How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized | Hacker News Reader

How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized

cnn.com

1,205 pointsnashashmi1,364 comments

Israel's response to Oct 7th has been a major blackpill.

Their strategy was, I think, as bad as it could possibly be. In fact, it really seemed, and still seems, like no strategy at all -- they lashed out wildly and extremely destructively, without a clear picture of what the post-war Gaza Strip will look like.

Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response that killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, which played directly into the dynamics of guerrilla warfare where a strong state's extreme actions against a weak opponent undermine its legitimacy.

Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation.

Yet, rather than adapting, Israel's network doubled down with censorship campaigns, crackdowns on protests, and weaponizing "anti-semitism" accusations to silence critics -- actions that have all backfired. Now international support is collapsing, the EU is pushing sanctions, and the US is slowly distancing itself. Israel's best option right now is to end the war as quickly as possible, and devote all of its efforts to repairing damaged relationships and mitigating the war's effects, before isolation accelerates to the level of sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa.

I'll also note that it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost. Hamas lost the shooting war, the people of Gaza have lost lives and livelihoods which may take more than a decade to rebuild, and Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this.

Sadly I think you are mistaken to paint it as an irrational Israel lashing out - that's too generous.

I think it's quite the opposite - there has been a very clear, cold, calculated strategy - which is to use the conflict as an cover for doing what some in the government have always wanted to do ( and been quite open about it ) - which is to create a greater Israel - drive out all Palestinians from the river to the sea ( Gaza and West Bank ), as well as push to the river in the north into Lebanon and take more of Syria.

Those in government understand the potential reputation loss - but see that as temporary and something that can be managed under the protection of the US, while viewing the gain of territory as permanent.

This is spot on. This has been a recurring practice of the Israeli regime - to take advantage of a terrorist attack or some other pretext in order to take over additional territory and remove the local population. This modus operandi has been practiced since right after the partition resolution at the end of 1947 to conquer Palestinian villages, remove their inhabitants and rase the houses to the ground, and is still practiced today in the occupied territories and Gaza. Like you said, Israel's recent military campaigns in Lebanon and Syria are also examples of the same strategy.

This, for Israel it was a perfect pretext. Netanyahu financed Hamas through Qatar for years because he knew that Hamas is a destructive force for Palestinians and their struggle for nationhood. It was a cold, cynical decision. He exploited the anger and emotions of the people after October 7th to justify what he is doing now.

Here's a thought experiment to underline that, in case there's any confusion.

Q. How many times did any Countries hold islamic-only real-estate expos in Mosques for the former and future homes and territories of Jewish peoples either already dispossessed or planned to be dispossessed due to fundamentalist islamic occupation? _Zero_

Q. How many times did any Countries held jewish-only real-estate expos in Synagogues for the former homes and territories of Muslim peoples either already dispossessed or planned to be dispossessed due to zionist occupation? _Countless_

https://lapublicpress.org/2024/09/israeli-real-estate-fair-h...

https://halifax.citynews.ca/2024/03/07/palestine-is-not-for-...

https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-drawing-protests-in-othe...

https://www.laconverse.com/en/articles/les-coulisses-dun-sal...

They're now at the point where they're paying their contractors $1,500 a house demolished, and constantly inciting violent engagement so as to get the IDF involved and sanitise the area - most notably near the supposed humanitarian relief distribution points they're so fond of double-tap bombing.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250630-shocking-israeli-...

N.B. Israel is now concentrating on the remaining medical facilities, and has carried out at least 17 attacks on or in the vicinity of healthcare facilities in Gaza City since 16 September. (https://www.bmj.com/content/391/bmj.r2078)

Three healthcare facilities—Al Quds Hospital, Al Rantisi Children’s Hospital, and the Medical Relief Health Centre—have all been directly hit, while further strikes were recorded in the vicinity of two more, Al Shifa Medical Complex and Al Ahli Hospital.

Currently, across the Gaza Strip, only 2000 hospital beds remain available, for a population of over 2 million people.

> which is to create a greater Israel

This is fantasy. Israel (or any country really) ability to expand is limited by its neighbors. Egypt, Jordan and the GCC are more powerful than the 60s and the recent UAE message of pulling of the Abraham accord is a clear signal that they have real weight in Washington. Israel cannot, in the current circumstances, expand.

So I agree with your parent. What Israel currently is doing is non-sense and plays in the hands of Hamas (who is not losing, as civilian lost lives do not count in Hamas counter).

Israel's main best option is to give Palestinians, at least those unambiguously born under Israel's control, the right to vote in Israeli federal elections.

A government that can kick down the door of the house you were born in has a duty to give you voting rights.

(And if your ethnic group is denied voting rights, you have a basic duty to your fellow man to raise hell until you get those rights, because arbitrary starvation is always on the table for your children until you get them.)

International law forbids the occupying power to give voting rights to occupied regions.

Its also a bit unclear what you mean by "unambiguously under Israeli control" since Palestinians in occupied palestinian territories aren't unambigiously under Israeli control, they had little control over the inside of Gaza until recently, and have some power in the west bank that is shared with the PA. Neither is "unambiguous control". The only group unambigiously under their control are the Palestinians inside Israel proper who as far as i understand do have full voting rights.

If you think military presence should equal voting rights, than i think that would imply that Iraq should be able to vote in US presedential elections.

Without some strong general protection isn't that just 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner? Seems at least some basic guaranteed rights and freedoms is needed.

> A government that can kick down the door of the house you were born in has a duty to give you voting rights.

100%

The most basic principle in democratic government is that those subject to the monopoly of violence should also have a voice in how that violence is managed.

>it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost

Benjamin Netanyahu is still in power, his trial for corruption continually delayed as a direct consequence of the war:

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

Yes, things look pretty bright for Netanyahu, and the others in the Israeli state who want to do ethnic cleansing or worse. And settlers who want to do ethnic cleansing (not everyone! a minority I presume), are happy too.

Not many mistakes made here, just others who are mistaken about the goals

A big question for me continues to be how much of Israel's behavior isn't really about best options for Israel as a state, but power politics for particular political factions internally.

but that's how every polity operates, you can't influence it more than people already try to influence it.

you can ask the same of Hamas, is theirs the policy the populace wants?

Israel does have a robust free speech democracy and you can easily learn what many of the different factions think, and like elections anywhere, you don't know till afterward how it plays out, and voters are always disappointed by the way power is exercised.

Some have described what we're seeing as an impassioned overreaction to Hamas' initial strike and kidnappings. However, Netanyahu's actions appear far more deliberate. Rhetoric from his own cabinet ministers is now impossible to ignore.

The IDF has taken a very slow and careful approach. There are typically under a hundred Palestinians killed at a time, but they are killed most days with a high degree of consistency. Headlines like "50 civilians killed in Gaza overnight" no longer make it to the front page. There has clearly been careful management to ensure that the numbers don't climb high enough in a single day to upset the new "normal". Israel has banned foreign journalists and the IDF has deliberately targeted those inside of Gaza to further minimize coverage. On top of that, the IDF has targeted healthcare infrastructure and workers while carefully controlling aid to bring about famine without provoking any significant foreign response.

The big concerns now should be how quickly an incipient famine in a region whose healthcare system has been largely eliminated could cause mass deaths, and how long the fog of war Netanyahu has carefully crafted over Gaza might hide it. The remaining window of time in which intervention might prevent tragedy is rapidly closing.

Also the fact they were doing it long before Oct 7 2023 proves it wasn't caused by anything that happened on Oct 7 2023.

They're not losing the information war against Hamas, who they can easily kill if they can identify, they're losing it against those concerned with human rights in the free world. International law (in the absence of diplomatic enforcement) has nothing to do with it, and neither does the complex and detailed history that only serves as a way for people to avoid talking about the present...

I think that’s extremely incorrect tbh. Israel saw an opportunity and they took every inch of it.

They have neutered Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, and effected the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.

I don’t think Israel cares about foreign civilian opinions. Western states are largely still aligned and dependent on Israeli geopolitical presence.

Palestine is not and never was the focal point of this conflict. It was always Iran.

Netanyahu's goal is endless war and conflict so that he'll never have to leave office and finally face criminal charges. I think Oct 7 is exactly what he wanted also.

netanyahu trial is ongoing and actually been picking up pace in past month

> In fact, it really seemed, and still seems, like no strategy at all

Since 2005, Israel has maintained a strategy for managing Gaza called "mowing the grass"[0][1] in which every few years they attack and conduct short, sharp military operations. This is in contrast to their strategy of (illegal) settlements in the West Bank. In fact, they removed 8,000 settlers in 2005 when they began this strategy.

Besides the major hostilities of 2008/9,[2] 2012,[3] 2014,[4] and 2021[5], Israel infamously tests new weapons and technology on Gaza, allowing their weapons to be labelled "battlefield tested". One of their largest export is surveillance technology (guess who's the largest customer of that), but they also test drones, air force tech, and even guns. In October 2020 an IDF sniper boasted to Israeli newspaper Haaretz about breaking the "kneecap record" after shooting 42 Palestinian kneecaps in a single day. The snipers purposefully target kneecaps to permanently disable protestors, especially younger ones and increase the burden of care for Gazan society. This is "peacetime" between Gaza and Israel.

Gaza has been called an "open air prison" and "laboratory"[6] for Israel's military industry. The point I'm making is that Israel has never stopped keeping its eye on Gaza. I find it extremely hard to believe Israel didn't know, with extreme detail, what they were getting themselves into

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

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/14/israel-gaza-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War_(2008%E2%80%932009)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Gaza_War

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Gaza_War

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Israel%E2%80%93Palestine_...

