Targeting of IT Experts in Gaza
euromedmonitor.org
euromedmonitor.org
> Captain Ernest Medina told his men that nearly all the civilian residents of the hamlets in Sơn Mỹ village would have left for the market by 07:00, and that any who remained would most likely be VC or VC sympathizers. He was asked whether the order included the killing of women and children. Those present later gave differing accounts of Medina's response. Some, including platoon leaders, testified that the orders, as they understood them, were to kill all VC and North Vietnamese combatants and "suspects" (including women and children, as well as all animals), to burn the village, and pollute the wells.[23] He was quoted as saying, "They're all VC, now go and get them", and was heard to reply to the question "Who is my enemy?", by saying, "Anybody that was running from us, hiding from us, or appeared to be the enemy. If a man was running, shoot him, sometimes even if a woman with a rifle was running, shoot her."
> "A sweep operation was conducted recently… Crazy American enemy used light machine guns and all kinds of weapons to kill our innocent civilian people in [My Lai]. Most of them were women, kids, just born babies and pregnant women. They shot everything they saw. They killed all domestic animals. They burned all people’s houses. There were 26 families killed completely – no survivors… The American wolf forgot its good sheep’s appearance."
> "The only crime I have committed is in judgement of my values. Apparently, I valued my troops’ lives more than I did the lives of the enemy." -- William Calley, ‘C’ Company lieutenant
Even though innocent brothers and sisters in tech are being slaughtered now, I expect this thread to be flagged and locked within minutes... It is already flagged off the front page.
It's more unbelievable to you that they would mislead than it is that they would murder innocent workers, as they have
This has nothing to do with optimizing resources to defeat Hamas. If Tel Aviv regime really wanted that, they should just stop allowing Netanyahu to fund Hamas[1] in his effort to undermine Palestine Authority (the Palestinian group that actually gave up on armed resistance), as the later can't be presented as a proper boogeyman to keep the public scared dumb.
It's all about sabotaging the two-state solution, maintaining the apartheid and enforcing a media blackout, not allowing the Palestinians to document the genocide and ethnic cleansing being perpetrated against them. First IDF targeted and killed journalists in droves, as previously discussed here[2]. But the images from the daily massacres, filmed by victims, still circled the world. Targeting IT staff is a criminal decision to make more difficult for the war crimes to be properly documented and known.
[1]. https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-funded-hamas-claims-e...
https://time.com/6696507/palestinian-death-toll-gaza-israel-...
1 in 100 people have been killed in gaza since october 7th.
Entire neighborhoods have been leveled by bombs and bulldozed.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/07/world/middlee...
From using drones with mounted guns to this, technology is being abused to carry out this vicious moment in history that tech has ignored LOUDLY.
The silence, when not outright complicity in the tech sector reminds me of this holocaust quote:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller (source: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists )
... the people who were put in the camps then were Communists. Who cared about them? We knew it, it was printed in the newspapers. Who raised their voice, maybe the Confessing Church? We thought: Communists, those opponents of religion, those enemies of Christians—"should I be my brother's keeper?"
So most other countries have the poetic version as "First they came for the communists ..."
The link explains (again, at about as much length as you have patience for - these discussions have been going on for years) how this works on HN - you have to take at least some of that stuff in and engage with it, if you want to advocate for some sort of change. Being offhandedly reductive about it or explaining how this one thing is actually really important is not that.
We get all this news, but we cannot talk about it because there was a thread a couple of weeks ago which talked about journalists being targeted[2].
This is an ongoing catastrophe, and we need to have an ongoing conversation about it. When new information is reviled we need to have a conversation. As a forum popular in our industry HN needs to own up its societal responsibility. There is a lot of tech being used in this genocide, and as workers in tech, we should know our part. As long as this genocide continues, we cannot stop talking about Gaza
This is an ongoing catastrophe, and we need to have an ongoing conversation about it. When new information is reviled we need to have a conversation.
Little of what has happened in the... I think 3? gigantic threads that have been on HN about this qualifies as 'conversation' so there's that enourmous problem, given the remit of the site. And just as importantly, 'we need to have a conversation' is not a meaningful practical approach for obvious reasons, about any topic in a limited space. The case needs to be made more specifically and probably addressed at someone who can take it into consideration which would be hn@ycombinator.com
As dang once said early in ChatGPT's hype, if AI were good enough to generate the insights brought from conversation here, at as good or better a level than humans are able to, he'd consider replacing the open forum with AI generated content. Because it would serve the purpose of the site, which is not community.
He didn't say the bit about this not being a community, that's what I inferred
The people on the list compiled by Euro-med HRM were all killed by the Israeli army in its ongoing genocide in Gaza. It doesn’t matter how biased the source is, the list is still there full of martyrs, each one of them experts in the IT industry, and no doubt some of them even with accounts here on HN which they leave behind.
1: https://countylocalnews.com/2024/03/15/gaza-family-killed-in...
2: https://www.wkar.org/wkar-news/2023-11-07/tariq-thabet-remem...
Early in the current Gaza siege, a few months ago, IIRC, there was a Palestinian programmer taking part on the discussions here on HN. I don't see her posting here anymore. Hope she is still alive.