I for one will be holding my representatives responsible who continue to vote for the US to enable a genocide. The videos coming out of Gaza have turned me and many others into single issue voters.
To really hold them responsible, they have to be given war crimes trials at The Hague. At this point, just unselecting them is not enough. They really need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
This includes anyone that voted to provide military aid to Israel as well as any propagandist that claims Hamas raped anyone on October 7 (of course never naming the names of any rape victims). People like that have literally been given the death penalty at The Hague for promoting genocide before.
It really is too late to save any politicians from prosecution at this point. They are now fully complicit in the genocide.
Flipping the U.S. really is the key to ending this conflict. The U.S. reliably uses its security council veto to nix any meaningful UN response and the U.S. remains, by far, the biggest supplier of arms to the IDF. If the US were to stop veto'ing everything and cut off the IDF's supply of, at least, some types of weapons, the new ground assault would likely end quickly.
Unfortunately, that isn't likely to happen. Netanyahu has, to date, handled Trump deftly and Rubio's current presence in Israel seems to be aimed at offering support to the ground offensive, not opposition. I honestly have no idea what kind of backlash it would take to shake U.S. support for this genocide.
There's definitely a generational gap going in the US. Support for Israel is not popular among the younger generation in the US, and there's a good deal of voters in their 20s and 30s for whom support for Israel a red line in candidates. But older generations tend to be staunchly in favor of Israel, and too much of the gerontocratic political class thinks that pro-Israel uber alles is the key to winning votes.
It is worth noting that Andrew Cuomo, in a desperate last-minute gamble to boost support in the NYC mayoral race, has come out against Israel. Considering that much of the attacks on Mamdani have focused on his support for Palestine (construing him as antisemitic), it's notable that other candidates also seem to think that being anti-Israel is actually the vote winner for moderates right now.
I wouldn't label this as "support for Israel"/"against Israel". One can support Israel without supporting Israel's current approach. Many within Israel are not happy with Netanyahu's methods, and presumably they are not against Israel.
I understand that that's the current shorthand, but it seems inaccurate and unnecessarily polarizing to me.
That gap between support of Israel across age groups existed historically AFAIK, although the margins were narrower.
More worrying for Israel is that it's becoming a partisan issue. That goes to both ends - previously unthinkable, unwavering support under Republicans but a very short leash under the Democrats.
Why would we expect any desirable outcome in this hypothetical though? So the US flips, Israel is pressured into withdrawing, Hamas regains control of the strip and resumes rocket attacks, Israel is forced to respond eventually. It doesn't seem like a path toward a real solution.
> It doesn't seem like a path toward a real solution.
As long as the Dahiya doctrine persists, it won't be. But that's an Israeli problem - their disproportionate response has been exploited for years. Hamas is fine letting Israel commit as many war crimes as it takes to satisfy their leadership, it very clearly hasn't changed tactics in recent years. The cost to Israeli international credibility seems to be "worth it" in their eyes.
So, if Israel wants peace they first have to stop escalation. But even if Hamas was defeated, we know that wouldn't be the end of things. Next the Druze has to be defended, which would result in a very justified annexation of south Syria and repeat of the same genocidal conditions in Gaza. They would also attempt to unseat power in Yemen, and then embroil America in an unwinnable war against Iran to sustain a true hegemony.
When it comes to strategic bombing, honestly, yes.
It boggles my mind that militaries keep attempting despite decades of experience showing that damn near every single time it's been attempted, it's been an abject failure in its aims and very often entirely counterproductive.
All the evidence cited is either circular in nature, referencing other agencies and bodies which cite each other, all reinforcing an extremely one-sided ratcheting look at the conflict. Ambiguous statements made by Israeli officials are consistently interpreted in the manner most damning to Israel, and statements of clear genocide made by those who attack Israel are ignored or excused. They cite clearly flawed logic such as the commonly debunked "Israel admits to 83% civilian deaths".
Interestingly enough, I tried to find other cases in which the UN Human Rights Council concluded that a genocide had occurred or was occurring. I found none. Not the Rwanda genocide, not the Ughers, nor Tamil, nor Rohingya, nor Nigeria, nor Chechnya, nor the Congo, nor Darfur, not in Sudan, not ISIS, nor Yemen nor Ethiopia.
While you do have points that these UN bodies do seem to sleep more often than not, one should never, under any circumstance attempt to suggest that what's happening in Gaza aren't crimes against humanity.
A friend of mine is in the Red Cross staff, they had more than 20 casualties since 2021 in Palestine. Their staff was literally shot at because they were doctors.
Which side do you think has an interest in shooting doctors?
I'll help you with that. It's not the side that would regularly take Gazan children into Israel for medical treatment before the Gazans started a war against Israeli children. Or do Israeli children mean nothing? Because I personally know two women whose children were burned to death on October 7th.
> Which side do you think has an interest in shooting doctors?
The one shooting doctors.
What happened on October 7 has been a tragedy. 38 children died that day, and you know two of the mothers. I can't even relate with their suffering, in no way I can understand their pain like you do.
But I don't know either any mothers of the 32'000 killed and wounded on the other side.
"One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this."
That's nicely tautological. Hamas shoots at doctors.
> What happened on October 7 has been a tragedy. 38 children died that day, and you know two of the mothers.
Yes. Additionally, I know half a dozen of the hostages personally. My older daughter's classmate, his brother and sister and both parents, were all slaughtered in their home. My younger daughter's teacher was a hostage, he was murdered in Gaza. My son's camp counselor was likewise taken hostage and murdered in Gaza. Shall I continue?
> How many mothers of the 32'000 killed and wounded on the other side you know?
I'm not sure, but I do know a few Gazans who have told me that they lost family members. One just lost an uncle a few days ago, we talked about it. Yes, I talk to Gazans.
I'd have to check, but I think Israel has killed more children in the past two years than Hamas killed Israelis on October 7. Israel has killed something like 30-40x the number of civilians in the same timeframe.
Hamas is a bunch of evil people. That doesn't justify descending to their level of butchery to exterminate them, especially not when you are so much more efficient at that butchery.
You don't have to check, more Gazan children have died than Israeli children. So by your argument, had Hamas killed more Israeli children then there wouldn't be a problem? I can think of no other reason why you made that argument.
> Israel has killed something like 30-40x the number of civilians in the same timeframe.
You might notice that Hamas was in Israel for less than 1/40 the time that this war has been going on. So per time period, Hamas killed _more_ children than Israel, given the chance. Who do you accuse of genocide now? They've just been denied the chance.
Looking at the official HN guidelines, it states that "Most stories about politics" is off-topic, and "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic".
Is the Isreal/Gaza debate not political, and not mainstream news? How does a story like this not directly violate those guidelines?
Furthermore, the guidelines state that stories should be what "good hackers" find "intellectually satisfying". A political debate thread about Isreal is what "good hackers" would find intellectually satisfying?
I just can not understand how a story such as this in any way remotely meets the established, official guidelines for what belongs here.
I feel like parent probably meant Paul Graham. Garry holds polar opposite opinions (he blocked me on X because he had had made claims about what Intifada means, and as an Arabic speaker I felt compelled to point out the correct meaning).
In any case, I don't think Paul or Garry are interfering with the algorithm or moderation here.
Why shouldn't Hamas leadership be bombed wherever they may be? They're the leaders of a terrorist organization. The US takes out terrorists wherever they may be (or, works with local authorities to get them first). But, when local authorities are siding with the terrorists, we go in there and do it ourselves. October 7th was Israel's 9/11 - we went and got bin Laden in Pakistan, without dealing with the Pakistani government. Why shouldn't Israel do the same thing? I say - kill all the Hamas leadership, and leave the random Palestinian citizens alone.
Yes, and at this point I'm not arguing for or against that action. I'm saying the current and previous US administration have very different foreign policy.
Come on, many voters made the genocide a single issue (and ironically voted against Harris as a way of revenge for Biden's support of said genocide), but many didn't even care, they were promised a great again country/a white supremacist country, why would they care if some brown kids died when they took option B...
I don't want to downplay the atrocities going on in the current conflicts, but this sort of comment deserves some perspective.
About 70 million people were killed in WW2, as of the present day about 1 million have died in the war Russia is waging against Ukraine and about 70k people have died in the Israeli/Palestine conflict. The horrors are most certainly real. But WW3 this era is most certainly not, that's thankfully off by an order of magnitude.
The World Wars were called World Wars because of the number conflicts and the powers involved. While the casualties and damage has been lower, it seems like the powers are at least indirectly involved at the moment.
I'm afraid the latest spate of "recognizing the state of Palestine" is not, in fact, a sign of coming relief for the people there, but rather a spigot to relieve domestic pressure to engage in substantive actions (sanctions, pressuring the US and other suppliers of arms to engage in sanctions, let alone sending peacekeepers or no-fly zones).
