521 karma · joined October 21, 2017
This is an absolutely insane comparison, Hamas is free to surrender and give up their weapons if they want the bombing to stop, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto had no similar opportunity.
That's simply factually inaccurate, Hamas started the latest war while the population of Gaza was growing. The Jews started the Warsaw Ghetto uprising while they were being actively exterminated(i.e. population declining).
I'm pretty sure the Israeli border guards didn't entirely prevent movement between Palestine and Israel either, at least prior to October 7th.
My point was simply that trying to claim legitimate border defenses are somehow equivalent to a concentration camp is an insane view.
If some act is in pursuit of a legitimate war goal then that typically negates it being considered an act of genocide from my understanding of international law.
Saying Ben-Gvir has genocidal intent(which I'd probably largely agree with) is not remotely the same as saying Israel has genocidal intent. The power dynamics in Israel are much more complicated and one should not conflate things said by the most extreme ministers as actual policy.
I think we'd typically call that bias.
> And secondly, is your claim that every single one of these hundreds of large orgs are historically politically or religiously anti Israel?
Plenty of those organizations/countries do have historical problems when it comes to antisemitism which is obviously highly correlated with an anti-Israel bias. Which of these organizations/countries don't have a history of either blatant anti-Israel bias(i.e. clear double standards) and/or outright antisemitism?
Israel does have some problems with extremists getting elected but that's partially due to the proportional representation system making it easier for extremists to get elected without widespread support from the population.
> I'm pretty sure that Jews in the Polish Ghetto had pretty negative views about the people detaining them there. Do you hold that against them?
Were the Jews in the Polish Ghetto terrorizing/murdering random German civilians? I'm sure they had a very negative view of the Nazi's but it's not a particularly comparable situation as the Jews were being exterminated regardless of their actions.
France was sealed off in 1938 by a line of concrete fortifications, obstacles and weapon installations called the Maginot Line.
> German authorities specifically used the guards to prevent movement between the ghetto and the rest of Warsaw.
French authorities specifically used the guards to prevent movement between Germany and the rest of France.
> Sounds familiar - as I said, history rhymes.
Sounds familiar - as I said, history rhymes.
Based on the publicly available evidence I would consider it to potentially be genocide, certainly it's more plausible than the accusations against Israel since China isn't at war with the Uyghurs from my understanding.
However keep in mind International law requires Dolus Specialis(special intent) for something to be considered Genocide which is a very high bar. Note that war crimes or crimes against humanity alone would be insufficient to reach that bar.[0]
The Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising were not going around killing German civilians.
Many groups are oppressed to various degrees for various reasons but restoring to terrorism(especially against civilians) is arguably an extremist response. The two are not mutually exclusive.
> For example, I wouldn't call those who rebelled in the Warsaw Ghetto "extremists".
They were being exterminated. I don't recall there being much terrorism targeting German civilians during that rebellion either.
> I wouldn't call a 14 year old boy who has only known struggle his whole life under apartheid an "extremist".
It's not oppression that would make one an extremist, it would be for example holding extremist views such as the supporting of terrorist attacks against civilians. One can teach extremist views to a 14 year old boy, in fact it's often much easier to teach extremist views to children than to adults.
> Calling everything one disagrees with "virtue signalling" is a tired trope.
Advocating for more condemnation without proposing actual solutions is rather pointless unless your end goal is endless war.
> There is no solution that will occur in our lifetimes, because there is no benevolent and omnipotent authority that can snap their magic finger and cease the suffering that's occurring because of this apartheid ethnostate.
So we should just give up and advocate for policies that will clearly never lead to peace? Also an occupation is not the same as apartheid. Apartheid is race based discrimination while the situation with Israel/Palestine falls mostly under the category of citizenship based discrimination(which most countries practice to various degrees).
> With my suggestion, I'm trying to prevent the next ethnostate disaster. Ideally, I would want our descendants to recoil in disgust when thinking of the concept of funding an ethnostate in the same way that we recoil in disgust at the concept of funding a sex trafficking ring. I will teach my children, and my children's children, that "A State for [] People" is disgusting, no matter what [] is - unless it is "A State for All People".
