Comment by nailer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nailer | Hacker News Reader

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> On top of the collective punishment and other war crimes committed en masse

What collective punishment? If you are referring to the end of the free utilities, Hamas has a responsibility to provide it's citizens with water and electricity, Israel does not have any obligation to provide these services for free to a neighboring region.

> Are you implying that genocide

I'm implying nothing. Wikipedia is not a source, but let's use it anyway since you cited it: "a national, ethnical, racial or religious group"

- British Palestine was not a nation - the British mandate was a multi-ethnic territory, consisting of Jews, Arabs, Christians, and Druze. Likewise the Ottoman Empire beforehand. There has never been a Palestinian ethnostate run by arabs for arabs, although many arabs wished for one and tried to achieve an arab ethnostate in 1948, 67, and 73, and many "pro Palestinian" people still march today for an arab ethnostate.

- The ethnic and racial group is arabs. Arabs outside Israel and Jordan in the former British Mandate called themselves arabs prior to 1960. There are no records of Palestinian people prior to this. The actual Philistines were Greek. Israel does not seek to destroy all arabs, as discussed previously.

- Israel does not seek to destroy all Muslims either.

So Israel does not seek to destroy any nation, any ethnic group, any race or any religion.

> How great "Arabs" have it somewhere else doesn't prove...

Arabs are real, I don't know why you have them in quotes. What it does prove is that your claim of genocide is false.

While we're at it: just a reminder that Hamas rejected 3 ceasefires in the last week because you (and I say you because pro-Palestinians are inevitably pro Hamas) didn't want to give back the people they stole, including young women, six 79+ year olds, and at least one baby.

Speaking of war crimes, would you say that gouging out a father's eyes, so he can listen as you saw off his daughter's leg, and listen as you cut off his sons fingers counts as a war crime? How does that compare in the 'war crimes' department to not giving someone free electricity?

Gaza isn't a "neighboring region" of Israel. It was formally occupied for decades, and, before October 7, was de-facto occupied by dint of Israel controlling all its borders, waterfront, airspace, and access to the world. I don't believe there's a reasonable argument that says Israel isn't obligated to provide water and electricity.

I write this bearing in mind that we're not going to resolve this, one of the world's most complicated conflicts, in a days-old HN thread.

Yes, Gaza is a neighbouring region of Israel. You can determine this by looking at a map. Gaza has borders to multiple countries, you can also determine this by looking at a map. After being given a $300 million flower export business in 2005, Gaza elected an organisation that wants to murder all Jewish people worldwide. As anyone can understand, Israel would likely close its border to such an awful region.

I am glad that you can’t think there’s any good reason for Israel to not provide free utilities to Gaza - I think perhaps not being you can do so, may raise questions in your own mind.

I am content not to resolve the issue in a hacker thread, however, I am doing you a favour by making you realise how ridiculous these arguments are. I once used to think along the same lines as you about Israel versus Palestine but then realise I was in a left-wing bubble full of provably false information.

There hasn't been an election in Gaza since 2006.

The overwhelming majority of Gazans are too young to ever have voted.

Hamas won the 2006 election in large party by throwing PA supporters off of rooftops.

The other side of this argument routinely overstates it case, but you're doing your side no favors here by pretending that Israel can cut Gaza off at its own discretion. It cannot.

> The overwhelming majority of Gazans are too young to ever have voted.

That is true, but the majority of Gazans polled support the actions of Oct 7, and back in 2021 most supported Hamas in another polls.

I do appreciate these polls may be answered under duress though and from what I see on video, there are definitely some people inside Gaza that are tired of living under Hamas. We just don't know how many.

> you're doing your side no favors here by pretending that Israel can cut Gaza off at its own discretion. It cannot.

I don't have a side asides from that of truth. I don't understand what the basis for this argument is - why can't Israel stop supplying utilities to Gaza? Israel probably will post-Hamas, since the UAE or whoever else would like them to do so, but ultimately it's at Israel's discretion.

No, for all the reasons stated upthread.

I don't see any reasons from you or the other commenter upthread. One person may have alleged it was collective punishment but that's already been dismissed.

I have nothing to do with "the other commenter upthread" and am disinclined to respond to anything framed that way.

Okay: I haven’t seen anything from you explaining why Israel needs to provide Gaza with free utilities

Even though they didn't have a physical presence, they were in control of the territory, controlling all borders, the sea, and the air. Israel is widely considered to be an occupying force due to this control.

Regardless of whether you agree or disagree that Israel is occupying Gaza, would you at least agree that an occupier in general has a responsibility to provide basic necessities like water to the occupied?

> controlling all borders

No. Egypt lets Israel run the border, but if Egypt wanted to open the border to Israel it would.

> would you at least agree that an occupier in general has a responsibility to provide basic necessities like water to the occupied?

But it's not relevant, since there's no occupier.

The government of Gaza has the responsibility to provide basic necessities to Gaza. Instead they spent it on tunnels and weapons.

> As anyone can understand, Israel would likely close its border to such an awful region.

Murdering or ethnically cleansing the population to then take over the area isn't "closing the border". The IDF created a situation in which 500.000 people might die in the next 12 months, without further bombing. The murder continues either way.

And under international law, the obligations of Israel as an occupying force are clear.

> The occupying power must take measures to restore and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety.