Regardless of how much you're personally invested in the topic, this should break the hearts of everyone who dreamed that the international community could hold each other legally accountable. Indeed, the US would rather sanction individuals at the ICJ than acknowledge any sort of legitimacy—even as our own politicians accuse Russia of engaging in "war crimes". I have no doubt that they are, in fact, I think that the evidence is quite damning. But the double standard is striking, as is the difference between the footage visible on social media and what is acknowledged when you turn on the TV or open the paper.
> I'm afraid the latest spate of "recognizing the state of Palestine" is not, in fact, a sign of coming relief for the people there, but rather a spigot to relieve domestic pressure to engage in substantive actions (sanctions, pressuring the US and other suppliers of arms to engage in sanctions, let alone sending peacekeepers or no-fly zones).
I don't think recognition as a State would really change anything. If at least one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council will veto everything that comes up, the UN won't effectively intervene in the situation. Military intervention in such a case is unlikely, unless at least one permanent member is willing to join an intervention coalition. Looking at conflicts the US has been involved in, it usually lines up around the lines with US maybe with their usual friends vs Locals or Locals and Russia and friends. The only one I found where the pattern was when France started sending arms to Nicaragua while the US was supporting the other side [1]. Unless Russia or China wants to support the Palestinians militarily, or the US decides not to no longer support Israel militarily, there's not much chance of outside intervention here.
Given the outside countries can't effectively intervene, recognizing the state of Palestine at least sends a message, that maybe hopefully influences the US?
"
251. The Commission’s analysis in this report relates solely to the determination
of genocide under the Genocide Convention as it relates to the responsibility of the
State of Israel both for the failure to prevent genocide, for committing genocide
against the Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023 and for the failure to punish
genocide. The Commission also notes that, while its analysis is limited to the
Palestinians specifically in Gaza during the period since 7 October 2023, it
nevertheless raises the serious concern that the specific intent to destroy the
Palestinians as a whole has extended to the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory,
that is, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, based on Israeli authorities’ and
Israeli security forces’ actions therein, and to the period before 7 October 2023. The
events in Gaza since 7 October 2023 have not occurred in isolation, as the
Commission has noted. They were preceded by decades of unlawful occupation and
repression under an ideology requiring the removal of the Palestinian population
from their lands and its replacement.
252. The Commission concludes on reasonable grounds that the Israeli
authorities and Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to
commit the following actus reus of genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza
Strip, namely (i) killing members of the group; (ii) causing serious bodily or
mental harm to members of the group; (iii) deliberately inflicting on the group
conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or
in part; and (iv) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
253. On incitement to genocide, the Commission concludes that Israeli
President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defence
Minister Yoav Gallant, have incited the commission of genocide and that Israeli
authorities have failed to take action against them to punish this incitement.
The Commission has not fully assessed statements by other Israeli political and
military leaders, including Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and
Minister for Finance Bezalel Smotrich, and considers that they too should be
assessed to determine whether they constitute incitement to commit genocide.
254. On the mens rea of genocide, the Commission concludes that statements
made by Israeli authorities are direct evidence of genocidal intent. In addition,
the Commission concludes that the pattern of conduct is circumstantial evidence
of genocidal intent and that genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference
that could be drawn from the totality of the evidence. Thus, the Commission
concludes that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have had and
continue to have the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
255. The Commission concludes that the State of Israel bears responsibility
for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide and the failure
to punish genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."
Bottom-of-the-barrel antisemitism ought to be the easiest thing in the world to avoid, regardless of your views or feelings about the ongoing situation. In any case, there's no place for it on Hacker News—never has been and never will.
---- original comment: ----
rimunroe is correct, you've repeated a classic antisemitic trope. We ban accounts that post like that, so please don't post like that again.
It's entirely possible, and ought to be entirely easy, to make any substantive point you have without any of that.
So as long as there is one Hamas left standing, everyone around must die. This is what you mean?
Edit: can the non-Hamas surrender and avoid getting killed? They can't and the situations on the ground aren't that different. A Warzaw and Gazan survivor would have a lot in common.
255. The Commission concludes that the State of Israel bears responsibility for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide and the failure to punish genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
I see that the person we replied to edited their comment. It originally said something along the lines of "that just says they failed to prevent genocide."
Not so much "lies" as "a people having a genocide committed against them does not make them constitutionally incapable of ever committing one themselves in the future." For several reasons, including that it was different people (only 7% of Holocaust survivors are still alive) and that 'nation,' as a conceptual construct, still carries the same weaknesses that it did when a relatively few voices in Germany used that construct to rally the masses to commit atrocities against their own citizens (and the people in their temporarily-conquered territory) for being 'the wrong kind' of people.
"It's not wrong when we're doing it" is an old, old failing of human empathy and sense of justice.
zionists still trying to deceive people with misleading analogies while pretending that their apartheid ethno-state can just start its origin story at october 7th [1]. I wonder what kind of individual still buys into these false and lazy zionist narratives.
The infrastructure for genocide needs a lot of technology and technology related subject. The victims of genocides include technology workers, hobbyists and hackers. No doubt there are HN members who are current victims of the ongoing genocide. They deserve our sympathy and their existence needs to be acknowledged.
The problem is there obviously isn't any discussion happening. People are so entrenched on one side or the other and that's pretty apparent by this comment section. Everyone wants to virtue signal without taking any responsibility. The unfortunate reality of this situation is that it's extremely complex and weaves in a lot of historical context. But nobody cares about nuance anymore it's all just "killing bad!" within the framework of whatever controversial event is on the inciters mind. Well duh, but how did we get here? If we can't stop and consider both sides constructively then clearly we're never going to get anywhere and shit like this will just continue.
That's essentially the pro-Israel argument for decades (Including the opinion that killing somehow weren't always bad). It hasn't prevented the current situation.
But don't let that stop you. Feel free to make a nuanced and well-researched counterargument why the UN report is wrong.
I'm not sure what you're pointing to in my response to attribute it to Israeli support. I was attempting to make light of the fact that 'discussion' requires two sides. Right now both sides live in a different reality. I am in no way condoning Israel's genocide against Palestinians. But to say Israel is the only one at fault for this situation and to only point fingers to one side betrays the historical facts of the situation. I in no way tried to downplay the situation or play sides so please don't twist my words as if I did.
The problem is that there is a massive power imbalance in the conflict and insisting on "both sides" without acknowledging that is itself muddying the waters.
Accusations of "one-sidedness" for everything that doesn't follow the Israeli narrative of the conflict has been a standard defense for decades, last employed against the two-states UN resolution.
That's why I find (naive) insistence on seeing "both sides" problematic in this conflict. By all means, do see both sides, but see them with their respective amounts of power and historical context.
I 100% agree with you here. Which is why it's important to have the acknowledgement that this isn't an isolated situation. There is a 'one-sidedness' for Israel against the Palestinians, in the same way that there's a 'one-sidedness' for the entirety of the Arab nations against the Israeli's. For as long as Israel has existed they've been fighting against their own genocide. I haven't seen anyone acknowledging that? Or that the Arab nations were the ones to provoke the Israeli's in the first place? I find no love for Israel, but we make it waaaay too easy for them to justify these positions. Like it or not it's not as simple as everyone seems to make it out to be. The western nations and the other Arabs were the ones to give up on the Palestinians first, but now all of a sudden we care? Like I said, it's all virtue signaling.
> For as long as Israel has existed they've been fighting against their own genocide. I haven't seen anyone acknowledging that? Or that the Arab nations were the ones to provoke the Israeli's in the first place?
It was so obvious that you were trying to carefully push Zionist propaganda from the very start, but here you went from 0 to 100% hasbara real quick. This isn't 1990, you won't get away with this kind of blatant Zionist revisionism; there are about 10000+ academic articles and videos now that teach the history in painful detail. So give it a rest with your lazy propaganda.
It's sad that we can't take an objective look at the facts of the matter without trying to point to one side and saying it's propaganda. Like is it so hard to say that both sides did bad things? I have no problem acknowledging that Israel is being the ultimate bully right now, is it not okay to say they have a reason? Or should we just ignore all reasoning and condem "killing bad" like I initially said this would devolve to? The US literally has the same problem right now it's kind of insane. How can you try to swat away historical facts, then in the same breath link me a random master's thesis from 1977... Like can we just go to Wikipedia, start from the beginning and then disagree over the facts that actually happened instead of trying to see it through the lens of some 20s something from the 70s?
so after trying to mislead people with outright lies and historical revisionism based on zionist fantasies, you are trying to "both sides" a livestream genocide and about a century of brutal zionist colonialism. That's your strategy.
>How can you try to swat away historical facts
The cognitive dissonance of Zionists needs to be studied in Universities across the world. You are straight up lying into people's faces and in the same breath projecting your own behavior on others "trying to 'swat away historical facts'". It's truly astonishing.
