Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

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I think it's uncontroversial that Likud opposes a 2-state solution, for what it's worth. I think you're going to find a lot of people taking Israel's side in the existential question of whether it should defend itself as a sovereign, and/or respond to mass-casualty attacks from paramilitary militias in territories it occupies, but far fewer people endorsing Israel's leadership. "I support Israel's right to exist but Netanyahu belongs at the Hague" is a pretty common position.

The issue is: it doesn't get you anywhere in the Israel/Hezbollah conflict. I believe Israel has awful, possibly criminal leadership. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't respond to full-scale military attacks from neighboring near-peer militaries.

I think tallying up the morals of each side of this conflict is really unproductive, but in the spirit of just digging into the details here, I feel like it's worth pointing out that the details on Hezbollah's side of the scale are grim. Not in its conflict with Israel, but with the broader region, where it has killed civilians with great gusto.

(Full disclaimer: I have no personal ties to the conflict and I get the largest part of my information about it from Haaretz, Wikipedia and Al Jazeera. So I definitely have a bias)

> "I support Israel's right to exist but Netanyahu belongs at the Hague" is a pretty common position.

I think Netanyahu (and Smotrich, Ben Gvir, etc) are a big part of the problem, but it's too simple to blame everything on them. The differences to the other political parties seem to be mostly in details that seem relatively irrelevant for non-Israelis: Basically whether to conduct the occupation and settlement with a good or a bad conscience and whether in service of a religious destiny or for mundane security reasons. But no one has any plan to end the occupation or even just to clear the settlements. The recent bill to reject any Palestinian state was voted in across almost all parties.

> But that doesn't mean it shouldn't respond to full-scale military attacks from neighboring near-peer militaries.

I think tallying up the morals of each side of this conflict is really unproductive, but in the spirit of just digging into the details here, I feel like it's worth pointing out that the details on Hezbollah's side of the scale are grim. Not in its conflict with Israel, but with the broader region, where it has killed civilians with great gusto.

Yeah, I don't want to exonerate Hezbollah (or Hamas for that matter). It's just that in this conflict, Hezbollah so far behaved entirely rational and predictable. Their attacks were calibrated to put pressure on Israel but nothing more - and their objective was clear to see. Israel could have easily achieved its objective of bringing back the inhabitants of the north by agreeing to one of the US-brokered ceasefire deals.

It is relatively obvious that Netanyahu wants to continue the war in Gaza at all costs and is rather starting another war than to hold the attacks.

The other reason is that with Israeli military operations, self-defense and conquest seem always be intertwined. I find it uncanny how quickly settlement movements for Gaza and Lebanon pop up during something that is ostensibly a war of self-defense. (Not even starting with the extremely dehumanizing "proposals" what to do with Gaza's population that are apparently freely discussed in Israel's civil society, such as the recent "General's plan")

I'd be more on board if the fight against Hezbollah and Hamas was conducted by an international force with UN mandate than by the IDF alone - and if at the same time we put some actual pressure on Israel to end the occupation, so there is an actual alternative for Palestinians to the terror groups.

No, Hezbollah has not behaved "entirely rational and predictable". They have indiscriminately fired rockets at civilian populations in northern Israel, often over a hundred in a single day, averaging dozens every day continuously for almost a year, killing principally (as you'd expect) civilians (ironically, many of them not Israeli Jewish citizens), in one case including half a youth football team.

If "team A did bad thing X" is an argument for anything, could I counter that team B did X too, and more? You're complaining that Hezbollah kills civilians... So does the IDF.

Now if you tell me that one is intentional and the other one isn't the I know you're not being honest, because there's plenty of evidence that the IDF is really casual about collateral damage.

That's not the argument. I stated it plainly upthread.

> Now if you tell me that one is intentional and the other one isn't the I know you're not being honest, because there's plenty of evidence that the IDF is really casual about collateral damage.

Casual about collateral damage and purposefully targeting civilians are different things.

Remember when Israel shot at that car with a family in it? Hind Rajab.

Or when they sniped that journalist and attacked her funeral, Shireen Abu Aqleh?

Or when they bombed the AP building in 2021 with no evidence.

