Comment by VictorPath | Hacker News Reader

Comment by VictorPath | Hacker News Reader

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Al-Haq is a Palestinian human rights NGO funded by the European Union. Two weeks ago, Israel labeled six Palestinian NGOs, including al-Haq, terrorist organizations and has outlawed them. This was condemned by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others. The EU also funded the other Palestinian human rights NGOs which Israel outlawed.

The US had an office in Jerusalem dealing with Palestinians that Trump closed down. Biden and Blinken began to reopen it but the Israeli government have refused permission for the US to reopen it.

This is following Israel's throwing Palestinians out of their homes in East Jerusalem back in May and replacing them with settlers, which was followed by a mass bombing of the Gaza strip by Israel, including the building in which the Associated Press had its office, a building Israel said it purposely targeted.

This amidst settlement of Palestine's West Bank by Israel which is opposed by multiple UN resolutions supported by an overwhelming majority of nations.

> including the building in which the Associated Press had its office, a building Israel said it purposely targeted.

Why did you omit the reason for targeting?

"... because it was being used by the groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad and that terrorist attacks were directed from there"

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-has-received-mo...

There are so many facts omitted in the comment you are replying to, there is no question it is not a comment made in good faith.

> Why did you omit the reason for targeting?

I think it's obvious why he omitted it.

That's the excuse used to bomb every hospital, school and press building by the Zionist regime. Hard to take anything that comes out of their mouths seriously.

Because it was never substantiated. There's little point in repeating information that's no more trustworthy than taking a poll of random people on the street.

Israel is free not to release their evidence, and the rest of us are free to infer what we would like from the fact that a first world nation refuses to substantiate their reasoning for bombing a news outlet.

That would stand for pretty much any nation that considers itself to be free. If Germany bombed their AP HQ and refused to release any evidence of why, there would be some very stern questions as well.

I don't understand how people can think Israel mass bombed gaza. Israel has one of the largest militaries in the world. If they decided to mass bomb somewhere, it wouldn't be a place anymore. Its not the 1800s. A mass bombing is not something anyone walks away from in the modern world.

So perhaps the obvious conclusion should be that your definition of "mass bombing" is not what people mean when they use that term?

I was under the impression it was a synonym for area bombing - e.g. throwing a bunch of bombs at a place to inflict damage in a general way. As opposed to having a very specific target.

What's your definition?

Tens of thousands of people being displaced seems pretty general to me.

How does that compare to other conflicts? Tossing around numbers without any context doesn't do anyone any good. There are four ongoing "Major Wars" with 10,000+ fatalities in the last year, which undoubtedly displaced orders of magnitude more people

"people" are not one group. when a group uses some specific words, you can ask what those people mean. General 'people' have different definitions, and sometimes use words as weapons.

Many people have no idea what they're talking about when speaking outside of their areas of expertise. So, yes, it's very possible that those people have something very different from mass bombing in mind.

Israel launched over 900 attacks on Gaza in May, killed hundreds of Palestinians, and displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians. The UN estimate is 461 housing and commercial units were destroyed by Israel's bombing of Gaza.

I don't dispute even more could have been killed by Israel and more destroyed by Israel if the United Nations Security Council did not call for an ending to it and that if that did not happen "it wouldn't be a place anymore...not something anyone walks away from". People can go and look at the videotaped news reports from Gaza after the bombings and judge for themselves.

I'm not saying there wasn't an armed conflict or that people didn't die. Just when people say something was mass bombed it implies something very different.

A quick google search reveals that the US launched 2800000 ground attack missions during the Vietnam war, dropping 15000000000 pounds of bombs. That works out to an average of several hundred attacks per day for two decades.

I also encourage you to look at Wikipedia's List of ongoing armed conflicts [1], which lists the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as a "Minor Conflict" given its scale in comparison to the other entries.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict...

Seems a bit over the top to use the Vietnam War as a benchmark for the size of any bombing campaign, unless the benchmark is going for "largest ever by quite a margin".

You're indulging in the fallacy of relative privation and trying to change the subject for some reason.

there were fewer people killed than bombs dropped - it was a highly pinpointed affair beyond any sort of 'mass bombing' terminology, while at the same time the government of gaza WAS mass launching artillery rockets at israeli cities.

Truly upside-down world.

But they do walk away from mass bombings. I mean, heck, folks walked away from nukes (most later died of cancer, but not all). More folks survived the hindenberg than died in the crash. And so on.

Mass bombings tend to kill folks in the blast areas, but there are a lot of places that aren't directly in the blast. If you destroy one house with a bomb, the surrounding houses will likely have damage but still stand - and the residents will know.

way fewer people died than bombs dropped. There was no 'mass bombing' - it was all highly pinpointed with roof knocking and warning of people in the area.

The mass launches of artillery rockets against israeli cities was mass bombing, just less effective.

Gaza City has a higher density than NYC (34k per sq mi vs. 29k). Now imagine trying to run an anti-mafia campaign using only air power.

Maybe don't do that then? If someone knowingly bombs areas densely packed with civilians, then they are committing war crimes at best, terrorism at worst.

It's incredibly difficult to have sympathy with Israel when their politicians and military behave with such little regard for human rights and human life - I really wish they'd take the moral high ground and just fucking stop the evictions, abductions, torture, beatings and killing.

No, Hamas is committing war crimes by deliberately launching rockets from an area packed with civilians, knowing that some of them will be killed by the return fire. And doubly so if you consider that the rockets Hamas is launching are targeting densely packed cities (without military targets nearby)

>This is following Israel's throwing Palestinians out of their homes in East Jerusalem back in May and replacing them with settlers

that is a complete distortion of the facts. This was a perfectly legal eviction which made it's way through the court system over a number of years. The pa put a nationalist spin on it in order to distract from their failing election campaign and unfortunately, everyone fell for it. But it was never anything more than a rental dispute.

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