Does anyone still need testimonies like these to be convinced that Israel is systematically exterminating the Palestinians using kinetic force and starvation? We're past that point now. Making Gaza unlivable by carpet-bombing the strip, telegraphing mass murder in unambiguous statements at the highest levels of government, dehumanizing the Palestinians and silencing anyone who dares to speak up?
I, for one, am thankful this hasn't been taken down like any article remotely critical of Israel.
And this has eliminated the whole Western bullshit about human rights maximalism - it's just the same damn thing every time. Like the atrocities in the Congo free State, the Scramble for Africa, etc. the West will sponsor unspeakable atrocities overseas and then act shocked when they actually happen.
Many people in the West don't realize it, but Palestine will wreck severe damage on the West. Just like Gorbachev visiting a random store in the US and seeing insane abundance in a shop in the middle of nowhere while Soviet citizens starved, what killed the Soviet Union was disillusion; people at all levels realized that a system that couldn't provide its people the basics didn't deserve to exist.
That's what happening in the West: American GWOT veterans are still feeling disillusioned about what they went to do in Iraq & Afg. (and Vietnam, before it), and now their kids are seriously asking, "Are we the baddies?"
What's the point of this industrial capacity and wealth if all we do with it is bomb kids? No political system can survive disillusion, that is, the point where people across the spectrum start seeing their nation as hypocritical.
I think the thing that should have been a clear unambiguous sign (if nothing up to then were convincing enough) that Israel's intentions weren't just to defeat Hamas but cause severe harm to the civilian population of Gaza was when they blocked all food and aid into Gaza for months. I mean, why would you do that unless you want people to die?
Even the stated explanation that they wanted to deprive Hamas of the ability to fundraise by stealing food and selling it back didn't make sense. Food shortages would cause the market value of hoarded food to rise, thus helping Hamas. Flooding the region with food would collapse the prices and deprive them of a revenue stream.
The intention was clearly communicated from day 1. But Western governments willingly decided to provide diplomatic cover & military support - some to this very day - with the backing of the Western media apparatus.
"destroy Hamas" has become "kill everyone with Hamas sympathies" -- but you can be sure that every boy who can carry a gun, who has seen family members die, who is living the destruction and desolation, is itching for a chance to join the next version of Hamas (which may not be Hamas itself, but something else built on the same shouldering fires that burn when people are oppressed, bombed, and starved, repeatedly for generations. They're not destroying Hamas -- they're just creating a new one (if anyone survives).
The market value of hoarded food going up only helps Hamas if they are the one managing to do the hoarding - otherwise it actually works against Hamas (if there's another distributor)
Exactly. If Hamas is doing it, it's self-defeating. If Hamas isn't doing it then you're just starving people. Because the point is just starvation, nothing to do with Hamas.
BTW, all orgs (other than the lyin' IDF) says Hamas wasn't stealing significant amounts of aid (nowhere near the 10% claimed). Therefore it's clear starvation was the goal, not targeting funding or Hamas at all.
How is it self-defeating? Hamas is able to continue fighting with the more aid they steal. By stealing aid they also increase the suffering in Gaza thus winning the propaganda war.
Even the IDF now admits it had no evidence of Hamas systematically stealing aid [0].
Yet the talking point - which attempted to justify genocide and never had a shred of evidence - will linger for years. I still meet people who think Saddam did 9/11, or that Afghanistan was connected.
I still meet many people who don't even know a third tower fell in NYC that day. When news media repeats a talking point that long, or ignores evidence that long, it makes a very deep impression on the type of person who takes things at face value a little too much.
> Anyone still need testimonies like these to be convinced that Israel
You are operating until a false premise that Palestinians/Hamas are some sort of children and bear no responsibility for anything at all.
Where in reality, the war could have been over in 5 minutes if they released the hostages at any time during the past 3 years. It still can be over in 5 minutes if they choose to do that. But no, they will put as many of their own people in harm's way as necessary to get to the world opinion to be what it is. And literally no one, including you, is questioning that. But please, do tell me that hostages have nothing to do with anything or Netanyahu bad or whatever else you can cook up.