[6] https://www.versobooks.com/products/2684-the-palestine-labor...

> I find it extremely hard to believe Israel didn't know, with extreme detail, what they were getting themselves into

I find it extremely hard to believe Israel didn't know about the Oct 7 attack in the first place, and chose to use it as a reason.

"Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation."

Such as ?

In all this description, with which I agree to a large extent except in believing the "lashing out" to have been very much deliberate, except simply murderous and grossly inept, it's worth mentioning the specific name of that murderous war criminal Netanyahu who is responsible for the majority of the decision making and impetus.

> Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this

Israel probably came out ahead if all they lost is prestige.

They've neutered Iran and become the de facto regional security power. Their weapons and military have been validated, which makes than a desirable trading partner in an increasingly-militarising world. And they're turning into a gas exporter.

Worst case, a generational shift occurs and Israel loses its military support from America. (I don't see us sanctioning Israel any time soon, so its economic primacy will remain intact. And we only pay for like 15% of their military budget, so not a disaster.) Do you really think China and India would even hesitate to partner with Tel Aviv on defense?

> They've neutered Iran and become the de facto regional security power

How did they "neuter" Iran? Iran responded quickly and managed to heavily damage TelAviv and is now rushing to accelerate rebuilding their nuclear capabilities.

If anything, the previous operation was a disaster, it allowed to regime to entrench itself even further in IRAN and regime change that they were hoping for didn't happen.

I'm sure both Iran and Israel are gearing up for another round of heavy conflict later this year or early next year.

IRAN is still very much a threat to Israel.

Iran being neutered is propaganda that is necessary for the (failed, for now) Israeli plan of regime change.

Iran maintains the ability to build ballistic missiles in large numbers, greatly depleted Israel-US BMD reserves, continues to build even more reinforced nuclear sites. Neutering those capabilities was the main goal of the 12 day war and by most accounts, that didn't work.

Israel did not manage air superiority over the large majority of Iran, instead the majority of strikes over Iran were done using standoff weapons and drones, many flown from within Iran as an act of sabotage.

If Israel truly managed to get air superiority over Iran, the Iranian regime would have suffered the same fate as Nasrallah. But that didn't happen, because while Israel was able to execute a number of deep strikes, the capability to do so was much closer to Russia's ability over Ukraine than, say, the way the US operated over Iraq. And Iran at the same time was able to execute dozens of deep strikes within Israel, but with much less precision - without a much deeper cut to the Iranian MIC it's only a matter of time before the newer, much more precise missiles are built in sufficient numbers to become a similar threat to the Israeli airforce.

There is no reason why China would ever want to partner with Israel on defense anymore. They tried do in the 2000s, and they found that Israel was so deeply and inextricably dependent on US technology and manufacturing for it's military technology that there was almost nothing worthwhile they could get that wasn't so dependent on the US that the US would veto it. Israel's military sophistication is not endogenous to the extent it would be competitive without the US - it's entirely dependent on an extremely privileged relationship with the MIC that allows Israel to stand on the shoulder of giants and produce weapons that are far more sophisticated than would be possible for any economy of its' size otherwise.

An article came out only today on Haaretz detailing how much of the footage and imagery from Israeli strikes were deepfakes or recycled footage. That's not something you do when you've managed to neuter your opponent.

Israel an the US are a single entity when it comes to security matters in the middle east. It was already the de facto regional power.

They haven't "neutered" Iran, all they've proven is that they're actually quite ineffective against Iran and Yemen. They've also become the most hated country in all of the world. Their citizens have to hide their citizenship when they travel back to Europe. Israel won't last another 10 years.

You may not realize it but Israel is slowly becoming Rhodesia/Apartheid South Africa. And i don't mean the word 'apartheid' as a cudgel.

During the Rhodesian Bush War, their forces ran circles around the ZIPRA and ZANLA with multiple battles and encounters where they'd routinely record 500:1 KD ratios like Operation Dingo, etc. They had complete freedom of action to bomb any infrastructure obstructing them, reach deep into neighboring countries and slaughter guerillas copiously.

Hell, South Africa had a dozen nukes.

Once the sanctions came on, it unraveled everything they had.

Israel is in such a precarious situation right now. Their economy depends on technology exports to an extreme degree. Cutting off that source of FX would literally half the economy overnight because cash would stop sloshing around internally from its main sources.

If that happens, all the smart kids propping up the economy will move out while you're left with extremists who want war but won't fight in the army. In fact, it's ongoing right now with people leaving the country in the midst of a war they're 'winning.'

You might think sanctions are a far-off notion, but key Western powers are breaking with America on recognizing Palestine. That's a red line designed to signal to Israel that it's losing ground. People across the world are calling for sanctions and it won't be long before they materialize.

And America? Israel's main power base are American boomer evangelicals who're going the way of the dinosaur. Like I said in another comment, their kids are either not religious, don't like bombing kids, have been radicalized by the atrocities they've witnessed, or are aligned with people like Fuentes.

I hope they can smell the coffee; if anyone had told South Africa that a nuclear power could be disarmed without a gunshot, they'd never have believed it. But, look what eventually happened.

Thanks to the ongoing genocide, America's voting demographic for the next 40 years has begun to see Israel as a genocidal terrorist state. They will be voting for the next 50 years, while the boomer evangelicals die off.

The article says on a low period they found people were eating 1400 calories a day at one point. If there was more than that they would have listed it. Israel targets a higher number but that is what it got to in the worst situation the article could find to list.

The United States Red Cross sets as a floor 1500 calories a day for people in distress. Is the Red Cross trying to starve Americans in distress?

https://emergency.lacity.gov/sites/g/files/wph1791/files/202...

The UN just cut food aid in Kenya for 800,000 refugees from the war in Sudan in half to 588 calories per day, yet the UN says it is willing and able to provide significantly higher amounts of food (and to not do so would be criminal) to the 2 million people of Gaza. Is the UN criminal/genocidal against Kenyan/Sudanese for offering starvation level assistance to one group but significantly more to another? The UN says they are ready and able to provide assistance to one group at the very same time the cut in half/say they can't provide aid that meets the level they say Gaza must receive when it is people in Kenya that need aid. Kenyan war refugees are receiving significantly less per person than that 1400 calorie at 588.

https://allafrica.com/stories/202505230270.html

Agreeing with the other sibling comments. I think in part it was following the same vision that the current Israeli government had been following already before Oct. 7 - they had annexation of the West Bank listed as one of the official goals of their coalition since they were elected.

Another part stemmed from the extreme dehumanization of Palestinians that was already established in Israeli society long before (and to a lesser extent also in other western countries). The overton window had already been shifted so far that this kind of response was seen as mostly normal.

I found the standard justifications of "eh, war is always cruel" and "when their kids grow up, they will just become the next generation of terrorists" pretty telling.

I thought Israel said its (strategy?) aim was to remove? Hamas so it could no longer be a threat.

> the US is slowly distancing itself.

Public opinion in the US has turned against Israel, yes. Trump doesn't care about public opinion. He'll be buddy-buddy to Netanyahu other than symbolic acts of distancing / reprimanding.

I think that's mostly accurate, but to be fair he did recently sign an executive order guaranteeing military defense of Qatar, which was clearly a message to Israel that they better not mess with them. It's far from a backpedal on his support for Israel, but it does show he won't let them do anything they want (at least if he is speaking honestly)

> Trump doesn't care about public opinion

Of course he does. But he's currently most sensitive to Republican voters' opinions, and they're still at 64% net sympathy for Israel and 9% for Palestine. (55% of Trump voters say "Israel should continue its military campaign until Hamas is fully eliminated, even if it means the civilian casualties in Gaza might continue," while only 29% say "Israel should stop its military campaign in order to protect against civilian casualties, even if Hamas has not been fully eliminated" [1].)

As the midterms come closer, that 26% independent net support for Israel becomes more pertinent, as do the 67% of independents who want Israel to stop its campaign.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/02/polls/times-s...

Trump is also "buddy-buddy" with a lot of the Gulf States, in fact, he probably likes them more because they have more money to give him. If Israel does something they don't like, such as bomb Qatar, Trump can swing against Israel.

Trump turns on his friends the moment it's convenient to do so.

Well Hamas did write they want to kill all Israel. Hamas did slaughter , rape and torture 1200 civilians , children and babies. and take at least another 200? hostage Then paraded some of them thru Gaza. Exactly what response did Hamas expect. Also Trump has said 30,000 of the cira 60000 dead are Hamas fighters.

Look at the situation on October 7. 6000 armed terrorists swarmed across the border of gaza, commiting atrocities the like of which were not even thought to be possible in todays day and age among civilised people. I was never under any illusion of what hamas was and i was still shocked. The political climate in Israel up until that day was trying to help gazas economy and assuming hamas were pragmatic enough not to seek a war.

But it became clear that not only did they spend their main efforts in the previous few years planning this massacre, but they had embedded themselves as deeply as possible in every single part of gaza as possible. Their tunnel network is more extensive then the London underground. Their bases are in hospitals and schools. Undeniable facts except to the most cynical and dishonest people out there.

But what dismayed me the most was the response of the average palestinian on the street. Ecstatic celebration, i saw videos of crowds literally shrieking and crying for joy, at the single most shameful crime against humanity that was ever committed in their name.

No other country in the world would do anything different in Israels place. Most would go much further. You can express disgust at their actions from your place where you would never have to confront such barbarity. Hamas planned and created the entire situation you just described and left no other course of action for Israel to take. What else should they have done? Don't tell me some stupid idea like make peace with them and stop the settlements etc. Those are grievences entirely made up of anti israel people and does not address the reality of who hamas and far too many palestinians are.

