Israel targeted Gaza children resulting in genocide, UN inquiry says | Hacker News Reader

Israel targeted Gaza children resulting in genocide, UN inquiry says

reuters.com

534 pointssupercopter406 comments

> Between October 7, 2023 and October 7, 2025, at least 20,179 children were killed, around 30% of the overall death toll.

> A rebuttal shared by Israel's mission in Geneva said Israel "consistently strives to minimize harm to children even in situations of conflict".

Well, it is certainly no question that Israel is killing children en masse.

Israeli officials are saying “but we are trying to minimize”. Well, these attempts clearly failed given 20,179 fatal cases, and let’s also consider all physically injured and traumatized children.

Still, as of today, Israel is killing a child per day in Gaza [1].

So either it is complete incompetence of Israels warfare methods, or it is done on purpose. No matter how you try to frame it, package it: this is not right and Israel should be sanctioned internationally.

Fundamentalists rule this nation. Sanction them, no weapon exports and their actions are not aligned with their official rhetoric.

Also, October 7, October 7, October 7. Yes, horrible, but at what point does the consensus become that October 7 starts to look like a small event in light of the death toll on the other side?

Spoiler: we should be way beyond that. Over 97% of all total casualties are on the Palestinian side [2].

Sanction Israel.

[1] https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/geneva-palais-briefing... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war

Thank you for stating the case better than I ever could.

Thank you for swallowing lies so smoothly and better then I ever could or even imagined.

> Yes, horrible, but at what point does the consensus become that October 7 starts to look like a small event in light of the death toll on the other side

At the point when other side (free palestine and alike) start acknowledging it. Two wrongs don't make something right.

Start with teaching Palestine supporters that hamas is not the answer. And maybe, maybe after that people start seeing Palestine people as victims. Without it, most people will continue supporting Israel, not because they think that it does no wrong. But in comparison with hamas and their supporters Israel is lesser evil.

> most people will continue supporting Israel

Your perspective is divorced from reality.

Across the 36 countries, a median of 67% of adults have an unfavorable view of Israel, while 25% have a favorable view [1].

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/06/04/most-peop...

To go back a long long while, the Israeli state was also founded by religious paramilitary organizations. Irgun et al.

Hamas IS the only organization to survive Israeli assasinations & internal conflict. Why is it there are no secular Palestinian groups left?

IMO Hamas / Netanyahu & the Kahanists are both the worst possible leadership on both sides.

The Kahanists literally murdered the Israeli prime minister for shaking hands w Arafat.

> maybe after that people start seeing Palestine people as victims. Without it, most people will continue supporting Israel

Most of the world sees Palestinians as the victims and Zionists are very much the global minority. Hamas made that a reality, so I think they are the answer. I certainly support their resistance to Zionism, just like the Haitian slave revolt.

In what world is 20,179 dead children the lesser of two evils?

The pro-israel argument is that hamas are almost entirely to blame for those numbers (as they use civilian infrastructure for war purposes)

Almost all Israelis are IDF members, members of various intelligence and defense companies. If we plotted a map of a suitable attack radius around all valid combat targets in Israel, almost the entirety of their "civilian" regions would be covered.

The idf doesn't fight near civilian infrastructure - it deploys to the borders. Military bases in israel are far from civilian infrastructure. I think you're probably just wrong here.

That's another fun one. Israel doesn't seem to mind launching missiles at non-serving non-military officers who are living in neutral countries like Qatar, and killing unrelated Qatari civilians in the process. So I would say by the same precedent, anyone has served or is serving in the IDF, which obviously would live in the cities as most of the population is a valid target.

I misunderstood your point earlier. Not that international law is necessarily always a valid philosophy we should accept, but international law does only consider people to be combatants if they're actively serving. Regardless of what international law says, I would argue that ethically, retired/non-serving army members should not be considered combatants or fair wartime targets (I think I mostly feel this way on the basis that targeting them causes civilian strife - e.g. the company they work for, family/community they support etc. is harmed - with zero war value). And I would say reservists are a more complicated case.

I care more about equality than international law. If Israel uses a tactic or policy, then its valid and just for those fighting Israel to not tie their hands behind their backs and avoid the same tactic.

>Khalil al-Hayya, a reported target of this air strike, was previously targeted by a 2007 assassination attempt, which killed at least seven of his family members.[33][34][35] His home in Gaza was struck by an airstrike in the 2014 Gaza War.

Israel hardly has difficulties with killing innocent family members. So "civilian strife" is irrelevant in my view, as symmetrically Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, etc are permitted to do the same against Israel. The people targeted in the Qatar strike were all political office holders not soldiers. So for instance it is valid for these countries to bomb the home or place of stay of Ben Gvir or Benjamin Netenyahu and kill them and their family members for the sake of just and fair combat.

Saying "I accept X using any tactic against Y that Y used against X" is meaningless in an ongoing tit-for-tat conflict unless you pick an arbitrary historical starting point. You may naturally lean towards picking an anti-israel starting point, but that isn't the only option.

Strikes against hamas leadership have war value, and I personally find proportional collateral damage justifiable.

Netanyahu is roughly (not legally but comparable) a commander in chief and targetting him likewise has war value and is justifiable. I'm not sure of ben gvir's role in military matters, but that's what I would base my answer on.

How does historical starting point matter? If Y started using traditionally inadmissible tactics then it is pure foolishness for X to constrain himself. Clearly Israel saw some benefit in killing the innocent family members of this non-military personnel. And then to lob a missile at him in a civilian building in an unrelated country that is in no conflict with Israel, killing further innocents. Ben Gvir is an equivalent example in Israel, so these countries are justified in killing Gvir's family. These countries are wholly justified in attacking Israel's sites whether military or civilian for Israel struck a civilian site in a neutral country. Its very simple, military tactics themselves depend on the combatants feeling morale, it would be quite unjust and a drain on morale for them to be unable to respond in kind to inadmissible actions.

I'm saying I could give you an example of unconstrained attacks against israel prior to this incident - so is X sinking to the level of Y, or vice-versa? The answer is, I believe, neither - the mental model simply isn't functional. And certainly we should still both advocate against tactics that are unjustified at baseline, no? Does that make sense?

We can naturally trace the history of back and forth violence, until we reach the point where we see the political entity had been founded by ingrates committing terroristic violence against the country that generously gifted them some of its colonial land.

You can trace it back much earlier than that - until at least the 1500s, when the conflict was present but at much less of a boil. I'm assuming you concede that "if X does it to Y, it's fine for Y to do it to X" is not a functional model here. You should at least ask yourself, "how would I need to change my outlook if I learned it was impossible to resolve who started it?"

Of course, we can go all the way back to the first cavemen fighting each other. But the difference here is that there is a very clear dividing line. The locals may nor may not have liked the Ottomans or British very much but they were clearly living their lives. Until some European invaders came and illegally took over their land by force. If the peoples before this event seem mostly satisfied, and after this event inflamed, then we have the key marking point for all the nonsense.

Jews have had a presence in the area that is today israel/palestine for thousands of years, and jews from the diaspora have been moving to israel/palestine gradually.

I would challenge you to name an initial inciting incident, which you believe was not preceded by or in reaction to an earlier incident. I can almost guarantee you I'll be able to name an inciting event, prior to it (and you will be able to find another one before that, etc.)

Why not? You tell me why committing acts of terrorism against its benefactor country with an ingrate sense as if its your own land not British land is valid or any previous precedent makes it valid? The reason why I don't go thousands of years back eg to Saxons and Vikings is that modern Britain and modern Denmark have long made peace, whereas Israel the state was formed itself as an act of ingratitude and terroristic thievery and is still illicitly expanding to lands clearly not its own.

Would you agree and support a group of people who wanted to immigrate to the United States but the USA decided for whatever reason to deny them immigration/citizenship and these people start bombing, kidnapping and torturing American officials and civilians? If not why is Israel special?

I love discussing this stuff, but I'm not interested in guessing what your non-specific language is referring to; I'll likely silently ignore that stuff.

I generally support israel because:

- I don't think it corresponds to your hypothetical (which I obviously disagree with)

- It was internationally recognized by the UN, and I find the collective jewish effort put towards nation-building to be legitimizing

- I support a jewish state, and I think jews, including those from the diaspora (based on genetic tests - dietary preferences are irrelevant to me), are indigenous to roughly the territory of modern-day israel

- It is a decently functioning democracy with human rights

- I think its war efforts are usually justified

I'm sure you disagree with all of these ^ and it's better to avoid a breadth-first conversation. I assume you've conceded that "X did it to Y, therefore it's fine for Y to do it to X" is not a functional model here. The ball is in your court.