> while Soviet citizens starved
As someone who grew up in the USSR, I can assure you - no one was starving.
> what killed the Soviet Union was disillusion. People at all levels realized that a system that couldn't provide its people the basics didn't deserve to exist.
That is such a simplistic view of what happened. I don't think that the system cared what its people thought at any time during the existence of the Soviet Union.
> You are operating until a false premise that Palestinians/Hamas are some sort of children and bear no responsibility for anything at all.
Where in reality, the war could have been over in 5 minutes if they released the hostages at any time during the past 3 years. It still can be over in 5 minutes if they choose to do that. But no, they will put as many of their own people in harm's way as necessary to get to the world opinion to be what it is. And literally no one, including you, is questioning that.
Palestinians and Hamas are 2 different groups of people. Which 1 are you referring to when you say "they"? Only the Hamas can legally be punished as a result of Hamas's actions. Punishing Palestinians because you're mad at Hamas is a war crime.
Sure, technically. But to this day, majorities support Oct 7th attack, both in Gaza and West Bank.
That's like saying in WW2, we can't attack Berlin because there are innocent Germans who don't support Nazis.
So how exactly do you propose to fight Hamas in an urban environment when it's blending in to the population that largely supports them (and only put on a uniform during propaganda events like hostage handovers)?
> to this day, majorities support Oct 7th attack, both in Gaza and West Bank
Likewise, to this day, majorities of israelis support the israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
> That's like saying in WW2, we can't attack Berlin because there are innocent Germans who don't support Nazis.
There's a difference between collateral damage and the israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine. That said, the intentional firebombing of German civilians was arguably a war crime, so you're arguing against your point here. Indeed, the geneva conventions are partially motivated by the atrocities that occurred during WWII, with the aim of making sure they happened "never again".
> So how exactly do you propose to fight Hamas in an urban environment when it's blending in to the population that largely supports them
That's not my problem, but ethnic cleansing is obviously an illegal and wrong way to go about it. Still though, an answer to your request can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44718080
> majorities of israelis support the israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine
That is simply nonsense. Provide a link to a poll stating that. You can't.
> difference between collateral damage and the israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine
More nonsense. You are just throwing out words. There is no ethnic cleansing. Palestinians are still there - no one is kicking them out. In fact, their population increased. And since there is no ethnic cleansing, your point is moot. What is happening is a modern war, door to door fighting - with collateral damage. The situation is grim.
> So how exactly do you propose to fight Hamas
>> That's not my problem
Of course, it isn't. You just like to throw big words and feel good about yourself, while providing zero solutions to anything.
the problem with this issue is the israeli supporters largely argue in good faith and the palestine supporters largely argue in bad faith or ignorance.
> Where in reality, the war could have been over in 5 minutes if they released the hostages at any time during the past 3 years.
This talking point is very-much dated now.. Israel has said that they will not stop until Hamas is "eliminated". Netanyahu also threw in another condition to end the war: implementation of Donald Trump's plan to relocate Gaza's civilians [0]. So now I guess it doesn't end until ethnic cleansing is complete? That's lovely.
People will say all sorts of nonsense to detract from this one simple solution. And yet they won't do it. Because they don't really want the war to end. They want Israel to lose.
Exactly. From 1950-67 Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip from 1959-67. At no point during this time was there any desire on part of the Palestinians to establish a Palestinian state.
The Palesinians don't want a state, they want no Israel.
I could on and on with historical examples, but it doesn't seem many here are interested in that sort of thing.
For now. Eventually, the injuries your system takes over time grinds your gears to a halt.
And I can provide numerous examples: Portugal's colonial holdings (Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique) were unwound after the carnation revolution because the overseas wars were consuming 50% of the national budget while the Estado Novo at home was a corrupt, violent, authoritarian, corporatist state.
The Brits could not square a global empire while their countrymen were rationing food, etc. at home. That had to go as well.
