> German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s centre-left coalition agreed to “evaluate” a tax on internet platforms in its treaty signed in early May, agreeing that the proceeds should be used to strengthen the country’s media landscape.
Not sure in what world Merz's coalition could ever be considered centre-left. It's a coalition of the conservative party (which moved much further right under his leadership) and the centrist Social Democrats (who equally moved to the right/center under current and former leadership). Calling them "centre-right" could perhaps be acceptable, all while "conservative" is also a widespread label.
The SPD started moving to the right shortly after Schröder was elected chancellor. Their policies curbed the welfare system in a "only Nixon could go to China manner".
On the other hand, in modern European politics very often anything that is traditional right wing is labeled "far right extremists" anyway at this point, especially if they are a bit too critical of the EU and open borders. The only thing 'acceptable' is "centre right".
For instance in France, at this point, the National Rally (Le Pen) is not really more in the right than the traditional conservative/right wing party was in the 70s and 80s (with years in government). It is plainly just "the right" and largest party in Parliament, yet they are labeled dangerous far right extremists because it is (less and less) helpful politically...
Not sure exactly how the political positioning is in Germany but overall "far right" and "right-wing extremists" have lost all meaning generally in Europe because those terms are so abused. The current German government coalition does not seem to particularly reflect the democratic result of the latest election (majority on the right), same as in France.
So it makes sense then: there are two parties. The center is the imaginary line in the middle. One of the parties is center-left, the other is center-right. Logic! :)
Can you specify ? The default heavy reliance on Reddit and YouTube, rather than trusted publications (e.g. Scientific American, NYTimes) and scientific publications, is worrying given widespread misinformation in certain scientific fields (e.g. nutrition, health, economics)
I never said "heavy reliance" on Reddit/YouTube. It actually is requested to use discernment to recognize poor, or biased sources and opinions, and label them as such (see the example report on Coffee which I shared previously in another comment).
Most the time it has only sought out one or two post/youtube videos as it can recognize the low credibility value.
It comes loaded with a PubMed MCP tool and the beauty of it being open source is you can exclude or limit the sources as much as you want, or add in new sources - that's why I wanted to open it up, to allow for critique over methodologies and allow for improved, balanced research from experts.
It is also requested to evaluate the source and whether or not they have "some benefit to gain" from the article, to ensure it balances this into the research, also.
> My 55-minute flight from Geneva to Zurich didn't land on its first attempt.
I know this is not the point of the article but why would you take a flight from Geneva to Zurich? It's less than 3h by train, which if you count the time it takes to get to Geneva airport and go through security, probably becomes a much smaller difference.
Airlines need to offer this as a single ticket option. (They might, I don’t know). Because the average traveller or the business traveller isn’t going to coordinate and book two systems, and the headache associated with one being delayed.
Lufthansa does in Germany. They've cut their flights from a lot of the regional airports to Munich and Frankfurt (I think the government made them if ground transport time is lower than a certain amount), and replaced the former mostly with shuttle buses (Munich airport is not on a major rail line) and the latter with "AiRail" (Frankfurt is, and it's a high speed line) which makes regional hub train stations look like airports to the booking systems.
The idea is pretty easy: If an employer could simply ask you about past union activity (or activity indicating it, such as certain training) and then fire you for lying about your employment history when you omit it, then the protection for unions is effectively neutralized.
Unlike what other commentators imply, this judgment doesn't legitimize just inventing degrees or qualifications. It's closer to omitting that 2-month job that didn't work out
> McClure applied as a covert organizer, or salt. He gave Respondent a resume that falsely claimed that he worked at a non-union company called Deem from 2018 to the time of his application... McClure testified that he believed claiming to work for a non-union employer would increase his chances of being hired, as people in the HVAC industry would generally recognize WMI and Habel as union shops and Deem as non-union.
Years ago, scholars (such as Didier Bigo) have already raised concerns about the targeting of individuals merely based on (indirect) association with a "terrorist" or "criminal". Originally used in the context of surveillance (see Snowden revelations), such systems would target anyone who would be e.g. less than 3-steps away from an identified individual, thereby removing any sense of due process or targeted surveillance. Now, such AI systems are being used to actually kill people - instead of just surveil.
IHL actually prohibits the killing of persons who are not combatants or "fighters" of an armed group. Only those who have the "continuous function" to "directly participate in hostilities"[1] may be targeted for attack at any time. Everyone else is a civilian that can only be directly targeted when and for as long as they directly participate in hostilities, such as by taking up arms, planning military operations, laying down mines, etc.
That is, only members of the armed wing of Hamas (not recruiters, weapon manufacturers, propagandists, financiers, …) can be targeted for attack - all the others must be arrested and/or tried. Otherwise, the allowed list of targets of civilians gets so wide than in any regular war, pretty much any civilian could get targeted, such as the bank employee whose company has provided loans to the armed forces.
Lavender is so scary because it enables Israel's mass targeting of people who are protected against attack by international law, providing a flimsy (political but not legal) justification for their association with terrorists.
It always starts with making a list of targets that meet given criteria. Once you have the list its use changes from categorisation to demonisation -> surveillance -> denial of rights -> deportations -> killing. Early use of computers by Germans during WW2 included making and processing of lists of people who ought to be sent to concentration camps. The only difference today is that we are able to capture more data and process it faster at scale.
