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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

Attacks on merchant ships can't be tolerated, period. That's a fact regardless of whether one thinks about Israel or the US role there. My take on this is pretty crass: I hope a coalition of whoever is interested and affected can help level as much as is necessary in Yemen and that mission is accomplished when shipping insurance rates return to what they were before. A ceasefire in Palestine is a good idea no doubt, but from my safe armchair it looks a lot more attractive to spend billions of dollars and risk a lot of collateral damage in land attacks in Yemen than give the impression that a ceasefire happened through blackmail.

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> Attacks on merchant ships can't be tolerated, period.

Israel maintains a blockade of Palestine. What do you think they do if a ship tries to sail to Palestine?

> Israel maintains a blockade of Palestine. What do you think they do if a ship tries to sail to Palestine?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_flotilla_raid

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230531-13-years-since-is...

"The Gaza flotilla raid was a military operation by Israel against six civilian ships of the "Gaza Freedom Flotilla" on 31 May 2010 in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea. Nine activists were killed during the raid and dozens wounded, including one who later died of his wounds, while ten Israeli soldiers were wounded, one seriously. Three of the six flotilla ships, organized by the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (İHH), were carrying humanitarian aid and construction materials, intending to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip."

And what guarantee can anyone give that this coalition is going to be any more successful than the last one was in Afghanistan?

clear goals, and generally clearer targets.

we're not here to "democratize" the country, we're here to protect global trade routes, and to strip their ability to launch anti-ship missiles.

> can help level as much as is necessary in Yemen and that mission is accomplished when shipping insurance rates return to what they were before.

Ah yes, because stupid ship insurance rates are more important than human lives in Yemen, nothing new to be honest, we know how the "human rights" world values human lives in Iraq with Abu gharib and the proxy war in Syria to the active genocide in Palestine.

As long as its not Europeans or Americans getting attacked it's "complex" and "blackmail".

I was deliberatly being a bit pointy in the wording, but yes that's what I'm saying.

Note: this isn't about oil in Iraq or exterminating terrorism in Afghanistan. The civilian lives on those ships are exactly as civilian as civilians in Yemen. This isn't about some US war in a foreign country. This is about either not stopping attacks on civilian merchant ships, or stopping attacks on merchant ships.

Except the ship could just not go to Israel, you know that's an option right?

Let's assume for a moment that Houthis are in good faith only attacking ships that are going to Israel. How good is their intelligence? How likely is it that they may hit some innocent civilian as collateral damage? Would that even matter or since "the West" has hit civilians as collateral damage in the past (and being criticized for that) Houthis can do it too (without being criticized)?

Ships not owned by nor going to Israel have been attacked.

Even ships going to or from Israel aren't acceptable targets in any way shape or form (Also I don't think only ships going to/from Israel have been targeted, but that's beside the point)

I don't think many people give a crap if I'm honest, at least in Europe. I'll be honest and say I don't. The whole Middle East has done a lot of repetitional damage to itself over the last 20 years by bringing its politics to us in Europe in the form of killing citizens. When it starts using those tactics in home territories against allies we're insensitive to their position.

As much as this sucks, Yemen is another Middle East shit show. And it's not a shit show we should expend anything further on other than protecting our shipping lanes.

I wish it could have been better but the damage is done. I'd rather everyone just stopped being nut jobs and blowing each other up respectively. And I don't think we should get involved in Middle Eastern politics, just distance ourselves from it.

Man, if the west completely left the middle east, almost all of the "shit shows" wouldn't exist.

The occupation wouldn't exist, the zombie state in Iraq wouldn't exist, and much more. Please just leave it alone!

> The occupation wouldn't exist,

If you meant the Israeli occupation, you're wrong. Israel isn't "The West" and isn't able "to leave" in the same way that e.g. the US could leave Afghanistan. This is true both in terms of Israelis having mostly nowhere else to go, and also in that the majority of Israelis aren't Westerners in the first place.

> If you meant the Israeli occupation, you're wrong. Israel isn't "The West" and isn't able "to leave"

It won't leave it will just be defeated.

> the majority of Israelis aren't Westerners in the first place.

Not true, especially when taking into account that it's the "country" with the highest dual citizenship percentage in the world.

Israel has a population of roughly 9.3MM people.