Despite all the Cold War propaganda spread since the fall of the USSR, in 1991, the Soviet Union was still a first-rate military power, with 35k to 40k nuclear warheads and >150 divisions, totaling 3.4M troops. It could easily suppress any of those pro-democracy protests, and all the CIA's burrowing in the Sovbloc would come to nought.
But there was no longer anything worth fighting for. Even people within the Party infrastructure had come to admit that they'd been living for a lie, lying for a lie, killing for a lie-all that for a lie!
The Qing dynasty faced massive internal revolts (Taiping, Boxer), external invasions (Opium Wars), and technological stagnation. The empire resisted modernization too long, then tried too little, too late.
Overwhelmed by foreign powers and internal revolution (1911), it died because it could no longer defend the illusion of legitimacy.
In France's Ancien Regime, nobles were exempt from taxes while peasants starved; France had a bloated, corrupt court and massive debt (partly from helping America fight the British!), yet refused reforms.
Nazi Germany claimed to be defending “Western civilization” while practicing industrial genocide and totalitarian control over - wait for it - Europeans!
One contradiction doesn't bring down a political system, but it cascades, because a hypocritical system dives deeper into hypocrisy until it eventually collapses.
My god such a telelogical view of history and it smells like generated with ChatGPT and using a few prompts to try to textual style hide it.
Howard Zinn, Chomsky, and most other anti imperialist intellectuals viewed history similarly badly and are looking almost as stupid in retrospect as Fukuyama did with his claim that history has ended. For every example they bring up, there's 5 counterexamples that they didn't bring up because in some cases the evidence for the good they did is locked up in a spooks SKIF for the next 50 years - or in other cases they didn't bring it up because America just isn't allowed to be the good guy anymore if you personally took part in America doing bad things.
The amount of damage that folks like Marx did through making people believe in telelogical views of history ( i.e. "Capitalism is GUARANTEED to destroy itself due to internal contradictions") is colossal.
Shit bad regimes which are based on lies are now stronger than ever. I'm willing to bet $$$ that not only does NK exist in 50 years, but it's stronger than ever and even more authoritarian. AI literally locks in power structures and perfects them.
>AI literally locks in power structures and perfects them.
There you go advancing the same teleological theory of history you're supposed to be denouncing.
Like the saying goes, history doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes: when institutions, states, etc. behave in a certain way for an extended period of time, we can infer what their future will look like by studying similar examples from the past.
> I, for one, am thankful this hasn't been taken down like any article remotely critical of Israel.
?????
I am generally not at all invested in this conflict and I cede that I have very little information about what is going on, and it's been like that for me for decades.
But the information that is available to me, in the current context, from looking at HN, is: pro-Palestine and anti-Israeli sentiments are the norm in comment sections here; comments resisting this viewpoint are routinely downvoted and flagged; news stories about the conflict that make it to the HN front page (including this one) overwhelmingly are taking Palestine's side; and on occasions where I've tried to flag submissions that I felt were grossly uncharitable (making claims beyond what their evidence supports, and/or using inflammatory language) they have not been taken down (and I've only seen anti-Israel examples of such to flag).
At any rate, your comment is a polemic that appears not to even consider reasons why other people might see the issue differently, and implicitly shames people for not coming to a conclusion you consider obvious. That is not up to the standard I understood HN political discussion to expect.
(And since I have showdead on, I can see the replies to you that were flagged and killed. They are really not any worse from what I can tell, but they apparently have the wrong political polarity — the one you claim is endorsed, directly counter to the evidence available to me.)
P.S. Whoever downvoted and flagged this, please explain your reasoning. I am happy to consider your point of view.
If didn't downvote nor flag, but wanted to help you clarify your misunderstanding.
The vast majority of people across the world is in favour of the end of bombing and segregation, and against the regime that perpetuate it, if only because of empathy alone. And HN does indeed reflects this to some extent.
What the OP was alluding to when he said that pro palestinian view points were silenced is the more or less dissimulated support for the war and systematically misleading depiction of the situation in the mainstream news. To say nothing about the exceedingly harsh criminalization of dissent.