There's even books written about it. Shame on IBM for this. I suspect in the future we'll have lots of books like this, for other companies enabling this genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
The same author wrote Nazi Nexus, with separate chapters for different US companies' (Ford, GM) dealings with the Nazi regime. It can always be a case of "let's not bring politics into work" attitude or the belief that "tech is a tool only, can be used for good or ill" but at least in the years leading up to WW2 there was a lot of support for eugenics, antisemitism (Henry Ford was a notorious one) and other Nazi tendencies in the US too. I would not be surprised if many of those working on killer AI today were politically motivated and not just developers caught in projects they don't really have their hearts in.
Only recently someone here on HN posted a video about some big hall in the US, where nazi supporters gathered in droves. It made it seem like they had significant ideological footing in the US as well. Unthinkable what could have happened, if they had had even more support. Not exactly this video that was linked, but this seems to be about the same gathering: https://invidious.baczek.me/watch?v=r4zRZ7XLYSA
You’ll find these bad ideas never really die. Look and you’ll see it throughout time and location. Russia, Germany, the U.S., Japan. Tyranny isn’t something accidental, exotic or mysterious. People take their eye off the ball and get clobbered with it from time to time.
I’ll always argue we’re better off with a world war than tyranny, but the whole goddamn point of the UN Charter is to prevent both. The lesson was learned. It was written down. And we’re still fucking it up again.
Don't forget Japanese Unit 731, all the scientists involved were whisked away to the US if they would give up their research on human subjects to the US military and help translate.
there's a lot of "these are some tested to failure limits for humans" results that are of use in medical settings, but they aren't really needed and end up being more of a "fatal dose" style measure.
The most used one I've heard about is studying hypothermia because they took quite detailed notes on the different stages and how the body reacted.
Years ago I read a blog post by a Jewish doctor who was trying to do hypothermia research without relying on Nazi data. His ultimate conclusion was that it was not reasonable to discard this data, because treatment would be very inadequate without it. It would unnecessarily hurt people today to give lesser care, and it would not be a positive testament to the memory of those victims to throw it all away.
I haven't been able to find that blog post again, but I often think about it and would love to bookmark it.
It's in a similar vein of ethical question to embryonic stem cell treatments, but certainly with very different aspects between them.
That's definitely my belief with it too, and it wasn't a blog but I remember a history teacher in high school pointed me at a couple similar papers when I expressed discomfort that we'd use such horrific research.
The weird thing is, I’ve seen this author post factually incorrect things about early Islamic history. I just wish he was more careful about things outside his area of expertise.
There's such a premium on outlining the crimes of the Nazis. Condemning eugenics and the culture of blind adherence to institutional norms is valuable. However the concerns ring hollow when we apply it in the retrospective or accusatory rather than the introspective sense.
For decades, Nazi-adjacency has been just another insult to be hurled at the political opponents we've othered. Depending on where you are on the political spectrum, "Nazi" could be synonymous with Elon Musk. In one breath we trivialize the evil humanity is capable of inflicting upon itself. In the next breath we exclaim, "Never again!"
The American Eugenics Society rebranded itself into, "Society for Biodemography and Social Biology". Ambiguous terms like, "bioethics" are used by eugenicist think tanks like "The Hastings Center" where explicit appeals to eugenics are undesirable. The Club of Rome evolved into the WEF. Paul Ehrlich's ideas are as popular as ever. The same eugenicist appeals for population control remain in the forefront of public discourse. Even here on HN, you will regularly find posters lamenting the impending doom of climate change. The answer, if you ask many here is the eugenicist policy of population control.
There are other themes in parallel, but I'll try to keep it somewhat concise and less controversial.
It isn't only the "Banality of Evil" or an engineer only who wants to go home to watch Netflix after designing a killer drone. Similar authoritarian ideas are celebrated in our popular discourse. Instead of examining these ideas critically, we accuse political others, dehumanize them and finally rationalize them into the Nazis.
In the future, AI will be so good that it will detect criticism of IBM as you are typing and threaten to lock you out of "your" computer unless you delete your work.
Either that or genAI will be used to publish a bunch of books telling fantasy stories about how IBM personally arrested Hitler. :)
already the AI detects criticism of itself. except its response it's to shadowban you meaning you can continue to post but nobody sees your opinion online.
eventually, you're "bubbled" by AIs.. all your interactions online are surrounded by an AI and you'd think you're interacting with other people when you're just AI-bubbled so to not disrupt the rest of the workers.
you'll still see likes, and other interactions with the social media posts you leave behind, but as a flagged critic of the system, all these interactions are merely faked to keep you calm. as the AI advances you'll even see responses, retweets and other interactions.... all AI driven in order to keep you busy while IBM keeps a calm overwatch over all. the end.
they don't have to, they bought it. or hired it? dunno. for all you know I'm an AI intended to keep you distracted while at the same time you're just an AI bot keeping me occupied with pointless online discussions.
even if neither of us is actually an AI, this interaction will surely aid in training some LLM in the end...
Maybe some day in the future this will amount to an "organic" way of accidentally building up a simulation of human society, that will be the only thing remaining for some far into the future aliens, who come to visit our planet. And what conclusions they would draw from this.
Maybe that's the new Turing test; true AGI is reached when computers are smart enough to dismiss the possibility of IBM returning to competence. For a warm-up task, ask the AI about a hypothetical scenario involving an honest and ethical Oracle sales rep.
i think the only plausible solution is that we don't know but we're just about to find out? as soon as the singularity hits we can ask the AI (...?)
then again, and thinking more broadly, all of life is one giant contest to guess the future, and later, to determine the future by taking precise action
so what you're asking means to try and guess how much of my current reality is predicted by AI (and more generally, by any possibly conscious actor) and how much is wildly unpredictable and chaotic?
