Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas (2009) | Hacker News Reader

Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas (2009)

wsj.com

34 pointsstareatgoats60 comments

Unfortunately, HN isn't great for any nuanced discussion in this space. Someone will flag this story in a few minutes. The overall death toll for Israel, including Gaza, is now higher than any month in other recent world conflicts, even though it's not yet been a month. And it's mostly women and children.

Indeed Or they literally remove all your "Karma" points for a comment not in-line with the current "message".

I find that the entire internet isn't a great space. There's too much hurt on both sides of the conflict, too much trauma for anything besides hate, anger and mass destruction.

I feel the opposite is true. You're right about this, if we were to resume the internet to the arab world/middle eastern world/etc. But the internet de facto is a global medium of discussion(for all intends and purposes, even though it's still somewhat segmented). This means it's more likely that people outside of this conflict, with no ties and partisanship, can have a 'more objective' look on this. This however is with a drawback: it's also easier to influence the "entire audience" through the power of peer-pressure (or straight out propaganda/agitprop).

Yeah agreed, the stakes are immense for those with propaganda goals.

To expand... I'm commenting from personal experience. I have no stake, besides an ever intensifying weltschmerz every time I turn on the news. But I see friends and acquaintances take super harsh positions: "they got it coming!", "we must fight! We have the right!", "all bystanders must pick a side (ours) or else you are complicit too!", "the other side is inhuman and has no right to exist!"

And so few people I know are reacting in a de-escalatory manner. We collectively gaze into a bottomless pit of despair.

>And so few people I know are reacting in a de-escalatory manner. We collectively gaze into a bottomless pit of despair.

Well said. That's where I'm at. I'm very confused why anyone would be working against a "pause" (is there a synonym that's less controversial?).

It's an absolute atrocity what Israel is inflicting on Gaza, and all institutions that could put a stop to it have plainly proved either to be disinterested or powerless. And anyone who speaks up against this aggression (Israel is well past the point of self-defense) risks their livelihood for stating the obvious. It must shock us all, yet many are cheerleading the extermination of Palestinians. This is a brutal stain on our humanity and we will face the consequences sooner or later.

> Unfortunately, HN isn't great for any nuanced discussion in this space

Agree and disagree: as far as social media goes HN is possibly the most capable of nuanced discussion among them all. That doesn't stop contentious topics from going down in flames, especially if the title is provocative. But I'm hoping/sure many people will read, or bookmark this article and read it later with interest, because it is way more nuanced and informative than the title might imply.

Thanks for posting this.

What I mean is that the stories and comments get flagged/killed and shut down very early. I'm surprised the story is still up.

I was also surprised - but I imagine it's due to timing. I would guess this will get more nuanced discussion outside US hours.

I seems you are right, it got killed. But not flagged or anything, it just simply disappeared right after landing on the front page 3 hours ago: https://hnrankings.info/38048372/

Weird, I haven't seen that before. It's like some sort of "shadowflagging", visible to people who have commented or with a direct link, invisible to everyone else.

edit: ok, so now it got flagged, too.

Yep, seen this on several occasions.

If you consume HN with a feedreader that pulls the feed fairly often you will see posts get flagged and “disappeared” which is what I call it when HN deletes the link from a post (but my feedreader still has it).

Usually when the post’s link disappears I can see why if I hit the link in my feedreader, but I would say that at least a third of the time when I see a post flagged, it’s hard to see why logically, so I usually assume it’s some zealot who feels the duty to protect all of us from hearing or reading things they don’t like.

> I usually assume it’s some zealot

It might be that, but the power to completely delete posts from the front page (or any page) doesn't reside with users AFAIK. My theory is that either a moderation bot or someone with superuser privileges did it, and not really because the information was distasteful per se, more likely because there is an assumption that the HN crowd wouldn't be able to handle the topic with nuance and rationality, and therefore hurt the overall experience here.

I can understand it: topics related to wars where people have had relatives, friends, acquaintances and/or tribesmen killed and maimed will obviously tend to devolve, badly. But it would be a difficult balance in that case - it might lead to vital information being suppressed, here on HN as well.

I was referring to the flagged posts, not the removed. Like I said, most of the time those removed are understandable to the TOC of the site.

It’s the flagged where I suspect the zealotry. Interesting topics and great discussion can get suppressed and essentially killed.

We're still doing a lot better than Reddit for example. Pointing out the civilian death toll and how it's only creating the next generation of Hamas fighters tends to turn into absolute shit show.

Because no one knows what the death toll is except for what the terrorists are telling us.

The numbers from the health ministry are historically accurate, and even often cited by the US State Department in the past[1].

Or, if you trust Israel's numbers, they are pretty open that they dropped, for example, 6000 bombs on Gaza in a single week. Very conservatively, a typical JDAM bomb kills everything in a 30-40 meter radius and more deaths out to 10x that distance. That's just bombs, Israel is also using artillery, mortars, drones, small arms, etc. And then there's whatever deaths a water+fuel+food+medicine blockade might cause. Gaza's population density is high and well known, as is the percentage of women and children. Try some emotionless math that tells you thousands of women and children aren't dead...it just doesn't work.