You might not be aware of it, if really you don't read anything beyond tech news, and I'm not going to blame you for that.
>The vast majority of people across the world is in favour of the end of bombing and segregation
Should you not feel the need to evidence this?
> the more or less dissimulated support for the war and systematically misleading depiction of the situation in the mainstream news.
First, I don't see why I should conclude that that's what the comment was about. The part I quoted was:
> I, for one, am thankful this hasn't been taken down like any article remotely critical of Israel.
I understood this to mean "taken down from HN".
But I see nothing of the sort in mainstream news, either. The news coverage available to me is full of stories like the submission, and says rather little that would tend to justify Israel. If I search, for example, for coverage in the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) of the conflict, I find plenty of independent sources claiming that there is some kind of whitewashing going on (and none of the people making these claims seem to face any negative repercussions for doing so — as they shouldn't, since Canada is also pretty good on the freedom of speech thing), but then I look at the actual CBC articles I find and they're just... not as described.
The general sense I get is that people who characterize this as a genocide are upset that other people fail to accept this characterization by fiat.
> To say nothing about the exceedingly harsh criminalization of dissent.
Who has been imprisoned for merely expressing the view that this is a genocide, as opposed to being imprisoned for the usual disorderly, anti-social actions that typically get protesters (in general, whatever they're protesting for) imprisoned?
Notice that the question asked by this poll was a bit stronger than my claim (I believe one is more likelly to be in favor of the end of bombing than against Israel because advocating for peace is less damaging for one's reputation than voicing a more political stance, whatever that is).
> The stories have been routinely retracted by the BBC, NYTimes, Washington Post, NPR, etc after they’re later shown false.
Do any of these stories compare to the mainstream media's systematic lies about 40 beheaded babies? Or babies burned in ovens? Or systematic rape? Did the US President launder any of those lies long after they were debunked?
Were the stories about premie babies left to rot at Al Nasr true? Were the stories about Hind Rajab true? Were the stories about civilians being used as target practice while they try to get aid true? Were the stories about the IDF mass murdering a convoy of emergency vehicles and burying them in a shallow unmarked grave true?
Do Hamas have people in the BBC censoring stories they don't like? Did the NYT run huge stories by Hamas "journalists" with no experience and no evidence?
> Yesterday I saw the story that’s been in almost every major news publication showing an emaciated boy starving while his mother holds him with headlines of “Gazan children starving”.
You don't refute that the boy is starving. He's far from the only one. Gaza is in stage 5 of famine; the effect of which will be felt for generations - and you think a photo of a "well fed" (and horrifically traumatized for life) boy proves that they're actually fine??
Read the comments on your own link - they're absolutely vile and I won't repeat them here, but that you think this is making a good case for you is absolutely wild.
How many people have been murdered while trying to get aid in the past week? Are those stories lies too, even though they come from whistleblowers who were there; even though there's video of some of the incidents?
Sometimes I almost feel pity for the type of mind that can defend the perpetrators of these acts. But this is going on for 21 months (and 80 years) now. At some point - long past - you become fully complicit by defending this holocaust.
My refutation was implicit in the fact that the boy's condition appears to be genetic and that his brother appears healthy and well fed. His mother also appears not to be starving either.
> Read the comments on your own link - they're absolutely vile and I won't repeat them here, but that you think this is making a good case for you is absolutely wild.
I didn't link to those comments nor do I condone them. There's plenty of vile pro-Palestinian comments on X and elsewhere as well.
You also don't deny the veracity of the photo or the full story.
There is real starvation occurring in Gaza, but the IDF has also started scaling up aid and food including announcing safe corridors for UN aid delivery which I believe the IDF should've done sooner.
> Sometimes I almost feel pity for the type of mind that can defend the perpetrators of these acts. But this is going on for 21 months (and 80 years) now. At some point - long past - you become fully complicit by defending this holocaust.
