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Comment by rich_sasha | Hacker News Reader

I think there is good reason to hold Israel to a higher standard. It is by many metrics one of the most sophisticated states in the whole world. It has one of the highest fractions of people with higher education, it is a highly innovative economy. It is the second largest country of origin for NASDAQ stocks - US being the first one - despite being small by numbers at around 10m people. Whereas the Palestinian territories barely classify as the third world.

Similarly, it was awful, but not really surprising when the Taliban were torturing people but it was a shock when the US troops in Afghanistan did so.

This isn't an excuse or justification for Hamas. But indeed I think our expectations of Israel should be higher.

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I completely agree that Israel should be held (and hold itself) to a higher standard than Hamas.

I think one thing Israelis... dislike... is that often Israel is held to higher standards than every other country on Earth, is held to impossible standards. And when it falls short of those standards - it is considered proof that Israel is evil.

Every other country? Which standards are you talking about?

Obviously this depends on who you're listening to.

Certainly, the chants for a ceasefire right now because there are civilian deaths in Gaza can be a way of holding Israel to impossible standards. No country on Earth can wage war without civilians being killed, so unless you believe that Israel isn't entitled to wage war against Hamas in this situation, it's not clear what a call for ceasefire means - Israel should just surrender?

Also, it's hard to tell how much of this is a Twitter bubble vs not, but the amount of people calling what Israel is doing genocide is very large (despite this being completely wrong), and many people are saying something to the effect of "nothing at all makes it ok to kill civilians", see above what that kind of statement means.

This is a false all-or-nothing take.

It's not an impossible standard to attempt to minimize civilian casualties. It's a crime of war not to. Israel is incautiously bombing all over Gaza including refugee camps. They are destroying housing and hospitals. They have dropped more bombs in a few weeks than the US dropped in their first year war on Afghanistan.

We can definitely call what Israel is doing "genocidal". And it does rise to the label of ethnic cleansing.

Here's one UN statement from weeks ago: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/10/un-expert-wa...

What about bombing places where the US said there were aid groups? https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/21/u-s-has-sent-israel...

What Israel is doing is disproportionate and cruel.

> It's not an impossible standard to attempt to minimize civilian casualties. It's a crime of war not to.

Completely agree.

> Israel is incautiously bombing all over Gaza including refugee camps. They are destroying housing and hospitals.

Disagree.

First, I'm not sure what you mean by "refugee camps" here (since in some situation all of Gaza is referred to as a "Refugee camp").

Second, they are definitely destorying housing, but that's because Hamas militans are hiding in that housing. What is the alternative?

Israel asked the people to evacuate and gave a a lot of time to evacuate those buildings, despite this allowing Hamas militants to evacuate as well, exactly to minimize casualties.

And Israel hasn't destroyed hospitals as far as I'm aware, despite many people thinking so.

> They have dropped more bombs in a few weeks than the US dropped in their first year war on Afghanistan.

This should by itself invalidate your statement that it's incautiously bombing. If the amount of bombing is so large, how are there so few civilian deaths compared to other conflicts?

> We can definitely call what Israel is doing "genocidal". And it does rise to the label of ethnic cleansing.

There is not intent to kill all the Palestinians. The reason we know there's no such intent is that if Israel truy were trying to do it, far far more civilians would've been killed. You can see that in every conflict in which a country really did go all-out and didn't care about deaths. (E.g. Syrian war, 600k dead, various actual genocides that have happened, etc.)

Ethnic cleansing - for sure the current population of North Gaza was asked to vacate to the South. You can call that temporary ethnic cleansing if you want, I don't think it fits. If in the long run Israel doesn't try to remove any Gazans, they all are able to go back to the North - then it wouldn't really be ethnic cleansing. (There is the issue of many of their homes having been demolished - which is a clearer case for ethnic cleansing - but I still think it falls under the umbrella of justified attacks, but I also think Israel should do something to help the people made homeless.)

> What Israel is doing is disproportionate and cruel.

It's fighting a war. All wars are cruel. Israel didn't want this war, Hamas did. And Israel doesn't really have an alternative.

The experts disagree with you. It is incautious.

Even Biden (a self-proclamed Zionist) thinks so: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/world/middleeast/us-criti...

