better job of supporting Israel
What a weird take. Without Biden's support of Israel this genocide would not have been possible. How do you mean it should have supported Israel more? Allow these psychopats to nuke Gaza?
What genocide? Since when is there a genocide? Do you mean when Hamas tried to genocide Jews?
And you think Hamas wanted to nuke Gaza? Do you mean Hamas wanted all this destruction of their country? What did they gain from that?
Biden should have told Hamas to surrender, he should have told Palestinians that their Hamas leadership is leading them to death and destruction, and if the Palestinians don't stop the US will get involved. Which is what Trump did, and now there's a ceasefire.
Hamas feeds off of Palestinians support, believing it's for them. They need to know that everyone wants them dead and destroyed. But that didn't happen till Trump. Biden was weak, and did very little helpful.
Hamas has been considerably weakened. Their arsenal of rockets and weapons is depleted. At the beginning of the war thousands of rockets were being shot into Israel and now there are very few and the ones that are are quite crude.
Hezbollah entered the war immediately and said the only way they would exit is if Hamas exists. Israel retaliated, killed their leader, decimated their forces, and negotiated a ceasefire that got Hezbollah to back off on their original terms. Lebanon just elected an anti-Hezbollah President.
During all of this, Assad was deposed. Israel's main adversary is Iran. They are the ones who fund and supply Hamas and Hezbollah, and were the key ally of Assad. They attacked Israel multiple times during the war and Israel responded in kind, the assesments seem to be that Israel's responses were quite strong.
So prior to October 7, Iran had strong proxies and allies all over the region. They are now either in shambles or deposed.
The goal of the war for Israel is to prevent another October 7th style attack from occuring. I'd say they have made significant steps towards accomplishing that from a military perspective.
Israel has likely also created multiple generations of anger and hate against themselves. They may have reduced the likelihood of another Oct 7 in the near term, but 50 years is not something I would count on
The right way to fight an independence movement is to either do so from within/in a more targeted fashion, or barring that, meet their demands in some shape or form. Escalating the violence to the point where you’re destroying and displacing a people might settle things down in the short term, but the movement will not die, and will more than likely grow.
Not only is Hamas weakened, Hamas' and Iran's supporter (China, Russia) has been severely weakened compared to the start of the conflict. Russia is in a stalemate in the Ukraine invasion, and has lost significant economic and military resources since. Russia also lost significant influence in Middle East, with the Assad regime fall. China is a severe economic decline. Also, China distanced itself from Iran, most likely due to wanting to not get sanctioned by US and Europe. https://thediplomat.com/2024/11/china-is-recalculating-its-m....
And we've yet to see whether this is a good thing.
Gaddafi was seen as one of the most oppressive figures in the world during his lifetime. A few countries made it their goal to take him down and liberate the people of Libya.
Gaddafi was killed, Libya was free, and the media celebrated. Just like with Syria, media coverage was down to basically zero about a month after that happened and everyone was left thinking it was a job well done. Turns out Libya has been worse than it ever was under Gaddafi. Having an oppressive albeit relatively secular leader who maintained a stable hold on the country turned out to be better than an oppressive non-secular mess.
Good points there. Still not sure how much the ouster of Assad was connected with the war (though no doubt that the weakening of Hezbollah must have contributed a lot to it) but it definitely changed the playing field.
> Israel's main adversary is Iran. They are the ones who fund and supply Hamas
Well, Israel started and has been funding Hamas (I'm assuming, but who knows, that it stopped with this war) since the PLO/Arafat days to the tune of (at times tens of) millions a month.
The monsters are still there and already planning their next attempt in genocide. While the hostages coming back is a welcome news, none of war objectives were achieved. All the sacrifices were pointless if Israel exits Gaza and leaves Hamas in control (weakened is but still in control).
Netanyahu again showed that he is a coward and easily pressured and has a pathological fear of a conflict.
With thousands of monsters being released back into Gaza I fear the next 7 October will be worse.
By conservative estimates (see the 2024 Khatlib paper in the Lancet), roughly 7--9% of the population of Gaza will perish as a result of the actions of Israel on the strip. Many more will flee. According to UN, clearing the rubble in Gaza will take 15 years. That's just clearing the rubble, not rebuilding the damaged buildings, which is about 66% of the total.
There are some clear indications that the intention of the Israeli government is to destroy in whole, or in part, the Palestinian people, for example by killing members of the group, or inflicting upon it conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of the group.
There's a wealth of quotes from high ranking officials, going all the way up to the Knesset, stating almost exactly that. One quote I think of from time to time is "Erase them, their families, mothers and children." given in a motivational speech directed at the IDF.
Given that this is their intention (and I have every reason to believe it is), I'd say that this has been a pretty successful affair for Israel. Sure, Jews worldwide (including Israel) are much less safe now than they were two years ago, but the Israeli government does not give me the impression that this is at all their goal.
This makes no sense to me. If 8% (171,000 people) of Gaza were to perish, that would leave Gaza with the population it had in 2020. The ceasefire reportedly will have Israel pulling out from Gaza fully and a massive influx of humanitarian aid is expected to enter Gaza. If the ceasefire goes through, the death rate will drop greatly and the population will begin to grow again.
As horrible as the destruction has been, this is nowhere close to eliminating the people of Gaza. If genocide was a goal of any of the Israeli leadership, they abjectly failed.
Israel is definitely more secure, because of the on front confrontation with Iran and its proxies.
1. Hezbollah suffered heavy blows and lost significant political and military power in Lebanon. Didn’t retaliate nearly as heavy as feared.
2. For the first time Israel struck with its military directly in Iran and showed real abilities by destroying most of Iran’s air defenses.
3. As a result of the two points above and other reasons, there was significant shift of powers in Syria which led to Assad regime collapse (significant amount of supplies to Iran’s main proxy Hezbollah went through Syria), but the affect of the regime change in Syria is yet to be determined.
There is an argument to be made that Iran and Hezbollah have been degraded, which makes the entire region safer. I'm not going to claim this, as I'm no expert, but there is a an argument to be made.
For the Gazans, the next months and years will be more determinative. Will they get the support and aid they need to rebuild and keep terrorist organizations from running their country? (They should have their own country instead of being effectively an open air prison)
Gaza has been its own country / Palestinian State since 2006 and they have been recipients of foreign aid for many years, which is how they fund these attacks.
That (security) was never Hamas' intention; they were worried about being forgotten, after Israel and KSA were close to normalizing relations, and now they've managed to gunk up the gears of any peace process, at the cost of 40,000 Gazan lives. So... a victory for Hamas? They've never been interested in peace anyways.
Israeli's are (not that they think it was worth it), Gazan's are not. This war severely weakened Iran, Iran's proxies (Lebanon/Hezbollah, and Syria) and also interestingly Russia.
Gazan's now have a ruined country with exactly nothing to show for it.
Depending on how you interpret it, this war was actually a good thing for Lebanon (they have a government for the first time in years), and Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster.
[Reposting a comment from ChocolateGod that was flagged and made dead despite being a legitimate good faith question]
> Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster.
Not saying Assad wasn't a sadistic monster, but do you really think an ISIS-related group running the state is going to be any better?
Can you concretely suggest what each side should have done at some point in time, to avoid being where we are now? I feel like you're making a rhetorical statement that's hard to map to specific actions.
Oh please. Israelis could have voted in a different party/leader that would have taken another path. West Bank settlement expansions could have been halted and reversed (to a sensible degree of course). These are bread and butter suggestions that everyone who thinks honestly about this conflict sees clearly.
There are of course many more suggestions I didn't state. To pretend that there was just no way to avoid this is shameful.
Israel has a bunch of land that is politically and practically simpler to annex, than before. Israel is more secure by far, knowing that the US will continue to fund them even in the face of being convicted of humanitarian crimes.
Sooo, now we can get the process of extracting Netanyahu and his gang out of Israel rolling and handing him over to the international criminal court ... right?
Hamas just changed the terms of the deal, demanding the release of hardened terrorists. The deal will now likely fall apart. They are a terrorist organization, and behave as such. This “deal” is just another avenue to wage psychological warfare, in their view. The war in Gaza will likely continue.
> Trump's Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff was in Qatar along with White House envoys for the talks, and a senior Biden administration official said Witkoff's presence was critical to reaching a deal after 96 hours of intense negotiations.
Sure, because the new guy is famous for not honoring any agreements so it’s critical to have his envoy around to ensure that he isn’t going to do the same to this one.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. *If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.*
It is news because several newspapers credit the achievement to Trump and his envoy Witkoff. Ha'aretz has more on this, but it's paywalled so here is another one:
I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but multiple sources are agreeing on the fact that Trump’s team had a role to play in this. But I guess this upsets the “vote blue no matter who” crowd.
> Negotiations on implementing the second phase of the deal will begin by the 16th day of phase one, and this stage was expected to include the release of all remaining hostages, a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
Am I missing something or did they really only agree to _just_ a ceasefire?
You're not missing anything, this is a ceasefire like the first one, Israel will demand the rest of the Hostages at the end of it, Hamas will refuse, and the fighting will resume after lots of finger-pointing about whose fault it is.
Hamas did not lose any friends the last few times they reneged. I think both sides agree this peace will just last until Hamas can rearm, but I just think both sides agree that's as good a deal as either is getting.
The headline reports the net result, however the real story here is Trump's man Steven Witkoff laying down the rules of this particular game to the Israelis.
I have never seen so many downvoted comments that aren’t dead in a thread before. If anyone had examples of other threads of this ilk I’d be curious to see them.
I’m completely ignorant as to the public sentiment on this topic, no social media besides this site.
A system that sides with the majority is not very good at protecting the voices of a minority.
Given the sheer global size of one group vs the other tiny ethnical minority it’s no surprise who wins in a count of opinion votes. That applies in the UN, and it applies here. And is ironically the reason the ethnic minority must have self determination.
honestly, one thing I like about this conflict is that euphamistic comments like this don't get you banned anymore.
the ostracizing has been diluted so much that its become even counterproductive. everyone can laugh about something as benign as that, as the real frictions have been laid bare for all to see.
Many people believe they need to add support to their cause at the expense of accuracy, so instead of elaborating or explaining why they just try to drown out discourse that doesnt automatically help them
But fortunately there is no need to debate your beliefs anymore, just go bet on them in the prediction markets
You get paid for being more correct that someone else, geopolitics is greater than sentiment
I suggest looking up the dictionary definitions of the words "war" and "genocide" and seriously considering which of the two is more appropriate for this situation.
Unlikely, unless one of the combatants has a major economic collapse. Which, I mean, pulling support from Ukraine would do it, but personally I don't consider that an acceptable outcome.
Ukraine won't end until terms can be achieved that allow bankers and Western investors to buy up all the "distressed assets" in the Ukraine for pennies on the dollar just like the oligarchs bought up all of the major industries following the collapse of the USSR.
If you've never seen it, these videos from a banking conference in 2023 are "enlightening":
Mitch McConnell's comments about Ukraine and it's natural resources also support this plan. If assets become to expensive to buy, just cause them to be distressed so you can buy them cheaply.
This is essentially how Turkiye continues to describe the Armenian Genocide to this day. "A) there was a war going on, people sometimes die in wars whoops it's tragic" and "B) the situation is very complex and nuanced and any narrative but our chosen one is too simplistic". It sounds pretty familiar doesn't it?
Erdogan is a war criminal too. And I’m sure the ones before him were not much more enlightened about this issue. I wonder what Ataturk thought about the Armenian genocide. I will google that to get educated on what he thought because he is about the only leader in Turkey’s history including Ottoman history that deserves respect.
Oh yeah, the first "genocide" where the genocided population somehow increased in size instead of decreasing, and where the genocider tries to minimize the number of deaths instead of trying to maximize it.
That's one of the most stupid things I've ever read. An actual genocide is the Holocaust, or Hamas attack on Oct 7th, where they actually tried to kill as many Jews as possible.
Look, you may fool peoe with your “all Palestinians are terrorists” rhetoric in zionist circles, but I would hope that most other people would be able to see through the propaganda.
Israel has imprisoned people in “administrative detention” with no legal recourse for decades, for all kinds of bullshit reasons. If my home was being taken by settlers, which happens in the West Bank on the daily, I would do more than just throw stones. And it would land me in jail as a “terrorist”.
So you're saying that palestinians are not terrorists, but if you were palestinian, you would become one. That's certainly a way to make a point, I guess.
I agree. In terms of objectives achieved the only one was the release and return of Israeli civilian hostages and even that is still mostly hypothetical, otherwise Israel failed to eliminate Hamas and will be withdrawing from Gaza which Netanyahu had declared would be annexed.
Hamas won the war even if they lost the battle. They still exist to fight another day (and judging from history they absolutely will), at the cost of countless Palestinian civvies. Israel lost the war even if they won the battle, at the cost of significant Israeli lives and reputation.