Yes, loosely I think what you're asking at the end is somewhere slippery that I've been thinking as well. By introducing chaos or randomness in one's life it may be a way to incur computational cost to the "Sentinel AI" that is optimizing for predictive behavior (which humans are pretty predictive day to day).
Oddly this led me to realize that historical magic related to randomness may actually be a "thing" in such a system, and it was kind of a "wow" moment.
tl;dr use randomness to attempt to distort reality and run experiments, if results show anomalies then you may be in a reality at the very least "modulated" by an AI.
Not today, no. But remember that IBM is critical to SERN due to the importance of IBM 5100 for time travel, so there's a bit of technological back and forth going on within the ~100 year period we happen to be at the center of right now.
It is both, and also a way of acknowledging that GP's comment points out that the main/only ridiculous fantasy in GGP's comment is that IBM specifically is involved, and not the whole AI part.
I do regret making the joke now, though, given the wider context of the thread.
Art and metaphors are useful tools to illuminate and elucidate. I think you were able to make a good point, and the tonal shift helped situate your comment in juxtaposition to the parents’. My point was not to criticize but to make the reference explicit for those who aren’t familiar with them, and confirm my own assumption regarding your usage, as well.
like the reddit "shadowban", where your comment isn't shown to others but is visible to you in the thread.
fudge the up/down votes to make it look like it's been seen but not reacted to.
but do you need to burn cycles on AI to keep these people engaged? if someone is spamming stuff you don't want seen have them throw out a basic response and then shadowban or just straight-up ban them. if they're very negative bad actor types just give em the boot
Welcome to the future of racial / political / ideological / social status segregation.
On platforms like Facebook or YouTube where the feed is algorithmically generated and you can't easily view a filtered list of topics (like Reddit) something like this would be very easy.
The interactions don't even need to be generated by AI, it just needs to keep you seeing interactions with other people in your social status circle. And if you try to venture too far outside of that it shadow bans you.
Heck I'd be surprised if the way the news feed algorithms work today they don't already do something like this, as a byproduct of optimising for viewership.
They'd just need to take it a bit further by preventing you from seeing viewpoints outside your circle. So taking the WWII example, people in the Nazi group would not be able to see pro-Ally content. All they'd see about Allies would be content that paints them in a bad light, and vice versa.
It is already happening, just recently Instagram pushed out an update to 'quietly' limit political content (ie. pro Palestinian voices) to all users by default without informing them.
It's reasonable to view Palestine as a nation and it's reasonable to look at what's going on and see forced starvation of a nation coupled to, as we are discussing here, cruelly relaxed standards for enemy combatants that make a mockery of international law and are de facto indiscriminate by any standard. Sneering about agendas is distasteful in this context. Vast majority of us aren't really keeping score or trying to advance anything at all, just horrified, as horrified as we were by 10/7, while 10% hurl insults at each other and lash out at anything anyone else says.
I see it as open season. One under resourced side wants a fight with a well resourced side. I don’t expect them to sing songs. I expect them to very violently kill each other till on one side goes, ‘we lost’.
The entire Palestinian war doctrine is built around attacking Israel, then running for cover of well intentioned Western public. Hamas just needs to survive this to declare victory, and then the clock resets until the next cycle of violence. Hamas assumes Israel will not be allowed to have a decisive win, one where its leadership down to its last junior operatives are hunted down and eliminated.
This method of elinination can only be carried out via a Holocaust. Killing half the 2M citizens won't eliminate Hamas it will recruit 3 generations as justified in their violence as Israel. The cost of their crimes will be paid by both sides grandchildren or we will witness a final slaughter of 2M people.
Sorry, but I don’t buy this. West Bank is both more peaceful and less radicalized than Gaza, the difference being that the Israeli military operates in the West Bank but not in Gaza. Gaza was left unchecked to be run by Hamas and we’re seeing the results today.
Long term the only solution is systematic deradicalization, but before any of that happens, Hamas needs to he destroyed and the war in Gaza needs to serve as a lesson to why peace is better than war. So far, for all Palestinian suffering, we’re not past that point.
Hamas leadership can be killed, but Israel is effectively waging a was on terror by another name. And terror is a concept you can’t blow up. By inflicting horrific damage on a civilian population Israel creates more people willing to give up their lives in military struggle.
The problem isn’t individuals with a wish to kill. They can’t do much damage. West Bank is full of those people and Israeli security apparatus deals with them just fune. The problem is institutional terrorism; an entire enclave of tunnels, rockets, special forces and a structure all designed to murder Israelis. That can, and has to be destroyed in a decisive way.
So policing the west bank has left it more peaceful so we can certainly now murder our way to peace in gaza by killing another 30,000 innocents in order to kill another 0.5% of the militants. 30,000 dead innocents can't possibly generate more than 300 soldiers among survivors.
For practical purposes the degree of force required to pacify it would kill 98%. Its possible that a better policed Gaza would be more peaceful this doesn't mean present efforts are reasonable.
I'm presuming that intelligence about the exact location of targets in a ruin is going to be far less precise and starvation and privation are going to start killing faster than bombs. Ironically the armed gang will probably weather than particular challenge than the general population. Incremental improvements in number of combatants dead is going to come at the expense of a much larger contingent of dead civilians.
