Comment by johnnyworker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnnyworker | Hacker News Reader

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> Is Israel obliged to provide water to an enemy entity? In what world does a country attacked by an enemy have an obligation to provide water.

Using starvation, and denying water falls under that, as a means of warfare is a war crime EVEN if ONLY used against "the enemy".

And you are implying the often-heard "there are no civilians in Gaza", which is another atrocity on top of that.

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

> Israel spent 17 years trying to manage Hamas

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...

> The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.

And Smotrich, more recently

"If we act strategically correctly, there will be immigration and we will live in the Gaza Strip." and "In the context of de-legitimization - Hamas is an asset and the Palestinian Authority is a liability"

One crime does not excuse the other. Blaming war crimes and crimes against humanity on Hamas because they're just so extremely evil and wiley, while people in Gaza get starved to death and Israeli soldiers make TikToks about blowing up whole villages with wired explosives, singing about how they'll move in, while journalists are targeted, refugee tents are bombed, while people repeat the same sophistry over and over, because a positive wall of politicians and hack fraud journalists repeating the most obvious of lies, gives them the idea they have license to.

"They chose war and war is what they got". Children screaming in agony as legs get amputated without anesthesia.

Unforgivable.

People who chose to justify atrocities with the flimsiest excuses got what they wanted, too. But you can't accept it, say I'm engaging with "actual" facts. You are wrong. The facts simply are very unflattering for what you are advocating is all.

You are missing the point. First of all, cutting off water to enemy forces is not a war crime

https://www.quora.com/Is-cutting-off-water-to-an-enemy-city-....

Secondly, Hamas is a genocidal terrorist organization that Israel thought was moderating over time and one that could be managed. That assessment was proven spectacularly wrong

And now there is an actual war happening as a result, in which civilians are dying, which is terrible

But it’s completely absurd to place 100% of responsibility for this on Israel. Hamas is an actor in this war, not a passive observer

Did you know, for example, that when Hamas and Islamic Jihad fire rockets at Israel, a significant percentage misfires and falls right on top of civilians, right in Gaza, injuring and killing civilians?

Hamas embeds itself among civilian population

These are all choices, choices about starting a war and a manner in which it’s conducted

It’s absurd to discuss all this as if Israel is the only party with agency here.

Israel has no choice but to try and wipe out Hamas because Hamas has explicitly vowed to repeat October 7th again. That leaves Israel with no real options. But Hamas doesn’t have to embed itself in civilian population to fight Israel, that’s a choice they made knowing it would lead to high civilian casualties.

Cutting water to Hamas is not a war crime. Cutting water to civilians is. See the ICRC page on the Laws of War with respect to water.

technically, this is not accurate

https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/96544/what-services-...

You are not supposed to destroy existing water resources of the population of the entity you are at war with, but you are under no obligation to provide them with water out of your own resources.

Regardless, this whole convo is a red herring because Israel turned water back on

I agree that it's mostly immaterial given that Israel was forced to turn the water back on. I do not agree that the supposed arms-length relationship between Israel and Gaza meant Israel wasn't obligated to supply water. For all practical purposes, Israel occupies Gaza; it is required to keep Gazan civilians supplied. If Israel wanted Gaza to be self-sufficient, it could allow them to build an airport, to receive ships on its shorefront, and to manage its own border with Egypt. It will not do those things, for a variety of practical reasons, and so it must accept its responsibility toward Gazan civilians.

"For all practical purposes, Israel occupies Gaza; it is required to keep Gazan civilians supplied, If Israel wanted Gaza to be self-sufficient, it could allow them to build an airport, to receive ships on its shorefront, and to manage its own border with Egypt"

This is besides the point. Israel did not stop Hamas, which is the governing authority in Gaza, from investing in water infrastructure. Hamas chose to invest in underground tunnels instead. That is tragic, but it's not the responsibility of Israel. Israel did not control what happened inside Gaza and blockade did not prevent Hamas from importing cement and other materials for tunnel building, this is because civilian imports were allowed, but Hamas used imports earmarked for civilian use to build tunnels and rockets.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/us/politics/israel-gaza-t...

