- 1076comments
- 451comments
- 581comments
- 705comments
- 337comments
- 248comments
- 238comments
- 212comments
- 516comments
- 166comments
- 246comments
- 387comments
- 390comments
- 268comments
- 237comments
- 286comments
- 113comments
- 107comments
- 175comments
- 185comments
- 763comments
- 135comments
- 274comments
- 205comments
- 358comments
- 111comments
- 89comments
- 123comments
- 350comments
- 98comments
If you want to compare before and after:
https://earth.google.com/web/search/31%2e297226,+34%2e243649... - then click "show historical imagery" next to the search box.
The horror of the "Playground" marker here: https://earth.google.com/web/@31.28532193,34.25349609,77.611...
I'm a little confused by this one, because if you hit the "Show historical imagery" button, and go back through the prior years, I don't really see much or anything of a playground there.
Usually a football field.
idk if it's the same "playground" we found, but honestly just looks like an site prepared for building: https://earth.google.com/web/search/31%2e297226,+34%2e243649...
Atomic dome vibes when looking at some of the few buildings still standing
Another one to look at is the maps of Ukraine [0]
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/google-maps-...
The icons from what was there before are a haunting digital ghost. School, Restaurant, Pharmacy all the city is just rubble.
It's sad that most world leaders do nothing to combat such genocide. There are so few sanctions against the state, or specific people, of Israel. Foreign forums are very much still open for business to them.
1) Ultimately, money means more to foreign nations than what happens with internal affairs of their trading partners
2) Accusations of genocide, whether they stand up or not, are great fodder for whataboutism discussions. Let's say the world's two largest economies, the US and China, decided to start sanctioning Israel for what's happening in Gaza. You could expect other countries to start threatening actions against the US and China over their previous or current genocidal behaviors. These are obviously not things that the US and China want to deal with.
What do you think world leaders should've done differently?
The post you are responding to lists several possible actions. Another good start would be to stop providing the weapons that have done this damage.
Cut off weapon gifts+sales to Israel, impose sanctions. Same way we dealt with the South African apartheid state.
Israel has both nuclear weapons and the Epstein files, so that's not really an option (granted: SA had nuclear weapons too, but nobody really to drop them on).
Nuclear weapons sure, but what is this about Epstein?
he's referring to the fact that epstein is a mossad agent and that compromised world leaders are being blackmailed to support the genocide
Epstein (and Ghislaine Maxwell in particular) are widely believed to have operated as a massive Mossad blackmail operation, collecting (and creating) blackmail material against western politicians and influential individuals to ensure their support for Israel.
I won't go into details that support or refute this claim, but that is what the parent poster likely meant.
and it seems pretty likely that's exactly what was happening.
The idea that a nation-state was/is running a child sex trafficking ring, and we're *not* turning over heaven and earth to investigate that so that country faces unprecedented consequences...I don't even know what to say
Why is it likely ? Why not Russia ? I’ve heard it’s Russia ?
Epstein is thought to have been working for Mossad. If that's true, they probably have copies of all the video tapes (which we know were made) of all the stuff rich people did on Epstein island. This theory would single-handedly explain why almost everyone in the Epstein files supports Israel so strongly.
So you're suggesting that Israel would drop a nuke on a Western country imposing a boycott? Somehow, I doubt it.
Who's this "we" who dealt with the SA apartheid state?
The international pressure on SA did absolutely nothing to change their mind (I'm old enough to have seen PW Botha's Rubicon speech live on TV). The NP (political party in charge) was slowly and carefully convinced to push out the hardliners.
The people left, like FW De Clerk, actually did the dismantling - unbanned the ANC, released Mandfela from prison, switched to allowing black voters, etc.
The rest of the world's pressure had absolutely no effect on the leadership. Change only came when leadership started changing.
See this for more background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiations_to_end_apartheid_...
The actual on the ground resistance was of central importance in the end of South African apartheid, but the international pressure and sanctions greatly increased the need for negotiations to begin. The point is to increase the pressure to change leadership through democratic means.
This could hopefully happen somewhat faster with Israel, given that the government isn't a literal Nazi remnant, as the South African government was. (Though, ironically, the main arms supplier to South Africa during the arms embargo was Israel, often reselling weapons from the United States. Sigh.)
"By the late 1980s, the South African state was in profound crisis, crippled by international sanctions, a stagnant economy, and widespread resistance. Recognizing the unsustainable nature of the perpetual conflict, the government under P.W. Botha began tentative, secret contact with the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and the exiled African National Congress (ANC) leaders."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_Africa_(1948%...
A lot.
Literally on Oct 7, Hamas tried to return civilian hostages, who the IDF killed. This is why Hamas changed policies to only give up hostages through 3rd parties. They reached out to israel to try and return hostages and were ignored. They reached out to the US to return hostages and were ignored. [1]
So for starters, the US could have pressured Israel to negotiate with Hamas to return the hostages.
As Israel started to show genocidal intent (for example, killing aide workers multiple times). The US could have at a minimum threaten to withhold aide. In fact, there are laws on the books that a country such as Israel committing war crimes is ineligible for aide.
Finally, the UN should have deployed peace keepers to gaza specifically to stop the genocide.
Actions could have been taken, but they weren't because our politicians are so bribed by Israeli lobby money as to turn a complete blind eye to it's misdeeds.
[1] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-politics/2026-09-...
So you feel like after October 7, there should've just been a talk about what happened and some form of negotiation ?
Quote exactly where I even implied that.
Well what else do you expect when you subjugate a native population for decades? Just expect perfect victims?
The peaceful route didn't work. Only idiots will think continuing with the status quo will result in anything different.
UN has no such power. I am still amazed how people do not get this.
Members need to vote for such things to happen. It wouldn't, not in this climate.
The question was
Members should have voted in the UN to deploy peace keeping troops. The UN does have that power if it's voted for. This isn't a question of the current realities but a question of what the right actions are.
This is where you notice that the world is more complicated than social media posts.
Like it would've been a nice idea, until you realize that Hamas is heavily backed by Iran, Iran is helping Russia, Russia is invading Ukraine, and it starts to look like that level of intervention is a step towards a world war.
Then you notice world energy markets are going to be effected by a massive conflict etc.
If the UN went into Gaza, got attacked by Iran, then had to respond, next minute they're attacking a close Russian ally, and maybe even China might have to get involved in that.
What would've been good is if October 7 didn't happen, and that goes for both sides.
Iran would WELCOME UN peace keepers in gaza, are you kidding? Hell, I think even Hamas would welcome their presence. UN peace keepers would mean the likes of UNRA could operate once again in Gaza to deliver aid. It would also mean that Israel would have to stop it's aggression.
lol, no, other way around. Though the Russia hasn't really been involved with Iran since Ukraine started. It's actually China that's the biggest Iranian trade partner.
The only party that'd be upset over UN peace keepers in Gaza is Israel.
I don't think what you're saying is actually right, if peacekeepers came in, it would (likely) mean a freezing of the current borders / situation, and isn't that what most people say justified October 7, "the theft of land"?
That's not how that answer was phrased. It directly indicated that the UN should have taken that action.