War is horrible. I don't want it. No one wants it. This one is just and necessary. The world can sit and wait or they can help meaningfully.

If you want to argue explain to me how Israelis and any human being should view and respond to the scenes of joy and celebration they saw on and after Oct 7. Even today there is very little remorse or even regret.

Your metrics are yours alone. Ask Hamas if they won? If they stay in power in Gaza, trust me, they won. Same as if the Nazis were still in control of Germany, Stalin in charge of Russia, ISIS in charge of Iraq and Syria and the Khmer Rouge in charge of Cambodia…

Your suggestion that Israel stop fighting in contrast to Trump’s direct words stating that he will back Israel fully in defeating Hamas if Hamas does not accept his deal which involves them fully disarming, is essentially suggesting that Israel should accept defeat even when it has the backing of the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Now either you are ignorant or you are intentionally malevolent in your suggestion… take your pick

So what would you do if you're Israel? Suck it up? Leave the hostages to rot in Gaza? Wait until the next coordinated attack from Iran, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza? Israel's enemies want it destroyed- that's what's at stake here. If Hamas had a chance it would keep going and murder all Israelis, not just the ones they managed to before they were repelled.

What sort of adaptation are you proposing?

I do agree Israel is taking a hit on the world stage. This is part of the war and Israel has a hard time defending itself against enemies with vast resources. Those enemies are also more than happy to distract and splinter the western nations with this topic. Russia has a better standing in the world with its war of aggression on Ukraine amongst many other problems. Most western countries who were/are happy to abandon Israel would (and have) respond with significantly more force to a similar attack on themselves.

It remains to be seen what are the longer term consequences here. Not just on Israel.

What we have seen throughout this is not criticism. It is hate. It is often directed at Jews, not just at the Israeli government. Not 100% but a large percentage. It's not that Israel's response has no problems - it has many problems. But the discourse on this is not rational and not fact based. The media and the various actors are pushing agenda and ideology. This isn't unique to Israel here, we see this on political issues, a discourse that is tribal, not rational but rather emotional, manipulated by the media (social and otherwise). CNN here is treating Israel basically as it treats Trump and the republicans. CNN is not in the news business, it is in the shaping political opinion business.

Would you say the west's response to ISIL/ISIS chopping the heads off a few westerners, a couple of random terrorist attacks in the west, and burning a Jordanian pilot alive would also be characterized as "extreme actions against a weak opponent"? How did CNN cover that conflict?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_against_the_Islamic_State

- >83k militants killed.

- 10's of thousands civilians killed. (IMO vastly underestimated, one source claims 40k killed just in the battle for Mosul: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mosul_(2016%E2%80%93... )

- millions displaced.

So criticism is hate? I'm Jewish does that mean I am hateful when I am critical of the actions of the Israeli government? Are you claiming none of the critism is legitimate and its all hate? Is criticism of Israel antisemetic? Because last I checked Israel is not a religion.

> what would you do if you're Israel?

Let in the food. Flood Gaza with food, actually, so it stops being a recruitment tool for militants.

always with the emotional manipulation, and when that doesn’t work go Samson on people

your entire narrative screams “I’m the victim here, please validate my aggressions, abuses and violence”.

the state of Israel has not been respectful since day one of it’s inception (violating the defined borders) neither truly wants a two state solution.

this outcome is the product of what escalated from that.

at least you understand the correlation between a figure like Trump and the state of Israel, that’s exactly on point.

it’s ok when one side violates borders and even settles on foreign land but when reactionary action (you’ve helped shape) takes place, you’re now the victim…

I would never be in Israel's position because I don't believe in genocide or land theft, thus would not have created this fake state in the first place.

> So what would you do if you're Israel? Suck it up? Leave the hostages to rot in Gaza?

What they're doing doesn't seem to be working, so maybe something else.

This is just armchair military philosophizing, but after the October attack, go ahead and do some big disproportionate response stuff for 30-90 days, then a ceasefire and prisoner exchange (this happened). But if the ceasefire doesn't work out, you can't go back to disproportionate response on the October attack; that doesn't look reasonable. Cat and mouse strikes on leadership until the hostages are released (edit: but not while leaders are gathered for peace negotiations!). You can still do proportionate response for any tit-for-tat kind of attacks in the occupied zone.

A war of occupation is a PR thing. You need to convince outside observers you're occupation is reasonable --- two years of disproportionate response doesn't do that. You also want to convince the occupied people not to support armed resistance; disproportionate response can work for that, but IMHO not over a long period of time; in the short term, it can get people to demand a stop to fighting, but after two years, again IMHO it just breeds more desire to fight.

You also need some sort of plan for after the hostilities end. How do you set the conditions so this is less likely to happen in the future. Really, the best way to have peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine as two states is for Israel and Palestine to both be prosperous; Israel needs to help make that happen, because it's in Israel's interests --- even if maybe it doesn't feel like it; a prosperous Palestine will be incentivized to be peaceful because prosperity is tenuous; a destitute Palestine has no need to be peaceful, because it has nothing to lose.

There's a lot of talk about ending Hamas; maybe that would do it, but if Hamas disbands today, you need something to replace the government services they provide. What's the plan for that? What would the interim system look like between now and that; can you enforce the interim system now as a way to push Hamas out?

Alternately, big problems require big solutions. Forcibly return Gaza to Egyptian control, as it was before the Six Day War, and encourage Egypt to deal with Hamas through diplomacy and response to future attacks from within Gaza as if they were from Egypt.

Perhaps return the West Bank to Jordan ... maybe do the return of the West Bank first as a show of 'if y'all give us the hostages, we'll end the occupation' Returning the West Bank is hard, because you've got to figure out what to do with the settlers, which is probably a lot of tricky negotiations over which settlements can be kept with a land swap and which have to be abandoned, so it probably can't be done super fast.

"What we have seen throughout this is not criticism. It is hate. It is often directed at Jews, not just at the Israeli government. Not 100% but a large percentage."

This is exactly the blackpill. I live in a Muslim-majority country. Jews and Muslims have been allies since the start of Islamic history. Yes, there was some hate for Jews 20 years ago, but it has been gradually displaced into Zionist hate.

The recent analogy is Imperial Japan. The Japanese killed, raped, starved our people. But it was specifically the Imperial Japanese, not the citizens. Firebombing citizens didn't make anything better and it only slowed the process of post-war healing. We have great relationships with Germans and Japanese today despite their past. Moving on is an option.

Some of it is because we see the same pattern. Nationalist politics will always say, "Everyone hates you. We are the only ones who will protect you." For the former British territories, it was the playbook.

I do believe the only way to break from this cycle is to break this hold. Internally: don't keep genocidal leaders in power. Externally: avoid all this racist shit that gives fascists their power base.

> Their strategy was, I think, as bad as it could possibly be.

After the October 7 attacks it was critical that Israel re-establish deterrence, not doing so would be inviting more attacks.

> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response that killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, which played directly into the dynamics of guerrilla warfare where a strong state's extreme actions against a weak opponent undermine its legitimacy.

It turns out a disproportionate response is a rather effective strategy at deterring ones enemies from attacking, it worked quite well with Hezbollah which was considered by Israel to be a much more serious threat to Israel than Hamas was.

> Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation.

What other option did they have realistically? The middle east isn't a region where pacifism tends to work out well.

> Yet, rather than adapting, Israel's network doubled down with censorship campaigns, crackdowns on protests, and weaponizing "anti-semitism" accusations to silence critics -- actions that have all backfired. Now international support is collapsing, the EU is pushing sanctions, and the US is slowly distancing itself. Israel's best option right now is to end the war as quickly as possible, and devote all of its efforts to repairing damaged relationships and mitigating the war's effects, before isolation accelerates to the level of sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa.

Keep in mind that statements politicians make publicly about Israel are often rather different from what they really think, politicians placating various activist groups for domestic political reasons doesn't often translate into meaningful adverse actions against Israel. The Israeli stock market is at all time highs right now despite everything that has happened.

I agree Israel has been way too slow at ending the war, their reluctance to take actions to finish off Hamas(or force their capitulation/surrender) and end the war is not helping either the Palestinian people or Israelis.

> I'll also note that it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost. Hamas lost the shooting war, the people of Gaza have lost lives and livelihoods which may take more than a decade to rebuild, and Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this.

Israel losing the media war was probably somewhat inevitable, the extreme disparity between worldwide Muslim population sizes and Jewish population sizes being a big factor, but that isn't really an entirely new issue either.

Despite all this Israel has largely re-established military deterrence in the Middle East and is on a path to normalize relations with countries like Saudi Arabia once Hamas is either forced to surrender or degraded enough that they lose their ability to govern Gaza.

A country loses its right to "re-establish deterrence" when the population it's "deterring" is born inside its own de-facto borders, and when the only reason it needs to deter so many of them is that they would (rightly) like one of a) sovereignty or b) voting rights inside the federal system that controls their borders and can kick down the doors of the houses they were born in.

If Israel would like to give Gaza full sovereignty, or Palestinians born inside the occupied territories the right to vote in the federal systems that determine their law enforcement environment, we can talk about deterrence and law enforcement respectively.

Israel has unilateral control of who it recognizes as its citizens, and what sovereign states it recognizes. No complaint about current or past bad behavior by the Palestinians excuses its failure to grant sovereignty or voting rights to people under its territorial control.

> After the October 7 attacks it was critical that Israel re-establish deterrence, not doing so would be inviting more attacks

Sure. They did that when they killed Sinwar. After that, they could have just continued to Mossad individual leaders in Hamas.

> Israel losing the media war was probably somewhat inevitable, the extreme disparity between worldwide Muslim population sizes and Jewish population sizes being a big factor

Not relevant to America.