As far as I understand, they've made many offers to release the hostages in exchange for their own people or for other concessions. You can track the negotiations pretty well, although occasionally the diplomats get bombed for some reason.
Diplomats - who don't even live in the strip - were recently (unsuccessfully) bombed.
If Hamas wants to end the war (or supposed genocide) then they can release the hostages with no additional demands. The fact that the supposed genocide victims choose to continue the war is quite the sign that this is not genocide, in what other situation would a victim choose to continue a war that is a genocide against his people?
They don't need to make offers with additional demands. They need to release the hostages. And the war should continue, until they feel pressured to release the hostages.
Why would Netanyahu stop the war? It is the only pressure on Hamas.
The way war usually works, is the side that feels it has something to loose, sues for peace by making concessions. However the international backing of Hamas has ensured them that they have nothing to loose, and everything to gain, by attacking the Jewish state.
They have repeatedly hampered the entry of baby formula, a clear pattern of actions to stunt childhood development, increase childhood mortality and dissuade the population from having more children.
Gaza is dependent on Israel's permission. Food aid is provided by the UN and other humanitarian organisations, they require Israel's permission to bring that aid into Gaza and not attack it (n.b. attempts since 2010 to deliver aid by boat, such as the MV Rachel Corrie, have been attacked in international waters and the aid never reached Gaza). Israel destroyed the power and water desalination plants, making Gaza dependent on their supply, which has since been used as a weapon.
Since '93, the range allowed for Palestinian fishing boats has been reduced from 20 to 3 nautical miles by Israeli naval vessels. Because primarily only young fish are found that close to the shore, and because constant damage to infrastructure means untreated wastewater is being dumped close by, it's a pretty bleak picture.
Reminder that Israel razed hundreds of Palestinian villages to the ground in 1948, and expelled half the Palestinian population from their homeland. Israel has always wanted to ethnically cleanse Palestine of the indigenous population. It has resisted any diplomatic route to a two-state solution, going as far as financing Hamas because Fatah was moving towards a peaceful resolution, and Hamas was seen as an adversary against whom ethnic cleansing would be easier to justify.
Israel is quite literally built on top of the ruins of Palestinian villages. The zionist project has always required an ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population, because the project's goal is to build an ethnostate. This is just culminating in the current genocide.
This is politics and therefore probably off-topic for hn. It not being tech-related is irrelevant.
An argument could be made that it is an "interesting new phenomenon", but the post is most likely to result in tedious flamewars regardless and so should probably be killed.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I would agree with you if we were in 1994 and this was about Rwanda.
Those tower blocks in Gaza that were felled on the anniversary of 9/11 were not taken down with machetes. We have got AI assisted targeting going on, with all of your favourite cloud service providers delivering value to their shareholders thanks to sales to the IDF.
The corporation that once had 'don't be evil' as their mission statement are suckling on the IDF teat along with Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Cisco.
Does it seem plausible to you that during the years of the Syrian civil war, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Tigray war in Ethiopia, the war in South Sudan and countless others (conflicts which, in total, claimed the lives of millions), Israel would commit war crimes at a ratio of 3:1 against the entire world, combined?
In contrast, the number of deaths from both Israeli and Palestinian sides in the same time period was several hundreds.
You forgot, the West Bank, under apartheid, extreme settler violence, constant and massive home expropriation, is also khamas, although no khamas ever walked on it.
It's part of a broader phenomena: feelings over facts. Doesn't matter how many commissions say it's genocide and how much evidence is presented, people don't "feel" it is true, therefore it is not true. Zero difference between these people, climate change deniers, and anti-vaxers.
I find it funny people still find the UN legitimate. They still haven't criticised Hamas attack. The UN in Gaza is extremely corrupt because they are threatened by Hamas or they're themselves Hamas. We already saw this organization being accused of hiring terrorists.
Also, please don't provide Al-Jazeera links, they are accused countless times hiring/supporting terrorists, and their news reporters are themselves terrorists. They're funded by Qatar and Hamas and other organizations.
> I find it funny people still find the UN legitimate. They still haven't criticised Hamas attack
I find it funny that you have to lie so much. They did, it's easy to find. My father is from a Christian orphanage in east Jerusalem. My grandmother hosted sisters and priests from Israel who worked in schools, hospice and orphanage all over the two countries. UN school programs there had a lot of issues, but being religious (Hamas was a religious group before being a terrorist one) or close to Hamas wasn't one (having no heating in schools during winter and having to sometime amputate toes from 10 year old was probably the biggest issue that I remember).
For an organization ostensibly concerned with education to violence everywhere, that's a LOT of board members with direct connections to Israel.
I also think it's common sense that if an occupying force deliberately ensures your living conditions become ever worse, shoots your friends and family to death for throwing stones and eventually obliterates entire families, that you don't exactly need textbooks to develop hatred.
it's almost like if population is educated for violence for 50 years, it will behave violently and it will result in counter action from "occupying force"
on the other side, Israeli population is been subjected to palestinian violence for extended period. Pretty much everybody was either target of it or lost somebody to it.
i am talking about systemic things in education system. not about random anecdotes. also good chunk of israeli population (and even bigger chunk of those serving in army) is secular and whatever random rabi says means nothing.
Given the Israeli military are defacto state sponsored terrorists (see e.g. their active support of settler violence on the West Bank if you want to avoid Gaza related complaints). That means every single company in Israel is employing terrorists.
Sure. The Israel military rapes, kills, slaughter, and rob Gaza and West bank. The IDF is exactly like Hamas sure. /s if you didn't understand.
The Israelis live in the West Bank. The IDF is there to protect them. There is no violence whatsoever from the settlers. It's pure propaganda. There were a few rare times of some violence, but it's nothing compared to what the Palestinians do. Last week, two Palestinians crossed the border and murdered 6 people and 20+ injured on a bus shooting in Jerusalem. They even kill each other.
Each time the IDF comes into Palestinians "cities" to catch terrorists, they throw rocks on them.
Can't find it on the source you provided. The source you provided also justifies terrorists cries about their home being destroyed. It's interesting from where they get these numbers, from Palestinians?
about year ago PA tried to remove Hamas and other charity organizations for Jenin and other cities (that it typically can't entered) but failed and asked Israel to intervene what Israel did.
So you have interesting situation, when Palestinian authority asks Israel to kill palestinians and than Israel is blamed for killing palestinians.
I really do. (personal note: I never know if I should engage with these trolls, given them more visibility, or simply ignore them, risking seeing their propaganda spread)
> Again, this is an unreliable source. It provides Palestinians testimonies. In Gaza the amount of untruthful testimonies is disgusting.
Yeah we get it, all Arabs are liars. Anyone who has sympathy for them is a liar. The Sde Teiman video is a fake and also the soldiers in it are all heroes. Israel has the most moral army in the world. IDF soldiers never post TikToks of themselves committing war crimes and laughing about it. It's not as if a person could spend 5 seconds online and find video evidence of these atrocities.
Sde Teiman MAYBE was real (there is still no proof, and it still being investigated by ISRAEL), but we're talking about terrorists whom murdered and raped people, not citizens.
TikTok is the most propagned platform currently. Not only about Gaza, but about everything. In the mean time, all the injured/starved citizens that were pictured and put on news papers were all a lie. I can also tell you I see many, many videos of sustained shops, rich food, candies and whatever first-world country has in Gaza. Give me one video please.
It's evident for example that this thin child that was put on the front page of NYT was actually suffering from a genetic disorder. It's also evident that the pictures of Gaza citizens starving with their bowls out asking for food, was actually a complete lie (you can find pictures from the side, and not only from the front). Yet you still see those images on TikTok.
IDF is state sponsored; they (and Israel more broadly) have a responsibility to comport themselves within the bounds of international law. If they choose not to, then they are behaving like terrorists.
Hopefully we are at the beginning of a change, but I doubt this will come only from the UN.
The UN is the only international democratic institution that - even with its many imperfections - prevents the world to fall into complete anarchy. It's quite telling that it gets ignored since so many years by the country that elevates itself as the world defender of democracy, the US.
The UN has voted for decades for ending the embargo towards Cuba. Every year the outcome of the vote, which has always resulted in a great majority demanding the immediate end of the embargo, has been ignored by the US, resulting in millions of Cubans facing extreme economic consequences since many decades. The last time every country except Israel and US voted for ending the embargo (I might be wrong, maybe a single African state abstained).
In all of this, the only seed of joy I see, was seeing the Cubans a couple of years ago, after decades and decades of seeing their economy strangled by the most powerful country on Earth, roll out their own Covid vaccine just at the same time of those of big Pharma - a vaccine that resulted excellent, effective, and cheap. Hats off for the Cubans. Hope to see some other seed like this also in the Palestinians.
> The UN is the only international democratic institution that - even with its many imperfections - prevents the world to fall into complete anarchy. It's quite telling that it gets ignored since so many years by the country that elevates itself as the world defender of democracy, the US.