Or when the IOF threw a baby in an oven in front of the father during the Deir Yassin massacre? Hussein al-Shareef and Abdul Rauf

Or when they bombed refugee camps? Or when they told people to evacuate south and then bombed the Rafah border crossing so they couldn't escape?

Or the Goldstone Report where the UN found that the IOF was forcing Palestinians at gun point to enter buildings first to make sure they're clear? https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g09/158/66/pdf/g09158... Page 22

Very demure, very mindful

Yes, you can make a list of terrible acts committed by almost any military, especially if you go back 76 years to before it was a state. It is very clear that some soldiers in the IDF, like in any army, have committed war crimes.

It's not "some soldiers", Netanyahu and others at the top have signified their intent to commit genocide with their repeated dehumanization of Palestinians as "Amalek". The Israeli Minister of National Security was a member of a recognized terrorist group. It's not some bad apples, the leadership in Israel is rotten to the core.

But it's clear that no matter what I say you're gonna excuse it. Throwing a baby into an oven in front of the father is some next level nazi shit. If you'll excuse that you'll excuse anything

> But it's clear that no matter what I say you're gonna excuse it. Throwing a baby into an oven in front of the father is some next level nazi shit. If you'll excuse that you'll excuse anything.

I didn't excuse it. I said it was a terrible act.

It was also committed more than 70 years ago, technically before Israel was even founded. Quite literally 3 years after millions of Jews were systematically burned in Nazi-Germany's ovens. Do you think Germany's actions in WW2 are relevant if discussing Germany today?

> It's not "some soldiers", Netanyahu and others at the top have signified their intent to commit genocide with their repeated dehumanization of Palestinians as "Amalek".

Those were statements made the week after the horrible October 7th massacre. They were propaganda statements that should never have been made, but you call it repeated. And it isn't.

What has been repeated is the thousands of times that Netanyahu and others have said that Israel is only going after Hamas, not Gazan civilians.

> The Israeli Minister of National Security was a member of a recognized terrorist group.

Well that I can't argue with. That minister is a disgusting human being who is completely destroying Israel from within, even apart from the vile things he is doing against Palestinians. Luckily his impact on the war isn't huge, but he definitely has some impact, including scuttling ceasefire deals and pressuring for the war to continue.

He is vile and Israel should be ashamed he has any influence on Israel at all, let alone being in charge of the police. (Most Israelis agree about this, unfortunately the totally corrupt Netanyahu needs him for his own political ambitions, because all normal Israelis politicians refuse to work with him!)

> It was also committed more than 70 years ago, technically before Israel was even founded.

> Those were statements made the week after the horrible October 7th massacre. They were propaganda statements that should never have been made, but you call it repeated. And it isn't.

Hmm... I smell a double standard. Cite Israeli aggression too recently and it's justified sensationalism - cite it from the 50s and you're passing an invisible statute of limitations. Most people on this site are American, they're not going to lambaste you for supporting a political nuthouse lest they scorn themselves. But they will (and rightfully so) contest anyone that tries laundering history to create a halo-effect for their favorite nation. Zionism deserves it's due shake no matter what the conditions were at the time, especially considering how interests in the region predated WWII with the Balfour declaration.

The problem isn't people, but politics. Israel (as does America with their Abrahamic militants) has an extremism problem that has been given undue control over government and military proceedings. Their actions (as you've admit with the propaganda concession) has justified insane actions and statements that cannot be rationally supported. The events of October 7th were gruesome indeed, but most people will admit that Israel's reactions were too incensed to take seriously. The world's apprehension would be proven correct as Israel made hot-headed mistakes like bombing aid workers and approving poorly-targeted operations as bloody restitution.

Two wrongs don't make a right. The US depends on Israel to not just enforce peace in the Levant, but to export the Western esprit de corps across the world. If Israel continues to allow it's politics to be dictated entirely by identity and emotion, then logic will be rhetorically unnecessary to justify any military action.

> Hmm... I smell a double standard. Cite Israeli aggression too recently and it's justified sensationalism - cite it from the 50s and you're passing an invisible statute of limitations.