Saying Israel is a “functioning democracy with human rights” is not a truthful statement.

First, Israel still has no single written constitution and instead operates through Basic Laws, something its own parliament acknowledges. So, not a democracy.

Second, Israel was established through armed Zionist paramilitary groups conducting terror campaigns. Look up the Irgun and Lehi, both of which carried out bombings and other attacks that were described as terrorism by contemporary governments and organizations.

Third, the claim that it “has human rights” is impossible to square with reality. Israel maintains a decades-long military occupation of the West Bank, where Palestinians live under military law while Israeli settlers living in the same territory are governed by Israeli civilian law. Human rights organizations document torture and abuse in Israeli detention facilities holding Palestinians. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch published extensive reports documenting systematic violations of Palestinians’ rights. both organizations completely reject the characterization of Israel as a state that upholds human rights. What evidence are you prepared to put forward that Israel “has human rights” in the face of the evidence that its human rights are reserved for one class of people?

Breadth-first discussion is not effective.

Are citizens of israel able to vote for their leadership?

Party, yes. Leader, No. Individual representative, No.

And, of course, not everyone in the Israeli-occupied territories has suffrage.

If your objections are that parties are elected rather than leaders, and that non-israelis can't vote, it sounds like you are straining very hard to deny that israel is a democracy.

What is vague about what I said? I am talking about how Israelis repaid Britain back for fighting the nazis and then granting them a parcel of British owned land completely free by violent terroristic attacks on British officers and civilians. History may trace back centuries, but what history of wrong doings did the British have with European white jews that they started terrorizing the Brits? It shows just how insane the level of ingratitude and entitlement was in this group that they behaved as if its their own owned land they are entitled to and not a gift given out of pure generosity. I think its fair for Britain to have retaliated with extreme violence against these immoral crimes. Its a shame Britain had lost the political will for these actions due to WW2. Which is why I asked, would you be fine with some people who were denied immigration to the USA launching a terror campaign of bombings and violence against the USA? That's what Israelis did during the 40s.

International recognition of Israel is a point you should be careful with. Just as Israel was formed with violent illicit methods but accepted by the UN later, the reverse could as well happen and "illicitly" retaken Israel will in time be recognized by the UN.

I do not support ethnic or religious states, but it's fine, many disagree. They could have gone anywhere they wanted, as long as it was legal immigration with consent of those already living there.

Explain me again how if these white jews were supposedly so deeply culturally connected to the place, they were whining about lack of European food and had to reverse engineer local food from native Arabs and Jews living there? Do you think eg if I had a scottish great great great grandfather and I lived in America all life, I'd suddenly unlock some knowledge of scottish culture hidden inside my blood somehow? And does it grant me rights to carve out a parcel of Scotland for myself forcing out locals violently against their wishes? The question can also be flipped, if it is just for Israel to kick out people from their so called ancestral home, then I believe it is perfectly justified for eg France or Netherlands to kick out jews living there as it is not their ancestral land and it is the just home of the French or Dutch peoples.

>- It is a decently functioning democracy with human rights

Meaningless if it is not justifiably their land and property. Its the opposite of democracy, its a violation of property rights.

>- I think its war efforts are usually justified

Do you think the present Lebensraum campaign is also justified?

Breadth-first discussion is not effective.

It's easy to argue jews terrorized the british to reclaim their indigenous land, i.e the british had no right to jurisdiction there in the 1st place. Your analogy of denied US immigrants is different if it turns out the US was their original land they were displaced from, they all genetically trace back to it, there has consistently been a presence of that people living there, that people's artifacts are buried under the ground throughout the land, etc etc - no?

The British had perfect rights to that place, both legally, and I would say practically and morally. I am not personally black and white against colonialism as a concept anyways if they were better administrators than the natives. Many places in Africa, and yes Israel/Palestine itself would have been much better if it was British. (Even considering their blunder of promising the land to multiple groups, the aftermath would have been much better managed by them.)

Let me find that one patch of Africa where human life originated then. We should all have a right to that place.

What's so special about the value of 2000 years or whatever number Israel prefers? Why not 4000 years and therefore Babylonians/Iraqis? There is no naturalistic or scientific significance to the value selected by Israel. Let us take Israelis like Netenyahu back to their real homeland, the Steppes of Ukraine. A big portion of Israel trace their genetic origin there, their peoples artifacts are buried in Ukraine, etc etc.

Why do you not protest in support of British people of Norman ancestry forcibly taking over France?

The british withdrew from the palestinian mandate under economic and insurgent pressure.

The land which is modern day israel/palestine is the only historically jewish land; if not that land there is no other. The connection between jews, and the land which was judea, is very strong - even after thousands of years jews have a powerful cultural desire to to inhabit that native land, to enact nation-building there, and to defend it.

I feel sorry for normans who feel displaced from what is currently french land - it seems they lack either the passion or ability to return, unlike jews vis-a-vis israel (although jews were uniquely catalyzed by the holocaust).

Does that make sense and address what you were saying?

(Netanyahu would genetically test as levantine descent, not ukrainian steppe - ashkenazis have consistently avoided assimilation and the connection to the levant remains; as a person he also culturally resembles an ashkenazi jew, not a ukrainian)

Why? Why what's special about 2000 years? Why not 100000 years? Why aren't jews protesting to return to the whatever patch of Africa everyone came out of? And why should not other countries that are hosting jews right now deport them saying its the ancestral land of natives not for jews? If we are to accept Israel's framing, then we must accept these too. Britain should kick out normans and danish blood people. American natives should kick out any white persons, etc etc.

Are you sure about netanyahu? How can you say that about a clearly polish looking person without dna test results? What percentage of his dna is Levantine? If it is 10% Levantine and 90% Steppe why is it not laughed out the room if he claims the extreme minority portion of his dna as his primary identity?

Judea is central to jewish ethnogenesis. That's ~3000 years ago, not 100000.

Netanyahu is an ashkenazi jew. We know who his parents, grandparents, etc are - he's also claimed to have taken a genetic test, which registered him as primarily ashkenazi. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

This argument works both ways.

Netanyahu was born in Tel Aviv. You think he is “illegal” in Israel because of his DNA?

Someone with continuous presence and cultural ties to the place wouldn't be cooking European dishes there and having trouble adapting to local cuisine to the point of having to reverse engineer food from locals for instance.

Start with teaching Israel supporters that IOF is not the answer. And maybe, maybe after that people start seeing Israelis as victims. Without it, most people will continue supporting Palestine, not because they think that it does no wrong. But in comparison with IOF and their supporters Palestine is lesser evil.

Fixed that for you.

Maybe to spark curious conversation, when a world power seems to be supportive of actions that an international body considers negative, what structure can help resolve these? It does seem like UN is unable to really make a dent here.

We kinda went through this with South Africa.

The only thing saving Israel is the US protection and the nukes. US protection can change. Nukes are harder.

South Africa successfully utilized "strategic ambiguity". They never explicitly acknowledged they had the weapons, while making sure world leaders knew they were a credible threat.

during South Africa's border wars (specifically against the Cubans in Angola), there were internal discussions about deploying tactical nuclear weapons. Because world leaders viewed that threat as entirely credible, it gave South Africa massive leverage.

Feels like world leaders view modern Israeli threats through the exact same lens and i'd agree given recent covert operations like the beeper bombings hence this UN posture.

Could we replicate the SA situation? probably not but maybe partially?

When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended, South Africa’s strategic leverage evaporated overnight. The US and UK no longer had a reason to shield them from crippling global economic sanctions.

Feels like we are watching this in real time with Israel post Iran war. If the US entirely removed its diplomatic shield and allowed full global economic isolation to set in, the economic cost of maintaining a pariah state might eventually outweigh the perceived security benefit of the weapons. ('might' doing a lot of heavy lifting there)

Also SA was also motivated by fear of the nukes getting in the hands of the incoming leftist government, Israel does not have that fear.

Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal on earth, and we have no issue sanctioning them excessively.

Not sure if it used to be the case with South Africa too, but I'm baffled how much ideological support Israel still has, in various population groups. There are at least two religious groups who seem to view it as integral part of a divine plan that trumps all other considerations. ("mainstream" Orthodox Jews and Evangelical Christians)

Then there various secular narratives around the Jewish homeland, the rebirth (and Germany's redemption) after the Holocaust etc.

For western politicians, it seems far easier to chime in to the dehumanization of Palestinians and either paint the daily suffering there as "tragic but necessary", make fun of it or dismiss it completely - than to object to those stories.

This seems to work on a different layer than geopolitics, so I have doubts that a shift in geopolitics alone would change this. (I may be wrong)

Though maybe the changed perception of Israel after the Gaza war might change it.

