Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

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> not a modern war though. It's asymmetric warfare

Modern (i.e. post nuclear) war is always fought asymmetrically. And great powers constantly fight asymmetric wars. (Israel isn't a great power, but it is an emerging regional hegemon.)

In this case, we have a proxy war between America and Israel, on one hand, and Iran and its proxies, on the other hand, with Gaza and to a lesser degree Yemen being the board's pawns.

> IDF and contractors are just enacting methodical slaughter and starvation techniques in an indiscriminate manner surely?

I genuinely can't figure out why anyone in this war is doing what they are doing.

Hamas' winning move is to return the hostages--they're greater leverage for Netanyahu at this point than the villa-dwellers in Doha. Tel Aviv's winning move is to end hostilities with a tight security cordon around Gaza to prevent Iran from resupplying Hamas. Tehran's winning move is to offer dropping support for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis if the Security Council agrees to (a) an independent Palestinian state and (b) dropping sanctions. (And, like, not bomb Australian Jews. Though Tehran's position makes the most sense, not because it's rational, but because Iranian hardliners gain domestic power when Iran is isolated. Sort of like Netanyahu.) The only folks without a winning line are America, the EU and the people of Palestine and Israel.

That said, detaining a Hamas member is not indiscriminate. Even if the paperwork says they're a librarian, it's reasonable to act on hunches in wartime provided they're treated like POWs.

But we know they are not treated as POWs. That is well documented: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinians_in_Israeli_cust... - see Human Rights abuses.

The mistreatment includes obvious civilians and children and their mistreatment includes heinous, evil acts.

Theoretical arguments that don't reflect the actual facts really shouldn't be a point of discussion.

I don't agree with the entire premise that military power can enact a war and that allows it to detain, torture and kill anyone associated with the other side. That doesn't meet any moral or ethical threshold that should be acceptable.

The might is right argument is just self-serving to those that don't want to be accountable no matter how horrifying what they have done.

> we know they are not treated as POWs

Sure. Nothing I suggested is being done.

> military power can enact a war and that allows it to detain, torture and kill anyone associated with the other side

Nobody argued this.

> Sure. Nothing I suggested is being done.

Does that not invalidate a reasonable amount of your points above?

> Nobody argued this.

I view what Israel is doing now as exactly that.

There is an argument it has been doing it for decades.

> Does that not invalidate a reasonable amount of your points above?

Which ones? The original point is that detaining a Hamas member is not unusual even if they were just a librarian.

I find it "reasonable to act on hunches in wartime provided" such prisoners are "treated like POWs." But reasonableness is not the same as precedent. While Israeli torture is certainly far along the spectrum of what America and China have done, and Russia and India are suspected to have done when dealing with hybrid elements, it's not particularly outlying.

What is outlying is detaining an elderly mother and leaving her children on the streets. That was my top-level argument. Focussing on the common horribleness is good for, I guess, educating everyone on why we shouldn't do war. But if the horribleness isn't particular to this war, that message is not only lost, it serves to cover up the specific horribleness that increasingly sets this one apart.

If they aren't being treated like POW's then your argument doesn't hold in this case.

So hunches for instance aren't reasonable because they will lead to non-POW treatment of whoever is detained. How they are classified is also no longer relevant as we are talking about a proposition to detain and mistreat regardless of classification. And I'd go further and say it's deliberate.

Similarly, I don't really hold with arguments that are based on others doing the same or worse. It doesn't change for me that the objective here being pursued is collective punishment. What's been enacted is clearly not warfare but deliberate targeting of the whole population in addition to ethnic cleansing/genocide, so in an entirely different category to assess.

Hamas has offered to return the hostages many times and Israel refuses to stop the killing. Missing in your analysis is Israel’s primary goal: ethnically cleanse all of Palestine and enforce Jewish supremacy.

> Hamas has offered to return the hostages many times and Israel refuses to stop the killing

Offering and doing are different. Unilaterally returning the hostages is the winning move for Palestinians. It is not for Hamas’ leadership, however, so it won’t happen.

> Missing in your analysis is Israel’s primary goal: ethnically cleanse all of Palestine and enforce Jewish supremacy

This is like equating hard liners with Iran or Hamas with Palestine.

There are elements in Israel who want this. There are elements without who are okay with it. Nobody is particularly motivated to intervene because the burden is purely moral—there isn’t a unique industry or diaspora for Palestinians to call on.

Hamas and Likud benefit from the war continuing. (Their right wing elements are both exterminationist. They have been for years. Nothing new there.)

Let's say Hamas returned the hostages. What would happen next? What makes that the "winning move?"

My guess is that Netanyahu would say that the war can't end until "all the terrorists are dead" (impossible), and the Palestinians have given up the one bit of leverage that they have.

> Let's say Hamas returned the hostages. What would happen next?

The international terms of the debate would change. The domestic political situation in Israel would change.

Netanyahu’s hand would be significantly weakened by losing hostages as a justification to his electorate and even the IDF. Hamas, however, would face pointed questions over why it didn’t recognise that the hostages were a liability sooner (I frankly question if they were ever an asset at all—Sinwar’s purpose, to draw in Iran, was a dud).

If you want to get conspiratorial, consider that the one red line Netanyahu has respected is Hamas’ leadership’s security in Doha.

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