Make it make sense. The question is what should have happened. You say I answered what should have happened. But you also say "that's not how the answer was phrased".
How is my "should have" happened not a direct answer to the question?
That would result in the USA going to war against the UN. There is a reason the UN only takes action when the security council agrees. Countries on the security council can plausibly use their military might to prevent any UN action, so to prevent the senseless deaths of peacekeepers, they are given a verbal veto instead.
No it wouldn't? We are talking hypotheticals. When talking about what world leaders should do I include the US in world leaders.
I wasn't engaging in what's likely, just what should be. Biden and Trump should have been on board with deploying peace keepers. They were not.
If Biden or Trump would simply cut off funding there probably wouldn't be a need for peace keepers any more.
If you had to guess, what do you think they might do? I feel like questions like this are in bad faith. Think about it for a minute, and try to come up with some things that they might do.
Send all collaborators to the international criminal court. (In the US, especially congress critters and members of the executive branch.)
Also, blockade Israel proportionally to the Gaza blockades. I doubt they would have kept murdering red cross members in Gaza once the supermarkets started running out of food.
How can they forcibly imprison the leaders of a soverein, nuclear armed state?
The remaining non-corrupt members of the executive branch (or the state governments) would uphold the oaths they took, lock potus and friend in boxes, and ship them off.
As for Israel, as I understand it, the next election will mean domestic jail time for the incumbents unless the polls are wildly wrong.
At that point, it would be easy for Israel to start climbing out of lawlessness too.
At the very least diplomatic condemnation and a South African level sanction.
Immediately stop all exports and money flows to Israel. Food and medical aid should still be allowed to both sides, of course.
Do not forget that world leaders are heads of sovereign states that are in charge of their self defense. Those that actually have to defend themselves, like the US, rather than relying on strong allies, need to make public statements that are not hypocritical about what they would do for self defense. This is why both U.S. administrations support Israel's actions
Pretty sure that's not why US administrations support Israel's actions.
Bad phrasing on my part. That is one of many reasons
wow, you hold a very high opinion of american politics. you must have been reading new from paper news paper for the last 30 years
Sure, the need to self defense against US dangerous neighbors. Looking at you, Canada!
Have you been living under a rock? The time when "public statements" used to work is long, long gone.
Sure, but are we going to ignore about the US having to rely on its "helpless" allies to provide staging points and cannon fodder for its illegal imperialistic wars? How much of a superpower would it be without its overseas bases?
Its really telling to see the destruction limited to where the structures used to be rather than to all of the surrounding green spaces. If the destruction of civilian dwellings was purely an accident you'd expect to see the destruction spread evenly over the area. Instead it looks much more like a prolonged set of surgical strikes to destroy the buildings while preserving as much of the surrounding areas as possible.
For a great example of this, look at this pin https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZcMbdFcx87PrqoYNA
And here's a pin of where the farms were spared https://maps.app.goo.gl/iZbbTH4iH27FCz4s9
They just use bulldozers to flatten whatever the bombs don't. They can drive a bulldozer pretty precisely, especially when they don't care who's in front of it or under it.
Caterpillar even supplies the IDF with bulldozers just for this purpose, which then get up-armored and sent into Palestinian civilian areas to do this (including unmanned versions).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDF_Caterpillar_D9
I don't quite understand your argument here. In your first pin I'm struggling to find a single building that isn't leveled, or at least severely damaged. Even buildings far away from the city center in the boonies are leveled.
They are saying that this is genocidal destruction. In a war sometimes civilian infrastructure is hit as collateral. But here, all infrastructure is destroyed and it's clear this wasn't done by 1 or 2 errant bombs but rather because of direct targeting. It can't be argued to be an accident because in farmland you see no bombs which hit the farmland by mistake. In other-words, this is entirely purposeful.
Please check Norman Finkelstein's latest book namely Gaza's Gravediggers on this matter [1].
He also has a very telling and chilling interview recently on Palestine and Gaza [2].
[1] Gaza's Gravediggers: An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places [book].
[2] Norman Finkelstein Reveals Shocking Discoveries While Researching History of Israel’s Gaza Obsession [video]:
https://youtu.be/Jmv2h1WYnNo
What a nice, objective guy:
https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/uyqjn2/norman_fink...
He also promotes transphobia. Chomsky was friends with Epstein and acquaintance of Steve Bannon. I don’t think that discredits his entire body of work, but I think we should stop promoting him when there are sources that are less problematic.
You are mixing Chomsky (the subreddit) up with Norm (the book author). Norm was friends with Chomsky but not Epstein or Bannon. I'm unaware of him having transphobic views.
I would caution against uncritical consumption of Finkelstein's work. He is a bit unhinged, and limited in what content he can analyse as he can't read Arabic or Hebrew.
Also Tucker Carlson? Seriously?
Norman Finkelstein's treatment of sources is dubious at best , dishonest at worst, and he is not very good at defending his position when challenged on them
At least that was my takeaway after watching his debate with Destiny (the streamer) and Benny Morris (the historian):
You be the judge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X_KdkoGxSs&list=PLrAXtmErZg...
A war requires at least two militaries. This is what happens when a well armed military engages a mostly unarmed civilian society unable to mount significant opposition.
"Before the October 7, 2023 attacks, the total size of Hamas’s military wing (the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades) was estimated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and intelligence agencies to be between 25,000 and 30,000 fighters, with some intelligence assessments placing the upper limit as high as 40,000. This army was organized into five regional brigades and 24 battalions."
"Hamas's military force prior to October 7, 2023, was roughly 3 to 4.5 times larger than the United States military when measured as a percentage of their respective total populations."
Source: the aggressors
No link to a source ?
Anyway, IDF as ≈170k active duty personnel and 465k reservists[1]. Literally a different order of magnitude. Add to it the vast different of resources, access to an air force and nuclear weapons and it become even more clearer that there is no comparison possible.
(And comparing personnel count to the USA is laughable as it is vastly different military type. Both a fighter jet pilot and a foot soldier count as one personnel, but it's neither the same force projection nor the same investment of civilians working for the war machine).
1: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/10/14/idf-explai...
You don't need to compare the military forces. You can compare the casualties on both sides or, for a different perspective, you might count the civilians killed inside their own territories (you might count the West Bank if you really want accurate numbers).
Forced displacement is also considered a war crime and, considering what is happening in Gaza and at the West Bank, it would qualify as genocide as well.
comparing the casualties just shows that Hamas are incompetent not that they aren't trying.
I was hoping the numbers would make it obvious the reaction is disproportionate and careless with the lives of civilians.
Maybe they should be treated like the festival goers?
The IDF has killed not just a higher number but also a higher percentage of civilians, and a much higher percentage of children, than the October 7 attacks[0]. Even if collective punishment was considered not cruel but moral by the larger community, Israel has far surpassed it.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war
If it was genocide, why would you spare the farmers? Doesn’t really make sense.
It’s more efficient to spend your ammo on housing and city buildings.
Wouldn’t it actually be much more efficient to just destroy all the food infrastructure and just have everyone die from hunger instead of destroying all the houses?