Just wanted to recommend the film, Ajami (2009) [1] that touches on the rather hair-trigger issues in the region. Pretty intense film that does, I think, a good job of showing all sides.

[1] https://youtu.be/9VFRMkUlf9g

* * *

Yes, and that seems to be the rationale of western politicians as well, essentially, "we have to protect Israel to protect the Jewish people, without it, the Holocaust would risk repeating"

That makes sense as a "subjective experience" (if there is something like the subjective experience of a people), but it fails the reality check for me.

Yes, Israel is the center of Jewish life today (New York coming next apparently), but I can't really believe that it genuinely is the safest place for Jews in the world today - not after the last years. Jews in the US or Europe were not at risk of being murdered by Hamas, hit by a missile from Iran or get conscripted in a war. Jews in Israel were.

> Most want peace but believe their Arab enemies do not.

Well, everyone wants peace in the "I won" sense. I don't see that most Israeli Jews want peace in the sense of living together peacefully with their neighbors.

(Neither do their neighbors, true - which is why I fault Israelis less here than the western allies who should apply force to both sides to deescalate and reconcile if they really wanted to end the conflict, but who instead only apply pressure to one side and unquestionably support the other side)

> Neither do their neighbors, true

Their neighbours don't really have an option though. Stopping all resistance will not stop the settlers from harassing and chasing away the natives, and it will not force Israel to respect any border (which they took care of not even declaring). If anything, Palestinian resistance is functional to the progress of the occupation, so, if things get too quiet, a couple of killings or demolished homes keep the situation dynamic enough.

Unless you're counting on the moral authority of the Western nations that stayed silent or even financed and armed Israel while it was starving a population under blockade and bombings, murdering tens of thousands of civilians, killing hundreds of journalists, bombing hospitals and universities. Maybe they would say something if Israel killed and conquered a population that absolutely refuses to react. What do you think?

[flagged]

> Well I tried but you are extremely ignorant, and my comment got flagged anyway.

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

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

> There are hardly any Jews in Europe after the Holocaust. They're a rounding error. The communities are small and vulnerable. The largest community in France is under strain with antisemitism and is moving to Israel. The 2nd largest in the UK is not far behind.

This honestly makes no sense for me. I live in Europe (Germany) and the discussion about antisemitism and Jewish life is front-and-center here. There are also several synagogues in my city. No one, not even the pro-Palestinian protesters wants them to go away - on the contrary, most protesters (from the left!) go out of their way to stress that their protest against the state of Israel is not hate against the Jewish people. In fact, lots of protesters are Jews themselves.

Who keeps conflating the two things and blurring the boundaries in public discussion are pro-Israel orgs.

Unfortunately, you're right that real antisemitism is rising. However all European states are taking a stance against that.

> There have been repeated attempts at peace...

You forgot the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.

There are ~100,000 German Jews, from a pre-WW2 population of 560,000 in a modern population of 83.6 million, 0.1%.

Yes, did forget that one. Reinstatement of the prohibition to Judaism's holy sites, expulsion of hundred thousands of Israelis from the West Bank, and unlimited Arab immigration to the Jewish state. But it was a peace plan.

Edit: I'm still in shock you argued that 100,000 people in a population of 83.6 million is a lot - front and centre - but hand waved the forced relocation 500,000 people in a population of 10 million in a much smaller country as just the cost of peace.

No one in Germany (except neo nazis) would object to more Jews settling here.

> but hand waved the forced relocation 500,000 people in a population of 10 million in a much smaller country as just the cost of peace.

The West Bank is not part of Israel. And evidently the Israelis expect the same of 7 million Palestinians (if they aren't trying to annihilate them outright - see OP link of this thread).

> But it was a peace plan.

It still is. It was offered again several times, last time I believe by Qatar during the Gaza war.

> It is also where Jews are most protected.

Israel is without a doubt, the most dangerous place for Jews in the world. Not only is the entire country built on ethnically cleansed land (and thus Zionists have the indigenous population correctly trying to get them off the land), Israel has also attacked almost every country in the region and regularly receives missile attacks.

You are missing the very massive religious and ideological groups who are on the other side and see in the destruction of Israel a divine plan or a fulfilment of some secular ideal.

This blinkered view will reasonably leave you baffled and with a distorted world model, and a perception that people are stupid when they are actually seeing the bigger picture.

No question those exist, but this ignores basic human psychology: If my whole family was wiped out in an airstrike, and then I have a whole population saying "yup, that's exactly how things should be!", of course I would start to hate them.

I don’t think you understood. You pointed out support from parts of two Abrahamic faiths for Israel, while ignoring the other major Abrahamic faith, whose opposition to Israel is older and in much greater numbers and zealotry than the evangelical one is for Israel, and has existed long before Israel even had an air force.

They are not family and often not even the same race. It’s a religious thing, but you only find two of the three religious alignments irrational, when these two are, at least in part, just reacting in response to the other.

Might really is doing some heavy lifting here. If the UN turns on Israel and they become sanctioned by the west the most likely outcome is that Israel turns to China. China needs stabilizing forces in the Middle East because of their lack of domestic fossil fuels. They also see similarities between the Gaza situation and Taiwan. The Israelis are fiercely aggressive on security issues. They will not give up on that because of sanctions I think. What US backing is really doing is mostly just making it cheaper for Israel to defend itself so that the Israelis feel less pressure to be aggressive with making buffer zones. Without the US funding the iron dome we would see a real genocide in Gaza.

It is funny how much hand wringing is done with nuclear weapons. like they are this big line in the sand when really the same result happens with or without them. Gaza looks as wrecked as Hiroshima or Dresden. Doesn't matter it seems in terms of the function. I guess the bigger risk is really the implication vs the action. It is like Kayfabe for the political class.

I know traditional munitions aren’t exactly “clean” but isn’t nuclear fallout still a unique concern?

No one in power meaningfully cares about environmental destruction.

They do meaningfully care about the significant radiation that is likely to drift into their own citizens. Israel is not a large country.

Your analysis on nuclear use doesn't consider the lingering poisoning of people and land compared to conventional weapons. It's not Keyfabe. You would vastly prefer being attacked with conventional weapons.

I mean they don't care about pollutants currently harming the health of their own citizens not to mention the environmental crisis and climate change making these regions increasingly inhabitable. Why would they care about radiation? It would be easy to sweep under the rug and wash with undercoverage like the climate issues have been.

> when a world power seems to be supportive of actions that an international body considers negative, what structure can help resolve these

If recent history is any indicator, UN isn't that structure; probably EU / G7 / BRICS & other such blocs are:

  ... we construct a new dataset covering all 43 very large mass atrocities perpetrated by governments or non-state actors since 1945 with at least 50,000 civilian fatalities.

  This article introduces and summarizes these data, including an inductively generated typology of three major ending types: those in which (i) violence is carried out to its intended conclusion (37%); (ii) the perpetrator is driven out of power militarily (26%); or (iii) the perpetrator shifts to a different strategy no longer involving mass atrocities against civilians (37%).

  We find that international actors play a range of important roles in endings, often involving encouragement and support for policy changes that reduce mass killings. Endings could be attributed principally to armed foreign interventions in only four cases, three of which involved regime change. Within the cases we study, no ending was attributable to a neutral peacekeeping mission.

How very massive atrocities end: A dataset and typology (2020), https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343319900912

The UN is really just meant to prevent World War 3 and nuclear war. It has succeeded in this for the last 70 years. The structure of the UN is basically unanimous consensus between the major world powers with each power getting a veto.

There is no unanimous consensus on this issue at all.

Did it? Because this was also always the argument for the "League of Nations" that came before it. If you read 1930s newspapers that's what they give as a reason for the organization's existence ...

Now after WW2, consensus is that the League of Nations may have outright caused WW2, and certainly contributed more than any other individual factor. The League of Nations was the embodiment of the treaty of Versailles. As if that wasn't bad enough, the League of Nations was also the league of nations that stopped most reactions against Hitler immediately before the war.

I'm not even going to bother drawing the obvious parallel with how the UN is treating nuclear powers, and people defending themselves against attacks by a nuclear (or trying-to-be-nuclear) power.

It did because world war 3 hasn’t happened and it’s been about 80 years vs the short time between world war 2 and world war 1.

I'll just ask the forbidden question: and did WW3 not happen because of the UN ... or because of MAD?

(VERY importantly, combined with a fundamental agreement on the value of human life, at least to some extent, between the 2 dominant powers Russia and the US and now China)

Not saying that a meeting room where nuclear powers have permanent presence isn't useful. But to say it is responsible for peace somehow is just crazy.

