Comment by FridayoLeary | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FridayoLeary | Hacker News Reader

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Take a better look at it from Israels perspective. Any other response after Oct 7 would have been unthinkable. No israeli is particularly happy with what's happening in Gaza (a massive understatement) but there is still broad support there for the war, because most israelis feel it's a matter of survival.

The rest of the world haven't been shy lately about expressing their opinion of the war, something that Israel recognises and care about, but they have provided no way out for israel to take any other course of action.

Our ideas and opinions should be as harmonious as possible with reality. If Israel was understood better and her concerns and fears engaged seriously it would go a long way to ending the war.

In the context of this assassination i feel the path forward is not empty platitudes of "deescalation" rather greater empathy and understanding of people you disagree with. This is mainly an internal process, but also one that should have outward expressions too.

> there is still broad support there for the war, because most israelis feel it's a matter of survival.

A phrase like "the war" glosses over a lot. If the IDF were not deliberately shooting children¹, would the Israeli public be clamouring, "shoot more children"? If food shipments were not being blockaded², would the public be demanding that Gazans be starved?

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/09/opinion/gaza-... [2]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/gaza-malnutrition-children-blo...

I'm sure some form of military action was necessary in the aftermath of the October 7th attacks. Genocide³ ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ was not.

[3]: https://www.fidh.org/en/region/north-africa-middle-east/isra... [4]: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/un-special-committee-pre... [5]: https://amnesty.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Amnesty-Intern... [6]: https://msf.org.uk/issues/gaza-genocide [7]: https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/28/middleeast/israeli-human-righ...

I didn't see anywhere in the article anything about israelis calling for more dead children. Even if that happened it's the actions of a fringe group, not idf policy. Food shipments are being restricted because it's not generally accepted that you have to feed your enemies while you're at war with them. In any case the GHF was set up to deal precisely with this problem and is doing a great job.

On the charges of genocide... Again what you say should be in harmony with reality. In truth all those sources have an anti israel bias. One can't help but think they started with a conclusion and found the evidence to fit in with it, which is the wrong way round. In any event other bodies like the UK government don't agree. Genocide requires intent and there is simply no intent for genocide from the Israeli government. One can also argue that if indeed genocide was the goal the war would have been much faster. anyway i hope that gives you a better perspective of Israels point of view and interpretation of events. Their stated goals in gaza are destroying hamas and ensuring gaza is no longer a security threat. Hamas is very large and quite well embedded in the civilian population and has a lot of infrastructure which means that even waging a war will lead to a lot of civilian casualties. Something that hamas exploits and people who claim genocide ignore.

>Food shipments are being restricted because it's not generally accepted that you have to feed your enemies while you're at war with them.

Funny way to put it. You do not feed the enemy, rest of the world feeds the enemy. You make all effort to prevent the enemy being fed, to starve the enemy to death. Starving the enemy is generally accepted as a war crime, but Israel disagrees. Oh yeah, and enemy in this case includes infants.

>> because most israelis feel it's a matter of survival.

How do you think Palestinians have felt living in an open air prison next to genocidal maniacs with zero ability to control themselves for the past 50 years. USS Liberty should’ve been the end of things, but it wasn’t.

>because most israelis feel it's a matter of survival.

It objectively isn't and that's what's so tragic. Israel doesn't need to be understood, it needs to work harder to understand. And, per 9/11, it specifically needed to understand that taking Hamas' bait was a straight shot to dashing international goodwill and benefit-of-the-doubt.

There's some far-off timeline where Israel negotiated in good faith for the return of all of the hostages without dropping a single bomb. The anti-war movement that finds one of its most fervent centers in Israel itself is driven by the dawning horror that many of those hostages are never coming home precisely because Israel (again) chose blind fury over reason. And that's not a matter of perspective, it's a simple fact.

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