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Comment by golergka | Hacker News Reader

If it's a choice between your human rights and someone else's life — obviously.

Also, "fight back in a wrong way" is a very curious way to label brutal attacks targeting civilians that go on non-stop for the last hundred years — long before any of alleged grievances that you would be "fighting back" against even began.

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>attacks targeting civilians that go on non-stop for the last hundred years

Those go on non-stop from BOTH sides.

And statistically the side you seem to be siding with has caused 100 times the casualties --doing those "brutal attacks targeting civilians" with full military force, not ad-hoc weaponry (plus they have amassed all this land areas they didn't use to have). Or is that just a minor detail?

The important detail here, which you ignore, is targeting.

I'm not sure I follow. How is bombing and attacking people in their lands (and then taking them) not targeting them?

> If it's a choice between your human rights and someone else's life — obviously.

So if I unjustly imprison you, and the only way for you to escape is by killing me, will you willingly stay imprisoned forever? It's an... admirable stance, although so unpopular that you'll likely find not even Gandhi on your side.

(honestly, historical trivia is relatively irrelevant to the whole Israel/Palestine debate, which has great moral issues to argue -- if your people suffered apartheid and holocaust, are you justified in doing the same to others "in self-defence"? How long does it take for populations to forego ethnic grievances and land claims? Will nations ever renounce ultimate sovereignty to the UN? etc etc)

>So if I unjustly imprison you, and the only way for you to escape is by killing me

Completely wrong analogy. The killing doesn't help you escape at all, it just angers the jailer (who you can't touch anyway).

It was not an analogy, it was an hypothetical situation. If my human rights end where loss of life on your side begins, then according to that stated belief, the situation I mentioned is morally acceptable, is it not?

The standard you are applying is pacifism: do not use violence even if violence is being used on you.

No. Use violence if it can lead to less net violence — this is my standard. Terror acts are a direct opposite of this.

Except you don't know what will ever lead to "less net violence", nor do you have a way to quantify net violence beyond bodycount -- and I don't think you want that.

And in the meantime keep grabbing somebody else's land. You're a man of high principles, indeed.

You mean like Sinai and Gaza?

Let's talk seriously. Israel withdrew from Sinai and dismantled a few settlements in in the Gaza strip. It didn't relinquish its full control over Gaza's borders, air space and maritime space (which means, in fact, on the whole Gaza economy) such that Gaza is still considered by the UN an occupied territory.

In the meanwhile, Israel keeps expanding its illegal colonies in a foreign territory, the West Bank, contravening to the international law. It also unilaterally annexed the whole city of Jerusalem, also contrary to international law. And it unilaterally annexed the Golan Heights, demolishing over a hundred Syrian villages and giving the land to Israeli settlers, also against the international law (as was recently reaffirmed by the UN Security Council).

As of 2016, 750000 Israelis, about 10% of the whole population of Israel, lives in illegally occupied territories. This number has been steadily growing for the past 60 years.

Let me clarify the concept if these numbers seem a bit abstract. Israel is stealing houses and fields and destroying villages and driving out native populations, by economic and military oppression, in a quest for lebensraum for its own population. This is completely unacceptable by any modern western standard.

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