You're right, it is, hence the strikes on World Central Kitchen and the blockade on food entering the area.
they send armed settlers for the farms. they can't destroy those
Food production was target, even in different part of Palestine (west bank).
Farmers were killed, even in different part of Palestine.
Killing farmers have nothing to do with the definition of genocide.
Farmland wasn't bombed, but they did use Bulldozers to destroy a lot of fields.
there are videos of bulldozer in the West Bank eradicating secular olive trees from Palestinian farmland. There is no Hamas in West Bank, no tunnels, no fighters.
Looks the same in Ukraine, and at least there it's most likely not primarily because Russians wanted flatten the city (I'm sure they'd have preferred taking it in one piece) but rather because fighting happens from buildings resulting in the buildings getting targeted.
Doesn't mean that here the targeting couldn't have been done with the primary goal of displacing the population, but the buildings being destroyed doesn't prove the motive.
Does it look the same in the Ukraine? I haven’t seen any footage of entire cities leveled like this.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-26/damage-data-reveals-e...
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/5/24/satellite-...
And that just from the start of war.
Yeah, we can look at how Mariupol looks on satellite images. It looks nothing like Rafah. You have to be completely blind to not see the difference.
Here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/TncezF72LxaWAKYY7
Many of the towns along the front with Russia are also wastelands. Nearly every single building from homes, to schools, to shops are rubble.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2024/10/28/how-russias-invas...
It does not look the same, at all.
Cities in the heat of the conflict (i.e boots on the ground) sure do look like that
It does not.
What happened on the Ukrainian frontlines is a war of position. Everything gets pounded, even forests and tree lines. It’s more like Verdun than anything that happened in Gaza.
In absolutely does [1].
If Gaza is a genocide then Ukraine almost certainly is too. The same messaging about exterminating a culture that doesn't "actually" exist from senior leadership. The same attacks on children. The same destruction and systematic razing of civilian settlements.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ySLyCjNnrI
It can be (and is imho) true that both Russia and Israel have broadcasted genocidal intent with the consequences being war crimes and still not look identical
It seems like the state of Ukraine frontline cities is due to intense artillery fire and air bombingn whereas gaza cities states seem to be more of systematic bulldozing of entire areas which would erase the marks of actual bombings and make the scale harder to assess
Both are the results of aggressive madmen, but both situations are different. And the genocide aspect is not what is discussed here.
Also, why do you think that “Russia is doing the same thing” is some kind of gotcha?
Well, it happened in germany with the hitleryouth and volksturm.
The same thing happens in Ukraine in the urban front lines. Villages get erased with artillery and bombs, as basements are the best place to survive drones and fires from artillery and bombs.
Systematic destruction of urban areas is sadly what modern urban combat operations look like.
When an enemy digs in and choose to fight and die in an urban area, this is how war plays out.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2024/10/28/how-russias-invas...
WAR IS HELL
Rafah was no village, with 250,000 to 280,000 people.
But that’s not what we see in Gaza. The parents specifically mentioned that only towns were leveled. The destroyed towns are not the only relevant aspect. The other one is that major damage happens only there. And of course it would, because the Israeli forces don’t want to sterilise the land; they want to take it. In contrast, Russia is happy to be king of the rubble as long as Ukrainians eat shells.
I'm sorry, Ukraine war discussion was labeled political on HN, not allowed, actively moderated and shutdown. Please don't post it here. Only Gaza/Israel get's a special carveout for these sorts of discussions on HN.
A lot of destruction is from bulldozers like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDF_Caterpillar_D9
The way the IDF fought in Rafah and other areas is leading with bulldozers that can take RPGs, IEDs, mines etc. to clear way for troops behind. That's how the tunnel and other guerrilla advantages are neutralized.
So yes, the destruction is absolutely purposeful, its purpose is to take away the advantage of the tunnels and guerrilla tactics, and enable excavations for tunnel access and detection.
The sequence was something like this (AI assisted):
Early May 2024, the IDF issued extensive, phased evacuation orders. This prompted an estimated 1 million to 1.4 million civilians—many of whom had previously fled to Rafah from other parts of Gaza—to evacuate to designated zones like Al-Mawasi.
Once ground troops secured these largely emptied areas, the IDF Combat Engineering Corps moved in. Objective satellite damage assessments show a massive spike in structural destruction in Rafah beginning in the summer of 2024, directly correlating with the ground invasion.
Satellite imagery confirms that ground forces used controlled explosive demolitions and heavy earth-moving equipment, including armored D9 bulldozers, to systematically clear residential blocks, agricultural land, and infrastructure.
This mechanical destruction was particularly concentrated along the Philadelphi Corridor (the Gaza-Egypt border) and in eastern Rafah. The military objective of these block-by-block clearing operations was to uncover and destroy cross-border smuggling tunnels and to establish a widened, flattened security perimeter where structures previously stood.
In summary, while aerial bombardment occurred prior to and during the invasion, you are correct that the wholesale, block-by-block leveling of Rafah was heavily driven by engineering operations using bulldozers and controlled demolitions after the majority of the civilian population had evacuated the targeted areas.
"Evacuating" a million people who will not be allowed to return is "ethnic cleansing".
It's not even evacuation because the IDF does not provide facilities to go to, it's just forced displacement.
I’m not sure your point? They are not civilians when they are covering up tunnels in their homes for Hamas to use.
Look at Google map of Gaza city, Rafah, Khan-Younes, Al Qarara, ... pretty much all building have been destroyed. You want to try to argue that every one of them was somehow hiding a tunnel ?
Is having tunnels in their own territory a problem?
You can also see a lot of buildings demolished on the Egyptian side too.
In 2015, the Egyptian government announced a plan to demolish the entire Egyptian city of Rafah, in order to deter smuggling with the Gaza Strip. More than a decade on, most of it is gone. The residents were forcibly relocated to elsewhere in Egypt.
It also looks similar to Mosul in Iraq before and after the ISIS and Iraq and coalition forces fought:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/15/world/middlee...
Urban warfare is brutal, especially when one side systematically digs in and uses IEDs and booby traps in civilian buildings.
Yeah, this is not what happened here. You can look up Israeli articles from the time that described that nothing was going on for weeks on end other than demolitions. Basically no fighting. You get Israeli politicians repeating beforehand that Rafah will get leveled.
They wanted to level the city, they did. That's all. There was some fighting eventually with a few fighters holed in in Rafah, but nothing that would justify this. And Israelis continue leveling entire areas the whole year after so called "ceasefire" during which there were almost no attacks on them, yet they managed to murder more than a thousand of people.
The problem is the reporting--it's only "fighting" if Hamas is actually shooting guns or doing things that actually kill Israelis. Anything below this threshold is either not mentioned or is "peaceful".
Thus anything that precludes Hamas from actually inflicting harm is not "fighting", even if it's demolishing Hamas booby traps or demolishing structures Hamas would use. Hamas knew what would happen, they intended the result. The more Gaza suffers the more the world blames Israel.
Just because the Israeli politicians knew what was going to happen doesn't change this. Urban combat flattens cities.