If the latest Gaza war taught us anything, is that UN is powerless. And, unfortunately, it is the highest entity that could apply leverage here, so... Not much we can do. In the long term I hope other nations realize they are very vulnerable and begin to invest more in defense, but that escalation can have other downsides.

> highest entity that could apply leverage

What is the lowest entity that can apply leverage? Regardless of what US or UN does or doesn't, you can start boycotting today.

Not completely true, if you're in the US there are laws to punish boycott of Israel.

Where are you required to declare your purchases?

It has taught us the the UN is completely corrupted by antizionist hate. The UN Human Rights Council passed 68 resolutions against Israel in its first decade (2006–2016) — more than the other 67 resolutions against the rest of the world combined, and three times more than any other single country. Meanwhile, 48 countries with serious human rights abuses received zero condemnatory resolutions, including China, Russia, Cuba, Yemen, and Zimbabwe. Countries that did receive resolutions included Syria (20), Myanmar (11), North Korea (9), Belarus (6), Iran (6), and Eritrea (5). Contrast these basket case countries like North Korea and Iran with Israel's record of liberal democracy, free elections, an independent judiciary, rule of law, protections for speech, religion, minorities, women, and LGBTQ people. Israel aint perfect but please, even antzionist haters can see how ridiculously corrupted the UN it is by antizionst hate.

What kind of answer are you expecting? The only “structure” that matters is power, and the only power that matters is the power to force and destroy. Everything else is derived from that, not the other way round.

Perhaps it was a rhetorical question.

I think this is a good argument why a singular world power is actually a bad thing - because no matter how much it will promote itself as the "good guys" (and of course it will), at the end of the day, it will push through its own interests by that dominance - whereas if power is more evenly distributed, countries might be more willing to agree to common, formalized rules and a "neutral" body to evaluate them.

I think the emergence of nation states with democratic institutions and a strong system of law is actually a hopeful precedent here. Somehow we got from a world of fiefdoms and lords that literally stood above the law to states with checks and balances. (Yes, we're sliding back towards the "fiefdoms" situation right now, but we're still far better than things used to be)

So I'm gonna be a starry-eyed idealist and keep the hope up that we might archive the same on a global level at some point.

History has shown that having a multitude of roughly-equal competing powers results in more per-capita death from war than when there is 1 or two dominant nations. The 1800's and early 1900's were bloody. Post WWII has had less death from war.

Bilateral is stable. Multilateral is not. We have limited evidence nukes change that. Currently, with the implosion of Pax Americana, we’re hearing words a multi-lateral theatre in the Middle East and Asia. Hence the heightened risk of nuclear power in one of those settings. (Europe remains a bilateral theatre.)

Maybe because of nukes now.

Or mass media.

True, though post-WWII was not a single power either until the 90s. We've had several decades of Cold War in which there were at least two great powers.

> when a world power seems to be supportive of actions that an international body considers negative, what structure can help resolve these?

Apply the Apartheid South Africa treatament. Gather the larger number possible of complying members, and apply a coordinated boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign to put pressure in the party engaged in genocide, ethnic cleansing or other abhorrent actions.

Maybe it would help if other countries focused on the immediate problem: rescuing people from a dangerous situation. They should be volunteering to take refugees.

Sadly, it's unlikely because they care more about keeping immigrants out.

Unless you're talking about Zionists returning to their homeland, you're advocating for ethnic cleansing. Palestinians should not be refugees from their own land.

No, I'm not talking about forcing anyone to leave. There are likely people who do want to leave who are trapped there.

Boycott. Divestment. Sanctions.

Agreed. But to do so at govt level, those govts first need to free themselves from the infiltration of lobbyists that make these kinds of policies "unthinkable" for their coward politicians.

This is, IMHO, the big difference with enacting these kinds of policies to apartheid South Africa (mentioned a lot in this discussion). Lobbyism is very effective in this specific case.

Do you plan to do that to any other Countries in the Middle East? Saudi Arabia's human rights record all good for you? Pakistan? China and the Uyghurs - mass internment camps and sterilisation of female prisoners. They get a complete pass? Antizionism is Bondi Beach. Antizionism is a hate movement.

When one is out of real arguments one resorts to mere whataboutism.

Many countries have strict laws how to deal with genocide, genocide support, and genocide deniers! So just enforce local laws, report supporters of genocide to police.

This doesn't seem to even relate to the question. How am I suppose to out the Israeli government to my local police? Or the miriad entities that support it?

Pro-tip (observe what the UK does closely): Don't call it a genocide and then you don't need to do anything about it.

> Don't call it a genocide and then you don't need to do anything about it

Personally speaking, the is-it-a-genocide debate makes me tune out. It’s hyperlegal, clearly a moving target and selectively prosecuted by each side to the point of, often, absurdity.

If two people want to debate it, fine, but I have no obligation to pay attention. If we want to talk about harms and harm reduction, that feels more concrete and relatable.

I love this point, invoking "genocide" will only derail you. The conversation benefits by being framed simply in terms of ethical validity / harm.

Indeed. It has to be a particular kind of recognized genocide, and then people just don't agree on what is and isn't a genocide. Turkey is the worst offender there, but it's quite a widespread problem.

And, of course, the problem is people don't agree. Turkey refuses to accept many of it's actions as genocidal (because that's how Turkey was created: when the last islamic state ("the Ottoman empire") got destroyed by Turks (who at that point were the ottoman army), they massacred a LOT of population groups, famously the Armenians but academics name more than a dozen separate genocides: Greeks, Kurds, Azeri, Jews, ...)

Oh and of course they kept doing it. Technically what Turkey did in Cyprus is also a genocide, and they have an active policy of replacing Kurd population groups but that's, if that's even possible, an even worse sore point.

The sad fact is that these genocides happened to gain territory. And, most of that territory, go look at Google Maps. This was mostly deep inland Turkey. And ... Turks obviously don't want it. There's no big cities there, and the more east you go, the less little towns, the less people, the less everything (except on the border). After the genocides what was a European landscape, a village every 5km or so is now empty. Hundreds of kilometers of nothing. Names on a map , with nothing or ruins below them. You don't really need a line to find the Armenian or Georgian border: where the farms begin, the rectangular fields, the villages, you've crossed the Turkish border. In other words: what repopulation the Turks did ... is a failure. And what little remains, mostly near the black sea, is losing young people at an astonishing rate. This is huge empty space, mostly ecologically destroyed land, not productive farmland. Not nature preserves. Nothing.

Also the reverse also doesn't apply. The UN may have trouble with Israeli actions, but where the UN took control to resolve the situation, where the UN took action, most famously southern Lebanon, it has not just failed but it systematically kept getting worse for 50+ years now. Whereas at least for Israel you can say: look at Tel Aviv. Look at Jerusalem. Look at Haifa. They really built something. Where the UN "helped" ... there's nothing.

The UN is stuck in 1945. The UNSC needs to throw out the UK, France, and bring in Brazil, India, South Africa and Germany.

And this veto nonsense needs to go away.

the vetoes are pretty much the sole differentiator between the UN and the league of nations, which failed.

in theory its better if you don't give veto power to great powers because they'll abuse it. in practice it's what keeps the fragile system that prevents WW3 from total collapse, as happened with the league of nations.

And how do you suggest they do that?

By defunding the UN until it falls apart and is rebuilt from scratch. Right now it's a dysfunctional joke. As are most "international" bodies created just after 1945. "Rules based order" when it suits you, "preemptive strikes" when it doesn't.

This is ironic, because the UN itself was already a rebuilt version of the League of Nations.

It's not ironic, it's just a fact.

The only thing which counts is raw power and the means to deliver it. The US just got a lesson in its limits from the Iranian regime.

Countries with natural resources need their own defense against thieves like the US and its vassals. Libya, Iraq, Syria. Oil and no nukes. Fat use the UN was for them.

(Forget about the UN. Take a home owners' association. In due course a clique will take it over and corrupt it.)

Uhhh, irony and facts are not mutually exclusive categories.

And advocating for the dissolution and replacement of the UN due to it being ineffective is deeply ironic, because that's exactly what happened with the League of Nations, which led to the later formation of the UN.

You seem to be in an argumentative mood, but nothing I said is disagreeing with you about the ineffectuality of the UN.

I sort of see your logic other than South Africa. Why would you drop two nuclear powers who have some means of force projection for a middling economy and military?

British nukes are a joke, they're controlled by the US. Maybe France can stay.

If not South Africa, who from Africa? Egypt? Nigeria?

The current composition of the UNSC is just ridiculous.

> British nukes are a joke, they're controlled by the US.

While it maybe be true that some of the nukes in the UK(i.e. US B61 gravity bombs) may be under the control of the US, the UK still maintains full control over their submarine launched nukes AFAIU.