You've convinced yourself it's a holocaust, despite the scales being 2 orders of magnitudes different in number and completely different in actions and intentions. Note it wasn't just 6 million Jews killed in the holocaust, but also 5-6 million Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, disabled people, and more. That's 2 out of every 3 Jewish people in Europe at the time.
Your distortions and semi-irrational accusations don't change the actual realities which are hard enough to estimate.
Estimates place the ratio of combatant to civilian death near to that of other urban wars. Most sources estimate a civilian to combatant death rate of 4:1 in Gaza, while Mosul was 4.7-6.1:1. That's despite Hamas leadership actively using civilians as shields.
There's worse confirmed famine occurring just hundreds of miles some estimates of 522,000 infant deaths due to starvation in Sudan in the last two years alone. Despite 10 times the numbers of people dying in Sudan, much less Yemen and Somolia, they're receiving only a fraction of the international aid or attention that Gazans receive.
Yet it's not sensational or in the headlines everyday, so who cares right?
We don’t need to be so productive on easy problems. Identifying something is genocide is easy. The harder problem is confronting people with the cold hard fact of “hey this is genocide, don’t write long bullshit posts about this”. Then the convo veers, and before you know it, you’re discussing HN rules and shit.
One interesting excuse I hear about slavery in America was that that’s just how life was back then, people didn’t know better. This is not true, as we know for a fact abolitionist knew what right and wrong was during those times. Even if it was only a small percentage of people that knew morality, it’s enough proof that that no American alive at the time lacked the human capacity to perceive it.
This is still true today. We know what’s going on here morally, and as a collective whole (8 billion people), we are collectively responsible. The moral standard does not change. It was wrong to murder people 2000 years ago, it was wrong to enslave people 2000 years ago, and all of that is still wrong today. Honest people knew it then, and honest people know it today.
No bullshit, please. Right and wrong is never a morally nebulous problem, it’s just an utterly strict standard to adhere to. It never changes. It’s an understated reason why many have no fear of God or have abandoned the concept entirely, not just because there’s no proof, but because even if there was, what a fucking moral standard to live up to (quite hard for humanity since the beginning of time).
Yeah, sorry but that's wishful thinking. As long as the people in the West have a relatively high quality of life and political stability -relative to everyone else, that is- they will not shake the foundation of their national institutions. That is even more so the case when they see how everyone else fares, who doesn't live in the West.
In a sense, seeing what happens to Palestinians, Sudanese, Somalis, Syrians, Afghans, Lebanese, Pakistanis, etc etc, is a great motivator for the citizen of the EU, USA, and friends.
If you look, you'll notice that the major political flare point in the West these days is ... immigration. Who cares what happens outside our borders? Our main preoccupation is protecting our borders. Because we are convinced everything outside them sucks.
Israeli is implementing a final solution to the Palestinian problem, and that solution is...genocide!
Some might argue it's not genocide but simply mass-murder. That's an awful lot of mass-murdering going on.
The Bret Stephens hasbara is that it's not a genocide because of how slow the killing is. Obviously the IDF could dig in machine guns in hidden trenches, lure starving Palestinians with the bait of food, and gun down thousands at once.
The problem with that approach is that such a strategy would risk rousing the conscience of the world. It's much safer to murder a few hundred a day and have slow starvation take thousands.
While pictures of starving Palestinian children are evocative of the Holocaust, or at least of the end of the Holocaust when cameras were allowed into liberated concentration camps, the world seems not to have a problem with Holocaust 2.0
> And this has eliminated the whole Western bullshit about human rights maximalism
That's the truth. "Never again". Clearly our politicians do not believe in human rights or international law. What do they believe in? Democracy? I doubt it. Money? Western exceptionalism? More likely. Where do we go from here? Why would anyone ever take any moral argument from a western nation seriously ever again?
What we have learned again is that actions speak louder than words and that without action you can't achieve anything.
Western nations aren't doing anything nor are middle eastern governments, nor asian governments.
My takeaway is that the UN needs to be replaced with something without the 5 veto powers. Both Gaza now and Syria could have been prevented with peacekeeping missions if it weren't for the US and Russia and their vetos.