For most of us outsiders looking on, the moral to take away is this: Don't wage wars, everyone loses. Don't. Wage. Fucking. Wars. If a war must be fought, whether as the aggressor or defender or intervener, realize that everyone involved is fucking retarded and then fight all-or-nothing to end it swiftly with decisive achievements before anyone can realize what happened.
That's not true. Hamas finally agreed to let Israel monitor the Philadelphi corridor and to keep a buffer zone.
Hamas also finally released an actual list with names of who they would release.
Those were the changes the made the deal. Israel did not change their position.
If you think you are right, then tell me: What did Hamas want that they didn't get before, than now because of Trump Israel agreed to? There's not a single thing, but I'll let you have a chance to find something.
As a dev, I hate jargon to dress up trivial products or when distressing things are watered down. Usually I keep my feelings to myself but in this case, allowing a genocide to be watered down would make me complicit.
P.S. I understand this will be downvoted. But HN karma is a small price to pay to call out the softening of a literal genocide. Imagine standing by when someone calls Germany’s genocide “punishments”.
I’m confused by this question, is 45,000 too little for you? To label genocide you need a large number of of deaths with the intent of destroying a people’s identity.
> What’s the civilian/military ratio ?
If you’re able to find this number, you’re likely able to find that depending on whom you ask the percentage of militants ranges from 10-40%.
And this says nothing about the millions displaced, the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure and the policies to starve the population. Given the vast amount of attention given to this topic and the information around it, you need to be make a conscious effort to stay ignorant of it. And to be wilfully ignorant of a genocide is to be complicit in it.
I'm not at all surprised, they have form. Even now, they are still breaking the ceasefire in Lebanon too (they broke it within hours, of course) - and why wouldn't they, when the Israeli-controlled Lebanese army just lets them continue to destroy entire villages all along the border?
I hope the leaders of this genocide are brought to be accountable. Apartheid Israel have killed 10s of thousands, stole their land and dehumanised the Palestinian people; all supported by the so-called enlightened West (especially the US). This leaves a huge black spot on their morality.
It's unbelievable that Trump has managed to facilitate this before he even steps into office. It is a brutal display of power, but that is sometimes needed, just like when a parent needs to intervene in a conflict between children.
A meta level comment for dang, I’m upvoting every comment that is being gang-downvoted…independent of the position. This topic, with roots going back millennia, deserves to have all opinions captured and presented, if nothing more than as a snapshot/wave collapse of where the opposing sides sat in 2025.
No platform that simply sides with the majority is a good place for reasoning about a conflict that pits 0.2% of the world’s population against 25%, and that includes UN resolutions.
I welcome this ceasefire with caution. Israel are still currently bombing Gazan homes and the death toll is still growing. There is always a risk it is temporary for further tactical gain.
A poll showed 60% of Israelis wanted a ceasefire but the 40% who want the war to continue are making a big noise. Violence was never going to take down a resistance group, we all knew this.
I don’t think there can be a future with Hamas in charge. Only a peace deal will will secure safety for both sides. But this negotiation between Hamas dismantling and a two-state solution is not the rhetoric coming out of Israel.
Only sanctions will gain a two-state solution and actual peace for Israel and Palestine.
IMO Iran is the winner (least damaged) out of all this. Their proxies are smashed, but the core strength is still the same.
Israel has blown all its international credibility. The International Court of Justice verdict will be very interesting. If it goes against Israel then BDS will (should) become the policy for all countries.
Iran invested all its resources into proxies waging wars for it. Them being smashed means Iran is ruined on all those war investments. With economy in shambles and expansionist war failed, it's hardly "least damaged".
This is untrue on multiple levels. Iran invested most of its resources on its own military - the proxies are extremely cheap - and Iran's most powerful Iraqi proxies are fine, while the Houthis actually came out of this stronger.
With other conflicts wrapping up, there are people expecting more attacks into Iran, especially by Israel. They are in a weakened state. Their missile attacks amounted to nothing. Much like Russia, they likely look better on paper than in practice. That being said, one nuke from them against Israel would be devastating, but also likely mean the end of the regime
This is one of those conflicts where there are no good guys. Both sides have way too many people who want to see the other side burn more than they want peace. For outsiders like me, not picking sides is the best course of action.
And yet, our support for one of side is the best military technology available and unlimited diplomatic protection - and for the other, humanitarian aid shipments that never arrive.
Everything else aside, this is an absolutely fantastic development and I really hope the ceasefire holds and all hostages are released.
I just fear this will cause western media and politicians to and declare the crisis to be over (after it had began on Oct. 7, of course absolutely out of the blue and without any context...) and go back to pretending everything is back to normal. Never mind that Gaza is still in ruins, the west bank is still being annexed, Israel still has the dual role of "all authority, no obligations" over the Palestinians, while making it pretty clear they have no vision for them at all, apart from "maybe they just vanish into thin air tomorrow".
And never mind that Israel still has a fundamentalist, authoritarian government that is actively at work undermining democratic structures and civil rights even inside the state - that too with no word of objection from its allies.
We'll see where all of that goes.
I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
Is this just his usual "appear unpredictable by all means" spiel or does he have a strategy there?
I graduated from an electrical engineering program at a big ten (U.S.) school in the mid '90s, and I am closing in on retirement. I spent today enrapt in an Oracle upgrade from 10g to 11g. Yes, our IT is COBOL-centric, and we are vastly behind the times. Much of today was spent (re)compiling C. The consensus is that I will have to think hard tomorrow about how to fix these problems.
While I was in school, I studied with many Palestinians in my college of engineering. I wonder often what happened to them.
At the same time, within Israel, Intel is the largest civilian employer. The Pentium M is an Israeli rework of the Pentium Pro legacy, and Israel is key to Intel's gains over the past two decades.
I wish that everyone that I knew from the Middle East was fully involved in the advances of Intel.
Perhaps my lost schoolmates' absence was precisely what Intel lacked, but such cultural divides are not easily bridged.
This is a great pity.
I've worked with a few teams based in Israel during my at Intel, namely in networking and transceiver technology space. I try to make a point of getting to know the people I work with through 1:1s, and you'll be pleased to know there is a good mix of Palestinans and Israelis working together. Everyone there was proud to have a very diverse team.
This is a great post. Thank you to share your personal experience. Do you think they were first generation Palestinians? Or multi-generation (parents or earlier immigrated)? I know that Michigan state (Detroit, etc.) has one of the largest Arab communities in the United States.
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This is a one-sided description of the conflict. I am empathetic to Israel, because they also do not have a lot options.
Israel, as it it currently constituted (based on 1967 borders) is not a viable state if the West Bank is a hostile entity with a standing army, and funded to a similar extent as Hezbollah. The West Bank bulges into Israel and effectively cuts the country in half and places all strategic targets within shelling distance.
The Palestinian position seems to be "trust us that if you give us full, un-fettered independence, then we will not be a hostile entity" - but that's asking for Israel to place an enormous amount of trust in present and future Palestinian people and leaders, without any historical reasons to base this on, and highlighted by the worst case scenario of Hezbollah in the north, a foreign-controlled militia funded to the tune of 1 billion / year, and potential a hostile party in the West Bank (and Gaza) - effectively surrounding the country.
And it is more than just demilitarization. A demilitarized Palestine is not enough if, for example, Iran funnels hundreds of millions of dollars in arms to militia groups.
Hence we are where we are .. with Israel unable to disengage because doing so presents an existential risk to their nation.
> Israel, as it it currently constituted (based on 1967 borders) is not a viable state if the West Bank is a hostile entity with a standing army, and funded to a similar extent as Hezbollah. The West Bank bulges into Israel and effectively cuts the country in half and places all strategic targets within shelling distance.
This is exactly the same argument that Russia has been using to annex territories such as Crimea; "it's strategically important for us" isn't really sufficient justification for mass murder, and - on a purely geographic point - talking about the West Bank doesn't justify anything to do with Gaza, which is geographically separate.
And why the 1967 borders rather than the 1948 ones?
> Iran funnels hundreds of millions of dollars in arms to militia groups.
This is the side that's not really been raised enough in this whole discussion. If Israel's war is with Iran, why is that war not being carried out in Iran? Does this have something to do with the fact that Iran is 1000km away from having a land border with either Israel or Palestine?
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Why is demilitarization always a unilateral affair? Has this solved anything in the past 50+ years?
It should be either be bilateral militarization (a miniaturized MAD if you will - similar with the Korean peninsula I guess), or bilateral demilitarization and extensive UN force deployment.
There is an international perspective on the borders that I think should be mentioned. I think it is also worth mentioning that most people who live now in West Bank and the broader Palestine area were not consulted in how power and might is distributed, whether they benefit or suffer from it.
Should they?
> The West Bank bulges into Israel and effectively cuts the country in half and places all strategic targets within shelling distance.
That’s why the peace before 1967 was so important. But Israel ended it and was left with a mess that now all young people are drafted into service.
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Israel repeatedly and systematically kicks Palestinians out of their homes and grants those homes to Jewish settlers.
They are able to do this in large part because Palestine is not a recognized state.
The longer they prevent Palestine from getting statehood, the more dunams of land they can steal.
> "trust us that if you give us full, un-fettered independence, then we will not be a hostile entity"
I don't agree, that's an optimistic view of things. Most Palestinians (Hamas for sure, Abbas as well) never agreed to give up on the 'Right of Return' so its not really independence in a 2 state solution that they're looking for, it's the abolishment of Israel.
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I don't disagree with you, but will comment.
There is a justifiable argument for Israel to occupy the west bank and/or the Gaza strip (whether one agrees or not is another matter that I will not get into). Settling it is another matter entirely, and this action is what causes so much grief.
But what Palestinian supporters continuously fail to grasp is that every time Israel has tried to give (and there were many attempts in the 1980s and 1990s), bad actors have caused violence. This violence was a huge cause in support shifting to right-wing parties in Israel.
The tragedy is that a plurality of Palestinians would otherwise love to have a peaceful (two state or otherwise) solution, but the "bad" ones are well funded by outsiders, in particular Iran. If a Gandhi/Martin Luther King/Nelson Mandela figure emerged, they'd almost certainly be killed by Hamas,Hezbollah,etc.
But at the end of the day, there's no way the extreme elements of either side will agree to a permanent and dignified peace, because even if it would work it would mean the end of either of them (and Israeli PM was assassinated by a far-right Jewish nationalist).
I'm sympathetic to both sides myself. I'm sympathetic to Israel's position, need for security, and the fact that hostility against them is a given. I'm also sympathetic to the fact that the Palestinian people were pushed off their land, often with violence to a level that can fit the definition of genocide, during Israel's independence and subsequent annexations.
But there will never be a true peace so long as the extremists on both sides have as much power as they do. I know most Iranians are fed up with their government. My Iranian colleagues all are commenting that even devoutly religious Iranians back home are getting fed up. A lot of this is a house of cards, so I guess we'll see.
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While this is a good development. Everything in this part of the world is on a rinse snd repeat cycle ever since the Assyrians and the Babylonians - it hasn't changed much except maybe its actually a little more humane then it was in the past (which says something). Sorry for the cynical take but this just does a temporary stop.
That's not true at all. The current conflict isn't some thousand year old feud. It was very much caused by the deliberate provocation and importation of European settlers via Zionism. It's easy to wave our hands and say "it's so complicated!" or "they've been doing this for thousands of years!" but it's not complicated, much like apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were not complicated. Colonialism and ethno-centric racism are never good.
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Actually it goes back a bit further, basically to the dawn of civilization. The first battle in recorded history was between Egypt and the Hittites, the Battle of Megiddo, in what is today the state of Israel [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Megiddo_%2815th_cent...
> Everything in this part of the world is on a rinse snd repeat cycle ever since the Assyrians and the Babylonians
That's an incredible statement, as if the rest of the world is somehow different. The only thing special about these regions is that they've had complex states for longer, so of course state-based warfare would go back farther.
On another level, there absolutely have been periods of stability in regions of the middle east, for periods of time we would consider long.
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The conflicts with the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Hittites came down to geopolitical factors that don't exist anymore. Mostly, the Levant separated the empires of Mesopotamia and Anatolia from Egypt. The numerous battles that happened at Meggido occurred because that was a chokepoint of the Way of Horus, the principal land trade route from Egypt specifically and Africa generally to the rest of the world. Besides trade, the Levant had tended to serve as a buffer zone between pharaonic Egypt, which preferred hegemony over outright empire, and other empires who always seemed to want to expand towards Egypt. The Assyrian military campaigns in particular are a reaction to the 25th dynasty in Egypt convincing rulers in the Levant to ally themselves more closely with them at the expense of the Assyrians.
The current conflict is a different beast. The fall of the Ottoman Empire and the careless meddling of western powers in the aftermath. The Jewish diaspora, Zionism, and the Holocaust. The Sunni-Shia conflict.
