Comment by johnnyworker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnnyworker | Hacker News Reader

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> 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.

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