Of those, a little over 2.0MM are Israeli Arabs. Arabs are the largest ethnic minority in Israel.

Among Israeli Jewish people, over half are Mizrahi. They're the former Jewish residents of Morocco, Tunisia, Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and other MENA countries.

It is not possible that the majority of Israelis are westerners; you can't possibly make those numbers work. It would be like trying to claim the majority of Americans are Irish.

Not sure why you're putting the word country in quotes - it is a country.

As for dual citizenship, it might be large, but it's still estimated at only 10% if the population. And that includes lots of people with citizenship in countries that they have no connection to at all.

> It won't leave it will just be defeated.

They have nukes. They aren't going away. Ever.

And in some absurd world where their existence actually is threatened, they'd take out the countries trying to destroy them along with them.

Oh completely. I'm also 100% fed up of my tax money being spent on stupid attempts to unfuck it.

you're the kind of person who calls the police when workers are on strike ?

No personal attacks, please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Wait what? I'm staunchly pro-union. In fact I'm strongly supporting my local union against Tesla in Sweden thanks for asking. But of course their blockade of Tesla is legal. Even the sympathy actions like garbage collectors refusing to fetch trash at Tesla service locations is of course, legal.

If strikers start shooting random civilians nearby, even the staunchest labor organizer should probably consider a call to 911.

I'm not aware of anybody who got killed when Yemeni boarded the ships. No hostages were taken and no ransom was asked. In fact it seems the only casualties are Yemeni who got killed by a US Navy ship who had no reason to be there in first place.

They're shooting missiles at civilian ships. They are thankfully large targets with few humans, but that's not safe behavior. Someone's eventually going to get hurt/killed if it continues.

The US Navy ship has every right to be there under international law, and its reason for being there is to repel attacks on civilian shipping that also has every right to be there.

> The US Navy ship has every right to be there under international law, and its reason for being there is to repel attacks on civilian shipping that also has every right to be there.

Every right to go to another countries waters and kill it's solders who are imposing a blockade ordered by their government? - A blockade that has killed 0 people I would add.

I mean the US can't possibly give in to these terrorists demands right - to stop bombardment of civilians and let in humanitarian aid....

For clarification, do you believe preventing aid from entering gaza under the threat of violence is self defense, but preventing ships from going through the red sea trade route is terrorism? - I mean these ships are informed that they are breaking a blockade and chose to continue anyway, and still no civilians have been hurt.

> Every right to go to another countries waters...?

Yes.

First, the Houthis aren't the recognized government of Yemen by any country except Iran; they don't (legally) control Yemen's territorial waters.

Second, even if they did, the vessels are permitted under international law (including treaties Yemen is subject to) to transit the strait. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_passage

> A blockade that has killed 0 people I would add.

If you run around shooting a gun at people and only hit their cars in the process, expect to still be shot by police if you don't stop.

> For clarification, do you believe preventing aid from entering gaza under the threat of violence is self defense...

No, I similarly believe Israel is violating international law in various ways. I'm opposed to their blockade of Gaza.

> can help level as much as is necessary in Yemen

That's not how it works.

> risk a lot of collateral damage in land attacks in Yemen than give the impression that a ceasefire happened through blackmail.

This is just a very, very bad take, you're basically saying "it's better for Yemeni kids and women to get killed [my reading of collateral damage] than for the West to lose face [my reading of the blackmail thing]". Hasn't the West learned anything from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, like, literally, anything?

> you're basically saying "it's better for Yemeni kids and women to get killed [my reading of collateral damage] than for the West to lose face

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that these things (israel, vs merchant shipping) basically cannot be allowed to be linked, because they aren't. It's simply blackmail. If the merchant shipping is seen as isolated, then it's clear it can't be tolerated. We can't tolerate the attacks, and we can't tolerate disruptions such as caused by massive detours.

> Hasn't the West learned anything from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, like, literally, anything?

Iraq and Afghanistan were invasions with the attempted (and nearly impossible) goal of regime change. That's not at all what I'm suggesting should happen. This is about removing the ability to engage in piracy/attacks on merchant ships.

> it's better for Yemeni kids and women to get killed [my reading of collateral damage] than for the West to lose face

No, it's even more crass than that! we are discussing accepting the loss of civilian life just to maintain shipping insurance prices! And what I'm saying is "yes that's terrible, but less bad than the alternative".