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But if it is in fact more humane than in the past (hard to imagine TBH), hopefully that trend of gradual improvement will continue?
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I like how even in this thread, you have many people - almost certainly very few of whom have no real stake in the fight - bitterly arguing about who is right and wrong (turning it into a fight about US politics as a bonus). Human nature and tribalism really is a terrible thing sometimes.
I agree with you, although I certainly hope you and I are wrong. It would be nice to see people let go of past injustices on both sides long enough to have a lasting peace.
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> Sorry for the cynical take but this just does a temporary stop.
It’s hard to disagree. But Ireland was an impossible problem at one stage, and while it’s still far from resolved, it’s a hell of lot less violent.
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Where has it not been on rinse and repeat. Some other parts of the world just operate on a bit longer cycles.
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> the west bank is still being annexed
I am not smart enough to have an opinion on the situation in Gaza that's much more complicated than "people dying is bad", but I struggle to understand how the continued annexation of the West Bank by Israeli settlers, supported by the government and army, is anything other than clearly ethnic cleansing. If it had stopped ten years ago, and it was now a conversation about uprooting the established communities there, maybe then there's room for nuance and so on, but it didn't: it's ongoing.
>And never mind that Israel still has a fundamentalist, authoritarian government that is actively at work undermining democratic structures and civil rights even inside the state
As opposed to the neighboring states (and Hamas), which mostly have religiously tolerant, fully democratic governments that fully respect civil rights, and which of course have never openly stated that they want Israel to disappear from existence, not at all leaving it implicit that its millions of Jewish residents should be ethnically cleansed from the region.. Yes?
The further we are from a people, the more we tend to group them into monoliths. As monoliths, both sides are monsters, with the best one can argue being that one side's monstrosity is justified.
Break them down further and you can find the actual monsters--those self-interestedly seeking either their own aims, or, some random aim at any cost, even when the aim is impossible and its costs massive.
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> undermining democratic structures and civil rights even inside the state
Who killed Rabin?
Israelis killed their own PM to prevent the Oslo Accords, the goal of the Oslo Accords was to provide a 2 state solution.
Don't rewrite history.
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Such an insane take, how is adding another despotic goverment to the mix going to help?
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> undermining democratic structures
Democratic structures like fatah and hamas ?
Israel has been hindering a democratic process in Palestine since forever. It was a borderline explicit policy to bolster hamas to split the Palestinian rule in two to be able to say "we have no negotiating partner". Netanyahu has been quoted saying that outright.
Very few of the Fatah concessions ever led anywhere despite promises from Israel, leading many palestinians to think that Fatah was weak. Which other "strong" democratic options were there? PNI? Third Way? They were never serious options.
Now, the Fatah party has been incompetent and corrupt. I am not saying democracy would have sorted itself out in Palestine, but I am saying that if Israel would have wanted a democratic development in Palestine, it would not have dealt with Fatah in such bad faith.
Nor, I must add, would they have killed any palestinian (Gaza) leaders opening up to peace with Israel. Ahmed Yassin was killed just months after started proposing a long term truce on the condition of a Palestinian state in the west bank and gaza. his successor (al-Rantisi) suffered a similar fate after a similar proposal. Then Jabari in 2012. Then they killed Haniyeh who was the principal negotiator during all recent peace talks.
None of these men were innocent cute bunnies by any means, but Israel has been sending a clear message for many many years: negotiation will be done by force.
I assume OP is referring to internal-to-isreal structures such as the independence of the supreme court.
> Democratic structures like fatah and hamas ?
This refers (I imagine) to internal Israeli politics - a certain portion of the Israeli populace fears that Netanyahu is attempting to make Israel less democratic by various means. This was a topic that caused mass protests in Israel before October 7th, and continues in some form even now.
the difference between terrorists and freedom fighters is temporal.
Yesterday they were called terrorists by the mainstream, tomorrow when they win they will be hailed as heroes and freedom fighters.
the zionists were also called terrorists by the UK in the beginning, especially when they bombed king david hotel
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Why else would Israel prop up Hamas over the secular PA?
As https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-06-13/ty-article-ma...
> Never mind that Gaza is still in ruins, the west bank is still being annexed, Israel still has the dual role of "all authority, no obligations" over the Palestinians, while making it pretty clear they have no vision for them at all, apart from "maybe they just vanish into thin air tomorrow".
It was pretty much like that before. They're just being a lot more open about wanting to wipe them out.
> And never mind that Israel still has a fundamentalist, authoritarian government that is actively at work undermining democratic structures and civil rights even inside the state - that too with no word of objection from its allies.
And what would Gaza have if it were independent?
Israel does not have a fundamentalist, authoritarian government! There are some fundamentalist and far-right parties in the current coalition but they have little power to push their own policies except to threaten to bolt the coalition. For all the talk of those 2-3 ministers to who belong to these more extreme parties to eg legitimise new settlements, repopulate gaza, they don't have enough power to actually pass such laws and none of these ministers none of whom hold the top 8 roles in government.
The most religious/fundementalist of the the parties UTJ believes in land for peace and have said so many times over the years (but like the majority of the Israeli public, they wont mention it, let alone push for it, during wartime so as not to reward terrorism) and was fully behind all the ceasefire proposals in the past 18 months.
And it's certainly not authoritarian. Israel has full powers of protest, free speech, and in fact it's generally the press that have the strongest voice not the government.
And "that is actively at work undermining democratic structures" is also wrong. They are trying to reform Israel's supreme court system which many legal scholars agree badly needs reform as the justices are largely self-selected yet have the power to override legislation without referring to existing law (the so-called reasonableness test which no other country has).
> And it's certainly not authoritarian. Israel has full powers of protest, free speech, and in fact it's generally the press that have the strongest voice not the government.
Israel maintained a prerogative from early in the war to assassinate essentially every known journalist in Gaza, and they did it by bombing their homes and killing their families. West Bank and pro-Arab Israeli journalists were merely arrested and held without charge.
Not authoritarian to its own ethnic population maybe... How exactly does that right of protest extend to the people it's occupying?
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In the recent conflict, as punishment for the (inexcusable and revolting) mass killing of Israelis by Hamas, Israel has killed vast numbers of innocent civilians -- 10s of thousands more than could possibly be justified by legitatimate military operations -- and has deliberately killed several journalists, destroyed healthcare infrastructure, and deliberately caused water and food shortages and mass civilian displacement. Its reputation is in tatters and will remain so for decades.
Be aware that this account has only one post (this one) and was created around 8 months ago when reports started to appear about Israeli influence on American public opinion online.
"Israeli State-sponsored Internet propaganda include the Hasbara, Hasbara Fellowships, Act.IL, and the Jewish Internet Defense Force. Supporters generally frame this "hasbara" as part of its fight towards improving their image abroad given continued Israeli human rights abuses, and also against anti-Israeli agitation and attempts to criticize it. There is substantive evidence that Israel heavily uses data-driven strategies, trolling and disinformation and manipulated media, as well as dedicating funds to state-sponsored media, for overt propaganda campaigns."[1]
"In June 2024, Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs was revealed to have paid $2 million to Israeli political consulting firm STOIC, to conduct a social media campaign, fueled by fake accounts and often employing misinformartion, targeting 128 American Congresspeople, with a focus on Democratic and African-American members of the House of Representatives. Websites were also created to provide young, progressive Americans with Gaza news with a pro-Israel spin. Among the objectives of the campaign was amplifying Israeli attacks on UNRWA staffers and driving a wedge between Palestinians and African-Americans to prevent solidarity between the two groups. "[2]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_Internet_propa...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_in_the_Israel%E...
3. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2024-0...
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>"maybe they just vanish into thin air tomorrow"
This is the exact platform of at least one political party on either side.
Over and above any underlying cultural or historical conflict.
It's when misguided political parties gain power that puts that kind of thing on steroids.
> His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable
His base and the people surrounding him have the habit of ostracizing anyone who doesn't fall in line behind him, rather than being guided by principle (Which is why Pence is no longer his VP pick, and why basically his whole cabinet is full of sycophants compared to last time).
Trump's whole shtick is to take whatever is happening, and spin it into "This was my whole plan all along", then take the credit for it. This is why you never see him give concrete policy proposals in interviews, and is also what will likely happen with the russia/ukraine war. Whatever happens is good, and was part of Trump's plan, and his base will fall in line or disappear politically.
> "maybe they just vanish into thin air tomorrow"
Actually they don't want them to vanish completely. Just suffer enough. They are the reason the far right government is leading Israël.
Exactly. This war has really messed up the world and Israel for generations to come. Never mind the devastation in Gaza.
But the Palestinians cant keep living under occupation. Everyone should continue to exert pressure for a free Palestine or the cycle will continue. The fundamental goal of the current Israeli government is to never have a Palestinian state, which will always be a major barrier unless sanctions are introduced.
Trump was interesting.. Im sure we’ll find out one day what it was all about. But if he really was the catalyst in this I will take back my words and eat humble pie. Someone has suggested the ceasefire is just a show, so we watch carefully.
<< This war has really messed up the world and Israel for generations to come.
Possibly. There does seem to be an uptick in previously unvoicable sentiment that was quickly squashed anywhere it showed on social media. I will say this. My parents went out of their way not to discuss some political events with their children ( communism - different rules apply and kids are dumb ), but in 90s, when similar 'war' raged and newshead was convincingly telling me, who to root for, my father unusually said 'you may want to check how Israel came into existence.' For the longest time, I did not. October surprise was a reason to get some of the dust removed from those books. It is not a good look. One could argue it is worse than US colonization of Indian lands.
My understanding is that decades past when Israeli liberals tried being nice to Palestine and letting them self govern they were rewarded with more bombings and conflict. It isn’t a politically tenable position in Israel anymore to let Palestine (and Lebanon) “just be,” and that’s equally the fault of Palestinian behavior as it is Israel’s.
I am sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, but the truth of the matter is that Israel has a valid claim too and military superiority to back it. If Palestine is to self govern, it and the rest of the nations around it need to convince Israel that they won’t try to wipe Israel off the map (or, alternatively, to succeed at it, which I’m sure many Western protesters would celebrate). Until then Israel will just dominate them instead.
I am hoping at least for some sort of "Ok, now we pour money and bricks and concrete into Gaza to help them rebuild."
call to dispose other's people money is easy. you are free to make you donation.
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> Is this just his usual "appear unpredictable by all means" spiel or does he have a strategy there?
If you think a 78 year old alone is capable of such feats of planning, you have more faith in the elderly than most. Read any of his speeches that are off the cuff and you will see that Trump has incredibly poor working memory, vocabulary, and attention. This is to be expected from an elderly individual, but not from a great strategist. These are the results of large groups of people working towards goals, not heroic individual feats.
> Everything else aside, this is an absolutely fantastic development and I really hope the ceasefire holds and all hostages are released.
Don't hold your breath, Isreal already announced a ceasefire in Lebanon in the past and didn't respect it.
OK since no one else has said it yet, "according to a source familiar with the details"[1] (I know) Trump has basically told Netanyahu to agree to the ceasefire including the return of hostages. Then if they decide to break the ceasefire and go back to relentless bombings, Trump will still continue to support them.
So it could be a tactic to get Hamas to release whatever hostages are still alive, then get right back to the new status quo.
This actually makes perfect sense for Trump. He's only claimed to care about the Israeli hostages. I'm sure he feels great about taking credit for their return.
[1]: https://trendsinthenews.substack.com/p/gerald-celente-on-gaz...
Sadly I suspect this will be the case… I don’t hold much hope on this whole thing actually ending… but I do have a glimmer of hope that they may have reached a tipping point due to one of the many slowly shifting parts of this tragedy… no idea what the tipping point is from the outside but it does kinda have the vibe of “maybe this is going to fall apart if they keep pushing”
Hamas broke the last ceasefire. Israel doesn’t need to do anything as it’s expected there will be a Hamas offshoot group who launches a rocket into Israeli civilian areas thus restarting the need for Israel to defend itself.
Would there really be much support within Israel to continue the war if all the hostages were already released?
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Wouldn't trumps best course of action have been to wait two weeks and make it seem like it was all because of him?
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Well, we will know within the year how it turns out.
One not particularly obscure theory is that Netanyahu was prioritizing Trump coming to power over a peace/hostage deal and now that Trump has power, Netanyahu seeks to benefit from prioritizing the hostages. Trump is claiming credit for it and probably doesn't care about the timing.
Not obscure at all, as it wouldn't be the first time a hostage situation is used for a presidential campaign [1]:
> The timing of the release of the hostages gave rise to allegations that representatives of Reagan's presidential campaign had conspired with Iran to delay the release until after the 1980 United States presidential election to thwart Carter from pulling off an "October surprise".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis#October_Su...
