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Comment by neepi | Hacker News Reader

I don't like getting involved in political threads but on this I have to.

All information presented is mostly unverified testimony printed verbatim by the press from untrustworthy sources on both sides. It's difficult to tell what is fact and what is not. A lot of early reports in this war turned out to be false information and the rush to immediate news notification rather than quality journalism means that the headline changes context very quickly from the first cut to what people read and remember. (I wrote an extensive suite of software to track this)

Wait and see. Do not judge too early. Take nothing as verbatim from anyone without evidence.

Don't be unknowing partisans of an information war. Veracity takes time.

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This has been one of the deadliest conflicts for journalists in history. The number of killed journalists is very safe data, since the names are known and the cause of death is typically relatively well researched.

The story told by the data is that these journalists are overwhelmingly killed by Israeli forces, in some cases with prior notice of the press being where it was.

So if the IDF wants the press to tell the true story on the ground maybe let them do their work without killing them? The quesrion is: at which point do we have to stop assuming incompetence and start to assume malice (at least in parts)? For me personally that point has been months in the past.

This will be a stain on Israel for the rest of history.

I don't disagree with you there at all. That again backs up my point. There is a lot of information and evidence to back those cases up. Which should be the universal standard that we hold everyone accountable to.

This information didn't just appear out of nowhere. It took time to collate, source and verify.

> This information didn't just appear out of nowhere. It took time to collate, source and verify.

Could you try to rely less on using vague innuendo on HN? If you have reasonable doubt in a theory and/or additional/missing information that isn't purely anecdotal that lead you to your statement consider sharing it on here. If you don't have any information consider the option that your opiniom might not be as much supported by the ground truth as you probably like it to be.

Journalists like these are professionals that are paid to work in a conflict zone, if they are killed, of course their death will be noted. It works like this in literally every conflict on earth and there are international organizations that monitor violence against journalists because they are an fundamentally important pillar of any free society.

The question is why the technologically advanced IDF kills journalists at rates higher than in any other conflict zone on earth. This isn't a statistical anomaly that can be simply hand-waved away. It describes the nature of this conflict with numbers that are written with blood.

Anybody who defends the killing of journalists in a war zone is on the wrong side of history, period.

There are indeed a lot of statistical anomalies in this conflict and your wrong side of history argument will very likely be wrong again.

Don't want to keep you from your hobby though. I don't think many comments in this thread do reach any sensible HN standards for that matter.

Hamas member gets a press west by hamas newspaper or the muslim brotherhood (quatar) then participates in hamas warcrimes like using ambulances as troop transports and gets humused. Nobody believes those loud lies anymore.. that whole narrative is falling apart.

You are defending the killing of civillian journalists in a war zone using unchecked propaganda — if you make bold claims, you gotta bring the receipts as well.

The bold claim is that there can be free "press" in Afghanistan, iean or the isil caliphate. Theocrates will be total

This has nothing to do with the point discussed. Unless of course you want to infer from your (unsourced) allegation that because press freedom is problematic in certain regions it is therefore okay for a foreign nation to kill said journalists, since they weren't free anyways. We would have to ignore the international journalists that got killed for this train of thought to work.

I hope you realize that this would be genocidal rhetoric. The kind of thinking that lead to the worst atrocities humanity has ever committed. But hey as long as it is happening to the dehumanized subhumans it is okay, right?

Is a journalist still a journalist if he’s launching rockets, carry a gun and grenades? Hamas and PIJ has filmed themselves wearing “press” vests while doing these things.

Many of the journalists in Gaza are Hamas operatives until they die. When suddenly their twitter or fb account is used to claim they’re a journalist.

You’re being lied to on a regular basis about nearly everything that comes out of Gaza. Aside from 3rd party medic accounts we have zero evidence of any of these supposed crimes. This is the most filmed war in history and yet after 3 weeks of claims by Hamas that GHF is shooting and booby trapping aid there is literally zero actual evidence to support that.

Please amend the Wikipedia-list on the topic with sourced information if you have the strong evidence required by your extraordinary claim.

In such a conflict both sides have incentives to twist reality, but since the names of the killed journalists are public you can do research and provide a valuable service to the public by ensuring the truth is out there. But this means "trust me bro" isn't going to cut it.

The information is unverified because Israel does not allow journalists into Gaza.