My problem with citing one statement out of a thousand is that it gives the wrong impression, especially if that is made in the heat of war rhetoric.

And I don't think there's any double standard with saying that we should consider war crimes committed 80 years ago as less relevant. That's how everyone thinks of things all the time in other contexts. Egypt was one of the countries that fought wars with Israel multiple times - now Egypt and Israel have peace. Moving on from past violence is pretty much how every conflict eventually ends.

> The events of October 7th were gruesome indeed, but most people will admit that Israel's reactions were too incensed to take seriously.

Most people think so. And they might be right. I certainly have a lot of questions and doubts about the way Israel has carried out the war.

But it's worth noting that many/most of the most vocal critics of Israel were incredibly critical before Israel had done almost anything. Israel was accused of genocide almost days after October 7th. And indeed, all over the world, people were protesting Israel while Hamas militants were still inside Israel slaughtering families, before Israel had done any response.

So I take criticism of Israel from some people seriously, but with a huge grain of salt.

> My problem with citing one statement out of a thousand is that it gives the wrong impression, especially if that is made in the heat of war rhetoric.

The Amalek quote is from October or November but

“This is a battle, not only of Israel against these barbarians, it is a battle of civilisation against barbarism,” Dec 24th

> Israeli President Isaac Herzog said a few weeks earlier, on December 5, that Israel’s attack on Gaza is “a war that is intended, really, truly, to save western civilisation… [from] an empire of evil”.

Or you could just check out this database of 500+ genocidal statements presented to the ICJ https://law4palestine.org/law-for-palestine-releases-databas... (not all of them come from the government but it's a great resource)

> My problem with citing one statement out of a thousand is that it gives the wrong impression, especially if that is made in the heat of war rhetoric.

Heat of war rhetoric is exactly the problem here, though. The War on Terror is 20-odd years old now and people are just as skeptical now as they were when aggression initiated. Without objective or logical goals to attain, Israel's defense forces can't cripple the Iranian infrastructure that threatens them, and they instead fight in Gaza as a perceived proxy. And instead of stabilizing their neighboring region, the IDF tactically neutered it to prevent any chance at sovereign control. Their goals are pretty much blatantly obvious, if you're looking at the big picture.

> And I don't think there's any double standard with saying that we should consider war crimes committed 80 years ago as less relevant.

I disagree wholeheartedly, and I suspect the ADL would object too. War crimes are consistently relevant, and stain their associated administration with the intent of bringing specific criminals to justice and preventing patterns of abuse. When the Axis lost in WWII, the Nazi regime fell but the criminals, their ideology and the hateful rhetoric they used persisted. Germany only absolved themselves by committing to complete and good-faith national reformation, which Israel hasn't undergone since the nation's inception.

> Israel was accused of genocide almost days after October 7th.

They were accused of genocide for a lot longer than that. From the very start, Israel ordered the poisoning of wells in Lebanon[0], tacitly endorsed mass-killings in the West Bank[1] and researched minimum sustainment for the remaining Gazan population[2]. It doesn't make you antisemitic to note these things any more than it makes you racist for acknowledging slavery. These are politically and ideologically motivated fascinations with the suppression of a native people that errs on uncanny.

It's not my pleasure to report it in the slightest, because it's a harrowing reflection of how far global powers will bend over to support dubious interests. But it's also our global responsibility to excise all forms of dangerous extremism, otherwise we're just hypocrites. The IDF's attitude (and likely much of Israel, considering the terms of conscription) reaches dangerous levels of nationalism that are synonymous with supremacist and genocidal intent. We don't have to ask ourselves if Israel supports this or not, because settlers in the Golan Heights are allowed to molest the natives without fear of reprisal.

Take your criticism from wherever it pleases you, but do not write off anti-Zionist protest as transient or outdated. Israel has done this to themselves by creating a soft power echo-chamber that only rewards their worst impulses. They've had every opportunity to acknowledge their mistakes and address them, but they refuse relentlessly. I do not respect the IDF, and their actions embarrass me simply by being a member of the first world. They need to change, or Israel will sign their fate as another internationally embarrassing hermit kingdom.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cast_Thy_Bread

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qibya_massacre

[2] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-29/ty-article/.p...