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Netanyahu was simply pushing his opportunity to do what Israel hardliners have wanted to do for as long as possible (basically aggressively lash out in every direction without consequences and red lines). It was always going to need to be wrapped up, even within Israel there was strong internal pressure. Waiting until is Trump is coming in gives Israel a free golden ticket with him by timing it right and Netanyahu's careers basically over after this anyway, so he has nothing to lose by doing it earlier, absent internal revolt.
Never mind that Hamas will STILL have hostages after the deal is done. That Gaza is ruled by an organization stating they’ll continue doing an Oct 7th again and again.
It takes both sides to agree to a better future.
How are you proposing the deal could be made more fair?
Keep in mind:
Israel killed 100x more civilians than Palestine during this conflict, and more damage was done to Gaza than any European city during wwii. 90% of the population is displaced. 10% are casualties. Israel intentionally blew up all the civil infrastructure (hospitals, doctors, engineers) first.
There are > 17,000 children that have no adults to care for them any more. That’s 10 orphaned kids for every Israel civilian casualty in the middle of a famine with no support infrastructure.
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Trump wanted the war to end, and I'm sure Netanyahu was doing his Netanyahu thing.
Posting that video was Trump's way of telling Netanyahu that he will burn him by turning him into public enemy #1 with his base. That's how he got him to agree.
This makes no sense.
Netanyahu destroyed his reputation within the Democratic base and it did not concern him in the slightest. Because Israel stopped truly needing the approval of the US a long time ago.
And so the idea that he is suddenly worried about what the Trump base thinks has no basis in fact. Especially when the Trump base is not 1-1 with the Republican base i.e. the majority of the Congress still supports Israel.
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> I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
Because you weren't listening to Trump. Throughout all of his campaigns he's been pretty clear he doesn't want to be paying for other country's defense/military spending.
> ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire
There is no evidence of this.
Every single time Trump has blustered about doing something e.g. turning Canada into a 51st, buying Greenland the parties have been concerned but not particularly worried. Because he doesn't follow through.
So the idea that we should credit Trump for his words and ignore the months of diplomacy and pressure from not just the US but Middle Eastern countries is bizarre to me. Ceasefires are always far more complex and nuanced than they look from the outside.
I got it from here: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-01-13/ty-article/.p...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/arab-official-trump-envoy-sway...
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The broad outlines of the deal as well as all the work in pushing together the various parties is from Brett McGurk and his team, and he deserves the lion's share of the credit. That being said, there's probably some contribution as to the timing of the US inauguration, and Trump giving the nod to Steve Witkoff throw support behind McGurk, though.
Diplomacy is a lie, there's only military intelligence.
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> I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
> Is this just his usual "appear unpredictable by all means" spiel or does he have a strategy there
He thinks past a certain point it looks bad to the median American and isn’t ideological enough to push it past that.
> I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
It's not odd, considering that most pro-Israel figures (and most Israelis themselves) are not pro-Netanyahu.
>I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd.
It doesn't seem odd at all. Trump just went up against the mainstream Israeli-American power structure and won. He was very open that he supports Israel, but not this war. He ran on a premise that he would end the war before he took office. Appointing hard-line pro-Israel people is par for the course. It shows he supports Israel, but it makes those people beholden to him. In one of his books Trump talks about how he would give people he didn't like / wasn't sure about promotions. If they did a good job and impressed him great. If not he would fire them and felt that firing someone from a higher position was more meaningful and had a greater impact for the people below them.
Trump understands what American power is he doesn't really give the context that other world leaders are looking for, he just goes about it with the premise of comply, or we will make things difficult for you.
Trump basically tells Israel, you can do what you want, but you can't do it like this because it looks bad. The average person just doesn't like what they are seeing with regard to Palestine. Trump isn't ideological about Israel so he's not hellbent on the destruction of Palestine like so many. He gives the same attitude to most of our allies, in that you can be our friend, but you can't make us look bad.
It was just Bibi being friendly with a fellow neofascist who happens to be the next elected POTUS, not some great diplomatic maneuvers from Trump.
> His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire
Only Nixon could go to China [1].
To the degree the Israel-Palestine war could have helped America, it already has. Hezbollah has given way to a power-sharing government in Lebanon. Syria, miraculously, is a wild card--with major implications for Russia and Iran. Hamas has been downgraded from a threat to a nuisance. And not only is Iran on its back foot, we also got a free PR campaign for the efficacy of American weapons and worthlessness of post-Soviet Russian air defences.
Realpolitikally speaking, any more war is an expensive distraction. (Potent for a media-time savvy guy.) I'm sure Netanyahu could find something new to bomb in Gaza. But it's not a bad time for him to consolidate gains, politically and geopolitically, and possibly re-aim Washington's eye towards Iran.
(On a human level, it does seem Trump gets moved by images of war deaths. Maybe the carnage actually touched him.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_goes_to_China
> To the degree the Israel-Palestine war could have helped America, it already has
Idk, what we had to watch Israel do and fund with our own money may not have been worth all those achievements. Only time will tell... We made a lot of advancements in Iraq and Afghanistan too, and that was nowhere near as careless about human suffering as this latest flare up. And we lost all that progress extremely rapidly due to the hatred the local populace and neighboring countries had due to our actions. I think Israel (and us, since we are tied together) might face the same unforced error.
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> To the degree the Israel-Palestine war could have helped America, it already has.
Fifty thousand people are dead, many of whom were underage, and most of the universities and hospitals in Gaza are destroyed. Like the Iraq war or Tianamen Square, this is something people are going to keep bringing up for decades.
Syria is arguably the only good outcome, and it's not clear whether that was anything to do with Israel/US action at all?
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Multiple sources are crediting months of work by Brett McGurk as the lead in this. This is Biden admin accomplishment.
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Biden's accomplishment is sending bombs to the IDF to aid Palestinian genocide.
> of course absolutely out of the blue and without any context
LOL
> I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
Trump just wanted a deal - he loves being the "deal guy". Frankly, I'm shocked he didn't push Bibi into waiting until after the inauguration. Guess he felt like it was close enough that he could still take credit for it.
Perhaps it speaks to Biden's administration and its interest in the conflict that Trump can achieve this now where Biden couldn't a couple months ago.
> Frankly, I'm shocked he didn't push Bibi into waiting until after the inauguration
If you read between the lines it was clear Biden was also pushing hard to wrap it up before his term ends to add it to his legacy (that's how NYT spun it at least). But Trump also had his people negotiating there as well and enough of add a hard-line persuasive influence to force Bibi to show up in Doha last-minute on a weekend during Sabbath [1]. While Biden really didn't seem to have much influence there in the last yr.
But ultimately they both get to take credit.
The cease-fire ending will eventually need a conclusion during Trumps term as well.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-salty-envoy-may-forced-1549...
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> Guess he felt like it was close enough that he could still take credit for it.
He's a private citizen. It isn't legal for him to engage in foreign diplomacy. Conveniently we have a feckless DoJ that won't hold people accountable.
Trump and Netanyahu famously had beef: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-59571713
Trump's a die hard Israel supporter but I think personally he feels disgust for Netanyahu, for reasons that arent too clear.
(As we all should - Netanyahu is a deeply racist genocidal maniac who cynically used this conflict to try and save his own political career)
Trump was mad at Netanyahu for being the first to congratulate Biden on winning in 2020.
> Netanyahu is a deeply racist genocidal maniac who cynically used this conflict to try and save his own political career.
What makes you think this causes Trump to think lesser of Netanyahu? Seems like the kind of person Trump fawns over as being "tough".
Oh, and like a sibling pointed out -- Trump wasn't mad at Netanyahu for being a racist, opportunistic genocidal maniac. He was mad that Netanyahu was the first to congratulate Biden on his election victory in 2020.
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I don't think it's accurate to say they "left the place some 20 years ago" since they maintained a strict blockade on what could go in and out.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip
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One of the major problems is that across the Arab world it is politically useful for internal politics for there not to be peace between Israel and Palestine. It is a very “good” issue for politicians/kings to have an enemy, a struggle for their peoples to be passionate about. Everything that’s being done by the Arab neighbor governments is calculated for their own political benefit. They don’t want peace or a solution because that would deprive them of something that keeps them in power.
So those who would be terrorists are funded and encouraged, the fight is promoted, and the Palestinian people are manipulated into greater belligerency instead of a peaceful equitable resolution.
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Look I get that you're annoyed by the GP post's simplification but you are currently arguing that the women and children living in a hellscape deserve it. The typos in your post make it clear to me that there's a lot of emotion behind it, so I'd advise you to take it slow and be more measured.
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"Social media showing people how incredibly biased traditional media is towards Israel"
I learned how incredibly biased social media is against Israel.
"Polls showing people now recognizing Israel are the bad guys and Hamas are the good guys"
The same Hamas that murdered over 200 young people at a concert on Oct 7 2023? And paraded the dead body of a woman like a hunting trophy. The one thing that Hamas is NOT is "the good guys". They are utterly amoral Islamic supremacists.
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> And also that TRUMP turned out to be the lesser of the evils.
You’re talking about the guy who moved the US embassy into contested territory essentially justifying Israel’s expansion? Something no previous president would even consider because they knew it would result in an escalation in the region and set peace talks back even further? That’s the guy you think is looking out for Palestinians?
> And also that TRUMP turned out to be the lesser of the evils.
This is a pretty shortsighted perspective. At least wait 4 more years :).
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> people now recognizing Israel are the bad guys and Hamas are the good guys
Hamas kidnapped and tortured innocent civilians, and has help them in captivity for `~18 months, and you think they are the good guys? There are no good guys.
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> Polls showing people now recognizing Israel are the bad guys and Hamas are the guys
Was the second “guys” supposed to have an adjective attached to it?
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>due to literal IDF agents running newsrooms across the country
source?
>Polls showing people now recognizing Israel are the bad guys and Hamas are the guys
Are you missing a word here? Or is this intentional?
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> Hamas are the good guys
The group that kidnapped, murdered, and tortured a bunch of kids at a music festival? That Hamas? The “good guys”?!
Tons of stories I've seen on CNN or BBC or CBC about this war had Muslim (edit: or Arab) authors and were very anti-Israel in bias. Traditional media is incredibly biased against Israel which is not surprising given its general left leaning. But I'm sure you've found some bubble that more out there.
Random examples of CNN Arab reporters on the topic:
https://www.cnn.com/profiles/irene-nasser
https://www.cnn.com/profiles/jomana-karadsheh
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/13/europe/us-israel-aid-gaza-ins...
There is no way more American Jewish teens support Hamas than Israel. Your "unbiased" media seized on to one question of this survey: https://mosaicunited.org/mosaic-teen-israel-survey-antisemit...
Where even this "sympathy" question definitely does not agree with what you're saying.
There are also no polls showing people saying Israel are the bad guys. e.g. in the US: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/10/01/slight-up...
> Trump turned out to be the lesser of the evils
This is based purely on his word which isn't worth all that much.
Meanwhile Biden's actions has resulted in a ceasefire.
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This is what happens when there is an unchecked Affirmative Action program for zionists in many industries like tech and Media.
Microsoft employees get fired for calling for a ceasefire meanwhile their Israeli counterparts get to gloat about continued slaughter of children with a mere investigation, in Apple, they provide extra support for employees doing time for the IDF while Palestinian employees get fired and Muslim support slack channels get shut down.
Unfortunately, the Contrarian Club in the tech industry is yet to reckon with the pernicious AA program for zionists meanwhile bleating about the joke of meritocracy and crying about H1Bs.
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Hamas’ main goal is killing every single Israeli. Israel defends themselves. Hamas are the good guys? Honestly this take being seriously considered is a truly horrible sign for dem electability. The vast majority of Americans see right through it.
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Yeah, sure, it's all Israel's fault, after the 1200 people slaughtered on October 7
There was, at the very least, a massive intelligence failure.
Responding by killing tens of thousands of civilians is on them a bit, too.
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To this day we still have no idea how many of those 1200 people were killed by Hamas and how many were killed by the IDF under the Hannibal Directive.
There likely are thousands upon thousands of hours of footage from October 7th from private/personal security cameras and also from the camera equipment on the attack helicopters and tanks.
Yet, despite all the footage that likely exists, a total of 46 minutes has been screened for the purpose of hasbara.
We could easily have an actual accounting of which of the 1200 were killed by Hamas and which were killed by the IDF if there was actual transparency and all the footage was released instead of selectively released to insinuate that 100% of the deaths were committed by Hamas.
Absent transparency, I'm inclined to place most of the 1200 deaths on IDF. There's more than enough footage of testimonials from IDF soldiers afterwards talking about how they engaged on October 7th to know for certain that they killed many of their own either due to the fog of war or due to the Hannibal Directive.
Personally, I would not be surprised if more than half of the 1200 were killed by the IDF given the ratio between how much footage has been shown relative to how much footage exists.
Absent transparency, the only fair thing to due is assume an intent to maximally deceive the public about what actually happened on October 7th.