It's not been ignored the purpose of the UN is for largely irrelevant countries to petition the world powers to maybe consider doing something. The UN has been so successful because it has no real power over players like the USA.
> The UN has voted for decades for ending the embargo towards Cuba.
Ok? I mean the purpose of the UN is for people to suggest stuff to players like the USA not for the USA to actually do what the UN votes for.
What people fail to understand about dynamics between countries, is ultimately there is no supreme court or arbiter of truth. The UN doesn't have authority over any powerful country (or non powerful country for that matter).
People seem to have this concept that there is some supra national legal system, or even moral system that can hold a higher truth than what powerful countries want, but there isn't. When it comes to geopolitics, the biggest and most powerful sets the rules and lives by them (or not). The USA has zero motivation to do something the UN wants it to do, if it doesn't itself want to do it. No one is going to hold it to account.
Ultimately - whoever controls the violence can set the rules. For the last 80 years that's been the US. Maybe that is changing, but not quite yet.
The UN isn't an international democratic institution. For the last 20-30 years it's been a powerless theatre. And it didn't have much power before then either. Because ultimately, whoever has the most nukes and the biggest army rules the world.
One hopeful observation is that I actually have seen coverage of the genocide in a local newspaper this time. N=1 of course (and I'm not sure what other local newspapers have been like), but that's more than before.
> Agence France-Presse has described UN Watch as "a lobby group with strong ties to Israel" ... Primarily, UN Watch denounces what it views as anti-Israel sentiment at the UN and UN-sponsored events.
Unwatch is, and has always been, critical of everything the UN does with regards to Israel. Had the UN made one statement like "Israel should not arbitrarily detain children and hold them without fair trials", I am pretty sure unwatch would twist it into antisemitism.
True. And in the interest of balancing the claims of the critics, I offer up the observation that UN Watch is "a lobby group with strong ties to Israel" (AFP article: Capella, Peter. "UN Gaza probe chief underlines balanced approach." 7-Jul-2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20111222162658/https://www.googl...).
If I want to understand any position I would look for first sources. Say I want to understand why Russian invaded Ukraine, I would seek out Russian sources. When I try to understand the Palestinian position, I seek out Palestinian sources.
The beautiful thing about intellectual honesty and openness is that you don't have to agree with any position. You can expose yourself to things that deeply conflict with your personal values and walk away with a deeper understanding of why you value what you value, and how to refute ideas that you strongly disagree with.
To dismiss a source because it is Israeli ironically gives fuel to the antisemitism charge. You're saying that the very reason to dismiss it, to not even bother entertaining its arguments is because it is Israeli and no other reason. Beyond that, you are even arguing that any claims of prejudice can be dismissed outright on the basis of one thing that one Israeli Minster once said [allegedly].
Quite simply Israelis and Jews are not the same group, otherwise you would be holding all Jews on the planet responsible for this genocide. Dismissing the source for being Israeli is not antisemitic.
There are many examples of Israeli sources lying about the state of things, from the baseless claims against UNRWA to the unconscionable excuse of burying medics and the ambulances they were in, to avoid wild dogs eating them.
Israeli sources rarely offer evidence to refute the claims presented in this report, and a cry of antisemitism, as stated, conflates Judeism with Israeli nationality, hence these sources are worthless at best.
You are aware that Shulamit Alloni was on the extreme left and was criticizing this supposed misuse of Antisemitism, this is not some playbook
The american equivalent would be to quote Bernie Sanders saying "America is fascist" and then saying, see? therefore the USA system of government is fascism, even Congress agrees!
I wonder if Israel will try to bully members on the HR council like they've done in past years.
In what way has Israel bullied members on the HR council?
Almost certainly
or if they were behind Charlie Kirk's assassination as the right begins to rescind its support of Israel after the Epstein situation?
I for one will be holding my representatives responsible who continue to vote for the US to enable a genocide. The videos coming out of Gaza have turned me and many others into single issue voters.
To really hold them responsible, they have to be given war crimes trials at The Hague. At this point, just unselecting them is not enough. They really need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
This includes anyone that voted to provide military aid to Israel as well as any propagandist that claims Hamas raped anyone on October 7 (of course never naming the names of any rape victims). People like that have literally been given the death penalty at The Hague for promoting genocide before.
It really is too late to save any politicians from prosecution at this point. They are now fully complicit in the genocide.
Flipping the U.S. really is the key to ending this conflict. The U.S. reliably uses its security council veto to nix any meaningful UN response and the U.S. remains, by far, the biggest supplier of arms to the IDF. If the US were to stop veto'ing everything and cut off the IDF's supply of, at least, some types of weapons, the new ground assault would likely end quickly.
Unfortunately, that isn't likely to happen. Netanyahu has, to date, handled Trump deftly and Rubio's current presence in Israel seems to be aimed at offering support to the ground offensive, not opposition. I honestly have no idea what kind of backlash it would take to shake U.S. support for this genocide.
There's definitely a generational gap going in the US. Support for Israel is not popular among the younger generation in the US, and there's a good deal of voters in their 20s and 30s for whom support for Israel a red line in candidates. But older generations tend to be staunchly in favor of Israel, and too much of the gerontocratic political class thinks that pro-Israel uber alles is the key to winning votes.
It is worth noting that Andrew Cuomo, in a desperate last-minute gamble to boost support in the NYC mayoral race, has come out against Israel. Considering that much of the attacks on Mamdani have focused on his support for Palestine (construing him as antisemitic), it's notable that other candidates also seem to think that being anti-Israel is actually the vote winner for moderates right now.
I wouldn't label this as "support for Israel"/"against Israel". One can support Israel without supporting Israel's current approach. Many within Israel are not happy with Netanyahu's methods, and presumably they are not against Israel.
I understand that that's the current shorthand, but it seems inaccurate and unnecessarily polarizing to me.
That gap between support of Israel across age groups existed historically AFAIK, although the margins were narrower.
More worrying for Israel is that it's becoming a partisan issue. That goes to both ends - previously unthinkable, unwavering support under Republicans but a very short leash under the Democrats.
Why would we expect any desirable outcome in this hypothetical though? So the US flips, Israel is pressured into withdrawing, Hamas regains control of the strip and resumes rocket attacks, Israel is forced to respond eventually. It doesn't seem like a path toward a real solution.
> It doesn't seem like a path toward a real solution.
As long as the Dahiya doctrine persists, it won't be. But that's an Israeli problem - their disproportionate response has been exploited for years. Hamas is fine letting Israel commit as many war crimes as it takes to satisfy their leadership, it very clearly hasn't changed tactics in recent years. The cost to Israeli international credibility seems to be "worth it" in their eyes.
So, if Israel wants peace they first have to stop escalation. But even if Hamas was defeated, we know that wouldn't be the end of things. Next the Druze has to be defended, which would result in a very justified annexation of south Syria and repeat of the same genocidal conditions in Gaza. They would also attempt to unseat power in Yemen, and then embroil America in an unwinnable war against Iran to sustain a true hegemony.
America is pissing away its hegemony all on its own.
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When it comes to strategic bombing, honestly, yes.
It boggles my mind that militaries keep attempting despite decades of experience showing that damn near every single time it's been attempted, it's been an abject failure in its aims and very often entirely counterproductive.
How about when it comes to military actions that were not strategic bombing?
FWIW the reason that Israeli troops are on the ground and not just razing the Strip from the air is to reduce risk to civilians.
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I"m going through the PDF now and I am appalled.
All the evidence cited is either circular in nature, referencing other agencies and bodies which cite each other, all reinforcing an extremely one-sided ratcheting look at the conflict. Ambiguous statements made by Israeli officials are consistently interpreted in the manner most damning to Israel, and statements of clear genocide made by those who attack Israel are ignored or excused. They cite clearly flawed logic such as the commonly debunked "Israel admits to 83% civilian deaths".
Interestingly enough, I tried to find other cases in which the UN Human Rights Council concluded that a genocide had occurred or was occurring. I found none. Not the Rwanda genocide, not the Ughers, nor Tamil, nor Rohingya, nor Nigeria, nor Chechnya, nor the Congo, nor Darfur, not in Sudan, not ISIS, nor Yemen nor Ethiopia.
Only Israel.
While you do have points that these UN bodies do seem to sleep more often than not, one should never, under any circumstance attempt to suggest that what's happening in Gaza aren't crimes against humanity.
A friend of mine is in the Red Cross staff, they had more than 20 casualties since 2021 in Palestine. Their staff was literally shot at because they were doctors.
It's sickening.
Which side do you think has an interest in shooting doctors?
I'll help you with that. It's not the side that would regularly take Gazan children into Israel for medical treatment before the Gazans started a war against Israeli children. Or do Israeli children mean nothing? Because I personally know two women whose children were burned to death on October 7th.