And by refugee camp, I mean literally refugee camp. (That "some people" call all of Gaza a refugee camp doesn't matter here) Here's one: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/03/us-asks-israel-for-....

You don't have to kill all the Gazans for attacks to be "genocidal". But see what the experts say. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/10/un-expert-wa... There's also this article in Time: https://time.com/6334409/is-whats-happening-gaza-genocide-ex...

> If in the long run Israel doesn't try to remove any Gazans

I am certainly not holding my breath for this.

Innocents dying is a fact of war and war is cruel but Israel's handling of this has been especially cruel--happening on top of their years long blockading and imprisonment of Gazans. Maybe entertain the possibility that Israel may not, in fact, be being righteous.

I'm critical of Israel's handling of this conflict just as much as I'm critical of Turkey's response to Kurdish separatists. No one is held to impossible standards. Everyone deserves dignity

And yet no where near as many people are crying and protesting against Turkey. Maybe people are just critical, but they refuse to take the same actions. How many people support BDS against Israel? How many support it against Turkey?

There are US military bases in the Kurdish administered part of Syria. The US has troops stationed here for many reasons, one of the biggest ones being to protect the Kurds in the region(just recently the US military shot down a Turkish drone flying in this airspace)

Turkey already has a lot of human rights violations on its record, but, if it got to the level of Israeli repression in West Bank against Palestinians, there would be a lot more sanctions against Turkey

I'm not talking about the US government doing stuff. I'm talking about ordinary people doing stuff. If people cared about human rights abuses they would protest Turkey and Israel (and plenty of other countries). We should, of course, also get protests against Hamas since they are doing a lot of shitty things as well. Instead we only get protests on one side. It feels so partisan. I think the major problem is people like things to be black and white. Israel is bad so that means Hamas is good. They can't just accept that there are two bad guys. I think people have a hard time separating Hamas and the Palestinian people which makes it harder for them to call out Hamas.

Frankly, I don't think we know the scale of abuses. The idea that Turkey has less than Israel is just an assumption. As far as I can tell there are significantly more eyes on Israel. When Israel does something wrong it is all over the news. When Turkey does something wrong it is often crickets and when it is reported it doesn't make it to the front page of HN like this post. Just upvoting an article doesn't take any real effort but people can't even be bothered to do that about Turkey or any other atrocity but when it comes to Israel they can.

I understand the concern but I also understand the general public reaction to Israel's actions. The occupation is one thing, but the genocidal rhetoric by Israeli officials and the desecration of muslim holy sites and harassment of Armenian Christians in Jerusalem is another. Israel needs to do more to change its behavior and protect its image if it doesn't want people to be repulsed by its actions

Turkey isn't innocent but Turkey is calculated and careful. They know Kurdish people represent a significant part of their population (20 million) and they can't carelessly stomp around like Israel is used to doing

>I understand the concern but I also understand the general public reaction to Israel's actions. The occupation is one thing, but the genocidal rhetoric by Israeli officials and the desecration of muslim holy sites and harassment of Armenian Christians in Jerusalem is another.

I'm not sure if you do understand my concerns. The problem is the genocidal talk is going both ways.

I've seen some estimates that 25% of Tel Aviv is LGBT. If Palestine controlled the entire region (from the river to the sea) how many of those in Tel Aviv would be killed? Calling for a people to take over land who we know will specifically target a certain demographic to kill is genocidal rhetoric. Yet so many westerners are literally calling for it. It is hard to take people's criticism against genocide seriously when they are calling for an action that will lead to genocide.

Christians are persecuted in Palestine as well. (I've seen some numbers that indicate Christians in Palestine support Palestine more than Israel, but it isn't really clear). When looking at the percentage of Christians over time in Palestine, I'm guessing they aren't treated all that well in Palestine either. I haven't seen any numbers about Jews in Palestine, but if there are any, I doubt they are treated well.

I'm just complaining about the selective outrage. Ignoring well known terrible things in the same conflict you are protesting is so selective it feels deceptive. If you are focused enough on a conflict to know about the bad things on "their" side then call out "your" side as well. If you don't call out your side I will just assume you don't care about abuses. (Sorry, I'm just rambling and know you aren't justifying genocide/abuses)

> Israel needs to do more to change its behavior and protect its image if it doesn't want people to be repulsed by its actions

Sure, but I guess this goes back to my complaint about selectively being outraged. Why are so many people repulsed by Israel not also repulsed by Hamas?