In many ways, this is comparable to how the United States was misled about January 6th, 2021. A lot of the footage released in March 2023 contradicted much of the narrative that was spun in the weeks following Jan 6th, 2021. Even now, a lot of the footage still has yet to be released and we still have no idea how many undercover agents and other agent provocateurs were in the crowd that day.
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> it's all Israel's fault, after the 1200 people slaughtered on October 7
This did not start on oct 7th. I too was ignorant about the situation in palestine but its obvious after just a bit of research that israel isn't a good faith actor here.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MknerYjob0w&t=37s&ab_channel...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoFjbnvkmQ0&ab_channel=Amnes...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYgwKhzHeGc&t=569s&ab_channe...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2unZIzIwp0&ab_channel=AlJaz...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMYEHhCkedo&ab_channel=TheGu...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhXIYns7ZeM&ab_channel=AlJaz...
PS: yes I know I'll be flagged for this but truth is important.
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October 7th doesn't justify razing Gaza to rubble and killing mostly children.
> And never mind that Israel still has a fundamentalist, authoritarian government that is actively at work undermining democratic structures and civil rights even inside the state
And never mind that Hamas is still the same old non compromising, cut throat, maximalist and some would say genocidal terrorist organization it has always been. You forgot to mention that. The PLO is only slightly better.
Trump needed some way to counter the "Zion Don" counter-programming that 4chan tried and failed to get into the hearts of the anti-zionists that have become the norm among Zoomers. That's why he acts like this.
> Never mind that Gaza is still in ruins, the west bank is still being annexed, Israel still has the dual role of "all authority, no obligations" over the Palestinians, while making it pretty clear they have no vision for them at all, apart from "maybe they just vanish into thin air tomorrow".
Israel doesn't want to annex Yehuda and Shomron (the place you call West Bank). This is a complete misunderstanding of the people in the West about Israeli politics. Israel wants to have nothing to do with Arab population. Never wanted it, and doesn't see it wanting it in the future. It's completely antithetical to what the absolute majority of Israeli population (and the politicians who represent it) want.
The reason why Israel holds that territory is that after one of the wars, Israel tried to use it as a bargaining chip to convince its Arab neighbors to recognize Israel as a country and to sign a peace treaty, once the territory is returned (so-called "land for peace" series of UN treaties). But, the Arab neighbors outsmarted Israel by abandoning their people in occupied territories, and, essentially, handing Israel an armed grenade that it now has no idea what to do with.
With respect to this problem, Israel has different approaches to its solution, that range from the "transfer" (the idea that Israel will force / subsidize the Arab population to migrate out of the occupied territories, this is the extreme right-wing position, assassinated "Gandhi" was one of the major proponents of it.) to the two-state solution on the far left, where Israel makes territorial concessions, esp. in Jerusalem and around.
But there's no political force that wants annexation (including the population), and nobody would realistically dare to vanquish / force to move the whole population of Gaza / Yehuda and Shomron. Of course, you could probably find some oddball idiot declaring "death to all Arabs" or similar, but they don't hold any real political power. But even these people wouldn't want annexation if it meant they have to put up with the people from annexed territories.
> And never mind that Israel still has a fundamentalist, authoritarian government
All true, very true. Of course the other bunch will slaughter you for drawing a cartoon.
I submit that you have a responsibility to be comprehensive when posting.
In the interests of comprehensiveness, the 'other bunch' have AIPAC, the Shomrim, and will get legislation passed enshrining Orwellian Newspeak. Anti-Zionism is now categorised as Anti-Semitism in American discourse. Insanity.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-resolutio...
I submit no such responsibility is required, thats one reason comment threads exist. So others can add to the discussion…
> All true, very true. Of course the other bunch will slaughter you for drawing a cartoon.
You're confusing Al-Qaeda with Muslims.
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Hamas was offered a ceasefire under exactly the same terms in May, and refused it. Since then:
* Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Hamas political wing, was killed in Tehran
* Yahyah Sinwar, the leader of the Al-Qassam Brigades, was killed in Gaza
* Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanese Hezbollah, was killed in Beirut
* Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah's successor, was killed a week later
* Large swathes of Hezbollah's command and control were wiped out in the pager attack
* Bashar al-Assad, Iran's most important military client, fled Syria
The Al-Qassam Brigades are shattered. Mohammad Sinwar, its current leader, is reported by ISW not to have communications with most of its new recruits, who are scavenging improvised weapons from unexploded ordinance. Iran's "Axis of Resistance" lies in tatters, their foreign/military strategy, of which Hamas was a key component, now seems totally repudiated. Hamas has lost most of its remaining infrastructure, supply chains, and support.
They should have taken the deal when it was first offered.
Someone briefly left a comment here saying this summary was inaccurate, because of news reporting about Hamas having accepted ceasefire terms in May. I understand the confusion.
At the end of April (iirc), Israel agreed to a set of terms; Qatar and Egypt then gave Hamas a different set of terms, which Israel hadn't agreed to. Note that stories about Hamas "accepting" a ceasefire date from May 6th. The terms today are the same as those of May 27th.
If it helps, it seems like it wouldn't be worth arguing, and easy to stipulate, that Hamas had accepted ceasefire terms prior to May 27th. You could say that the Qatar switcheroo never happened, and it was Israel being intransigent up to that point. That's not the reporting I read, but fine, ok. The only point my comment makes is that the terms they received on May 27th were ultimately the ones they ended up accepting. Given that: they should have accepted on May 27th.
In retrospect, I guess.
It could be that they were holding out for international support that never came, and are now cutting their losses
They did take deals, repeatedly.
This is the fourth or so deal that Hamas has accepted, the surprising thing is that Israel has accepted it too
I've read a lot of reporting over that time period and all of it said Hamas was holding out for a final agreement that would include a permanent cessation of hostilities, while Netanyahu (who, to be clear, I believe to be a war criminal) is publicly on the record saying he would sign a temporary deal that exchanged hostages for prisoners.
If you can cite a source clearly stating Hamas accepted these terms, the May 27/today terms, I'd like to read it. Thanks in advance!
Later
I want to be clear: I'm not saying Hamas didn't offer alternate terms, many many times, over the last year. But you can't "take" a deal your counterparty refuses. What's important about the May 27 terms is that Hamas was forced to accept them anyways. As a descriptive statement, based on the facts of what happened: they should have taken that deal.
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>Hamas was offered a ceasefire under exactly the same terms in May, and refused it.
This is complete opposite of actual facts which is often the case with Israeli apologia. Hamas wanted a permanent ceasefire and full withdrawal from Gaza. Israel wants a temporary ceasefire - which if one comprehends english - is not actually a ceasefire at all. Quoting Netanyahu (in June) : “Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel,” which translates to "Return the hostages and we will kill you all at a time of our choosing". Even then Netanyahu never had any intention of pursuing a ceasefire deal to completion at the time because his cabinet members publicly threatened to withdraw from his coalition and collapse the government which would likely lead to Netanyahu's impending trial and incarceration.
Whatever you think of the terms Hamas just accepted, they were offered them on May 27, and they should have taken them then, because the intervening months have been just awful for them.
You can think those terms are dreadfully unfair; that's fine, that has nothing to do with the argument I made.
> They should have taken the deal when it was first offered
It is a foregone conclusion that (the despots in charge of) Hamas aren't operating on the same trade-offs as you & I. Despite the toll, they'll consider it a victory if the IDF withdraws from all its positions.
Not taking the deal has indeed caused more mayhem, but on the flipside, Likud+ are being dragged through the mud, and for some, they were made to look every bit the "terrorists" they seem to hate with a vengeance.
Why are you using scare quotes for "terrorists"? Do you dispute that Hamas are terrorists?
Do you think that the Hamas' attacks aimed at civilians, such as Oct 7th, or indiscriminate launching of missiles it performed for decades, are not terror attacks?
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There was a lot of contradictory reporting about negotiations and which said had accepted/rejected the deal. But one thing I think is undisputed is that Israel signed because they were pressured to, and is generally not happy with the deal. At least that's what they're saying publicly. Because of that I find it more credible that they were the bigger impediment to getting a deal done.
That's kind of how deals work. You take a compromise because of the constraints you are under. Hamas took the deal because they are feeling the pressure, Israel did too.
Obviously if everything went unambigiously right for Israel, hamas would be offering an unconditional surrender not a ceasefire. If everything went well for Hamas they would be negotiating a very different deal.
Do you think the bombing would have stopped if they took the deal, based on how Israel has historically operated during "ceasefires"?
Just curious. I do think they should have taken the deal.
I think that's a hopeless discussion to have on HN, but I think it's possible to have a clear-eyed and objective take on what Hamas should have done back in May, because we can see what happened. If the ceasefire terms had been substantially different today, the analysis would be complicated; they aren't, so it's pretty simple.
Was Gaza bombed at the 6th of oct? Or before that?
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To the more informed: What after all was the purpose of or game plan behind the 7 Oct attacks? Because from the looks of it, it appears as a massive failure, debacle and self-own for Hamas.
Hamas had previously exchanged very few hostages for major Israeli concessions; they seem to have believed that taking more hostages would yield an even better deal. Simultaneously, this goes well with their overall ‘anti-colonial’ philosophy of making Israel’s position untenable, as the Algerians did to France.
I suppose if we are to digress to the land of "shoulds", Israel should not have decided to delete tens of thousands of Gazan children in the interim.
Even if we grant that Israel offered this ceasefire deal in good faith in May, a bungled deal by Qatar/Egypt/Hamas does nothing to justify the ethnic cleansing they conducted in 2024.
I'm not making a moral argument.
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Unrelated to your central point but, I suspect these types of things never really die? Where philosophy (be it social, religious or otherwise) is the driver. Al Qaeda is back on the rise in a meaningful way and it's been how long? Do we have examples from history where terrorist groups like Hamas or Al Qaeda actually fully died? Even in Japan Aum Shinrikyo converted to Aleph and I think(?) is still running. I really do pray we can one day come to a peaceful and harmonious understanding of each other, regardless of our differing perspectives, it often makes me quite sad.
Actually all these deaths are just transitory feel goods for the Israeli side. By killing more civilians than ever before, Hamas is able to recruit the same (maybe more) fighters back. They will have different leaders with different names, but these fighters who have had innocent family killed and now want revenge will be blowing themselves up at some point in the next decade or 2 and Israel is equally or less safe as a result.
Pager attack is a notable exception here, that was actually targeted badassery.
It goes on.
This completely misapprehends the conflict. Hamas wasn't simply a terrorist organization; it was a organized, well-armed military adversary, supported by other large irregular armed forces in the region as well as by Iran, with extensive infrastructure and supply chains, and a command and control structure with decades of experience and training. Netanyahu bears significant responsibility for allowing them to develop those capabilities! He positioned them against the PA to derail the two-state outcome.
Whatever else Hamas is now, whatever improvised explosives they blow up in Tel Aviv or Haifa or Jerusalem, they are as a military force with a complex and carefully designed order of battle done, utterly broken. WSJ reports Al-Qassam isn't even communicating with the Hamas political branch. Of course they're going to recruit terrorists. There's no such thing as stopping that kind of activity.
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> Pager attack is a notable exception here, that was actually targeted badassery.
weird to call killing people "targeted badassery"
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Hamas accepted the deal back in May, but then Netanyahu refused to sign the deal, and revised it into a form that was no longer acceptable.
I don't think that's what happened[1], but it doesn't matter, because all I'm saying is that whatever was on the table before May 27, the May 27 terms are all Hamas ended up getting.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42721325
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I'm going to push back on this a little bit.
I agree that most reporting, and most statements from US officials, put the blame squarely on Hamas for not having accepted a deal earlier.
But there is also at least some sense, definitely reported on in Israel, that this time Israel was far more serious about getting a deal done - ergo, in the past rounds of negotiations Israel was not pursuing a deal as seriously.
In particular, Ben Gvir (a right-wing extremist Israeli politician) a couple of days ago took credit for causing the previous ceasefire deals to not happen. This has been talked about a bunch in Israel.
I think you're right in thinking of it as Hamas should've called Israel's bluff and had a deal sooner, but let's also be realistic in understanding that they might've correctly seen Israel as not really trying to get a deal.
> They should have taken the deal when it was first offered.
That's a pretty good summary of basically the last 100 years of that region's history lol
While that's indeed true that all these people were monsters, for the record this deal wasn't only rejected by Hama's but by Netanyahu himself as well. The key difference here is that Trump put pressure on him when Bidden always refused to do so.
No, it wasn't. Hamas could have had this deal in May.
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So I suppose it's just back to the status quo? What has really changed that will make a difference in 2-3 years from now? Israel has sowed a whole fresh generation of "I will sacrifice everything to wipe Israel" Palestinian youth.
The entirety of Hamas leadership is gone, Hamas will most likely not going to have control in Gaza (still being debated which mechanism will govern, this is part of the deal), the crossing to Egypt will be handled by foreign countries which will prevent weapon smuggling. And in the broader spectrum, hizballah is not more, Assad is no more, all of Iran’s proxies can no longer support Hamas’ ambitions which basically means the “mokawamma” is dead. So in short, the entire Middle East have changed.