Scary! Can we get photos of those? Wait, they look suspiciously like medical equipment and incubators…
(Will the Chosen Ones reclassify radiological equipment as nuclear weapons next? Stay tuned for more!)
Oh 100%, you can see specific buildings (mostly marked as schools) that are still standing.
This wasn't done with strikes, but with (remote controlled) bulldozers. https://idfclub.org/remote-controlled-warfare-how-israels-ro...
Wow. So the next Rachel Corinne will be killed by a robot.
Prolonged "surgical" strikes continued so long that there is almost nothing left to operate on I guess. And your justification is that some farms are not completely destroyed? What a disingenuous remark.
Look to Ukraine.
Every structure is eventually flattened.
The only difference is that Gaza, unlike Ukraine
- first had the option not to attack
- secondly had an option to accept a ceasefire and not immediately violate it 15 minutes later by firing barrages of unguided rockets into civilian neighborhoods
- had the option to actually respect the ceasefires and exchange hostages as scheduled
Gaza is being flattened because that is the only way Israel has to make sure this won't happen again. This is not unusual. Same situation as when the allies flattened nazi Germany.
But this time we are absolutely somewhat responsible because we reward hamas every time they do insane things that makes sure civilians get hurt.
If the understanding in media and among thought leaders back in 1945 were at todays levels we would have had people crying about the "genocide against the Germans"[1] and how the allies were the actual bad guys and we would still have a small nazi country in the middle of what is Germany today.
[1]: I mean seriously, at least 350 000 civilian ethnic Germans died in the war compared to well under 10 000 civilian Americans - and well under 2000 if we exclude sailors, so the numbers are very comparable
What is your expectation of how the civilian population of Gaza are meant to live after this? You can repeat your propaganda all you like, but what is the actual outcome you expect from this? In five years time, is this land occupied? By the same population that was displaced, or by Israelis? Or by no one?
Ukraine looks nothing like this
After the Allies flattened Nazi Germany (and Japan), civilized peoples looked at what they had done and said "wow we need to agree that this never happens again."
It's always funny hearing these defenses of Israel or Hamas which resolve to "hey what can you expect, they have the moral intuitions of cavepeople!"
non-X Google Maps link to ~location of screenshot: https://www.google.com/maps/@31.2857778,34.2533333,1010m
jesus fucking christ
Israeli here. Maybe I can give some helpful context.
Most people in Israel have not, and probably will not see this - any “support” for Palestinians is seen as a very far-left idea after Oct 7. There are still many here who oppose the extent of the war - I see regular demonstrations in Tel Aviv calling for peace. I will note that there seems to be fairly universal agreement that _something_ needed to be done after Oct 7. If you want to understand the Israeli perspective (doesn’t seem like most commenters do, but I’m not writing this for them), you have to look at how Oct 7 shaped Israeli society these last 3 years.
But anyways, don’t take my word for anything, pay attention to our upcoming elections. We will see how big the tents are then.
Wishing for peace, for saner voices to rise, and for an end to this cycle of violence.
[flagged]
America didn't do things like this after 9/11, we tried to build democracies in a naive way, failed, and got a lot of people killed unnecessarily. Iraq was completely unjustified and based on fabrications.
But we weren't trying to wage war against the entire civilian populations as revenge. That's an entirely different category of crime.
A lot of the stories that came out of Abu Ghraib sure sound like they have very strong parallels to what is happening today. At the level of "poorly trained reservists trying to do something difficult without sufficient oversight and getting frustrated and turning to torture" it sounds very similar.
And the destruction of Fallujah from Phantom Fury ended up only marginally better than what happened to Rafah (destroyed about a quarter of the buildings in Fallujah and damaged another quarter).
Abu Ghraib was a scandal, some people got punished, probably not all of the right ones.
When it came out that Israel was systematically sodomizing detainees with nightsticks, they had protestors come out in favor of the guards. It's still ongoing, all charges have been dropped. Nobody is scandalized by it.
That's a very flat take. That ignores the fact that the doctor that saw the prisoner reported it for investigation or that the military had chose to prosecute it, also you don't mention this was one case, not "systematic"
Even ignoring the fact that protests do not imply popular support, there is no comparison as 9/11 did not include widespread sexual violence and ongoing hostage rape was still going on at the time this happened.
So even if this seemed terrible to most Israelis, it was hard to find someone who will publicly defend a rapist from rape in jail
Sure if you ignore the UN Commission of Inquiry report from March 2025 that concluded sexual and gender-based violence was used systematically against Palestinian detainees.
the UNHR is comically biased against Israel though and controlled by totalitarian countries with less than stellar human rights records
The reaction of Americans to Abu Ghraib and the reaction of Israelis to the - larger scale - torture of Palestinian prisoners, is miles apart. It's also why there was always an end in sight to the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, yet there isn't for Gaza until it has not a single Palestinian left.
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
Please don't post like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Please don't post like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Would you have preferred that the US stay out of WW2 to avoid killing any civilians? Sure, the Nazis took over, but at least our hands are clean!
[flagged]
9/11 did happen to us.
Admittedly, this was before social media but back then you didn't get 50% support for gassing anybody.
That ended in a million dead over bi-partisan 20 years of war. Without 9/11 including massive hostage taking, rape or mass murder with torture in people homes.
The other main difference is that 9/11 ended within a few days, the hostage part of 7/10 made it an ongoing disaster for years in Israel.
Hamas offered the hostages to end the war within the first week or so, Israel refused, as they did many times later. They also got many warnings about the attack, even from Hamas. It was always about the destruction of Gaza, the situation is manufactured.
The actual violent civilian caused by coalition forces are estimated to be around 15,000 in Iraq and 10,000 in Afghanistan - over a period of 20y and populations around 25x that of Gaza.
Everyone knows that Israel essentially went on a rampage of revenge, which you basically seem to agree with given your explanation for the destruction (i.e. not military necessity while protecting civilian lives).
I support Israel, but not wholeheartedly. I understand how Nakba was a matter of survival of your people. But why is this still going on today? Why is Israel continuing to expand settlements? Can you not understand how Palestinians must feel to constantly live in fear of being pushed out of their own homes? This is what gives me heartache. Can't you draw a line and say, what happened in the past cannot be reversed, but we will not continue to expand settlements?
Probably tougher to do politically than me stopping ICE from putting non-violent immigrants in concentration camps
I did a study abroad in Israel in 2005 (not jewish, just for middle eastern studies) when Israel pulled out of Gaza and did essentially that. They forcibly removed settlers and left Gaza. As I recall most Israeli's thought it'd be good step toward peace.
Unfortunately Hamas took over Gaza shortly after and shot some 12k+ rockets into southern Israel over the next 20 years, and then launched Oct 7.
Unfortunately now there seems to be far less interest in Israel now in restricting settlers in the West Bank. I also feel for the Palestinians, particularly the Arab Christian communities, however extremists on both sides don't want peace.
Sure, if you ignore the part where they kept bombing Gaza, assassinated political leaders, did ground incursions, and blocked it by land, sea, and air.
