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Comment by jimbohn | Hacker News Reader

Feels like saying a kidnapper is "actually" feeding its prisoner, so after all it's not so bad. With all the money and political goodwill the US has spent on Israel, couldn't these good results be reached by anybody having that much capture on the US?

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The comment to which I replied was "was there anything good that ever came from that Apartheid genocidal state?"

The objection I have with that is that it's reductive.

"It's not *so* bad" is different than "it's not *entirely* bad", and my objection stands, whether or not "someone else could achieve good results"

Do you feel like Apartheid and/or genocide are justified in this case?

If it's apartheid and if it's genocide, then of course not.

To hold a strong opinion on whether those terms apply, I'd need more information than is available to the public, and go on a case by case basis.

I'm not particularly involved with the whole Israel/Palestine question yet I was unable to not find myself put in front of a lot of evidence, and I don't follow/have social media.

There invariably is evidence that supports two diametrically opposed narratives; what is missing is evidence to know which is true.

For example:

The IDF claims Hamas use civilians as human shields. Hamas denies it.

Hamas claims the IDF targets civilians. The IDF denies it.

And I, with no access to internal IDF communications, and no access to internal Hamas communications, don't know what to make of all the videos and articles supporting and debunking both claims.

We can judge by the outcomes.

If the goal is to judge Israel and find it guilty of genocide, then we can choose some number of civilian deaths lower than Israel killed, and be done with it.

If the goal is to determine whether Israel actually is guilty of genocide then that approach isn't useful.

Determining if there is a genocide or not doesn't depend on the kill score but on factors which (ironically) find their highest experts among jews and Israelis (Lemkin, Bauer, Charny, Auron). Some of them have actually helped define the definition in the UN Genocide Convention. If you take a look at the definition, even before October 7th, Israel is pretty much committing a genocide. Regardless of the outcome, one of the key factors is intent, and after October 7th, lots of important Israeli figures came forward with unambiguous statements of their intent.

I read conflicting reports that speak to the intent behind IDF actions, which takes us back here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45770705

Well, you are in luck, because there will always be conflicting reports.

Yes, both sides in the conflict produce torrents of propaganda.

The sensible position is to be conscious of what one doesn't know.

It's less satisfying than believing that one side is just evil, like the person to whom I originally replied: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45766601

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