-- https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/misc/634kfc....

Instead:

> Israeli forces continue their attacks on Palestinian refugee camps throughout Palestine, including in the West Bank. They destroyed more infrastructure in Tulkarem refugee camp last night including roads and water infrastructure. Water access is controlled by the occupation.

https://twitter.com/Shepherds4Good/status/174285862996590192...

While some at best condemn the now unmasked calls for ethnic cleansing and even genocide, but not the actions.

The claim that reducing Gaza to rubble and murdering or dislocating all the people there is the only way to ensure safety is nonsense, it ensures no such thing. It would remain a giant crime even if that was the intent, that "intent" isn't even real. Hamas was supported over moderates by Netanyahu precisely to prevent peace. That's all on record.

> Israeli finance minister Smotrich: "In the context of de-legitimization - Hamas is an asset (for Israel) and the Palestinian Authority is a liability"

- https://twitter.com/pgosh_MTP/status/1741169302051402195

Wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure, just one very clear example one of many, many such war crimes: https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17317722618482647...

> If we act strategically correctly, there will be immigration and we will live in the Gaza Strip. We will not allow a situation where 2 million people live there. If there are 100-200 thousand Arabs in Gaza, all the talk is about the day after will be different.

- https://twitter.com/GLZRadio/status/1741347524693127398

Denying that this is ethnic cleansing, and blaming the victims for the collective punishment and crimes against humanity, is a terrible thing to do. It's also futile.

Denying that this is ethnic cleansing, and blaming the victims for the collective punishment and crimes against humanity, is a terrible thing to do. It's also futile.

Please stop personally attacking people in these threads. Make your point calmly or not at all.

This isn't even effective as rhetoric. The comment you responded to made an argument that didn't require a wall of text or an appeal to Bezalel Smotrich to knock down.

> Murdering or ethnically cleansing the population to then take over the area isn't "closing the border".

I've shown how those aren't happening, you had no retort, so we've establish there is no ethnic cleansing. Unless you mean Hamas intention to murder all Jewish people worldwide.

> The IDF created a situation in which 500.000 people might die in the next 12 months, without further bombing.

No, Hamas created that situation. There was a ceasefire before Oct 7. There have been many offered since, most recently one week in exchange for returning 40 kidnapped people. Hamas puts military infrastructure in schools, and UNRWA / Hamas school raise children to be martyrs, creating this situation.

> Israel as an occupying force

Israel is not an occupying force as previously discussed. Neither is Egypt. Nobody is obliged to open their borders. You wouldn't. I wouldn't.

> attacks on Palestinian refugee camps

These aren't refugee camps. They're collections of concrete buildings with permanent occupants. The building you're typing this from would be considered a Refugee Camp if you were in Gaza. Likewise Hamas openly instructs all deaths to be reported as 'civilian deaths'.

> The claim that reducing Gaza to rubble and murdering or dislocating all the people there is the only way to ensure safety is nonsense

Agreed.

I haven't seen anyone making the claim murdering all the people in Gaza is the only way to ensure safety.

You've found one minister that wants to move people in Gaza to someone else. But that's not the majority view and is fairly extreme.

The majority view of the way to ensure safety is this:

Most people want Israel to pay UAE to police Gaza.

- For Israel: Hamas must no longer exist. They need to give the baby back (yes they have a bay, he just turned one), the women may be being raped (Mia mentioned she was only likely not raped because of her captor's wife), the men may be tortured, they have 6 people over 79 years old.

- For Gaza: Gazan arabs are happy to be policed by other arabs, more than they are Israelis (even Arab Israelis). Gazans may want to live more than they love to die (that's not me saying that, it's a frequent claim by Hamas supporters that they love death).

- For UAE: UAE hates seeing arabs be poor and wants peace in the region. Gaza is valuable when not run by a death cult.

What's frustrating about these threads is that the bottom half of this comment seems pretty defensible --- reasonable people can disagree strongly about it, but it should be possible to do so without accusing either side of genocide (of the Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, or of Palestinians).

But there are so many land mines in these conversations --- like, and I'm not trying to pick on you here, "Israel is fully justified in cutting off supplies to Gaza because Gaza is independent of Israel" --- that threads spiral off into repetitive and increasingly emotive flame wars.

I think this is probably just not a very good topic for HN. Lots of important topics aren't good fits for a moderated, open-access, anonymous Internet message board catering largely to technologists. That's OK! There's a whole big Internet out there.

> Israel is fully justified in cutting off supplies to Gaza because Gaza is independent of Israel

I didn't write that.

What I did write - that Israel is under no obligation to give Gaza free utilities - is true.

Hamas openly does support genocide, see the Hamas charter.

See, this is what I'm talking about. I agree about Hamas. I think most people do. But by inserting it unbidden into a response like this, you invite someone to either (a) misinterpret your point, or (b) worse, to challenge it --- and the only people who are going to do that are precisely the people you shouldn't want to see chiming in.

Worth noting maybe that the three of us on this thread are some of the last people keeping this unproductive conversation going, across the whole site. I'll do my best to reduce that count now!

It was not unbidden. You mentioned accusing any other side of genocide. I responded by pointing out that Hamas explicitly supports genocide.

Sorry tptacek, I just realised this was you replying to this old thread and not johnnyworker. My reply still holds, but any references to 'you' are to johnnyworker.

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