[1] https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-country-reports-on-human-...

The precentage of woman and children in the population is known but that is only relevant if you assume Israel is bombing randomly

Some civilians evict themselves from these areas (north and central gaza mainly)

Some of the bombed areas would have less civilians in them even before the war since they are used by hamas for war (but obviously not 0)

Israel publishes the high ranking Hamas members that are confirmed dead but don't report civ/"grunts"

Not that I am saying we should take the health ministry word as fact (they lied before, Al-Ahli Hospital is just an example) but I don't think their numbers would be orders of magnitude off

Mentioned in another comment, but 6000 bombs went into that small area, within a week. Mostly JDAMS that have a really large kill radius.

Look at the number of bombs dropped in an entire year, into an entire country, by the US: https://progressive.org/latest/usa-bombs-drop-benjamin-davie... That gives an idea of the scale of the bombing in Gaza...it's HUGE.

There's almost certainly an extremely high number of civilian deaths, without having to look at the Gaza Health Ministry numbers at all.

What do you think the thousands of bombs Israel is dropping are doing? They've dropped over 7000 bombs according to their own numbers. Is it really hard to believe that each of those only killed 1 person? I think we'll find the death toll is much higher in the end.

There's a dark joke that the Israelis trust what's coming out of Hamas more than the news coming out of the zionist media. We've seen the comical lies the latter did in order to justify their war crimes, from "40 beheaded babies" to rapes, to human shields, to fabricating a very convenient phone call that happen to tell exactly where the supposed rocket launch came from before the hospital massacre[1], to another fabricated phone call in which the speakers happen to admit that there is an "HQ" underneath the same hospital. It's quite a joke at this point.

They also do not admit that the zionist army kills its own people, as per the straight admission of one of the kibutz survivors. Look for the interview on youtube.

[1] several sources, and most recently the NYT have shown that the rocket that the zinoist media said it caused the blast in the hospital actually came from israel.

> [1] several sources, and most recently the NYT have shown that the rocket that the zinoist media said it caused the blast in the hospital actually came from israel.

I haven't seen anything that showed any conclusive proof that the rocket came from Israel, the blast pattern doesn't match any armaments that Israel has airburst or not.

I'm happy to change my mind with a link that provides concrete evidence though, can you provide one.

Read this: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/world/middleeast/gaza-hos...

Furthermore, yesterday or 2 days ago, the zionist media released CGI footage of a supposed secret HQ under the hospital. Why now? It seems they are paving the way to justify what may be discovered in the future. The did shell the hospital 3 days before the blast, I wouldn't be surprised if the cause of the blast was another shelling that blew up cars in the parking lot.

The zionist media has been desperately lying through its teeth: https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1718547315764441095

> Read this

>https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/world/middleeast/gaza-hos...

I did and this doesn’t sound very “conclusive” at all

>> The Times’s finding does not answer what actually did cause the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital blast, or who is responsible.

>https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1718547315764441095

This tweets main source appears to the GreyZone which is a pro Russian propaganda rag that mostly peddles in misinformation I wouldn’t find it credible.

[flagged]

Since you've reverted to using HN primarily for ideological/national/religious battle, I've banned the account. I understand that these topics are intense, divisive, and emotional for good reasons—but that doesn't make it ok to use HN primarily to argue about them. On the contrary, it's a reason not to do that.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

> nuanced discussion

> mostly women and children.

Isn't Israel inflicting civilian casualties because Hamas is using human shields? Isn't there a stark moral difference between trying to minimize collateral damage (but still killing civillians) and intentionally fighting out of civilian infrastructure like hospitals?

I can see the "human shield" angle, though I don't personally agree that's what's happening. Either way, there's a choice there on Israel's part, to continue using bombs when they know the rough ratio of how many civilians, women, children, they are killing for each Hamas member they think they are killing.

That ratio is highly unusual compared to other conflicts.

Scale it down to something you can relate to. Someone did something unthinkable to your family, killing many of them. How many women and children, uninvolved in that, are you willing to kill to get to the original perpetrator? Is it justified if the original perpetrator is using them as shields?

Isn't killing innocents because of atrocities to their people the same thing that started this most recent conflict?

Edit:

Compare the number of bombs the US dropped on entire countries over a year's time: https://progressive.org/latest/usa-bombs-drop-benjamin-davie...

You'll see that 6000 bombs in a week (Israel's numbers), into a ~10km x 40km densly populated area, is highly unusual.

Human shield is a euphemism for target.

A tweak on your question: Someone did something unthinkable to your family, killing many of them. They have the stated intent of continuing to kill as many others as possible. How many women and children, uninvolved in that, are you willing to kill to get to the original perpetrator?