You still have millions of people in Gaza and Lebanon who got bombed by Israel. Whether it's the existing groups or new groups going forward, the grievances are still there and bigger than ever. Let's wait a few before we declare anything changed.
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Soon it will be a different name under a different symbol.
You cannot break the cycle of hatred with more hatred and violence.
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The wall street journal seems to disagree https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-has-another-sinw...
> What has really changed that will make a difference in 2-3 years from now?
The whole Iranian anti Israel coalition has been badly beaten!
Hezbollah barely exists anymore. The Assad regime is toppled. Iran itself has learned that Israel can attack them at will. The Houthis are still active, but too far away to do real damage.
Hamas itself still exists, but in a deeply degraded form. Their leaders are dead. Their armed forces have taken huge losses. Their amazing tunnel network is destroyed.
Israel will never again be invaded by surprise.
Hamas will probably start shooting rockets into Israel again, and kill the occasional civilian, but Israel is used to that and can deal with it.
Is there any way to bet against this rationale? As in, putting money on it?
I can't do anything about the US having an obscenely distorted view of terrorism but it'd be nice if I could at least turn a profit off it.
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Never again - I wouldn't hold my breath. Left alone, Gazans will dig new tunnels, and everything will repeat.
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Of any of Israel's wars in recent history none has decimated their regional enemies as much as this. Every way you cut it they are in a much more secure position militarily. Iran (aka Lebanon/Syria) losing so badly is more important than Hamas surviving because that was the cludgle that threatened them from punishing Gaza too harshly (for ex: America pushed Israel very hard not to provoke Lebanon after Oct 7 and we saw how that turned out).
Any future Hamas actions will inherently be less secure as their external help is now crippled.
Ignoring that Hamas is still in power, the best outcome of this war is destruction of Hizbollah. That was a boogie man that everyone was afraid. Of course it took decades of preparation but the outcome is magical. It's hard to believe that only 1 year ago IDF was afraid to touch a tent that Hizbollah setup right on the border and now it freely bombs them without any response.
Israel was in an extremely secure position on October 6th. They blew it by getting soft on border security, a mistake they won’t make again. There was absolutely zero reason a single hamas fighter should’ve been able to escape Gaza.
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Israel is weaker politically and internationally than it has ever been, dramatically so. It can only have military superiority as long as western nations are supplying it with weapons and political cover.
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I guess you didn’t notice when Hamas sowed a whole fresh generation of "I will sacrifice everything to wipe out Hamas" Israeli youth.
I don't think this is a symmetrical situation. Life in Israel is quite comfortable. Young people have hopes and dreams beyond sacrificing themselves in an eternal war. Palestinians in Gaza have an extremely bleak outlook on the future and effectively no hope that anything meaningful will change in their lifetime, and they feel collectively humiliated by decades of occupation. Sacrificing "everything" is a lot easier when everything looks a lot like nothing.
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Honest question, but why haven't there been "I will sacrifice everything to wipe [country]" generations sowing havoc on neighbors after Dresden, Nagasaki, Nanjing or others?
I think the west learned after WW1 that it’s better to rebuild your enemies in corporation than punish them when you win and let grudges fester.
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Dresden and Nagasaki, we managed to convince them they were at fault to some degree.
Nanjing, well, Chinese sentiment is still very anti-Japan because of that and all the other atrocities. And proportionally to size/population, the destruction visited on Gaza in the past year and a quarter goes far beyond what Japan did in China.
Frankly, because even the Nazis weren't as much of a death cult as present-day Islamists.
I believe the reason was that the Nazis were forced to repent due to the Allied occupation. They also had to pay billions in reparations to Jews affected by the Holocaust. If that hadn't happened and the NSDAP had been allowed to continue to dominate German politics, I bet millions of Jews who lost their loved ones in the Holocaust would seek revenge on the Germans. Similarly, if the Zionist regime were toppled and replaced with one that treated Palestinians as humans, rather than as animals, feelings of deep hatred would dissipate.
Oh because the a lot of the apparatchiks of the Nazi and Imperial Japanese regimes were absorbed into the western countries (operation paperclip, unit 731 amnesties, ratlines => colonia dignidad, jakarta method masterminded by Nazis mindset in the CIA) and the remaining nazis were propped up by the allies in west germany to continue their reign after all the dust was settled after which they eventually and successfully absorbed east germany. Note; Germany was never denazified.
Ok now a double honest question, why do zionists have unlimited justifications for committing a holocaust over the last 15 months+? And how many oceans of Palestinian children's blood does it take to wash away German guilt?
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Did the residents of Dresden have to live in an open air prison for 75 years in a tiny corner of the city after they were bombed?
Realistically, West Bank will be gone (totally settled, all Palestinians removed) in 15 years. Gaza will further be ghettoized and, pessimistically, will be basically gone in 50 years or so.
That's indeed the current trajectory, but then what exactly will happen with the Palestinian population in that scenario? All 5+ million crammed into Gaza? Driven into Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan by force? (which are already refusing to take them today, by threat of military action) What else?
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That's not realistic at all. Israel has no apparent plans to settle the major Palestinian population centers in the West Bank like Nablus, Ramallah etc. and evict Palestinians from there.
Indeed, life will probably continue getting worse for West Bank Palestinians under the Israeli apartheid regime, but there's no reason to believe they'll be literally exterminated.
Gaza has been leveled for the most part.
The only thing left is allowing developers to build on the land and setting up checkpoints to keep the previous owners out.
I don't know why this is downvoted. Do people not realize Gaza was razed to the ground?
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Gaza is completely unlivable and more Palestinians can be "persuaded" to move abroad now that they literally have no infrastructure to survive.
It's a telling statement about the militant nature of Gazans that not even religiously-aligned neighbouring countries will accept them as immigrants.
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No country wants them.
Gaza has changed.
Quite literally.
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The problem is unsolvable. You have two sets of people with sets of claims on the same land. Both sides have an unshakable resolve that they are in the right and nothing is going to change that.
No, it is solved by ethnic cleansing or by prevention of ethnic cleansing.
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A lot more Palestinians learned not to attack Israel though.
If they try October 7 style attack again, Gaza will be wiped out.
nothing this is the life of pawns has been will continue to be until humans evolve which won't be until eons from now
This Land Is Mine by Nina Paley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tIdCsMufIY
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Hamas + PIJ had a fighting force of ~45 000 at the beginning of the war.
They chose to fight it in a heavily urbanized area AMONG CIVILIANS. What human outcome would you expect out of the situation ?
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~20k civilians dead in this war (started by the Palestinians, all civilians were collateral damage thanks to Palestinian militants using civilians as shields) vs 12 million killed in Nazi camps. Maybe you shouldn't diminish far greater horrors in order to attack Israel.
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>colonial apartheid character
How does this square with the Palestinians inside Israel with citizenship having the same rights as Jewish Israeli ones? Execution issues and favoritism of the ethnostate majority aside.
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Assad fell as a result of Israeli actions. Leadership of the entire axis of resistance is dead. Syria, Lebanon, and the West Bank learned what the price will be for “FAFO”. Gazan citizens have started to have a negative sentiment in Hamas, but do not express it given they and their families will be killed
Don't think I'm taking sides. I'm trying to simply look at it from a neutral bird point of view.
I think this cease fire somehow legitimises, to the public eye, Netanyahu's strategy of intense attack.
It gives the message of "we won't stop until we get the hostages back" and gives the world a reminder of what this is all about, at least according to what he claims.
Again, just trying to observe the message
It was never about the hostages. They used the Hannibal directive on 10/7
false. Hannibal directive has nothing to do with hostages
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I still remember the other time when rumor spread there was a ceasefire. Gaza streets were celebrating.
Bibi did not force the Palestinians into a ceasefire. He was the bottleneck behind it. Trump effectively threatened no more weapons. Which is why we have a ceasefire.
Yes, eventually. I have tears in my eyes. Enduring more than a year with a preposterous populist government and endless deaths, this nightmare is finally over.
100% support ceasefire. 100% agree Israel overdid it. 100% support Hamas must cease to exist. Don't leave that last part out
Whatever you think of Hamas, a blockade and/or occupation will result in militant resistance groups.
In every single example of human history without a single exception.
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What is different from Hamas right to exist compared to the IDF or Likud? Hamas certainly has less blood on their hands!
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I agree
The resistance will not cease to exist until the occupation ceases to exist. Don't leave that last part out
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Speaking of not leaving things out:
This was genocide, supported and endorsed by the US.
The moral standing of the US and Europe has, in the eyes of the rest of the nonaligned world, plunged to new depths because of this and that has been a massive, MASSIVE help to Putin and China.
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IDF 100% should cease to exist as well. It's long overdue. I don't know how an organization can officially be labelled as genocidal and be allowed to continue functioning as they do
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I don't mean to be pessimistic, but how sure are we its over? They're still bombing as we speak - and yea, I know the cease-fire doesn't come into effect sunday, but doesn't that signal something? Many times Israel has said something in these scenarios they've changed their minds. Cease-fire is not "peace," either. I think for some unfortunate people that survived this, the nightmare may just be beginning. I truly hope I am wrong. We live in dark times.
Unfortunately in the Middle East we aren’t used to peace, when I say the end of the killings I mean the scale of the killings will plummet, unfortunately this region will not see peace yet. This is by far too much for Netanyahu to backtrack, the next president of the USA already made promises that the deal is sealed, and Netanyahu spent the last 15 months telling his base that this kind of deal is not worth it, to go all of this way angering his base and putting his coalition in that risk for nothing will be very odd for me even for Netanyahu
I recommend engaging in this thread with the caveat that HN is obviously a technology community, and Israel has one of the world's most engaged technology communities.
How long before Hamas start shooting rockets indiscriminately into Israel again
That's the normal during peace periods, no? Hamas does what hamas does, IDF does what IDF does. Unless there's a permanent solution this conflict will keep getting active. Looking at the state of affairs, there will to be no end to occupation and apartheid from Israel. Feeble PA will not gain more political capital all of a sudden. Hamas made themselves a pariah with October 7 attacks. All parties will race to the bottom it seems. Palestinians and Israelis will keep suffering.
Have they stopped? Hamas and the other militias in Gaza fire rockets into Israel almost every day since the war started.
It'll take at least a few days to see if that stops.
They did yesterday https://www.tzevaadom.co.il/en/alerts/5292
How long before Israel occupies and annexes more Palestinian land again
And shoots children in the head
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It was only hours before Israel broke the ceasefire repeatedly.
Well it seems everybody was cheering too early: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-01-16/ty-article-li...
This page says, "Error 403 Forbidden. Forbidden. Error 54113." What are you referring to?
I believe they where referring to this:
“Hamas has reneged on parts of the agreement reached with the mediators and Israel in an effort to extort last-minute concessions,” [Netanyahu’s] Office said. The statement said that the cabinet will not convene until Hamas has accepted all the terms of the agreement.”
Source: https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/artc-hamas-rene...
Mirrors: https://archive.ph/9m170, https://web.archive.org/web/20250116121511/https://www.i24ne...
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Israel bombing Gaza after the ceasefire deal. At least 81 people were killed and at least 188 people were injured. I don't know if those 81 deaths includes the 45 deaths Israel killed from another bombing shortly after the ceasefire was announced.
On Israel's side, Israel claimed Hamas has reneged on parts of the agreement. I can't find any specifics.
Who would have thought?
How many square kilometers of land does Israel gain this time?
You are aware, I hope, that Israel pulled back from Gaza completely in 2005, and from Sinai in 1980?
It’s been growing smaller since 1973 (and never technically annexed any area it did temporarily take in a war)
That's not correct. Here is a map of how the West Bank settlements have grown over the years, from 1967 until 2024: https://apnews.com/a-look-at-how-settlements-have-grown-in-t...
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Is that true though, given that Israel informally takes over more and more of the West Bank? The settlers...
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I don't think the Palestinians expelled from the West Bank by Israeli settlers agree with that
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Israel invaded Syria in 1967, stealing land, and they just pushed farther into Syria, stealing even more land. How is this growing smaller?
> growing smaller since 1973
Propaganda machine at work, I see.
Israel is clearing land in the West Bank to this day, even if they haven't "annexed" the land officially.
But hey, according to their own maps it's already part of Israel, so yeah, you're right:
https://www.gov.il/en/pages/topographical-map-of-israel
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Why did it take for the incoming arrival of a new US president (Trump) and for the existing president (Biden) to LOSE to get this ceasefire deal to happen when the first proposal was rejected? [0]
Of course it "needs to be take longer" since lots of money was made by government contractors in this war and why would it need to end earlier if Biden was throwing money on Israel instead of reaching a ceasefire deal much earlier with the first deal.