We're veering towards a debate about competing values, and I'm deeply skeptical of the value of those kinds of conversations on HN, given how polarizing this topic is and how conditioned we are to pattern match to the worst possible interpretations of competing arguments. I'm doing my best to stay dry and neutral about the overall conflict, and to rebut only claims that are in the ballpark of factual.

Regarding the "governing" status of Hamas, I would observe that the overwhelming majority of Gazans are too young to have ever voted, and that Hamas seized and maintains power coercively, so we should be careful attributing ideas like rightful governing status to Hamas. Among the organizations that care less about the lives of Palestinians than Israel, one must clearly number Hamas.

I don't agree that this has anything to do with values really.

Hamas is the de facto governing authority of Gaza, or was as of October 7th It could have chosen to build water infrastructure, desalination plants, etc. Instead it chose to build tunnels and rockets.

As the de facto governing authority, it has the obligation to provide water, not Israel, if we are talking about strictly legal aspect of this situation.

We disagree sharply about these things are at likely at diminishing returns for conversation, one indication of that being that you didn't really respond to the point I raised, but rather reasserted your original claim as if I hadn't raised it at all. That's fine; some discussions are just hard to have on HN, and we shouldn't force it.

your point that you raised seems irrelevant to the specific question at hand.

"Regarding the "governing" status of Hamas, I would observe that the overwhelming majority of Gazans are too young to have ever voted, and that Hamas seized and maintains power coercively, so we should be careful attributing ideas like rightful governing status to Hamas"

I agree, but I did not attribute "rightful" status to Hamas. It's just a factual observation that Hamas had de-facto governing control of the Gaza strip. Elections are not a pre-condition to control

Given that it had control of the Gaza strip, Hamas, as the controlling authority, has responsibility for civilians under its control, not Israel, at least legally

if you want to argue that regardless of legal responsibilites, Israel is still responsible for those civilians, despite Hamas control, that's a separate line of reasoning that leads to its own implications

At that point you're making a very banal point about the moral status of Hamas. But Hamas has no moral status, so metering it in ever finer units isn't moving any conversation forward. We agree: Hamas is very bad.

well, it's not as banal of a point as you think because plenty of players treat Hamas as a legitimate organization, including Turkey and others. Palestinian politicians from the West Bank are on record, for example, that future governments should and will include Hamas. Once you agree it's very bad, there are further implications that follow from this assessment and then we arrive at where we are now.

Anybody who treats Hamas as a legitimate organization has disqualified themselves from the public debate. That is a values statement I am unafraid to make.

Cutting off water for 2.2m civilians "but only meaning" the militants is not a thing.

> It’s absurd to discuss all this as if Israel is the only party with agency here.

And each party is responsible for their own actions. It's not like some kind of car with two steering wheels. Each person has responsibility for what they do.

> Israel has no choice but to try and wipe out Hamas

Oh, so Israel has no agency. No choice but to turn off water, just lay waste to infrastructure to make Gaza unlivable, and of course no choice to sing about how there are "no civilians in Gaza", as shown during the hearing of the ICJ trial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G15NyemgYDM&t=4548s

Which is just one of so many clips the IDF soldiers are proudly making. They all talk about colonization very openly, and the dehumanizing rhetoric is just astonishing.

https://www.nad.ps/en/media-room/latest-israeli-incitement-r...

> But Hamas doesn’t have to embed itself in civilian population to fight Israel, that’s a choice they made knowing it would lead to high civilian casualties.

Many, many Israeli politicians have vowed to ethnically cleans if not outright murder Palestinians, for their Greater Israel thing. While they're doing it, no less. Right now, it's hundreds of thousands people set to starve, and that is justified with mere "aims" of Hamas. Nobody had to do or justify that, either.

edit: this just in:

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/01/over-one-hun...

> “It is unprecedented to make an entire civilian population go hungry this completely and quickly. Israel is destroying Gaza’s food system and using food as a weapon against the Palestinian people.”