If Israel wanted a peaceful two-state solution, why did they keep occupying Gaza by turning it into an open-air prison?
The answer is in the post you replied to.
"shortly after". Let's just forget for a moment that Israel made that happen, intentionally. What happened during that "shortly", was there a food blockade?
wasn't Egypt in control of southern border? did Egypt participate in the blockade?
Yes.
Netanyahu preferred Hamas to the PLO in order to guarantee that no unified Palestinian movement might arise. The way to do that, according to Netanyahu, was to strengthen the Islamist Hamas in Gaza at the expense of its rival, the Fatah-dominated PLO in the West Bank.
“Anyone who wants to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas,” said Netanyahu at a Likud party meeting in 2019. “This is part of our strategy, to divide the Palestinians between those in Gaza and those in Judea and Samaria.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/21/the-netanyahu-...
What makes Christians more worthy of empathy?
The position you’re describing is essentially the modern left position in Israeli politics. Again, we’ll see in the upcoming election, but not everyone here supports the current goings on in the West Bank. The “Palestinian situation” is a major question in Israeli politics, both wrt Gaza and the wb.
One thing you will find across the board is that nobody is willing to compromise on security. Most voters today remember the second intifada. There is no serious political position where Israel fully withdraws from the wb. But there’s a big difference between “massively expanse settlements” and “phase out settlements and make room for the possibility of a future Palestinian state”.
The words “Palestinian state” are usually political suicide here in Israel, but the fact that Palestine is recognized to various extent by many countries in the world means that eventually these two realities are going to have to clash.
Israel rejects the two-state solution. They seem to be aggressively pursing a one-state solution, incorporating all of former Palestine (and perhaps beyond) into Israel. Obviously this doesn't include taking in the people living there, giving them Israeli citizenship. People will be killed or expelled. All while Israel continually claims to be the victim "look at what those people trying to stop us stealing their land did to us now."
you're describing what current government does, do you think everyone agrees with them?
So this situation is a bit like when the Nazis invaded Poland and then said, we have to destroy Poland because if we don't, they'll kill all our Nazi soldiers.
Isn't the humane solution to move the troops back out, instead? Of course the aggressors in a war will never do so, they will only press forward.
didn't they do that in South Lebanon and then quickly rockets appear near the border and nearby towns get evacuated semi daily?
also they did it in entire Gaza, unilateral disengagement
Was food prevented from entering Gaza during this "disengagement"?
The question is what did the government know before October 7th https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/2026/09/ra-vivian-repor...
On the day that it happened both Egypt and the US confirmed that Egypt had informed Isreal in advance.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67082047
This article is from a few days after that, but I remember that there were confirmations already during the day.
Most people in Israel have not, and probably will not see this
It is outside their zone of interest.
Counterpoint, a more passive turn of phrase is more fitting: How Israeli society was shaped around oct 7.
The event doesn't shape society by itself, political and media response/interest shape the society.
If we have to look at how October 7 shaped Israeli culture, we also have to look at how all of the dates leading up to October 6 shaped Palestinian culture. How many people were killed in the West Bank on October 6 - does that register, anywhere?
Can you try to free your brain from political bullshit for a moment and think which kind of a person can come up with a plan to kill civilians not in the heat of battle, but with premediation and purpose? And in which kind of society this idea could have a wide enough support to be implemented.
Netanyahu preferred Hamas to the PLO in order to guarantee that no unified Palestinian movement might arise. The way to do that, according to Netanyahu, was to strengthen the Islamist Hamas in Gaza at the expense of its rival, the Fatah-dominated PLO in the West Bank.
“Anyone who wants to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas,” said Netanyahu at a Likud party meeting in 2019. “This is part of our strategy, to divide the Palestinians between those in Gaza and those in Judea and Samaria.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/21/the-netanyahu-...
Someone who has no ability to accurately target because the other side destroyed it?
What should one do in war if they only have improvised rockets available, and surrendering will guarantee your extermination? You'd throw them in the general direction of the enemy, right? And the enemy knows this and will not put civilians in range of the rockets - unless they plan to use them as human shields. It is the same reason the German trenches were not full of clockmakers.
But that is what settlers movement and Israel army were doing for decades?
Do you not see the article you are commenting on? The state of Israel is being accused with evidence ofsimilar crimes on a scale an order of magnitude larger. I just can't stand the hypocrisy....
I just looked it up and on Oct 6th Israeli 'Settlers' murdered 19-year-old college student named Labib Mohammed Dumaidi. The state of Israel later teargassed his funeral.... Perfect example of needed context if you are truly trying to understand Oct 7th
I understand Israeli perspective already, from what I've seen last few years, and read about the history.
Or is there some other perspective, other than what Israelis can be observed as doing? I assume what I've seen is what Israel is like.
Netanyahu preferred Hamas to the PLO in order to guarantee that no unified Palestinian movement might arise. The way to do that, according to Netanyahu, was to strengthen the Islamist Hamas in Gaza at the expense of its rival, the Fatah-dominated PLO in the West Bank.
“Anyone who wants to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas,” said Netanyahu at a Likud party meeting in 2019. “This is part of our strategy, to divide the Palestinians between those in Gaza and those in Judea and Samaria.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/21/the-netanyahu-...
While I vehemently disagree with the IDFs handling and it's hard to deny the genocidal effort, let's not forget Americans reacted very similarly after 9/11. People are not keen on ideas of peace after a large scale terrorist attack.
Revenge and collective punishment may be natural human reactions to a terror attack but that doesn't make them justified. Especially when those in charge anticipated the attack and deliberately exploited it.
Except for Palestinians of course, who suffer a terror attack every day, and are expected to remain peaceful afterwards, or they will be punished with another terror attack.
Israel, in the worst blunder in its history, disengaged from Gaza and left Gaza to be purely in the control of the Palestinians. The Palestinians elected Hamas, which killed of Fatah and took control of Gaza, leading to the following 20 years of escalating violence which reached a peak in the 7th October.
The only reasonable conclusion from the Gaza experiment of giving control to the Palestinians is that they will only use that to attack Israel. The mistake of the disengagement will not be repeated.
Nobody in Israel is willing to give Palestinians control anymore. We've tried that and we see how it went completely wrong. Thank god it was just Gaza because if 7th october attacks came from the west bank, Israel would be gone.
The most peace that can be achieved is sadly in the current situation where Israel maintains control of the Palestinians and they don't get a chance to organize another 7th of October from the west bank, which is just few kilometers from Tel Aviv.
The Palestinians authority can't even win elections and they have stopped doing elections. If they were to resume elections, presumably Hamas would also take control of the west bank too. The majority of Palestinians would support 7th of October attacks on the rest of Israel. Which is an existential threat to Israel.
It's worth noting that the whole notion of having Palestinian "democratic" regime alongside Israel is as far from arabic culture as possible. There are no arabic democracies. Even after the arabic spring, none of the arabic countries developed a functioning democracy. So the current situation of the Palestinians not having a "fully democratic" regime is actually the norm in all arabic countries. The most democracy that Palestinians could hope for is the current situation under Israeli control. If the entirety of Israel vanished tommorow, and the Palestinians were given democratic elections, they would immediately devolve into an Islamic state with Sharia law where the average Palestinian has less freedom than today.
