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Comment by barbazoo | Hacker News Reader

“If you were a Russian soldier wouldn’t you rather work in administration in Moscow than invade and murder Ukrainians.”

Sure but the real answer is try what you can to get the fuck out of there so you don’t have to do harm to someone you don’t even know.

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Pretty sure military aged males aren't allowed to just leave Russia at this point without prior approval. And sometimes are forcibly conscripted on the street

The notion that everyone conscripted into a war is guilty by default is absurd, but always inevitably comes out to play during the height of moral outrage.

right guys, it’s only like 80% of that population that has the ideology we don’t like

and in the other 20%, many of them don’t get conscripted due to a religious exemption that includes being in a totally different ideology that has always disagreed with the other

odds not looking good, speaking as a betting man, not one with any actual opinion just need my prediction market bet to hit

What is the ideology we don’t like? I think it is easy to throw stones when the reality is that if your nation suffered a similar attack, many many people would get swept up in anger and outrage and retaliatory madness.

What Israel is doing is wrong, but I don’t think it would be unique among developed states experiencing something similar.

Yes most people would fight back against foreign occupation

Zionism and violence against Palestineans predates the October attacks by a couple of decades.

More like a century.

Zionism, as in the belief that Jews deserve self-determination as a nation?

Zionism is the belief that there should be a Jewish ethnostate, it should be called Israel, and it should go in the geographic location where Israel now is.

That definition would exclude half of the early Zionist conference attendees, who would have accepted any region where refugees could gather, and seriously considered multiple locations.

Guess what - political movements change over time. We don't define left and right depending on where a party sits in the French parliament either.

I can see how it would be controversial but how is it absurd?

Especially in a first world country like Israel where people aren’t shackled by their poverty.

Blameworthy in a similar way to how Vietnam vets are blameworthy.

Maybe we should be thinking differently about those too then. Or maybe the environment is different where one generation should “know better”, having lived through another 50 years of human development and ubiquitous access to information.

I don’t think your comparison works because Israel does not have a comparable anti-war movement that the US had during the Vietnam War. In fact, if the media is to be believed, there has been enthusiasm on the part of Israelis to take part in the fighting.

Wouldn’t that only make vietnam vets more blameworthy? There was a whole movement against it and they still chose to not give up their home/family and choose exile even when it was less stigmatized to do so.

That’s an interesting point, and if we follow that logic, we move the blame from the Israeli soldiers and place it in totality on Israeli culture.

Your comparison doesn't work because Vietnam War didn't start with Vietnam attacking USA, holding many hostages, the group leading the charge having religious ideology viewing Americans as second class citizens as well as people to ethnically cleanse, all while bordering USA.

I’m a little confused as to which country Vietnam is in your comparison.

I'm not making a comparison I'm explaining why equating USA anti-war movement in Vietnam to Israel was a faulty comparison.

10s of thousands of scum flew from all around the world from their comfy lives to Israel to enjoy participating in an attempt at total destruction of a nation composed in half from children, by starving them, bombing them, shooting them, and burying them alive.

These were not conscripted in any way whatsoever. These 10s of thousands deserve full blame, and fuck them all.

> how is it absurd?

Humans build identities around their homes. It’s why any plan that involves relocation implicitly or explicitly requires violence.

It’s absurd to suggest Israelis should effectively “self deport” from their homes. It’s unrealistic to the point that it’s effectively dismissing the problem instead of honestly engaging it.

Look up Zionism and settler violence. Israel is systematically taking land away, not the other way around.

> Israel is systematically taking land away

Sure. Not great. But also not relevant to charging individuals.

If we’re to learn from Sykes and Picot, a good place to start would be in acknowledging the primacy of the living over the dead, and those on the ground over ideals from abroad. One conclusion from that is we shouldn’t be condemning men we’ve never met for actions they are only affiliated with.

So Russians who are dragooned into a war to destroy another country are victims of poverty, but Israelis who are conscripted and fighting a defensive war are not given the same benefit of the doubt... because they have businesses and families they have to leave for months at a time to defend their own existence?

Leaving aside your warped sence of pity, which one's a society you'd rather live in?

Most movies and games about WW II, do depict killing German soldiers as justified, even in horrendous ways.

You can think killing someone is justified without thinking they are morally culpable. There’s a reason the laws of war don’t endorse summary execution of surrendering combatants, beyond the practical benefits of encouraging more humane conduct towards your own troops.

Russian soldiers are volunteers. They sign a contract. When money are involved many many people don't care about inflicting harm to others.

Also convicts who can get out of jail early.

Volunteers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Russia

The ones at the Ukrainian front are volunteers.

Some of them. Some of them were mobilised.

Every single russian at the front has signed a contract. Some might be force and most of them are dumb, but they are still volunteers and they could all have said no.

It's reservists who are conscripted, not civilians. This is in stark contrast to Ukraine, for instance.

People in EU buy Russian natural gas and see no problem with it. What are you talking about.

"People in EU" are Hungary and Slovakia for pipeline gas and crude oil. Belgium, France and Netherlands for LNG. Most see a huge problem with it and pledge to phase it out by 2027.

Source: https://energyandcleanair.org/june-2025-monthly-analysis-of-...

So EU nationals can’t even phase out their fully voluntary usage of gas for 5+ years because it would cost a bit more despite financing Ukrainian deaths, but conscripted soldiers are blameworthy because they didn’t abandon their home and everything they know to become a fugitive of their state rather than get conscripted?

To be fair, conscripted people did not take part in a war. The ones who take part are those involuntarily mobilized in 2022, well paid volunteers and convicts who get a pardon after serving for a certain time.

> cost a bit more

It's not (only) a matter of cost, but availability. People need fuel to heat their houses. In order to fully replace Russian gas, other facilities (like LNG container terminals) need to be built. That has been done and is being done, but is complex and not instant.

Should it have been done before February 2022? Yeah, probably.

This is whataboutism. They're both bad.

Good point, I’ll accept that conscripts are similarly blameworthy as gas consumers in Europe

> pledge to phase it out by 2027

When the war hopefully will be over, sanction lifted and there will be no problem with trading with Russia anyway.

There are also countries which buy Russian resources indirectly, via Turkiye and other countries.

I see a huge problem that the annexation of crimea started in 2014, escalated in 2022 to a full war and invasion, and eu countries can’t be bothered to move off Russian gas before 2027.

There isn't a single country on earth that doesn't despise refugees with every fiber of its metaphorical being.

Calling a population that you forcibly displace from their homes “refugees” is certainly a choice. Not a correct one, but certainly a choice nonetheless.

In what way aren't they refugees? People forcibly displaced from their homes are refugees.

A fair point but in that situation it should would be nice to be a desk job while I was waiting for my visa to come through.

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