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Comment by nezirus | Hacker News Reader

"tries to avoid killing unarmed people"

I respectfully disagree, Israel is an occupation force, has overwhelming power (military, economical and diplomatic) and they do kill grown people and children almost without prejudice. Some official numbers (I suspect it is even worse in reality):

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-208380/

P.S. I don't condone violence on both sides, eternal war like one in Palestine/Israel is horrible (I've lived through 4 years of war, believe me a day of it is too much), but I really don't like political correctness, where we must have "balance" in reporting, but it is completely clear who holds the keys of peace and who has the finger on the trigger)

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Quoting fatality numbers does nothing to disprove the statement. How many armies fire warning shots to let people vacate the area before airstrikes?

Regarding who hold the keys to peace, and who has their finger on the trigger, I think the government glorifying and paying people who sneak into towns and slaughter sleeping families with knives is a pretty big impediment to peace.

If you read the very same report you linked, you’d see that of the Israelis that Palestinians killed, 69% were civilians, while from the Palestinians which Israel killed, 59% were civilians.

It doesn’t sound like Israel is deliberately targeting civilians.

Furthermore: It is also well known for anyone who wants to know that

- Hamas deliberately launch rockets from densely populated areas and from hospitals. This is a war crime as big as anything Israel has done in recent years.

- Israel goes out of their way to avoid harming civilians: often calling affected areas on phone, dropping leaflets, "firecracker" bombs that go off over rooftops and after that do they bomb the area.

Think about what you are saying. Israel has overwhelming superiority - and yet somehow the Palestinian population is growing?

And this somehow mean "almost without prejudice"?

To me it's exactly the opposite - Israel can do what they want, and yet, they aren't. They are barely harming the Palestinians (compare casualty figures to ANY other conflict).

On the other hand Palestinians (mainly Hamas and other groups in Gaza) are attacking as hard as they possibly can.

So why do you think Israel has the key to peace here? Seems to me it's exactly the opposite.

You make a good point. A lot of people aren't aware of this, but more people die in Mexico every year as a result of cartel violence than have died in the entire history of the Israel Palestine conflict. If Israel were really the big bad oppressive force that people claim it to be, especially with their industrialized military and the asymmetry of the two forces, wouldn't we expect that the death toll would be much higher?

the un has proved countless times, since 1948, that they have no reliability when it comes to honestly presenting the Israel Arab conflict. To prove my point, look at UNRWA, a singular organization, whose sole aim is to maintain the status of the Palestinians as refugees. Show me a comparable organization to UNRWA. Show me any large group of refugees -and there are many- who have had their reputation maintained for 70 years.

What part of this link proves Israel is not trying to avoid casualties?

At no point I’m saying there’s not casualties, including civilian casualties, including horrible mistakes, including trigger happy psychos that make it through the ranks.

But the imbalance of casualties is the result of Israel being better at it.

It would be great if there was peace. But even if I ran Israel and the Palestinian Territories as a dictatorship tomorrow I still wouldn’t be able to turn all violence to zero.

Personally, as an Israeli I would love for Israel to evacuate settlements. But pretending that would bring peace is not even naive, it just doesn’t align with anything anyone involved is saying.

You should read your words out loud, to yourself, to your kids. Israel is better at it, better at killing people...

There is no easy solution for that conflict, but killing more people and holding millions of people in de facto concentration camp sure wont help it.

That’s one twisted way to interpret it. A more charitable one would be that Israel is better at protecting its civilians.

It sounds as if you have an idea that Israel could just make it all go away in a day if they’d like. I would love to know what you think that move would be.

Well, for one it should (at least try to) protect all civilians not just "its own".

I agree with you that no one can make it go away in a day, and that is a big problem. Every day of the conflict causes more pain, more casualties, and expands vicious circle of violence.

I guess that current generations are lost cause, as long as we always frame it into "us vs them", "we are good, enemy is bad", the conflict will never end.

Maybe the solution is one state, with citizens, not religious groups, maybe it is two states (dunno if that is even possible at this point).

Also, extreme conditions in Gaza and West Bank don't help. Imagine if young people there have an option to go to real university, have a nice job, a house. Would they be willing to blow themselves, killing many innocent people. (Not to say poverty is the primary cause of attacks, but that level of desperation certainly doesn't help)

Don't wish or do anything to other people which you wouldn't want for yourself. Imo, that should be a good start. To change the world one must start from himself.

> Well, for one it should (at least try to) protect all civilians not just "its own".

They do. They are known to go to extreme lengths to avoid harming civilians, including calling up before bombing, dropping leaflets, "firecracker" bombing ahead of actual bombing etc.

And why are they bombing civilian neighborhoods in the first place: because that's were Hamas puts their rocket lauchers. That is a war crime too, and it is worse, because the only reason they do it is to attract attacks towards civilian areas; tactically those rocket attacks are just dumb - they only serve to get media coverage when Israel find they have had enough of it and flatten it.

Israel can end it tomorrow by leaving the middle east entirely, or by taking over the areas, kill the leadership of the various terror groups and grant full citizenship to everybody else. The top leadership is super corrupt and are doing nothing to help the people.

Instead they keep doing this stupid inbetween thing that helps nobody but the weapon manufactures, and those who like to hurt humans.

Granted neither of those options could be done in a day, but peace in two years seems about as good a solution as any, no?

Transforming an entire people into refugees is an unacceptable solution, whether it be the Gazans or the Israelis.

So if you were wondering why they do this "stupid inbetween thing" instead, now you know.

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