So anyone judging Israel for the continued control over the Palestinians needs to remember both what would happen to Israel without this control (genocide) and what would have happened to the Palestinians themselves (Sharia theocracy with less rights).
There might be some Tel-Aviv detached people who support the Palestinians, but I guaranty you there are no Palestinian supporters in the Gaza adjacent zones which were hit in the 7th of October.
There are Street View photos that look like they were taken from someone driving down one of the side streets so you can pretty much walk on it. You can see apartment buildings, local shops, people going about their day... It’s heart-wrenching to contrast that life with the current aerial view, with nothing but rubble and destruction.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/31%C2%B016'58.6%22N+34%C2%...
How did they get those cameras inside and footage out? Isn't it an open air prison without electricity or internet, where you are shot immediately when trying to approach?
There is a possibility to use https://www.google.com/streetview/contribute/
There was internet connectivity at least before the widespread destruction - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_Palestine#Ga...
You realize people get cameras and phones into actual prisons, right?
They don't, that's the point. All of the street view footage is from before the start of the current genocide. Gaza is under one of the most complete internet and media blackouts on earth, even the roaming international sim card loophole has been closed.
For comparison, here's Mosul in Iraq after the defeat of ISIS:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/15/world/middlee...
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/middle-east/2016/11/01/battl...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mosul-satellite_n_596d34a3e4b...
This should be higher I think - it is pretty clear that cities get demolished during war, whether purposefully or not.
It's pretty clear you didn't look at the pictures. The destruction in Mosul appears very limited compared to the annihilation of Rafah.
I did look at them and the destruction in both was horrific. I'm not saying that the conflicts are in anyway comparable, but both include fairly comprehensive destruction of civilian areas.
Mosul still had tons of standing buildings where Rafah has entire neighborhoods demolished down to the ground. The destruction there is far more systematic because it's intentional and systematized to drive Palestinians out of the area.
Interesting. Despite the images of Mosul (e.g. on the NYTimes) being presumably selected to show the areas with largest impacts, the destruction is in patches and you can see many houses still standing. In Rafah, every single house has been razed to the ground.
The sad thing is that in a way the terrorist won.
Internationally Israel is probably positioned weaker than before and there is a fissure running through liberal societies from Ireland to France, from Portugal to Germany and probably similar in the US.
This is conflict polarizes. A good example is the recent election in Berlin, which was focused on the housing crisis but now devolved into name calling based on how people think of Israel. A minority might have voted “pro Palestine” but most people wanted affordable flats.
Sowing dissent among your adversaries is very effective.
"Sowing dissent among your adversaries is very effective"
Yes it is, and some countries have become very good at doing that
I take a harsher stance: that we should expect division to be sewn among us by our adversaries, and harden ourselves accordingly through open mindedness, debate, clear info, leaders who discuss deeply and write essays, integrity, best-faith debate (rather than flame wars, especially in popular contexts like tv and social media).
I find it strange that the antidotes to a lot of the bad stuff going on today is basic enlightement stuff: cultivating a citizenry who value evidence-based worldview, education and rule of law. Yet it feels like that is increasingly slipping from our fingers.
The "bad stuff going on today" that you call is the opposite of enlightenment - citizenry based on emotions, tribal and racial affiliations, and rule of strength. There are countries and media that actively promote such a world, since it's easy to get rich and powerful in circumstances like these.
Except that people doing that lost. Very very clearly, it is not sufficient at all. And people who won loved to frame themselves as rational, open to ideas, even wrote essays and pretended good faith.
So did Netanyahu. His far-right policies require an eternal enemy to distract the people and blame for everything going wrong. The October 7 attack definitely didn't hurt his position in national politics.
I don't have a strong position on this but seems at least plausible that the Israeli security services did in fact know about Oct 7th but chose not to act.
I mean come on... Hamas were seen practising flying hang gliders around the strip and one of the most paranoid states in the world didn't think that merited some investigation?
And everyone just happened to not be at their posts?
Is wrong. It is kind of you to show you don't know what you are talking about.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Well the official story IIRC is the border was more lightly manned than normal (and with more reservists than normal) because it was a national holiday.
But again does that make sense given how the Israeli elites feel about Palestinians? Just assume because it's a Jewish holiday Hamas will also take the day off?
Because if that is stupidity then yes, it is very stupid
Official? It is well known in Israel and for it's enemy that on holidays there are less people. Nothing weird or reasons to doubt it.
No, if they did they wouldn't have anyone on the border.
Dear reader, notice how they shifted their claim from "And everyone just happened to not be at their posts" to the official story (wink wink although I offered no real evidence) is that the border was lightly manned.
I'm Israel's enemy and still had no idea about that. Beyond stupid if true.
They are a truly strange people sometimes
Bibi had the advance knowledge and let it happen because he’s fine with collateral damage even if it’s his own countrymen. A few dead Jews are nothing to him if it means More Land To King Over.
“You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet” and all that.
Yes that would be the basic thesis.
It's a bit too 4D chess for my liking but would also explain some things that otherwise don't add up
Regardless of the facts in this specific event, you can make much the same argument about many of the major 21st century terror attacks - there were multiple warnings leading up to 9/11, and the FBI and CIA had eyes on several of the perpetrators before the attacks. They didn't "choose not to act" in so much as institutional disfunction prevented the dots from being connected or any preemptive action being taken, but from the outside it looks pretty much the same.
I would indeed also cast some suspicions on those events, yes, but also with no firm conclusion.
I'm open minded, could see it either way
Several spy agencies also tipped them off about the specific attack, I think it was UAE and Qatar as well as the IDF themselves?
"The sad thing" is that 100k+ humans were brutally killed and the lives of 2 million others were destroyed. The second sad thing is that Germany will never learn. Also, I'd suggest you look up the definition of the word "terrorist".
That's what the sad thing is?
Interesting interpretation.
The Israel stock market is up about 100% since October 7.
The Israeli Shekel is so strong against the dollar it is causing issues with exports.
Israel has signed major missile defense deals with many European countries and just signed a major new one with Greece.
Gaza is in near complete ruins, the tunnel infrastructure Hamas spent the past 2 decades building is being destroyed.
Nasrallah was killed and Hezbollah is severely diminished militarily and politically in Lebanon.
Iran’s nuclear weapons program and ballistic missile capabilities have been severely damaged and no longer pose an existential threat, at least for the time being.
Israel is doing very well since October 7 whereas Hamas and Gaza is not.
Is that the same program that was compeletly damages last year?
The same program that was two weeks away from completion since the nineties. And will again be two weeks away the next time it's convenient.
Strange way to measure success, reducing everything to a powerpoint with graphs, its almost like humans dont exist.
I have no stake in this conflict.
The flip side of your statement is that more nations than before decided to recognize a Palestine state and that it seems for the first time in decades US support for Israel is waning.