If you go after the perpetrator, people are going to die. But if you don't, (different) people are going to die.

Fair, but what ratio are you comfortable with? How many innocents per Hamas member is justified?

I"m not comfortable even with the question.

One way to look at it is as a stock versus a flow. How many people are you willing to kill today to prevent Hamas from killing X people a year? What's your time horizon?

But another way to look at it is: Families of civilians killed have some motivation to become Hamas fighters. How many Hamas fighters are you willing to create in order to kill some Hamas fighters?

It's a horrible situation. Until Hamas and Israel are willing to forgive each other for past killings, the killings will continue, on both sides.

I would move to a more peaceful place long before I'd let that happen.

> Isn't Israel inflicting civilian casualties because Hamas is using human shields?

Nope, they're doing ethnic cleansing. Just last night Israel bombed the West Bank. Hospitals, schools, restaurants, markets... taking civilians hostage.

you gonna source that?

West Bank:

* https://twitter.com/Timesofgaza/status/1715876278245470717

* https://twitter.com/Timesofgaza/status/1717151823499268497

* https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1715872245623496930

* https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1718127227026510058

* https://twitter.com/ShaykhSulaiman/status/171820746500984059...

* https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1714883129020719488

Market Bombings

* https://twitter.com/PalestineCultu1/status/17158712086195734...

* https://twitter.com/Megatron_ron/status/1717182771934703923

Bakery Bombings

* https://twitter.com/Timesofgaza/status/1714542418689712325

* https://twitter.com/mortazavi/status/1715978615186460719

* https://twitter.com/stickyshed/status/1718290604684394646

all of those are propaganda twitters from one side, and some are even controlled by the enemy combatants.. thats like my sources are ONLY the israeli army

The Israel/US media isn't reporting any of this, so you need to get it from Arab sources. If you doubt any of those (I don't know how you could), please cite your sources that contradict them.

well I can tell you that since Hamas runs the entire gaza strip (up until about a day ago), "The Times of Gaza" is under complete censorship from them or is essentially pravda. There is no "independent journalist organizations" in gaza, im sure there are some individuals on twitter, but odds are, if they are under 30, they pretty much grew up with Hamas controlling their whole life, education, etc.

It sounds crazy but you really can't believe anything they say.

So you think that footage is faked? What do you think those thousands of bombs Israel is dropping on Gaza are doing exactly?

Also Israel has been terrorizing the West Bank for years, this is well known and well documented by many sources.

terrorizing islamists and the people who harbor them

I urge you to think a little more critically about the purpose of the wording "human shields"

The Israelis are dropping JDAMs, mortars and artillery into the most densely populated area in the world and Yoav Gallant's said bluntly they were going for "damage not precision"

They have refused hostage exchanges and have already killed some of them (50 I think I read on the Al Jazeera English chyron)

The number of Hamas operatives killed so far is in the low double digits range

They are calling _anyone_ who is currently in Gaza a human shield, not to emphasize their intrinsic humanity, but rather to warn they are targets too

> The Israelis are dropping JDAMs, mortars and artillery into the most densely populated area in the world.

What specific area are you talking about? The Gaza strip as a whole is about 15k people per mi^2. Gaza City is in the 20-40k per mi^2 (sources vary quite a bit).

Going with 40k per mi^2 would put it around 70th on the list of densest cities [1].

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

I stand corrected on the numbers. Still though, the entirety of the Strip is under fire - and a human standing in front of another human is no shield when you blow up both of them

> The number of Hamas operatives killed so far is in the low double digits range

Source?

Let's not forget that they also called the Palestinians animals. Sounds awfully similar to another genocidal regime that ruled over Germany before WWII.

are you just making this up?

Did people in Gaza admit they were being used as human shields, or is this another pro-zionist talking point? We saw what Bassem Yousuf did on Piers' show.

It's a talking point. They are human shields by virtue of residing in Gaza just like Hamas militants.

Yep. This is one of the biggest reasons everyone is furious at Benjamin Netnyahu. For 30 years he supported and used the Hamas as a cudgel against the PLO and as a threat against the moderates. The amount of stupidity around this is mind boggling.

Like António Guterres strongly implied, the cycle of violence has been amplified by the Israeli government.

Yes, but I think it's important to separate Benjamin Netnyahu as he went to the extreme during a period of time where we knew the Hamas is "serious". Previously Israel supported the Muslim Brotherhood, that was dumb. But they wanted Jihad "in the future". Also the PLO was still a terrorist organization back then.

Netnyahu promoted the Hamas when the PLO abandoned terrorism and when the Hamas was known for extremely violent mass murder (exploding busses etc.). He's a special kind of idiot a*hole.

100%, but it is also politically expedient to keep Hamas around as that yields (well, used to anyway) the usual excuse for dehumanizing Palestinians..

I'm saying that since the 90s this was almost entirely due to one guy. Other leaders from his party (e.g. Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, etc.) didn't take the same approach.

https://archive.ph/iPO3z

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