Comment by cultofmetatron | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cultofmetatron | Hacker News Reader

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> This is a lot of anecdotal evidence.

you see enough annectodatal evidence and it starts to become a pattern

> And you are touching a lot of different subjects which I don't have time to refute one by one.

thats how systematic oppression work. it has many facets and if you're pro israeli, you've only maintained that position by bot reading though the evidence

> Convinction rate in Israel is over 90% for the entire population, not just palestinians.

fair, but why do palestinians go thougha. seperate miliary court? why are children as young as 10 serving time in military prisons? october 7th was horrible but lets not ignore that it was motivated by people in a desperate situation trying to gain bargaining chips to have their loved ones released. some of those children released from the prisons in exchange for the israeli hostages were as young as 10 at the time of incarceration.

"Systematically exterminated" - This is an extreme hyperbole..

no its not. this proves to me you have spent no time watching any of the documentaries exploring this. you wouldn't last a day living in the west bank as a palestinian. Ive seen plenty of videos of settlers shooting down palestinians in cold blood with IDF soldiers doing nothing to stop it. they only step in when palestinians fight back. as an american who studied history, I know enough about the ku klux klan to to know ethnic cleansing when I see it.

> Please try to touch something more concrete than multiple anecdotes which most do not really represent anything similar to an apartheid government.

I think its obvious that there is no amount of evidence that would meet the bar for you to consider whats going on an apartheid.

> you see enough annectodatal evidence and it starts to become a pattern

Pattern for what? a national conflict is not the same as an apartheid government. We might need to go back to how you define apartheid, because I imagine separate bathrooms mandated by law, and it seems you imagine a national conflict in an occupied territory

> thats how systematic oppression work. it has many facets and if you're pro israeli, you've only maintained that position by bot reading though the evidence

Sounds a bit ad-hominem

> fair, but why do palestinians go thougha. seperate miliary court? why are children as young as 10 serving time in military prisons? october 7th was horrible but lets not ignore that it was motivated by people in a desperate situation trying to gain bargaining chips to have their loved ones released. some of those children released from the prisons in exchange for the israeli hostages were as young as 10 at the time of incarceration.

Military courts are how you manage a military occupied territory, I believe this is quite common in international law. Also Palestinians can appeal to the Israeli supreme court, many do and many decisions are overruled.

About children as young as 10, I need specifics. Looking at Israeli human rights organizations which I don't think anyone would think are pro-government in any way, there weren't any younger than 14 for the very long while I scrolled (https://www.btselem.org/hebrew/statistics/minors_in_custody).

The difference between hostages is these minors were trialed for real crimes, which you probably wouldn't accept in your country as well (attempted murder for example)

> no its not. this proves to me you have spent no time watching any of the documentaries exploring this. you wouldn't last a day living in the west bank as a palestinian. Ive seen plenty of videos of settlers shooting down palestinians in cold blood with IDF soldiers doing nothing to stop it. they only step in when palestinians fight back. as an american who studied history, I know enough about the ku klux klan to to know ethnic cleansing when I see it.

Systematic extermination can be quantified. Let's say one way you could measure it is by comparing birth rate to intentional death rates. I assure you the growth rate of the palestinian population is extremely positive.

Another way you can measure it is compare it to ongoing conflicts, the Syrian civil war which is currently ongoing has 600k casualties spanning a few years. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is ongoing for almost a hundred years and it hasn't reached 10% of that.

It doesn't make it less tragic, but saying this is systematic extermination can minimize real cases of genocide.

> I think its obvious that there is no amount of evidence that would meet the bar for you to consider whats going on an apartheid.

I'm not sure. Again, apartheid is a government system that is based on systematic racism and discrimination. Although both exist in Israel, as in many other countries, this is a far cry than South Africa, or even the United States in the early 60s.

ok so a large human rights group calling it apartheid isn't enough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoFjbnvkmQ0&ab_channel=Amnes...

or the case where a 13 year oldboy was raped in prison and the IDF labelle dthe group trying to document and report it a terrorist organization?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnH61RvX-VQ&ab_channel=Daizy...

> Sounds a bit ad-hominem

I'm not talking about you specifically. I'm stating that the israeli position requires being absolutely obtuse and deflective for every shred of evidence that comes their way.

to be clear, no one is here to defend Hammas. I just don't think the IDF is any better.

case in point, they shot the three shirtless israeli hostages because they thought they were palestinians? so its perfectly fine to shoot unarmed people basicly?