Israel is military and economically strong. It’s also a small country in a difficult region that needs trade partners and international connections, probably more so in a future full of climate change.
sounds like the terrorists did indeed win
Eh, those are short term gains. Popular opinion has shifted away from Israel since they've increased their attacks and basically no longer hide the fact they want to eradicate Palestinians wherever they may be. They can't throw antisemitism rhetoric anymore because people have caught on to their victim syndrome. What they're doing is the same thing the US has been doing for decades, creating terrorists by oppressing entire generations and it will end the same way, eventually, when a critical mass opposes their regime or until they elect someone as dumb as the US did and throws all pretenses out the window. They either succeed in their genocide or all they're doing is motivating people who will one day have an impact.
"Hamas and Gaza" You mean Palestinians right? But yeah, it seems genocide is a profitable business.
This is a psychopaths measure of success.
Well Israel is also the only developed country on earth with a fertility rate above replacement.
I don’t know what metrics you would consider non-psychopathic.
Getting married, having children, being materially successful, destroying your enemies. These are good things.
This is psychopathic.
This seems like some serious rose colored outlook. Support for Israel in their patron state has absolutely plummeted in the last year. Support is almost certain to be cut back sharply by the next administration and might go to zero in the near future.
Iran's nuclear program has hardly been destroyed long term and there is almost no chance a durable nuclear agreement comes out of this war. It will almost certainly be a vague memorandum where Iran pinky swears to never build a nuke and then starts building one as soon as the fighting stops. America isn't going to start endless wars to prevent that and Israel can't do it alone. The long term future looks grim for the Middle East, especially for Israel.
which one you called terrorist?
surely the one creating such destructions and deaths no?
Somehow a powerful state army destroying homes and killing civilians is not "terrorist". It's only "terrorist" if the weak try to respond in kind, using means available to them. It's almost like "terrorist" is a propaganda term used by the strong against the weak who try to resist.
As the saying goes "war is terrorism with a bigger budget".
That's the sad thin? not the destruction and wholescale murder?
There's not much of a fissure in Ireland, the consensus there is pro Palestine. They see parallels between how Israel is treating the Palestinians and how the UK treated Ireland. Generally they don't view the bigger country next door trying to take over a smaller country favourably, and that's even without the mention of the word genocide which certainly doesn't help Israel's case.
There are several factors involved as I see it - a lot of money from Qatar flowing to make sure Israel is always shown as the aggressor, anti-semmitism is still prevalent, most people can't grok what the issue is in the Middle East anyway, people don't understand what living 10km from people who want to kill you looks and, and war is horrible and it's always easier to side with the people who seem to be the underdog.
In your own words, what is the issue in the Middle East?
Unfortunately this is a story as long as time itself, with tons of narratives to it so I can't write as a HN comment.
I wish I was eloquent and knowledgeable enough to write it, I'd probably write a book.
Is it? Here's my summary for you:
In 1948 a colonial mission from West Europe invaded Palestine. This has made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
That’s certainly one way of describing it.
Another is: an indigenous people with a continuous presence in the land, joined by mostly legal immigrants (and later by refugees fleeing pogroms and the Holocaust with literally nowhere else to go) built towns, farms and infrastructure, drained swamps and developed an economy that also attracted some Arab immigration and created Arab employment.
This happened under the colonial rule of the Ottomans. Then later under the colonial rule of the British. Finally in 1948, colonial rule ended, much to the dismay of Arab colonialists.
The problem is the inexorable logic of war - fighting everyone everywhere all the time - has led to the war expanding until it collides with an enemy that is actually comparable to Israel, i.e. Iran. And that war has now expanded to include the world's supply of oil.
It's going to affect everyone, and I don't think you can stop Western voters noticing that the price of fuel has gone up. Then they're going to start sharing the blame around: Iran, yes, but also Trump and Netenyahu.
It's hard to blame Iran when they literally weren't doing anything until we attacked them. You don't blame a child for punching back against the school bully - unless you're also a bully.
I don't think Iran are entirely blameless given their sponsorship of Hezbollah and participation in the Yemeni (and previously Lebanese!) civil wars. They've been maintaining a sort of sub-threshold threat in the area for a long time. Which was why, yes, it was an incredibly bad idea for US/Israeli attacks to escalate that.
https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/the-lebanese-civil-war-in-... (article is rather more favourable to them than I would be, but it describes the basic history)
Any rocket or bullet turned against Israel for the past 20 years has its roots in Iran. Iran controlled Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Gaza and Iraq through its militias.
This rhetoric reminds me of how, at one time, everything bad that happened to Germany was said to be orchestrated by you know who.
Look at the pictures from the original post.
Imagine the death and destruction caused by the hands of Israel.
Realize that this reaction wasn't necessary. Those who run Israel are adults. They could have chosen a path with much less deaths. They were not forced to commit a genocide, they chose it.
Realize that when people see such pictures, of entire cities completely leveled to the ground, that people get extremely upset. Imagine the place you live reduced to rubble and how atrocious you would find this. The inhabitants of Gaza are humans just like you and the world is justified in their disdain.
This wasn't a reaction though, this is what Israel's been doing there since its foundation. Oct 7 only intensified existing patterns.
I'm confused about your opening line. First you say the terrorists won, then you continue to elaborate how the terrorists are losing. So they won but now they are losing again?
Indeed the terrorists did win, as we can see from these images.
I would honestly say the people committing the genocide won, as it was always their goal
Google Maps acting as a real-time war damage tracker is a sobering use case. The raw satellite data is a stark visual.
reminded me of this post from earlier this year, also Rafah but from the ground:
https://x.com/MacaesBruno/status/2017251152900079675
Israeli regime is pure terror.
It's sad that so much of this conversation has devolved into technicalities of whether this is a genocide.
You can't look at this, at reports coming out of Gaza and the West Bank, at Israel's own government officials' statements, and not, at minimum, believe that brutal war crimes were committed on a massive basis here. Whether it's "Holocaust level" or "genocide" is a red herring. It needs universal condemnation, it needs to stop, and the people who did it need to be held accountable.
It did stop. When the hostages were freed and Hamas gave up. Which they could have done at any point. Or you know, they could not have started the war too.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/18/run-get-away-w...
Maybe look at Hamas own videos on when they started the war too. For comparison.
Hamas offered to free all the hostages on October 7. Israel refused and shot all of the hostages they did release. Why did Israel do that?
What are your sources for both claims?
The Haaretz investigation
There are no technicalities, only sophisms written by bots.
The ICC is trying to do that, but is being impeded by the US.
Sounds like quite the impotent organization then
That is why the ICC needs our help and support.
Rightful people supports the week. Only the depraved laughs when a person without power is being abused.
I have been watching the atrocities that Israel have been committing since 1987 and there is simply zero argument any supporter of the regime can make to change my mind that they are evil, by every definition of the word.
There is no justification for their actions. There is no justification for the greater Israel project they are pushing. There is no justification for them to be taking a leadership role in the global security technology industry. The whole thing is just absolutely Fkd and I find any person trying to contort the argument in a way to justify this shit to be evil themselves.
The fact that this comment is being upvoted as much as down shows me that evil exists here too.