Hamas was I believe said to have what 50,000–60,000 fighters. By the time they get to the halfway point half the population will be dead.
> The entire Palestinian war doctrine is built around attacking Israel ...
Let me correct that for you - The entire Palestinian resistance is built around the idea of fighting a foreign occupation of their land. Israel is a coloniser state, and the Palestinians are justified in fighting them, even violently, for their land and existence as many other colonial countries have in the past against their oppressors. The denial that some Israelis have about this is the height of political stupidity.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
The problem with Israel is not PLA or Hamas, but the the right-wing religious fundamentalist Israeli-Jews that have captured power in Israel. Right-wing religious fundamentalists around the world thrive by creating a climate of fear and hate. Unless Israeli Jews and Palestinian muslims hate each other, they cannot be in power. And if you look at the history of the Israeli religious fundamentalist Jews, you will find that they have assassinated their own people, Palestinian politicians and ven foreign diplomats and leaders, to ensure that there is no peace and a climate of fear and hatred flourishes.
Why do you think Netanyahu and his predecessor formulated the policy of supporting and financing Hamas when the PLA started exploring diplomatic and non-violent means of peace, and gaining international support? The reality was that that these religious fundamentalist Israeli politicians need some religious fundamentalist violent Palestinian faction to brainwash and radicalise their followers to retain power. So they deliberately create conflict. The Likud party that Netanyahu now heads, was found by religious fundamentalists in Israel who were a jewish terrorist organisation that took please in killing and slaughtering Palestinina men, women and children. Albert Einstein once warned the Israel polity about the dangers of such people capturing power in Israel because of the atrocity them committed against Palestinians in the name of Israel.
It is not a co-incidence that Netanyahu and his other religious fundamentalist buddies allowed Hamas to attack Israel, when he and the right- in Israel are in a very politically precarious situation. The current war allows them to create hatred among the new generation of Israelis and Palestinians, so that they can cling on to power.
> And what should the 12 million people living there now do?
Accept the idea of a single state where Palestinians and Israelis have true equal rights and live together as the best solution. The opponents to this are the religious fundamentalists on both sides, especially the Israeli-right. Or, alternatively, accept the two-state solution by creating a State for Palestinians.
Would Hamas dissolve? Their charter specifies that their goal is to kill all Jews. What happens after they are citizens?
The two state solution was offered repeatedly. Israel isn't in charge of that. Hamas refused every time. So, I support you there, but it's not up to the 12 million living there. It's up to the handful of Hamas psychos holding Gaza hostage.
> Would Hamas dissolve? Their charter specifies that their goal is to kill all Jews. What happens after they are citizens?
The same thing that happened to jewish terrorist organisations like the Ḥerut (“Freedom”) Party (who, like Hamas used to rape and slaughter woman and children) - their leader Menachem Begin founded the Likud party (which toned down its terrorist roots and became a right-wing fascist political party). PLA too has toned down. Hamas too can. Note that Hamas was democratically elected but was never allowed to exercise its democratic right to govern because Israel and the US didn't like it, and forced a civil war on Palestinians by urging the PLA to attack it, while using their propaganda machinery to demonise Hamas. The Israeli-right (and US) never wanted democratic organisations in Palestine to flourish because it makes it harder to demonise them and deny them their right, and would lead to a peaceful resolution between Palestinians and Israelis that they do not want.
> The two state solution was offered repeatedly. Israel isn't in charge of that. Hamas refused every time.
The Israeli-right doesn't want peace. It desires all the land of the Palestinians for the State of Israel. If you look at Israeli history, you will find that it is Israeli-religious fundamentalists who have always sabotaged the peace talks, while using the settlers to attack Palestinians and occupy more and more of their land. They killed their own Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin (The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin: ‘He never knew it was one of his people who shot him in the back’ - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/assassination-... ) as he was working for a peaceful settlement with Palestinians. They succeeded in sabotaging the peace process. Netanyahu's mentor, Ariel Sharon later gave the order for assassinating PLA's Yasser Arafat (Yasser Arafat: The Assassination - https://www.palestinechronicle.com/yasser-arafat-the-assassi... ), to create anger and hate amongst the Palestinians and sabotage the peace process. They succeeded. Hamas too has many times offered to negotiate peace with Israel, but each time they were rebuffed by Israelis (Israel Rejected Peace with Hamas on Five Occasions* - https://inkstickmedia.com/israel-rejected-peace-with-hamas-o... ). Why do you think Netanyahu continued to support and finance Hamas? (Why Israel Created Hamas - https://swprs.org/why-israel-created-hamas/ ). Even recently, Netanyahu has bluntly said he will never accept the two-state solution (Israel’s embattled leader has long opposed the emergence of an independent Palestine. - https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/01/22/netanyahu-bi... ) and has instead used the recent tragedy to do the same thing the right-wing religious fundamentalists in Israel have always done - kill Palestines brazenly and seize their land in both Gaza and West Bank (Israel unveils big West Bank land seizure as Blinken visits - https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2024/03/israel-unveils-... ).
Israel's greatest enemy are their religious fundamentalists in power. They need to get rid of them, starting with Netanyahu, if they want lasting peace.
That's unsubstantiated, and besides the point. PLO and Hamas have still refused any and all two state options, including a 98% land swap offered with Bill Clinton at the Camp David summit.
The two state solution isn't on the table no matter what anyone other than Palestinian leaders say, so we can ignore that part of your argument. It doesn't serve as constructive criticism of Israel. Maybe of Arafat specifically, if you're intending to criticize.