> Turkey isn't innocent but Turkey is calculated and careful. They know Kurdish people represent a significant part of their population (20 million) and they can't carelessly stomp around like Israel is used to doing

You know something like 20% of Israelis are Muslims and a couple more percentage are non ethnic Jews? If Turkey can't oppress the Kurds (in the same way Israel does) because of the percentage of the population then how can Israel do it?

Regardless, I don't trust the Turkey (or Israel) numbers. We don't know what these governments are doing and that is my point. They are all crap. Selectively picking the bad guy and assuming the numbers are accurate and ignoring the other side is dumb.

Under what standard is conduct like this acceptable?

“One of the soldiers said I looked like his nephew and that this nephew was killed in front of his grandmother who was taken hostage by Hamas and that the soldiers will slaughter us all,”

Those who dared to leave their homes for whatever vital errand were shot down in the streets by snipers.

“They made us empty out our bags on the floor and blocked us from picking up our money or our wives’ gold,” Nader recalls. “What little food we had, they also threw away. They took our money, IDs and phones.”

The men and teenage boys were taken to a warehouse where they sat on a bare floor covered in scattered grains of rice. There they were beaten, interrogated and verbally abused. There was no sleep, and the grains of rice cut their skin as they sat there, undressed.

I don't trust a story reported by Al Jazeera, which is heavily biased against Israel, without outside verification.

That said, I'm sure Israel falls short of ideal on many occasions, not everything it does is exemplary, to say the least. On the whole, Israel's conduct is, I believe, moral and legitimate.

Do you trust Amnesty International?

Amnesty International has for decades documented widespread torture by Israeli authorities in places of detention across the West Bank. However, over the past four weeks, videos and images have been shared widely online showing gruesome scenes of Israeli soldiers beating and humiliating Palestinians while detaining them blind-folded, stripped, with their hands tied, in a particularly chilling public display of torture and humiliation of Palestinian detainees.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-ho...

Amnesty International has showed itself to be little more than Kremlin mouthpiece in the past few years with a very one sided reporting of Russian invasion of Ukraine.

That doesn't seem to be true:

Russian President Vladimir Putin, his government and the Russian armed forces are desperate to hide the truth about the invasion, including the possible war crimes they are committing in Ukraine. This page will feature Amnesty International’s regular updates on the conflict, which help to uncover the human rights crises caused by Russia’s invasion.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/03/latest-news-o...

Is Israel being held to a highest standards though? I think the US wars are a great point of comparison. US got totally dragged through the gutter for, frankly, all of its Middle Eastern interventions: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. Libya is maybe the odd one out - maybe.

To be clear, I'm staying clear of any assessment of moral ground of either side. I'm making a limited argument about expected standards.

Well, it's hard to say - the US killed far, far more people in its wars. That said this war has been waged for far less time.

It really depends on how you extrapoalate out the deaths in Gaza. If it's "Israel kills 10k people a month", that would be a horrible situation where Israel would be acting very immoraly.

If you assume that there are going to be far less casualties going forward, relatively speaking (which is my view, given that Isarel has switched to a ground offsenve), then this war will end up with far fewer deaths than Iraq or Afghanistan

As a sibling comment mentioned, I think the US was both held to a high standard and determined to be failing that standard during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Reports of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, the Nisour Square massacre, etc.

And while it might be frustrating to expect one side to behave without having similar expectations for the other side, I again offer up the US wars in the Middle East as an analogous situation where ISIS wasn't being held to the same expectations of warfare as the US was.

None of the above is to excuse what Hamas has done/is doing, naturally. Just to point out that this isn't the first time and that in the longer context of history, Israel isn't somehow being singled out as an exception.

If prisoner well-being was Qatar's concern, it would be best to bring accusations during diplomatic discussions. This is more like Russia Today calling out prisoner abuse in Guantanamo Bay. I don't think Israelis see Al Jazeera as a neutral player here, and are now less likely to demand better of the IDF.

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