> Which side do you think has an interest in shooting doctors?
The one shooting doctors.
What happened on October 7 has been a tragedy. 38 children died that day, and you know two of the mothers. I can't even relate with their suffering, in no way I can understand their pain like you do.
But I don't know either any mothers of the 32'000 killed and wounded on the other side.
"One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this."
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I'd have to check, but I think Israel has killed more children in the past two years than Hamas killed Israelis on October 7. Israel has killed something like 30-40x the number of civilians in the same timeframe.
Hamas is a bunch of evil people. That doesn't justify descending to their level of butchery to exterminate them, especially not when you are so much more efficient at that butchery.
You don't have to check, more Gazan children have died than Israeli children. So by your argument, had Hamas killed more Israeli children then there wouldn't be a problem? I can think of no other reason why you made that argument.
You might notice that Hamas was in Israel for less than 1/40 the time that this war has been going on. So per time period, Hamas killed _more_ children than Israel, given the chance. Who do you accuse of genocide now? They've just been denied the chance.[dead]
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Why is this posted on a tech news site?
To divide the Americans.
Wonder why this made the frontpage when other political articles die.
Has the rules around political non technical articles changed? Can we get an Epstein thread for the frontpage sometime this week?
No, the rules haven't changed—they've been the same for many years. Let me try to dig up some past explanations.
Edit: here's one from a few months ago, which covers the principles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43738815.
Re how we approach political topics on HN in general: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Re how we deal with Major Ongoing Topics, i.e. topics where there are a ton of articles and submissions over time: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Re how we approach turning off flags: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Re the perception that "HN has been getting more political lately" (spoiler - it hasn't - though it does fluctuate): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.
If you or anyone will check out some of those links and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Looking at the official HN guidelines, it states that "Most stories about politics" is off-topic, and "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic".
Is the Isreal/Gaza debate not political, and not mainstream news? How does a story like this not directly violate those guidelines?
Furthermore, the guidelines state that stories should be what "good hackers" find "intellectually satisfying". A political debate thread about Isreal is what "good hackers" would find intellectually satisfying?
I just can not understand how a story such as this in any way remotely meets the established, official guidelines for what belongs here.
Just wanna say this is the kind of day where I feel like I should send you a fruit basket or something for the work you do here.
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I've never discussed this topic with Garry and no one at YC has tried to influence how we moderate HN on this or any other political topic.
You might want to check out the part of the HN FAQ which explains that the moderators are editorially independent: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
I feel like parent probably meant Paul Graham. Garry holds polar opposite opinions (he blocked me on X because he had had made claims about what Intifada means, and as an Arabic speaker I felt compelled to point out the correct meaning).
In any case, I don't think Paul or Garry are interfering with the algorithm or moderation here.
Yep, I meant pg
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maybe because we are two years into an event that will define the early 21st century.
C'mon man, the Charlie Kirk post stayed on the front-page for a pretty long time.
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Useless except if the following done on the US side:
Remove exception to AIPAC political status
Reevaluate AIPAC non profit status entirely
Replicate EO 14046 for Israel which adds the entire ruling party and head of state and spouses and military and affiliated business to the OFAC list
all of this is easy and doesn’t require Congress
but nobody is close to considering those actions with regard to Israel. Notably, other nation’s organizations do not enjoy this courtesy
(Don’t sorry guys, Hamas is already on these lists too)
Voters can take a stand and refuse to vote for anyone complicit in this atrocity.
In the US, both parties were supportive in the last election. Not many choices.
One party had a long leash. The other cut the leash and yelled attaboy.
Now acting mildly concerned when the neighbour downstreet (Qatar) got their chickens bombed.
Why shouldn't Hamas leadership be bombed wherever they may be? They're the leaders of a terrorist organization. The US takes out terrorists wherever they may be (or, works with local authorities to get them first). But, when local authorities are siding with the terrorists, we go in there and do it ourselves. October 7th was Israel's 9/11 - we went and got bin Laden in Pakistan, without dealing with the Pakistani government. Why shouldn't Israel do the same thing? I say - kill all the Hamas leadership, and leave the random Palestinian citizens alone.
> Now acting mildly concerned when the neighbour downstreet (Qatar) got their chickens bombed.
Thing is, what was bombed there was Hamas leadership, not some rank-and-file goons.
Yes, and at this point I'm not arguing for or against that action. I'm saying the current and previous US administration have very different foreign policy.
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Come on, many voters made the genocide a single issue (and ironically voted against Harris as a way of revenge for Biden's support of said genocide), but many didn't even care, they were promised a great again country/a white supremacist country, why would they care if some brown kids died when they took option B...
Combined with the other ongoing conflicts it really feels like we’re in a WW3 era
I don't want to downplay the atrocities going on in the current conflicts, but this sort of comment deserves some perspective.
About 70 million people were killed in WW2, as of the present day about 1 million have died in the war Russia is waging against Ukraine and about 70k people have died in the Israeli/Palestine conflict. The horrors are most certainly real. But WW3 this era is most certainly not, that's thankfully off by an order of magnitude.
The World Wars were called World Wars because of the number conflicts and the powers involved. While the casualties and damage has been lower, it seems like the powers are at least indirectly involved at the moment.
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Sadly history is a very poorly studied topic.
I look at European leaders and they don't seem to remember it any better.
I'm afraid the latest spate of "recognizing the state of Palestine" is not, in fact, a sign of coming relief for the people there, but rather a spigot to relieve domestic pressure to engage in substantive actions (sanctions, pressuring the US and other suppliers of arms to engage in sanctions, let alone sending peacekeepers or no-fly zones).
Regardless of how much you're personally invested in the topic, this should break the hearts of everyone who dreamed that the international community could hold each other legally accountable. Indeed, the US would rather sanction individuals at the ICJ than acknowledge any sort of legitimacy—even as our own politicians accuse Russia of engaging in "war crimes". I have no doubt that they are, in fact, I think that the evidence is quite damning. But the double standard is striking, as is the difference between the footage visible on social media and what is acknowledged when you turn on the TV or open the paper.
> I'm afraid the latest spate of "recognizing the state of Palestine" is not, in fact, a sign of coming relief for the people there, but rather a spigot to relieve domestic pressure to engage in substantive actions (sanctions, pressuring the US and other suppliers of arms to engage in sanctions, let alone sending peacekeepers or no-fly zones).
I don't think recognition as a State would really change anything. If at least one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council will veto everything that comes up, the UN won't effectively intervene in the situation. Military intervention in such a case is unlikely, unless at least one permanent member is willing to join an intervention coalition. Looking at conflicts the US has been involved in, it usually lines up around the lines with US maybe with their usual friends vs Locals or Locals and Russia and friends. The only one I found where the pattern was when France started sending arms to Nicaragua while the US was supporting the other side [1]. Unless Russia or China wants to support the Palestinians militarily, or the US decides not to no longer support Israel militarily, there's not much chance of outside intervention here.
Given the outside countries can't effectively intervene, recognizing the state of Palestine at least sends a message, that maybe hopefully influences the US?
[1] https://www.csmonitor.com/1982/0715/071566.html
The international community is a worthwhile endeavour. But all other countries play at the behest of the US and now, also China.
Between them, the rest have only local influence.
@dang isn’t this the exact kind of story HN isn’t supposed to have?
Conclusion:
" 251. The Commission’s analysis in this report relates solely to the determination of genocide under the Genocide Convention as it relates to the responsibility of the State of Israel both for the failure to prevent genocide, for committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023 and for the failure to punish genocide. The Commission also notes that, while its analysis is limited to the Palestinians specifically in Gaza during the period since 7 October 2023, it nevertheless raises the serious concern that the specific intent to destroy the Palestinians as a whole has extended to the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory, that is, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, based on Israeli authorities’ and Israeli security forces’ actions therein, and to the period before 7 October 2023. The events in Gaza since 7 October 2023 have not occurred in isolation, as the Commission has noted. They were preceded by decades of unlawful occupation and repression under an ideology requiring the removal of the Palestinian population from their lands and its replacement.
252. The Commission concludes on reasonable grounds that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to commit the following actus reus of genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, namely (i) killing members of the group; (ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (iii) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and (iv) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
253. On incitement to genocide, the Commission concludes that Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, have incited the commission of genocide and that Israeli authorities have failed to take action against them to punish this incitement. The Commission has not fully assessed statements by other Israeli political and military leaders, including Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Minister for Finance Bezalel Smotrich, and considers that they too should be assessed to determine whether they constitute incitement to commit genocide.
254. On the mens rea of genocide, the Commission concludes that statements made by Israeli authorities are direct evidence of genocidal intent. In addition, the Commission concludes that the pattern of conduct is circumstantial evidence of genocidal intent and that genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference that could be drawn from the totality of the evidence. Thus, the Commission concludes that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have had and continue to have the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
255. The Commission concludes that the State of Israel bears responsibility for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide and the failure to punish genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."