Look at Israel's history and you will find that religious fundamentalist Israeli Jews have always been at forefront in sabotaging all efforts at peace and in fostering violence whenever they can because it benefits their politics. (I've already cited many examples). The slogan "from the river to the sea" was originally the genocidal slogan coined by the fascist Likud party, by Netanyahu, in 1977 to highlight their policy of subjugating all Palestinians and occupying their land for the State of Israel (The controversial phrase “from the river to sea,” explained - https://www.vox.com/world-politics/23972967/river-to-sea-pal...). (And now the same religious fundamentalist Israelis cry crocodile tears about "anti-semitism" because some muslim fundamentalists and secular pro-Palestinians have usurped the slogan for their own cause).
As long as these religious fundamentalists thrive in Israel, Israel is doomed to be a country to live in hatred and anger.
And, if you support Israel, it should worry you. I am an indian who had great sympathy and respect for Jews, and later Israeli leaders. Today, thanks to Netanyahu and his vulgar war to just cling on to power, I am a pro-palestinian now. It is important for people like you to understand this because while in the short-term you think that Israel is "winning" the war by "defending" itself by killing 30,000+ Palestinians, later on, you are going to wonder why the rest of the world don't "like you". Netanyahu and his other religious fundamentalist jews will use identity politics and try to convince you its because you are a jew, and the world hates Jew. No. If people look down on Israelis today and tomorrow, it will only be because you were cowards to not stand up to your genocidal leaders, and even supported them, like the Nazis cheered on Hitler.
(Now, Netanyahu has deliberately attacked and provoked Iran too because he knows Israelis are losing patience with his promises to bring back the hostages - most of whom the IDF has already killed with their bombing of Gaza. So expanding the conflict to war with another foreign state, by provoking Iran, is his only way to further distract the public, foster even more hate between jews and muslims and cling on to power.)
>Israeli Jews have always been at forefront in sabotaging all efforts at peace
I'm not seeing that. I'm seeing that they offered a 98% land swap that is extremely contrary to your claim. (That's not the only time Israel agreed to a two state solution, either.)
Let's look at your other argument.
>because some muslim fundamentalists and secular pro-Palestinians have usurped the slogan for their own cause
"From the river to the sea" is in the Gaza charter. If it's Netanyahu's slogan then we must also conclude that it's so inspirational to Gaza's government that they wanted to include it in their constitution. That doesn't sound like "some." That sounds like the government of Gaza, regardless of how much citizen support, is intent on conquest and extermination.
You're also acting like "from the river to the sea" is bad for Israel to say. Those are Israel's borders. Any less than that means they need to evacuate somewhere. India isn't offering to accept 12 million Israelis for immigration. Right? If they are, it would be easier to accept 2 million Gazans.
Of course that's what Gaza included in the charter. They want Israel erased. They want the Jews dead. That's also in their charter. It's very specific. They didn't mince words there. It says the rocks will divulge that Jews are hiding behind them so that they can be killed. I encourage you to read it.
Israel, however, has no intention of conquering Gaza. It withdrew completely from Gaza, nearly 20 years ago. Gaza invaded Israel. Not the other way around. They are now occupying Gaza as a response. But they were not occupying Gaza before October.
If you are going to bring up the import restrictions, you should criticize Egypt too. They are also on that front. Why pick on Israel? Egypt is the bigger army.
>you were cowards to not stand up to your genocidal leaders
I don't have a horse in the race, so "you" isn't really appropriate. But this is exactly what people are thinking about Gaza, that they are cowards not to stand up to their genocidal government that beheads children and films it.
Regardless, you still haven't given a single viable solution.
It looks to me like Israel has no choice, as you've proven here. You're criticizing a victim forced to act in a way no one likes. Gazas' goal is to make you not like Israel by forcing it to act. They won you over with baby beheading and terror apparently.
Do you feel it's okay for Gaza to invade Israel?
Would it be okay for Pakistan to invade India?
What about if Pakistan's founding documents direct all Pakistanis that all Indians must die? Is that acceptable?
The previous commenter didn't say "Israeli Jews have always been at the forefront of sabotaging peace" (which would have been a nationalist slur that presumably would have been flagged off the site); they said "fundamentalist Israeli Jews" --- a particular minority cohort of Israeli Jewish people with particular policy goals.
There are some problems and differences that you're ignoring.
The goal of previous terror groups wasn't extermination. In fact their goals were largely in alignment with Western morality. Targets included key infrastructure, not specifically civilians. This is similar to Western military efforts.
The US hasn't needed to do much propaganda, Hamas has made themselves intolerable in Western society by beheading children, recording it, and disseminating it, among other similar media interaction. Their goal is to alienate Islam in order to preserve it in the face of westernization. They don't want Palestinians to be accepted in Western society.
Given the historical dissimilarity, why would any Western government believe that Hamas would suddenly gain Western idealism within the confines of a Western democracy?
I don't see any reason that we should, especially when relying on the historical accounts you've provided.
You think Israel is winning? It's hate that has won and it will consume the Israelis soon. Unlike you however, I feel sorry for the Israelis too who will be harmed because of Netanyahu and his ilk - hopefully Israelis will realise this sooner and get rid of these selfish religious fundamentalists politicians.
First off, the fact you wrote that unironically and with such surety and verve means this is, at the very least, if you're in a place where your interlocution hurts Israel.
There's no way to explain this, even at length, in a way that's convincing. It's something that settles in over weeks, at best.
