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Comment by angra_mainyu | Hacker News Reader

Europe has done the same with Russia.

Also, I think a few other Arab countries like Egypt have blocked/banned Al Jazeera.

That's correct and IMHO its the right thing to do when shooting begins because when people shoot each other this is no longer a discussion and the press is part of the warfare. Remember all the Russian media and social media accounts claiming that its American hysteria that they will invade Ukraine? They denied and mocked anyone who claimed that they will invade up until the tanks rolled in.

Personally, I'm critical of the Israeli government but I think it's in their right to try to control information flow as they are in process of driving people from their homes and mass killing people in retaliation of a terrorist attack that claimed the lives of over thousand innocent people.

I really dislike glorification war and pretending that it has rules or honour or something like that. People are taking lives en masse and its more than normal to try to control the information flow when doing it.

I find it downright perverse to call genocide "retaliatory" and the act of covering it up "normal".

To parse your statement we need to understand what genocide means to you. For most it means the systemic killing of every person of a certain genetic identity. Is that what you believe is happening or something else?

If genocide is illegal than covering up would be the only logical move. Therefore it would be normal.

Genocide has a precise definition and has been codified in international law. I believe this internationally recognized definition mirrors what most people mean when they use the term. It does not necessitate the systemic killing of every person of a certain genetic identity.

Genocide is outlined in the Genocide convention from 1948[1]. It is short so I’ll give you the whole definition here:

> In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

> (a) Killing members of the group;

> (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

> (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

> (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

> (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Genocide is illegal under international humanitarian law, there is no justification admissible for the crime of genocide. It is not normal to cover it up. Israel is currently being investigated by the ICJ for the crime of genocide. Israel has argued that whatever it is doing in Gaza is not genocide.

1: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Prevention_...

The US has killed over 400,000 Iraqis since invading Iraq. Do you think that qualifies as genocide?

Speaking as an American: yes. Bush and Obama are war criminals and I'd say that they belong in Gitmo but I'm more principled than that and we need to shut Gitmo down.

It isn't

The context of the convention needs to be understood in the general context and especially in the context of a war (though of course they don't "exist" only in that context). And wars are awful.

(not saying what Israel is doing is correct or even adequate - but generalizing terms helps nobody)

That's a built-in failing of the genocide definition: it requires intent, otherwise no doubt the US would have been on the hook as early as the Korean war.

Sadly for the Israelis, they have a cabinet of the kind of people who just cannot help themselves from communicating intent.

Are you familiar with the fine words of Madeleine Albright and her cohorts in PNAC, who very clearly demonstrated the intent to massacre hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's, mostly children, and then proceeded to do so?

Just because the US got away with genocide doesn't mean any other nation should. The American people should be jailing their own war criminals, and then go after those of Russia and Israel and the UK and Ukraine and so on. However, war crimes are good for (American) business. See also: the military support of the genocide of Yemen by a known fascist totalitarian-authoritarian dictatorship.

I am not, and I have no idea what PNAC is. I think I am probably representative. Will you explain what you are talking about?

Some explanation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright#Sanctions_a...

PNAC = Project for a New American Century [0]

Madeleine Albright should have been frog-marched into The Hague for justifying the US-sanctioned deaths of over 500,000 children. [1], [2]

The extremely deceptive, duplicitous individuals in PNAC are the ones who lied and scammed the American public into funding the destruction of Iraq, and countless other sovereign states in the Middle East, in order to be able to refactor those states according to American interests.

This is why the USA illegally occupies 1/3rd of Syria's sovereign territory (its oil fields) in order to deny the Syrian people the resources they need to rebuild their country.

It is why Libya was destroyed, why Iraq was destroyed, why Afghanistan was left in utter ruin. Its why Yemen suffered a genocide widely ignored by the West.

This is why the USA funds and supports ISIS as a "fifth column" (See also: Operation Gladio[3]) in the region, in order to fight wars without the approval of Congress. Note that Gladio is still in effect as official US military doctrine - under different names now, but the modern manifestations go all the way back to the original Gladio doctrine.

It would be very important for you to understand who PNAC are and what their very clearly stated intentions are - these are the fascist oligarchs whose dogma allows the Joint Chiefs of Staff to get away with mass murder. Real, actual mass murder, not hyperbole, of cultures deemed culturally inferior by Americas oligarchic ruling class.

Note that, even if Americans are not aware of these things, the rest of the world is, and is - I believe - a motivating force behind the rise of BRICS and the general anti-American sentiment that exists outside the Anglosphere bubble.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C...

[1] - https://www.newsweek.com/watch-madeleine-albright-saying-ira...

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47aaaFhGtMM

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

I swerved hard on a girl obsessed with Madeleine Albright. I'm glad I got out and around that because I never really liked the look of that older woman.

Exactly how you think the US can support ISIS (oil sales via Turkey? Used plumbing trucks to JAS/JAN which aren’t ISIS?) when Lloyd Austin blew hundreds of millions to arm like 10-100 people is beyond me.

Source? None of the organisations tracking Iraqi civilian deaths that have broken down figures by cause show that number caused by US forces directly.

If you're including indirect causes too, such as a rise in sectarian violence, deprivation, and increased criminality then, yes, but that's a different statement.

You may confuse the deaths of the sunni-shia civil war with deaths under US fire. Saddam Hussein like Gaddafi would have died sooner or later. To me there is nothing that suggests that these civil wars wouldn't have happen sooner or later, like in Yugoslavia.

Absolutely, positively, unequivocally, yes.

I think it's fairly clear that given this definition (which is the same one I always reference), Israel isn't committing a genocide.

If you do think Israel is committing a genocide, I think one thing you have to do is demonstrate how what Israel is doing is different from any other war (e.g. war on ISIS, Afghanistan, Iraq as obvious examples).

The statute makes the difference pretty clear - it's the intent to kill some (definable) part of the members of the group. This is not the case with Israel given its current actions and lack of actions; it could kill far more people if it decided to, militarily speaking. (I say this not because Israel deserves any "credit" for not killing more people, obviously, only to make it clear that the reason more aren't killed isn't because of lack of capability, but because of lack of desire to kill more).

Of course, you might disagree with me. If you don't have some kind of way to distinguish between what Israel is doing and what e.g. the US did in Iraq, you can just bite the bullet and say that all wars are genocide. That would be a consistent POV, but that would also effectively render the concept of Genocide meaningless.

There were quite a few statements by key people in the current Israeli government that demonstrate clear intent for genocide.

As to why they don't massacre every living Palestinian in Gaza if they really want to do so - Israel still depends significantly on external support, most notably from US, but also from European countries. Thus even if intending to commit genocide, they have to do so in a plausibly deniable way.

> There were quite a few statements by key people in the current Israeli government that demonstrate clear intent for genocide.

There were a few statements, mostly made very early in the war, most of them ambiguous. These are horrible, but fairly similar to most war-time propaganda in most countries.

They're also dwarfed by the many, many statements almost all of them made that quite explicitly clarified that that isn't what they want, and that the only goal is to remove Hamas while trying to minimize harm to civilians.

Btw, this is less true of ethnic cleansing - there is a minority, but influential, part of the government that is, at the very least, hinting strongly at ethnic cleansing. I find it despicable and am convinced the majority of Israelis would never go along with this, but those statements by those (despicable) "leaders" are recent.

> As to why they don't massacre every living Palestinian in Gaza if they really want to do so - Israel still depends significantly on external support, most notably from US, but also from European countries. Thus even if intending to commit genocide, they have to do so in a plausibly deniable way.

This is an unfalsifiable statement. People have been claiming for most of my life that Israel is either committing genocide, or wants to, and is only held back by foreign powers. A genocide hasn't occurred so far, and I believe very strongly that Israel will never do so. But you can always say "oh well, they just can't because other people are keeping them in check". OK - so what kind of evidence would convince you that that's not true?

There are clearly genocidal statements from Israeli leadership.

Bezalel Smotrich, finance minister, for example: "We need to encourage immigration from there. If there were 100,000-200,000 Arabs in the Strip and not two million, the whole conversation about the day after [the war] would be completely different".

Remember, these are people whose entire nation is Palestine. He's certainly not suggesting that Palestinians be accepted as refuges in Israel, and he has also been actively taking land in the West Bank, so is not proposing they go there either. In the Knesset in September 2021 he told an Arab Knesset member: "You’re here by mistake, it’s a mistake that Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job and didn’t throw you out in 1948".

The most charitable interpretation of this so far is that he only wants a "forcible transfer of population" (Article 7 of the Rome Statue of the ICC - a crime against humanity) instead of a genocide. However, those statements can be coupled with actions:

* While people in Gaza were suffering famine, he issued an order blocking flour into Gaza. * Half of Gaza's population is squeezed into a tiny corner, Rafah, by Israeli actions. Smotrich has called for: "No half jobs. Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat, total and utter destruction". So he is calling just there for killing half of the Gaza population, which he has made clear, he doesn't want to continue to exist in Gaza.

I think all of this together is quite solid evidence that Smotrich is inciting genocide with intent to destroy at least part of the Palestinian nation. Others are even more extreme. For example, Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza to wipe out everyone there.

In this context it is worthy to cite Article III of the genocide convention (which directly follows the above definition in Article II):

> The following acts shall be punishable:

> (a) Genocide;

> (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;

> (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;

> (d) Attempt to commit genocide;

> (e) Complicity in genocide.

Bezalel Smotrich is deffinetly guilty of (c) here, “Direct and public incitement to commit genocide”, but being a member of the Israeli government which is plausibly guilty of (a), a government who’s several members are also guilty of (c), including the Prime Minister himself. it is very likely—though we don’t know this yet—that he, other Israeli officials, and generals in the Israeli military, are also guilty of (b) “Conspiracy to commit genocide”.

Even in the most charitable interpretations of Smotrich’s words, he, and other members of the Israeli governments, are plausibly guilty of (e) “Complicity in genocide” as Israel has a duty to protect Palestinians from Genocide, but still allowing genocidal actions to unfold in Gaza, while not punishing offenders, nor even stepping down their rhetoric.

> There were a few statements, mostly made very early in the war, most of them ambiguous.

There was so many of them, over 500, that it was actually necessary to set a database to track them all. See https://law4palestine.org/law-for-palestine-releases-databas...

The tech nerd in me insists I complain that this isn't a database. It's just a document.

I've read this site multiple times. While some statements there are horrible (and I never said there weren't), many are really taken out of context and/or exaggerated. And most are very early in the war, as I said.

Also, to get to such large numbers, they are putting in statements from random infantry soldiers, random journalists, etc. If you want the list that's actually somewhat relevant, I think only the decision makers one is (22 statements there), maybe parts of the army personnel. Is it really relevant to include "public expressions" made by a football player, or the Australian Jewish association? Does that make sense to call it an "Israeli Incitement to Genocide"?

What matters is that these statements were both echoed and followed by actions. When random infantry soldiers recite genocidal rhetoric, and don’t get punished for that, at best you are complicit in genocide (which is also a crime according to Article III (e) of the Genocide Convention). When genocidal rhetoric is echoed on the international stage by random journalists, or football players representing your nation, you need to disavow those words (and in case of the football player, dismiss the player from the sport).

Genocide is serious crime, and when it is plausible that a genocide is being committed, any incitements to further it are criminal, and need to be punished, if these acts are not punished, or worse, dismissed as not relevant, you are at best complicit. But the fact that genocidal conduct continues on the ground, and officials are not backing down their rhetoric, and are not punishing genocidal actions, it is reasonable to assume that genocide is also the intent of the people in charge.

The two wrongs make a right argument.

There isn't a single item on that definition that hasn't been reported and evidenced on numerous times by the limited press coverage. To bring the conversation back to the article.

The argument that it could kill more is ridiculous. Israel is clearly killing as many as it believes the international community will let it, without becoming a pariah state. Deliberately, and indiscriminate killing or maiming of 5% of a population is not trivial.

I find it difficult to classify what is happening as a war. The disparity in power, control and access to military and other means is to disparate. Like Iraq, Afghanistan, etc it's transparent one side is doing it because they can, and without regard for anything but their own satisfaction and revenge.

Not just that, the international community [0] is helping them, by giving them weapons, money and other kids of help to do so. Even coutries like germany, who had their own genocidal "incidents" in the past, continue to export weapons to israel.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/tfrh17/the_internati...

I cannot understand your key points that this is a) not genicide, b) it is simply what the US was doing all these years c) Israel kills acts with self constraint not imposed by others

Israel is actively doing most of the points above against an effectively unarmed and blockaded group of people. US was fighting against actual armies whichever their quality. Israel claims “hamas” and kills indiscriminately, there is no footage of “hamas” army with any heavy military equipment, israel actively causes famine, destroys all hospitals, creates mass graves that have victims with hands tied behind their backs. Israel official claim their desire to kill everyone.

They simply cannot do it immediately because they are doing it with western financial and military support which would evaporate because you can only do propaganda so much.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148876

> Israel is actively doing most of the points above against an effectively unarmed and blockaded group of people. US was fighting against actual armies whichever their quality.

You are just factually wrong on many of your points.

It's true that Hamas isn't a traditional military with heavy equipment, but they are a 30k strong insurgent group that has had years to plan their defense. They've built tunnel complexes that are said to be larger than the NY Subway and hide in them, coming up to ambush soldiers.

If your view of what is happening is that the IDF is going around shooting at civilians, then you're just incorrect about what is actually happening on the ground for the last many months.

If you look at videos that Hamas themselves post, you can see them constantly attacking soldiers, collapsing buildings on soldiers, placing munitions on tanks to blow them up, etc.

> [Israel] destroys all hospitals,

Absolutely not true. Israel hasn't destroyed hospitals, definitely not all of them, despite this being commonly claimed.

There was one hospital that saw a week of fighting between Hamas and the IDF. After that week, much of it was destroyed. This btw goes against your point that Hamas is effectively unarmed. But while most other hospitals have seen attacks around them and many have been ordered evacuated, they aren't destroyed. (Some are damaged, to be fair - but hospitals are pretty big, and there's a world of difference between "some hospitals have been damaged" and "Israel has destroyed all hospitals".)

> israel actively causes famine

I think Israel has acted horribly around humanitarian aid, yes. This has largely changed recently, thankfully.

> creates mass graves that have victims with hands tied behind their backs.

This was recently reported and hasn't been investigated. Many things later turn out to not be what was claimed by the Gazan authorities (Hamas) who are playing a disinformation campaign. Israel says this mass grave was made by Palestinians. Neither you nor I know the truth of this. I highly doubt it was Israel, if those people are civilians. If it was Israel, that would most definitely be a war crime as far as I can tell.

> Israel official claim their desire to kill everyone.

Not true, and I've talked about this in another comment in this thread.

> They simply cannot do it immediately because they are doing it with western financial and military support which would evaporate because you can only do propaganda so much.

OK. But that's an unfalsifiable statement. You can always say that Israel is "just about" to do more. Do you think Israel has more support now or 6 months ago right after the October 7th attacks? I think it has far less support, which was entirely predictable. So why wait so long? What kind of evidence would convince you that Israel doesn't want to engage in genocide, if not doing it when it had more support isn't strong enough evidence?

In fact, the US is guilty of genocide as well - it just has a far more effective media control apparatus, which shields its citizens from the outrage they'd experience if they really knew and understood just how responsible they are for such atrocities as, the funding of ISIS, the destruction of Mosul, the destruction of Raqqa, the destruction of Libya, the military support of the genocide of Yemen, and .. on and on.

So yeah "the bigger bully also kills people" might be an effective thought-blocking argument, but that is only the case because that bully has been effectively thought-blocking any inspection of its war crimes by the people, who ultimately pay for them.

Yes, the US should face justice for its war crimes, crimes against humanity, and so on. No, it won't face justice because, instead of frog-marching its war criminals to face justice in The Hague, it has plans to invade The Hague, instead.

Those who support Israels massacre of innocent Palestinians need to be very, very careful about the association with bigger bullies. Just because your allies got away with genocide, doesn't mean you will. (See also: Australia)

> The statute makes the difference pretty clear - it's the intent to kill some (definable) part of the members of the group. This is not the case with Israel given its current actions and lack of actions; it could kill far more people if it decided to, militarily speaking.

This logic is one-dimensional and flawed. Israel is capable of wanting many different things and intelligently balancing their actions to accomplish many different things. For example, if Israel wants to remove all Palestinians from Gaza while also retaining some international allies, they would balance their actions to achieve both, and that would probably look quite similar to what we are seeing.

It's like in chess. I want to capture my opponents pawn, that is a thing I want. That doesn't mean I will sacrifice my queen for the pawn. And if an observer says "he must not want to take that pawn, because he could have taken the pawn with his queen but didn't", that observer would be looking at things in a very one-dimensional way and would be wrong.

OK. What would it look like if Israel just wanted to remove Hamas from power in Gaza without wanting to remove Palestinians from Gaza?

Just to remove doubt - I'm genuinely asking. One thing I don't feel I've ever gotten a real answer on is what should Israel have done after the October 7th attack instead of what it did. Not in general about the situation, but specifically on October 7th.

They need a carrot and and stick, not just a stick.

For one thing, they need to let in the thousands of trucks of aid that are held up by their onerous inspection processes. They need the people of Gaza to see Hamas as the source of their troubles and Israel as a source of aid.

It's hard thing to do. I remember listening to Jocko Willink (a US Navy Seal) describe this difficulty in Iraq. They had to work closely with poorly trained Iraqi soldiers to help them become better trained, and they had to go out of their way to obey the rules of engagement. He had to explain to soldiers that their mission was to stabilize Iraq, not just to kill insurgents and survive the next patrol. Some of his soldiers died because of this. Those soldiers wouldn't have died if the US just dropped 2000 pound bombs on everything, but that wouldn't have accomplished the mission of stabilizing Iraq. (I know there's plenty to criticize about the Iraq war, but focus on my point please.)

I don't get the sense that the IDF is doing this. They are all stick, no carrot. Their actions will not reduce the amount of terrorism coming out of Gaza.

Remember when the Israeli hostages tried to get help and surrender? They wave a white flag, they seek help, the IDF just shoots them, and later we all recognize it was a tragedy. Well, that scene has played out hundreds of other times, but hidden, Palestinians getting killed intentionally for no good reason. If my accusations here are true we would expect to see other instances as well, such as blowing up marked international aid vehicles that are actively coordinating with the IDF--the IDF just blows them up anyway, blows up one vehicle, survivors crawl away, minutes later they blow up a second vehicles, minutes later they blow up a third vehicle. Other times, we see things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhVV2_mub84

Maybe I have a blind spot in my news sources, but has the IDF done anything to show the Palestinians that they are friends, or could be friends? I know the IDF tried to give out flour once and ended up shooting several hundred Palestinians and killing about a hundred (the "flour massacre"). Maybe I've missed it, but have they ever tried that again with more success? Have they done anything to help the civilians of Gaza?

