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Comment by weatherlite | Hacker News Reader

You are ignoring the fact that Hamas wants to bring Israel down by force, it explicitly said it would repeat October 7th. So getting back the hostages is only a part of the problem, there is the issue of existential threat to Israel. And this is all speculation anyway, who knows if Hamas would have been willing to free all hostages - why would it, it could have kept humiliating Israel right after massacring its population and released only small numbers of the hostages.

As for examples from history - we have the allies bombing of Germany, the allied reaction to September 11th, Afghanistan etc. Almost no one considers any of them 'genocidal rampages' although they all left millions of dead, we save that rhetoric only for Israel.

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There's simply no comparison between the Afghanistan occupation and what Israel is doing in its occupied territories.

Stupid and ultimately futile though the former mission was, the allied countries never thought they had a historical claim (or even any specific interest) in Afghanistan the way Israel covets (and certain factions within it openly proclaim their intent to fully displace the native population from) the West Bank and Gaza.

We save that rhetoric [accusations of genocide] only for Israel.

Plainly false, given the plethora of genocide rampages in recent decades.

And the extremely prominent media coverage of these situations, which cannot possibly have escaped your notice.

> Stupid and ultimately futile though the former mission was, the allied countries never thought they had a historical claim (or even any specific interest) in Afghanistan the way Israel covets (and certain factions within it openly proclaim their intent to fully displace the native population from) the West Bank and Gaza.

There's no much talk of historical claims on Gaza from Israelis besides very fringe groups who don't number a lot of people. Palestinians on the other hand are pretty much 100% united in their view that history necessitates they "free Palestine from the river to the sea", so if there are major historical claims they mostly come from the Palestinian side and their fans in the West and the Muslim world.

> Plainly false, given the plethora of genocide rampages in recent decades.

> And the extremely prominent media coverage of these situations, which cannot possibly have escaped your notice.

No not really, there was nothing resembling the circus around Israel not even close. Which ones do you mean were vastly talked about or protested against even with 1/100 the amount this does?

There's no much talk of historical claims on Gaza from Israelis besides very fringe groups who don't number a lot of people.

They're certainly quite obnoxious, these groups. But they can't be called "fringe" anymore, now that they've been made coalition partners in the 37th government (receiving very prominent cabinet positions to boot). Meanwhile Israel's expansionist claims on the West Bank have been the de-facto national consensus (and have been supported by every government to one degree or another) since the late 70s.

If there are major historical claims they mostly come from the Palestinian side

These aren't "claims" coming from their side as it has always been their land to begin with.

The allied bombing campaign and the US war on terror are hardly patterns in history (and neither were responses to hostages). A much more common pattern is what we saw e.g. after the Madrid train bombings in 2004, or the recent Moscow concert hall attack, where there is increased police presence and perhaps domestic political persecution of some groups by the police and with discriminatory laws. Nothing close to a genocidal rampage.

There are plenty of terror groups which the rulers of plenty of countries say are existential threats to those countries, some of them even take hostages, Israel alone responds to those attacks with genocidal rampage.

I think the closest behavior to Israel here is ironically Turkey who engages in brutal military campaign against Kurdish communities on a regular basis. But those reactions don’t come anywhere close in scope as the Gaza genocide.

EDIT: And just to flip the narrative here a little bit. The terror attacks by Hamas is actually something we see quite often in history. Occupied peoples usually resist, and if political means of resistance is not available, they almost always use violent and armed forms of resistance. You want to make the case that Israel’s behavior is to be expected. I don’t believe that, but if you do that, you should also apply the same logic to Palestinian resistance.

> There are plenty of terror groups which the rulers of plenty of countries say are existential threats to those countries, some of them even take hostages, Israel alone responds to those attacks with genocidal rampage.

Such as ? When the U.S felt it was under existental threat it definitely responded.

The Madrid/London attacks don't resemble at all the situation between Hamas and Israel - even if Spain wanted to go to war against the terrorists - where would the war happen? Who would they attack? Hamas is right on the border, hell bent on recreating October 7th again and again (their words). And its not just their words Hamas has built an entire army with whatever means they could find, and had fired rockets on Israel repeatedly throughout the years. Madrid and London was one or more sophoisticated terror cell, without knowing what happened there in detail I find it hard to believe it was more than a hundred people involved. Hamas has/had tens of thousands of members, rpgs, explosives, tunnels and tens of thousands of rockets (low quality, but still). Not to mention the fact Israel was immediately attacked by Hezbollah and later on Iran. This comparison to Spain or the UK is simply silly. You simply choose to view Israel as uniquely evil due to your political ideology/own biases and thought processes.

About 50 hostages where released based on negotiations over 9 months ago.

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