The middle east is full of ethnostates, compared to most states in the region Israel does reasonably well at protecting the rights of minority ethnicity citizens.
> South Africa was once an apartheid state, and it continues to exist.
Sure, but I don't think black South Africans were advocating for the destruction of South Africa as a state during apartheid.
> Similarly, ethnostates need to find ways to transition away from being ethnostates.
How do you propose states do that? Israel is clearly never going to give Palestinians full citizenship when the Palestinians at large do not believe in equal rights.
> If only I could trust the state of Israel to actually design a "heavy handed approach" that wasn't rape, pillage, murder, and terrorize.
So should a different country or organization be trying to de-radicalize Palestinians?
> I could never imagine the state of Israel allowing a Palestinian to testify against an Israeli soldier who raped them. Not yet, at least.
Israel has allowed for testimony from Palestinians in cases to some degree AFAIU but I don't think simply being allowed to give testimony is really the main issue here. The real issues are more tied to the way justice is administered, systematic double standards and the way military law is applied to non-citizens. The lack of any sort of final peace agreement between Israel and Palestine is what perpetuates this system however.
Destroying the military infrastructure of Hamas is obviously not genocide, that is something one would expect to happen during a war.
I could list organizations with the opposite view as well, but I don't really consider arguments from authority to be all that strong.
> the international association of genocide scholars
They have certainly had some interesting members[0].
> China
Because they would be the ones to know?[1]
> all... got it wrong?
Obviously.
> Why should I believe a random HN comment warrior over literally hundreds of organizations and governments whose jobs include identifying genocide when it happens?
Facts actually do matter and when you look into the details it's clear that the claims of genocide are simply not backed up by the evidence.
> What makes your case so compelling it stands up against all that and what my own eyes see?
My case is simply that the evidence is insufficient to support the claim.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20250903112024/https://genocides...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...
Do you attribute Palestinian support for extremism to a similar root cause? Opinion polling indicates the extremism problem is far worse on the Palestinian side, Israeli extremism trends tend to be fairly reactionary to Palestinian extremism(i.e. Second Intifada) historically.
> What I'm advocating for in practice is quite clear in my original post, but I'll state it again: we need to denounce artificial states, neocolonialism, ethnostates, and apartheid. Much in the same way that we denounce war crimes, sex trafficking, and slavery.
So you're just advocating just for more virtue signalling instead of actual concrete actions? I don't see how that would meaningfully change the situation on the ground as I don't see how denouncing the right for Israel to exist is going to do anything except push Israel towards a more extreme position.
> But in a way, yes, during Reconstruction a more heavy-handed approach should have been used to eliminate with great fury and prejudice the cultural desire for an apartheid state in the South, and maybe prevented or softened 150 years of suffering for black people and their descendants.
Are you suggesting Israel also take a more heavy handed approach when it comes to eliminating the widespread practice of teaching of hate and antisemitism[0] to Palestinians?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textbooks_in_the_Israeli%E2%80...
Anyone claiming Israel is committing genocide is quite obviously conflating the two.
The election that brought Hamas to power in Gaza was widely considered to be free and fair.[0]
> Also, the elections that were won by Hamas candidates before that were before most currently living Gazans were born, much less eligible to vote, and subsequent elections have not been held because Israel blocked the all-Palestine elections agreed to by Hamas and Fatah, so even if the “government of Palestinians in Gaza” were simply a direct result of those elections, which it is not, it would hardly be the “democratically elected” by those currently governed.
And yet polling indicates if another vote was held Hamas would likely still win, in both Gaza and the West Bank, so it's essentially a moot point. It's not just Israel that has blocked elections, Fatah has also not wanted elections because they know they would lose. The problem is that Palestinians have in reality largely supported extremists far more than moderates, that may change but reducing Palestinian support for extremism is ultimately what needs to change for there to be a chance at having some long term peace agreement.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...
People also need to stop conflating a war with genocide.
The democratically elected government of the Palestinians in Gaza(Hamas) has for a long time quite openly advocated for effectively genocide Jews/Israeli's, it's not racist to simply believe that Hamas is telling the truth in regards to what their end goals are.