I'm intimately familiar with the branching arguments from here: ex. Hamas is stealing the aid, it's not Israel's job to make sure aid gets in, of course aid has to be screened, UNWRA radicalized palestine so UN isn't a reliable aide distribution partner, etc.
I had to make a bit of a journey myself on this topic: I spent Oct/Nov/Dec talking about Gaza Health Ministry is the last place I'd go to for death totals, etc. etc.
At some point once things pile up, and up, and up, it crosses a critical line where you can see in reality that our jaundiced view from thousands of miles away is a map, not the territory. It's a list of excuses used to avoid taking the world's easiest layup ("we are defeating the terrorists and flooding the zone with cookies and cakes for the civvies"), and that layup has been avoided for 6 months, there's been plenty of time to take action to avoid a visible outcome, and that outcome's visibility may have just vanished into the wind as another complaint from uninformed antisemites.
Let's say that's not Israel's problem and it's being unfairly treated by a PR campaign by radicals who contain antisemites.
Then either A) world government's are too scared of their population to admit Israel is doing just fine or B) maybe all that stacked up stuff is a list of excuses to not have to take action to treat Palestineans like people.
That's not true. If you read anything, it's very, very, clear that the absolute very most you can argue is "40% of Palestineans love Hamas and want it to fight Israel".
Meanwhile, you're out here, doing in public:
- why would anyone ever call this a genocide
- they should be starved as they are the enemy
- yes correct I mean all of the Palestineans are the enemy and should be starved
- just listen to them for proof
I, completely honestly, 100%, believe its more likely you're astroturfing to make Israel and Zionism look bad than an actual Zionist. But I'm a Zionist, so it's just cope on my end. Terrible stuff my friend.
I'm trying to understand; it sounds like you feel that an AI selecting targets and letting some live is just as bad and indiscriminate as a group forming a charter that reads "exterminate all Jews." (Paraphrasing, but the meaning is not disputed.)
That's hard to agree with. I'd rather the group that tries to save some civilians over one that targets all civilians intentionally.
Wouldn't you?
That said, we can criticize. But we should do it constructively. Provide a better option, militarily, or otherwise. (I don't have one. And anyway I believe this article is baseless.)
Short of offering options, we're just picking sides, and to me it looks like you're picking the wrong one.
The criminal that hides under color of law while killing far more innocents is more odious on multiple fronts. Dead children and austere serious men walking through their blood reeking of offal and rightiousness is a disturbing contrast.
The US ought to disassociate ourselves forever from such undepentant criminals.
So the one that kills openly against the law prescribed by democracy is better? Do continue. The world is listening.
>ourselves
Please don't call yourself American. Your immorality is embarrassing me.
Israel: 10% acceptable civilian casualty as defense against Gaza. (An unsubstantiated claim without a source. But let's pretend it's true since that's what we're commenting on.)
Gaza: 100% intentional civilian casualty as defense... Uh wait, they weren't even defending anything. They were trying to uproot 12 million residents in a neighboring country. That is literally their stated goal.
How is the second one more moral? Don't bother answering because if you can explain that, you belong in prison, or you at least need a psych evaluation.
This post doesn't make any sense no matter how many times I try to parse it. You are part of the 10% I mention who lash out at anything anyone else says. Be well.
Which part didn't make sense? I'm happy to help you.
Start here: Gaza seeks to exterminate 100% of enemy civilians. It's in their charter and it's their stated goal.
Does that part make sense?
Next compare with Israel. According to this article their ugly secret mission is to save at least 90% of enemy civilians.
Which of those is preferable to you?
Lashes out
My commentary shows that desire to be moral does not always make for moral action. You thought you were rooting for the good guy, and it turned out that you're not. That can be upsetting. The right thing to do is to revise your view. I'm not lashing out. You're upset with yourself.
I don't know how you keep coming up with #s from the article that somehow indicate Israel's trying very hard to protect civilians. It's self-soothing but no one, absolutely no one, thinks the article is saying that.
n.b. not in their charter, not their stated goal. I'm a Zionist too, used to say stuff like this, I just had a wake up call in January about how I was unable to talk to other people anymore because I had walked too far down a path that was obviously us vs. them and the Likud-Gvir unholy alliance was doing truly evil things that made us vs. them look really, really, bad.
Well, October 7th Massacre wasn’t enough to wake you up from a 140 years long dream of peace.
But some social lack of acceptance in January did.
That’s telling.
It is a zero sum game.
It always was for the Arabs.
Time to wake up and face the harsh reality, not invented idealistic dreams (that are admittedly much more comforting, but lead to massacres October 7th style).
I can't tell if you're pretending or not. Are you?
ARTICLE 7:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."
INTRODUCTION:
"This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's victory is realised."
They are accepting 10% casualties according to the article (probably bullshit). I didn't expect to have to explain this, but the % symbol implies it's divided by 100. That means there are 90% unacceptable casualties.
>absolutely no one, thinks the article is saying that.
I think most people here can subtract 10 from 100 and get 90. Am I the only genius on HN? I hope not. Help us all if I am.
Or are you talking about the 100% number for Gaza? I took it from their charter. I assume that "O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him" means that they want all of them dead. I didn't find any mention of rogue or rebel trees or stones that would allow Jews to hide behind them, so I have to assume they mean all of them.
But, I'm intrigued by your accusation. Where are you finding different numbers? I'd love to see even a single document that allows for saving a Jew authored by Gaza's government. Let me know where this document is.
