[flagged]
Perhaps Israel look bad in the press because they are acting badly. It seems to me that Israel are unambiguously the stronger power in this conflict: they have are much stronger military, and additionally have the backing of the US and a bunch of other nations that would step in were Israeli territory under threat. And they are using that power to aggressively attack the weaker power in the conflict with little regard for civilian casualties (“collateral damage”) or proportionality of response.
It's also absurd to think Israel should chill out and let the US handle its defense. As if an occasional murder-raid and constant rocket fire is just something Israel should tolerate because, if the Arabs actually invade again, the US will bail them out.
That aside, Israel should do more to avoid civilian casualties. And it should treat captives better than this story indicates.
A fundamental principle of the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) is distinguishing military and civilian targets, and minimizing harm to the latter. That applies to all sides in every war. [0]
In warfare, generally all sides are outraged, filled with hatred and revenge. They wouldn't be killing each other otherwise. That is not an exceptional situation, it's the norm; that's what the LOAC was written for. 1200 civilian deaths, though absolutely horrible, unforunately also is well within the norm for warfare. 100,000+ have died in places and times, including at US hands.
Obviously Hamas didn't follow that principle (they seem to have intentionally violated it). I can't say how well Israel is doing it, but it's an essential issue. Saying 'we're angry' or 'our people were killed' is not exceptional in warfare and does not create exceptions.
[0] https://www.justsecurity.org/89489/expert-guidance-law-of-ar...
Whichever side you are on (if any), responding to atrocities with further atrocities is not justifiable. It doesn't matter who commits these atrocities
1. https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2023-10-09/secr...
They way you put it, it sounds like Israel wasn’t created by forcefully stealing land from the Palestinian people that were already there
That is incredibly ahistorical, and in my honest opinion, "land theft" allegations are akin to a smear.
The truth about the land's history is, of course, too complicated to fit in a thread.
One thing is for sure though, they keep doing it. To this day Israeli settlers, aided by the IDF, keep stealing Palestinian land and resources
Israel probably wishes they would just disappear so it would stop being so complicated
Also it's amazing how nuance is needed when it's to discuss Israel's war crimes, land grabs, and everything else. But none is required when it's about Palestinians. Do you also say that "it's complicated" when someone talks about Hamas?
Israel is not colonising anyone. Even the West Bank was occupied in ab existentixal war against proper state armies and violent civilians groups in 1967.
You however, by saying it’s complicated, are trying to paint a simple picture in which Israel apparently didn’t do anything wrong
That’s actually incredibly partisan and false
Yes you did. You said Israel was created by "forcefully stealing land." The vast majority of Jewish migrants in the late 19th century bought the land. If you're talking about the 1949 war... well, it was a war, in which the Israelis agreed to the fair UN partition plan, and the Arab states did not. At the very least, "stealing" is a very reductive way to summarize it.
> by saying it’s complicated, are trying to paint a simple picture
But is is complicated! That is actually true, and that's OK!
> in which Israel apparently didn’t do anything wrong
Of course Israel has done things wrong.
> That’s actually incredibly partisan
I am trying my absolute best to make comments in the spirit of HN. If you think it's too partisan to engage with, then I'm sorry, but you should know that I really did try.
Maybe you mean Zionist claims?
Do you also think that criticizing Israel in any way is antisemitic?
It is certainly aggressively attacking Hamas, but that's because, despite Hamas being weaker, they've shown themselves capable of invading Israel and killing thousands of citizens.
You write "little regard for civilian casualties", but I don't think that's true - please, explain how you arrive at that conclusion.
And proportionality of response doesn't mean what many people think it means - is' not "Hamas kill X people so Israel should kill f(X) people". It's measured by how many civilians would die while achieving a valid military objective. Destroying Hamas is absolutely a valid military objective - the question is if Israel is managing to do it without a disproportianate number of civilians killed.
I think based on the best-known numbers we have - which place the civilian-to-combatant kill ration at 2:1, meaning 2 civilians killed per 1 militant - I think that this is valid and in-line with similar wars fought by Western countries in the past.
Could you share any source for these numbers?
The majority of the reporting I have seen is that around 17-18,000 people have died in Gaza since October 7 and that the majority have been women and children. If we take that at face value, it seems that we would almost have to assume that the majority of men killed are being counted as Hamas militants. Given that there were assumed to be ~40,000 of these (as far as I can recall) in a total population of over 2 million, it seems unlikely.
The 18k number is from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, and doesn't break down the numbers into civilians vs combatants.
I didn't quite understand your calculation or last sentence.