These are not actions that will reduce terrorism. These are not actions that will help the people of Gaza learn to live in peace.

I think there are plenty of actions and statements from Israeli political leaders to differentiate between a focused goal of eliminating Hamas and collective punishment and revenge, and it appears punishing all people in Gaza is one of the things they want.

> They need a carrot and and stick, not just a stick. [...] They need the people of Gaza to see Hamas as the source of their troubles and Israel as a source of aid.

Oh, I absolutely think Israel should've done this, both for strategic reasons and moral reasons. I think Israel should've been showing Gazans (and the world) some amazing innovations in getting aid into a warzone, proving to everyone that it cars more about Gaza's civilians than Hamas does. I think this would've been, not just the moral thing to do, but then smart thing to do.

I just don't think that not doing so means it's committing genocide. It's just undertaking a war like most countries do. War is always awful.

> It's hard thing to do. I remember listening to Jocko Willink [...] He had to explain to soldiers that their mission was to stabilize Iraq, not just to kill insurgents and survive the next patrol. Some of his soldiers died because of this. Those soldiers wouldn't have died if the US just dropped 2000 pound bombs on everything, but that wouldn't have accomplished the mission of stabilizing Iraq.

Yes, I heard this podcast (and I admire Jocko). Israel did something very similar - the first few weeks of fighting were mostly bombings, but the ~5 months after that have been a ground invasion that has gotten IDF soldiers killed (as opposed to more aerial bombardment).

That said, Israel is facing a tougher situation - Hamas is far more entrenched and very innovative in terms of their insurgent operations. You can watch videos by Preston Stewart to get a sense of the kinds of attacks Hamas is doing (a recent one is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFeWC1svUQI). Hamas is moving around dressed as civilians and can plausibly claim to be civilians, right up until the moment they open fire. That's a very hard situation to deal with, leading to many tragic situations.

> Remember when the Israeli hostages tried to get help and surrender, they wave a white flag, they seek help, the IDF just shoots them, and later we all recognize it was a tragedy. Well, that scene has played out hundreds of other times, but hidden, Palestinians getting killed on purpose for no good reason.

Yes, there have been countless tragedies in this war. It's partially the fault of the IDF lowering the bar for shooting, it's partially the fault of Hamas operating in the way that they do (there are cases of them deliberately pretending to be civilians then ambushing soldiers).

> Other times, we see things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhVV2_mub84

That video is utterly without context. I don't remember the exact case (I think Preston Stewart talked about it), but those could literally be armed militants walking to/away from battle. I don't know if Al Jazeera followed this up with any other information.

> These are not action that will reduce terrorism. These are not actions that will help the people of Gaza learn to live in peace.

I don't think Israel is trying to help Gaza learn to live in peace. It's trying to win a war against the Gazan government and military so it doesn't attack again.

So you agree that the actions of Israel do not look like genocide?

The rest of your comment is conjecture and it sounds a bit conspiratorial.

Agreed and on moral grounds the war of Israel is far more defensible than these examples because they are directly subjected to the aggressor. That doesn't allow killings with impunity of course, but that is far from what Israel is doing.

Debunked.

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/09/israel-genocide-gaza-us-aus...

And this was widely reported by the MSM.

The ICJ are NOT investigating Israel for the crime of genocide. This is a common misunderstanding. See clarifications by the former president of the International Court of Justice, Joan Donoghue.

Google for the clarification or read the actual text https://www.icj-cij.org/node/203847

I’m not sure I understand what you mean. You cited a ruling from March 28th 2024, which imposed extra provisional measures in light of evidence that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war, and ordered Israel to stop doing that. Or in words of the Court (Article III, Paragraph 45):

> In conformity with its obligations under the Genocide Convention, and in view of the worsening conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza, in particular the spread of famine and starvation, Israel shall:

> (a) take all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full co-operation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance, including food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care to Palestinians throughout Gaza, including by increasing the capacity and number of land crossing points and maintaining them open for as long as necessary; and

> (b) ensure with immediate effect that its military does not commit acts which constitute a violation of any of the rights of the Palestinians in Gaza as a protected group under the Genocide Convention, including by preventing, through any action, the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance.

The original ruling is from January 26th 2024 was also orders of provisional measures, but crucially ruled that the court had jurisdiction over the case (Article II, Paragraphs 31-32) and that accusations of genocide were plausible (Article IV, Paragraph 54):

> In the Court’s view, the facts and circumstances mentioned above are sufficient to conclude that at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible.

The court has not concluded on this case, which means that it is fact still investigating the allegations. I honestly can’t see where my supposed misunderstanding lies.

1: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192...

Here is the precise misunderstanding; the statement you quote

>In the Court’s view, the facts and circumstances mentioned above are sufficient to conclude that at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible.. (my emphasis)

Has been widely reported as saying that the allegations of genocide are plausible.

I don’t understand your point.

The court ruled that it has jurisdiction over the case, and that some of the allegations are plausible. How are they not investigating Israel for the crime of Genocide?

Again your use of language is loose. It's yet to be established that genocide is occurring, so how can you investigate it?

Is the misunderstanding in the meaning of the term investigate? It very common for justice systems or law enforcement to investigate whether a certain crime falls under a given category, for example Hate Crime.

Here is one example: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/comments-at-pro-palest... The police does not know as of yet whether this protestor was guilty of hate crime, but they find it plausible, and are investigating.

Now this example is of a local law enforcement, which has pretty liberal laws on what it investigates. The World Court however needs strong conviction to even accept a case. The court did rule that the accusations are plausible and that they have jurisdiction over it. In other words, they are investigating whether Israel’s conduct falls under the crime of genocide.

Perhaps in the narrow technical meaning. But how you present it has great PR value.

I'd like to announce that I'm now investigating @runarberg for <despicable crime>.

> That's correct and IMHO [censorship is] the right thing to do when shooting begins

it's been a common observation since aischylos that the truth is the first casualty of war

it's quite different to assert that the truth should be the first casualty of war, which seems to be your position

Few questioned Ukraine's decision to ban RT's operations. This doesn't seem terribly different - Al Jazeera has very deep ties to Hamas, the enemy Israel is at war with, and has arguably been acting as their mouthpiece for propaganda.

i did and do. banning your citizens from reading the 'propaganda' of your enemy reduces them to subjects and foments further armed conflict. it's also a power invariably used to avoid accountability for petty corruption such as beria's garden full of young, beautiful women

Is the fact that you put "propaganda" in quotation marks an indication that you don't consider RT to be that, or that you don't think propaganda even exists?

I think the point is that one side's propaganda is another side's information.

As in "there is no such thing as true or false, only opinion"?

In a post truth society, certainly. If you can't verify it yourself it's all a leap of faith.

"Verifying it yourself" is often if not usually also a leap of faith, because how shall a single mind error check itself in a confirmably reliable manner, especially if it's received no specialized training in the domain?

It comes down to the relative stretch of the leap you take.

And to know that, you need (just for starters) a means of discovering what is True...so you are back to the problem I noted.

Luckily, all of this complexity can be wallpapered over by cultural conditioning, making the problem essentially vanish (depending on the frame of reference one is observing from, or if one even knows what that means).

That's completely unrelated. Obviously there exist objective facts, but outlets get to pick and chose which facts they report and which ones to hide under the rug. For example, its common for state news organizations to report enemy losses, but omit their own.

Some propaganda goes beyond selective disclosure of facts, like Al Jazeera uncritically reporting questionable claims as long as they're anti-Israeli, and failing to retract the ones that turn out to be false.

An important distinction must be drawn between suppressing distribution, and "banning your citizens from reading". In fact it is not illegal to possess or read RT content, nor even for that matter to share it on social media. It is not secret. All that has been done is to remove a propagandist with a megaphone from the town square.

It should be noted that Ukraine has banned far more than just RT.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press_in_Ukrain...

I don’t say that the truth should be this or that, all I say is that information flow is part of the warfare and the parties at war will want to control it for their advantage. After all, they are literally killing people.

Sure, but why should we be subjected to only our own propagandists lies and not be able to hear the other side? Why are our lies better?

RT is not truth though. When a country is fighting for its very survival against a genocidal foe, I'm not about to start clutching my pearls that they've banned their genocidal foe's propaganda. Seems reasonable to me.

It's no worse than CNNs take on iraq and weapons of mass destruction, or (to go to the ru-ukr war), all the "putin has 3 days of supplies left" articles from 2022, 2023 and this year.

You just prefer your own propaganda.

I don't think that "putin has 3 days of supplies left" propaganda is just as bad as the kind of genocidal propaganda pumped out by the Russian media, no, sorry.

Not all propaganda is born equal. Antisemitic propaganda pumped out by the Nazis in WW2 was absolutely worse than "keep calm and carry on" propaganda pumped out by the Brits during WW2. Hope that helps.

But if you truly believe that putin is losing due to propaganda, you'll go and fight a war you believe you'll win... and then die, because the media lied to you. How is this good for you?

I mean sure... you, as an outside observer want more "other" people to die for a cause you believe in, but for an individual it's better to know the truth and decide according to that, than to be mislead by lies and propaganda.

Ukraine seems pretty intent on continuing to fight, I'm not forcing them to do anything, indeed I have no power over Ukrainian policy whatsoever. If Ukraine wants to fight then I believe we should support them. Hope that helps.

> fight a war you believe you'll win... and then die

I can't imagine any sane person is going to blame the Ukrainian media for Russia invading Ukraine, killing Ukrainian soldiers and committing genocide in Ukraine. I imagine they would, you know, blame Russia itself. Lol.

Thanks for the hot takes though, amusing, if not also a little bit sad.

> Ukraine seems pretty intent on continuing to fight

Yeah, i saw the videos of men being kidnapped from the streets, and the articles about european countries trying to forcibly sending men (who managed to escape) back to ukraine, to die for zelensky. Once you're out of volounteers ready to fight, you're not "intent on" anything anymore, but are forcing young (and a bit less young) men to die for politics. And ukraine hasn't had any volounteers for quite a lot of time now.

> I can't imagine any sane person is going to blame the Ukrainian media for Russia invading Ukraine, killing Ukrainian soldiers and committing genocide in Ukraine. I imagine they would, you know, blame Russia itself. Lol.

Ukranian media can be a cause for uninformed men to die in a way, that they would never fight in, if they knew the truth.

Yeah that's why war sucks bro. People end up getting conscripted when the war is for the very existence of the country itself. It sucks.

So Russia should withdraw.

Anyway seethe more. And keep acting all shocked and outraged that countries produce propaganda during war time when they are attacked. Lol.

But if people prefer their own life to some lines on the map... why should we force them to fight? I mean.. shouldn't ukranian individuals have a choice? Are we really supporting forcefully sending them to die? Is this "democracy"? "western way of life"?

If you prefer lines on the map, why not help with the fighting, instead of being a keyboard warrior?

>If you prefer lines on the map, why not help with the fighting, instead of being a keyboard warrior?

If you are so desperate for Russia to win, why don't you go and join the Russian army and join a meat wave?

> shouldn't ukranian individuals have a choice

Conscription in its various forms is as old as warfare itself. I cannot believe you think Ukraine invented conscription lmao.

I'm not desparate for russia to win, I just support people to have a chance to not die for the lines on the map. It's not just ukraine forcing them to do so (and us helping them), but there are actual movements within EU to forcibly send the ones who escaped back.

If you want to fight russia, you're free to do so, but you shouldn't be able to force others to do so.

> Conscription in its various forms is as old as warfare itself. I cannot believe you think Ukraine invented conscription lmao.

Sure, and it's wrong and should be abolished. Aren't we the ones supporting democracy here? At least you're acting as if you are, as long as ukranian men have no choice but to die in a war you support more than them.

Nothing necessarily antidemocratic about conscription. Finland is a democracy and has conscription.

You need to focus your outrage on Russia for invading Ukraine

instead of Ukraine for defending itself.

Do you believe it's possible to support Ukraine, criticize and blame Russia for the conflict, and still think there's much to criticize about the Ukrainian response? It seems like you're not comfortable with that level of nuance, and you're being very disrespectful as a result.

Of course, but they very clearly support Russia, so that does not apply here.

They explicitly state that Ukraine should stop fighting, i.e., let Russia win.

They state The Independent and Russia Today are two equally trustworthy news sources. That is not serious.

Anyone who says we should support Ukraine is told that we should go and join the Ukrainian army, also ridiculous.

I do not respect such people, so I am being disrespectful, indeed. I do not care, either.

If you think I am being an arsehole, that's fine, you're probably right, but if you cannot see that the other guy is also at least as much of an arsehole as I am, then you presumably have very interesting opinions on the Russian attack on Ukraine, just like he does.

Conscription is undemocratic by design.

If the democratic majority wants to fight, you have more than enough volunteer soldiers to either win (or lose ~1/2 of your population...). If you can't get any volunteers any more, their opinion on if they want to fight or not is already known, even without a democratic referendum.

...at least if you only count the votes of people whose opinion actually matters here.

You need to focus your outrage on Russia for invading Ukraine

instead of Ukraine for defending itself.

What good will that do? 1 outrage = one prayer? Or whatever that faceook boomer meme was?

Now is the time to prevent forciful conscription in other countries, because our politicians are steering us towards war, and I don't want to die for them. If someone volunteers, sure, if not, then sit down and negotiate.

I don't live in neither russia not ukraine... my outrage went to my (small, eu) country occupying afghanistan and still having soldiers in syria. Sadly noone gave so much weapons and money to afghanistan/syria/libya/... to help them win the war.

What good does your seething on HN do?

My point is if you're going to rage about the war in Ukraine, you should probably rage and seethe about the invader, not criticise Ukraine for defending itself lmao.

If your only problem is that Ukraine has conscription, well so too does Russia, but you only criticise Ukraine, and repeat Russian imperialist/fascist talking points about defending Russians in Ukraine.. so it is very transparent where your sympathies really lie.

North Korea is a line on a map.

>why not help with the fighting

This is a really common refrain from paid Russian trolls. It means that someone cannot argue against an injust invasion unless they fight themselves - which is ridiculous. So you are either a troll, or just stupid. Based on the rest of your comments I'm certain you are a troll. What is really sick is that you claim to be concerned about Ukrainian lives when you are actively supporting their daily massacre.

You can argue all you want, but you shouldn't be able to force people to die for your arguments. And ukranian men don't want to die.

Instead of arguing, you come with the "paid troll" accusations and personal attacks.. come on.

It's one thing to argue about injustness (especially if you're from one of the coutries that is currently invading some other country, or recently has been, like syria or afghanistan.. like my country did), but you canot argue about ukranians having to die for whatever you consider to be right. If you support any kind of democracy, and if there is noone left who wants to volounteer and fight, the democractic opinion is already known (at least the opinion of those whose opinion should matter). If you believe that dying in this war is worth it, for whatever reason, you can replace a ukranian guy who doesn't believe that.

I'm not willing to fight for Ukraine but I am willing to support them. If my country was at risk of being ruled by the thugs in the Kremlin, I would fight for it and I would welcome support from anyone.

Your line of argument (idiotic though it is ) is used frequently by trolls because it is very effective at shutting down conversation. You can't threaten violence directly but you would if you could. You are supporting a regime that kills, rapes and kidnaps children (you will deny this because you are a paid troll but it's absolutely clear from your arguments that you do)

Anyway, you are clearly delighted to get more opportunities to repeat it so I will shut up now.

You've made it so deep into this discussion and now is when you pull out the "paid troll" comment? Speak directly and don't imply things you're not confident enough to say outright. And frankly, 99% of claims of paid trolls sound like conspiracy theories to my ears.

> That's correct and IMHO its the right thing to do

I'm in awe. I'm pro-censorship myself as a general principle (though not in this obviously unjustifiable instance of it), but please be coherent. How come the current semi-popular opinion on HN happens to be pro-censorship, when HN community is against censorship in every other situation?

I’m not pro-censorship at all.

I just think media is part of the warfare and it’s normal to try to control it during a war. I am anti war in first place, if you don’t want censorship don’t start a war.

As a complete aside, I enjoy your posts. Cheers.

Thanks!

> How come the current semi-popular opinion on HN happens to be pro-censorship, when HN community is against censorship in every other situation?

The answer to most questions like this is: there are many different users on HN. You might think the "general consensus" of HN is one thing, but you're talking to a specific person commenting on a specific article, who has their own views, not to a generic "HN user".

And note that different threads will have a different makeup of users clicking on it. E.g. I wouldn't necessarily be interested in a random "censorship" thread, but this one is about Israel, so (as an Israeli) I am interested. Since this logic probably extends to other users as well, that will give the thread a specific bias, depending on its subject matter and framing.

Certain topics, this is one example, draw a different crowd than other HN articles.

It is at least the biggest insult to your adult citizens to say to them, "you are not allowed to read this because you are too stupid."

I don’t think it’s that at all, it’s about controlling the narrative for your advantage. You might be lying as well, be doing horrible things and you don’t want the people you control to know that or to think that way.

It’s not a noble thing, it’s a war weapon.

I dont think the EU is at war

Someone is blowing up military facilities in the EU though. So if at war or not is starting to be open to interpretation.

Whats open to interpretation? If sabotage = war we would have seen ww3 several decades ago.

It is not clear that the pipeline was an act of war, but acts of war can be that simple.

"WW3" is a conceptualization of existential fear, rather than a singular event. The world rallying to one of two sides to make war (or neutrality), is highly unlikely.

I think that denying that ww3 would pose an existential threat to everyone is akin to being a flatearther and an anti waxer. However given todays unfortunate climate it is infinitely more dangerous and war mongorers should be exposed more ferrociously than Russian bots

Is taking sides in a war though. That’s why the Russian outlets push talking points. This can affect the public support on war efforts issues, which is fine only before shooting start because when no one is shooting arguments(which can be fair ones or designed to achieve something like withholding weapons deliveries) can be addressed in timely manner.

Whatever problems a website or an app is causing can be solved through civil means, but at a war time irreversible damage using deadly weapons can be done before even realizing it.

But banning Russian propaganda surely is an indication of weakness. Banning RT to me also signals that Russia got good at playing the media game, which until recently was largely the playground of US and UK. There is a reason that dry Tass is not banned but snazzy RT is.