Haaretz is the last news organization I would expect to knowingly spread anti-israel disinformation. If these guys are telling you what Israel is doing is bad then it's bad.

Could you elaborate? Because it's an Israeli news organization?

Yes, and one of the more prominent ones at that. If they had a bias in this, I would expect them to be biased in favor of Israel not against it. If even they are saying Israel is committing these war crimes then I'm inclined to assume that the evidence must be very compelling.

Just for the record, this is almost certainly wrong in the sense you mean it.

Haaretz is a (far?) left, anti-current-government newspaper. It's not outside the mainstream or anything - it is considered largely credible, and its articles are taken seriously - but most people in Israel would find it funny that you assume it wouldn't be biased against Israel. Lots of Netanyahu supporters routinely consider it a "traitorous" publication.

I think its articles should be taken seriously, but you can't simply assume it's automatically right and not "biased". Think of it the way an American Democrat would think of Fox or something - the news org definitely has a viewpoint.

Lots of people still believe that "critical of the government" is not the same as "biased against the country." That's an explicitly authoritarian belief and a disastrous framework to work within. It's antithetical to the concept of human rights and notable historical documents such as the American Constitution.

The bias of a mainstream publication that's considered "traitorous" by genocidal authoritarian ethnonationalists is, given historical consideration, likely to be toward justice.

I don't think you can frame a media outlet based on which administration is currently in power. Anything and everything an administration says is propaganda, and hence untrustworthy.

I.e. your claim that it is leftist requires some justification.

Yeah, sure, if you are a Nazi, everything to the left of you is going to look "left", and likewise if you are a Communist, everything to the right is going to look "right", that doesn't make your viewpoint reality, however.

I don't think I'm framing Haaretz based on the current administration.

I'm a leftist - I identify far more with what Haaretz is doing than most other news orgs. I'm personally very angry that other orgs, even ones that are "centrist" or "anti-current-government", are not covering the stories that Haaretz is covering, and barely covering the tragedies happening in Gaza. It's common in most countries during wartime, but it's deeply wrong IMO.

That all said, saying Haaretz is on the left is like saying Fox News is on the right. It's common knowledge.

And here, I just looked it up, this is from Haaretz's own About section:

"Haaretz has built a reputation for in-depth reporting, insightful analysis, and a liberal and progressive editorial stance on domestic issues and international affairs."

So they are framing themselves as liberal and progressive.

> All information presented is mostly unverified testimony printed verbatim by the press from untrustworthy sources on both sides.

Why do you say its "unverified" ? The commander in question: Brigadier General Yehuda Vach is formally under investigation for several crimes already: https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-said-to-launch-probe-into-...

This nutcase general has faced consistent accusations from soldiers under his own command over the last year for over a dozen incidents alone. What is your holy threshold for evidence ? How can you "wait and see" if the press is not allowed at the food distribution site ? Basically, you are saying "wait and sweep it under the carpet".

Wait and see while each day people keep dying? And who the hell is going to do these investigations?

>(I wrote an extensive suite of software to track this)

Interesting. . . do you have a page for the project or anything?

No it’s internally used. Think of it like archive.ph but with text extraction and a diff like interface over the text.

Can you share examples then?

I found it: https://magic-8ball.com/

Sorry, but the killing of unarmed civilians seeking aid has been reported half a dozen times by many different outlets. The IDF denials are getting quite absurd. The only one suffering from disinformation is you.

I haven’t made a point either way. Please don’t quote me on things I haven’t said. That is morally and intellectually dishonest.

There is a point at which pleas to wait for "better" evidence can be construed as denials.

"There is ample evidence and this is not a new accusation, so your request to wait and see rings hollow and appears to be a de facto request to not pass judgement on Israeli crimes" is neither morally nor intellectually dishonest.

The lack of journalism in this conflict is a direct result of Israel forbidding press access and their targeting of Palestinian and other journalists. This deliberate effort enables them to then criticize the reporting which is done and cast doubt over sources.

Since October 7th sources from within Palestine have been accurate regarding deaths and actions. Often being attacked first and then quietly acknowledged later.

There is no reason to doubt the reporting of Israel’s paper of record, which though considered left wing writhing Israel, supports Netanyahu’s attacks on Gaza and applies rigorous journalistic standards.

What measure of proof (evidence) do you require?

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