The merchant ships are also civilian! The current attacks are deliberate attacks on civilians. We are talking about attacks on military (or paramilitary) targets, in order to stop attacks on civilians! Yet you are arguing that those would be the attacks that put civilian lives at risk?

> If the merchant shipping is seen as isolated, then it's clear it can't be tolerated.

Agreed. And there's no fundamental reason that "Israel doing what it's doing" justifies "attacking commercial shipping."

It's a convenient moral and diplomatic fig leaf over an unrelated action.

> The merchant ships are also civilian! The current attacks are deliberate attacks on civilians.

I must have missed the part where those civilians couldn't take the Cape route. Also, saying that the West does this in the interest of a couple of dozens under-paid Filipino or Eastern European sailors and not because it's freaking out about a few percentage points added to the transport costs of the Chinese dildos and EVs being brought in by ship from China is beyond parody.

> I must have missed the part where those civilians couldn't take the Cape route.

They can. But are you saying it's acceptable that they should have to in order to not be attacked? What else is acceptable? Would it make a difference if they were also attacked by the same attackers on that route so there were zero routes available? Why would that make a difference? This whole line of reasoning makes no sense to me...

> Also, saying that the West does this in the interest of a couple of dozens under-paid Filipino or Eastern European sailors and not because it's freaking out about a few percentage points added to the transport costs of the Chinese dildos and EVs being brought in by ship from China is beyond parody.

It's not. It's because in particular it's important for world shipping that merchant ships can travel freely where needed. In general though it's of course unacceptable to have piracy or attacks on civilian vessels.

My comment about those sailors being civilian was merely made to point out that right now we already HAVE regular and deliberate attacks on civilians in this situations. And that the action called for is deliberate attacks on military targets where any civilian targets would merely be collateral damage.

> That's not how it works.

Israel annihilating Hamas looks like a winning strategy to decisively eliminate foreign interference from the likes of Iran.

> This is just a very, very bad take (...)

I don't agree. As Iran's control over the likes of Hamas proves, terrorist nations are actively killing the same innocent civilians they are using as human shields with the expectation that the humanitarian crisis inflicted upon their pawns hinders or even prevents any retaliation. The only effective strategy to prevent civilians from being thrown in arms way is to eliminate any perverse incentive leveraged by the likes of Iran to harm innocent civilians as a proxy war strategy.

> Israel annihilating Hamas

This is a pipe dream. For every killed Hamas member there are two sons or brothers who are ready to pick up arms. This looks like a fools errand if you ask me. Isreael appear to think that if they just get rid of the last training camp, the last tunnel or the last rocket ramp, then all will be quiet. I honestly don't think they really believe that. I think the campaign is a populism fueled killing spree for a domestic audience. The collateral and civilian damage isn't a side effect but a feature. And they know Hamas isn't weakened long term by it but the opposite. But they do it anyway because of domestic politics.

This is almost certainly not true, at least to the extent you portray it. Sure, domestic Israeli politics plays into everything (as politics always does in a democracy).

But you have to realize a few things - this is wrecking the Israeli economy, Israel is losing soldiers in this current war daily, and everyone in Israel personally knows someone on the front lines of the fighting. This isn't some vague "other people are fighting a war and might get killed", this is people you know personally fighting that war.

No one sane would support a "killing spree" with no end in sight, if not for morality's sake, just for the fact that it's hurting Israel a lot. In fact, it would be far "easier" on Israel, in that sense, to just bomb a lot more, kill far more civilians, but end this war much sooner. Of course it would be a moral travesty, but if Israel was going by pure populist anger, that'd probably be the course it would take.

There are some people in Israel advocating for exactly this - increase the amount of bombing in order to lower the risk to Israeli soldiers.

ISIS is mostly gone and a non-threat. Al-Qaeda as well. Nazism is a thing of the past. Sure you have neo-nazis in different places like Russia, US, Gaza (looks like "Mein Kampf" is the most popular book there after Koran) but that's just deranged individuals, not infrastructure. So yes, Hamas will be there for decades but mostly as an ideology of a sick people, Israel physically eliminated any future threat from this place for a long, long time.

Neo Nazis in Russia? The Russians sacrificed millions fighting the Nazis.

