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Comment by rowanseymour | Hacker News Reader

As bad as this story makes the Israelis sound, it still reads like ass-covering to make it sound like they were at least trying to kill militants. It's been clear from the start that they've been targeting journalists, medical staff and anyone involved in aid distribution, with the goal of rendering life in Gaza impossible.

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> It's been clear from the start that they've been targeting journalists, medical staff and anyone involved in aid distribution

I really doubt that's the case, seems more like a "fire first if any suspicion at all and ask questions later" policy. If there was an intentional policy to kills journalists, aid workers and medical staff you'd see a lot more dead.

And you have to be extremely naive or one sided to not realize that Hamas does use those type of roles as cover for their operations.

Not trying to justify Israel's actions because they are fucked up, but based on all the evidence we have you are clearly wrong.

> I really doubt that's the case

It is. The IDF shot once, then when a vehicle came to rescue survivors, they shot again. Then the third attempt at rescueing survivors, they shot a third time. Purposefully murdering aid workers that coordinated with the IDF before entering the area.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/idf-strike-on-gaza-aid-...

“…were traveling in a convoy that had been coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces and was following an IDF-approved route. The vehicles had GPS trackers and SOS beacons broadcasting their positions”

That's not really a rebuttal - the entire convoy was (incorrectly) identified as a target. If they were actually military it certainly would make sense to kill the targets one by one as it's hard to target simultaneously.

No one is disputing that the convoy was targeted, even the idf admits that, the question is why.

> I really doubt that's the case, seems more like a "fire first if any suspicion at all and ask questions later" policy.

I will try to solve your doubt. Gaza is a closed area. You can't just cross freely the frontier unless Israel allows it. Before that, humanitarian organisations are required to inform directly to Israeli army about everything that they want to do, where they want to go, how many, an when. They are clearly identified by a logo at all times. Israel had every single piece of info necessary to avoid bombing aid workers and had it for weeks

Despite that, Israel can't avoid to keep killing this workers; and they were doing the same repeatedly, systematically, for the last six months, in multiple attacks that last tens of minutes (maybe even hours?), while singing "oops!, I did it again".

The theory of the honest mistake is getting really difficult to swallow.

I think you're proving the opposite - like you said they have all the information so if they really wanted to kill all aid workers they could easily do that, so the fact that they haven't makes it pretty clear that isn't their goal.

You really think Israel coordinated with WCK for weeks now only to suddenly decide to kill a few aid workers intentionally? It makes zero sense.

And if you wanna go all conspiracy theory, why not just make it to look like Hamas killed the aid workers? It would be extremely easy for Israel to do so.

Well, they had assassinated yet "a few" (hundreds of) physicians, and nurses, and ambulance drivers in the area, so maybe are getting more bold about it.

> why not just make it to look like Hamas killed the aid workers?

Because they simply don't care, obviously. They even feel safe enough to film their own crimes.

So why even allow WCK to operate from the start? They could easily just deny them access.

Seems like negligence and not caring for collateral damage is much more straightforward reason compared to intentionally targeting them.

The WCK withdrew from Gaza after being killed by Israel.

Now Israel can say that they didn't stop aid, they just "accidentally" killed an entire envoy of aid, which unfortunately led to the WCK withdrawing from Gaza.

Ok, so why not just put the blame on Hamas? Seems like an easy win-win if that was indeed Israel's goal.

Probably so they have "evidence" of their "good behaviour" for the next ICJ hearing.

So again, why not make it look like it was Hamas who killed the aid workers? I mean if it was all planned ahead seems like an obvious thing to do given that it wouldn't taint the "good behaviour" while also stopping aid.

1) Israel doesn't have to - they can do essentially anything, and their US/GB/DE/FR backers will continue to support and enable their genocidal behaviour

2) The Israeli army comes across as extremely unprofessional - I honestly believe Israel doesn't have full control over them. It's a car-crash of "soldiers" who believe Palestinians are inhuman beasts, combined with commanders who don't give a shit and probably couldn't control their squad in any case

1) I don't agree since international pressure is escalating, but regardless it would be a win-win for Israel to blame it on Hamas so I just don't buy it.

2) So what is it? Does the idf targets aid worker intentionally as part of a idf/Israel policy or is it some rogue soldier/commander that decided to do it? Those are two very different claims.

And what consequences did Israel face after destroying almost all of Gaza and killing over 32000 humans, mostly women and children, and blocking aid and starving the rest of the population, and killing aid workers, journalists, and doctors?

Nothing. Literally zero consequences. Yet someone like you is not convinced.

How does that change anything I said? Still all evidence is pointing towards this being a targeting mistake.

1) Thanks largely to social media, you have a point. However, it's still abundantly clear that Israeli can act how it wants. At best, western politicians (many of whom are bought and paid for by Israel!) will make platitudes and try to distance themselves while the latest US-back Israeli attrocity/massacre "blows over"

2) could be both; Israeli commanders made clear that grunts can do what they want - "all restrictions are removed", and we now know that commanders designated "kill zones" where anyone was to be murdered. I believe it's both US-backed Israeli policy, and they haven't got full control of their "soldiers"

>And you have to be extremely naive or one sided to not realize that Hamas does use those type of roles as cover for their operations.

Why would Hamas use anything other than clearly uniformed soldiers, marked military vehicles, and civilian distanced military installations?

Yea this really seems like more of a weapon of propaganda directed at Israelis. If they didn't want people to know about it, we probably wouldn't know about it. The fact that we're talking about it is probably not an accident, and I guess the play here would be to convince Israelis that the army is technologically advanced and they know what they're doing, so don't question it. But AI or not they were going to commit genocide and violate every international humanitarian law on the book. But for the people that still believe the genocide is justified I think this probably improves the optics.

I don't know if this was really planned. With my best will, I cannot imagine the Israeli military & Netanyahu's government releasing this to cover their ass. This could be potentially something which worsens their actions and not lessen them.

Obviously, nobody in an international court will be able to say "... but the AI did it!" - This is just far too easy as a way out. There are rules to AI Usage and one of them is not a usage like that - as already said somewhere else: The AI is only as ethical/moral as the humans behind them.

I agree it doesn't justify it, but I just don't think the international court is a concern at this point. I think they're pretty far past that point.

Maybe the international court will judge them in 20 years, but the damage will have been done and netanyahu's objectives will be achieved.

The only major power that can stop it is the US and they refuse to do so.

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