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Comment by vivekd | Hacker News Reader

We use the word war crimes for that. This isn't the same thing because there was no fighting at the time. It's not like there was an ongoing military engagement between Israel and Palestine on October 7.

In this case there is tension and bad things happening at the border with sporadic fighting.

Then on October 7 Hamas on its own volition crossed the border and did attacks on regular people.

Just imagine a different situation. Imagine Russian army started shooting Ukranian kids at a dance party, paraded the naked body of one of the kids in camera after they raped tortured and killed her

Would we still be having this intellectual debate about whether the word terrorism is overused and wether it can apply here.

You know what I think, I think this is the bigotry of low expectations. Some western intellectuals instinctively apply different and lower standards to people of other races.

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That's the problem. I think this reveling over death is what makes people treat something as terrorism vs. warfare, even though the end result is largely the same. You dance over the naked body of an enemy and you're an inhuman animal; but you push a button to blow up 19 family members of a journalist and it's not even considered a war crime. (Heck, you're even allowed to gloat over those deaths on certain forums without immediately being labeled a monster!)

The sadism of those who delight in rape and murder is deeply disturbing. But, in some ways, the depersonalized automation of murder, where you roughly target something on a screen and go get lunch while dozens of distant lives are torn apart, is even more perverse.

At least the former doesn't scale. There's only so many fucked up people you can recruit. But almost anyone can push a button.

Maybe some of the people in mainstream militaries are psychopaths who try and kill innocent families to spread terror. And I think some cases like the firebombing of Japan and Germany do fall under that. But on the whole I think I'm mainstream militaries such actions are the exception and goals and targets are military.

In this case there was no parading over the body of an enemy. This wasn't an enemy this was a girl in her early 20s. How is she an enemy, she didn't do anything. We don't even know maybe she opposed Israel settlements and wanted a different approach to Gaza.

The difference with groups like Hamas is they don't care, everyone is an enemy deserving of rape and torture, even random girls in their 20s. It's not the same thing, comparing this intentional attack to unintentional breaks of discipline or accidents in military contexts seems insane in my mind. The difference is Hamas intentionally targets civilians as their official policy, that's their organizational approach.

It's a messed up thing that happened, an atrocity. And Hamas is an evil organization. But go to Reddit and you can see people cheering in every article about Gaza being bombed, even if it's about innocents being killed. Is that so different from the oft-cited incident where people were celebrating in the street after the attack? It all comes from the same place: dehumanization of your opponent.

> It's not the same thing, comparing this intentional attack to unintentional breaks of discipline or accidents in military contexts seems insane in my mind.

When the military orders civilian infrastructure to be bombed, they know that innocents will die. It is a certainty. And yet they get to write it off as "collateral damage." I could argue it's a distinction with very little difference. It just so happens that one form of violence is societally acceptable while the other is not. "Law of war" is a comfortable lie we tell ourselves to avoid facing war's true human toll, but in the end, it's all still bodies in the rubble.

> It's a messed up thing that happened, an atrocity.

Listen to yourself dude. A thing that happened. As if Hamas murdering people is a 'thing that happened' like a rock fell down the cliff and went through someones windshield. Just a thing that happened.

A thing I noticed is how people like yourself use agency rhetorically to excuse things that are simply unacceptable. So here Hamas has no agency. The people in Israel that died was a 'thing that happened' because Hamas has no agency. But of course the Israeli military they have agency because it's necessary for your argument.

This is just hoary old school tribalism. What we do to others is excusable. What's done to us is an outrage.

Who is excusing Hamas? This is an absurd interpretation of what I said.

Hamas murdering over a 1000 people in cold blood is a 'thing that happened'

Well I agree with you there, I don't think Israel's response is justified either.

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