It's a bit ironic how we are constantly reminded that china isn't a democracy because they have censorship, while we are free and democratic and don't have censorship (except we do).

Italy is passing laws to be able to block websites within 30 minutes, without any oversight from any judge. (more details here, link in italian https://stop-piracy-shield.it/)

One of them is 100 times more extensive. Ideal is to have none, but lets not pretend that magnitude and severity is not relevant.

Relevant to the people living in it.

Not relevant to the ideals set forth, which our moderns free democracies are based on. This is fundamental, so it's actually worse than when it happens in China.

Not really. Compromise and nuance have always been necessary features of democracies. This has also frequently been seized upon by autocratic apologists with this framing (“it’s actually worse here because of our idealism!”) and yet autocracies remain reliably worse off than democracies in practice.

Every country calls their enemy "undemocratic"

Stunningly, not all of them are correct.

It’s actually not a sign of intelligence or honesty to be able to squint so hard that you see no meaningful differences between e.g. the US and Russia/Iran/China. It’s just called closing your eyes.

Shall we talk about what % of the population is imprisoned in all the countries you mentioned?

Happy to once you explain clearly how that number is relevant to whether a country is democratic or not. Or are you just trying to change the topic?

Did American citizens directly vote for the level of imprisonment in the country?

The game is rigged: any political system that allows any voting at all can be "accurately" described as "being democratic", and this (especially when combined with non-stop supplemental propaganda) is more than adequate to satisfy the heuristic based thinking of most people (and to pull the wool over their eyes).

Noteworthy: who sets educational curriculum (which is what enables people to think skilfully about such things) in schools in "democracies"? How likely does it seem that among thousands of people over decades, no one connected to the department of education noticed that the basic skills for practicing critical thinking are not contained within K-12 curriculum?

Directly voting on laws is neither necessary nor ideal for a democracy.

Again, squinting too hard. American democracy is extremely flawed, yes, but no that doesn't make every other self-proclaimed democracy actually the same.

Your noteworthy note is not that noteworthy. Curricula are almost entirely controlled by state and local school boards. The federal DOE has extremely limited requirements by design to prevent the exact thing you're accusing them of doing.

Only 23 states in USA allow referendum to take place. Being allowed to vote is a requisite for democracy.

Thank you for sharing your opinion! It's not a very commonly held view or intuition that directly voting on policy is a prerequisite for democracy. Of course you can use whatever exotic definitions you want to trick yourself into believing you've won an argument, but it will do nothing in terms of actually creating the type of world you'd like.

I don't think we'll see eye to eye on this and that's okay.

> Directly voting on laws is neither necessary nor ideal for a democracy.

a) That depends on which subjective definition you are using, and also whether you realize your definitions are subjective.

b) It isn't possible for you to know what is "necessary" or "ideal", thus you are speculating.

> Again, squinting too hard.

Speaking (and perhaps even thinking) in popular but misinformative catchphrases may not be ideal.

> American democracy is extremely flawed, yes, but no that doesn't make every other self-proclaimed democracy actually the same.

This is true if considered independently (not in the context of this conversation), but what is the "but no" part referring to?

> Your noteworthy note is not that noteworthy.

Your subjective opinion appearing to you as an objective fact is noteworthy.

> Curricula are almost entirely controlled by state and local school boards.

There is how things are supposed to work, there is how things are claimed to work, and then there is how things actually work (and even this is a substantial simplification). Talking about that last one is...culturally frowned upon.

> The federal DOE has extremely limited requirements by design to prevent the exact thing you're accusing them of doing.

Maybe this is part of the problem!

Regardless: I think it is time the public stopped taking all this nonsense lying down, and behaving as if we are helpless observers trapped in a stream of reality in which we have and can have no control over.

From below:

>> Thank you for sharing your opinion!

Very interesting. Is this interesting to you?

> I don't think we'll see eye to eye on this and that's okay.

When you say "that's okay", what is it you are referring to? Reality?

Democratic, rules based order, freedom: all words used to paint oneself in the good and others in the back. They barely have meaning in political discourse nowadays.

Go to Qatar and strike up a conversation like the ones that are had millions of times per day in the US about how awful/incompetent/evil/illegitimate the government is.

It's you who is degrading the meaning of these things. You can go experience the difference for yourself.

> Go to Qatar and strike up a conversation like the ones that are had millions of times per day in the US about how awful/incompetent/evil/illegitimate the government is.

What is the point of this with respect to the comment it is replying to? Is it intended to be a disproof of some kind?

And while we're at that (comparing Qatar to the US), should we also consider other metrics? Like, oh, I don't know...say Total Body Count on the International Stage? I'm fairly certain being alive is at least as important to most people as Freedom of Speech.

> It's you who is degrading the meaning of these things.

Appeals to the perfection of one's own cognition are getting a bit old. It's 2024 ffs.

> You can go experience the difference for yourself.

Realistically, most people are mostly stuck where they are, and I would rather not engage in illusory thinking about the quality of my country to make myself feel better. But of course, each to his own.

Uhh yes, it's to say there are actually real, practical differences in daily life between countries on the dimension of "freedom" and that these are not merely artifacts of one's own cognition or of rhetorical gotchas. They do not "barely have meaning" and one can travel to various places on the earth and try simple experiments to prove it.

Absolutely wild to be saying "go travel and try to exercise a freedom there" is seen as an appeal to cognition while "I would rather not engage in illusory thinking" is... what exactly?

> ...and that these are not merely artifacts of one's own cognition or of rhetorical gotchas.

A non-"pedantic" person might read this and accidentally form the belief that they are not often just rhetorical gotchas, or that they are not artifacts of one's own cognition (which they are....but they are not only that....and, it is fairly well known even by science how unreliable our Narrator of Reality is).

The relative perfection of the US and other "democracies" is what it is, and that perfection is plausibly substantially influenced by the degree to which citizens collectively buy into the stories of how good they are ("if it ain't broke...").

Do you disagree that most people's models of the quality of various governments rest upon a bed of stories? Or another way of asking the question: do you believe that there is an accurate methodology in existence to objectively determine with high accuracy the quality of each nation in this regard (and also that most people utilize such a methodology, as opposed to believing the stories that please them)?

> They do not "barely have meaning" and one can travel to various places on the earth and try simple experiments to prove it.

It's a fair point, but the claim was: "They barely have meaning in political discourse nowadays". There is a difference, and the importance of the difference is very tricky.

> Absolutely wild to be saying "go travel and try to exercise a freedom there" is seen as an appeal to cognition while "I would rather not engage in illusory thinking" is... what exactly?

Also wild: you sidestepping the other metric I mentioned, and leading out with supreme self-confidence. But then, truthfulness and accuracy is perhaps not the game being playing here, considering the topic.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-i...

I was in China, they called democracy "hopelessly inefficient, will not work for a large population like ours".

What you describe is mostly western/NATO rhetoric, after which they can influence the election (which drives them to tears when it supposedly happens back home).

> china isn't a democracy because they have censorship,

What the fuck even is this? That's like saying Pizza Hut isn't a hamburger shop because they don't sell french fries.

They're not, but that's not the reason!

A democracy is dependent on people having access to information. Free information is a direct requirement of any democracy. It just isn't the only requirement of course.

> It just isn't the only requirement of course.

Right, and it's far from the only one the PRC is lacking. If a tyrannical dictatorship hypothetically permitted free speech, it wouldn't be a democracy. The most conspicuous lacking feature of a democracy in the PRC is the lack of legal competing parties and elections, so it's strange to hear that China isn't a democracy because they don't have free speech.

Incidental to that, free speech as a qualification of democracy is less than cut and dry; every democratic country recognizes some limits to free speech, be that as simple as libel and slander laws, wartime censorship (as America had during WW2), or even hate speech laws like most of the democracies other than America have. If absolute free speech is a prerequisite for having a democracy, then no democracy exists. If you concede some limits, then we're just quibbling the details. Probably, America "" banning"" tiktok still qualifies as having free speech since it's still legal for Americans and American media companies to say nearly anything they like, limited mostly just by slander and libel laws (e.g. infowars getting sued for saying Sandy Hook didn't happen.) Certainly on the spectrum of speech freeness, America is far further on the free side than the PRC where you can get your organs harvested for saying that the government should be replaced. The supposed irony guappa was talking about up-thread is farcical, you have to be out of your mind to think America and China are even remotely close to each other on the speech freeness spectrum.

No tyrannical dictatorship ever permitted free speech because it would pose an immediate threat to their rule.

Competing parties is an indication of a working democracy. Theoretically everyone could agree with a single party to rule. Edge case and very unlikely of course. But there is a reason freedom of opinion is a human right instead of the freedom to have multiple political factions. It isn't comparable.

In contrast to that freedom of speech and expression is a fundamental requirement. For parties forming in the first place for that matter. It is a right that can be abused and different countries deal differently with that problem, although the technicalities should be very carefully considered here.

I don't believe TikTok is an essential part to freedom of speech, but it could very well suppress voices otherwise unheard. Even if I disagree with most of them, there is a restriction.

I do believe the decision against it is populist drivel though and I agree that there is a stark difference between China and the US in offering freedoms. China banning foreign platforms is a sign of weakness in their convictions and they are afraid that different ideas would challenge their order.

I’m also quite concerned about the Western world adopting the Chinese style of governance but censorship at wartime is very different from censorship at peace time.

False information leading to spreading misguided ideas is deadly at wartime because there is no time to address it.

I definitely don’t support Italy blocking websites or the US blocking apps.

>I’m also quite concerned about the Western world adopting the Chinese style of governance but censorship at wartime is very different from censorship at peace time

If you allow this then the government will just forever find excuses to be at war.

We live in a broken world, there are no perfect solutions. But I would argue that staying alive comes as a primary priority.

Ah yes the "we must kill them, to stay alive" narrative. It has never been abused in the whole history of mankind.

What are you even talking about? Of course those attacked must kill the attackers to stay alive.

What about all the misleading news (i.e., positive spin) in the Western world's "free press" that lead to many believing that Ukraine had a chance for a counter offensive (against even basic military thinking and logic). Didn't that lead to unnecessary suffering and deaths during war time (vs say an alternative, beefing up defense lines)?

That's just a random recent example. Another older one is the the media going nuts over "WMDs", leading to an unnecessary US invasion and millions of deaths. My point being is that even free press can spread bad ideas and narratives - in fact, it frequently does. And those ideas should be able to be challenged, at any time, by any source.

what a starange statement about the counterattack, as if there was a definite knowledge about the future and the Western propaganda suppressed it.

They attempted at taking back their own lands and they failed. The same people claiming to know the future also used to claim that Russia would not attack and later that Ukraine will fall in matter of days.

Maybe just stop listening to fortune tellers.

Exactly, I prefer to listen to experts and the experts were saying it was a bad idea (esp without air power). It was news media and politicians (ie, not military experts) that cheered it on.

It's amazing how you believe that militaries and politicians operate without experts and there're experts on the social media/ tradmedia who came together analysed the situation, came to a definitive prediction about the outcome of a military operation but the western media surpassed those experts and as a result politicians and military engaged in a futile counterattack.

Fascinating mental model on how the world works.

That’s exactly what happened, yeah. And warfare/foreign policy is not the only issue they gaslight us on.

You're being very disrespectful in this conversation. I was GP has provided links and references when they made their comment, but they are certainly correct. The way the conflict is covered in US media makes it seem like Ukraine is wily superhero making good progress against the bumbling Russians. This does not reflect the current reality or future prospects in the conflict.

Apologies if I sounded disrespectful, I’m just fascinated that people can conceptualize the world in this way.

Pretty sure the actual world leading experts on Ukraine’s situation are the ones making battlefield decisions in Ukraine. Like the other commenter said, what a fascinating model of the world you’ve built here.

Holding a non-narrative driven view might be fascinating for some, I suppose.

You are literally constructing a narrative that western news media makes the decisions on the Ukrainian battlefield.

Yes, it is a major contributing factor. PR wins help with public support for funding. This situation/topic is not the only situation they intentionally manipulate public option on.

Lots of narrative here buddy

Lot of books, buddy. You might want to start with this one: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12617.Manufacturing_Cons...

I'm pretty sure that "western news anchors produce an expected-to-fail counteroffensive in Ukraine" would even make Chomsky roll his eyes.

Your explanation is not even internally coherent. A successful counteroffensive is a PR win. An unsuccessful one is a PR loss, obviously.

His thoughts on this conflict are a simple Google search away.

Please link to any source in which he makes the argument you're making. I looked and couldn't find any.

Your argument is dismissible on its own merits and Chomsky believing it as well won't change that, but I am curious if he does.

I do not understand how supporting Ukraine can lead to more suffering, there is a long history of implerialism causing suffering so there is a rather large opposition against it in the west. What Russia does to Ukraine is pretty gruesome, it is not even considered a country in russian intellectual discourse that is a bad sign.

When we talk about the press and politics these kind of cynical tones are not helpfull. The WMD issue was heavily discussed and debated. The same as Gaza is now, it is interesting what issues manage to be changed by public opinion and what that really is, this is not only an issue with the press. People and groups tend to think that their own opinions should matter, that is only true if you managed to get enough people to care about your opinions and even then you might need a referendum.

I’m not talking about supporting Ukraine vs not, but about wishful thinking propagated by media that led thousands of unfortunate Ukrainian souls into heavily mined traps. And that’s my point, media spread a narrative that was at odds with expert advice and basic military strategy (there’s mathematical equations about force required, etc for these types of operations that was ignored). That idea should have been able to been challenged without accusations of being in bed with Putin. We all saw the aftermath. Bad ideas, even from the good guys, can be deadly.

Are you saying Ukrainian military base their strategy on media propaganda rather than basic military strategy? Why would they do that?

That's a good question that has a lot of people scratching their heads. My best guess is top Ukrainian leadership are staffed by a lot of former mass media people, including the president himself (well, until May 20th when his term ends).

So you have enough insider information about the decision making process to know they plan the strategy based on media propaganda rater than military intelligence. But you dont have information about why.

> I do not understand how supporting Ukraine can lead to more suffering

You're not responding to the right question at all. You're being asked about the Westerns media not covering the difficulties, losses, and bleak future of the war - justified it seems by the need to support Ukraine.

Is italy at war? I must have missed the memo.

It’s not at war, that’s why I don’t support such a thing.

It isn't and shouldn't be different in war time either. If you allow this exception, you will just always be at war.

Censorship for security reasons isn't a new concept.

Not at all, you can't be at war all the time as people and ammo is limited resource. Just stick tight to definitions and observe for technicality BS. I.e. don't take "War on drugs" as a war, don't assume you are at war when the countries no longer fight but technically never signed a peace agreement etc.

I think I made it pretty clear that the exception for censorship is only when people are actively killing each other and this is because killing happens fast and its irreversible, therefore tolerances to tackle spread of false information is too small to be allowed.

Not the war on drugs, but certainly the "war on terror". This is not clinging to definitions, it is political reality that such measures would also be undertaken in peace time, any justification would suffice. Who do you believe would draw the line here anyway?

Also, especially in times of war, there is a heightened interest of people getting news and independent reporting. Any other news isn't worth the read.

Yeah, just don’t fall for that kind of BS.

In fact, a series of Western media including the BBC, Reuters, CNN, etc. all have offices in China.... and you can also easily access Western media websites through VPN and other methods which are uncensored

VPNs increasingly don't work well, however, it's not like they completely turn a blind eye. It's some kind of statistical thing that drops connections that "look wierd" that can interfere with even quite obfuscated VPNs.

yeah, actually what I told 'VPN' is also included like SS/SSR/V2Ray/Xray/Trojan, which is easily gotten, and smooth link and you can even have a HK phone number and used the no GFW network in China.

In Germany they can't publicly gather to protest Israel's actions either, not legally anyway.

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/26/complete-censo...

There are regular pro Palestine protests in my German hometown. And they do condemn Israel's actions.

I know some people who are regularly protesting in Germany also, but my understanding is that they knowingly break the law in doing so. Is this not correct?

It's complicated.

Germany has pretty strict laws against "incitement of hatred". Additionally it's illegal to deface, damage or destroy a foreign flag. Also demonstrations and protests need to be registered in advance with proof of proper security and safety measures. Germany is also very biased in favor of Israel and has (like the US) adopted the stance that an attack on Israel is an attack on Judaism. This has led to Jewish anti-Israel protestors being arrested.

In theory it is possible to have a "spontaneous" protest without leaders but in practice this means the police will designate the loudest persons in the crowd as leaders and claim that they organized a protest without a permit and arrest them for that. Also the political bias favoring Israel means pro-Israel counter-protestors are likely to be tolerated more than anti-Israel protests.

And of course anti-genocide is conflated with anti-Israel and pro-Hamas, again like in the US. But yes, most political protests are illegal because they are not formally organized with the authorities (and even with organized protests you often have break-out protests deviating from the permitted route/location or overstaying). From personal experience I can tell you though that unless the police can pin anything on you (e.g. trespassing, resisting arrest, "attacking a police officer"[0]) this usually only ends up with the police roughing you up a bit maybe and then recording your identity before dropping you off somewhere else with a temporary restraining order.

[0]: This is worth mentioning because it explains the low police numbers for injured protestors in Lüzerath compared with the video evidence of police charging unarmed protestors: being injured by a police officer is considered evidence for attacking a police officer as unless there is evidence for the police officer doing anything wrong the assumption is that they followed the guidelines for escalating force, i.e. they must have had a good reason. It's also worth mentioning that in many places riot cops do not have any visible unique identification so reporting any claim of police brutality at a protest is usually fruitless as the alleged perp can not uniquely be identified and you need an individual person to accuse. Protest medics thus have stopped giving detailed statistics as merely keeping a tally would help the police in tracking down "suspects" by visiting the nearby hospitals (which they did e.g. after Lüzerath).

So tl;dr: depending on your demographic, your cause and which police you end up being surrounded by, it's relatively safe to take part in an illegal protest in Germany as long as they can't prove you did anything illegal and don't get hurt.

Based of your tl;dr would you say they that the original assertion was true in practice, that they generally "can't publicly gather to protest Israel's actions either, not legally anyway."

I'm not sure whether there have been any pro-Palestine or even simply "anti-war" protests that were properly registered, not disrupted and not dissolved by the police but I guess it depends on your definition of "legally".

I would say in practice it's very difficult to have any protest opposing Israel's actions in Gaza without a high risk of ending up in a place where the police decides to dissolve it. But I think in practice the two biggest reasons for that are a) the topic is likely to attract protestors who decide to express opinions that are illegal (or are deliberately interpreted that way) and b) most protests tend to be dissolved by the police eventually because even ones that follow all the rules usually spin off or feed into spontaneous protests that don't.