Have you considered that it's bad to kill Jews and that Jews deserve a homeland? Israel is building a great project there - a Jewish homeland - while Arabs are trying to destroy it.
Never mind that it's also a Palestinian homeland and Muslim homeland. Those ones don't count because uh, we said so.
Are you willing to give up your land so that someone else can have it as their 'homeland'? Who was there 2000 years ago?
Maybe you missed the sarcasm. Btw the descendants of the people there 2000 years ago are the current Palestinians; the current Israelis are mostly the descendants of West European colonizers from the 1948 invasion.
You can take that or leave my feedback, but your comment didn't come across as sarcasm to me until I read this comment.
Poes law or something.
I agree with your position, but it didn't read as sarcasm to me.
It is absolutely fascinating to see how people are justifying a genocide right before your eyes in this comment thread.
From a psychological point of view, watching what is happening in Israel right now could really help understand human behavior in previous historical events involving genocide and mass killings.
It's no secret that people get blinded by their own belief and faith. They forget how to see, how to smell, how to taste, and how to hear. They get trapped in a virtual world inside their own minds -- a gigantic Matrix, but without sophisticated machinery.
Look at the current physical state of the city, the raw sight of it -- no amount of fair punishment can justify this scale of pure, one-sided destruction of lives, daily-lives, and futures. This is directed violence, clearly beyond practical necessity -- unless practicality is defined in terms of ethnic cleansing.
Any logic that jumps through the hoops of background material (history, religion, beliefs, politics, and so on) is mere mind tricks, designed to draw your eyes away from reality -- the horrific nature of the Israeli genocide.
(EDIT: grammar check)
I don't think its just religious faith and belief, but also like how much people want to believe that the society they are part of, and that provides for their every day life, is a moral, just, and necessary one. And how much that puts on the blinders to questioning things. Israel is simply labeled a "like minded country".. at this point sounds a lot like "we have certain things in common, Jeffery" to me..
Well, the first thing that happens is "dehumanization" of the enemy. This is the root of all evil.
This. It's just so much more compelling to follow these discussions as they happen, compared to reading a historical correspondence or something. Of course I'd much prefer if there weren't genocides taking place at all.
IANAL nor ICJ nor ICC to officially name genxxide but This looks much (MUCH) worse than the worst thing Putin did to Ukraine
Are you afraid to use the word "genocide"? Just curious.
https://xxcancel.com/AliAbunimah/status/2103890594137309425
Stupid question but if Israel is willing to flatten cities, how have they not won the war yet?
Too many Palestinians have nothing to live for, except revenge.
They have won. The goal is keeping Netanyahu in power and ethic cleansing.
Itamar Ben-Gvir (National Security Minister) has repeatedly called for the "voluntary emigration" or forced removal of Gazan residents and urged the permanent resettlement of Israelis inside the Gaza Strip.
Not every Palestinian is dead yet. And they've moved on to Lebanon. Not to mention that the war has widened to include Iran.
What would qualify as having won? Every Palestinian dead?
They don't want to completely destroy Gaza. In the aftermath, they would be held accountable for destroying Gaza, plus they'd have no guinea pigs for the surveillance and military tech. All the big Israeli surveillance firms test their products on Gaza first, it's the most surveilled place in the world.
But they also don't want it to get too big or powerful. Israel calls it "mowing the lawn"[1]. You want to have grass on the lawn, but not too much, so you periodically cut off the excess grass.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mowing_the_grass
By who?
The ICC, their own political opposition, their own competitors within their party.
Doubt it. Bibi operates above all that noise. Same as Putin.
Accountability isn’t achievable, as far as I can tell. Especially when there’s some lucrative real estate deals for Gaza land on the table. IDF brings bulldozers as part of their attacks on other countries for a reason.
Both Bibi and Putin hold their positions more precariously than you'd think, although they do manage to maintain them.
How easy do you think it would be for anyone close to Putin to slip him some poison or just stab him with a knife? To prevent that happening, a whole lot of stuff has to be kept oriented towards him remaining the president.
One of Bibi's support pillars is the perpetual threat of Israel's destruction. He positions himself as standing between Israel and destruction, so replacing him would be dangerous.
Has the United States won its "war on terror" yet? Why not?
Some of the people contributing here were born after the "war on terror" started.
Genocide doesn't actually work as a tactic, especially in an urban setting. It strengthens the victim's resolve. The Palestinian people are not known for giving up on survival.
"We are demolishing more and more homes, they have nowhere to return. The only obvious result will be the desire of the Gazans to emigrate outside the Strip. Our main problem is in the receiving countries."
—Benjamin Netanyahu, 2025
https://www.maariv.co.il/news/military/article-1195594
It's an interesting contrast with Azerbaijan whose soldiers were beheading elderly civilians that did not manage to run away in time, mutilating bodies of female soldiers, making it clear that no Armenian will stay alive under Azerbaijani occupation. As a result when Azerbaijan have occupied Karabakh everyone living there had to leave it and run for life in under a week, without demolishing homes, or getting condemnation from any country.
Azerbaijan did that with 70% Israeli weapons! BFFs learn from one another
Lots of countries condemned it. Maybe you're just not paying attention?
The Biden administration paused diplomatic relations, put out public states condemning it, and more.
In fact, Azerbaijan came out and complained about the US's "biased" stance against it.
https://asbarez.com/aliyev-criticizes-biden-for-biased-towar...
And they will not stop with Gazans. The plan of the bloodthirsty monsters that compose the Israeli Ethnosupremacist Republic is to rebuild Greater Israel, executing and shedding the blood of anyone and everyone who dare not be a chosen one. The chosen ones are the natural rulers of the world and we're their bitches.
Yikes, the antisemitic mob has fully penetrated HN as well. This is just an avalanche of stupidity.
Why is this "antisemitic" when it's the clearly stated goal of Israeli leadership? We're also commenting on a post where Israel destroyed an entire city. There's a great twist of propaganda where people are more upset at people being upset about a genocide, then they are about the actual genocide. Expecting that to work is an "avalanche of stupidity".
Is the truth antisemitic now?
https://jewishlink.news/when-did-torah-values-become-extreme...
https://www.dw.com/en/from-the-nile-to-the-euphrates-inside-...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/smotrich-it-may-be-justified-t...
None of these are far-right sources. Although, well, considering how chosen ones are buddy-buddy with nazis these days, that doesn't hold much water. These are mainstream sources.
An excerpt from the first link:
"The Torah explicitly commands us regarding hostile populations that endanger Israel: “But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the Land from before you, then those whom you leave over will be as spikes in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they will harass you in the land in which you settle” (Bamidbar 33:55). The Torah further states, “And I will make your boundary from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the river, for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hands, and you shall drive them out from before you” (Shemot 23:31)."
I suggest creating two tabs, one for Google Maps link [1] and another for Apple Maps link [2], then quickly switch between these two pages. It made me realize how much have been destroyed. Heart wrenching.
1. https://www.google.com/maps/@31.2963743,34.2449952,1665m
2. https://maps.apple.com/frame?map=satellite¢er=31.296508%...
this is unbelievable!
Thank you for putting this together. Free Palestine!
Fauda S05E07