It's the neo Nazis in Ukraine that tried to ban the Russian language and prevented Zhelensky from negotiating peace in the Donbass when first elected.

> Neo Nazis in Russia?

Yes, and there's even a Wikipedia article devoted to them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism_in_Russia

Quote from that article:

> With the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, Russian neo-Nazis have achieved international attention for their militant support of Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine. Certain groups, such as the Russian Imperial Movement, have been accused of training white supremacists and neo-Nazis from other countries in Europe. The links between these groups and the Russian government, comprising a policy known as managed nationalism, have become particularly noteworthy since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to be pursuing the "denazification" of Ukraine.

The linked article on "managed nationalism" has more:

> Managed nationalism or controlled nationalism is a term used by some academics to refer to an informal policy of pragmatic collaboration with Russian nationalist and neo-Nazis (or in broader cases, the Russian far-right as a whole) pursued by the government of Russia under Vladimir Putin. ...

> The Russian response to Euromaidan marked a significant revitalisation of managed nationalism. Neo-Nazis, monarchists, Stalinists, and Christian nationalists, as well as Cossack groups, formed the anti-Maidan coalition, and later became militants supporting the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics as part of the Russian people's militias in Ukraine, bringing together members of the Russian neo-Nazi community and others from throughout Europe. ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managed_nationalism

Israel is also bombing refugee camps in the West Bank right now, destroyed water infrastructure last night. Hamas isn't in the West Bank. A few Politicians are criticizing Israeli politicians openly talking of complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza, but tacitly condone the actions.

Terrorists aren't just a fixed group of people, and studies and common sense is that widespread and arbritrary attacks on innocent people increase resentment. It's like an employment program for war mongers and war profiteers. The civilian populations of Israel and the US also don't benefit from this, in addition to the innocents in Palestine Israel as occupying force is obliged to protect under international law.

> The only effective strategy to prevent civilians from being thrown in arms way

... is to not do it actively. Obviously. Otherwise, preventing the harm to innocents can be ruled out as a motivation and justification.

> Israel is also bombing (...)

Iran's strategy has been to use their proxy groups to force innocent civilians to be their human shields. Hamas has been thoroughly documented as using basic infrastructure such as hospitals as their command bases, prevent innocent civilians from fleeing war zones under the penalty of death, steal humanitarian aid to cause humanitarian crisis, and even infiltrating supposedly humanitarian organizations to abuse them to further their military and political goals.

Let's face the facts: the likes of Iran actively places civilians in arms way expecting it to be a win-win scenario, as in either it prevents any retaliation or leads people like you to misguide your indignation hoping to weaponize it.

There is a wealth of information on how Iran, through Hamas, is murdering palestinian civilians by playing them as expendable pawns. If you care about the problem then you'd be directing your indignation towards the root of the problem, and do your best to not create an upside to using civilians as sacrificial pawns.

You just repeat the trope about "human shields" in response to attacks in the West Bank, on refugee camps and more, on basic water infrastructure. It has been refuted.

> leads people like you

Can you refrain from personal attacks, as totally lacking of substance as they may be?

> This is what Israel has begun to do - we cut the supply of energy, water and diesel to the Strip … But it’s not enough. In order to make the siege effective, we have to prevent others from giving assistance to Gaza … The people should be told that they have two choices; to stay and to starve, or to leave. If Egypt and other countries prefer that these people will perish in Gaza, this is their choice.

-- Giora Eiland, former head of the Israeli National Security Council

Just ONE of the many many many dozens of such things is enough to refute these tropes about "human shields" and "$evil group and their likes". "(...)" describes the full depth of your counter-argument.

> If you care about the problem then you'd be directing your indignation towards the root of the problem

I am just as outspoken against those who glorify Hamas as I am here. You are, right now, just repeating what I essentially replied to, while ignoring the inconvenient facts I introduced, and making it about me, and "the others". That's all that happened here, what I wrote stands, your attempt to dismiss it stands.

Well it's more of when people in other developing countries find their daily fuel or food beyond what they can afford and spiral into poverty.

Geopolitics is a cruel game, and unfortunately sometimes we wil be deciding whose lives are worth more / more aligned with our interests. If one dosen't like that, then one can try to enact their own peace on the world, but I doubt the world wants that.

It's not about saving face, it's about the economic and deterrence consequences of the naval blockade that is being attempted.

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