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Gaza isn't occupied any longer, or at least, not in the traditional sense. Israel left Gaza in 2005.
As for the casualty rate - just look at the casualty rate in e.g. the Iraq war. Every civilian death is tragic, but war really does involve a lot of collateral damage - all the more so when groups like Hamas purposefully try to get civilians killed.
> How would you feel if Hamas claimed that all the civilians were a collateral damage? After all they documented the extermination of Israeli soldiers and if there are documented intentional killings of the civilians they can just say it was some bad Apples among them.
I would say they are lying, because there are many videos, uploaded by them!, of them targetting civilians. And not just killing them, brutalizing them and massacring them.
Btw, killing soldiers is also illegal if they are not in a position to fight you. Invading a base and capturing it is a legitimate military tactic. Executing all soldiers in it even if they have no weapons or have surrendered is a war crime.
> I'm sure we can also find some videos of Israeli people saying really bad things about exterminating all the Palestinians. IIRC, there were officials calling to drop an Atomic bomb on Palestine and kill them all and other officials calling for mass extermination. Don't you have a far right government?
Yes, some Israeli say bad things, especially in a time of war. And some fringe members of our government have said horrible things and are rightfully condemned. If the government acted the way some members of the government would want it to act - I'd be completely against it and would consider it immoral.
Luckily for both sides, these are fringe views (though not fringe enough).
> Can you put yourself in the shoes of your opponent? Hamas are horrible but Israeli are no better unfortunately
I can put myself in the shoes of my opponent. But comparing Hamas to the IDF is just wrong. The IDF doesn't target civilians, and would definitely never brutally massacre, rape and torture civilians.
> It's fascinating that you can claim with straight face to be the good guys with over %50 civilian kill rate in the prison you created. Very unfortunate, another blow for the ideals of the "civilised world". Once again a well educated, technologically advanced nation conducting unspeakable horrors and claim that they are victims and are the good ones.
I don't think we're the "good guys" - and I think that's a really simplistic way of thinking about things. I think Israel has a lot to answer for by not advancing peace for the last 15 years, for example.
But I also think that given what happened on October 7th, Israel didn't have any choice but to do what it's doing, and doesn't have any chance now - the only way to get safety for Israel and eventually a peace in place is by destroying Hamas.
You just can't live next to a government that loudly proclaims it is intent on killing your citizens, and carries this out!
> Hamas or any Islamic terrorism with political or religious goals is horrible enough and you are asking us to accept more killing with a bit different political and religious goals.
Israel's goals in this war are to destroy Hamas to make us safe. Period. That's the goal and it's a completely legitimate goal, much as Ukraine is fighting off Russia for legitimate reasons.
They have unequivocally done all of those.
I'm just writing this because I'd want someone to write something similar to me if I was locked into a thread like this.
Happy new years! We celebrated by being bombed with rockets, no siren where I am but we heard them being shot down outside our window. That was fun. And of course, for Gazan civilians the new year is so much worse right now, so many displaced people barely getting by.
War is just terrible. I wish humanity would grow up and stop all this violence.
My favorite act of necessary extermination of civilians by IDF is this one: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/unlawful-killings-in-gaz...
Please don't do that on HN, no matter how right you are or feel you are. Instead, please make your substantive points thoughtfully. This topic raises a lot of strong feelings in everyone. If your feelings prevent you from commenting within the site guidelines, please wait to comment until that's no longer the case.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This is important for preserving the community here, and it's important for another reason as well: to the extent that what you're arguing for is true, by posting aggressively and abusively you end up discrediting the truth that you're arguing for. That's not only not in your interest—it hurts everyone. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. We've had to ask you this more than once before, so it's clear that this problem is not limited to this topic.
Is that O.K. really? They don't even address me when talking about me, that's why I felt the need to reply with a bit of a sarcasm and emotional tone. I also provided a document by the United Nations to keep this grounded. I don't know how this is less substantive than the parent comment talking about me in a sneering manner.
Here's a point I've often tried to communicate in situations like this, which I'll repeat here in case it's helpful—but please understand that I'm not talking about you personally; as far as I can tell we all have this bias...
There's a common pattern where people underestimate the provocation in their own comments by (say) 10x and overestimate the provocation in the other person's comments by another 10x. Put those together and you get a 100x distortion in self/other perception. That's a lot of distortion. It's basically "objects in the mirror are closer than they appear". In my experience it's helpful to remember this and try to consciously correct for the distortion. Even if you bend over backwards to do that, you probably won't compensate for the entire 100x but you'll at least be less likely to misgauge the impact of your posts and thereby produce unintentional negative effects. Not that any of this is easy, but it's something we should all be aware of and working on.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...