Are you trying to be equitable or based on power? If it’s the latter then unfortunately no nation in Africa currently has equivalent power.

Australia would be a better option in either case since they are a continent in of themselves and within spitting distance from being a nuclear power after Biden fucked over the French and beat them to a deal for nuclear subs with Australia.

And re: Britain’s nuclear power being controlled by the US. That’s just the maintenance. They still have the nukes and could easily turn to France as the refurbisher if the US denies them. Might even work out as a conciliatory point for the return to the EU that Burnham is harking about.

The security council was built around the nuclear powers at the time. I guess there are two ways to look at it:

1: The new nuclear powers should be included, I guess including N Korea, India, and Pakistan. And possibly Israel, if they admit to having them.

2: Rethink the whole thing. Are nukes really as important as everybody thought they were after WWII? If not, what should we look at to decide who to include?

> The security council was built around the nuclear powers at the time.

That's not actually true, the 5 permanent seats on the UNSC were granted in 1945, well before any country aside from the US managed to develop nuclear weapons.

Those 5 countries did all eventually develop nuclear weapons and became nuclear weapon states under the NPT but that happened quite a bit later.

> Are nukes really as important as everybody thought they were after WWII?

Possibly moreso. Nuclear sovereignty is demonstrably above the conventional type. At the end of the day, having a forum where nuclear powers with long-range delivery capability can veto things reduces the risk of them using that capability to veto in the real world.

By the range requirement, Tel Aviv and Pyongyang qualify for UNSC inclusion. New Delhi and Islamabad do not—they will mostly just nuke each other.

I haven’t run the stats on this but it seems to me that countries which have nukes are more likely to invade other countries and then use the nukes as shields to prevent retaliation.

Out of the 9 current nuclear armed countries 5 have invaded another countries this century, and three of the most prolific invaders this century (Israel, USA, and Russia; each with over 3 invasions this century) are all nuclear armed. Out of the 4 countries which haven‘t invaded another country this century, two (India and Pakistan) regularly engage in border skirmishes and bombing campaigns. This leaves China and North Korea as the only two nuclear armed countries (out of 9) which don‘t regularly engage in foreign wars.

By our current experience, the proliferation of nuclear armed states is almost certain to end in a disaster at a previously unseen scale. We should be doing everything in our power to prevent this world of future horrors.

> This leaves China

Not exactly.[0]

> and North Korea

Also not exactly.[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_border_incidents_invol...

To China I’d add the illegally occupied and annexed Tibetan territory. It’s old news. But it’s weird to ignore.

Not this century. I was going by this list here for what counts as invasions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_invasions_in_the_21st_...

and counted 3 or more invasions as prolific invaders.

But your parent is absolutely correct that China and North Korea also regularly engage in wars, though what counts as war and what counts as skirmishes is up for debate, I would count https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%... as a war (I had just forgotten about it), ditto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Yeonpyeongdo_bombardment

That however just makes my point stronger.

The under-18 population in the Gaza strip is roughly 47% (according to PCBS). So if deaths fell randomly across the population, children would be ~47% of the dead. They are ~30%. Also the numbers pipeline again runs through Hamas and there is the fact that the UN Council has passed more condemnatory resolutions on Israel than on any other single state (more than Syria, Myanmar, Yemen etc). I am surprised I don't see more nuance on HN.

Deaths should not fall randomly across the population unless you’re committing war crimes.

This is common sense. It's astonishing that this needs to be explicitly stated on a site like this.

That's not to say that 30% isn't a crime against humanity. About 1.5 million children were murdered during the Holocaust (1.5M of 6M+ deaths). Israel murders more children than adults when compared to the Nazis.

I agree, however the claim is not war crimes, its genocide. People think that using genocide to simply mean lots of killing and destruction and war makes them morally superior, but genocide entails "intent" and we need a vocabulary to differentiate between the two.

Overall, intent is quite hard to prove. You would need to access internal documents and communications that explicitly direct the military. That's probably not going to happen.

However, from what I have observed, Israeli government officials have often expresses that intent publicly, despite claiming otherwise at the UN.

In this case it is fundamentally impossible, since halakha prohibits deliberate targeting of civilians-- but not collateral damage.

So if you optimize for collateral damage and all civilian casualties are "accidental," then you are wholly operating within the constraints of your moral framework and can plausibly deny all claims of genocidal intent.

I am sorry but did you look at pictures of Gaza? Do you not see them actually CONCENTRATING the previously 2 million people there into a gigantic CAMP?

https://www.instagram.com/gazayoudontsee

Deaths in Gaza are very much not random.

Adult men have the highest casualties which is what would be expected since Hamas militants are most often adult men, it's well documented that Hamas also uses child soldiers to some degree as well.

Adult men are also the ones first to head out to retrieve food from dangerous places.

> it's well documented

It's well documented that food distribution places were specifically made dangerous.

> Adult men have the highest casualties

And 30% of casualties are children. The two are not mutually exclusive and this is the data point currently under scrutiny.

> it's well documented that Hamas also uses child soldiers to some degree as well.

Cruel Israeli oppression motivates even children to resist them.

Israel then murders said children.

Obviously Hamas must be to blame for Israeli actions.

> Cruel Israeli oppression motivates even children to resist them.

More like Hamas/UNRWA schools teach children to be terrorists.

Why is it that most of the world despises the Israelis, despite them not having gone to Hamas/UNRWA schools?

Successful anti-israel propaganda based on kgb-demoralization (west bad, "white privilige" etc.) https://bigthink.com/the-present/yuri-bezmenov/ sponsored by Iran’s oil money.

Mobbing against Israel by Arab and their socialist friend states in the UN.

I mean yea... If youre a child soldier you should expect to be targeted, even if your cause is valiant.

you've had an account for four years, and _this_ is your comment?

If your state finds that it needs to murder children in its defense then it is a failed state and should be refactored by its citizenry, immediately.

Because that which war criminals bring to their victims, they will also - ALWAYS - bring back to their own state.

Prosecute your war criminals. Now!

Perfect speech, I wish hamas and their 70% supporters in gaza could really hear it

If you try very hard, you can understand the reason for bombardment, at least from the BEGINNING. Surely, not the reason for killing these poor children.

But I never came to better conclusion about West Bank annexation that that it is pure imperialism. Basically what russians are trying in Ukraine. I'm still not quite sure what is the purpose, there is really not enough land or it's all just bs?

I wonder if this ends up Flagged.

> Basically what russians are trying in Ukraine.

Not sure it's the same thing. Russians want political and territorial control in Ukraine, not expelling Ukrainians to resettle the place with "ethnic Russians". Israel wants to conquer the whole of Palestine (West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem) to replace the native population with its own. There is no possible equal integration of Palestinians or their descendants into a Jewish state, not in a thousand years, and by design.

> There is no possible equal integration of Palestinians or their descendants into a Jewish state, not in a thousand years, and by design.

About 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab so Palestinian integration into a state with a Jewish majority can work to a degree. The issue is that if the demographics were flipped it would be unlikely to work(i.e. basically all of Jewish history in Muslim majority countries).

This webpage has a pretty good rundown on the status of Arab Israelis: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/what-know-about-arab-citiz...

An example of implicit discrimination is Israel's ban on family unification with Palestinian spouses: https://www.adalah.org/en/law/view/511

The linked article is also blaming socioeconomic differences on Israel. But by many metrics Israeli Arabs are doing better than Arabs in other Arab countries. E.g. life expectancy for Israeli Arabs is higher than the Arab average, and higher than Jordan or Egypt.

Similarly for income. While Israeli Arabs on average earn 65% that of Jewish Israelis at $2,400 vs $3,750, the average income in Jordan is $865, and Egypt $235.

But differences in socioeconomic status between groups exist in every country.

The question is whether Israel treats its Arab citizens fairly. Not whether they fare better in Israel than other countries by some metrics.

If you’re going to look at differences between groups, you can’t apply causality and accusation unless you account for other factors.

Now do Jews in Muslim countries. Or in areas under control of the PA.

Imagine you're a parent explaining to a kid why it's not right to punch other kids. Do you accept "but they punch other kids too" as an excuse?

Imagine a parent introducing some special rules to protect a kid that’s being punched, like having them sit at the front, and the bullies start crying why they can’t sit in the front.

The Israeli occupation of Palestine is nothing like a teacher sitting some kids at the front.

You choosing to zoom in and crop the picture shows a level of disingenuity likely due to ulterior bias.

The area under control of the PA is ethnically cleansed from Jews, with an ongoing apartheid where, for example, selling property to Jews is punishable by death, and they have government issued bounties for the killing of Jews.