> Israel is destroying and blocking access to farmland and the sea. Recent reports allege that since Israeli military's ground offensive started on 27 October, approximately 22% of agricultural land, including orchards, greenhouses, and farmland in northern Gaza, has been razed by Israeli forces. Israel has reportedly destroyed approximately 70% of Gaza’s fishing fleet.

[..]

> Israel has also destroyed more than 60% of Palestinian homes in Gaza, directly affecting the ability to cook any food, and causing domicide through the mass destruction of dwellings, making the territory uninhabitable. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has estimated that nearly 85% of Gaza's population — representing 1.9 million people — is internally displaced, including many who have been displaced multiple times, as families are forced to move repeatedly in search of safety.

> “We have raised the alarm of the risk of genocide several times reminding all governments they have a duty to prevent genocide. Not only is Israel killing and causing irreparable harm against Palestinian civilians with its indiscriminate bombardments, it is also knowingly and intentionally imposing a high rate of disease, prolonged malnutrition, dehydration, and starvation by destroying civilian infrastructure,” said the experts. “Aid needs to be delivered to Gazans immediately and without any hindrance to prevent starvation.”

> “Our alarm for the unfolding genocide does not only refer to the ongoing bombardment of Gaza but also concerns the slow suffering and death caused by Israel’s long-standing occupation, blockade and current civic destruction, since genocide advances through an ongoing process and is not a singular event.”

Just because an entity has agency, it doesn't that in every situation it has unlimited choices. You have to acknowledge the reality that Hamas has vowed to keep repeating October 7th again and again. Given this reality, what choice does Israel have other than fight Hamas?

Now, the point is, Hamas does want to fight Israel, it's their whole reason for existing as an entity. But certainly they can choose not to embed themselves in civilian population, digging tunnels under childrens' bedrooms, etc

Yes, war is absolutely horrible. And it could end instantaneously, if Hamas surrendered.

Wow, IDF soldiers made a clip? Yes, there are idiots in every army, this is not really relevant for analyzing the broader situation, or at best tangentially relevant.

"Many, many Israeli politicians have vowed to ethnically cleans if not outright murder Palestinians, for their Greater Israel thing"

And many many Palestinian actors have vowed the same. There are extremists literally in every single country. The difference is whether the extremists are actually running the policy of the government. Israeli Government spokespeople are out there every day explaining the policy and it's clearly not to ethnically cleanse, etc

You can't pick out what one idiot said in one instance and then completely ignore what others said in other instances.

Again, you have to engage with a very simple fact, if you want to analyze this situation objectively. Hamas has vowed to kill as many Israelis as they can for all eternity in the future basically. No sovereign country can allow this to happen to its citizens. Therefore, the only thing Israel can do is fight Hamas and try to destroy its capabilities to attack Israel

War is horrible, but you have to also acknowledge that Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel on and off for 17 years. All other options to stop this have been exhausted.

> Just because an entity has agency, it doesn't that in every situation it has unlimited choices.

Nobody claimed that. If you're implying not having unlimited choices meant being forced to dehuamnize Palestinians and to call for their extermination and commit war crimes, that'd of course be false.

> And many many Palestinian actors have vowed the same.

What? Name one. What Palestinians actors have talked bout how there are no innocent Israelis?

And why are you comparing "actors" with people like President, Prime Minister, generals and soldiers in the field? And actions that match it, more importantly?

> Israeli Government spokespeople are out there every day explaining the policy and it's clearly not to ethnically cleanse, etc

No, they're not, they're just repeating their "but Hamas" stuff and it's hilarious to see how even the people who interview them sometimes run out of patience with that. One can't "explain" that the deeds that are already on record for having been committed haven't been committed. One can just kick up sand and lie about it.

> Hamas has vowed to kill as many Israelis as they can for all eternity in the future basically.

Or, as you said elsewhere, they want to "continue to keep killing infinite Israelis". Which is such an absurd attempt to justify the crimes Israel is committing.