> Western nations aren't doing anything nor are middle eastern governments, nor asian governments.
On the other hand, middle Eastern nations and Asian nations are typically protesting loudly, they don't protect Israel in the UN, they recognize the Palestinian state, they don't sell weapons to Israel.
From an outcome perspective there isn't much difference. Egypt and Jordan keep their borders ironclad shut, no middle eastern country is taking relevant numbers of refugees. None of them have been able to stop Iran from using Hamas and Hezbollah as proxies against Israel.
It usually easy to bash the west, but still I don't see anybody else doing much better.
Perhaps what most different about this conflict is the dearth of nations willing to accept refugees. Many if not most Gazans do in fact want to leave [1] (wouldn't you?).
The unsettling conclusion is that these nations are willing to let Palestinians live in dire conditions--conditions the world has no reservation against decrying passionately on cable news and social media--so long as Israel does not get a perceived "win." The West has adopted the Hamas mindset.
This is just untrue. Go look at what major Arab countries are doing right now, or look at how China is selling weapons to Israel. It's not on the same level as Western support, but it's still there.
About Chinese weapons exports it seems we have different sources.
From what I can tell Israels arms imports are dominated by US and Germany, with scattered contributions from other European countries.
Chinas arms imports to Israel are miniscule by comparison.
On the other hand I'm sure China provides a lot of components to Israels military industry, but that's a different question.
One reason to doubt that Israel is systematically exterminating the Gazan population is simply that the population is not decreasing or projected to decrease, which is to say, the excess deaths due to the conflict are not all that great relative to the natural rate of increase of the population.
Israel should be as aware of the statistics as anyone, especially when undertaking the systematic extermination of a population. If Israel actually intended this, don't you think it would go much faster, with the tremendous amount of ordnance that has been expended and the overwhelming military force Israel has in place? It just doesn't add up.
Who is it that you expect to be doing the counting? I've seen estimates of anywhere from 50k-500k dead, but nobody is sure because outsiders aren't being allowed to enter and the people inside have enough trouble staying alive and little time to be doing headcounts and statistics. Israel hasn't been releasing any numbers at all from what I can tell.
Now you know all the antisemitism accusations were in bad faith, just to drown out any coverage of war crimes and suppress any opposition to the streamed genocide.
Edit: And this comment is flagged to hell, as well, haha. I guess saying that the systematic murder of civilians is bad is now a controversial opinion, lmao.
In spaces that were explicitly created with the intent of hosting civil, respectful discourse, it is always appropriate to insist the that discourse remain civil and respectful.
Part of civility and respect is not demanding that other people see things your way, or supposing that there is something wrong with them if the evidence available to them has not led them to the same conclusion as you. Another part is not ironically laughing because things don't go your way. Another part is not insisting that you are being persecuted for entirely innocent conduct in a way that ignores previously provided explanations for why that conduct was not considered innocent by others.
Honestly I find it kind of sickening how much people treat this conflict like picking a sports team. I’ve been saying that from the start - I feel for the civilians caught in the middle of this conflict, from both Israel and Gaza.
I’ve caught flak from both sides for saying so. Some people seem deadset on making an enemy of nuance.
I see your point, but it can also be frustrating when people “both-sides” every atrocity. It’s sort of like saying “All Lives Matter” at every police shooting.
It's less "both sides" and more "two of the four sides." There is Hamas, the weak but fanatical terrorist organization, the powerful and cruel ruling Israeli administration and military, the Palestinian citizens struggling to survive, and the Israeli citizens. The latter two are mostly not committing crimes against humanity¹. By the laws of war Israel signed into, civilians should be protected. Civilians are not parties in a war
1: The violent Israeli settlers, if certain accounts are true, are committing crimes against humanity. But you can't punish every Israeli just because they share nationality with a criminal. Just like we shouldn't starve Palestinians who live in the same area as Hamas.
I guess. But, the conflict in the middle east is insanely complex. Anyone claiming you can simplify the situation into "good guys" vs "bad guys" just doesn't understand the history of the region. Or they're lying about it, because they want a sports team.
