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Comment by aprilthird2021 | Hacker News Reader

aprilthird2021

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Many countries are bombing Syria, including Syria itself, Jordan, Russia, and the US, largely because of the ongoing civil war and related ISIS attacks, though Jordan is mostly targeting drug smugglers aligned with the Syrian government. Focusing on Israel is just incredibly ignorant.

"Focusing on Israel" is pretty fair in this instance. Israel has been bombing many important archaeological sites recently (along with hospitals, refugee camps, humanitarian corridors, press offices, schools, etc).

Have any of these countries (except the US) bombed Syria within the past few months that this discovery could be from?

Also the discovery is actually from 2004, so the point of my question was valid, it's not safe to do such research there now due to geopolitics

I had the same question, especially that the researchers are from a western "enemy" country. It's impressive the length researchers go to, well, research.

Often these things have been sitting in a drawer somewhere for years before the research is released.

> Archaeologists first found the cylinders in 2004

https://archive.ph/YOsqx

(Also: "It’s an alphabet. It’s easy-peasy. I’m used to much tougher things," said Silvia Ferrara, who was not involved.)

Thanks for the clarification. And, yes, that quote is so badass!

Most Westerners have their ancestry in Syria, the Levant, Mesopotamia if you go back far enough. Not that that is the only criterion!

You may be thinking of Lebanon.

Isreal is regularly bombing targets in Syria as well. But the targets seem to be mostly military installations, so the civilian life is not nearly as much disrupted as it is in Lebanon.

According to Israel's Dahiya doctrine, civilian targets are legitimate targets in order to put pressure on opposing governments.

Syria has been bombed way more by Assad, the dictator of Syria, than by Israel.

Assad has killed about half a million Syrians already in the civil war.

  > Assad has killed about half a million Syrians already in the civil war.

How can that be true? Western academics protest when so many people are killed. The Gaza health ministry itself claims less that 1/10 of that number, and look at how many protests and riots are in the US right now. If Syria really had half a million dead you'd see the academics rioting about that.

People typically protest their own government to effect policy changes. In the case of Gaza, the US is sending billions of dollars to Israel on a regular basis. The Syrian government, meanwhile, has been sanctioned for more than a decade by these western countries.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_agai...

Keep in mind that Gaza's Health Ministry isn't really functional any more, and they are in no state to keep numbers.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Isn't this pretty much the definition of terrorism?

The definition of terrorism generally excludes acts performed by a legitimate state. Whenever this causes problems, you have to declare the relevant state illegitimate (which, depending on the state, may be trivial or highly contested).

It's also been standard practice in war since pretty much forever. Not that that's a good thing—war is and always has been terrible—but Israel didn't invent the idea of targeting civilians, nor are there any countries in recent history who have suddenly become above that kind of warfare. There are some that like to talk the talk, but they either have managed to just avoid war (to be fair, good on them) or do the same thing.

Israel does regularly bomb Syria.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/12/how-can-israel-att...

Syria also regularly bombs Syria.

It's worth mentioning the ongoing civil war in Syria that so far result in around 700k dead.

The USA sponsors ISIS terrorism inside Syria. I wonder if that's why they are in the position to "bomb themselves."

It's worth mentioning that this is an externally state sponsored "civil war" on both sides. The most appropriate description is "proxy war."

It was closer to a "regime change" proxy war with thousands of imported fighters, rather than a "civil war".

Syria has been bombed far more by the US and Turkey than Israel, and a significant area is currently being occupied by Turkey. Israel is barely a player in this conflict and is just striking the occasional tactical or strategic target (like random factions attacking Israel, IRGC or Hezbollah leadership).

But the answer is that there's really not much bombing at this point. A bigger problem for Syria is the multi-faction conflict on the ground, of which Hezbollah was one of the biggest factions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_war#Belligerents

You might be confusing it with Lebanon, but Syria has been bombed by Israel and is pretty unstable in general so it's impressive they were able to do this research regardless. People shouldn't be downvoting you for asking a question.

Nah Israel is heavily assaulting Syria too, these days, at this moment, continuously. Special ops raids for targeted killing, blowing up some stuff or the other, bombing places. They don't even try to hide it, videos from chopper pilots, drones and helmet cams from soldiers are all over internet.

It may have some good reasons behind given war they wage on Lebanon, or just settling decades old political grudges, don't know.

  > It may have some good reasons behind given war they wage on Lebanon

The day after Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, Lebanon (well, Hezbollah) stepped up their rocket attacks on Israel. Israel had to evacuate the entire north of the country, so that combined with the evacuated people from the Gaza area means something like 200,000 internally displaced Israelis right now. Hezbollah has killed dozens of citizen across the border, most prominently 12 children playing soccer a few months ago. They bombed two kindergartens in Israel this past week.

Honestly, I don't understand why the threshold for war seems to be ground invasion. If you're shooting missiles at another country, that's war too. Israel is at war with Syria, Iran, and Lebanon imo. Not to mention Hamas.

When we bomb, it's called a preemptive strike. It's only considered war when the enemy responds.

Welcome to the "rules based international order"

Also giving billions worth of weapon is seemingly totally fine but selling shells and sending troops to an allied country is "an escalation" when the opponent camp does it. The double standards and double speak is so tiring.

Also, Israel claims it must preemptively strike and do all sorts of things due to what its enemies may do to them, but given how much slaughter and actual genocide Israel sanctioned its allies to do in Lebanon in its history, they would be equally justified in reverse

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