From my understanding Ben Gvir(who has very little overall support in Israel from the population at large) getting elected is more of a consequence of Israel having nationwide proportional representation which allows extremists to get elected.
Ben Gvir then managed to become a minister due to Netanyahu having insufficient support from moderates to form a coalition without having to work with extremists like Ben Gvir.
> I think it's upon us - all of humanity - to denounce artificial states, neocolonialism, ethnostates, and apartheid.
So most states in the middle east should be dissolved? It's not clear what you're actually advocating for in practice.
> They are founded on principles that are misanthropic, asocial, and unhumanitarian. They have always led to an immense amount of suffering.
So we should dissolve most states including the United States due to flawed founding principals?
What about using Gmail's own internal SMTP servers(i.e. smtp.gmail.com) to send emails from external, third-party addresses?
What is happening is a war, there is no systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, there is an ongoing war against a terrorist group that has so far refused to disarm which deliberately uses its own civilian population as human shields.
> blockading
This is an act of war.
> destroying civilian infrastructure, destroying healthcare facilities
When civilian infrastructure is used for military purposes it can be targeted in a war per international law.
> causing mass forced displacement
Evacuating civilians from areas of high intensity combat is a good thing because it drastically reduces civilian casualties.
> United Nations special committee and commission of inquiry
The UN has long ago completely thrown away their credibility when it comes to anything related to Israel/Palestine.[0]
> International Association of Genocide Scholars
They have had some interesting members.[1]
> The Gaza genocide has not been recognised by Jameshilliard.
There obviously is no Gaza genocide, there is a war in Gaza however.
> at least 75,811 people have been reported killed
How many of those are combatants and how many were civilians?
> including 270 journalists and media workers, 120 academics, and over 560 humanitarian aid workers, including 391 employees of UNRWA.
How many of those were also employed by and/or worked with Hamas or other terrorist organizations? Part of the problem is that it's virtually impossible for these sort of workers to operate in Gaza without consent/coordination with groups like Hamas to various degrees.
Employees of UNRWA were directly involved in the Oct 7th attacks.[2] UNRWA is well known to have allowed Hamas and other terrorist groups to have positions at UNRWA schools.[3]
Journalists in Gaza have even held hostages.[4]
[0] https://unwatch.org/2025-unga-resolutions-on-israel-vs-rest-...
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250903112024/https://genocides...
[2] https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1152841
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/08/world/middleeast/hamas-un...
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/world/middleeast/israel-h...
It's 17[0] so far since the start of the war.
[0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-strikes-iran-over-tro...
The threats in the middle east against international shipping and regional energy infrastructure seem to have a similar threat profile to data centers and commercial warehouses. There are lots of large high value targets in the region that are hard to defend reliably against missiles/drone attacks.
One of the big problems in dealing with those threats is that terrorist groups like the IRGC or Hamas can be very hard to deter in general.
> I bet that the protester action has been another startle more in a complicated week.
These sort of common and usually ineffective detached from reality protests are nothing all that new and are quite different from real military threats to infrastructure.
> A lot of sellers in UAE and Russia lost a lot of money this year.
Were UAE distribution warehouses hit as well or just data centers?
Amazon data centers were already being attacked by terrorist groups(i.e. the IRGC) before the Wildberries strikes.[0]
[0] https://apnews.com/article/amazon-aws-data-center-uae-iran-b...
I have a gas fired hydronic heating system but I still need AC for cooling(mixture of traditional and mini-split style units due to retrofitting requirements).
I'm also located in a high altitude location but for AC alternatives here we would typically see something like a swamp cooler.
Less people alive being good for the environment is maybe their logic?
So it's actually a hydronic heating/cooling system? I don't think those systems are typically referred to as heat pumps generally.
Ductless mini split style heat pumps are a common retrofit option for older buildings without vents aren't they?
> I didn't read the article - tired of all the American articles in the press promoting ac for some reason.
When a heat pump is used for cooling it's effectively the same as an AC. The main difference AFAIU is that a heat pump can reverse for heating as well. I think when Americans promote AC they probably consider a heat pump to be just another AC variant.