The vast majority (5/6) of the instances refer to were much more recent than 76 years ago, of course -- and fully 2/3 were from just the past 2-3 years. The Deir Yassin reference was just icing on the cake.†

So perhaps you'd like to address those most recent instances instead? With particular emphasis on "purposefully targeting civilians", which you seemed to suggest was no longer an IDF thing, or part of the brand the the State of Israel has gone out of its way to create for itself in the world today.

† Though there are some in the IDF who would strongly disagree, and maintain that Deir Yassin is very much relevant to the current moment -- https://imgur.com/a/UE5q2Fm

> So perhaps you'd like to address those most recent instances instead.

I'm not sure what more you think I can say beyond what I've already said - "It is very clear that some soldiers in the IDF, like in any army, have committed war crimes." Some of the cases in that list are fairly clear war crimes, others are more complicated (and I don't know enough about them).

Let me make my position as clear as I can:

- I'm 100% sure that in this war, plenty of war crimes have occurred.

- I'm personally extremely angry with the lax professional standards of the IDF in many cases, and of the relatively lax threshold for choosing which targest to bomb.

- I would've been happy with a ceasefire a long time ago, mostly to start allowing Gazans to go back to normal life.

That all said, I think Israel's desire to remove Hamas is totally valid, and would probably be better for Israelis and Gazans themselves. Hamas is absolutely acting in many ways in order to maximize civilian deaths, which makes it really hard to take them out without killing civilians, and for the most part, the IDF is doing its best not to kill civilians.

I think if you compare the numbers of combatant vs civilian deaths coming out of Gaza, and look at expert military opinion on the IDF, they're pretty clear that the IDF is doing relatively similarly to how other armies faced with similar situations have done (e.g. the US in Mosul).

And I think war is horrible. You can sit down and list thousands of tragedies, and sometimes war crimes, in every single conflict. That's just not unique to this situation, and listing individual tragedies or crimes is just not by itself evidence of much except that war is terrible.

> With particular emphasis on "purposefully targeting civilians", which you seemed to suggest was no longer an IDF thing

So this conclusion, that the IDF targets civilians on purpose, as a policy, is just wrong. The IDF could kill as many civilians as it wanted with no IDF soldiers dying, pretty much at any time. It has never done so and never will do so, because it doesn't target civilians. Have individual actions been wrong, or do individual soldiers sometimes commit war crimes? Absolutely. But as a policy the IDF does not target civilians.

Yes, between 26 and 31 civilians were killed on the Israeli side [1] (and at least 88 on the Lebanese side in Israeli counterstrikes) - during an entire year of daily rocket attacks.

Compare that to the death toll on October 7, or in Gaza or the West Bank or even just to a single(!) average Israeli airstrike.

I'm really sorry I have to make this comparision and I really don't want to downplay those deaths. I strongly believe that you can't compare individual deaths - but I think you absolutely can compare the orders of magnitude of killing happening.

My point is that those numbers are an indicator that Hezbollah (and also Israel) followed a different strategy in the north (at least they did pre Northern Arrows). Hezbollah's officially claimed goals are "area denial" - they want to prevent the inhabitants of the northern towns from returning to put pressure on the Israeli government - and preventing the IDF from using its full military force in Gaza. From what I can glean from the media, their attacks were consistent with those goals.

(An additional indicator for me is that most of the rockets targeted communities that had already been evacuated shortly after the war began [2] - yet Hezbollah kept hitting them for months and months after that point [3]. If the goal is killing, this would make no sense, however it's logical if the goal is to prevent inhabitants from coming back.)

This is what I meant with them behaving "rational and predictable" and what media at some point started to call "the unwritten rules of engagement". It was clearly a long-term problem for Israel, but nothing that had required some urgent "self defense" actions to avoid immediate death. (Also, a clear path to de-escalation was available the whole time: make a deal.)

(They did change their targeting over time and chose targets that were increasingly southward [4], however that was a slow process over many months)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hezbollah_confl...

[2] https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-769567

[3] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2024-1...

[4] https://israel-alma.org/2024/09/02/the-northern-arena-and-th...

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