Right now, you're saying Isreali is justified in its actions, which is leading to killing and starvation of civilians en masse, at rates we haven't seen before, because Hamas must be defeated and this is the only way. Since Hamas cannot be defeated in this way, it stands to reason that what you also are proposing is killing infinite Palestinians, unless they ethnically cleanse themselves, or stop having children. Same goes if you replace "freeing the hostages" with "destroying Hamas". The only way these actions achieve is the humanitarian catastrophe outlined above, which didn't even make you skip a beat.

And while Netanyahu is paying some lip service to not settling Gaza (and some Israelis are talking about how Ben Gvir should take over because that weakness is unforgivable), IDF soldiers are making their TikToks. Like this one addressing "Bibi", naming his unit (hence, no shame, this isn't something that will harm their career) and saying they will stick to it until they finished their task, which is, and I quote, "Occupation, Expulsion, Settlement"

you are making a lot of conclusions that don't follow from your premises and many of your premises are false.

"Since Hamas cannot be defeated in this way, it stands to reason" It can and it doesn't. Of course Hamas can be militarily defeated, its military infrastructure dismantled.

"No, they're not, they're just repeating their "but Hamas" stuff" Yes, they are

"What? Name one. What Palestinians actors have talked bout how there are no innocent Israelis?"

https://nypost.com/2023/11/01/news/hamas-official-vows-to-re...

"Right now, you're saying Isreali is justified in its actions, which is leading to killing and starvation of civilians en masse"

This is a war, you can't say Israeli actions are leading to killing of civilians, because this war has two sides, two players. At a minimum, the actions of Hamas have effects on civlians. At the very minimum, misfired rockets that they fire at Israel are known to fall on the heads of civilians injuring and killing them. The war could end if Hamas decicded to end it, not just Israel

"IDF soldiers are making their TikToks."

IDF has hundreds of thousands of soldiers, so 5 of them made a tiktok, so what? it's irrelevant.

> Of course Hamas can be militarily defeated, its military infrastructure dismantled.

By destroying civilian infrastructure, targeting journalists, using starvation? No, that can kill all civilians in Gaza, and then there still will be Hamas in a tunnel somewhere.

And that Hamas dude is not an actor? I thought you meant movie actors.

But okay, the only people who say the kind of stuff that is normalized in Israeli society and repeated from highest ranks to lowest soldier, the only equivalent to it, is Hamas. (and probably Antisemites and all sorts of terrible people, but nobody that is remotely considered respectable by anyone in the West). You kind of made that point for me.

> IDF has hundreds of thousands of soldiers, so 5 of them made a tiktok, so what? it's irrelevant.

And when many, many, many of public Israeli figures call all people in Gaza animals and call for extermination, then that's irrelevant because Hamas the terrorist organization is saying terrorist things ^^

At any rate it's not 5, and the fact that they make these genocidal statements while destroying civilian infrastructure, including usually naming their unit, often even the name of the person who leads it, makes it clear that it's not fringe, it's not something hidden, it's not a video that was stolen of a flash card, it's what they upload on social media and get celebrated for at home. And that rhetoric seems to matches the actions on the ground way better than all that stuff about this being "war" and aimed primarily at Hamas.

"By destroying civilian infrastructure, targeting journalists, using starvation?"

they are not using starvation, humanitarian aid is going into Gaza, multiple trucks are going on, hundreds a day. they are not targeting journalists, they are targeting Hamas. There are plenty of examples of Hamas affiliated "journalists" there.

"At any rate, it's not 5". It doesn't matter if it's 5 or 10. There are literally hundreds of thousands of soldiers. You are holding Israel to a bizarre standard that no country can fulfill while somehow completely letting Palestinians off the hook. Thousands of civilians took part in the October 7th massacre. If you are going to compare soldiers making tiktoks

Israel has fringe figures, bad people that say bad things or do bad things like any other country. This is not relevant to the analysis of the situation in which two sides are at war. In war civilians die, civlian infrastructure gets destroyed and that is horrible. But it;s extremely bizarre to place full responsibility on one side of the war, the side that did not start the war. Hamas started the war and Hamas made clear that Israel doesnt have too many options.

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