Comment by vasilipupkin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vasilipupkin | Hacker News Reader

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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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