> It’s sort of like saying “All Lives Matter” at every police shooting.
Eh. I hear that as a less articulate, more annoying way to say "I care more generally about police violence more than police violence against black people, specifically." Seems reasonable to me, even if people bring it up in an oblique way.
That’s how every war since the beginning of time has worked. Most people aren’t into mass murder until
you dehumanize the “bad guys” and make it a team vs team thing.
Look at how many Americans clamor for the mass murder of enslaved Russian teenagers.
Flagging or not flagging an article has no impact on the war. No matter how enthusiastic you are at your keyboard, you won’t stop those kids getting bombed.
And there are other reasons to flag an article like this - like some people would rather HN have less politics.
You've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly and badly in this thread, and you've posted 28 (!) comments, most of which have been doing this. That's way beyond the pale, so regardless of which side you're taking in the conflict, please stop.
People form beliefs and make judgments based on things they do not know, it is nothing surprising[1]. I would recommend reading the history of Israel (vs. Palestine, especially).
Yeah, Hamzah has been making lots of videos of IDF soldiers (and other Israelites) saying that they want all Palestinian children to die, and that their lives are worth more than Palestinians' lives.
I am not surprised by any of this, the media is probably controlled. They hear what the Government wants them to hear, which is this: they are the good guys.
[1] I do not claim to know everything either, which should be very obvious, but I try to postpone forming a judgment.
I feel it's not going to last longer. With the advent of modern, mass media, young people across the West can see for themselves and they're taking a side. More specifically, they don't want their governments funding genocide with their taxes. This cannot be made to go away, which is why Zionist activists and their lackeys are pulling out all the stops: no one expected the outburst of disgust at Israel's actions would get this severe, so they're in nonstop damage control mode.
That's why I say the war is already over. Hamas won. The Israeli public is too enraged by Oct 7 and it can't pursue a long term goal because it has to feed the need for vengeance. The only group that truly benefits from continued conflict is Hamas, everyone else is a victim of circumstance.
> Israel is systematically exterminating the Palestinians using kinetic force and starvation?
If this were the goal, they could do it in hours. Why is the body count so low given the duration of the war?
This isn’t rhetoric. It might be they want plausible deniability.
It seems to me however that everyone knows they aren’t really fooling anyone with their narrative, which really draws into focus: why aren’t they killing tens of thousands of Palestinians every day? They have the means, motive, and opportunity. They have the technology and are in position to do so.
They have not.
We know what systematic genocide looks like. This is mass murder, sure, but if they wanted to commit genocide, it would be done and over with by now.
Instead, they have killed less than 5% of the population of Gaza.
Israel kills as many Palesitinians as it thinks it can get away with. They have the means the kill faster, but they are mindful of the international backlash.
>About 2.5% of the inhabitants of Gaza have been killed in the ongoing war, constituting fewer than 0.5% of Palestinians worldwide.
My understanding is that the agencies in Gaza have not only lost their ability to tally the dead, but have not been tracking deaths where a corpse has not been located.
Not to mention that this is the tail end of a long process that began with the Nakba. The fact that theres a remnant refugee population that has been removed from their land and isolated to a small stateless fragment, is already in meeting with definitions of genocide. Bombing that remnant into the dust is underlining the issue.
Sure, it's been going on for a long time. Close to a million Palestinians were expelled (or fled) from Israel after its founding, and close to a million Jews were expelled (or fled) from various Muslim-majority countries around that time.
The former is known as the Nakba (as you highlight) and well known. The latter, not so much.
> Israel is systematically exterminating the Palestinians
This would be the dumbest way to do this. It would take centuries to exterminate them at this rate. The genocide narrative makes no sense to any person with a brain.
Why’s it gotta be quick? Israel has them contained and holds every card. Its government could speed it up tomorrow if they wanted to, but that might look bad enough to lose them the support of the US and much of their population. Why hurry?
And the war would have to carry on centuries to maintain the current rate. If there is a subtle insidious plot to erode the population of Gaza over time, it is a huge flop.