So Israel has restricted marriage visas from that location. The law still applies to every Israeli equally - Jews also cannot bring in people from that area on a marriage visa.

Banning the eating of fish on Fridays discriminates against Catholics, even if the ban applies to everyone.

The Jewish majority is not an issue. The issue is that Israel is not "the state of the Israelis", it's the Jewish state. You can become an Israeli, you cannot become part of the ethno-religious group that the state is meant to represent. Not you and not any of your descendants, ever.

> The issue is that if the demographics were flipped it would be unlikely to work

This is a classic of Israeli propaganda: justifying an actual wrong (discrimination, apartheid, occupation, murder, you name it) with the allegation that a worse wrong would be committed by the other side. In other words, justifying actual crimes with imagined ones.

> basically all of Jewish history in Muslim majority countries

Jewish history in Muslim majority countries hasn't been worse than history in European and Christian countries. In many cases it was actually better. The Holocaust was perpetrated by Europeans, not by Muslims.

> you cannot become part of the ethno-religious group that the state is meant to represent. Not you and not any of your descendants, ever.

AFAIU Israel does accept conversions to Judaism so that's not actually accurate.

> This is a classic of Israeli propaganda: justifying an actual wrong (discrimination, apartheid, occupation, murder, you name it) with the allegation that a worse wrong would be committed by the other side.

I'm not justifying actual wrongs, however Israel giving citizenship to all individuals who claim to be Palestinians is unlikely to result in a good outcome.

> In other words, justifying actual crimes with imagined ones.

Just look at Palestinian opinion polling and it will become clear why giving citizenship to all Palestinians would likely result in a civil war.

> Jewish history in Muslim majority countries hasn't been worse than history in European and Christian countries.

Jews lived as second class citizens in Muslim majority countries.

> In many cases it was actually better.

That's not really saying much.

> The Holocaust was perpetrated by Europeans, not by Muslims.

Yet there are far more Jews living in Europe today than there are Jews living in MENA countries(excluding Israel). Maybe Europeans largely learned that their past behavior was wrong while those in MENA countries largely did not.

Palestinians in Israel are not permitted to convert to Judaism, so no there is no path to assimilate and join the majority. https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/palestinian-requ...

> Palestinians in Israel are not permitted to convert to Judaism, so no there is no path to assimilate and join the majority.

This whole area of Israeli law AFAIU is rather confusing, keep in mind even many Jews are not recognized fully either due to Orthodox standards sometimes being applied, although there have been some more recent changes there I think.[0]

In practice though Palestinian/Arab Israelis probably can convert to Judaism in some form and since they would already be citizens the conversion from my understanding would not make much difference in practice for the legal status. Note that there are different congregations that have different conversion rules and there are also differences in how the Israeli government recognizes conversions for purposes of citizenship.

Palestinians living in the territories that are not Israeli citizens would have much more difficulty converting simply because it would be effectively impossible to covert within say the PA controlled parts of the Palestinian territories(since Jews are generally not allowed into those territories and I don't think conversions are typically allowed to be done remotely).

Between Israeli citizens AFAIU the only form of legal discrimination is arguably applied against non-Arab Israeli citizens(i.e. Jews, Druze) since they have required military service while Arab Israeli's do not. Arab Israeli's can of course still volunteer for military service so being classified legally as an Arab Israeli doesn't really have legal downsides from my understanding.

[0] https://jweekly.com/2021/03/01/israeli-supreme-court-rules-s...

Well russians over the history resettled the native population numerous times, even resettle russians there. But the truth is they mostly want control for whatever reason they made up. Part of their propaganda is thet Ukrainians are basically confused russians so you got the point here.

But I wouldn't be sure about your claim regarding Israel. Even now there are millions of Palestinians with Israel citizenship. I understand the deeply rooted animosity with hamas but I do not understand the whole point of this type of colonisation of west bank. I suppose it have something to do with their extreme religious part of goverment?

You've had a point. Maybe it's more like Native Americans and colonizer type of situation.

> I do not understand the whole point of this type of colonisation of west bank

Besides the obvious religious/ ideological motivation, there's also a simple matter of territory: Israel is a small country and the West Bank and Gaza have a lot of value, both for the country as a whole (more space for more people, more natural resources, nobody to share with) as well as commercial value- think developments, real estate, industrial and agricultural areas, seafront properties, etc. Very hard to keep your hands off this bounty, for decades, when the rest of the world basically allows you everything.

Those Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are no longer allowed into Israel. That's my understanding after watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrmE-WiC4eA

You’ve either misunderstood or the youtuber is lying to you.

Third option: it's true.

> not expelling Ukrainians to resettle the place with "ethnic Russians"

That is literally what they are doing in occupied territories

> not expelling Ukrainians to resettle the place with "ethnic Russians"

The similarity might be stronger than you suspect. Russia abducts and transports Ukrainian children to controlled territories [0], and actively encourages its own citizens to relocate to captured Ukrainian areas through economic incentives, subsidized housing, and aggressive long-term repopulation strategies.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz7g5xnvl2eo

[1] https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russias...

[[ Edit - added references in response to flagging ]]

Kidnapping and moving children to new parents also counts as genocide under the convention on genocide.

Ukraine is my pet war. I really hope we don’t get caught in the genocide-debate tar pit as well.

What’s happening is evil. That’s relatable, both in the problem and potential solutions. Whether it’s genocide under some international convention strikes me as a counterproductive distraction that replaces something horrifying with something boring.

The west bank annexation happened in response to Jordanian aggression (who were joining with Egypt, with whom Jordan had a mutual defense pact, in a war I would say was ambiguously instigated by Israel/Egypt).

Israel holds the territory with its army, and claims that neither Jordan (nor any country) owned it beforehand, which is a better-founded argument than some people may expect - the west bank was originally, by england, designated as a palestinian - not jordanian - state, arab leadership rejected it (to also reject an israeli state), england withdrew from it, and jordan occupied it, with very very limited international recognition.

It's a pretty crazy history, I hope I got it right, please fact-check me.

See also this This American Life episode, where doctors visiting Gaza saw a disturbing number of children with direct gunshot wounds to the head and chest: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/859/transcript

Had seen a testimony of an European doctor coming from Gaza saying that each week or month the hospitals where flooded with young males coming from the humanitarian food queues with a different gunshoot type. There was the month of the knees, the month of head gunshoots, and the month of the young men flooding the hospitals with their testicles blown off, all because they wanted to pick some food for their families.

There's only one honorable response, and it couldn't be simpler: A complete and immediate arms and dual-use technology embargo of Israel, combined with more general sanctions. South Africa should be the model: Just ostracize them as much as possible. Say what you will about Russia, but Israel can never be self-sufficient, and China (justifiably) appears to despise them, so sanctions and embargoes would be substantially more effective in correcting their behavior.

This will never happen, and we know why. It's disgusting. The "enlightened," "liberal" west's principles have never been more clearly on display: "Why should we concern ourselves with the wholesale slaughter of innocent children in a pent-up captive civilian population? Not our problem."

I think the why has more to do with capture of our media and politicians through collusion, bribery and blackmail. Epstein, etc.

This is really sickening - if North Korea or any other less connected country did this, you would quickly see their national (tech) companies being sanctioned by the west. I never understood how a country like Israel, given the history of its own tribe, can themselves become so gruesome and have a hugely state-supported private spy-tech sector that supports the worst autocrates in the world as long as the money flows to them.

Hopefully Israel will have lost American support in a generation or so, who cares what happens to them after that.

Well, you should still care. They have nukes and have promised to use them were Tel Aviv to fall.

I suspect that without American support, they would have to do quite a bit to change their behavior. They probably can't afford the current level of conflict on their own. It would force them to negotiate with their neighbors.

Or double down with India or China. (Or a right-wing Europe.)

Iran[1] may also have all the pieces for nukes by then[2], hence Bibi's fraught gamble with the decapitation strikes, and present desperation to continue - even escalate - hostilities.

1. Or the UAE, which has shown interest in nuclear tech, perhaps for strictly peaceful purposes

2. I.e. attain nuclear latency, and finally make real what Netanyahu has been warning the world for decades: that Iran is "weeks away from a nuclear bomb"

First thing coming into mind is the number of companies and individuals blocking Russians in the beginning of the war before any sanctions out of virtue signalling.

Virtue signaling that consist of blocking Russia is double virtue. You do the good thing and you motivate others to do the good thing too.

We need more of that.

I felt that quite badly at the start of that war, multiple accounts closed, including my brokerage account, bank account rejected, and a flood of emails asking me to divulge loads of documentation to get them to consider giving them back to me!