For clarity, I'm no Zionist. I just don't understand why anyone would support a government blatantly claiming a hateful purpose in their founding documents.
If you want me to feel bad for people in Gaza, I do. I very much do. But this discussion is about governments, and you've made a comparison between governments where there is a very clear cut difference. One has the moral high ground and is attempting to minimize civilian casualties, while the other is blatantly maximizing them in practice and inarguably as their stated purpose.
They built shitty murderGPT and they think based on vetting a sample it can be 90% effective at picking out Hamas associates. In turn they are targeting homes and residential buildings with the stated goal of killing up to 20 people to get the lowest level flunky.
Their goal would allow them to kill 200 people to get 9 Hamas. 21 v 1
In fact
- Hamas is the local government many people who fulfill only civilian roles arent lawful targets.
- A dearth of smart bombs led to using dumb bombs which are less accurate and more likely to create collateral damage.
- There arent infinite lawful targets as the supply of lawful targets is smaller in relation to the pool of victims it is expected to get less accurate.
The 10% is supposed to be merely those targeted incorrectly. You can't leave out collateral damage from your calculation.
> In an unprecedented move, according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians; in the past, the military did not authorize any “collateral damage” during assassinations of low-ranking militants. The sources added that, in the event that the target was a senior Hamas official with the rank of battalion or brigade commander, the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander.
For every 10 Hamas targeted for deliberate murder in their own homes while they slept to be splashed with the blood of their children and wives it is acceptable in their books if 1 was never in fact even a villain. It is further acceptable if the high tonnage dumb bomb dropped on your building kills up to 20 other people.
This means it is acceptable to deliberately murder a total of 200 people to kill 9 authentic Hamas. That is 191 innocents to kill 9 villains or 21 for every one.
> That is still objectively better than wanting to kill ALL enemy civilians.
They have objectively killed more innocents than Hamas and stand to kill more but that isn't entirely what makes it more loathsome. When monsters strike at the innocent in a functional nation they have no end of defenders and comforters. The cops come in the shoot the bad guy, medics come to heal what can be healed, the press are shocked, their families come together.
When the innocents are made over into villains or villains by association who will stand for them. Who will even stop the slaughter let alone heal the wounded. As the people went about their daily lives while the jews were marched to gas chambers so the jews will go about their lives whilst the gazans are hunted by drones and bombs and starved.
Look at yourself. You would never have defended the gas chamber but you are defending wholesale slaughter and starvation. THAT is what makes it worse.
I'm not defending it. I'm putting blame where it belongs, on the perpetrator. No one in Israel asked for war. Lots in Gaza did.
When a woman defends herself from rape by stabbing the rapist I don't say, "She caused him more damage!" I blame the rapist.
Not everyone wants war and that's sad that people are caught in it. But Israel isn't at fault, any more than that woman. Hamas is firing from behind innocents. They have to kill innocent people to survive, typically. You can help them by eliminating their need to do it, or you can blame the victim.
Those are your options whether you like it or not. Just like they are Israel's options whether they like them or not.
> I'm putting blame where it belongs, on the perpetrator. No one in Israel asked for war. Lots in Gaza did.
Gaza is a population of 2M people run by an armed gang of a mere 50,0000. The IDF a fully fledged modern army has thus far proved unable to root out Hamas despite leveling most of Gaza. It seems hard therefore to blame the 1,950,000 not in said gang for its actions especially when half of them are kids.
> When a woman defends herself from rape by stabbing the rapist I don't say, "She caused him more damage!" I blame the rapist.
This is manipulative garbage. The rapist is singular unified in guilt and purpose. We are talking about a society. If you have anything else in this vein please keep it to yourself.
> Not everyone wants war and that's sad that people are caught in it. But Israel isn't at fault, any more than that woman. Hamas is firing from behind innocents. They have to kill innocent people to survive, typically. You can help them by eliminating their need to do it, or you can blame the victim.
We can demand lawful just behavior even in war. Letting murderGPT generate targets and blowing up women and children in there home isn't it. What happened in October was simply awful but Israel in modern times is not under existential threat from Hamas. They absolutely had the ability to prosecute the war in a different fashion. Acting like they had to either lay down and die or petpetrate horrors is again manipulative and dishonest. A few fuckin pointers.
- Drop bombs only on human vetted intelligence
- Fire on armed resistance not children
- Drop bombs on people participating in conflict instead of homes even if its harder and less effective
- Drop bombs only when the probable collateral damage is either zero or the tactical gain is high eg killing 0-5 to get a top tier leader is probably acceptable killing up to 20 to get each and every flunky is insane.
If the war can't realistically be prosecuted successfully on those terms then set up an actual acceptable no mans land between gaza and Israeli settlements instead of letting a bunch of idiots build settlements adjacent to the people who want to murder them. Fire back when shot at and continue assassinating leaders and those directly responsible for the October horror. There is every reason to believe that October need never come again.
If this is unsatisfying nobody gives a fuck. Morality is hard. Decency in an indecent world is hard. Man the fuck up and develop a sense of honor.
The current trajectory is unsustainable. The only way to pacify gaza is to kill everyone and that endpoint is probably unachievable without the world turning against Israel and stopping it and if leave a genocide partly done you'll be worse off than if you had never started.
This is the train we are on. The conductors are mental midgets and the people laying the track are oblivious.
You're defending people rather than nations which means you've changed the subject because you can't defend Gaza's actions and you're being forced to sustain that Israel is a better actor.