The first mistake would be Israel's unilateral withdraw from Gaza in 2005, ethnically cleansing its own citizens from the region to make way for the Palestinians.
The population of Gaza has increased by roughly a million since then, which I must say isn't great for the Zionist plot.
> Does anyone still need testimonies like these to be convinced that Israel is systematically exterminating the Palestinians using kinetic force and starvation?
Before October 7, activists insisted that Gaza’s border restrictions were driven purely by hatred rather than any legitimate security concerns. That view was completely discredited by the attacks on October 7, so forgive me for being skeptical of similarly absolutist claims being made now.
To be clear, preventing famine should take far greater priority than intercepting a few more rockets with Iron Dome. The suffering in Gaza is undeniable. But I see Israel’s actions as driven more by indifference or strategic rigidity than by a calculated intent to exterminate.
Maybe that distinction doesn't matter to you, since it doesn't change how people are dying needlessly, but how we interpret Israel’s intent shapes how we respond. Backing Israel into a corner tends to make things worse, not better. That’s why the Biden administration’s approach of supporting military aid while applying diplomatic pressure was the only viable path to avoid even greater catastrophe.
Given the brutal blockade of Gaza, the continuous encroachment of settlers in the occupied territory, the continued refusal of a two-state solution, what exactly Israel expects to happen?
It is not like the Palestinians have F-35s and Abrahams tanks paid by the US in order to wage a proper war against Israel.
Israel, given its own history (google for Irgun, Stern Gang, Lehi, Hagannah, etc) should be able to predict the end result of its actions.
> Given the brutal blockade of Gaza, the continuous encroachment of settlers in the occupied territory, the continued refusal of a two-state solution, what exactly Israel expects to happen?
Are you implying that this "blockade" was unnecessary for security purposes? You're painting this as inevitable due to the circumstances, yet of the two regions, the one given more autonomy and decolonized was the one that attacked.
Nit: Congo free state and Scramble for Africa were pretty different as I believe most Europeans didn’t realize and/or accept that sub Saharan Africans are humans at that point. They had an extremely different exposure to them (level and type) than we have today, and I don’t think we today can say whether we would have reacted differently to the Africans immediately post mass scale contact.
Do people in the west today consciously consider Palestinians to be subhuman? I don’t think so? So this today is like much much worse actually IMO from a moral defensibility standpoint.
This is orthogonal to your point, I agree with your point.
I think your point has some merits, but ultimately, intent doesn't matter: action does. if the West keeps funding Israel's genocide in Gaza, then yes, it's because they believe the Palestinians are sub-human. Haven't you seen the outpouring of support for Ukraine since they were invaded? Yet, Western nations are funding (not overlooking, but actively paying for) something worse - a continuous, ongoing genocide - and it's supposed to be an oversight?
I disagree that intent does not matter when judging the morality of an action. I believe this is the supermajority view in the west. Which doesn’t make it right, of course, I just assumed we all thought that and if you don’t I’m not going to argue with you about it.
I, for one, am thankful this hasn't been taken down like any article remotely critical of Israel.
And this has eliminated the whole Western bullshit about human rights maximalism - it's just the same damn thing every time. Like the atrocities in the Congo free State, the Scramble for Africa, etc. the West will sponsor unspeakable atrocities overseas and then act shocked when they actually happen.
Many people in the West don't realize it, but Palestine will wreck severe damage on the West. Just like Gorbachev visiting a random store in the US and seeing insane abundance in a shop in the middle of nowhere while Soviet citizens starved, what killed the Soviet Union was disillusion; people at all levels realized that a system that couldn't provide its people the basics didn't deserve to exist.
That's what happening in the West: American GWOT veterans are still feeling disillusioned about what they went to do in Iraq & Afg. (and Vietnam, before it), and now their kids are seriously asking, "Are we the baddies?"
What's the point of this industrial capacity and wealth if all we do with it is bomb kids? No political system can survive disillusion, that is, the point where people across the spectrum start seeing their nation as hypocritical.