The assumptions I am working on:
- 18,000 Palestinians have lost their lives
- Gazan health authority figures are in the realms of reality given numbers reported compared with numbers confirmed in past conflicts (my inclination here is to assume they are possibly under-counting due to many still buried under rubble - though I could be wrong here and these are somehow already added to the tally)
- 50% are women and children (50% as a conservative convenience given that most reporting I have seen is over 60%)
- No women or children are being counted as enemy combatants (definitely not true - I have seen footage of female Hamas militants during hostage handovers - but again I assume for convenience that their numbers are not significant)
My calculation is that if 1/3 of Palestinian deaths have somehow been confirmed as militants/combatants then of a total of 18,000 that leaves 9,000 Palestinian men that have lost their lives. If the 2:1 ratio is correct then the number of combatants that have been killed must be 6,000. This seems unlikely to me because I cannot see why the 'collateral damage' suffered by the male population should be so different from the wider population when under 2% of a population of 2 million people are Hamas militants (by what I recall was the highest estimate of 40,000 given by the IDF at the outset).
In other words if the total ratio is around 2:1, I think it is highly unlikely that the ratio for the male population is around 1:2. What makes male Palestinians so special that they should suffer so much less collateral damage?
Israel has bombed Gaza multiple times, way before Oct 7, it’s killed people in peaceful protests, it has boasted Hamas to avoid a peaceful resolution of a Palestinian state and it continues to expand illegal settlements with the help of the IDF in the West Bank. All of that on top of forcefully taking over the land to establish the country in the first place
If anything, Israel has been the main aggressor, attacker and killer for over 70 years
To pretend otherwise is incredibly ahistorical
And you're calling people antisemitic (how original) because they care about the massacres and ethnic cleansing Israel is committing against Palestinians (who are in fact Semitic).
I think the OP point is why is this the only war being discussed, not that war is victimless.
I don't say this in a spirit of criticism—I am certain that you have deep and legitimate reasons for feeling the way that you do. But we're trying hard to have a certain sort of discussion here, one that remains within the intended spirit of this site, as expressed at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you can't find that place in yourself, that's entirely understandable and ok, but please don't post in this thread unless you can.
The same goes for some of the commenters arguing against your position—my moderation point here is certainly not about agreeing with them and disagreeing with you (I add this because I know it can all too easily feel that way).
The term "antisemitic" is well-understood in English to refer to hostility towards Jews. I know the root "-semitic" is in there. Yes, Palestinians are also semitic, but that's not what anyone is trying to communicate when they use the word "antisemitic."
Please don't do it, because it's incredibly trivializing.
That said, I don't think this is a valid criticism of HN. There have been plenty of threads about other wars, and there have been very few threads about Israel, actually.
The news coverage of Israel’s war in western media is huge. And while other ongoing wars in the ME, many of them led by dictators that are not even trying to seem democratic or just BTW, Israel gets the spotlight every single time. And HN definitely showed more interest in this than many other bloody conflicts in the ME.
That said, I tried to prove you wrong by searching for stories featuring the word "Ukraine" and "Israel". There's only one story featuring Israel. But then I realized I was making a mistake and searched for "Gaza" as well, and found far more stories.
So, it's kind of hard to say from this quick check, but maybe you're right. That said, I think you're right that HN just reflects the fact that Israel/Palestine is just a far more interesting topic to many people, and especially to people of the US.
Israel cannot be called a colonizer. That's stretching the meaning of the word too far, only for demagogic effect.
And yes, the UN are biased. The number of resolutions against Israel is absurd. From wikipedia: "Since the UNHRC's creation in 2006, it has resolved almost as many resolutions condemning Israel alone than on issues for the rest of the world combined." I don't think any Israeli loses sleep over UN resolutions, nor does it give any Palestinian hope.
Hamas cannot win the conflict with Israel, at least not in the foreseeable future. So they'll keep suppressing Palestinians (because they've got quite a tyrannic regime in Gaza), and do stupid things against Israel. Which then retaliates, and has also taken it as an excuse for other policies.
That cycle is not broken by some contorted, meaningless analysis using fashionable terminology. It will only make enemies in both camps. In a recent interview, John Gray said (about climate change, but it fits here too): "I think that’s the politics of narcissism: “I want to feel good.” But in the meantime, you’re wasting resources and you’re wasting time."
This conflict needs actions by a party with enough power to provoke a change on both sides. Ok, that's my bedside analysis, but the politically correct name calling (colonizer, fascist, terrorist) only widens the divide.
How does Israel not fit this definition? Even if we were to ignore the history of the country, it continues to fund such settlements on the West Bank.
Jews have a legitimate and ancient claim to indigeneity in the Levant. (In fact, this week's story of Chanukkah is about Jews being persecuted and evicted from from their homes in the region by a Greek empire.) Of course, Jews eventually left the region due to forcible diaspora.
Jews are obviously not the only ethnic group with a legitimate claim to the land. At least the following groups can all claim to be native to the land, for some definition of native: Turks, Ottomans, Arabs, and yes, Palestinians.
In a very real sense, the millions of Mizrahi Jews are in fact refugees from Arab countries (especially Yemen and Morocco), who fled persecution to their ancestral homeland.