I don't actually live in Russia, if I did, it would be even worse.

> As of 2024, 38 states have passed bills and executive orders designed to discourage boycotts of Israel

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#Anti-BDS_laws_in_th...

Yep, Xero published a blog post outlining their stance on Russia and outlining their sanctions (it was literally less than a handful of accounts for them):

https://blog.xero.com/news-events/our-position-on-ukraine-an...

But they didn't do anything for Israel. Actually, at the height of the genocide, they decided to invest in an Israeli company.

slow claps

Israel has had a hand up each US politician’s ass since the 1980s. Israel owns all of them.

Careful: AIPAC may call you antisemitic for commenting on their effective lobbying

Edit: I wonder if the (predictable) downvoters are following the news https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/22/politics/mamdani-aipac-new-yo...

Wait. The Jews really DOES run everything?

They said Israel, not Jews. Don't be antisemitic.

All Jews are dual citizens of Israel. Whether or not they've invoked the right to return, access is made available to them by default.

That is absolutely false. Israel offering citizenship *does not* mean diaspora Jews are their citizens.

This regurgitates two lies:

1. The old antisemitic trope that Jews have dual loyalties, and are therefore, untrustworthy and not full citizens of whatever country they reside in.

2. The Israeli state's claim that it represents, and speaks for, all Jews, when it doesn't.

Many many countries got sanctioned into oblivion or color-revolutionized into US-loyalty for far far less (often just for not being aligned with the US).

It is even more sickening and outrageous if you view it through that lens.

Anybody surprised at this point? In any case, this is the same UN that has accepted israel, and israel lobbied US vetoes to Palestine entry into the UN again and again, even then a broad majority of the world have voted in favor of granting membership, does any of what they do or pretend to represent matters anymore?

At this point, leaders should create a new security council excluding the permanent SC members, set rules around voting on issues where every country has an equal voice, create enforcement frameworks and then invite the SC members with equal footing.

The proposed reforms led by the likes of Brazil, Germany and India are not getting a lot of traction. Maybe if they included everyone else they'd have a better chance.

The excuse will be that these are just casualties of war and we'll shrug it off and move on, whereas the imaginary beheaded babies from October 7 are unforgivable and excuse any action on Israel's behalf.

Boycott. Divestment. Sanctions. Use any legal means to stop funding this genocide and make Israel's leadership accountable. We all love our comfy white collar jobs and would rather not rock the boat, but not doing the little we can do (e.g. stop using Israeli suppliers and services) makes us supporters.

Just curious to know what is acceptable proportionate response for:

1. What was done on October 7? Assuming that some kind of response from Israel was acceptable.

2. Against Israel for what Israel is doing now? Assuming that Israel is over reacting.

Maybe if we can come with a framework for what is acceptable, world can force certain behavior.

Edited for formatting.

It's always analysis of Israel's response and zero soul searching on the Palestinian side.

Didn't understand your point. Point 2 was for suffering of Palestinian. What is the appropriate response that should be given to Israel for what they did post October 7.

Oct 7th was a border security failure. The appropriate response was reinforcing the border and ensuring that gazans cant escape. Letting the gazans out was one of the biggest security blunders of the 21st century. Israel knew the government of gaza wants israel wiped off the map, this stuff isnt a surprise or anything. Israel absolutely had the capability of keeping the gazans in, they blew it. I see that this is close to victim blaming, but the thing is that both sides are victims here, all the arguments involve victim blaming. Israel already tried occupying gaza, they knew it doesnt work and would just make things worse.

Arguments can certainly be made about the hostages, but I think its clear that the gazan war was not really about the hostages.

“Systematic deliberate targeting of children as policy”.

I don’t see why this is controversial.

Pro-Palestine people have seen the overwhelming field reports that prove this and Pro-Israel people actually are in favor of targeting these kids because they might grow resentful of Israel and join Hamas.

> Pro-Israel people actually are in favor of targeting these kids because they might grow resentful of Israel and join Hamas.

I know many in that camp, and this sounds bananas to me.

Look up snipers taking legs off kids. It’s been reported for a long time.

Maybe you don’t know them well enough. If you inquiry about the killed children most agree is sad but ultimately they believe it has to be done.

It's easy to solve that problem. Stop attacking Palestinians and stop stealing land. Unfortunately that is a very difficult problem for Israelis. Its sad that Israelis and their hardware have to be eliminated in combat, but ultimately this is what has to be done to repel them.

I was trying to pay attention to the actual claim and I got: 1. Children died during the ceasefire 2. Israel is using larger bomb payloads than it should (according to who?) in civilian areas 3. Higher percentage of child deaths than in earlier conflicts

Still, for me, doesn't add up to "Israel deliberately targetted gaza children" - is the claim that this is systemic? Or rampant? Or just by some individuals? And how do we know?

The European Press Prize this year went to "What the wounds are telling us", an investigation into the wounds of Palestinian dead children. I recommend you read it.

https://www.europeanpressprize.com/article/what-the-wounds-a...

I am interested to know the overall scale at which this is happening. Disturbing but illuminating, thanks for the link!

I'm digging into this a bit. Looks like the 114 figure (certainly a conservative number) occurred early in the conflict, in the period of late Oct 2023 until March 2024 - in the same time the hamas health ministry reported ~25000 casualties; the deliberately targeted children account for ~0.4% of all the casualties, and ~1.5% of all child casualties. Enough to say "Israel is deliberately targeting"?

After 20.000 children assasinated, with the necessary support and complicity of Biden and Trump governments, yes. Is more than enough.

I have to force myself to read that link until the end. And it says what everybody in Europe has been saying for years, but Israel people still refuses to see.

We need to develop technology able to register this events even from a big distance. Even if the phones are forbbiden. And the war criminals must be judged and jailed, as they are not clearly part of the humanity anymore. A drone able to snatch and remove snippers alive if they are killing children is required.

Tragic as it is, 20,000 children can be lost even in a justified war. It looks like historically, retaliatory wars are initially especially aggressive, lethal and indiscriminate (likely due in part to emotional soldiers who desire to punish whoever they are retaliating against). Is Israel conducting a war here that aligns with the historical trend?

It's pretty clear Israel systematically kills Palestinian children to those paying attention. According to a public statement by the United Nations, Gaza has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world. At least 21,289 children have been killed. They starve the population, drive them out of their homes. (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...) This is the modus operandi of the Zionist belief system. It is a colonial settler ideology and they have to eradicate the natives, much like American settlers killed the native people and destroyed their way of life until they could keep them in tiny """sovereign nations""" where they would be crushed if they every truly tried to display any real sense of sovereignty. To be sovereign is to have a government with a monopoly on violence, the "reservations" are occupied.

I gotta be honest, the phrase “colonial settler ideology” gets an instant eye roll and detracts from the rest of your statements. Most nations on the planet are formed of settlers unless you think there were always Russians in Siberia, or there were always Anglo-Saxons on Albion.

Those happened many lifetimes ago. Much like the slave trade we recognize these actions by our ancestors to be wrong. There are many different conversations about "Land Back" or reparations for those affected by these systems, which often lead to nowhere. The distinction is this is happening today.

Yes for example if a religious extremist British faction were trying to colonize Native American america today, I'd gladly support funding and arming them against the invaders. Whats centuries past is past, what is happening today is important.

This positions israel as the invader, but pro-israelis (like myself) will argue that historically israeli jews+arabs are the indigenous population, and have been the target of invasion, and israeli territorial expansion has been through arguably defensive wars. In your example I immediately think "you'd never support a native movement that willfully and indiscriminately murdered a bunch of british citizens". And to me it's an even weaker argument, as jews are indigenous to not-too-far-off from the borders of modern day israel - in a way that does not correspond to brits in america.

The issue isn't the historical Jews living there (now Palestinian) the issues are the European Jews moving there claiming that they have some sort of connection to the land over say Poland.

Those european jews descend from judea (levant) - genetic tests confirm this. It's a rare instance of a displaced population returning home after centuries.

I have some few percent of French dna. Does this permit me to conquer France and displace the Frenchmen, whether whites of gaulish descent or african legal immigrants or anyone else? Unless I have a legal land purchase deed to some patch of land in France and a visa or other permit to live there, I have no rights to it. The jews living in israel are free to produce valid land deeds and an unbroken valid series of inheritance documents from any of the previous governments of the region if they can.

And what's the percentage of levant dna in them btw? If someone is 90% Polish, 10% Arab, why does it make sense to emphasize the 10% part over the 90% part?

I don't mind the jews already living in the region. If European whites had immigrated peacefully and with consent of those already living then none of these problems would exist or would be much smaller. But no, we have Europeans forcibly carving out a chunk of that land and today we have classic "Levatine tribes" like the...Milejkowskis lording over that patch and killing the actual peoples who lived for centuries before them. These people are mostly Poles, Russians, Germans not natives.