> Despite all this Israel has largely re-established military deterrence in the Middle East and is on a path to normalize relations with countries like Saudi Arabia once Hamas is either forced to surrender or degraded enough that they lose their ability to govern Gaza.

Citizens in the Gulf feel very differently on a large number of issues than their leaders.

Is there any way to starve people deliberately, and win a media war ? I’m not sure this has anything to do with Muslim vs Jewish population sizes.

> killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands

Article says 400 people died.

That's from starvation.

What response would you suggest for Israel?

My understanding is their civilian vs combatant ratio is lower than comparable urban conflicts. So it’s hard to respond “softer”.

Population adjusted, 10/7 was 10x+ worse than 9/11. Challenging to expect zero response.

So what else is there?

The layman's understanding of war is less guided by international law and more around ideas like "tit for tat". Eg if Hamas kills 1000 Israeli civilians, Israel is entitled to kill 1000 Palestinian civilians, but should stop after that.

Is it the better response under international law? Not necessarily, but it would be better PR.

How come Israel is supposed to respond to Palestinian actions but Palestine isn't supposed to respond to Israeli actions?

Would you happen to have sources for this?

> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response

Was Hamas' response proportionate to Israeli actions? What actions specifically.

Before you answer wildly, note that you're talking to someone who knows a dozen hostages and ex-hostages personally. Someone who knows two women whose babies were burned to death. Some whose daughter lost a close friend (that friend was slaughtered in his home along with both siblings and both parents, in their pajamas). Someone whose son's camp counselor was dragged to Gaza and murdered. I could go on. What was Hamas' actions a proportionate respond to?

Israel has tried responding to attacks by not killing hundreds of thousands of people, and that approach led to October 7th.

It’s been way too short a time to tell if this will work, but responding in a softer manner has proven to not. Might work is better than won’t work.

>It’s been way too short a time to tell if this will work, but responding in a softer manner has proven to not. Might work is better than won’t work.

Absolutely! As R.A. Lafferty correctly posited[0]:

   “When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure clarified your 
   attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer to a definite problem. 
   For better or worse you have acted decisively. In a way, the next move is up 
   to him.”
   ― R.A. Lafferty

Yes. It's up to those dead Palestinians to now make peace. And the more dead Palestinians there are, there are more who are on the hook to do so. In fact, if we kill them all, they'll be in the perfect spot to make peace, amirite?

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11072354-when-you-have-shot...

> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response

Is it disproportionate? Why do we talk about proportions when it comes to Jewish people defending their security but don’t bring it up in other conflicts? There was no talk of proportionate response after 9/11, for example. Virtually all nations who participated in the global war on terror didn’t care.

Proportionality is also not relevant when you’re talking about terrorists who are hiding among civilians on purpose. Why should Israel have to sacrifice the security of its residents to limit collateral damage among the very people who voted for Hamas and still support Hamas, as polls show.

> There was no talk of proportionate response after 9/11

I guess it depends on where you were, but for me in Australia at the time, yes - there was plenty.

I've lived in the US since around 9/11; there was lots of discussion around the responses to Iraq, and Afghanistan. It went on to Yemen, and Libya. There was always criticism and utter disappointment with Obama in many circles over this. Many US soldiers came forward and condemned the Iraq war.

Also, the people who voted for Hamas over 20 years ago? Considering how young the population is, I doubt many were alive then. Hamas won 74 of the 132 seats back then. It's very dangerous rhetoric to say collateral damage should not be limited. Did the babies and the many women who were slaughtered in endless bombing campaigns vote for Hamas to deserve their very end? This rhetoric is exactly why the world has turned their back on Israel. In the US, huge majority of under 35s do not support the state, for example.

We can talk endlessly about strategy and long term implications (for example, the destruction of the Iranian "ring of fire" network of proxies, the permanent changes in Syria and Lebanon, etc), but consider something much more basic: Israelis around Gaza can finally live securely. There are no rockets coming from Gaza, no mortars, no chance of another October 7th or smaller incursions as long as the Israeli military is there. Israelis have peace. No Gazan rocket can disturb the life in Tel Aviv or Ashdod.

This couldn't and shouldn't have been a re-run of the countless previous clashes with Hamas. Israel needed to go all out to change the security situation, permanently.

I'm pretty sure people said the same thing after operation Cast Lead and other previous crackdowns. A country making itself into an international pariah while pursuing local security from an antagonist it nurtured in the first place is extremely myopic. As this conflict has dragged on, it has become more and more apparent that a great many Israelis (including in government) view their strategic situation through the lens of ancient historical conflicts from >2000 years ago and fantasize about resorting to the triumphant excesses of legend. Mass psychosis is not a good basis for long-term security.

Israel has seen more rockets and daily attacks than probably in its entire existance since they commenced the Gaza genocide what are you talking about.

“Israel has built the most efficient starvation machine you can imagine.”

There's political opposition to this within Israel. Here's what happened to an elected member of the Knesset who spoke out against the cruelty in Gaza.[1] He was forcibly removed from the podium of the Knesset.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzDxV7jnAos

People sometimes forget how bitterly divided Israel was before October 7th, with hundreds of thousands of people protesting in the streets. The war put some of the infighting on hold for a while, but all the former problems still exist, and the stakes are higher.

A Pew poll in 2022 found that about half (48%) of Israeli Jews agree that Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel. Horrifying statistic.

The man speaking is Ayman Odeh [1], an Arab Israeli MK and chairman of Hadash, a left-wing Arab Israeli party. Arab Israelis and their political leaders are marginalized in Israeli society. Arab Israeli parties are largely considered illegitimate by a majority of Jewish Israelis.

Political opposition to the starvation of Gaza is still marginal, especially in Jewish society. Protests in Arab cities against the starvation and the genocide are being curbed and prevented by the police. the Jewish majority is still largely silent on these issues, if not outright supportive of the government policy.

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

There is simply no excuse for blocking the entry of food into a region wholesale. For that alone they should, at the very least, be an outcast in the international community. But here we are.

That they have the backing and blessing of the US government is the counter-argument to this. The US can almost unilaterally end this war if they want to.

How is that a counter-argument?

> US can almost unilaterally end this war if they want to

Almost but not quite.

The claim I've heard them make is that the food aid is making it in, but being stolen by Hamas so that it can be resold at markup. How do you convince people that believe this that it isn't true (or is irrelevant)?

Would reporting from the NYT citing Israeli military officials saying that this didn't happen on any notable scale help convince people?

No Proof Hamas Routinely Stole U.N. Aid, Israeli Military Officials Say

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/world/middleeast/hamas-un...

> How do you convince people that believe this that it isn't true

It's not like the Gazans have any money to speak of.

> (or is irrelevant)?

If the way to prevent starvation is to flood the zone with food shipments, it's a moral imperative to do that. That it will also help keep the enemy fed is entirely beside the point, since causing starvation is not a legal or ethical form of warfare.

> stolen by Hamas

And/or the Israel-backed ISIS groups[1][2].

[1]: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sytu2q1mel

[2]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-netanyahu-armi...

If that was true, wouldn’t the best course of action be to let as much aid as possible into Gaza to flood the market rather than restricting the flow (therefore increasing prices) like Israel has been doing?

Then Israel severely limiting the amount of food is helping Hamas by artificially, and cruelly, limiting supply. People want to feed their families and will go to great lengths: sell their valuables, harm others, or wait in line at a Gaza Health Ministry site with the knowledge the IDF might fire into the crowd.

If they flooded Gaza with food then Hamas would benefit less from the supposed stealing/reselling.

It is irrelevant. Israel shouldn't block other countries from sending whatever aid, obviously making sure there's no arms.

Honest question, why can it not just go through the 14 km border with Egypt? Is Egypt also blocking access for food and aid?

And this didn't start in 2023. Gaza has been under Israeli blockade for decades.

It's wild to me how many people here use the "it's war, bad things happen" to justify the situation. Weird that it needs to be said, but this is why war crimes are a thing. Just because it's an armed conflict, doesn't mean anything goes.

> wild to me how many people here use the "it's war, bad things happen" to justify the situation

The point is to distinguish this war from how others have been fought. A lot of accusations against the IDF's conduct have been baseless. Not wrong in that they're factually incorrect. Just wrong in that it's how everyone else fights wars when they go to war.

This is different. America didn't trigger a famine in Iraq or Afghanistan, and it's not like we fought those wars honorably. That is where it's worth answering the question, is this just war or is this worse.

The US-led sanctions regime against Iraq in the 90s did lead to high rates of malnutrition and excess deaths, with Madeleine Albright publicly insisting that half a million dead children would be 'worth it'.

Not really. Very very early on we knew (verifiable objective fact) that Israel used very different math on combatant:civilian casualty ratios than coalition forces in OEF and OIF.

This isn't "they're waging a more intense war and accidentally killing more people" -- it is that their actual decision framework was to authorize killings with several multiples higher ratios of civilian deaths than the US authorized in the Middle East.

No, a lot of the accusations were not baseless; you’re using a different definition.

The accusations of them deliberately shooting children in the head and targeting journalists have been proven unfortunately accurate time and time again.

We must be precise in our language when describing war crimes. No wiggle room.

> It's wild to me how many people here use the "it's war, bad things happen" to justify the situation

Keep in mind that there is a lot of money to be made by defending Israel. Some people will take that money. Just a few citations below:

- Certain social media influencers being paid up to $7000 per post [1]

- Israel boosts propaganda funding by $150m to sway global opinion against genocide [2] [3]

- "[...] a firm called Bridges Partners LLC has been hired to manage an influencer network under a project code-named the “Esther Project.” " [4]

[1] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/israel-influencers-netanya...