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> And let's find a war where clauses I, II, and III do not apply
When these clauses apply against civilian populations, they are war crimes or crimes against Humanity, or both.
Can you name a war in which members of a group weren't killed, or serious bodily or mental harm wasn't caused to a members of a group?
That's why the mens rea element is also an element of the crime. You've completely skipped over that part of the report and the conclusion.
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Edit: since you've posted egregiously like this before and have ignored our requests to stop, I've banned the account.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44738555 (July 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44362828 (June 2025)
Bottom-of-the-barrel antisemitism ought to be the easiest thing in the world to avoid, regardless of your views or feelings about the ongoing situation. In any case, there's no place for it on Hacker News—never has been and never will.
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rimunroe is correct, you've repeated a classic antisemitic trope. We ban accounts that post like that, so please don't post like that again.
It's entirely possible, and ought to be entirely easy, to make any substantive point you have without any of that.
What Israel is doing is reprehensible, but you're promoting a classic antisemetic myth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel
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Intentionally killing children will never be justified, everything else serves as a decoy from acknowledging this simple fact.
Israel does not intentionally kill children. Hamas does. They state it clearly.
Quite a few thousand killed by Israel, or are you claiming that's not true?
Quite the opposite actually.
You're free to Google the countless cases of Israel deliberately killing children, but I doubt you wanna get out of your echo chamber.
Nobody in israel's army is aiming at children except maybe for some people turning crazy because of the war, which happens in every war.
Pretending otherwise is just blatant propaganda.
you were downvoted because people don't have any argument against your point : jews couldn't stop the holocaust by just surrendering, like hamas does.
The two situations have absolutely nothing in common.
So as long as there is one Hamas left standing, everyone around must die. This is what you mean?
Edit: can the non-Hamas surrender and avoid getting killed? They can't and the situations on the ground aren't that different. A Warzaw and Gazan survivor would have a lot in common.
So as long as there is one Hamas left standing, he could return the hostages and end the war.
So, you don't disagree. That's pretty telling.
That's if the Israeli army won't kill the captives after they're freed.
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Cited from the full report:
255. The Commission concludes that the State of Israel bears responsibility for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide and the failure to punish genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
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It literally says they bear responsibility for the commission of genocide. Did you fail to... read the one sentence you were responding to?
You forgot to read the "commission of genocide" part.
I see that the person we replied to edited their comment. It originally said something along the lines of "that just says they failed to prevent genocide."
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That sounds like you're flirting with holocaust denial. We ban that sort of account, so no more of this please.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Not so much "lies" as "a people having a genocide committed against them does not make them constitutionally incapable of ever committing one themselves in the future." For several reasons, including that it was different people (only 7% of Holocaust survivors are still alive) and that 'nation,' as a conceptual construct, still carries the same weaknesses that it did when a relatively few voices in Germany used that construct to rally the masses to commit atrocities against their own citizens (and the people in their temporarily-conquered territory) for being 'the wrong kind' of people.
"It's not wrong when we're doing it" is an old, old failing of human empathy and sense of justice.
In fact, I think trauma often makes the victims more likely to perpetuate violence.
jews never threw grenades in kids room of germans before ww2.
history is widely different. Any nation knows they would have done exactly the same if they were israelis after october 7th, if not worse.
zionists still trying to deceive people with misleading analogies while pretending that their apartheid ethno-state can just start its origin story at october 7th [1]. I wonder what kind of individual still buys into these false and lazy zionist narratives.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
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What stat are you using for current Palestinian population during this conflict? Any good estimate of the deaths to hunger over the next few years?
I don't believe that the charges in the report require success either way, but it would help with your statistics.
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Technology enables so many of these problems and yet the technology builders want to flag it off the face of the internet?
The infrastructure for genocide needs a lot of technology and technology related subject. The victims of genocides include technology workers, hobbyists and hackers. No doubt there are HN members who are current victims of the ongoing genocide. They deserve our sympathy and their existence needs to be acknowledged.
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When peoples' comments are flagged to invisibility, there isn't discussion occuring. When people aren't willing to post, discussion isn't occurring.
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The problem is there obviously isn't any discussion happening. People are so entrenched on one side or the other and that's pretty apparent by this comment section. Everyone wants to virtue signal without taking any responsibility. The unfortunate reality of this situation is that it's extremely complex and weaves in a lot of historical context. But nobody cares about nuance anymore it's all just "killing bad!" within the framework of whatever controversial event is on the inciters mind. Well duh, but how did we get here? If we can't stop and consider both sides constructively then clearly we're never going to get anywhere and shit like this will just continue.
That's essentially the pro-Israel argument for decades (Including the opinion that killing somehow weren't always bad). It hasn't prevented the current situation.
But don't let that stop you. Feel free to make a nuanced and well-researched counterargument why the UN report is wrong.
I'm not sure what you're pointing to in my response to attribute it to Israeli support. I was attempting to make light of the fact that 'discussion' requires two sides. Right now both sides live in a different reality. I am in no way condoning Israel's genocide against Palestinians. But to say Israel is the only one at fault for this situation and to only point fingers to one side betrays the historical facts of the situation. I in no way tried to downplay the situation or play sides so please don't twist my words as if I did.
The problem is that there is a massive power imbalance in the conflict and insisting on "both sides" without acknowledging that is itself muddying the waters.
Accusations of "one-sidedness" for everything that doesn't follow the Israeli narrative of the conflict has been a standard defense for decades, last employed against the two-states UN resolution.
That's why I find (naive) insistence on seeing "both sides" problematic in this conflict. By all means, do see both sides, but see them with their respective amounts of power and historical context.
I 100% agree with you here. Which is why it's important to have the acknowledgement that this isn't an isolated situation. There is a 'one-sidedness' for Israel against the Palestinians, in the same way that there's a 'one-sidedness' for the entirety of the Arab nations against the Israeli's. For as long as Israel has existed they've been fighting against their own genocide. I haven't seen anyone acknowledging that? Or that the Arab nations were the ones to provoke the Israeli's in the first place? I find no love for Israel, but we make it waaaay too easy for them to justify these positions. Like it or not it's not as simple as everyone seems to make it out to be. The western nations and the other Arabs were the ones to give up on the Palestinians first, but now all of a sudden we care? Like I said, it's all virtue signaling.
> For as long as Israel has existed they've been fighting against their own genocide. I haven't seen anyone acknowledging that? Or that the Arab nations were the ones to provoke the Israeli's in the first place?
It was so obvious that you were trying to carefully push Zionist propaganda from the very start, but here you went from 0 to 100% hasbara real quick. This isn't 1990, you won't get away with this kind of blatant Zionist revisionism; there are about 10000+ academic articles and videos now that teach the history in painful detail. So give it a rest with your lazy propaganda.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
It's sad that we can't take an objective look at the facts of the matter without trying to point to one side and saying it's propaganda. Like is it so hard to say that both sides did bad things? I have no problem acknowledging that Israel is being the ultimate bully right now, is it not okay to say they have a reason? Or should we just ignore all reasoning and condem "killing bad" like I initially said this would devolve to? The US literally has the same problem right now it's kind of insane. How can you try to swat away historical facts, then in the same breath link me a random master's thesis from 1977... Like can we just go to Wikipedia, start from the beginning and then disagree over the facts that actually happened instead of trying to see it through the lens of some 20s something from the 70s?
so after trying to mislead people with outright lies and historical revisionism based on zionist fantasies, you are trying to "both sides" a livestream genocide and about a century of brutal zionist colonialism. That's your strategy.
>How can you try to swat away historical facts
The cognitive dissonance of Zionists needs to be studied in Universities across the world. You are straight up lying into people's faces and in the same breath projecting your own behavior on others "trying to 'swat away historical facts'". It's truly astonishing.
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As far as I understand, they've made many offers to release the hostages in exchange for their own people or for other concessions. You can track the negotiations pretty well, although occasionally the diplomats get bombed for some reason.
Diplomats - who don't even live in the strip - were recently (unsuccessfully) bombed.
If Hamas wants to end the war (or supposed genocide) then they can release the hostages with no additional demands. The fact that the supposed genocide victims choose to continue the war is quite the sign that this is not genocide, in what other situation would a victim choose to continue a war that is a genocide against his people?
The victims are the 60k+ dead people (including children), stop confusing things, you know this.
No one here is defending Hamas
They've offered! Israel's government is demonstrably not interested in the hostages.
They don't need to make offers with additional demands. They need to release the hostages. And the war should continue, until they feel pressured to release the hostages.
The war could stop at any minute, if only Netanyahu stops it.
Why would Netanyahu stop the war? It is the only pressure on Hamas.