You are allowed to protest against Israel, but you have to be extremely careful about how to phrase it, as a lot of things can get you arrested for anti-Semitism, even when it is arguably factual. So things like calling Israel an apartheid state, calling Israel fascist or warning of a genocide might land you in jail.

So basically you can protest legally as long as you don't protest against certain things the government protects. I'm gonna stand by my original assertion. It's like saying you can publish whatever you like in China as long as you don't mention Tianamen Square.

This article is clearly an oversimplification on aljazeera's side [0], which a bit also highlights a problem with their journalism. However, I guess this is harmless against some tabloids that are far from being banned.

[0] https://www.dw.com/en/israel-gaza-demonstrations-what-is-all...

I would likely be arrested if I wore my UK-created anti-fascist Football Fans Against Apartheid/Free Palestine pin, so it’s going into a drawer. Zionism has drowned all voices, my Jewish friends are being harassed for dissent too.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/ha...

Really, objectively, I am wondering what on Earth any country X would do faced with a statement from an enemy Y as in :-

The complete and utter destruction of X as an essential condition for the liberation of Y and the establishment of a religious state based on [ Y's religious theocratic laws ]

Any form of coexistence is clearly not on the table. For the context please read the link in the Atlantic article.

In this case it's akin to the bullied child crying 'I'll kill you', from his puddle of blood on the ground. Israel's own conduct in Gaza and the West Bank is the primary threat to the existence of the state. Not two million impoverished people who've been crushed under an imperial boot since the theft of their land almost eighty years ago. Israel is a wealthy, post industrial US backed, nuclear power. Hamas are a convenient boogyman allowing them to further consolidate their control over land that international law recognises as occupied [1].

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...

Yes but how about answering the question because lives depend on it. What should Israel do? Live with Hamas and the 80% of Palestinians who support them? Give up and move ten million people (including some ~20% Muslims & Arabs) to somewhere else? Where? Let's get serious! Again, what to do? How about a constructive response including your advice to Israel under these circumstances. I have no dog in the fight, criticize Israel how you like (undoubtedly much of it justified) but what's the solution? If there is none forthcoming, and there has not, then we move to Clauswitz. Whatever he meant with his famous dictum, that says there is no alternative. Appalling, much like the Ukraine/Russia horror show.

> What should Israel do? Live with Hamas and the 80% of Palestinians who support them?

Giving concessions to the population and offering them an equitable stake in society would go a long way to dissipating support for armed resistance.

It's not a conflict on the same scale but you can look to the resolution of conflict in Northern Ireland for parallels. Denying people their basic chances in life and doing so with the threat of violence it's never going to win people to your side.

At some point you either have to talk to them or kill them all. The situation now is only creating martyrs and enough trauma to fuel the next generation of the cycle.

That's what Oslo peace agreement was about. Palestinians rejected it and went back to intifada. They received the land and independence. Gaza had an international airport that Clinton landed in. They overwhelmingly rejected it. They elected Hamas and strive to erase Israel. There is no such thing as land concessions, they see it as a weakness and demand more. The national Palestinian idea is the genocide of Jews and the establishment of an Islamic state on all of Israel's borders. That's Hamas's stated goal and it is supported by 80% of the Gaza population. Judea & Samaria are the same, despite PLO geriatrics being in control most of the population supports genocide of Jews. It can't be compared to Ireland since the Irish never sought the destruction of Britain and the genocide of the English. The same with Japan. You can't compare. You see it with Western eyes and can't really understand or willfully ignore the Palestinian aspirations.

Many distortions above; let's just pick one:

They elected Hamas

Hamas won a narrow plurality in the 2006 legislative elections. That government dissolved entirely in 2007 after a military conflict between Hamas and Fatah.

So since 2007, Hamas has not been "elected". In any case it's main function since then has been as an instrument of Israeli policy. In Bibi's own words, just a few years ago: "Anyone who wants to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas."

So if you are unhappy with Hamas still being around, you know who to direct your concerns at.

That is certainly not Hamas's main function. Netanyahu is obviously in some sense culpable for funneling resources to Hamas, but Hamas is, obviously, an independent actor; if it's an instrument of anyone's policy, it's Iran's --- though, since October 7, the aQB wing of Hamas appears to be completely on its own.

Of course it's an independent actor, but I'm talking about the bigger picture and the strategic rational behind its continued existence. The Leitmotif if you will.

The IRGC was going to make sure Hamas continued to exist, to the extent it needed external support at all. Hamas isn't a creation of Israel; Israeli support is not the rationale for its continued existence.

I don't agree, but more to the point I didn't say or even suggest this:

Hamas is a creation of Israel

So I think we can wrap up here.

I'm not saying you did, I'm just emphatically pushing back on the idea that Netanyahu's support for Hamas is instrumental to its staying power or in some way its reason for existing. It's clear what Netanyahu's purpose for assisting it was --- to divide Palestine between Fatah and Hamas and prevent the emergence of a coherent Palestinian state. Similarly, the US had very particular goals in supporting Afghan Mujahideen, which turned out to be quite different than those groups actual reason to exist.

As I'm sure you're aware, this notion that Hamas is (or was, before the IDF demolished it) a puppet for Netanyahu has a lot of currency in online spaces. I don't see you making that argument! But it's worth calling it out. It is fine --- maybe even... dare I say it... good? --- if we say things that we agree on aloud.

Netanyahu funded Hamas because he had a cunning plan:

‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas

As far back as December 2012, Mr. Netanyahu told the prominent Israeli journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Mr. Margalit, in an interview, said that Mr. Netanyahu told him that having two strong rivals, including Hamas, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...

What a guy, that Bibi. He's so cute and smart, you just want to pinch his cheek and ruffle his hair. He funded Hamas to encourage them to fight the PA so they would not work together to create a Palestinian state. What an amazingly bright plan! Sending millions to Hamas? I mean what could ever possibly go wrong?

If it wasn't clear, both myself and 'racional are making the same point. We're disputing the long-term impact of that funding, not whether or why it took place.

A supermajority of Gazans are literally not old enough to have ever voted in an election. Hamas won the 2006 election by force, and immediately replaced open democratic process with a system of internal Shura councils. Palestine did not elect Hamas.

"Palestine" most certainly elected Hamas.

According to international observers the elections in Gaza that Hamas won in 2007 were democratic and fair:

The National Democratic Institute (NDI) in partnership with The Carter Center reported "a professional and impartial performance of election officials".[33] The European Union delegation reported "there was nothing which would indicate that the final result was not the outcome chosen by the voters".[34] A CRS Report for Congress on the 2006 elections concluded: "The election was overseen by 17,268 domestic observers, complemented by 900 credentialed international monitors. ... The Bush Administration accepted the outcome of the Palestinian legislative elections and praised the PA for holding free and fair elections. ... The conduct of the election was widely considered to be free and fair."[45]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...

Indeed, the entity that did its best to obstruct the democratic protest was Israel:

In the lead-up to the elections, on 26 September 2005 Israel launched a campaign of arrests against PLC members. 450 members of Hamas were detained, mostly those involved in the 2006 PLC elections. The majority of them were kept in administrative detention for different periods.[23] In the election period, 15 PLC members were captured and held as prisoners.[24]

During the elections, the Israeli authorities banned the candidates from holding election campaigns inside Jerusalem. Rallies and public meetings were prohibited. The Jerusalem identity cards of some PLC members were also revoked.[25] The Carter Center, which monitored the elections, criticised the detentions of persons who "are guilty of nothing more than winning a parliamentary seat in an open and honest election".[26]

Israeli obstruction during the election resulted in estimated 123,000 voters in East Jerusalem being prevented from registering until ten days before the elections, creating a number of logistical problems shortly before the election day. The checkpoints of Israel also continued to pose serious obstacles to all Palestiniain parties during the electoral campaign as well as on voting day itself. It was also noted that Palestinian refugees in exile and 9,000 prisoners remained ineligible to vote.[27]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...

The only problem with the elections was that the Palestinians elected the wrong party. The US, that great champion of liberal democracy around the world, did its utmost best to correct the result: they sponsored, armed and trained a Fatah faction to stage a coup; which backfired and left Hamas in control of Gaza.

The report said that instead of driving its enemies out of power, the US-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. David Wurmser, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney's chief Middle East adviser a month after the Hamas takeover, said he believed that Hamas had no intention of taking over the Gaza Strip until Fatah forced its hand. "It looks to me that what happened wasn't so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was preempted before it could happen," he was quoted as saying. Wurmser said that the Bush administration engaged in a "dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] with victory." Wurmser said he was especially galled by the Bush administration's hypocrisy. "There is a stunning disconnect between the president's call for Middle East democracy and this policy," he said. "It directly contradicts it.".[69]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...

The reason you're talking about an election that took place 18 years ago is that, after seizing control in Gaza, Hamas refused to ever hold another election. A supermajority of Gazan residents aren't old enough ever to have voted in an election held in Gaza. Whatever happened in 2006 --- and you'll get lots of stories about it if you go digging --- the Palestine that exists in 2024 did not elect Hamas.

No, the reason was constant attacks by Israel in multiple military operations against Gaza, what is allegedly known as "mowing the grass" in Gaza.

Wikipedia has an extensive timeline:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza%E2%80%93Israel_conflict#2...

And there is no reason to "go digging" and look for "stories". You can read the wikipedia article I quote above, about the US-backed Fatah coup and follow the sources, which are entirely public and mainstream. One of them is actual Vanity Fair.

The "US-backed Fatah coup"? Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2006, and won a war against Fatah in 2007. Most Palestinians are too young ever to have voted for Hamas.

Yeas, a US backed Fatah coup. It's all on wikipedia:

US post-election impediments

Just before the January 2006 elections, and after witnessing Hamas' gains in municipal polls, the House of Representatives passed H.Res. 575 (December 16, 2005), asserting that terrorist groups, like Hamas, should not be permitted to participate in Palestinian elections until such organizations "recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, cease incitement, condemn terrorism, and permanently disarm and dismantle their terrorist infrastructure."[63] The Palestinian Authority chose to ignore this external decision: "the Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas has favored an unconditional acceptance of Hamas's electoral participation, believing that it could co-opt Hamas within the Palestinian political fold".[64]

The New York Times reported in February 2006 that "The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again. The intention is to starve the Palestinian Authority of money and international connections to the point where, some months from now, its president, Mahmoud Abbas, is compelled to call a new election."[65]

Just how much further matters would be taken was revealed in April 2008. Tom Segev (in Ha'aretz) reported:

    a "confidential document, a 'talking points' memo,[66] was left by the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem, Jake Walles, on the desk of Mahmoud Abbas . … According to the paper left behind … he wanted to pressure Abu Mazen to take action that would annul the outcome of the elections that had catapulted Hamas to power. … When nothing happened, Walles … warned the Palestinian president that the time had come to act. Instead, Abu Mazen launched negotiations with Hamas on the establishment of a unity government. … At this point the Americans moved to "Plan B." That was a plan to eliminate Hamas by force. In fact, it was to be a deliberately fomented civil war Fatah was supposed to win, with U.S. help."[67]

In April 2008 Vanity Fair published "The Gaza Bombshell":

    There is no one more hated among Hamas members than Muhammad Dahlan, long Fatah's resident strongman in Gaza. Dahlan, who most recently served as Abbas's national-security adviser, has spent more than a decade battling Hamas. ... Bush has met Dahlan on at least three occasions. After talks at the White House in July 2003, Bush publicly praised Dahlan as "a good, solid leader." In private, say multiple Israeli and American officials, the U.S. president described him as "our guy."

    Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America's behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

    Some sources call the scheme "Iran-contra 2.0," recalling that Abrams was convicted (and later pardoned) for withholding information from Congress during the original Iran-contra scandal under President Reagan. There are echoes of other past misadventures as well: the C.I.A.'s 1953 ouster of an elected prime minister in Iran, which set the stage for the 1979 Islamic revolution there; the aborted 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, which gave Fidel Castro an excuse to solidify his hold on Cuba; and the contemporary tragedy in Iraq.[68]

The Jerusalem Post confirmed that the documents cited by Vanity Fair "have been corroborated by sources at the US State Department and Palestinian officials", and added:

    The report said that instead of driving its enemies out of power, the US-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. David Wurmser, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney's chief Middle East adviser a month after the Hamas takeover, said he believed that Hamas had no intention of taking over the Gaza Strip until Fatah forced its hand. "It looks to me that what happened wasn't so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was preempted before it could happen," he was quoted as saying. Wurmser said that the Bush administration engaged in a "dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] with victory." Wurmser said he was especially galled by the Bush administration's hypocrisy. "There is a stunning disconnect between the president's call for Middle East democracy and this policy," he said. "It directly contradicts it.".[69]

The original article was cited by the Irish Times, the Israeli historian and political analyst, Tom Segev, in an article entitled "Bay of Pigs in Gaza", and also by Suzanne Goldenburg of The Guardian, who added "A state department memo put the cost for salaries, training and weapons at $1.27bn (£640m) over five years."[59]

The 2008 exposé by Vanity Fair (of plans to reverse the democratic 2006 PA parliamentary elections) confirmed a CF Report of January 2007, over a year earlier, by Alistair Crooke:

    Deputy National Security Advisor, Elliott Abrams ... has had it about for some months now that the U.S. is not only not interested in dealing with Hamas, it is working to ensure its failure. In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas elections, last January, Abrams greeted a group of Palestinian businessmen in his White House office with talk of a "hard coup" against the newly-elected Hamas government — the violent overthrow of their leadership with arms supplied by the United States. While the businessmen were shocked, Abrams was adamant — the U.S. had to support Fatah with guns, ammunition and training, so that they could fight Hamas for control of the Palestinian government.

    Over the last twelve months, the United States has supplied guns, ammunition and training to Palestinian Fatah activists to take on Hamas in the streets of Gaza and the West Bank. A large number of Fatah activists have been trained and "graduated" from two camps — one in Ramallah and one in Jericho. The supplies of rifles and ammunition, which started as a mere trickle, has now become a torrent (Haaretz reports the U.S. has designated an astounding $86.4 million for Abu Mazen's security detail), and while the program has gone largely without notice in the American press, it is openly talked about and commented on in the Arab media.

    Of course, in public, Secretary Rice appears contrite and concerned with "the growing lawlessness" among Palestinians, while failing to mention that such lawlessness is exactly what the Abrams plan was designed to create."[70]

Voice of America reported that the Bush administration had denied the Vanity Fair report.[71]

In 2016 a 2006 audio tape emerged that contains an interview by Eli Chomsky of the Jewish Press with Hillary Clinton. Clinton opined that pushing for elections "in the Palestinian territories ... was a big mistake", adding "(a)nd if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win."[72]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...

This is a very long post that doesn't contradict anything I've said. There was a 7-day civil war in Gaza, which Hamas technically started (if that matters to you), back in 2007; Hamas has controlled Gaza ever since. It was doing so prior to that "war" (one of the reasons Fatah and Hamas got into it was that Hamas replaced all of the PA's governing institutions --- the courts, the school systems, etc --- with Hamas-designed alternatives), but, whatever.

Also: we all have access to Wikipedia. You don't have to copy and paste whole articles here.

I do, because you don't seem to read them:

>> There was a 7-day civil war in Gaza, which Hamas technically started (if that matters to you), back in 2007;

No. Fatah started it. The US funded, armed and trained a Fatah faction to stage a coup against Hamas. The coup backfired and Hamas kicked Fatah out of Gaza.

To be perfectly clear: Fatah and Hamas are different, rival organisations. The 2007 Gaza War was started by Fatah, not Hamas.

Again: it's on wikipedia.

>> (one of the reasons Fatah and Hamas got into it was that Hamas replaced all of the PA's governing institutions --- the courts, the school systems, etc --- with Hamas-designed alternatives),

Yes, because they won the election. So they replaced the public officials with their own. Are you suggesting there is something sinister in that?

People on this site are going to disagree with you about all sorts of things. You need to stop writing things like "you don't seem to read", or the worse thing you wrote downthread, if you expect to have a curious conversation with anybody. Can you do that?

Nah, I'm good. You refuse to engage with the information I present and continue to say the same factually wrong things over and over. You don't get to lecture me about curious conversation.

Would you say elections from 20 years ago are representative of the political mood in your country today?

Also:

1. Most of the current population wasn't born then.

2. Voting for the political wing of a violent group isn't the same as supporting violence. Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, are the biggest party in Northern Ireland almost 30 years since the cease fire.

That's right, but we do have up-to-date information that suggests Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank both support Hamas (though not overwhelmingly so) and consider the 7th October attacks to be justified. This is from the AP (I also posted the link earlier):

Palestinian poll shows a rise in Hamas support and close to 90% wanting US-backed Abbas to resign

Despite the devastation, 57% of respondents in Gaza and 82% in the West Bank believe Hamas was correct in launching the October attack, the poll indicated.

(...)

Overall, 88% want Abbas to resign, up by 10 percentage points from three months ago. In the West Bank, 92% called for the resignation of the octogenarian who has presided over an administration widely seen as corrupt, autocratic and ineffective.

At the same time, 44% in the West Bank said they supported Hamas, up from just 12% in September. In Gaza, the militants enjoyed 42% support, up slightly from 38% three months ago.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-palestinians-opinion...

But, just to be perfectly clear lest there be some misunderstanding: Palestinians may support whomever they want and whatever they want, that does not justify their endless slaughter and apparent ethnic cleansing by Israel. That is in the same way that the almost universal support of the far right by the Israeli public does not justify terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.

This kind of conversation is always about morality, as well as other considerations. The killing of women and children and unarmed men will always elicit moral outrage, as well it should. In a context as inhumane and cruel as the brutal occupation of the Palestinian lands by Israel there is very little safe moral ground that any side can occupy. Hamas are the democratically elected government of Gaza, they are the legitimate resistance against the occupation and at the same time they are the perpetrators of shocking atrocities against Israeli civilians. The Israeli government is democratically elected and enjoys the support of a majority of the Israeli population and the current "war" has the full support of the majority of the Israeli public. The only unassailable moral stance remains to respect the facts on the ground, discuss them as one understands them, and not try to twist them for political reasons. My thoughts anyway.

To make it plain: so what if Palestinians support Hamas? Massacring a defenseless civilian population is never justified.

Tough luck, maybe Bibi et al should check for underground water chi flows or indian graves or something causing this misfortune!

But hopefully more bombing will fix this soon! Insallah!?

> Palestinians rejected it and went back to intifada.