[2] https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/isr...

[3] https://jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com/israel-has-spent-m...

[4] https://www.jta.org/2025/09/30/united-states/israels-secret-...

This is a typical line used by those committing a genocide, it's not unique to this one. Turkey claims the same thing about the Armenian genocide.

Fixed headline: "How Israel caused famine in Gaza".

There is an editorial voice reserved purely for blunting reporting on American and Israeli state crimes that drives me nuts.

The horror that starvation inflicts on the human mind is beyond comparison. My grandfather experienced this firsthand when he fled from the Japanese invasion, an occupation that stripped civilians of their food supply. He helplessly watched as his parents, relatives, and even his older brother succumbed one by one to hunger. Barely escaping the same fate, he fled the country just before starvation could claim his own life.

When I was eight years old, I asked him why he always kept a room filled with dried cassava root. His reply was simple but unforgettable: dying from starvation is the most terrifying experience imaginable, and he was determined never to endure it again.

Starvation may also cause epigenetic and metabolic changes, which persist and are even passed to next generations. In children tissue dystrophy is particular damaging, since their bodies are still developing. Starvation is a really fucking bad thing.

In many ways, the fear of hunger is deeply ingrained within us as human beings. Our instincts continually drive us to optimize for consumption and survival. Yet, how often do we pause to reflect on how much of our daily lives revolve around thoughts of food or the pursuit of security?

It's nature's way of communicating to the next generation. That is crazy and beautiful.

My grandfather had to join Nazi German military towards the end of the war at the age of 15. Fully indoctrinated of course, thinking, that he must serve his country. Got captured in Russia, survived prisoner camps there, by eating grass to avoid starvation. He told me stories about the conditions there. Hard work, and every morning someone would be dead from the cold or from starvation, or from suffocating in puddles of water. Later he was moved to an US managed prisoner camp, where food was plenty and good.

He also survived a head shot wound (visible on the side of his head) and doctors told him, that he should drink and smoke as much as he wants, because he wouldn't make it long anyway ... Well, he made it to old age and only dies a few years ago. (He did stop smoking, when my grandma also stopped. He smoked cigars and then from one day to the next, they both stopped doing that.)

However, I think it is in those Russian PoW camps, that he developed something we call "Hungerhast". I couldn't find a translation in 2 dictionaries, so I am not sure it is a proper term. Basically, body begins shaking, cannot stop hands from shaking, if he got hungry.

He didn't have higher education, but definitely had an engineer's mind. He built many things out of wood to sell them. For example he got into woodturning and also made traditional nutcrackers, which he also painted in various colors. Back in DDR this stuff was highly sought, because getting it from West Germany was not possible for everyone. He also had a writing side. Was able to come up with spoonerism (I just looked up that word. Not sure if correct. Some kind of phrase that rhymes.) and collected them.

What a story! Thank you for sharing.

In 1942, Jewish doctors conducted the Warsaw Ghetto Hunger Study used the man made famine to study the physiological and psychological effects of hunger. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Hunger_Study Not all scientific studies need to be replicated.

There are articles about Israel planning for Gazans to emigrate for months. The idea is they would 'voluntarily' emigrate to several African countries Israel made deals with. So I think that is more proof the starvation is deliberate. They can claim they aren't forcing anyone to migrate but if you stay you die. Not only is that evil but they are forcing some other country to deal with the problem.

UK surgeon Nick Maynard, a volunteer at Nasser Hospital, tells Good Morning Britain that he and other doctors tried to bring baby formula into Gaza and the Israelis confiscated it from them with no justification. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ipJEROtHOs

I think we all know what their 'justification' was unfortunately.

Would it be acceptable even with a justification?

The reason for that is apparently that you can use baby formula to make rocket candy. Because apparently extracting the lactose from 40kg baby formula is all it takes to make a quassam rocket.

If you can get your hand om 20kg of oxidiser that is. It is all more than ridiculous.

Edit: and Nick Maynard is a national treasure.

"Israel accused the IPC of lowering the second threshold of acutely malnourished children for a famine declaration, which the IPC has denied."

Damn, Israel is really arguing about how much child starvation they are allowed to inflict before it becomes egregious?

That might be another one of those "are we the baddies?" moments right there.

Definitions matter. It's possible for an organization to redefine "acutely malnourished" as less than 4000 Cal/day, and then use that to make an accusation. Is that reasonable? No, because that does not match reality. It's unreasonable to criticize pushback on changing definitions because definitions should be pushed toward reality.

As you say definitions matter - so let's not invent hypothetical scenarios to dismiss points.

Israel was not arguing about the definition of 'acute malnourished'. The threshold for famine is 15%. The IPC said it had just hit 16% and was thus a famine. Israel was arguing that other data showed it was only 12.2-13.5% and therefore not a famine. When you get to the point of arguing "only 12% of the children are starving, not 16%" you probably shouldn't bother.

Are Gazans receiving adequate nutrition? If not, why are we discussing semantics?

Does this particular (supposed) definition change matter here? Because if it doesn't, pushback by the aggressor is heinous and obviously disingenuous even if your abstract love of accuracy means you happen to agree with the objection.

Israel blocks the entry of Plumpy Nut into Gaza, a peanut-butter like paste meant for treating severe acute malnutrition. They say it is a luxury item Hamas might steal.[1] The amount of evidence Israel is committing genocide is embarrassing.

[1] https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1971582137947295831

As a side note, that's the same stuff that just sat on shelves and went back instead of going to starving kids all over the world because Trump and Musk and Co. decided that USAID was a "waste of money".

https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/04/25/g-s1-...

I think the most amazing part of the comments is how much the sentiment has changed over the last 2 years. Is anybody else noticing this?

A lot of it is that Israel has stopped bothering to make a believable pitch to the rest of the world that their actions are justified.

People will latch onto even implausible justifications to avoid changing their opinion. When there's just nothing at all, it gets a bit difficult.

What shocks me is that there are still people trying to whitewash and/or defend the genocide.

what are you talking about? The sheer number of 10+ year old hn accounts tirading to defend, downplay and whitewash the actions of Israel in the comments in this exact thread is simply horrifying. .

Plausible deniability dried up as the blatantly skewed results of this “conflict” became impossible to ignore.

The situation in Gaza is horrifying and despair-inducing. While acknowledging the incredibly complex historical context of the region and the security bind that Israel is in, IMO they have surrendered all moral authority by their actions there. The military campaign and blockade of aid into Gaza is wildly disproportionate and monstrous.

Denying Palestinians their basic human rights to create an apartheid ethno state is not complex.

The narrative that “it is complex therefore there is nothing to be done” is meant to paralyze people from standing up for what’s right.

The solution has always been a single democratic secular state from the river to the sea. For all inhabitants of the land. Including those expelled previously.

Question: There is a repeated claim that more calories have been provided to the Gaza people than several other human crisis scenarios, but that Hamas is currently stealing it all.

But I have never seen rampant obesity in Hamas prisoners that the IDF have captured alive? Hamas can't be extorting the Gazan people for those calories, the Gazan people have no money at this point by and large due to the huge swath of destruction of property and infrastructure via bombing-- only Hamas has those underground tunnels or somesuch.

So like... what is going on here

> Question: There is a repeated claim that more calories have been provided to the Gaza people than several other human crisis scenarios, but that Hamas is currently stealing it all.

This claim is made by supporters of the war _outside of Israel_ for external consumption. If you look at what the Israeli cabinet, generals and politicians are saying for internal consumption... it's pretty deliberate.

the article also states that the US has looked into the reports of Hamas stealing the aid and found that none of the aid appears to have been stolen by anyone.

given the current US administration and their hard-on for Israel, I can't imagine this is a faked report. if it were faked, it'd be to agree with Israel

Have a look here:

https://apnews.com/article/mideast-wars-photo-gallery-hostag...

Plenty of Hamas fighters looking in pretty great shape.

Congratulations on discovering an easily identifyable lie.

Kinda silly logic, access to calories doesn't mean someone has to be obese.

Not saying that the claim is true, just that your logic is faulty.

From the article: "An internal US government review found no evidence of widespread theft by Hamas of US-funded humanitarian aid in Gaza." Other reporting supports this.

So what is going on is that the IDF are lying to justify their genocide. There is a massive propaganda machine at work to muddy the waters.

The IPC standard says for famine to be declared:

> at least two in every 10,000 people die each day from starvation, or from malnutrition and disease.

Gaza population is 2 million * 2/10000 = 400 people dying per day in order for it to be a famine.

> After more than 700 days of war, 455 Palestinians have died of malnutrition or starvation, including 151 children, the health ministry in Gaza reported on October 1. One hundred and seventy-seven of the total number have died of malnutrition or starvation since the IPC confirmed famine on August 15, it said.

Is 455 in 700 days more than 400 per day? I don’t know, I’m having trouble doing math. Perhaps the people of HN can tell me the IPC standard is being met as the CNN article states?

Media and general literacy is apparently impossible even for journalists.

> Gaza population is 2 million

In August, the IPC found about 514,000 Gazans are Phase 5 (famine / humanitarian catastrophe) [1][2]. It projected by September that was around 641,000. So the threshold you're looking for is a crude death rate (CDR) between 100 and 120 per day.

CRD "needs to be directly attributable to outright starvation or to the interaction of food consumption deficits and disease" and does not include trauma [3]. So it will be more than just confirmed deaths from malnutrition or starvation (which is, in practice, impossible to procure for anywhere on even the brink of famine).

[1] https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Food_Security_Phase...

[3] https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/I...