> ok so a large human rights group calling it apartheid isn't enough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoFjbnvkmQ0&ab_channel=Amnes...

Although this is a common perception, just the fact a human rights group declares something doesn't make it so. I have to remind you that you live in a world where the UN Human Rights council chair is a country where they publicly hang gay people on cranes and rapes women in prisons.

Case in point, Lebanon is a country where you cannot become president by law if you're not born from a specific Christian sect. This is a country where ethnic discrimination is codified into laws (and of course Palestinians don't have voting rights). This is closer to what you deem apartheid, yet Amnesty did not make a fancy video about that.

> or the case where a 13 year oldboy was raped in prison and the IDF labelle dthe group trying to document and report it a terrorist organization?

I'm sorry, I completely believe you it happened, however this is missing tons of context. Raped by whom? Was this case brought to a court? Do you believe the rape was state sanctioned? What were the charges which caused the IDF to declare it a terrorist organization? For example there were many situations where these organizations were money laundering fronts for Hamas.

And if the answers to all these questions is 'because Israel only does evil things and nothing is ever rational or a mistake or an individual wrong', what are you trying to prove and how does that relate to being an apartheid state

> I'm not talking about you specifically. I'm stating that the israeli position requires being absolutely obtuse and deflective for every shred of evidence that comes their way.

I don't think this is the case any more than criticizing one side for not being compatible with your values while completely ignoring the different side of the coin.

> case in point, they shot the three shirtless israeli hostages because they thought they were palestinians? so its perfectly fine to shoot unarmed people basicly?

It's an obvious blunder, but I think to be fair you have to know a lot more about the situation than we both know. One explanation is these soldiers were trigger happy and wanting revenge, and another explanation is that they misidentified them as armed or there was a failure of communication. There's a reason why it's called 'the fog of war'

> Although this is a common perception, just the fact a human rights group declares something doesn't make it so.

ok so I guess amnesty international isn't a good source on if something is an apartheid by your logic?

> Case in point, Lebanon is a country where you cannot become president by law if you're not born from a specific Christian sect. This is a country where ethnic discrimination is codified into laws (and of course Palestinians don't have voting rights). This is closer to what you deem apartheid, yet Amnesty did not make a fancy video about that.

fair point. on the other hand, my tax dollars aren't' funding that discrimination. wheres my tax dollars ARE paying for the palestinian genocide. and yes, 15000 dead with the majority of them being under 18 is genocide. There's enough names to put up a large monument.

> I'm sorry, I completely believe you it happened, however this is missing tons of context.

the video I linked explains a good chunk of the context. it was compelling enough for the US state department to take the allegations seriously and forward the information to the israeli government. their response was to confiscate the computers and classify the the reporting party as a terrorist organization.

FOG of war? they were shirtless and loudly screaming in hebrew as confirmed by many sources. at the very least they could have been apprehended. It was considered a mistake only in that they weren't' palestinians. I haven't' even mentioned the number of journalist "accidentally killed." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V4zG_UkIdc&ab_channel=Middl...)

I mean... this is all pretty damning.

you call it circumstantial and anecdotal but there's a LOT of it. They've even gone so far as to label literal children of holocaust survivors "antisemitic" for speaking out against this genocide. (google it)

I know I probably won't be able to change your mind no matter what I show you. but there are very real reasons antizionism is growing in the world. The only solution that doesn't make israel evil will be to grant palestinians citizenship and equality under the law and let them live in israel alongside jews. abandon this whole ethnostate garbage.

Generally I'll disengage as we're going in circles. But I'll say this, if you want to claim Israel is an 'apartheid state' or that a 'systematic extermination' is going on, you can't treat these as truisms and expect everyone to follow along.

You need to assert your claims and be ready to defend them, "Amnesty said so" is not enough to define a government system, and I heard it somewhere in youtube is not enough to declare genocide.

The conflict is extremely complex and nuanced just as the rest of the world is. People sometimes use this conflict as a way to flatly project their Good vs Evil binary attitudes, please try to embrace complexity.

I don’t think it’s fair to say he isn’t asserting his claims or defending them, it seems that you are just avoiding engaging. He literally provided documentation and links and you repeatedly dismissed them as “anecdotal “. When he provided overviews and summaries of the data (e.g HRW) you also dismissed them without engaging. What specifically does an apartheid state look to you?

He explained what an apartheid state looks like: South Africa during Apartheid and the US prior to the civil rights era.

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