Um, not really. Hamas did. And their radical brethren who assassinated Yitzhak.

It did end up extremely bad for everyone involved.

(I don't want to downplay the anti-Oslo sentiment [0], especially that Oslo I-II got signed despite the attacks previously.

Also it's hard to say how well the PLO represented the people, but it's sure that they were more accepted than Hamas. After all Arafat got elected in 1996 despite participating in the peace process.

It seems fairly clear that the peace process was a very unfortunate Schelling point for extremists on both sides, and their tireless cooperation successfully pushed the region away from peace and prosperity.

And, it's also important to note that it's perfectly possible that Arafat was simply deceitful, and the PLO wanted to get some breathing space to gather an army, blablabla. Sure. And that would/could have lead to ... exactly here anyway. Or maybe it would be even worse! Those are all legitimate concerns that have to be addressed, but very few things can simply make the basic issues irrelevant, and as long as people are there they will inevitably bear the burden of living with those unaddressed issues.)

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_views_on_the_pea...

I completely agree with your comment and would also note that the median age in Gaza is roughly 18 which is coincidentally also roughly the last time they had an election, which means most Palestinians have had no influence on their government.

This feels a lot like the American reaction after 9/11 where a great crime was committed but less violent options were rejected by hardliners who wanted to overcompensate for having missed the threat after having made “we will protect you” a major campaign point, and likely also seeing an opportunity for something they could not do following the normal political process. In this case it seems all the more tragic because there’s no natural separation due to distance, and it’s hard to see this not resulting in more tragedies for decades with so much fresh blood to avenge.

>> What should Israel do?

Israel should make peace with the Palestinians. It is only Israel that can decide to have peace, because it is the overwhelmingly more powerful side, militarily and in every other way, and even if Hamas put down its weapons and surrendered, there would be no peace if Israel did not agree to it.

And just to be sure this is well understood: Israel does not want peace. Israel has maintained its brutal occupation of the Palestinian territories for years well before Hamas, it has broken ceasefires left and right for years, it has continued to massacre the Palestinians every chance it gets, it has continued to settle more and more of the lands where the Palestinians live, and even when the top leadership of Hamas proposed a long-lasting truce, Israel responded by assassinating them, just in case anyone took them to their word:

According to Tristan Dunning, Israel has never responded to repeated offers by Hamas over subsequent years for a quid pro quo moratorium on attacks against civilians.[176] It has engaged in several tadi'a (periods of calm), and proposed a number of ceasefires.[176] In January 2004, Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin, prior to his assassination, said that the group would end armed resistance against Israel for a 10-year hudna[k] in exchange for a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, and that restoring Palestinians' "historical rights" (relating to the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight) "would be left for future generations". His views were quickly echoed by senior Hamas official Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, who added that Hamas envisaged a "phased liberation".[178] Israel's response was to assassinate Yassin in March in a targeted Israeli air strike, and then al-Rantisi in a similar air strike in April.[179]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#Second_Intifada

And let's not forget that the current leadership of Israel has made it exceedingly clear that it is hell-bent against any ideas of a "two state" solution, that it has complete disrespect for any UN resolutions trying to establish any kind of solution that involves Palestinian independence, and has of course worked hard to reduce the Oslo accords to a farce.

I don't think any of this is a particularly fair summary of the situation. In particular, it ratifies Hamas and the 2022 Netanyahu coalition as the leaders of both sides of the broader conflict; neither are really representative of the populations they serve. Hamas has at least since 2017 been run by a millenarian Bond villain, causing much of Hamas's political leadership to flee the country. Netanyahu assembled a neo-Kahanist fringe coalition as a parliamentary maneuver to keep from losing his post, because it's widely believed he's going to end up in prison as soon as he leaves.

Meanwhile: if we're talking about peace in the context of what happened after October 7, there's no country in the world that would have failed to respond militarily to an attack like that, which was the point of the attack in the first place. Sinwar expected Iran to go all-in on a final war that would wipe Israel off the map; instead, Hezbollah stayed home, and the whole plan fizzled.

The Israel/Palestine situation is widely considered one of the more complicated geopolitical crises, and for good reason. If you think you have a simple summary of it, like "Israel does not want peace", you're probably glossing over a lot of stuff.

No, I think it is your account that is attempting to over-simplify world politics into a Tolkien-esque story of good vs. evil, with Yahya Sinwar as a Bond-like villain and Iran as the secretive puppet master, pulling the strings, pulling the strings from the shadows. The problem is that this simplistic story doesn't seem to have much to do with the facts on the ground, as we can observe them, and not imagine them.

For example, I cannot find any information about Ismail Haniyeh having left for Qater with his merry band of revelers because of Sinwar. The scant information we have about the support of Hamas among Palestinians suggests that Hamas is popular enough among Palestinians in Gaza, and certainly in the West Bank, that if there was another election they would easily win it [1].

The same goes for the Israeli government. Certainly everyone agrees that Bibi is doing everything he can to prolong the war to save his ass, but at the same time his government coalition enjoys the support of a majority of the Israeli voters, whom, after all, it represents [2] [3]. And a majority of Israeli civilians support the "war" [4]. Scare quotes because that's not a war but an unhindered massacre of a defenseless civilian population.

>> Sinwar expected Iran to go all-in on a final war that would wipe Israel off the map; instead, Hezbollah stayed home, and the whole plan fizzled.

There is absolutely no reason to assume any of that is true. We do not know what were the strategic goals that Hamas had in invading Israel. They have given some reasons but they're not exactly a trustworthy source so the best thing to do is to avoid launching into wild speculation.

_______________

[1] Palestinian poll shows a rise in Hamas support and close to 90% wanting US-backed Abbas to resign

At the same time, 44% in the West Bank said they supported Hamas, up from just 12% in September. In Gaza, the militants enjoyed 42% support, up slightly from 38% three months ago.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-palestinians-opinion...

[2] The Israeli public has embraced the Smotrich doctrine

The terrifying Smotrichization of the Israeli public is embodied in the total willingness to sacrifice the lives of every last Palestinian in Gaza for the ultimate victory that the far-right minister promised in his plan. It is the terrifying indifference to the astronomical number of dead children, and the complete internalization of the idea that any thought of struggle and freedom on the other side of the fence must be extinguished, no matter the human cost.

https://www.972mag.com/smotrich-decisive-plan-israeli-public...

[3] How Israeli youth helped usher in the farthest right-wing government ever

Recent polling backs that surprising observation: A joint poll published by the Israel Democracy Institute last month found that 73 percent of Jewish Israelis between ages 18 and 24 identify as right-wing, compared with only 46 percent of Jewish Israelis over 65. Young Jewish Israelis are showing up to rallies and polling stations for the extremist politicians whose November electoral victory ushered in Israel’s farthest right-wing government ever.

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/2/23/23609584/israel...

[4] As trauma of October 7 massacres endures, Israeli support for Gaza war remains high

https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-trauma-of-october-7-massacr...

It is not my contention that the IRGC controlled Hamas leading up to October 7. The IRGC has trained and funded Hamas for over two decades.

Btw, this happened just as I was replying to your comment. tl;dr Hamas accepted a ceasefire proposal and Israel started attacking Rafah:

Israel’s military is now launching targeted strikes in eastern Rafah, Reuters and AP reported citing a statement. Israel says it is striking Hamas targets in the region. But more than 1 million displaced Palestinian people have sought refuge in Rafah amid Israel’s attacks in Gaza, the Washington Post reported.

Hamas says it has accepted an Egyptian-Qatari ceasefire proposal to halt the seven-month war with Israel. It issued a statement on Monday saying its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, had delivered the news in a phone call with Qatar’s prime minister and Egypt’s intelligence minister.

An IDF spokesperson said Israel will continue to act in a “operational manner” in Gaza despite Hamas announcing that it accepted a Gaza ceasefire deal on Monday. Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Israel is going to continue to act in an operational manner, saying earlier that Israel has a right to defend itself.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/may/06/israel-ga...

Israel does not want peace and there is nothing simplistic in that observation.

This is breaking news from like 4 hours ago. It did not happen just as you were writing these comments.

I don't think you're going to find many people to take the other side of your "Netanyahu is a monster" argument. The IDF has crushed Hamas militarily. There was no reason for Netanyahu not to accept a ceasefire on any terms that gave hostages back. This is why the streets in Israel are full of gigantic demonstrations about the return of the hostages.

Here is the full text of the ceasefire proposal as accepted by Hamas:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/6/text-of-the-ceasefir...

I don’t think Netanyahu on his own is able to reject this deal and invade Rafah. Especially with protests in both Israel as well as the USA, and with USA having set a red line here.

No, I think it is wildly simplistic to blame this on him, and there is a deep understanding inside the entire Israeli leadership that the genocide continues, no matter the cost. The Israeli public may not agree with it, however from what I see in the protests, there is very little talk—if any—of the lives of Palestinians. So it doesn’t really seem that Palestinian lives matter as much as the hostages for the Israeli public at large.

If e.g. Benny Gantz were to become the Prime Minister, there is little evidence he would behave any differently, this is for example how he is reacting to Hamas’ accepting of the ceasefire deal:

> “Every decision will be brought before the war cabinet—there will be no political considerations”

> “The military action in Rafah is also an inseparable part of our continued efforts and commitment to return our hostages and change the security reality in the south.”

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/389518

There are not many—if any—political regimes plausible in Israel at the moment who do not take a very hawkish and a criminal approach in denying Palestinians their states. The political reality is that without an intifada, there will be no political avenue for Palestine to gain their freedom from oppression.

You're saying all this and I guess I get why, but I'm coming at this from the opposite angle. I don't believe Israel has any further military objectives to pursue in Gaza beyond getting the hostages back.

There are allegedly 4 remaining combat-ready Hamas battalions (Google the ISW's al-Qassam Brigades Order of Battle for more information than you've ever wanted on this topic), all in or around Rafah. The other 15 battalions have all been disabled. Israel is believed to have killed or captured a full 1/4 of all Hamas fighters, but that figure understates the damage they did to Hamas; for instance, it really seems like they've more or less killed Hamas's entire officer cadre. Hezbollah fought the IDF to a standstill a few years back. Hamas did not repeat the performance. The IDF won, decisively.

Netanyahu's ghoulish neo-Kahanist coalition says things about completely eradicating Hamas, and, yes, about collectively punishing Gazans (this whole thing about Hamas being the duly elected representatives of Gaza is one of their talking points). But they're incompetent and these aren't military goals. If you killed literally every Hamas fighter, they'd be in approximately the same place: within 10 years of rehabilitation as a combat force given the same 9-figure p.a. disbursals they get from the IRGC and Syria.

There's a persuasive argument that Netanyahu needs this conflict to stay hot in order to stay in office; his incentives are very like those of the US's ex-President: being in office prevents his prosecution and eventual imprisonment (not unprecedented in Israel). I don't put it past him. Nixon probably prolonged the Vietnam War for electoral reasons. People do awful things.

I'm just saying: there's no coherent security reason for them to continue active combat operations. I think the Al-Aqsa Flood Attack is somewhat like the 9/11 hijackers storming the cockpits; it worked once, but it's never going to work again.

But, of course, Sinwar is no better. I assume Haniya is telling him about the alfalfa they're going to plant for the rabbits, and how Sinwar will get to tend the rabbits. My advice to Hamas people, once this all settles out, would be not to get in a motor vehicle with either of the Sinwar brothers ever again. It's an achievement to piss off Hamas and Fatah, the IRGC, and the IDF simultaneously.

>> (this whole thing about Hamas being the duly elected representatives of Gaza is one of their talking points).

It doesn't matter whose talking point it is. Hamas was elected fair and square in proper democratic elections. They are the only legitimate authority in Gaza. Those are the facts on the ground and there is no world where it makes sense to ignore this.

I suspect you assume this somehow justifies the atrocities committed by Israel, along the lines of Isaac Herzog's comment about innocent civilians in Gaza [1] but that's just nuts. We're not going to ignore reality because a bunch of blood-crazed fascists are trying to twist it to their needs.

_____________

[1] https://www.itv.com/news/2023-10-13/israeli-president-says-g...

I suspect you assume this somehow justifies the atrocities committed by Israel

No, and don't write things like this here.

The election was 20 years ago, with a population that is overwhelmingly very young.

In my country the political landscape was very different 20 years ago.

True, see my comment to you upthread (I think).

>> This is why the streets in Israel are full of gigantic demonstrations about the return of the hostages.

Yes, what may not be clear is that those people are demonstrating for the return of the hostages, not the end of the massacre of the Palestinians. They couldn't care less about the Palestinians. As I point out in another comment there is widespread support among the Israeli public for the war and near zero concern about what it will do to Palestinian civilians, including children.

This is false.

You keep ignoring every link I post here and still insist you understand the situation.

The Israeli public has embraced the Smotrich doctrine

https://www.972mag.com/smotrich-decisive-plan-israeli-public...

As trauma of October 7 massacres endures, Israeli support for Gaza war remains high

https://www.itv.com/news/2023-10-13/israeli-president-says-g...

How Israeli youth helped usher in the farthest right-wing government ever

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/2/23/23609584/israel...

Even the dumbest Google search will quickly get you examples of protests against the IDF's operations in Gaza right now. Try [protest (some-Israeli-city)]. I don't care what +972 thinks the Israeli public thinks about Gazans.

Those are demonstrations to return the hostages, not to stop killing Palestinians.

First page of results on google and ddg:

Polls Show Broad Support in Israel for Gaza’s Destruction and Starvation

https://truthout.org/articles/polls-show-broad-support-in-is...

Netanyahu might be losing ground, but his politics still resonate with most Israelis

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/israel-gaza...

Enduring pain keeps public support for Gaza war strong in Israel

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/enduring-pain-keep...

What Israelis Think of the War With Hamas

https://time.com/6333781/israel-hamas-poll-palestine/

War on Gaza: Majority of Israelis support withholding aid to Gaza until captives returned

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-majority-israeli...

You've reached the point where you're trying to make a point by citing Truthout. That's fine, you can take places like that seriously, but I do not, and a list of analyses about how Israelis really want the hostages returned isn't refuting my point. It's fine if we simply disagree here.

I’ve mostly been getting my news about these protests from English language news (particularly Democracy Now!) so I may be wrong about this, but I don’t recall at any point they even mention Palestinians in these protests. They seem to be against the war, and against the current government, solely because they want the hostages home.

Now, I want to be clear, I’m not blaming the protestors (I know many here on HN are going to these protests, and all the power to you for that). And I’m certainly not going to accuse any individual protestor of not caring about Palestinians. But from my eyes, through the English language news, it certainly does not seem to be a priority, nor even a consideration, for the public at large in Israel, that Palestinians get justice and liberation from these years and years of political neglect and human rights violations.

If you compare this to the Iraq war protests in the USA, which I will not deny were more about bringing the troops home then about the lives of Iraqis, but the lives and conditions of Iraqis was always at least a part of the conversations. I’m not seeing this int the “Bring Them Home Now” protests in Israel. The hostages are not the main focus, but the only focus. Consideration for Palestinian lives is completely absent.

When I see protests which actually consider Palestinian lives, it is not these mass demonstrations like we see with the “Bring Them Home Now” protests, but rather, very few individual anti-Zionist activists, who seem to get pretty disproportionate treatment from the Israeli police.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war_prote...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/2/14/israels-wa...

I also get my news from Democracy Now :) There was an interview with Omer Bartov last week, where I think he broached the subject of the Israeli public's concern about the lives of the Palestinians and it wasn't good. I think this was the video:

https://youtu.be/Ie3InYIVXF8?si=E0bdNNTQ2vr3Ysfs

Apologies but I don't have time now to search it to find the place where he talks about Israelis' opinions, or to check that's the right one. I'll try to do it later today, if you're interested.

Bartov is one of the calmest and most sensible voices around these days. He seems completely incapable of accepting that his country is committing a genocide and has argued eruditely and logically against it, but I guess that's understandable. I listen to that guy every chance I get.

For what its worth, I was watching Al Jazeera live last night, and they did cover last nights protests in Israel (I don’t know where they got their footage though). There were three protestors interviewed and all of them mentioned Palestinians lives[1]. So I was wrong about it being completely absent. There are at least some protestors which do use these protests to advocate for justice for Palestinians.

Daniel Levy’s interview at Democracy Now! this morning was also insightful[2]. Particularly the answer to Juan González’ question:

> JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted to ask you also about the protests, the continuing massive protests within Israel, even while the war continues. Your sense of the impact of these protests on the Israeli government?

> DANIEL LEVY: It’s a very important point, Juan. What I think we have seen is the intensity of those protests — and those protests tend to center around the prioritizing of getting the hostages out, saying, “Do the deal. Get the hostages out.” The intensity, especially those led by members of family of those being held, by family, friends, those have increased. The volume, the extent to which this is disruptive and is impossible for Netanyahu to stare down, I do not think we are anywhere near that moment.

> The internal pressure is such that the soft opposition, who will run against Netanyahu in the next election, led by this guy Gantz, former chief of staff, former defense minister, and Eisenkot, they are still in the government. They have still not unequivocally said that if Netanyahu turns down the deal, they will quit. Even if they quit, Netanyahu has a majority.

> But the pressure does not feel sufficient that Netanyahu’s politics needs him to accept a ceasefire. He still thinks he can wiggle out of this, which is where the question of the external pressure becomes a key factor, because it’s going to be that combination of internal and external. So I think the next question one would have to address is: Where does the external pressure stand?

So, in short, Daniel Levy does not believe these protests will do anything to change Israel’s policy, nor will any pressure from within Israel. He believes the only thing which will change this policy is external pressure, especially from the US. Meaning the student protests in the US are more relevant to the future of Palestine. The ball is not in Hamas’ courtyard, nor in Israel’s, it is—and has been this whole time—in the US’.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-NKhRVV2gU

2: https://www.democracynow.org/2024/5/7/daniel_levy_israel_raf...

I'm looking randomly at an RT from Rasha al Aqeedi right now of a Tel Aviv protest with signs like "STOP BOMBING RAFAH" and "DROP FOOD NOT BOMBS".

It is simply false that "Israelis" don't care about the lives of Gazan civilians. There are Israelis that don't (they are disproportionately likely to be Israelis of Middle Eastern descent, for demographic reasons similar to the urban/rural political divisions in the US), just as there are Americans that don't care about Mexican lives and Palestinians who don't care about Jewish lives and Zaydi Yemenis who don't care about Sunni Yemeni lives. People are awful and wonderful and complicated all at the same time.