So focusing on the details of the situation in Gaza is quite awful. The general tone of the comments in this thread, along with basically any public forum I think speaks for the reverberation of human suffering throughout this -- civilians are being made into casualties, Israeli and Palestinian, and it's terrible.

Taking a broader perspective, large parts of the human race have come to realize famine is a relic of the past. Modern agriculture, synthetic fertilizer, and the technology of the last 100+ years has made famine optional. There is without a doubt the technological capacity to supply every person on earth with food and clean water. Nobody needs to go hungry to feed every person in Gaza. The same could be said of Sudan, or Bangladesh, or Haiti.

200 years ago, famine was usually a natural disaster; now it is almost exclusively a political choice.

Famine is political, always. The world produces a significant excess of food. The only reason famine exists is because one group of people is perfectly happy to starve another group of people. Gaza is not unique here although Gaza is a aprticularly egregious example of industrial mass starvation and death at the hands of a highly-developed military and state actor.

For reference: While the gas chambers were are the prominent way of death during the Holocaust, the majority of victims died of starvation. Starvation death looks like succumbing to a random sickness (the body is just too weak for a functional immune response), and thus saves the perpetrator from the usual psychological consequences of direct murder. This methodology was agreed on during the Wannsee conference in 1942.

> A senior COGAT official told a briefing in early September that 27% of the trucks entering Gaza are UN vehicles, claiming it was “a lie” that the UN had brought in 600 aid trucks a day before the war.

un own statistics site https://www.ochaopt.org/data/crossings

food tracks fluctuate between 2000 and 3000 a month prior to oct 7th. a few more dozens of of tracks with "non-edible consumables" and "medical supplies". rest of tracks are construction materials

"farm land" part, they forgot to mention that gaza was always totally dependent on imported food. farmland iirc provides only few percent of calories required in gaza. live stock is also sustained by imported feed

It's amazing to see how support of Israel has started collapsing. Scores of US-aligned nations now recognise Palestine. Even inside their traditional support base in the US, it's on the decline; 50% of Republicans under 50 don't support Israel. At least one republican is calling it a "genocide". MAGA split over Iran.

What's interesting is that I don't see the zionist talking points changing at all. They still hold out hope they can accuse everyone of "anti-semitism" and they'll all get back in line like it's 2020. I think they're holding out hope things can go back to normal, but it will be hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

I've heard it said by eliminating all other avenues of Palestinian political expression, Netanyahu created modern Hamas.

He undermined the two-state solution and Palestinian Authority. When you do this, you back people into a corner. There's no path to peacefully making progress on anything you care about. It also conveniently gives Netanyahu a boogeyman for his own political ends.

You might argue the PA was corrupt, etc. But that status quo was far better than what exists now.

Israel gave Hamas seed funding back in the 1980s. They thought it would weaken the PLO. This was when the US funding the Taliban. Having pet Jihandis' was cool back then.

I would argue that the 2005 Israeli unilateral withdrawal from Gaza created the vacuum that allowed Hamas to grow. Palestinians and Hamas interpreted that withdrawal as a validation of their resistance strategy [0]—including suicide bombings—and it boosted their confidence in the goal of liberating all of Palestine “from the river to the sea,” which effectively means the elimination of Israel.

So no, what really happened was precisely the opposite of “eliminating all other avenues of Palestinian political expression.”

0: https://besacenter.org/gaza-disengagement-lessons/

Calling the old PA-led status quo “far better” ignores how dysfunctional and destructive it was. The PA was given territory, money, and international legitimacy after Oslo, yet instead of building a transparent, functioning state, it became notorious for corruption, power struggles, and failing to deliver basic services. Worse, during that same period, suicide bombings and the Second Intifada erupted under its watch, so for ordinary Israelis, that “status quo” meant buses, cafes, and markets being blown up.

Even for Palestinians, the PA’s rule was hardly a path to peace or progress. Billions in foreign aid were stolen by elites, elections were canceled, dissent was crushed, and everyday life was marked by both authoritarianism and insecurity. So while today’s Hamas reality is undeniably worse, pretending the old PA era was some kind of lost golden path to peace overlooks that it was already a dead end for both peoples.

More details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas

I'm not sure what the point of this is. "Do you want Hamas or the PA?" is like asking someone "do you want rotting meat or polluted drinking water?" Why are these the only two options?

The PA is a captured extension of the Israeli security state. The PA is standing by while Israeli settlers systematically kill, chase off and terrorize Palestinians on the West Bank. IOF soldiers will idly stand by while a settler just comes up with a (government-supplied) gun, shoots a 60 year old farmer and then complains to the Army that the locals are harassing them.

> There's no path to peacefully making progress on anything you care about

Would note that there is a huge divide between violent resistance and terrorism, same as there is between counter-insurgency and war crimes.

The most recent episode of John Oliver goes further and says he actively funded Hamas to destabilise the area and cause problems for the PA.

[flagged]

I feel like you could say Ukraine were backed into a corner, multiple times, they didn't resort to October 7 levels of horror either. In fact, there is not a single documented case where they have attacked civilians or civilian infrastructure.

So while I'm not closed to the idea that Netanyahu is a bad man. I find it hard to rationalize the actions of the people who were "backed into a corner"?

Executive Order 14046

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/09/21/2021-20...

this financial blacklisting was done on the mere allegation of famine and no court tribunal was involved at all and nobody split hairs on the definition

find and replace Ethiopia with Israel, Eritrea with Gaza, and that's all we need to do

happy Yom Kippur! there's a lot to atone for, as some say, and an easy way for the US Government to ensure it

I wonder if israeli citizens are blocked to enter other countries, or maybe Israel itself is disconnected from visa and mastercard

not that it is a proper response, but you know, at least it would be a principled one

Not sure how much sarcasm did you put in this comment, but banning from entering other countries and disconnecting from visa / mc only hurts. Here's why.

I am originally from Russia and I do not support the war my country has started. I moved to another country because of that. And I face all the fun consequences from two nice restrictions above. Some of my former neighbors or acquaintances who decided to stay in the country or even support the invasion face no issues. They don't visit other countries and don't need international cards.

Which means both these things primary target people who most likely do not support the shit which is happening. Is that the goal?

" We will clean Gaza of every potential murderer, and everyone there is a potential murderer." - Michal Woldiger, member of the Israeli Knesset

"Tulkarm and Jenin will look like Jabalia and Shujaiya. Nablus and Ramallah will look like Rafah and Khan Younis. They too will be uninhabitable ruins, their residents will be forced to migrate and seek a new life in other countries." - Bezalel Smotrich, Finance Minister of Israel

"It's a simple matter, existential and survival, of wiping these crazy Amalekites off the face of the Earth. Like the Nazis, so with Hamas: we will fight them and hunt them forever. Until not one of them is left. This is a Jewish commandment. This is an Israeli commandment. This is a historic commandment. And today's pictures are just another reminder of what we must not forget for a single moment: the nature of this deranged enemy. And why they must be wiped off the face of the earth." - Shai Golden, Channel 14 News

"Gazans will be concentrated in a very defined area and live as refugees their whole lives without water or electricity until they decide, of their own accord, to emigrate." - Eyal Shalit Snir, Lt. Col. in the Israeli military

"Anyone who stays there [in north Gaza] will be judged by law as a terrorist and will go through either a process of starvation or a process of extermination." - Uzy Raby, Professor of Middle Eastern History, Tel Aviv University

[Quotes taken from zionism dot observer, a website that aggregates statements from Israeli sources]

I think there's a sort of naivete amongst people who don't pay close attention to the realities of Israel's social and political climate, and simply ascribing a sort of ghoulish evil to the vague bloc of 'nationalist' or 'religious' right-wing is simply not true. Genocidal intent permeates every level of Israeli society, from citizenry to the highest decision-making levels of the government, to all strata of the military. Israel is a fascist society and it's plain to see. This is a Pandora's Box that cannot be shut anymore, and people won't magically unsee or forget the horrors that are broadcast on a daily basis on social media. The ghastly accusations of 'Pallywood' don't cut it anymore, either. The sheer speed of information dissemination has ensured that whatever horrors the Palestinians are experiencing the rest of the world sees in real time, as opposed to being memoryholed for 5-10 years, then uncovered in a viral tweet. Now, every airstrike is actually recorded as it happens, alongside its outcome.

Thats eye opening

What I find the most jarring about this on a day-to-day being in tech circles is how some of the smartest people I know are not only unwilling to call out what's happening, they're unwilling to acknowledge it to begin with, and some like the triangle man and Collison brothers even support it.

The more time I spend in tech the more I realize there's a deep moral rot here covered up by noveau-rich wealth

There's a special brand of anti-intellectualism running rampant in tech circles. They've drunk the koolaid on STEM vs. humanities and therefore glorify their willful ignorance towards all things "soft" science, like morals or philosophy.

The problem is we’re in an age of mass disinformation that makes any claim potentially propaganda. It comes down to trust and belief and those things are either easier than ever or harder than ever depending on media you consume and common sense.

Yea... It's sad and worrying.

I feel like the community is censored or rather finds inconvenient to talk about it because of the big role that Israel plays in the tech scene. SV has an ethos of avoiding name calling and finger pointing at members of the community, since they know it's a long repeated game they are playing.

But I'm glad to see some prominent voices step up. Particularly, PG and Amjad Massad (Replit) have been very vocal. I hope their voice makes people feel like it's OK to call out human right violations when they see them.

Then there's the other extreme of the tech scene that simply decided to play politics for its own gain. The All In Pod crew as the poster children of this. Their cynicism is s transparent and disgusting in how they kiss the ring to get favor of the king in turn. I think that's a bit of what triangle man is trying to get, and it's certainly what sama was trying to do when this admin started.