(see above)

That is not much relevant to the legality of living there. I could have French dna and have lived in Canada for 5 generations (let alone however many tens of generations white jews have been europeans), does that grant me any special rights to taking over the landmass that is France?

I mean you could qualify it by saying e.g. "it's a post-19XX settler colonial movement" - that would be some refreshing nuance on what is otherwise glaringly ideological language, mostly parroted by those who don't know much about the history (hence, I suspect, the disregard you received from another commenter here).

But even then the implication of some global cutoff year after which certain actions are officially no longer "ethical" or "advisable" is pretty ridiculous. Our ethical standards shouldn't vary only by what year it is, but rather ideally by the broadest possible context we are able to fathom. Israel is a unique case with indigenous jews returning to their native land after unparalleled delay, except in terms of borders modern-day israel doesn't perfectly map to ancient judea, and the crazy history of british intervention, geopolitical tension, war, expansion, and attempted peace treaties.

I'm trying to see the argument for "Israel deliberately targets children", closest thing I got was "Israel has made lots of children into amputees" - can you provide more info?

I think its obvious that there will be a lot of children amputees in active denstly populated warzone.

I think there's an ethical difference between "we need to wage war on a densely populated area", and "we need to wage war on a densely populated area, let's make sure to harm the vulnerable people we encounter there". This is what I'm trying to differentiate between.

We won't know without analyzing protocols how Israel picks targets.

Also, harming civilians is the norm in modern world. Russia absolutely deliberately is targeting critical civilian infra in Ukraine (e.g. grid during cold winter).

If the effect of your actions is a war crime, you are a war criminal.

If the Russians also do it, that is additional evidence of war crimes.

> If the effect of your actions is a war crime, you are a war criminal.

war crimes usually defined by intent: were civilians targeted intentionally.

Were civilians targeted intentionally on 9/11? Or was it just a targeted assassination strike on some bankers? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13_July_2024_al-Mawasi_attack) If I am attacked and legally have the right to self defense, but kill the neighbors "in the process of" defending myself because I fired 300 rounds at the attacker. Is that okay? I didn't do it "intentionally". But it is convenient that I hate them.

We likely agree that individual military strikes ought to aim for collateral damage proportional to their war value. For example a strike with potential to kill enemy leadership (rapidly accelerating the end of the overall war) can justify high collateral damage, much higher than would be justified by a strike against frontline troops.

With this in mind, I don't follow your example at all. Are those bankers of wartime value? And if they are, is the collateral damage proportional to that value? It's possible there's a lot I don't know about those banker's links to military!

But of course you're not arguing that collateral damage proves war crime?

I would expect the UN to investigate what the IDF defines as collateral damage and draw their own conclusion. Their conclusion is genocide.

I'm not sure all the facts are in yet in relation to Ukraine, but I do not anticipate that Putin will be getting his yacht back in the immediate future.

Would you accept opinion that UN is politicized org which does work of varying quality and its conclusion can't be accepted as ground truth without trivial checks?

I do not accept your opinion, or assertion, that "harming civilians is the norm" nor the implication that normative violence serves as any kind of license or justification.

Harming civilians is absolutely the norm in warfare through all humans history, all/most nations including likely yours practiced it in multiple points of time. Its also norm pretending that its bad while actually practicing it.

The question was specifically about genocide allegations, and blind trust in UN sub-orgs reports.

Note "the UN" has no unified voice on an absence or presence of genocide - instead it's voiced by individual UN inquiries. Only the ICJ can legally convict a state of violating the genocide convention.

The claim in report is that Israel deliberately targeted newborn delivery hospitals and similar. I don't think they have proof of "deliberately", I assume hamas people could use those hospitals as potentially safe zones for gathering, weapons stashes, etc.

yes, unfortunately this is all evidence people here needed

Were are the UN sanctions on Israel? Still none? UN can go f*k themselves then.

Needing so many years to get the courage to say the world genocide, where everybody had seen for years Israel turning little children into little flesh chunks, slowly unfurl in horrid technicolor in world TV, is just another part of the problem. UN is useless.

At this point, we're all useless.

The circumstances of little Hind Rajab's death plays on my mind every single day, and haunts me. The fact something as brazen and blatant as that could happen, and the world did nothing.

Truly a stain on our generation.

What about the death of the bibas children who were tortured to death by Hamas? There is plenty of bad on both sides.

> What about

ism.

You just did an ism.

Congrats you win?

Hind Rajab. Sidra Hassouna. Reem and Khaled.

The premie babies at Al-Nasr hospital.

Over a hundred bombed hospitals.

The Irish president's sister kidnapped and abused.

Assassinating negotiation teams and scientists.

Murders of whole families who dared to speak out to the world.

Running over a teenager with their hands zip-tied behind their backs with Caterpillars®.

The paramedic massacre in Rafah.

The hundreds of journalists. The tens of thousands of children. The doctors raped to death.

The people who never get mentioned in these lists of atrocities, buried in mass graves with their children, hands tied.

The people dying from n-order effects, slowly, painfully, barely noticed or counted.

...

And little/no sanctions from our civilized Western democracies. (Except on the people calling it out, who can't use a credit card or bank any more, or even receive donations.)

We are far worse than useless. The stain is set for all time.

A reminder for any Americans reading this: 98.15% of 2024 voters chose a Presidential candidate that supported the above.

True. I have a friend in Southern Lebanon who I met a few years ago at a conference. Our group chat is eerie - we haven't heard from him in over two months. We just don't know how he is, and it's sickening.

> Needing so many years to get the courage to say the world genocide, where everybody had seen for years Israel turning little children into little flesh chunks, slowly unfurl in horrid technicolor in world TV, is just another part of the problem. UN is useless.

People really should try to avoid conflating war with genocide, both typically result in some civilian deaths.

Even Reuters can not hide this anymore. After years of genocide, UN remembers it, it is something. Now let's see what will be the punishment of this genocide, this is not the first report.

The USA, the most powerful nation the world has ever see, is powerless to do anything about it.

If the US can't do anything about it, what hope is there for the underfunded UN?

The USA won't do anything about it because the USA is also guilty of heinous war crimes, crimes against humanity and massive violations of human rights at scale - in fact, it is the worst criminal on the world stage when it comes to un-prosecuted war crimes... so Israel facing justice will only mean that the USA will face the same justice, and we all know that there is nothing more heinous in all the world to an American than to be embarrassed by their state facing justice at the hands of any other international entity.

But the terrible tragedy is that this situation is not going to resolve until these countries actually prosecute their war criminals, who have been getting away with it in the current context for 20+ years. Which means the only ones with any power to do anything about the USA/Israels' war criminals, are the citizens of those countries themselves - which is why the situation is just so dire.

Until there is a real appetite for prosecuting ones own war criminals instead of bleating like sheep for the blood of perceived enemies of other states, there will not be the moral stance/altitude required for Americans to do anything effective about the war crimes of any other nation.

Until Americans prosecute their own war criminals they can do nothing effective about Israels', Russias', Ukraines' war criminals, either ...

I think powerless is entirely the wrong word as they are actively supplying the arms to do it

This is rising fast. 61 points at this moment.

Doubled to 103 points in 6 minutes

And flagged 36 minutes after submission right around 104

Flagged and off the home page. Now at 106 points.

After another half hour it is at 134 points despite being flagged.

It's taken another 5 hours to reach 201 points, despite being flagged and removed from the home page at around 100 points.

It is no longer flagged.

431 points after 18 hours. On the 3rd page. Many of my comments have been flagged. Meanwhile many hateful comments including swearing have not.

[retracted]

mods are still sleeping

Were hurty words written here?

Flagging a serious topic like this indicates motive in a way that's unbecoming.

Does Israel has the intent of genocide? I don't think so.

Does Hamas try to maximize civilian casualties with martyrdom? By meshing its combattants with civilians? Yes.

The Geneva convention, unfortunately, allows collateral to a certain extent.

Hamas also executed gazans several times.

Israel does have a very aggressive strategy, but labeling it a genocide doesn't help the Palestinian cause.

Words matter.

Your advice to change how people talk about the dead children does indeed seem motivated, but not to "help the Palestinian cause".

Intent is hard to prove if it is not published.

> Does Israel has the intent of genocide? I don't think so.

Just curious: is there a (hypothetical) red line that Israel would have to cross for you to be convinced? If not, you're biased.

ofc there is if Israel start taking hostages, rape them, ask for stuff for them publicly.

Take a look at the report, it's all in there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com