This one here right: https://twitter.com/OrenZiv_/status/1787891404313628749

I just saw it now. All the power to these people, they are absolute heroes. Also power to the protestors in the Al-Jazeera clip I cited earlier in the Bring Them Home Now protest for talking about Palestine.

I think, however—and it seems I’m not the only one—that far more is needed. This is not a large demonstration, especially given the stakes and the seriousness of Israel’s crimes.

The anti-zionist movement in Israel certainly exists, and is doing an amazing job. When I was in university I followed the works of Anarchists against the wall very closely (I don’t know if they are active any more though). I was also a member of the Icelandic Red Cross which worked closely with Israeli organizations (don’t remember which ones) in aiding victims of settler violence on the West Bank. If I remember correctly these organizations were mostly giving legal aid and monitoring checkpoints in the hopes it would prevent violence. Some of my colleges actually went to the West Bank to work with them.

But this was 15 years ago, and thinks have only gotten worse since then. I’m not optimistic that the current movements will have any more effects on policy than those of the last decade and a half (but they absolutely should still try). Like Daniel Levy says above, the pressure needs to come from the outside.

Wait a minute. I'm not talking about an "anti-Zionist movement" in Israel.

If the OP of the RT was indeed Oren Ziv, then you cited an anti-zionist journalist, that works for an anti-zionist news paper, photographing a what looks like an anti-zionist rally.

[Examples of protests against the IDF's operations in Gaza right now]

These are also described as "rare", and tend to get broken up by authorities for "harming the feelings of the public" and whatnot. The vast majority are led by the Bring Them Home Now movement or are otherwise unequivocally focused on the return of the hostages.

It's not hard to find explicitly anti-war protests from organizations on the Israeli left, but if you yourself were building a program to mobilize opposition to the war in Gaza, what would you lead with? Every march for the return of hostages is implicitly (or explicitly) demanding that Netanyahu complete a ceasefire deal with Hamas. 3/4 of polled Israelis now want Netanyahu gone, and the numbers don't get much better for his defense and intelligence teams.

Is this the conversion getting more thoughtful as it goes on? If even "the dumbest" Google search can show what you're saying, maybe you could provide these dummies with a link? You're dismissing their sources out of hand without any rebuttal while at the same time quoting various figures with no source at all.

I don't understand what you're asking, but 'runarberg upthread just posted a clear example. I'm uncomfortable with the whole enterprise of trying to characterize the thoughts and feelings of 7 million people, so the idea of doing a dueling cites thing is unappealing to me. If anyone on this thread wants to read that as a concession, I'm fine with agreeing to disagree.

"Netanyahu assembled a neo-Kahanist fringe coalition as a parliamentary maneuver to keep from losing his post, because it's widely believed he's going to end up in prison as soon as he leaves."

It may be "widely believed" but that doesn't make it true. It's highly unlikely that Netanyahu would end up in prison. The only case with a real threat of prison (case 4000) has been collapsing steadily since the start, with dismal prosecution witnesses, and judges were pushing the prosecution team for a plea bargain [1] due to the low chances of successful conviction.

It's also clear that the court proceedings would last until the end of the decade, so extending the war by months wouldn't buy him much time. Not to mention that the war cabinet is a unity wartime cabinet that is made up of the main centrist leaders too.

The idea that Netanyahu's war strategy is based on him clinging to power is lazy thinking that keeps on getting trotted out in order to bolster the argument that the war is unjust. In fact, the Israeli public are clearly behind the war aim of dismantling Hamas, the only significant split in public opinion is whether to risk a hostage deal that may not result in many living hostages released in practice and will only encourage further hostage taking by terrorists in the future.

Only ben-Gvir can be accused of having neo-Kahanist tendencies, the rest are "merely" right wing. And forming a coalition with a large parliamentary majority after an election is hardly a "parliamentary manoeuvre", it's democracy and all too predictable after multiple elections and failure for 5 years for centrist coalition to stick together.

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/prosecution-rejects-retreat-fr...

All but a tiny fringe of people everywhere favor the dismantling of Hamas --- something that has largely been accomplished at this point. For normal people who aren't poisoned by Twitter, the contention isn't that Hamas is worth saving, but rather that Israel's operations amount in practice to a collective punishment of Gazans for the actions of Hamas. I am deeply sympathetic to this argument, and disagree with most of what you have to say.

I was pointing out that the simplistic theory that Netanyahu is at real risk of going to prison is not true. It's a view that's put out to turn Natenyahu into a "monster" and make it easy to glibly view the war as serving Natenyahu's interests instead of the harder to swallow reality that it supported by the vast majority of Israelis (who don't have the luxury of merely "favor"ing Hamas' destruction, but as a existential necessity to ensuring Oct 7 is not repeated).

The rest of your comment is predicated on the fact that Hamas is a spent force which is nonsense. If there was a ceasefire today it's clear Hamas will regroup and reestablish. Most media sources claim 4 of their battalions are almost fully intact in Rafah.

The war aim, supported by vast majority of Israelis, is that Hamas is no longer a fighting force and will never threaten Israel again. Yes, there may be new terrorist groups that pop up, but the essential deterrent - that Israel is capable and will fully dismantle any good group that wars against it - will be reestablished. (Plus Israel has learnt a lot of lessons about how to ensure Hamas 2.0 is less of threat, including a renewed focus on insisting to the world for a Marshall-plan-style deradicalization, and the realisation that there are no bounds to what terrorists will do even if you ply them with cash and improve work opportunities for Gazans as Netanyahu and many previous governments did prior to Oct 7).

This war involves the most difficult urban warfare the world has ever seen - it's Mosul or Raqah combined with Vietnam, with extensive extensive secret tunnels and the use of civilian infrastructure to wage war. The civilian casualties and destruction where inevitable and the "collective punishment" argument simply does not stack up in this war.

I disagree with all of this. Hamas could be eliminated root and branch and still reconstitute within 10 years. My claim is that Israel has already accomplished the goal you lay out in your third paragraph. I don't believe there is any such thing as "Marshall-plan-style deradicalization".

Of course, what's really happening here is that our premises are too far apart for us to productively discuss things. To continue talking, we'd just be playing to the crowd, hoping to attract some other commenter on this benighted threat to chime in our side. Maybe there's some value in us just calling out the places where we disagree and leaving it at that?

Only Ben-Gvir can be accused of having neo-Kahanist tendencies, the rest are "merely" right wing.

Though that certain other major cabinet figure you're not mentioning (Smotrich) avoids the explicit affiliation and more obvious rhetoric -- his actions clearly resonate with the Kahanist agenda.

Other coalition members seem to be "out there" on the Kahanist spectrum. Meet Orik Strook (aka Minister of Settlements and National Missions), for example:

In 2007, Strook's son Zvi was convicted of abusing a Palestinian boy and killing a young goat, and spent thirty months in an Israeli prison as a result. In response to the ruling, Strook stated that, "Unlike the Court, who preferred to believe the Arab witnesses, we are sure of Zvi's innocence, and are hurting from the success of his haters and would assist him to deal with the difficult sentence imposed on him".

You've also got Zvi Sukkot:

In 2012, [Sukkot] was expelled from the West Bank under suspicion that he was part of a group of 12 that had planned and carried out violent attacks against Palestinians and their property. ... On 6 July 2017, he was arrested on suspicion of engaging in "price tagging". ... At the onset of the Huwara rampage, Sukkot tweeted that "Huwara's killers' nest needs to be taken care of", and posted a picture of himself among a group of settlers gathering at Tapuach Junction, to the immediate south of Huwara.

Finally, it's important to note that the vast majority of the folks who helped the Nazis do their dirty work throughout Europe were not members of their local Nazi parties (or if so, only on paper and sometimes under duress). By and large, they were "merely" right-wing or apolitical.

Looks like a duck, talks like a duck ...

The issue is how culpable civilians are in Hamas' atrocities.

The Israeli government is currently at ~30 killed Palestinians for each 1 killed Israeli.

Presumably, whatever anyone's opinion, there's some ratio that is unjust. Or is killing every Palestinian in Gaza just?

Last I checked, Exodus' Covenant Code [0] was also pretty clear on this, and it didn't include any multiple.

>> Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death. However, if it is not done intentionally, but God lets it happen, they are to flee to a place I will designate. But if anyone schemes and kills someone deliberately, that person is to be taken from my altar and put to death.

[0] https://www.biblestudytools.com/exodus/21.html

FWIW most Western militaries have specific ratios that are deemed acceptable for neutralizing a target (i.e. killing a baddie). These ratios are usually ranked based on the target's importance with a regular soldier being very low and a military leader being ranked very high. Often collateral damage from strikes against high value targets is more acceptable because the high value target is accompanied by lower value targets adding to the ratio.

I'm not aware of any such ratio used by the IDF. I've recently heard an Israeli government spokesperson say that the IDF has killed 13,000 Hamas including "civilian combatants". My guess would be that the IDF uses a very loose definition of whom they define as a combatant (note that the US for example has never used the term "civilian combatant" as that mixes the two groups: if they're a combatant they're not civilian and vice versa). Given that Israel also does not seem to acknowledge the 30,000+ lower bound on total deaths from IDF attacks in Gaza, it's entirely possible that Israel's ratio could be as low as 2 civilians per combatant in aggregate. But it's worth noting that this would still be much higher than anything used by any "Western" military even the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Given the rhetoric of Israeli government spokespersons, officials, politicians and other talking heads, I think it's more likely that the IDF effectively has no limits on how many Palestinian civilian casualties are acceptable per target. Former IDF soldiers have mentioned eliminationist rhetoric like "the terrorists who did Oct 7 are the kids we spared" or "anyone who hasn't left after the evacuation order should be assumed to be Hamas". This doesn't inspire confidence.

>I’m not aware of any such ratio used by the IDF.

The IDF has a robust decision making process, in excess of a single “ratio” approach. Here is an article that talks about an aspect of this:

http://law-disrupted.fm/idf-lawyer-advises-war-gaza-military...

>> They also discuss the three cardinal principles of targeting: distinction (which prohibits intentionally targeting civilians or civilian objects), precautions (which requires taking all feasible measures to mitigate civilian harm), and proportionality (which for each individual attack requires balancing the anticipated military advantage against the expected civilian harm) and the rules, procedures, and policies the IDF has in place to follow these principles in every attack.

> Given that Israel also does not seem to acknowledge the 30,000+ lower bound on total deaths from IDF attacks in Gaza, it's entirely possible that Israel's ratio could be as low as 2 civilians per combatant in aggregate. But it’s worth noting that this would still be much higher than anything used by any “Western” military

The most comparable recent US engagement was destroying ISIS in Mosul. The US had a 2.5:1 civilian combatant casualty ratio. Source: https://twitter.com/SpencerGuard/status/1786612914117349769#

> The most comparable recent US engagement was destroying ISIS in Mosul.

My point wasn't that the US is better. My point was that there were widespread protests opposing the US's "collateral damage" in their wars after 9/11 and Israel is doing worse.

The number you're citing is also the effective ratio based on the reported deaths, not an official or leaked guideline and this wasn't "the US" but "the US-led Iraqi Security Forces" (not a Western military, even if it is in practice US-led). The tweet you cite also references a Pacific battle between the US and Japan in WW2 (when the US infamously dehumanized the Japanese to an uncomfortable degree - surely the nuclear bombs trump that battle in terms of civilian casualties) and a battle that was part of the "Korean War" which in retrospect has become infamous for its war crimes, mostly committed by the US.

These are battles of infamy. You don't get a medal for being better than that, those are the table stakes if you want to shout about being the "most humane military".

Also, the reason I called 30,000+ the "lower bound" is because the process used by the "Hamas-run health ministry" is extremely conservative (it's not just a tally - the "fake deaths at hospital parking lot" story everyone ran with was a translation error into English that conflated "injured" and "deceased") and seems to have broken down earlier this year along with the remaining infrastructure in Gaza.

> The IDF has a robust decision making process, in excess of a single “ratio” approach.

That's a no then unless you think other militaries don't have decision making processes.

I'm not going to engage with you further as we seem to have either fundamentally opposed value systems or fundamentally opposed perceptions of reality.

If you want to end a comment with "I'm not going to engage with you further," better to not make that post.

Getting the last say in an argument by fiat isn't healthy.

Don't want others opinions? Don't offer your own.

I don't have to engage with every single person on HN to any extent just because I post on HN. I can also decide to engage with a post without having to commit to engaging with everything else that posters wants to add. I think it provides useful context if I clarify in advance WHY a follow-up might not receive a reply from me. In fact, most discussions on HN aren't back-and-forths between two people and arguably benefit from that.

But what is their definition of “combatant”? The IDF massacred a group of escaped Israeli hostages because the IDF didn’t realize they were Israeli before too late. The escaped hostages had stripped down to thir underwear to show they where unarmed. Neverthless the IDF said the “felt threatend” by them. Presumably these victims would be considered “combatants” if they had not turned out to be be israeli.

No one should be surprised by what happened to those hostages.

The soldiers were told they were fighting "human animals", and acted accordingly.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-ministe...

Strictly speaking, they are all "civilians", since Gaza is not a state (it is just the coastline of the western Negev - a geographic region of Israel) and does not have regular armed forces. Does this mean that these "civilians" have carte blanche to commit any unthinkable atrocity and remain unpunished?

Most of them are illegal combatants and none of the Geneva Conventions should apply to them.

Also, there is documented evidence that even their "civilian civilians" participated in atrocities, not to mention that a significant portion of them elected and supported terrorist "government".

I'm guessing that the so-called "civilian combatants" in these reports are people who are on the payroll of a terrorist organization, such as police officers, security guards, tunnel builders, etc. - anyone who helps/supports the terrorist "government", but may not be 100% militants by themselves. I.e. like the difference between a regular support soldier and a special forces.

Good to remember the real world consequences for the people on the ground when we declare combatants as non-state paramilitaries rather than recognising them with fuller status.

Indeed the Geneva Convention doesn't apply which means lots of things are on the table that otherwise wouldn't be. This is how the British state forces were able to use chemical weapons against the civilian population in Northern Ireland.

> This is how the British state forces were able to use chemical weapons against the civilian population in Northern Ireland.

I'm guessing these Catholics from Northern Ireland were British citizens, right?

This is something between separatism and civil war (although much closer to the former than the latter).

A better analogy would be if the Republic of Ireland settled its citizens there en masse and provided them with weapons, similarly to what Egypt did when they controlled Gaza.

A significant portion of Gaza's population today is descended from Egypt, they even speak with the Egyptian accent.

And majority of the advanced weapons were smuggled via Egypt.

I wasn't making an analogy, just pointing out another time when the definition of what was and wasn't a war had real world consequences for people on the ground.

But I would say two things: First, not only Catholics were targeted during the Troubles. If tear gas is used to dispel a riot then it not only those involved on both sides but also anyone down wind from it. My mother lost her eyesight from tear gas related injuries because she had to walk past a flash point daily on her return from work.

Secondly, while citizens of Northern Ireland are British by birth they were also entitled by birth to Irish citizenship after 1956.

> a war had real world consequences for people on the ground

no need to point obvious things

> not only Catholics were targeted

In case everyone were targets, and not just separatists - then it's closer to civil war. It only shows how cruel Brittish were (or still are), and all the double standards with regards to Israel.

> while citizens of Northern Ireland are British by birth they were also entitled by birth to Irish citizenship after 1956.

Granting citizenship to people in breakaway separatists regions is the strategy employed by Putin. Russia first grant them citizenship, and then uses this as a pretext for military invasion in order to protect their newly acquired "citizens".

Obviosly, Republic of Ireland doesn't employ this tactic, but granting citizenship to foreign people in confict areas is still problematic.

I want to add something to the previous response.

> A better analogy would be if the Republic of Ireland settled its citizens there en masse and provided them with weapons,

This did actually happen, but the other way around. The British settled citizens en masse in Ireland and provided them with weapons. This was called the Ulster Plantation. Even today many people in the North of Ireland speak with a dialect derived from the Scots language.

Interestingly, Ronald Storrs, the first British military governor in Jerusalem, was recorded to have said that the Balfour Declaration’s purpose was to form a “little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.” [0]

> Obviosly, Republic of Ireland doesn't employ this tactic

No, and I think the comparison is a little unfair. It's true that these things can be abused tactically but it's not always the case.

0: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/winston-churchill-s...

> Interestingly, Ronald Storrs, the first British military governor in Jerusalem, was recorded to have said that the Balfour Declaration’s purpose was to form a “little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.”

And to further this, historical and current Israeli restrictions on West Bank Palestinians and authorization and promotion of Israeli settlers seem like exactly the playbook one would run for crypto-annexation.

I'm familiar with Anglo-Saxon and Norsemen colonization of Celtic people in Britain and Ireland. The latter is referred as a series of "Plantations"[1, 2].

Interestingly, while in some western/highland parts of Britain, Celts kept their language, but adopted Anglicanism as a religion, in most of the Ireland they kept their Catholic religion, but adopted English language, and only in some western parts of Ireland kept both.

Anyway, if we go back to medieval times, then we can also talk about Arab and Ottoman colonization of Israel.

---

[1]. Israel condemns London's Ulster plantation project after private colonisation contract was awarded by the Queen

https://postimg.cc/xJ1XpHx7

[2]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantations_of_Ireland

I remember when during the 2020 civil rights protests in the US people were talking about the Geneva convention and calling what the police did "in violation" of it, especially wrt chemical warfare, only to be surprised to find out it doesn't apply outside formal wars.

I think if we want to make comparisons, an important difference is that Gaza has been existing in a limbo where Israel insists it's a sovereign territory because Israel withdrew from it but also insists it's part of Israel because they want to control its borders and what goes in and comes out of it.

Also, in addition to everything that happens in Gaza, Palestinian Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank have also been targeted by Israel despite Hamas being largely confined to Gaza.

> none of the Geneva Conventions should apply to them.

The Geneva Convention is (currently) humanity's best attempt at codifying ethical aspects of war. Unfortunately, it is not some lofty goal to aspire to. Oh no. It is the result of discussion and compromise. In other words, it literally is the lowest possible ethical standard we agreed to hold each other to. We should strive to do better, not worse.

Therefore: all of the Geneva Convention applies, always, to everyone.

> Therefore: all of the Geneva Convention applies, always, to everyone.

Except it only applies in certain circumstances, and doesn't apply in the current conflict.

> all of the Geneva Convention applies, always, to everyone Why? Because you wrote so?

Taking your line of thought to the ad absurdum will result in: "No one should ever be punished nevermind atrocities they have committed."

The Convention clearly states to whom it applies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions#Application

So-called "international law" is not really a law, but only a set of political treaties. In addition, the jihadists and other bad actors do not recognize it.