The way war usually works, is the side that feels it has something to loose, sues for peace by making concessions. However the international backing of Hamas has ensured them that they have nothing to loose, and everything to gain, by attacking the Jewish state.
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They have repeatedly hampered the entry of baby formula, a clear pattern of actions to stunt childhood development, increase childhood mortality and dissuade the population from having more children.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-hampering-entry-of...
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/07/01/i...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/22/gaza-i...
Why can't it come in through Egypt?
Because Israel controls that border crossing:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/7/israel-takes-control...
Even before this they had effective control of all goods moving through since 2007.
Consistent with the precedent set by the USA. Of course, they didn’t just hamper, they blew up the factory itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_pharmaceutical_factor...
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Gaza is dependent on Israel's permission. Food aid is provided by the UN and other humanitarian organisations, they require Israel's permission to bring that aid into Gaza and not attack it (n.b. attempts since 2010 to deliver aid by boat, such as the MV Rachel Corrie, have been attacked in international waters and the aid never reached Gaza). Israel destroyed the power and water desalination plants, making Gaza dependent on their supply, which has since been used as a weapon.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/07/thirst-weapo... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1w0l3q4zd0o
Why can't Gaza supply itself? There is farmland in Gaza. The Mediterranean sea is right there - plenty of fish.
Other folks are free to Google the answers to these questions.
If they haven't yet, what will get them to look?
Since '93, the range allowed for Palestinian fishing boats has been reduced from 20 to 3 nautical miles by Israeli naval vessels. Because primarily only young fish are found that close to the shore, and because constant damage to infrastructure means untreated wastewater is being dumped close by, it's a pretty bleak picture.
I suspect you haven't heard that Gaza is under a blockade for decades?
Why's it under blockade?
> The attack on Gaza’s largest fertility clinic destroyed thousands of embryos, sperm samples, and eggs.
More info on that particular attack: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15npnzpd08o
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Reminder that Israel razed hundreds of Palestinian villages to the ground in 1948, and expelled half the Palestinian population from their homeland. Israel has always wanted to ethnically cleanse Palestine of the indigenous population. It has resisted any diplomatic route to a two-state solution, going as far as financing Hamas because Fatah was moving towards a peaceful resolution, and Hamas was seen as an adversary against whom ethnic cleansing would be easier to justify.
Israel is quite literally built on top of the ruins of Palestinian villages. The zionist project has always required an ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population, because the project's goal is to build an ethnostate. This is just culminating in the current genocide.
Yeah, almost as many people as Jews were driven out of surrounding countries. I don't think headcounts do serve any sensible argument.
There is a lot of fiction in your post and I am not surprised that you have a problem with the existence of Israel.
You do realize Israel committed terrorist attacks against Arab Jews to make them flee their countries, right?
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This is politics and therefore probably off-topic for hn. It not being tech-related is irrelevant.
An argument could be made that it is an "interesting new phenomenon", but the post is most likely to result in tedious flamewars regardless and so should probably be killed.
From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I would agree with you if we were in 1994 and this was about Rwanda.
Those tower blocks in Gaza that were felled on the anniversary of 9/11 were not taken down with machetes. We have got AI assisted targeting going on, with all of your favourite cloud service providers delivering value to their shareholders thanks to sales to the IDF.
The corporation that once had 'don't be evil' as their mission statement are suckling on the IDF teat along with Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Cisco.
Sure it does, if enough users find this interesting to them. I for one find this interesting.
This is a genocide.
A tech-enabled one.
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The UN discredits itself: UNGA 2015-2023, 154 resolutions against Israel, 71 against all other countries _combined_.
Of course it stems from the anti-Israeli bias of its members: a single Jewish state against 57 Muslim states.
I think this was an even clearer example of the UN's anti-Israel bias: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/debunked-un-off...
Very blatant disinformation from a top UN official, no retraction or apology, and no consequences.
Or it stems from Israel committing more war crimes than other nations
Does it seem plausible to you that during the years of the Syrian civil war, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Tigray war in Ethiopia, the war in South Sudan and countless others (conflicts which, in total, claimed the lives of millions), Israel would commit war crimes at a ratio of 3:1 against the entire world, combined?
In contrast, the number of deaths from both Israeli and Palestinian sides in the same time period was several hundreds.
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You forgot, the West Bank, under apartheid, extreme settler violence, constant and massive home expropriation, is also khamas, although no khamas ever walked on it.
It's part of a broader phenomena: feelings over facts. Doesn't matter how many commissions say it's genocide and how much evidence is presented, people don't "feel" it is true, therefore it is not true. Zero difference between these people, climate change deniers, and anti-vaxers.
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that sounds like IDF propaganda and their credibility is basically non-existent
My claims have been widely reported in the media
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I find it funny people still find the UN legitimate. They still haven't criticised Hamas attack. The UN in Gaza is extremely corrupt because they are threatened by Hamas or they're themselves Hamas. We already saw this organization being accused of hiring terrorists.
Also, please don't provide Al-Jazeera links, they are accused countless times hiring/supporting terrorists, and their news reporters are themselves terrorists. They're funded by Qatar and Hamas and other organizations.
> I find it funny people still find the UN legitimate. They still haven't criticised Hamas attack
I find it funny that you have to lie so much. They did, it's easy to find. My father is from a Christian orphanage in east Jerusalem. My grandmother hosted sisters and priests from Israel who worked in schools, hospice and orphanage all over the two countries. UN school programs there had a lot of issues, but being religious (Hamas was a religious group before being a terrorist one) or close to Hamas wasn't one (having no heating in schools during winter and having to sometime amputate toes from 10 year old was probably the biggest issue that I remember).
UNRWA schoolbooks for you: https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/UNRWA-Education...
and first UN general assembly resolution condemning hamas attack is the one from the past week that speaks about recognition of palestinian state.
unless you can find different one
I can't refute all their findings, but it's still worth looking at the board of that org:
https://www.impact-se.org/about-us/impact-se-board-members/
For an organization ostensibly concerned with education to violence everywhere, that's a LOT of board members with direct connections to Israel.
I also think it's common sense that if an occupying force deliberately ensures your living conditions become ever worse, shoots your friends and family to death for throwing stones and eventually obliterates entire families, that you don't exactly need textbooks to develop hatred.
As for "from the Nile to the Euphrates", just ask Daniella Weiss: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-10-21/ty-article-ma...
"i can't refute the facts so i will have to do character assassination".
(i'll remind that those are books that are taught by UN agency)
the atlantic article from 1961 about unrwa camps showing that they were taught back than liberation of entire area by force and destruction of israel https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/archives/1961/10/208-4/132...
it's almost like if population is educated for violence for 50 years, it will behave violently and it will result in counter action from "occupying force"
on the other side, Israeli population is been subjected to palestinian violence for extended period. Pretty much everybody was either target of it or lost somebody to it.
Lets see what do we have in Israeli schoolbooks: https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/Arabs-and-Pales...
Yeah, they do that stuff in the pre-army courses instead.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-09-04/ty-article-op...
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-08-09/ty-article-ma...
i am talking about systemic things in education system. not about random anecdotes. also good chunk of israeli population (and even bigger chunk of those serving in army) is secular and whatever random rabi says means nothing.
but kudos on shifting goal posts.
Given the Israeli military are defacto state sponsored terrorists (see e.g. their active support of settler violence on the West Bank if you want to avoid Gaza related complaints). That means every single company in Israel is employing terrorists.
Sure. The Israel military rapes, kills, slaughter, and rob Gaza and West bank. The IDF is exactly like Hamas sure. /s if you didn't understand.
The Israelis live in the West Bank. The IDF is there to protect them. There is no violence whatsoever from the settlers. It's pure propaganda. There were a few rare times of some violence, but it's nothing compared to what the Palestinians do. Last week, two Palestinians crossed the border and murdered 6 people and 20+ injured on a bus shooting in Jerusalem. They even kill each other.
Each time the IDF comes into Palestinians "cities" to catch terrorists, they throw rocks on them.
> no violence whatsoever
The UN reported that, in the West Bank, Palestinians killed 6 Israeli settlers and 16 soldiers, while Israelis killed 719 Palestinians, from October 7, 2023, to October 7, 2024" https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-updat...
International journalists can't access Gaza, but they have witnessed first hand settler violence. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cewy88jle0eo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0pHcC0HMiQ
> while Israelis killed 719 Palestinians
Can't find it on the source you provided. The source you provided also justifies terrorists cries about their home being destroyed. It's interesting from where they get these numbers, from Palestinians?
Apologies, that was for the week ending September 30, only 695 had been killed at that stage in the West Bank. The week ending October 10 has the 719 figure for the full 365 days: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-updat...
What authority, other than the local government, would you be more comfortable with providing those numbers?
any breakdown between civilians and combatants ?
about year ago PA tried to remove Hamas and other charity organizations for Jenin and other cities (that it typically can't entered) but failed and asked Israel to intervene what Israel did.