All would have been avoid had it not been for Biden's weak leadership which was shown on display in-front of the world for the last 4 years.
There is no denying or spinning that.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-mediators-sea...
EDIT: Of course no-one can begin to answer this question, since the answer is there was no reason to prolong this war.
Here's an idea - the entire world doesn't revolve around the US presidency.
Israel is hugely dependent on the US, though.
In most cases sure. But this specific conflict is probably the worst example you could have picked.
What a bizarre comment. We don't have a new US President until next week.
> We don't have a new US President until next week.
You do realize that this war happened under this existing president and since November, Trump will be the "new US President"? Both Hamas and Israel both also knew this.
Even with this existing president (Biden), only until he lost the election this deal was reached and it started under his term and he prolonged to fund and waste money on Israel in this war even when the first ceasefire deal was rejected with an excessive amount of lives lost.
So why wasn't this stopped earlier with the first deal? Why did Biden (the existing president) wait until the very end to reach a deal when the first was rejected?
Can you not answer the above instead of dodging the question(s)?
I credit Trump's pressure on Hamas - Hamas eventually softened a lot of their positions because they realized they had no choice.
And I wish Biden had done a better job of supporting Israel, this war could have ended a lot sooner if Hamas had realized that the entire world was pressuring them to surrender. Instead the message got diluted with support for Palestinians, which Hamas interpreted as support for themselves.
Did you hear a single call by any country for Hamas to surrender? I didn't.
Edit: I got a very quick -4 mod on this, I assume because people don't like to realize Trump is doing more for both Israel and the Palestinians than Biden, and the Democrats lost the election partly because of their lack of support for Israel.
> Did you hear a single call by any country for Hamas to surrender? I didn't.
US, UK, France, Germany, Italy in a joint message: https://it.usembassy.gov/joint-statement-on-israel/
Spain: https://www.politico.eu/article/pedro-sanchez-spain-humanita...
Italy, France, Germany ask for EU sanctions to force Hamas surrender: https://www.reuters.com/world/italy-france-germany-call-ad-h...
Secretary of State calls out other countries for not demanding Hamas to surrender: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/20/politics/blinken-israel-hamas...
You should expand your media diet.
Except for the Sec of State no other article is calling for a surrender.
The first one condemns the attacks two days after. The second one is "Humanitarian cease-fire", and condemning Hamas for attacks - Not a call to surrender. The third one is sanctions.
I'm not seeing the call to surrender in your links. I'm seeing sanctions. I think parent is asking for explicit calls that Hamas surrenders (i.e. lays down their arms and returns the hostages). Not a ceasefire, a surrender.
The first two links are just weak platitudes. The 3rd link is a year old and the sanctions never happened. The last one is just Blinken talking, not a serious demand.
So I maintain what I said.
They agreed to the same terms from last May, so where did the soften anything?
Looks more like the Iranian hostage situation when Carter lost against Reagan.
>if Hamas had realized that the entire world was pressuring them to surrender.
I guess you mean the entire western world. The rest doesn't care or doesn't Israel vs Hamas as good vs evil. Same with Russian vs Ukraine.
> so where did the soften anything?
That's not true. Hamas agreed to:
* Allow Israel to patrol the Philadelphi corridor.
* Allow Israel troops to remain in a buffer zone
* Provided an actual list of hostages which they refused originally
* Agreed to a temporary ceasefire with hopes of negotiated a permanent one (they wanted the whole thing in one shot).
Israel on the other hand changed nothing except possible the specifics of who would be released (Israel will releases murderers, which earlier they did not want to do).
* Trump's pressure on Israel.
Trump started posting Jeffrey D Sachs videos on Truth Social and the chosen people got Hamas (which the chosen people also largely control, by the way) to accept the deal.
> And I wish Biden had done a better job of supporting Israel
What a weird take. Without Biden's support of Israel this genocide would not have been possible. How do you mean it should have supported Israel more? Allow these psychopats to nuke Gaza?
What genocide? Since when is there a genocide? Do you mean when Hamas tried to genocide Jews?
And you think Hamas wanted to nuke Gaza? Do you mean Hamas wanted all this destruction of their country? What did they gain from that?
Biden should have told Hamas to surrender, he should have told Palestinians that their Hamas leadership is leading them to death and destruction, and if the Palestinians don't stop the US will get involved. Which is what Trump did, and now there's a ceasefire.
Hamas feeds off of Palestinians support, believing it's for them. They need to know that everyone wants them dead and destroyed. But that didn't happen till Trump. Biden was weak, and did very little helpful.
Are either Israelis or Gazans more secure than when this war began? What has either side achieved?
Hamas has been considerably weakened. Their arsenal of rockets and weapons is depleted. At the beginning of the war thousands of rockets were being shot into Israel and now there are very few and the ones that are are quite crude. Hezbollah entered the war immediately and said the only way they would exit is if Hamas exists. Israel retaliated, killed their leader, decimated their forces, and negotiated a ceasefire that got Hezbollah to back off on their original terms. Lebanon just elected an anti-Hezbollah President.
During all of this, Assad was deposed. Israel's main adversary is Iran. They are the ones who fund and supply Hamas and Hezbollah, and were the key ally of Assad. They attacked Israel multiple times during the war and Israel responded in kind, the assesments seem to be that Israel's responses were quite strong.
So prior to October 7, Iran had strong proxies and allies all over the region. They are now either in shambles or deposed.
The goal of the war for Israel is to prevent another October 7th style attack from occuring. I'd say they have made significant steps towards accomplishing that from a military perspective.
Israel has likely also created multiple generations of anger and hate against themselves. They may have reduced the likelihood of another Oct 7 in the near term, but 50 years is not something I would count on
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Perhaps weakened them from an equipment & infrastructure standpoint - along with the rest of Gaza - but not from a manpower standpoint: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-14/blinken-s...
The right way to fight an independence movement is to either do so from within/in a more targeted fashion, or barring that, meet their demands in some shape or form. Escalating the violence to the point where you’re destroying and displacing a people might settle things down in the short term, but the movement will not die, and will more than likely grow.
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Not only is Hamas weakened, Hamas' and Iran's supporter (China, Russia) has been severely weakened compared to the start of the conflict. Russia is in a stalemate in the Ukraine invasion, and has lost significant economic and military resources since. Russia also lost significant influence in Middle East, with the Assad regime fall. China is a severe economic decline. Also, China distanced itself from Iran, most likely due to wanting to not get sanctioned by US and Europe. https://thediplomat.com/2024/11/china-is-recalculating-its-m....
> During all of this, Assad was deposed.
And we've yet to see whether this is a good thing.
Gaddafi was seen as one of the most oppressive figures in the world during his lifetime. A few countries made it their goal to take him down and liberate the people of Libya.
Gaddafi was killed, Libya was free, and the media celebrated. Just like with Syria, media coverage was down to basically zero about a month after that happened and everyone was left thinking it was a job well done. Turns out Libya has been worse than it ever was under Gaddafi. Having an oppressive albeit relatively secular leader who maintained a stable hold on the country turned out to be better than an oppressive non-secular mess.
Good points there. Still not sure how much the ouster of Assad was connected with the war (though no doubt that the weakening of Hezbollah must have contributed a lot to it) but it definitely changed the playing field.
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> Israel's main adversary is Iran. They are the ones who fund and supply Hamas
Well, Israel started and has been funding Hamas (I'm assuming, but who knows, that it stopped with this war) since the PLO/Arafat days to the tune of (at times tens of) millions a month.
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The monsters are still there and already planning their next attempt in genocide. While the hostages coming back is a welcome news, none of war objectives were achieved. All the sacrifices were pointless if Israel exits Gaza and leaves Hamas in control (weakened is but still in control). Netanyahu again showed that he is a coward and easily pressured and has a pathological fear of a conflict. With thousands of monsters being released back into Gaza I fear the next 7 October will be worse.
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By conservative estimates (see the 2024 Khatlib paper in the Lancet), roughly 7--9% of the population of Gaza will perish as a result of the actions of Israel on the strip. Many more will flee. According to UN, clearing the rubble in Gaza will take 15 years. That's just clearing the rubble, not rebuilding the damaged buildings, which is about 66% of the total.
There are some clear indications that the intention of the Israeli government is to destroy in whole, or in part, the Palestinian people, for example by killing members of the group, or inflicting upon it conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of the group.
There's a wealth of quotes from high ranking officials, going all the way up to the Knesset, stating almost exactly that. One quote I think of from time to time is "Erase them, their families, mothers and children." given in a motivational speech directed at the IDF.
Given that this is their intention (and I have every reason to believe it is), I'd say that this has been a pretty successful affair for Israel. Sure, Jews worldwide (including Israel) are much less safe now than they were two years ago, but the Israeli government does not give me the impression that this is at all their goal.
This makes no sense to me. If 8% (171,000 people) of Gaza were to perish, that would leave Gaza with the population it had in 2020. The ceasefire reportedly will have Israel pulling out from Gaza fully and a massive influx of humanitarian aid is expected to enter Gaza. If the ceasefire goes through, the death rate will drop greatly and the population will begin to grow again.
As horrible as the destruction has been, this is nowhere close to eliminating the people of Gaza. If genocide was a goal of any of the Israeli leadership, they abjectly failed.
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Israel is definitely more secure, because of the on front confrontation with Iran and its proxies.
1. Hezbollah suffered heavy blows and lost significant political and military power in Lebanon. Didn’t retaliate nearly as heavy as feared.
2. For the first time Israel struck with its military directly in Iran and showed real abilities by destroying most of Iran’s air defenses.
3. As a result of the two points above and other reasons, there was significant shift of powers in Syria which led to Assad regime collapse (significant amount of supplies to Iran’s main proxy Hezbollah went through Syria), but the affect of the regime change in Syria is yet to be determined.
There is an argument to be made that Iran and Hezbollah have been degraded, which makes the entire region safer. I'm not going to claim this, as I'm no expert, but there is a an argument to be made.
For the Gazans, the next months and years will be more determinative. Will they get the support and aid they need to rebuild and keep terrorist organizations from running their country? (They should have their own country instead of being effectively an open air prison)
Gaza has been its own country / Palestinian State since 2006 and they have been recipients of foreign aid for many years, which is how they fund these attacks.
That (security) was never Hamas' intention; they were worried about being forgotten, after Israel and KSA were close to normalizing relations, and now they've managed to gunk up the gears of any peace process, at the cost of 40,000 Gazan lives. So... a victory for Hamas? They've never been interested in peace anyways.
Israeli's are (not that they think it was worth it), Gazan's are not. This war severely weakened Iran, Iran's proxies (Lebanon/Hezbollah, and Syria) and also interestingly Russia.
Gazan's now have a ruined country with exactly nothing to show for it.
Depending on how you interpret it, this war was actually a good thing for Lebanon (they have a government for the first time in years), and Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster.
[Reposting a comment from ChocolateGod that was flagged and made dead despite being a legitimate good faith question]
> Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster. Not saying Assad wasn't a sadistic monster, but do you really think an ISIS-related group running the state is going to be any better?
Christians are already being persecuted.
> Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster.
Not saying Assad wasn't a sadistic monster, but do you really think an ISIS-related group running the state is going to be any better?
Christians are already being persecuted.
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The strengthening of the "us Vs them" mentality and terror politics
Can you concretely suggest what each side should have done at some point in time, to avoid being where we are now? I feel like you're making a rhetorical statement that's hard to map to specific actions.
If neither side has really changed what's to prevent them from going to war again?
It happened for a reason and unless that reason has changed then one should expect the same outcome.
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The Europeans should have stayed in Europe.
Oh please. Israelis could have voted in a different party/leader that would have taken another path. West Bank settlement expansions could have been halted and reversed (to a sensible degree of course). These are bread and butter suggestions that everyone who thinks honestly about this conflict sees clearly.
There are of course many more suggestions I didn't state. To pretend that there was just no way to avoid this is shameful.
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Israel has a bunch of land that is politically and practically simpler to annex, than before. Israel is more secure by far, knowing that the US will continue to fund them even in the face of being convicted of humanitarian crimes.
If Israel wanted Gaza, they wouldn’t have given it up twenty years ago.
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> being convicted of humanitarian crimes.
The UN and ICC have both shown they're absolutely powerless and useless.
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Timeline is very fascinating will be curious to see if eastern europe will follow suit
Isn't it better for Russia to wait till Trump?
Sooo, now we can get the process of extracting Netanyahu and his gang out of Israel rolling and handing him over to the international criminal court ... right?
Hamas just changed the terms of the deal, demanding the release of hardened terrorists. The deal will now likely fall apart. They are a terrorist organization, and behave as such. This “deal” is just another avenue to wage psychological warfare, in their view. The war in Gaza will likely continue.
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I wonder why I haven't read yet here: a "two states for two people" which which summarizes a real ending to the conflict.