Japan killed 2403 Americans at Pearl Harbor, to which the US retaliated by killing over 2 million Japanese, with more than 100 thousands in a single day.

So don't tell me about "conventions" that apply to some and don't apply to others. It's not some Law of Physics. It's a man-made stuff, invented by corrupt politicians.

If the international treaties do not work - they shouldn't be treated as written in stone - instead they should be changed and adapted to the realities of the modern assymetric wars. And also everyone should be treated the same - no double standards, otherwise nobody should recognize them.

We program the world through incentives, positive and negative. Malicious agents must be disintensivized/punished, and if that doesn't work - destroyed.

The Guardian published a piece on the automated ISR systems Israel uses, with cited ratios. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai...

15:1 for low-ranking Hamas militants

Elsewhere reported to be 100:1 for high-ranking Hamas targets

>> Several of the sources described how, for certain categories of targets, the IDF applied pre-authorised allowances for the estimated number of civilians who could be killed before a strike was authorised.

>> Two sources said that during the early weeks of the war they were permitted to kill 15 or 20 civilians during airstrikes on low-ranking militants. Attacks on such targets were typically carried out using unguided munitions known as “dumb bombs”, the sources said, destroying entire homes and killing all their occupants.

This talk of a ratio is mostly irrelevant. Palestinians are not being killed as a matter of retribution. They are being killed as enemies or collateral in the pursuit of enemies.

If Israel could neutralise Hamas and retrieve the hostages with zero casualties, they would do it. That's obviously impossible.

Israel could nuke Gaza and kill most of Hamas.

Presumably we all agree that's unacceptable.

So somewhere between "zero collateral civilian casualties" and "all collateral civilizian casualties" is warranted.

Which leads to a debate about where the line should be.

With the ratio of the dead being about 4 civilians to every 1 Hamas fighter it checks out with other major wars. Considering Hamas is a gurella force that's actually quite good.

Gen Westmoreland might provide some insight on the consequences of making enemy KIA the reward function, and the incentives that back-propogates to the classifier.

And to the IDF's credit, as much as I have issue with their absent strategic goals and tactical choices, they are fighting a guerrilla insurgence in one of the most density populated areas in the world.

So, it could have been worse? But it still isn't great.

The ratio of civilian to military deaths of the October 7th attack is very similar to Israel's in Gaza, around two thirds.

Israel has been caught multiple times willfully killing civilians in this conflict, and there are hundreds of statements by politicians, officers and soldiers calling for atrocities or even genocide. Israel is not a moral actor, and far more comparable to Hamas than any real democracy.

Considering what happened in Germany the last time it held mass gatherings to protest against Jews, better to err on the side of caution.

This type of conflation is extremely dangerous. Criticism of the actions of the government of Israel is not the same thing as anti-semitism (a real and very bad thing).

To make this claim essentially gives the government of Israel the go ahead to do absolutely anything without any possibility of criticism, because that criticism is never engaged with on the basis of its content but dismissed as anti-semitism.

>Criticism of the actions of the government of Israel is not the same thing as anti-semitism

Unfortunately, it seems the protesters themselves often don't make the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism.

I've seen thousands upon thousands of people protesting with my own eyes but never caught onto anything anti semitic. In fact I often see Jewish groups attending as well.

I'm sure there often are people espousing vile views, that's a statistical inevitability almost, but it's clearly far from the norm.

I'm just going on what the news says, and you know how the news likes to misrepresent stuff for clicks, but here's a few articles on the topic.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/student-protesters-denounce-antise...

https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/israel-hamas-war-protest...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/03/coll...

Yes, I know it well. I remember a very striking moment during some protests in London. The GB news was presenting it as having turned violent, with close ups of protesters clashing against the police. At the same time many individuals who were at the events themselves were able to broadcast on social media showing thousands of people peacefully walking together in a very positive atmosphere totally unaware that a small alteration had taken place elsewhere on the fringe of the event.

This is, by definition ("the protesters" used to generalise to all protesters), a gross generalisation. Based on what evidence? All the protests I have been to people have taken great pains to make that distinction.

Comments like the above merely reinforce what I'm saying: the basis of criticism is never engaged with in terms of its own merits or content but is dismissed using ad hominem.

I like how you cut my quote in half to misrepresent what I said. Well done.

I do sincerely apologise for omitting the word "often". My point remains that generalisations should not be made based on the views of a minority.

I have noticed that US media in particular presents a very one-sided accounting of protests. Axios, for examples, implies that Pro-Palestinian protests at colleges are a form of anti-semitism.

Again, I apologise. That was in error, not malice.

Thanks for that.

The same thing is happening to this protest as what happened in many other protests in the US. The news is finding outliers and representing it as the norm. January 6th, the majority of those people weren't trying to overthrow the government, but all the protesters were branded as doing just that, and many got pretty harsh sentences for it. BLM protests were similar with the fires and the riots. The vast majority of BLM protesters were non-violent but they were all branded as rioters and fire starters. The media is now running that play against the pro-Gaza protests and trying to paint them all as antisemitic by pointing out some antisemitic things some people in the protests said.

It's the standard playbook that happens again and again and again. It's almost as if the large media companies work for the status quo and feel any protests is a threat to that; which it is.

You appear to have fallen victim to a similar attempt at conflation, Zionism is a movement to fulfill the right for Jewish self-determination in their native land of thousands of years. Being antizionism is antisemitism because it negates the right to self-determination of the Jewish people.

I realize though that what you actually means is anti-Israel, or if we are being more specific, I assume anti-Israeli-far-right or anti-Israeli-right. E.g. if you are for a two-state solution you are in agreement with the Israeli center and left (mostly, but that's just going into too many details).

> Zionism is a movement to fulfill the right for Jewish self-determination in their native land of thousands of years.

This is the definition that makes Zionism troubling.

Why not just disenfranchise and/or murder any non-Jewish person within the borders of the Jewish people's native land?

Why not just disenfranchise and/or murder any non-French person within the borders of the French people's native land?

What's meant is that nobody would be called antisemitic for being against them if not for the fairy tale definition of a promised land.

Not sure what you mean by a fairy tale definition of a promised land, we are talking about actual land that they've actually lived in for thousands of years (though naturally not all of it continuously, after the Roman exile not that many Jews were left. Though if you accept that as removing their right to live there then surely you'll have no problem with Israel doing the same to the Palestinians).

You're using imaginary references, there's nothing to discuss here.

> Not sure what you mean by a fairy tale definition of a promised land, we are talking about actual land that they've actually lived in for thousands of years (though naturally not all of it continuously, after the Roman exile not that many Jews were left.

This is false, there's a reason for modern Palestinians and modern Jews sharing around the same genetic material with ancient Israelites, and that is conversion. The conflation of the ethnic group and the religious group is where your entire argument falls apart. What you are arguing for is not just an ethni-nationalist state, it is one steeped in religion, which is as good as any definition for fascism.

> Why not just disenfranchise and/or murder any non-French person within the borders of the French people's native land?

Historically?

Because post-revolutionary France has been a militantly-secular state.

And a decent counter-example on why conflating a state with a specific ethno-religious identity is a terrible idea.

I still don't follow your logic, I can't find a more charitable interpretation then you just saying that Jews are inherently murderous and the French are inherently not.

Somewhat ironic as currently the average French person is probably safer in Tel Aviv than the average Jew is in Paris.

You said "Being antizionism is antisemitism because it negates the right to self-determination of the Jewish people."

To which I pointed out that unlimited rights to self-determination include justifying genocide.

To which you rebutted that other countries have self-determination and avoid genocide.

To which I rebutted that those other states aren't founded on ethno-religious identities.

So here is my understanding of your point, feel free to correct it in a clearer statement, since your point still seems incomprehensible to me.

You are saying that denying the rights of Jews to self determination in their native land is not antisemitic, because Jewish identity is tied into both an ethnicity and a religion, making Jews inherent murderers and thus undeserving of a state. This is as opposed to say the French or German people, whose identity is mostly ethnic, who have a long history of peace, devoid of genocide, murder and disenfranchisement.

Maybe you're not saying what you mean.

What limits do you place on "self determination", as you define it?

And I'd point out that modern France and Germany are much less religious and more religiously diverse than Israel. (Even including Israeli Muslims)

But yes, historically states with high religiosity and state-entwined religions tend to be murderous: it's always a good reason for a just war.

Don't the Palestinians also have the right to self determinization in their native land?

My understanding is that anti-Zionism is not opposed to Jews living in Palestine having self determination. It is opposed to preventing Arabs living in Palestine from having self determination and/or oppossed to Israel existing as an ethnostate (since most people on the left are opposed to the concept of ethnostates).

> Don't the Palestinians also have the right to self determinization in their native land?

Sure, in fact Israel's declaration of independence (which doesn't have an official legal status, but is considered to be the base of a future constitution for Israel) calls for peaceful co-existence with its neighbouring Arab states. It would be an interesting alternate history to observe where Israel was not attacked by all of its neighbouring Arab states, could we really have peaceful co-existence? (I'd like to think the answer is "yes").

Now if you define "Palestinian native land" as the Jewish native land that was colonized by Arabs around 1,400 years ago, then you'll have a problem since that will legitimize Jews to themselves recolonize (and regular colonize) whatever areas they please thus making it their own native land. Of course, reverting the borders to 3,000 years ago is also not practical (especially as that would revert the peace agreement with Jordan which would have to give up a substantial piece of land). That's why IMO something like a two state solution makes the most sense, maybe along the lines of the agreement that was almost signed in 2008?

> My understanding is that anti-Zionism is not opposed to Jews living in Palestine having self determination.

No need to keep to the Roman convention of renaming Israel to Palestine.

> My understanding is that anti-Zionism is not opposed to Jews living in Palestine having self determination. It is opposed to preventing Arabs living in Palestine from having self determination

That just sounds like you are redefining "Anti-Zionism" to mean "Pro-Palestine". Sure, under a different definition it means something else, but how is that useful? If I define "Jews" to mean "Bananas" can I say that I think Jews are disgusting because I actually mean bananas are disgusting?

Anti-Zionism means exactly that, against the right for Jews for self determination in their native land.

> Israel existing as an ethnostate

I think this term is a bit excessively vague. Naturally the Jewish people want to live in their land of the Jewish people in much the same way that the French or Palestinian people want to live in their land of the French or Palestinian people.

A right of return for the Jewish people to the land of self-determination for Jews is only natural, just as much as an emerging state of Palestine should want a right of return for Palestinians into it (it sounds like madness for Palestine to refuse Israeli Arabs from moving to it).

It would also be madness to deny Israel a right to control immigration to it, especially as it is already very densely populated.

That said, I agree that current policies are too extreme, and I'm generally for a much greater separation between state and religion in Israel.

Don't you think 1400 years is a bit long? If you considered 'native people' to go back that far, you could get all sorts of really strange 'native lands'.

Normally, right of return is for people who were living somewhere, or have parents or grandparents who live somewhere. So it's obviously very strange when that applies to jewish people, who potentially have some ancestors in biblical times that were living in Jordan, but doesn't apply to Palestinians, who had grandparents living there.

To be honest, I have more sympathy for the argument that, yes, Israel is a typical colonial enterprise, but it's also been a while (70+ years), and people have made their lives there, so 2SS makes sense. It seems more consistent with how words like 'native', 'colony', and 'original inhabitants' work everywhere else.

> Don't you think 1400 years is a bit long?

Any threshold you set is arbitrary and then tends to be motivated by personal politics. I have some difficulty with setting any specific threshold since if you say the threshold is 1,000 years for example, then it follows that you have set a rule on how it is morally achievable to set or expand your territory; You take some place by force and then hold it for 1,000 years and then no one is allowed to contest it, which means that Israel should be allowed to take whatever land it wants as it is merely following the proper procedure you have set (and of course, Palestine and Iran are equally allowed to follow this procedure ;)).

> Normally, right of return is for people who were living somewhere, or have parents or grandparents who live somewhere. So it's obviously very strange when that applies to jewish people, who potentially have some ancestors in biblical times that were living in Jordan,

Much of the original push for the creation of Israel originates in world wide persecution of Jews, so it makes sense to me to allow all of them into Israel where they can band together. I also think that limitations on "parents or grandparents" are meant to imply some sort of test of "are they really still French if they left France two generations ago and haven't tried to come back since then?", whereas for Judaism many communities have been rather insular and managed to maintain their Jewish identity going back all the way to their original exile, so it is easier to see that they are still part of the same people. I do somewhat agree though in thinking that there eventually has to be some limit and the right to return should be drastically altered/reduce/abolished and replaced with more "normal" immigration controls. Maybe something like "You have a right to return by default if you are the grandson of a Jew who lived during the Holocaust. If you are the son or grandson of such a Jew (i.e. grandson of grandson) then follow this procedure, beyond that you are considered to have waived your right to return". Though this is off-the-cuff random internet talk and not a sound opinion :)

If talking specifically about Jordan, where Jews do not have a right to return, I'll add the other countries of the Middle East and North Africa where Jews who left (often but not only to go to Israel) are definitely not welcome back. It seems like morally you'd expect such a thing, though in practice I'd be surprised if there were any Jews willing to use such a right.

> but doesn't apply to Palestinians, who had grandparents living there.

Since you mentioned Jordan specifically, I'd just say that it is up to the Jordanians to provide that right to return (which I don't think they do).

For a Palestinian state (in a hypothetical 2ss) it will certainly make sense to have a right of return for Palestinian people, but I don't think it makes sense to have a right of return for Palestinians into Israel or Jews into Palestine, since the whole point of such an agreement would be to draw lines on what is Israel and what is Palestine, and drastically mixing the populations would just blur those lines and reignite conflict.

> To be honest, I have more sympathy for the argument that, yes, Israel is a typical colonial enterprise, but it's also been a while (70+ years), and people have made their lives there, so 2SS makes sense. It seems more consistent with how words like 'native', 'colony', and 'original inhabitants' work everywhere else.

Indeed I feel that is what follows from your initial statement, and I'll agree that your views are self-consistent and sound. Ideologically I don't fully agree with your thoughts, since I feel it incentivizes war-making as I mentioned.

Of course, as I said in my previous comment, in the real world I don't think it is practical or entirely fair to pursue something like a 3,000 year reversion, so a two state solution is a reasonable compromise, and it will require some strong guarantees to make sure such an agreement is kept and war-making is deterred.

I guess my intuition for how a 'right-to-return' should work would be, if you have your property stolen and you are driven out of the land, and it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt that it is yours by inheritance, then you should be able to get it back.

It's to the eternal shame of Poland, Germany, and many other countries in Europe, that this is not what they did after the war. It's frankly shameful that this is rarely enforced anywhere.

If you do 'right of return' without the implicit return of property thing, it's pretty hollow if you've actually had your house/farm stolen, but it also becomes just a way of having an immigration policy that discriminates on an ethnic or religious basis.

I feel like people are generally pretty fine with accepting colonial borders: basically the whole world outside europe is divided by them. As long as they have a chance to live in peace, build businesses, live normal lives, I don't think people get that exercised about these things, on the whole. If you look at the lives of Palestinians, they look pretty humiliating. If I lived that life, had no chance to build anything or hold onto anything, I expect I would be pretty angry about it.

No need to keep to the Roman convention of renaming Israel to Palestine.

It's the historically accepted term for the region. The Zionists themselves used it in their literature. Quibbles about it are disingenuous and absolutely irrelevant to the current situation on the ground.

Anti-Zionism means exactly that, against the right for Jews for self determination in their native land.

No, it means being against an ideology which fundamentally rejects the right of self-determination to the non-Jewish population living on their land.

Israel as an ethnostate is vague

It's now written into the Basic Laws of Israel, thanks to 2018 Nation-State bill.

If you define "Palestinian native land" as ...

We all know what it what is meant by "Palestine" and "Palestinians". And even Jabotinsky recognized the Palestinians as indigenous.

> Zionism is a movement to fulfill the right for Jewish self-determination in their native land

The thing is, though, it's not a right, it's their belief. They're very welcome to hold their beliefs and take democratic means to achieve their aims, but in a free and peace centred society they should not be allowed to take violent means to pursue their aims. Certainly if they want me to be happy taking financial and material support from a government that I'm supporting with my tax then they need to follow these basic ideals of respect for the other.

Long story short, we can accept their belief in their promised land without accepting it as their right to take it by whatever means necessary.

> The thing is, though, it's not a right, it's their belief.

Would you also say you have no right to live in the United States, and it is only your personal belief? If you think it is equally fictional then at least I can't fault your views for their internal consistency.

> They're very welcome to hold their beliefs and take democratic means to achieve their aims, but in a free and peace centred society they should not be allowed to take violent means to pursue their aims.

Are Jews prohibited from taking violent means to pursue their aims while Arabs are permitted? If not, then how do you accept Arab use of violent means to conquer and settle Israel 1,400 years ago?

> Long story short, we can accept their belief in their promised land without accepting it as their right to take it by whatever means necessary.

First, we aren't talking about a promised land being taken, we are talking about at land that was taken away from them and is at best being taken back.

Second, you aren't required to support anyone in any endeavor. You can even be pro-Israel and pro-Zionism and still not think they deserve your financial support. But if you single out Jews as being the only people in the world that are not allowed to have a state and not allowed to live in their native land of thousands of years (especially for the reason "but the Arabs took it away from them, so it isn't theirs anymore"), then you are indeed being antisemitic.

> Would you also say you have no right to live in the United States, and it is only your personal belief?

I'm not American so I would of course agree. But I believe I have a right to live in my current state because those rights are granted to me by the law. The distinction with Zionism is that the right for "the Jews" (i use quotes because of course this is not an homogeneous group, just as ideal) to claim, inhabit and govern Israel as their own is ordained by God. I find this as contrary to the ideals of equality and akin to totalitarianism.

> But if you single out Jews as being the only people in the world that are not allowed to have a state...

Wow there, that's quite a leap. I'm not saying anyone should be made stateless, only that if they're claiming to do the whole democracy thing then they need to recognise the right of their neighbours not to live by the rules of their Gods.

> then you are indeed being antisemitic

I would appreciate if you asked me to clarify when I was saying instead of delivering uncharitable readings, presumed arguments, and conclusions like these.

> I would appreciate if you asked me to clarify when I was saying instead of delivering uncharitable readings, presumed arguments, and conclusions like these.