But calling Israeli Jews settlers -- especially within the UN Green Line! -- is terribly inflammatory, and not particularly accurate.
> But calling Israeli Jews settlers -- especially within the UN Green Line! -- is terribly inflammatory, and not particularly accurate.
You brought this point back, even though I was willing to forgo it. I explicitly mentioned settlers illegally in the West Bank.
Jews have a legitimate and ancient claim to indigeneity in the Levant. (In fact, Chanukah is about Jews being persecuted and evicted from their homes in the Levant by the Greeks.)
Jews are obviously not the only ethnic group with a legitimate claim to the land. Turks, Ottomans, Arabs, and Palestinians all lived in the area "historically."
In fact, many Israeli Jews are the opposite of colonizers: millions of Mizrahi Jews fled persecution from Arab countries (especially Yemen and Morocco), to return their ancestral homeland in Israel.
It seems pretty logical to me that when a state starts illegally extending its borders pretty much immediately after its formation, their neighbors will not be happy about it and will fight back.
No need to be an antisemite to understand this, it's just common sense.
Tell me you know nothing about this conflict without telling me you know nothing about it. Israel was inches away from just having to give the Palestinians their own state. Why then, did Hamas attack just before that? The answer is simple: it is and always has been about removing Israel. That's true for Hamas and all their supporters. They aren't interested in a two-state solution. So don't act like it's about Israel not being a nice neighbour.
I follow that situation pretty closely and my understanding is that it was the opposite: The Palestinians' supporters were about to make deals with Israel - deals they refused to make while Palestinian territory was occupied - and leave the Palestinians mostly in the cold. Interview with Hamas leaders after the attack, iirc, said the same - they were going to be forgotten and needed to put the Palestinians back at the center of the issue. For years before the attack, Israel had openly disparaged and abandoned the two-state solution, and expended settlements in the West Bank (which is supposed to be Palestinian territory under the two-state solution).
Do you have anything that says a two-state solution was imminent?
> don't act like it's about Israel not being a nice neighbour
Could it be both? Hamas did something horrible. Murdering civilians isn't justified (why do I need to type that?) but history didn't start that day.
> Could it be both? Hamas did something horrible. Murdering civilians isn't justified (why do I need to type that?) but history didn't start that day.
You don't. But I typically don't write a whole disclaimer about such trivial things. What I will say though: Hamas uses civilians as protective shields, hides under hospitals etc. to generate outrage. And you can see it working pretty well. Or shooting rockets from the rooftops of civilian's houses. I don't envy Israel: either shoot civilians or loose your own in rocket attacks. There just is no right here, but one plan of action to me looks less wrong than the other.
Talking about history, I don't understand the whole fuzz about this anyway. Jews have been there for thousands of years. There's even a Quran sunna about "allah promised the children of noah the holy land" (or something like that). You'd think that makes it clearer. To me it feels like the deeply entrenched antisemitism of the middle east is just blind rage.
/e: I really liked this video about the history btw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN4mnVLP0rU
My impression was that the Palestinian issue was not at all at the heart of anyone's objectives, that some outside powers mentioned it in passing, and that Israel said nothing about it. I read that the Palestinians were very concerned about being abandoned by the world (they already see it that way, but thought the deal would be the final nail), and after the attacks I read that Hamas said that was an impetus for the attack.
> Hamas uses civilians as protective shields, hides under hospitals etc. to generate outrage. And you can see it working pretty well. Or shooting rockets from the rooftops of civilian's houses. I don't envy Israel: either shoot civilians or loose your own in rocket attacks.
That's Israel's argument and I expect it's at least somewhat true, but it's one of those things repeated often but that I haven't seen much factual support for. I don't expect much factual support: Who has access to Hamas planning, witnesses enough attacks, etc. to provide some objective verification? So that doesn't make it true or false, but I still have questions: In densely-populated Gaza, does Hamas have a non-civilian place from which to operate? And Hamas is an insurgency; they can't operate openly (have bases, open formations, etc.) - they would just be target practice for the Israeli bombs. I'd like to see a military expert talk about it.
Israeli partisans like to frame the issue with the last sentence quoted, but they have many other options of kind and degree, and they've had other options for many years. Israel has chosen in the recent past (~ last 20 years) indefinite low-level warfare, which is a self-defeating choice.
I'm mostly objecting to these points. I don't think they represent Israel's real position and needs well, but undermine it.
> Talking about history, I don't understand the whole fuzz about this anyway. Jews have been there for thousands of years.
I'm not sure what fuzz you're referring to here?
Length of tenure doesn't entitle anyone to real estate or the world would be really screwed up: every square meter has had many occupants, especially the Holy Land. It is a popular way aggressors justify themselves - 'it is our ancestral land!' Putin, for example, uses that for Ukraine.
You don't, but the comment you're replying to is replying to:
"Maybe rockets wouldn't be shot if Israel would not illegally occupy territories."