> Trump's Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff was in Qatar along with White House envoys for the talks, and a senior Biden administration official said Witkoff's presence was critical to reaching a deal after 96 hours of intense negotiations.
Better than Jared Kushner I guess
Sure, because the new guy is famous for not honoring any agreements so it’s critical to have his envoy around to ensure that he isn’t going to do the same to this one.
Great news. Let's see how many days it holds this time around.
How is this hacker news? From the HN guidelines:
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. *If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.*
There are exceptions to the rules, like US election results or the end of major wars
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42614703.
Really major political developments often have a thread on HN.
From the same page of guidelines:
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.
Yeah, the irony is the guidelines have weasel words allowing this post but not the comment
We should always celebrate peaceful interactions over violent ones.
It is news because several newspapers credit the achievement to Trump and his envoy Witkoff. Ha'aretz has more on this, but it's paywalled so here is another one:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/with-epic-deal-...
This is not just Trump bragging and taking credit, search other sources.
US foreign policy does not actually change when the administration does.
I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but multiple sources are agreeing on the fact that Trump’s team had a role to play in this. But I guess this upsets the “vote blue no matter who” crowd.
> This is not just Trump bragging and taking credit, search other sources.
This claim is not justified by the link you provide. What evidence do you have to support it?
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I'd guess because of the word "Most" in that line of the guidelines?
> Negotiations on implementing the second phase of the deal will begin by the 16th day of phase one, and this stage was expected to include the release of all remaining hostages, a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
Am I missing something or did they really only agree to _just_ a ceasefire?
You're not missing anything, this is a ceasefire like the first one, Israel will demand the rest of the Hostages at the end of it, Hamas will refuse, and the fighting will resume after lots of finger-pointing about whose fault it is.
Everyone is tired of this shit. Bibi will be on meathooks if he unilaterally backs out. Hamas will have no friends at all if they renege.
Hamas did not lose any friends the last few times they reneged. I think both sides agree this peace will just last until Hamas can rearm, but I just think both sides agree that's as good a deal as either is getting.
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The headline reports the net result, however the real story here is Trump's man Steven Witkoff laying down the rules of this particular game to the Israelis.
I have never seen so many downvoted comments that aren’t dead in a thread before. If anyone had examples of other threads of this ilk I’d be curious to see them.
I’m completely ignorant as to the public sentiment on this topic, no social media besides this site.
A system that sides with the majority is not very good at protecting the voices of a minority.
Given the sheer global size of one group vs the other tiny ethnical minority it’s no surprise who wins in a count of opinion votes. That applies in the UN, and it applies here. And is ironically the reason the ethnic minority must have self determination.
> I have never seen so many downvoted comments
Must be those pesky chinese or russian bots. Or could it be something else entirely? A chosen group of bots perhaps?
> that aren’t dead in a thread before.
Give it some time. They start with the downvotes and when things quiet down some, then come the mass flagging of comments.
honestly, one thing I like about this conflict is that euphamistic comments like this don't get you banned anymore.
the ostracizing has been diluted so much that its become even counterproductive. everyone can laugh about something as benign as that, as the real frictions have been laid bare for all to see.
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You will see it in any thread about Israel or Jews. Tons of flagged and downvoted posts. I emailed hn about it.
Unlike those highly motivated people, normal people don't spend time upvoting and vouching, so you end up with a tattered mess of a thread.
> or Jews
Any example of this that isn't Israel related?
Astroturfing
Many people believe they need to add support to their cause at the expense of accuracy, so instead of elaborating or explaining why they just try to drown out discourse that doesnt automatically help them
But fortunately there is no need to debate your beliefs anymore, just go bet on them in the prediction markets
You get paid for being more correct that someone else, geopolitics is greater than sentiment
I suggest looking up the dictionary definitions of the words "war" and "genocide" and seriously considering which of the two is more appropriate for this situation.
Good. Next, Ukraine and Russia.
Unlikely, unless one of the combatants has a major economic collapse. Which, I mean, pulling support from Ukraine would do it, but personally I don't consider that an acceptable outcome.
Unlikely. Having Russia bleed itself out like a stuck pig impaling itself on Ukraine is simply too beneficial for its geopolitical rivals.
Ukraine won't end until terms can be achieved that allow bankers and Western investors to buy up all the "distressed assets" in the Ukraine for pennies on the dollar just like the oligarchs bought up all of the major industries following the collapse of the USSR.
If you've never seen it, these videos from a banking conference in 2023 are "enlightening":
https://x.com/mtracey/status/1647811834039136258
Mitch McConnell's comments about Ukraine and it's natural resources also support this plan. If assets become to expensive to buy, just cause them to be distressed so you can buy them cheaply.
Pretty much all wars are banker's wars.
I have a friend living in Ukraine - they are trying to get out because Foreign Aid is likely to dry up and Ukraine annexed :c
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This is essentially how Turkiye continues to describe the Armenian Genocide to this day. "A) there was a war going on, people sometimes die in wars whoops it's tragic" and "B) the situation is very complex and nuanced and any narrative but our chosen one is too simplistic". It sounds pretty familiar doesn't it?
https://www.mfa.gov.tr/the-armenian-allegation-of-genocide-t...
Erdogan is a war criminal too. And I’m sure the ones before him were not much more enlightened about this issue. I wonder what Ataturk thought about the Armenian genocide. I will google that to get educated on what he thought because he is about the only leader in Turkey’s history including Ottoman history that deserves respect.
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Oh yeah, the first "genocide" where the genocided population somehow increased in size instead of decreasing, and where the genocider tries to minimize the number of deaths instead of trying to maximize it.
That's one of the most stupid things I've ever read. An actual genocide is the Holocaust, or Hamas attack on Oct 7th, where they actually tried to kill as many Jews as possible.
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The last ceasefire and hostage exchange was broken by Hamas when they didn’t want to return the hostage that was agreed on by the ceasefire agreement
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Look, you may fool peoe with your “all Palestinians are terrorists” rhetoric in zionist circles, but I would hope that most other people would be able to see through the propaganda.
Israel has imprisoned people in “administrative detention” with no legal recourse for decades, for all kinds of bullshit reasons. If my home was being taken by settlers, which happens in the West Bank on the daily, I would do more than just throw stones. And it would land me in jail as a “terrorist”.
So you're saying that palestinians are not terrorists, but if you were palestinian, you would become one. That's certainly a way to make a point, I guess.
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I agree. In terms of objectives achieved the only one was the release and return of Israeli civilian hostages and even that is still mostly hypothetical, otherwise Israel failed to eliminate Hamas and will be withdrawing from Gaza which Netanyahu had declared would be annexed.
Hamas won the war even if they lost the battle. They still exist to fight another day (and judging from history they absolutely will), at the cost of countless Palestinian civvies. Israel lost the war even if they won the battle, at the cost of significant Israeli lives and reputation.
For most of us outsiders looking on, the moral to take away is this: Don't wage wars, everyone loses. Don't. Wage. Fucking. Wars. If a war must be fought, whether as the aggressor or defender or intervener, realize that everyone involved is fucking retarded and then fight all-or-nothing to end it swiftly with decisive achievements before anyone can realize what happened.
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Great - I hope this national liberation movement pushes back the neo-colonial invaders.
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Hamas could have stopped it at any time by releasing the hostages. Or they could have just not taken the hostages in the first place.
“only you can stop us from bombing civilians”
-country bombing said civilians
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> No country in the 20th century has survived carrying out a genocide.
Turkey and Rwanda still exist.
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Hamas agreed to this deal months ago. Give Trump credit for applying pressure to the party that actually rejected it.
That's not true. Hamas finally agreed to let Israel monitor the Philadelphi corridor and to keep a buffer zone.
Hamas also finally released an actual list with names of who they would release.
Those were the changes the made the deal. Israel did not change their position.
If you think you are right, then tell me: What did Hamas want that they didn't get before, than now because of Trump Israel agreed to? There's not a single thing, but I'll let you have a chance to find something.
*Genocide. It’s not a war.
As a dev, I hate jargon to dress up trivial products or when distressing things are watered down. Usually I keep my feelings to myself but in this case, allowing a genocide to be watered down would make me complicit.
P.S. I understand this will be downvoted. But HN karma is a small price to pay to call out the softening of a literal genocide. Imagine standing by when someone calls Germany’s genocide “punishments”.
45 000 deaths is genocide ? What's the civilian/military ratio ?
> 45 000 deaths is genocide ?
I’m confused by this question, is 45,000 too little for you? To label genocide you need a large number of of deaths with the intent of destroying a people’s identity.
> What’s the civilian/military ratio ?
If you’re able to find this number, you’re likely able to find that depending on whom you ask the percentage of militants ranges from 10-40%.
And this says nothing about the millions displaced, the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure and the policies to starve the population. Given the vast amount of attention given to this topic and the information around it, you need to be make a conscious effort to stay ignorant of it. And to be wilfully ignorant of a genocide is to be complicit in it.
I suggest starting here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide
War? No, ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians - not war.
Yeah right.
In other news: Israel strikes Gaza within hours of ceasefire accord with Hamas, residents say
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-hamas-cease...
The ceasefire is not in effect yet, according to the article that you linked.
I'm not at all surprised, they have form. Even now, they are still breaking the ceasefire in Lebanon too (they broke it within hours, of course) - and why wouldn't they, when the Israeli-controlled Lebanese army just lets them continue to destroy entire villages all along the border?
I hope the leaders of this genocide are brought to be accountable. Apartheid Israel have killed 10s of thousands, stole their land and dehumanised the Palestinian people; all supported by the so-called enlightened West (especially the US). This leaves a huge black spot on their morality.
It's unbelievable that Trump has managed to facilitate this before he even steps into office. It is a brutal display of power, but that is sometimes needed, just like when a parent needs to intervene in a conflict between children.
A meta level comment for dang, I’m upvoting every comment that is being gang-downvoted…independent of the position. This topic, with roots going back millennia, deserves to have all opinions captured and presented, if nothing more than as a snapshot/wave collapse of where the opposing sides sat in 2025.
Noting that, ceasefires are wonderful things.
It's not just gang-downvoting, I've seen perfectly reasonable and civil comments being flagged for no apparent reason.
I remain convinced that HN is simply not the place to have a reasoned discussion about this conflict, and probably nowhere on the internet is.
No platform that simply sides with the majority is a good place for reasoning about a conflict that pits 0.2% of the world’s population against 25%, and that includes UN resolutions.
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>Noting that, ceasefires are wonderful things.
Rest, and re-arm time.
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Yet Israel is still bombing Palestinians.
I welcome this ceasefire with caution. Israel are still currently bombing Gazan homes and the death toll is still growing. There is always a risk it is temporary for further tactical gain.
A poll showed 60% of Israelis wanted a ceasefire but the 40% who want the war to continue are making a big noise. Violence was never going to take down a resistance group, we all knew this.
I don’t think there can be a future with Hamas in charge. Only a peace deal will will secure safety for both sides. But this negotiation between Hamas dismantling and a two-state solution is not the rhetoric coming out of Israel.
Only sanctions will gain a two-state solution and actual peace for Israel and Palestine.
> Israel are still currently bombing Gazan homes
And Gaza are still currently launching missiles at Israel.
> And Gaza are still currently launching missiles at Israel.
Sources please?
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Time to pay the piper.
IMO Iran is the winner (least damaged) out of all this. Their proxies are smashed, but the core strength is still the same.
Israel has blown all its international credibility. The International Court of Justice verdict will be very interesting. If it goes against Israel then BDS will (should) become the policy for all countries.
Iran invested all its resources into proxies waging wars for it. Them being smashed means Iran is ruined on all those war investments. With economy in shambles and expansionist war failed, it's hardly "least damaged".
This is untrue on multiple levels. Iran invested most of its resources on its own military - the proxies are extremely cheap - and Iran's most powerful Iraqi proxies are fine, while the Houthis actually came out of this stronger.
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Israel already violated multiple clear orders from the ICJ so I honestly don't see what mechanism would hold them accountable.
> Israel already violated multiple clear orders from the ICJ so I honestly don't see what mechanism would hold them accountable.
That is the point of BDS
After all it was scantions from the West that bought down the other apartheid regime in the 1990s
Iran has not escaped this war. Both the US and Israel have made strikes within the country
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/consequences-i... (from Nov) | https://www.understandingwar.org/publications?type%5B%5D=bac... (daily report history)
With other conflicts wrapping up, there are people expecting more attacks into Iran, especially by Israel. They are in a weakened state. Their missile attacks amounted to nothing. Much like Russia, they likely look better on paper than in practice. That being said, one nuke from them against Israel would be devastating, but also likely mean the end of the regime
This is one of those conflicts where there are no good guys. Both sides have way too many people who want to see the other side burn more than they want peace. For outsiders like me, not picking sides is the best course of action.
And yet, our support for one of side is the best military technology available and unlimited diplomatic protection - and for the other, humanitarian aid shipments that never arrive.