Who is “triangle man”? Quick google provided no answer.

Where did the idea that being smart meant being moral come from? Why would anyone assume that people in tech are "good"? A lot of (I would say most) people go into tech to make money. All the people you expect to say something won't because doing so could jeopardize the amount of money they make. The same goes with celebrities, academics, politicians, etc. If you are someone who makes a lot of money, and you speak negatively about america's greatest ally, you will probably make less money as a direct result.

How many people died of famine in Gaza?

Read the article

Remember that Gaza has the most amputated children per capita in the world. Next time you see a child, you should remember this fact. because Palestinian children aren't this abstract concept, but real people just like the children in our own neighborhoods

You can donate to help break the cycle of IDF impunity.

https://www.hindrajabfoundation.org/

I've seen air dropping videos, if random countries were to try that would they be at risk of being shot down, probably right for violating air space (cough cough).

Yes, airdrops are only done with permission from Israel since they control Gaza airspace (they have for decades). But airdrops are not an efficient way to feed millions of people (and the pallets have killed multiple people by landing on them). Shipping by truck allows a much larger volume much faster, and the UN has experience doing so, but they have been largely blocked from doing so for months by Israel, which runs its own much less efficient aid operation with many fewer distribution points guarded by mercenaries who regularly kill aid seekers who often have to travel long distances through dangerous areas.

For anyone commenting on this, I'll leave this: Official aid delivery reported by UN. I'd also assume this to be of the lower side, as there probably is more that doesn't get reported thorugh UN 27720 mechanism. I find the fact that this article does not use this or point to this data very questionable, but maybe I am wrong and I am imagining things.

https://app.un2720.org/tracking

> Intercepted - Either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors, during transit in Gaza

I presume you meant to suggest Hamas is bathing in baby formula, but your link isn't evidence for that. It could be desperate people doing desperate things, you know, because they are starving.

Samantha Power wrote an excellent book: "A Problem From Hell" - America and the Age of Genocide [0], [1]

She had seen war and genocide first-hand in Bosnia and that provided the impetus for her to study how America had responded to various genocides.

I will repeat the last paragraph of her Preface for some context.

>Before I began exploring America's relationship with genocide, I used to refer to U.S. policy towards Bosnia as a "failure." I have changed my mind. It is daunting to acknowledge, but this country's consistent policy of nonintervention in the face of genocide offers sad testimony not to a broken American political system but to one that is ruthlessly effective. The system, as it stands now, is working. No U.S. president has ever made genocide prevention a priority, and no U.S. president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on.

[0] https://samanthapower.com/books/a-problem-from-hell-america-...

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Hell-America-Age-Genocide/dp/...

Readers should be dubious of her moral authority on this issue. When given influence, her advocacy of the war on Libya resulted in endemic violence and showed that she was as misguided as anyone else in American politics when it comes to intervention in world affairs.

Genocide is a terrible thing. But that doesn't mean the USA has any obligation to directly intervene in foreign conflicts. Most of these aren't worth sacrificing the life of a single US soldier, and even when we do intervene it often makes the situation worse. Unless critical US national interests are involved, our actions should usually be limited to sanctions and diplomacy.

(I am commenting on the general US policy and not making a statement about the current situation in Gaza.)

There is massive narrative deception from Israel... wake up world:

>“There is no famine in Gaza. Period,” the [Israeli] official said, adding that “Israel and the IDF are trying to strengthen the humanitarian situation in Gaza with partners.”

If you want to see what Netanyaho looks like when he's covering things up [lying] just watch the 2024 documentary The Bibi Files — about his corruption charges (which features over an hour of Netanyaho lying to investigators about his accepting roses and leaves [wine and cigars]) — complete with his shit-eating-grins galore...

World leaders know this, they're pretending not to see it. For example, the Biden administration set specific aid targets for Israel to meet and even acknowledged that they weren't being met by the "deadline" but neglected to impose any consequences.

https://www.propublica.org/article/biden-blinken-state-depar...

Israelis (including those who use this platform to repeat the same warmed-over genocide denials for the umpteenth time) know it's happening too. That's why the argument is usually 50% "it's not happening" and 50% "but they deserve it".

For those out of the loop the actions of the Israeli gov. are not some fringe overreaction. This is what the people want. by their own admission, 48% of Israeli Jews want Palestinians to be ethnically cleansed which would constitute a genocidal act, while 79% believe they should get preferential treatment over Arabs. [0]

Both Israeli Arabs & Palestinian Arabs. This is not some, 'oh no! it just happened.' Everyone who has actually spent time studying this conflict, the state of Israel has a policy of systematic rape, torture, mass incarceration, murder, and dehumanization of Palestinians at an industrial scale that's been in place for decades now.

They're just going mask-off in a way Western audiences can't pretend not to know about it any longer.

Israelis and their Western supporters try to make out their actions as that of fringe far-right loonies like Smotrich, etc. Nope. Systematic rape, torture, murder, of non-Jews has been their policy for decades now. You're just finally learning about it after so long. The ultra-orthodox don't make up a plurality of the population and used to not serve in the military until recently. So, if their abominable ideology is state policy, it's because Israelis are okay with it.

[0]: https://www.timesofisrael.com/plurality-of-jewish-israelis-w...

Their hubris will be their own downfall.

>Israel has denied the allegations. [from linked CNN article]

People are waking up.

> Systematic rape, torture, murder, of non-Jews has been their policy for decades now.

I'd like some evidence for each of these three. I'm aware of the policy of interrogation which might count as "a policy of systematic torture". Can you do systematic rape and murder?

This genocide reveals how much Israel truly controls the US government and other Western countries. I am beyond appalled this is allowed to happen. The last couple of months also showed that international rules and agreements don't mean anything - they are in fact only there to please the Western countries, until they throw it in the bin when it is convenient to them.

Anyone who isn't from the West, hell even Southern Europeans, are taking note. There is no rights and freedoms for us. All this for to support a bully of a fundamentalist state and a bunch of theocratic kingdoms/emirates.

I've got to wonder if Israel is one the pillars propping up Trump along with China and Russia. It would make perfect sense with its relation to the Epstein files (in which Trump is likely mentioned every other paragraph).

I'm not saying the Democrats have done great by Gaza, but I feel like the point we're at - irrefutable genocide through starvation - there would at least be significant pressure to stop attacking humanitarian convoys.

All I can really say about the current situation is that it would be a great time for the EU to step up, demonstrate some international leadership, and forcibly deliver aid under the guard of military force.

> genocide reveals how much Israel truly controls the US government and other Western countries

Nonsense. Israel has influence because a lot of American voters make Israel one of their ride-or-die issues. If that support shifts, the influence does, too.

> last couple of months also showed that international rules and agreements don't mean anything

Did you miss Russia invading Ukraine, America invading Iraq and China annexing Tibet? Or the ongoing genocides in Burma, Sudan and recently-concluded one in Ethiopia? (I think.)

Germans would often say _their_ grandparents were never Nazis.

Ironically, the same thing will happen in future Israeli generations when they look back at the current genocide - "No, my grandfather wasn't involved in the Gaza war"

The Trump peace plan calls for a resumption of aid contingent on the Palestinians accepting the deal.

Please understand that this is a war crime. You can not use starvation of civilians as a weapon or as leverage against combatants.

> this is a war crime. You can not use starvation of civilians as a weapon or as leverage against combatants

America withholding its own aid is not a war crime.

Nothing has opened my eyes more to how much mainstream media is distorting reality to fit their narrative, than the genocide Israel is committing in Gaza.

You can sit with literal video of an incident, and then see media headlines tell a completely different story than what actually happened.

Social media in our generation has been a weird amplifier of both misinformation as well as truth from the ground that contradicts misinformation in the media.

My selection of topics I trust media to report on has greatly narrowed down to ones that are completely apolitical, which is sad (they’ve always been biased, but at least I felt you could tell that they were biased and read through it).

* * *

Probably because Israel violated the ceasefire earlier this year (that was a sham from the beginning) that lasted from January to March. The first phase of the ceasefire saw an exchange of hostages, but then the Israelis refused to move on to the second phase and broke the ceasefire by bombing Gaza in the middle of the night, killing over 400 Palestinians in one day, including over 200 children. [0]

Not to mention the fact that Israel just killed a top Hamas negotiator in Doha, Qatar only a few weeks ago. [1] How can you negotiate with someone who just killed your negotiator?

[0] https://apnews.com/live/latest-updates-israel-launches-new-w...

[1] https://apnews.com/article/qatar-explosion-doha-e319dd51b170...

I can't believe I'm weighing in on a political thread, but the "deal" is very one sided. It offers very little for the Palestinians in terms of creating their own country and ability to self govern and gives Israel pretty much everything they want including some control over Palestine.

The current "peace deal" is terrible for the Palestinians. No other country would sign it either.

Because it doesn't move the situation any closer to liberation of their people and their homeland.

They have been willing to constantly fight, and constantly keep getting killed by an enemy with overwhelming advantages, for their cause for two years now. Why would you assume that being able to escape with their lives is suddenly more important to them?

The party refusing any kind of deal are Israel since their goal is annihilation of Palestinians. Hamas were ready from day one for a deal, their goal (contrary to israeli narrative of course) was to negotiate prisoner exchange for the 1000s of Palesitnian prisoners held by israel (including children). This is still their goal along with ceasefire and complete withdrawal from Gaza.

> a peace deal that ends all this

Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir do not want this peace deal either. There is 0 chance it would be honored.

Whenever they've tried to agree to any peace deals in the past, what ends up happening is they make concessions and then Netanyahu turns around and resumes the war anyway.

Isn’t it true that some of the leadership doesn’t live in gaza at all?