Apologies if I have offended, but that's why that sentence begins with an "if", implying that statement is only correct conditional on some theoretical claim that might or might not be implicit from your statements. Since the discussion originates from the topic of antizionism and antisemitism, it is meant to refer back to the conclusion of my own parent comment clarifying where such a statement falls (as opposed to just being an ad-hominem). Maybe I'm not being entirely clear as English is not my native language and much of communication tends to be cultural rather than linguistic (for example, in the United States "That's a good start" is usually a scathing critique whereas in Israel it is usually a genuine compliment :))

> I'm not American so I would of course agree

I assumed by your reference to having your taxes go to Israel, a common American talking point. What taxes then are you referring to that are going towards Israel?

> But I believe I have a right to live in my current state because those rights are granted to me by the law.

Sure, and Israel also a rule of law country and acts within the boundaries of its laws, so you are going to have to go into more details into what you feel separates your rights from Jewish rights.

> The distinction with Zionism is that the right for "the Jews" (i use quotes because of course this is not an homogeneous group, just as ideal) to claim, inhabit and govern Israel as their own is ordained by God. I find this as contrary to the ideals of equality and akin to totalitarianism.

That is incorrect. In fact, the Zionism movement originated with secular Jews, seeing how they are persecuted around the world and desiring a return to their native land where they can band together and protect themselves under the mechanisms of state. Your conclusion about inequality and totalitarianism are therefore misguided. As a side-note I'll add that the more fundamental ultra-orthodox Jews that desire an Israel ruled by biblical law tend to be antizionist as well.

> if they're claiming to do the whole democracy thing then they need to recognise the right of their neighbours not to live by the rules of their Gods.

First, no such thing happens, Palestinians are not bound to the rules of a Judaism, neither those that are Israeli citizens, nor those that are not. Specifically for Muslims in Israel they have their own religious authorities with the ability to govern in matters of their religion. For example, Muslims can marry each other under Muslim law, in Muslim ceremonies etc. It is true though that Jewish courts currently have too much authority in governing Jewish customs like marriage, and that to my mind religion is too intertwined with state mechanisms, but not nearly so far as I'd say that it is ruled by religious law.

Second, I'm not actually sure what this has to do with the topic of the discussion, which is Zionism, which is not a religious movement (remembering that Judaism is both a religion and an ethnicity).

>> You appear to have fallen victim to a similar attempt at conflation, Zionism is a movement to fulfill the right for Jewish self-determination in their native land of thousands of years.

That doesn't make sense. I am Greek and we lost our ancestral lands in Asia Minor when we were slaughtered and expelled from them by the modern Turkish nation [1]. The same thing happened to the Armenians, Cappadocian Christians and Assyrian Christians, also.

And yet it is not anti-hellenic, or anti-christian, or anti-anything to deny that all those people and the Greeks have a right to return to their ancestral lands, where Turkish people now live. Resisting irredentist nationalism is not racist.

__________________________

[1] The Jewish are not the only people who were kicked out of the land they lived in for thousands of years, lost their greatest city and had their greatest temple turned into a mosque: this also happened to the Greeks: Asia Minor, Constantinoupolis and Agia Sophia, were Greek for thousands of years and now they belong to the Turkish nation. If the Greeks and every other ethnic and religious group claimed their "right to self-determination in their native land of thousand years", there would be bloodshed and war without end.

Greek genocide:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide

Armenian genocide:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_genocide

Assyrian genocide:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayfo

Pontic Greek genocide:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontic_Greek_genocide

About the Cappadocian Greeks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocian_Greeks

I think it's ok so long as we keep the protests at Beer Hall Putsch levels and don't go full Reichstag fire.

Germany isn't banning criticisms against Israel. They're banning antisemitic symbolism (whatever that means) that gets used in the protests. They have been like that for a long time with Nazi symbolism that isn't explicitly antisemitic.

The general dynamic remains: protests against specific actions of Israel are dismissed as anti-semitic by definition. Banning Nazi symbolism is a good thing. Trying to equate neo-Nazis to anti-war protesters is disingenuous.

Far-right conservatives in Germany have claimed to be persecuted in this way for a long time, claiming that they aren't antisemitic. My point is that it's nothing new.

That can be true but it doesn't logically follow that the people being shut down today are from the same group or are employing the same rhetorical strategies.

Far-right conservatives in Germany claim to be "not antisemtic" by using dogwhistles (similar to the US, e.g. "elites" - the Nazis literally used "international bankers"). However they generally don't oppose Israel's right to self-defense and they are anti-Palestine because they don't like Muslims. In fact "actually the rise of antisemitism is caused by all the Muslims in our country" has been a major right-wing conservative talking point in Germany (and other parts of Europe) because it serves as a distraction. As there's no "risk" of increased Jewish immigration to Germany and Israel actually literally wants the opposite (i.e. for Jews to leave their home countries for Israel to increase the Jewish population in the Middle East, especially if they're the "right" kind of Jew), being pro-Israel is actually an effective strategy even if you turn around to blame all ills on a nebulous group of Jewish "elites" (and in Germany this is usually very nebulous as even far-right conservatives aren't dumb enough to be openly antisemetic).

Anti-Zionism is not antisemitic and antisemitism is not anti-Zionist. Historically the German far-right was actually indifferent to Zionism because it provided a way to get rid of Jewish people domestically. They placed restrictions on emigration to prevent wealth drain (i.e. rich Jewish people taking their money/property with them when leaving Germany) but the only reason they shut down the Zionist emigration project was that they invaded Poland and suspended all legal migration because of the war.

There is a line between being pro-Palestine/anti-Israel and being antisemitic. That line is when you insist on people being evicted from Palestine/Israel simply for being Jewish. Yes, some protests have seen people cross that line and some groups who have organized protests were firmly on the wrong end of that line. But the narrative that you can't be anti-Zionist without being antisemtic or that you can't be opposed to Israel's government's action without being opposed to the existence of Jewish people in Palestine/Israel is in itself antisemitic by deliberately conflating a state with individuals, many of whom don't even live in that state nor agree with it.

There have been many Jewish opponents to Zionism and Zionism in Palestine especially since the inception of the modern Zionist movements. Until the state of Israel was created there was a strong divide between Jewish Zionists and Bundists, the latter arguing for a stateless nationhood. Bundists and other Jewish anti-Zionists still exist, they're just relegated to obscurity because Israel dominates the international conversation and most Jewish interest groups have aligned themselves with Israel for pragmatic reasons.

Also, finally, Israel's current government as well as the illegal settlers in the West Bank (and prominent figures who fantasize about a "Greater Israel" including at least all of Palestine but potentially also parts of the surrounding countries) are in fact most accurately described as "far-right conservatives" as well.

For some reason, Germany has very strict rules and traditions against any hint of anti-Jewish activities.

And there is certainly anti-Semitism mixed in with the protests, but I think Germany is still overdoing it. Silencing plenty of valid speech has a cost, too.

One would have thought that a proper stance is to be against any kind of mass killings, yet given the attitude on the topic of Namibia we do know there are first and second class victims.

Freedom and democracy are luxuries of peacetime, unfortunately.

Fear does terrible things to many people. When the guns come out, leaders that previously were the most staunch supporters of freedom will file them away and promise to reinstate them when the war is "won".

China agrees that it's not a democracy.

They don't even have sham elections on the national level.

> china isn't a democracy because they have censorship

You got that wrong. The reason China is not a democracy, is instead that it is a dictatorship, that's why it's not a democracy.

Democracies can have censorship, there's no contradiction. (Although less common.)

For example, IMO it's good to censor some of Putin's manipulation, because most people are dangerously easy to fool. It's a mistake to let an enemy state broadcast their psychological warfare unhindered.

Just because it’s normal doesn’t mean it’s morally correct.

If they had nothing to fear from it they wouldn’t do it.

Israel fearing anything from Hamas is laughable, so what they really fear is their own citizens.

They have a lot to fear from their citizens knowing that what they hear from their officials is not all the truth.

Some time in the future, when someone mentions the Jewish genocide, people will ask if they mean the one happened to them or the one they did.

Obviously the current Israeli government will want to control the information flow so they can proceed with their final solution to the Gaza issue. They will also try to control what comes out of Gaza to avoid the consequences of their actions.

If you believe that RT is an organisation that is not interested in the truth, but is set up purely to disrupt and disturb, then a government can reasonably want to prevent its operation.

Adding plausible noise to information causes people to have to do much more work to discern between what is true and what is not, time that many people do not have.

A reluctance to ban a bad-faith organisation is good: a moral society should thoroughly debate why it might undertake a repressive thing. But you cannot wish away the effects of corrosive and coercive behaviour because the act of banning a such an organisation is repressive.

A poor but useful analogy is use of violence in society. Violence is a bad thing, but to absolutely forswear it in all situations is something that very few governments will do, for reasons that seem quite justified to me.

There are two things wrong with this argument. One, it implies that there isn't a better way to deal with an such a malicious organization. And two, it doesn't acknowledge how such a ban creates an obvious opening for abuse.

Holding up the classic Western ideals of Democracy and Freedom is hard because it is much deeper than simply giving people the freedom to access all information so they can form their own opinions. It also requires that these people are educated and trained to be competent critical thinkers and be able to intelligently form their own opinions. It holds its citizens and the government to high standards and will collapse if these standards aren't met. Accordingly, better education and trust in citizens is the better solution, not banning.

As for the obvious opening for abuse, it doesn't have to be said that every system will eventually be maximally exploited, and creating this opening for exploitation will eventually be exploited as well. It is just a matter of time...

Another poor but useful analogy is fast food. Banning bad media is like consuming fast food. It is quick and easy, and "satisfies" the goal within some basic parameters, but it really does more harm than good in the long term.

The argument in no way implies that there is no other way to deal with malice, only that it is an option. The argument further implies that the decision to censor should not be taken lightly. When censorship is being considered in a democratic society, the decision to do so must be argued and debated. Note that it is perfectly possible to be well-educated and still be taken in by bullshit and false information - it happens all the time. Education is a good, not a nostrum, and durable opponents of truth are also motivated, sophisticated and smart. Democracy is about the means you use to undertake drastic decisions, and in no way rules out the restriction of unseemly behaviour.

Maybe explain why my analogy is not useful - I’ll do the same for you. What I initially said did not in any way imply banning should be quick or easy, while “fast food” is not, in itself, bad for you, but a restricted and monotonous diet of anything can well be.

Content is being banned because the governments don't think the citizens collectively can handle that content. This is the government thinking for the people. I wouldn't have an issue if it was really argued and debated, but I don't really see that happening. It is mostly just the government unilaterally deciding that said content is bad and banning it with no really possibility for debate. It isn't too hard to imagine a situation where content would help citizens but harm the government, and who is really deciding what to ban in such a case.

Countries are seeing how much banning content helps governments in places like China, and want that easy "solution" to their problems instead of doing the difficult thing of properly educating citizens and cultivating free and open discourse.

I guess my analogy is bad because it is debatable if fast food, in itself, is bad for you. My issue with your analogy is that the use of violence is abused by governments so much more than it is every used correctly (if that is even possible) and that all citizens would benefit from governments condemning violence. The reason governments don't condemn violence isn't because their use of violence helps citizens, it is because their use of violence helps themselves. And the same thing goes for banning content. So I guess your analogy is actually pretty good, just counterproductive to your point.

Your analogy was bad in that it represented a case that I had not made, that the ban was a convenient lever to be reached for out of convenience.

I have not seen an operating system of civil governance that has not reserved to itself the right coerce behaviour as a "last resort" (this would be different things to different people), so it is hard to say much about your last paragraph.

I would say: if you don't think that people are going to debate and argue a case for banning, for punishing, for going to war or other forms of controversial and "extraordinary" behaviour, you probably can't think that people are going to agree to be educated properly, whatever that means. Debate, argument and loser's consent are fundamentals behind the model of democracy we have today. including, in my view, the part where the demos is educated.

I think if you ask the average conservative voter, they would argue the New York Times is a bad faith organisation, uninterested in the truth if it contradicts its narrative, and trying to disrupt and divide. That's why the state should be nowhere near any power to curb political speech. If you would like to shut down a news outlet you don't like, ask yourself if you would like Trump to have that same power.

I guess this is what deliberation and debate is all about. I mean, a lot of people thought Trump shouldn't be President at all, but he was.

Who gets to decide that RT is not interested in the truth? Traditionally, liberal democracy has held that it's not safe for the government to make that decision.

It’s a good question. But I think that it is valid for a democracy to decide to tackle it.

> you believe that RT is an organisation that is not interested in the truth, [...] then a government can reasonably want to prevent its operation.

Except it's not what you believe that matters, but what the Ministry of Truth says.

> Europe has done the same with Russia.

Yes. Which I find abhorrent as an European, and has made me realize even more than our countries are much less democratic than we officially paint them as.

Nono, it's only undemocratic when china does it.

When the italian government wants to be able to block any website immediately and with no appeal, calling it an anti-piracy measure, it's completely fine and democratic.

Exactly. "Foo" is democratic when democratic or non-democratic country does it in a democratic way.

Do you have examples for Europe blocking Russia? Because all I have seen is DNS providers omitting certain sites (i.e RT), but their apps still work (plus URLs when using other DNS). An nothing of that coming from the nation states as all seems to be due to the activities of private companies doing these things.

At least in the UK, you used to be able to watch RT on broadcast. Now only the Internet version is accessible, and I think some ISPs DNS block them. Granted, a DNS block is easy to circumvent if you understand it, but most users will still be cut off.

As a total outlier, RT was paying the cable/sat systems to be carried in US/Canada, instead of the other way around.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/rts-purchase-of-cana...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/rt-channels-unique-carriage-dea...

I wonder if other countries were the same.

That’s not really an outlier. Common for political networks, religious channels, shopping networks….

Probably more than half the channels on a typical American cable system are paying to be there. Especially the stuff in the basic tiers.

Was it actually broadcast terrestrially? I remember picking it up from Astra2 (the "skytv" satellite) but looking online, it's not transmitted anymore.

I used to watch it on Freeview, picked up via a regular antenna if that's what you mean by "terrestrially".

RT, Sputnik and related Russian state media outlets are subject to sanctions in the EU, their broadcast licenses have been revoked and their channels have been removed from terrestrial, cable and satellite broadcasts. Their accounts on all major social media platforms are blocked. Their apps are no longer available on the Google or Apple stores. Europe doesn't have a Chinese-style Great Firewall, but EU countries have taken every reasonable step to prevent Russian state media from reaching EU audiences.

https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-rt-sputnik-illegal-eu...

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2022/ofcom-revokes-rt-b...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/01/youtube...

https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-google-blocks-r...

> Europe doesn't have a Chinese-style Great Firewall, but EU countries have taken every reasonable step to prevent Russian state media from reaching EU audiences.

Because they think the EU audiances are stupid?

Because they don't like anti-government point of views to become too widespread.

In Italy the current defence minister is personally earning considerable amount of money by sending weapons to Ukraine, because he's also an owner and manager of companies that make said weapons.

Do you think they'd want to favour open discussions?

No. In fact besides RT being banned, they want to be able to block any website, giving providers 30 minutes to implement the ban, no appeal and no oversight from a judge (https://stop-piracy-shield.it/)

> In Italy the current defence minister is personally earning considerable amount of money by sending weapons to Ukraine, because he's also an owner and manager of companies that make said weapons.

FUD is the reason why Russian liars are banned from EU.

Well italy allows the openly racist newspaper "libero" to be open. I don't think FUD is a main concern when blocking websites.

rt.com and their twitter are blocked.

How are you not aware of this? It's been a few years already.

The EU ruled on this.

https://paste.pics/4b60ebef97d3b7fbb6aba74637c2e818

https://paste.pics/0cb2ae98754165dad5cf086e75c4cc31

Many using VPN. For example if you set the VPN servers to HK, RT will display as usual. In general I notice my peers will use anti-west countries based servers for censored western news and the reverse for anti-east. Some do use it so intuitively they might not realized RT or any Russian sites blocked. A lot of time I just assume it is due to network outages.

I would think most people know about RT blocking because it was widely announced and discussed at the time, and not because they actually tried to access RT.

I am in the Netherlands and I am able to visit rt.com without VPN.

Netherlands here also and it's blocked for me.

Not for me.

Me too. I didn't even know about this blockade. I'm using T-Mobile fiber internet and rt.com loads just fine.

I'm in Sweden and I can see rt.com

I am very much aware of this but as I wrote, I do not consider this blocked as the servers are very much reachable and what you show is that the DNS does not resolve. That is not what I consider blocked by the state. And yes, here in Sweden, rt.com resolves just fine everywhere. That's why I was wondering about specific European legislation as it seemed to be 'only' private companies doing their part.

It's part of the EU sanctions, EU ISPs are required to block certain Russian sites. But they didn't specify how, that's left up to the countries to figure out afaik. But as you say, some of the what has been done barely qualifies.

Here's my personal experience with this:

Germany does exactly what you describe, the bare minimum to say "we're blocking" --- DNS omitting certain sites.

Spain is doing deep packet inspection, blocking DNS requests that lookup RT, so DNS over HTTPS or through a VPN is a must. Additionally, they're also reading the SNI in TLS requests and blocking that way. If you try accessing RT in pure unencrypted HTTP you're get some fortigate blocking message back.

It is still perfectly possible to access RT from Spain, even using regular ISP DNS servers.

That's not my experience with Movistar, they are throwing down the gauntlet

mullivad has a free to use DNS over https service by the way.

Thanks, though that specifically why I am questioning that it is the EU in this case. Because rt.com is reachable in Sweden just fine, including sub-sites. Which, to me, says that it must be national sanctions, or at minimum, national lists of what to 'block'.

Because rt.com is reachable in Sweden just fine, including sub-sites.

See discussion further down thread, but basically the block in Sweden seems to be on the ISP level and depends on which ISP you have. I can access rt.com via work wifi, but not not over mobile data via Telia. Another user who has Telia as their home ISP cannot access rt.com from home either.

The main difference would be that Al Jazeera is from Qatar and not Gaza, this would be the equivalent of the EU banning Armenia because they are friendly with Russia.

Banning Armenia isn't really an apt comparison since Israel isn't banning all media from Qatar, just one particular news organization which has very deep ties to the enemy they're at war with.

They're only banning the important one :D

> Europe has done the same with Russia.

Not really. Top Russian officials, say Dmitri Medvedev, are still shitposting on twitter:

> Macron preparing to go to kyiv? But he's a zoological coward!

Most Russian news websites are still up, say vesti.ru

And Russia is active participant in a war, while Quatar is not bombing anyone.

Also many european countries are not actively fighting a war. I do not really think it was the right decision to ban RT what are they scared of?

Egypt is a military dictatorship, so it's no surprise when it bans media organizations.

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