So you have interesting situation, when Palestinian authority asks Israel to kill palestinians and than Israel is blamed for killing palestinians.
Good that you mention it, yes Israel rapes, kills, robs, as you say. https://www.btselem.org/publications/202408_welcome_to_hell
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Being a "first-world" country has never been incompatible with war crimes.
I really do. (personal note: I never know if I should engage with these trolls, given them more visibility, or simply ignore them, risking seeing their propaganda spread)
We know they do. Now adjust what that tells you about the "first world".
> Again, this is an unreliable source. It provides Palestinians testimonies. In Gaza the amount of untruthful testimonies is disgusting.
Yeah we get it, all Arabs are liars. Anyone who has sympathy for them is a liar. The Sde Teiman video is a fake and also the soldiers in it are all heroes. Israel has the most moral army in the world. IDF soldiers never post TikToks of themselves committing war crimes and laughing about it. It's not as if a person could spend 5 seconds online and find video evidence of these atrocities.
Sde Teiman MAYBE was real (there is still no proof, and it still being investigated by ISRAEL), but we're talking about terrorists whom murdered and raped people, not citizens.
TikTok is the most propagned platform currently. Not only about Gaza, but about everything. In the mean time, all the injured/starved citizens that were pictured and put on news papers were all a lie. I can also tell you I see many, many videos of sustained shops, rich food, candies and whatever first-world country has in Gaza. Give me one video please.
Where is your evidence?
It's evident for example that this thin child that was put on the front page of NYT was actually suffering from a genetic disorder. It's also evident that the pictures of Gaza citizens starving with their bowls out asking for food, was actually a complete lie (you can find pictures from the side, and not only from the front). Yet you still see those images on TikTok.
You mean Mohammad Al-Motawaq, the boy with muscular dystrophy? MD wasn't the cause of this weight loss, a lack of food was.
Unless you'd prefer to trust the word of an Israeli blogger over the childs doctors (because of their ethnicity).
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/05/nx-s1-5488798/gaza-baby-starv...
Where is your evidence to back any of your opinions?
IDF is 100 times worse than Hamas. What do you mean?
Qualitatively, no. On the other hand, there's this saying in war, quantity is a quality its own. So, IDF looks very bad right now.
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Since 1948, on average, the IDF has killed 10x as many Palestinians that Israelis killed.
Since October 7th, that is at least 60x.
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IDF is state sponsored; they (and Israel more broadly) have a responsibility to comport themselves within the bounds of international law. If they choose not to, then they are behaving like terrorists.
The UN secretary general condemned it the day it happened.
https://press.un.org/en/2023/sgsm21981.doc.htm
Yes, everyone that criticizes Israel for killing and mutilating thousands of children in the most horrible ways is Hamas, we already know that...
The UN’s teeth appear to be red white and blue.
Hopefully we are at the beginning of a change, but I doubt this will come only from the UN.
The UN is the only international democratic institution that - even with its many imperfections - prevents the world to fall into complete anarchy. It's quite telling that it gets ignored since so many years by the country that elevates itself as the world defender of democracy, the US.
The UN has voted for decades for ending the embargo towards Cuba. Every year the outcome of the vote, which has always resulted in a great majority demanding the immediate end of the embargo, has been ignored by the US, resulting in millions of Cubans facing extreme economic consequences since many decades. The last time every country except Israel and US voted for ending the embargo (I might be wrong, maybe a single African state abstained).
In all of this, the only seed of joy I see, was seeing the Cubans a couple of years ago, after decades and decades of seeing their economy strangled by the most powerful country on Earth, roll out their own Covid vaccine just at the same time of those of big Pharma - a vaccine that resulted excellent, effective, and cheap. Hats off for the Cubans. Hope to see some other seed like this also in the Palestinians.
> The UN is the only international democratic institution that - even with its many imperfections - prevents the world to fall into complete anarchy. It's quite telling that it gets ignored since so many years by the country that elevates itself as the world defender of democracy, the US.
It's not been ignored the purpose of the UN is for largely irrelevant countries to petition the world powers to maybe consider doing something. The UN has been so successful because it has no real power over players like the USA.
> The UN has voted for decades for ending the embargo towards Cuba.
Ok? I mean the purpose of the UN is for people to suggest stuff to players like the USA not for the USA to actually do what the UN votes for.
What people fail to understand about dynamics between countries, is ultimately there is no supreme court or arbiter of truth. The UN doesn't have authority over any powerful country (or non powerful country for that matter).
People seem to have this concept that there is some supra national legal system, or even moral system that can hold a higher truth than what powerful countries want, but there isn't. When it comes to geopolitics, the biggest and most powerful sets the rules and lives by them (or not). The USA has zero motivation to do something the UN wants it to do, if it doesn't itself want to do it. No one is going to hold it to account.
Ultimately - whoever controls the violence can set the rules. For the last 80 years that's been the US. Maybe that is changing, but not quite yet.
The UN isn't an international democratic institution. For the last 20-30 years it's been a powerless theatre. And it didn't have much power before then either. Because ultimately, whoever has the most nukes and the biggest army rules the world.
One hopeful observation is that I actually have seen coverage of the genocide in a local newspaper this time. N=1 of course (and I'm not sure what other local newspapers have been like), but that's more than before.
It's always useful to balance these claims against their critics.
Towards that end I offer up unwatch.
https://unwatch.org/
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Watch:
> Agence France-Presse has described UN Watch as "a lobby group with strong ties to Israel" ... Primarily, UN Watch denounces what it views as anti-Israel sentiment at the UN and UN-sponsored events.
You can criticize it, but the fact that we're here should tell you enough already.
Nice critic. I remember on Reddit watching someone get blown up the other day while carrying water while it was still up. I think they were under 10.
Not sure if they died or just lost all their limbs.
That was a young Gazan girl who tripped a Hamas IED that had been set for Israeli troops. That's why there was a camera pointed at it.
>That was a young Gazan girl
Are we sure we are talking about the same child who got blown up? There is quite a few.
Is there a specific report arguing that Israel is not committing genocide? I don’t see it on the home page.
Is there a specific report arguing that the US, or Canada, or the UK, are not committing genocide?
Unwatch is, and has always been, critical of everything the UN does with regards to Israel. Had the UN made one statement like "Israel should not arbitrarily detain children and hold them without fair trials", I am pretty sure unwatch would twist it into antisemitism.
True. And in the interest of balancing the claims of the critics, I offer up the observation that UN Watch is "a lobby group with strong ties to Israel" (AFP article: Capella, Peter. "UN Gaza probe chief underlines balanced approach." 7-Jul-2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20111222162658/https://www.googl...).
And most of the UN are nations who depend upon Arab oil, or who are in an ideological conflict with the US.
Isn't that an Israeli "hasbara" site? The Israelis have admitted that they use the false cry of "antisemitism" to attack.
"Calling it antisemitism - it’s a trick we always use." Shulamit Aloni, former Israeli Minister
https://x.com/SuppressedNws/status/1896748975207952758
How is that a refutation?
If I want to understand any position I would look for first sources. Say I want to understand why Russian invaded Ukraine, I would seek out Russian sources. When I try to understand the Palestinian position, I seek out Palestinian sources.
The beautiful thing about intellectual honesty and openness is that you don't have to agree with any position. You can expose yourself to things that deeply conflict with your personal values and walk away with a deeper understanding of why you value what you value, and how to refute ideas that you strongly disagree with.
To dismiss a source because it is Israeli ironically gives fuel to the antisemitism charge. You're saying that the very reason to dismiss it, to not even bother entertaining its arguments is because it is Israeli and no other reason. Beyond that, you are even arguing that any claims of prejudice can be dismissed outright on the basis of one thing that one Israeli Minster once said [allegedly].
That is the very definition of prejudice.
I agree. I find it interesting to hear from Palenstinian sources about their motivations and goals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJxjmEbUZxM
Quite simply Israelis and Jews are not the same group, otherwise you would be holding all Jews on the planet responsible for this genocide. Dismissing the source for being Israeli is not antisemitic.
There are many examples of Israeli sources lying about the state of things, from the baseless claims against UNRWA to the unconscionable excuse of burying medics and the ambulances they were in, to avoid wild dogs eating them.
Israeli sources rarely offer evidence to refute the claims presented in this report, and a cry of antisemitism, as stated, conflates Judeism with Israeli nationality, hence these sources are worthless at best.
re: "baseless claims against UNRWA"
They come with receipts. Uncomfortable as they are.
https://unwatch.org/evidence-of-unrwa-aid-to-hamas-on-and-af...
You are aware that Shulamit Alloni was on the extreme left and was criticizing this supposed misuse of Antisemitism, this is not some playbook
The american equivalent would be to quote Bernie Sanders saying "America is fascist" and then saying, see? therefore the USA system of government is fascism, even Congress agrees!