Cause they are islamists and have nothing against turning all of Gaza's population into "martyrs"?

You are honestly blaming the killing of 60,000+ Palestinians on Hamas for not accepting a Peace Deal (Israel didn't honor the last one months ago) only?

Assume it is a hostage situation, 2,000,000 Hostages. Israel has killed 60,000+ hostages trying to rescue hostages. Starvation also counts as killings to me, but I supposed "Starved" is less direct than "Shot"

Well, hows the "peace" in the West Bank, where there's no Hamas? Israel has proven in both the West Bank AND Gaza that they do not care whether you violently resist or you attempt to be peaceful. You WILL BE REMOVED from your land, dispossessed of everything you own, because growing the Israeli people is more important than your life, your rights, your anything.

Why would the answer to this question matter in any way?

It's not a war anymore, wars are between armies, not civilians.

Has there been a peace deal that ends any of this for long?

Because Netanyahu is already saying he wouldn't comply with the deal that he's already agreed to, and isn't treating it as a peace deal.

> While Netanyahu agreed to the plan on Monday, he already appears to be pushing back on several of its terms.

> In a video posted on X, he insisted that the IDF would would be able to remain in parts of the territory and that Israel would 'forcibly resist' the establishment of a Palestinian state.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15156091/Hamas-mili...

Killing 736 Israeli civilians, 79 foreign nationals, and 379 Israeli military and security personnel, and kidnapping an additional 250 civilians is not, by any fathomable definition, genocide. It is a war crime for sure, but it's not genocide.

Edit: the post I was replying to was claiming Hamas/the Palestinians perpetrated a genocide in Israel. It has since been edited to be a completely different thing.

> why is Hamas refusing a peace deal

They're psychotic idiots.

> lets them escape with their lives

On the other hand: how idiotic would they have to be to believe the Israelis will let them escape with their lives, given all the evidence to the contrary?

Bold of CNN to so openly report facts that the current administration will take offense at. I wonder what retaliation they will face.

CNN is quoting data from the Gaza health ministry, an organization run by genocidal Islamist Hamas, without mentioning its affiliation and without questioning the data. So much for objectivity on CNN and "Hacker News". There is also no mention on the food convoys that get plundered by Hamas. Just to mention: Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization in the US, since 1997 - just adding some missing background information.

There is a genocidal group of religious crazies here, and it is the Israeli government.

If any other country in the world was doing what Israel is doing, there would be international sanctions against them and talk of military intervention (if they had oil or natural resources to grab). The fact that Israel can get away with this is almost entirely due to the US' "unwavering" support for political (a strategic military ally in the Middle East) and religious (Evangelicals and the "Promised Land") reasons.

As an American, I'm disgusted that my tax dollars are actively supporting genocide.

And let's not fall into the trap of telling ourselves that this only started in response to Oct 7. The Palestinians have been severely oppressed for _decades_ -- which is why it's almost impossible to root out something like Hamas, because the next generation of boys will be more than willing to sacrifice themselves to break and/or avenge the oppression of their families when they get old enough to carry a gun.

I generally use conversations on this topic as a litmus test for a group or community. I’m pretty disappointed by all the whatabout-ism and false equivalence.

I expected better from HN.

We can study why this happened later. The genocide needs to stop now.

The first question that should be asked is this: if there is indeed so much suffering in Gaza, why is no one pressuring Hamas to end the war by accepting Donald Trump’s peace plan? The war could have been over by now if Hamas had surrendered, yet this point is rarely mentioned. Why is that?

Instead, many—including major Western media outlets—repeat Hamas’ narrative: that Israel is responsible for the killing (while Hamas has been accused of using human shields [0]) and that Israel prevents the UN from distributing aid (even though the UN is said to be heavily infiltrated by Hamas [1], and the GHF was established to restrict Hamas’ access to food supplies and prevent profiteering through resale [2]).

Furthermore, if starvation in Gaza is a pressing reality, why does the UN refuse to distribute food directly [4]? In fact, the claim that there is a famine going on just doesn't match the numbers [5], and UN-linked IPC finds no mortality data to prove famine is present, despite their very intention of proving so [6], and media was found to misrepresent the situation on the ground [7]

Finally, little attention is given to Egypt’s role in maintaining the blockade of Gaza, which also contributes to "famine". Egypt does not allow Gazans—who are described by some as facing genocide—to cross its border to escape [3]. It often seems as though those who argue that starvation is being deliberately inflicted prefer to keep the situation unchanged, only to place the blame on Israel.

0: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/11/01/hamas-officials-admi...

1: https://govextra.gov.il/unrwa/unrwa/

2: https://www.aipac.org/resources/gaza-aid

3: https://theconversation.com/why-egypt-refuses-to-open-its-bo...

4: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/07/24/un-refuses-to-cooper...

5: https://x.com/Aizenberg55/status/1966495888051761582

6: https://www.timesofisrael.com/key-food-security-org-finds-no...

7: https://honestreporting.com/famine-standard-was-lowered-for-...

Hamas is dire, hencw the increased media attention lately, hopefully it'll all end soon, regular people have suffered enough

Not in a thousand years I would have expected CNN to start reporting on this.

Hope they got some good lines responding to accusations on how every single one of them, including the janitors at the CNN Center in Atlanta are antisemitic.

-"But we're not!" -"Aha, that's exactly what they always say, clearly a sign of guilt!" /s

Too little too late in order to save face now that the tide of public opinion has shifted

uh-huh. IF there is; Hamas carries the weight. Not Israel. Take a momma bear's cub away and see the momma bear's claws. Duh.

"One day, everyone will have always been against this"

Reminder: Only right wing supporters of Iaraeli Likud party actually support genocide going on. Literally half of Israeli citizens hate Likud and Natanyahu.

ps. Interesting trivia: Mahmoud Abbas (President of the Palestinian West Bank) and FATAH militia also are against Hamas. They always have been:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah%E2%80%93Hamas_conflict

Nothing is black or white.

This is a popular idea in the Israeli propaganda. Israelis like to say that they hate Netanyahu, but in reality, majority of Israeli Jews fully align with his policies towards Palestinians, and multiple polls confirm this. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-08-05/ty-article/.p...

Opposition to Netanyahu inside Israel is almost entirely about domestic issues (like judicial reform) and the fact that he refuses to accept any negotiated deal to get the hostages back. Relatively few Israelis care about what he's doing to the Palestinians.

Israeli society is deeply complicit in the mass killing and starvation in Gaza. The IDF is a citizen army. There haven't been mass refusals or resistance. It's not just Netanyahu.

majority of Israeli keep supporting IDF policies, shame on them

Does Israel have a government structure that allows for a counter-majoritarian government?

In the US, we do... due to the structure of the Senate and Electoral College, low population states wield outsize influence on national politics. This goes as far as allowing the election of a president with <50% national support. Add in political gerrymandering (setting electrical districts to constrain the influence of certain demographics), and we have a national government that's opposed to policies that have wide support across the population in general.

Moderate Israelis are the only people who have the power to peacefully defuse the situation.

I wish this were true, but it looks like that even if Natanyahu has little support (mostly because of corruption), the genocide is well accepted by israeli public

https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/poll-show-most-jew...

Reminder: The US does support the genocide. Both the Republicans and the Democrats.

This is nonsense, Israel's center right "opposition" won't even acknowledge the genocide, how can they be against it?

I think people blaming it on Hamas need to realize that Israel funds Hamas and uses it as a tool to further their goals. Hamas is their version of Talibans. It fully lines up.

> Israel funds Hamas

Funded. Past tense. We funded the Mujahideen, once, and then got bombed by their successors.

Well, if that was the case, it's not really working out for Israel now, is it? Considering that more and more countries are recognising Palestine, etc.

This comment is widespread on X or other social media as the n-th conspiracy theory that Israel has staged the attack etc. Crazy.

[flagged]

> How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza

Way to whitewash a genocide. The title make it sound like the famine is accidental or an unintended consequence of Israel's "actions". While in reality, it's the sole purpose of what Israel is doing in Gaza for years, they are conducting a genocide, plain and simple.

Is there any difference between carrying it out and intending to carry it out if given the chance? From the river to the sea?

> Way to whitewash a genocide

I honestly think invoking the g- word is harmful to the Palestinian cause at this point.

It's a war. There are war crimes. Maybe there's genocidal intent. But that seems like a distraction compared to actual harm on the ground.

Two numbers on the effectiveness of that strategy:

680.000 and 380.000.

The total number of Palestinians murdered, and the number of those who were kids under 5 years old.

source: https://arena.org.au/politics-of-counting-gazas-dead/

These numbers are just false. Even the Hamas numbers are 10x less than this!

Completely absurd projection not supported by any serious sources. That would mean 1 in 3 Gazans dead, and 10 deaths per reported death, which would be completely out of line with other conflicts.

I haven't seen any numbers exceeding 100k. Where did you get 600k from ?

the article is taking projections and applying multiple extrapolations to them. It is a bad estimate.

The current estimates are between 53000 - 66000. About 10x lower than what you propose.

How CNN, a supposedly reputable news source can quote Hamas-run (a recognised terror group in the US) Health Ministry’s number without even noting who runs the ministry or raising any doubt is ridiculous? More ridiculous, noting the prices of different goods in Gaza when the vast majority of those goods enter Gaza as free aid. So who is stealing it and extorting others? Hamas and other terror groups are ghosts in this article. It is time that the UN focus on delivering aid rather than blaming Israel. Gazans die when they both refuse IDF convoys to keep them safe and blame the IDF for not keeping them safe as the “occupying” power. If only the IDF had already won, then Gazans would eat like normal already

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