Stay on topic. You want to defund Israel.
Gaza intends to kill 100% of civilians (according to charter). Israel intends to kill less than 100%.
Defund Gaza?
If Israel had a kill all policy that would win your moral favor?
Disgusting. For real dude. Not even a little criticism for Gaza? Only Israel? Why?
I have realized you are uninterested in reasoned dialogue and prefer sentence fragments and manipulation. I don't think you have anything more to contribute so I'm ejecting. Good day.
> think most people here can subtract 10 from 100 and get 90. Am I the only genius on HN? I hope not. Help us all if I am.
TLDR: You are the only HN genius who forgot to multiply by allowed collateral damage.
They suggest based on thin evidence that it selects 90% Hamas associates given relatively clean data at start of conflict. There are oh so many things wrong with this.
- Hamas is the local government. Those who don't participate in the fighting aren't lawful targets in the first place
- They preferentially strike homes during the night maximizing collateral damage in order to obtain a higher chance of killing the target. They set the acceptable losses at 20–100 based on rank and importance of the target.
- Their initial accuracy was assessed by vetting a small sample earlier in the conflict.
What happens to your targeting as the conflict proceeds? Your known targets die, flee, and move around. New soldiers are recruited but don't provide clear intelligence from a chaotic warzone of their present status. You would logically expect such a system's accuracy to decline towards randomness as such a conflict proceeds and intelligence and targets become thinner on the ground. There is no reason to accept the initial 90% targeting accuracy on faith.
Even where we accept we must not forget to multiply by acceptable collateral damage.
I'm apparently at least one genius on HN that doesn't multiply unrelated sources.
I took each claim as coming from a separate source because the article specifies that they did.
By itself, a claim of 10% allowance, implies a 10% allowed civilian casualty rate.
Also, if you down vote, it prevents me from commenting. If you just want to get the last word in, say so. You're not important enough for me to care if I do.
Neither is this hearsay article.
More telling, you completely dodged the racism in Gaza's charter. Swept it under the rug.
Israel is bad for using AI, but it doesn't bother you that Gaza wants to kill all civilians?
Really, I think that last one makes moot all of your points entirely.
You can't downvote direct responses nor does a downvote prevent a response. YOu might find that the reply button is not present on a comment immediately after it is made. If you click on the stamp eg "1 hour ago" you will note the reply button is evident and can be used.
The predicted false targeting rate is explicitly NOT the civilian casualty rate nor is it even supposed to be. You are seizing dishonestly on a low number because it appears justifiable.
It's not the overall civilian casualty rate which appears to be 2–3x nor the expected casualty rate of AI guided bombing of residences which appears to be much higher yet. It does appear that the maximum allowable rate according to Israeli policy is 21x for such bombing raids.
So in summary what you're saying is, we should go with hearsay and sum all hearsay together, multiply all false claims and use those to guide our government.
Nice.
Hey, why do we use significant figures to guide our multiplication?
Anyway even if we do believe all hearsay, you have to admit kill 99.999999999% of civilians is still a better policy then kill 100% (Gaza's policy).
So your other points still don't matter.
You've opted to defund the kill some policy while still funding the kill all policy. And simultaneously you're critiquing it. You have to admit, there's not just a little bias there. It's something deeper.
Yeah, that's a very specific error for a specific function. HN has a thing where they can manually mark accounts as throttled - my understanding its when you have a habit of replying emotionally and repeatedly to the same thread. So this, helpfully, gives you a pseudo-timeout to reflect before jumping back in, which in theory increases constructive responses, and at least prevents littering.
"Your account is rate limited. We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments too quickly and/or get involved in flamewars."
What part of this differs from how I described it, except I was more polite and didn't say you were posting low-quality comments, or doing a flame war?
Your argumentative confusing responses used to frustrate me but you're putting a smile on my face now. Idk what's going on over there, but I have a feeling you know you're doing it, you're enjoying it, and I'm genuinely happy to hear that. יברכך יהוה וישמרך
How would you automate a system that throttles low quality posts? It relies on downvotes. When people downvote your comments, you are "rate limited" for a short duration.
That, of course, leaves open the problem of people downvoting stuff they disagree with, regardless of quality.
Essentially, the system works, but in many cases, a downvote means you're right and the downvoter doesn't like being wrong. That causes an unjustified throttling. Oh well...
82% of the so-called “Palestinians” approved of October 7th Massacre back in October. 75% approve of it in March 2024. For every armed terrorist there were 5-10 Gazans perpetrating the atrocities on October 7th.
Every other house in Gaza is full of weapons.
“There are no innocents in Dresden”, Winston Churchill
> They are accepting 10% casualties according to the article (probably bullshit).
I genuinely can't parse this. What does it mean to "accept 10% casualties". Casualties means injured/dead. Do you mean 10% of the total population injured? 10% of those injured in a strike are non-combatants? Steel-manning while gently guiding back to the material: lets ignore the 100:1 extreme in the material, and say 10:1. That would mean roughly 90% are non-combatants. Not the inverse.
I'm a Zionist and I'm shaking my head at the majority of what you wrote, there's no need to be this rude to anyone, ever. The condescension harms you more than them, you're trying to win them over, you shouldn't be ranting and pretending they don't know what a % mark means, its detrimental to your argument because it increases perception you're missing their point
More widely, at some point we have an obligation to engage with people and avoid silly side debates like "the charter says kill all the jews, here's the 1988 charter, oh you know they have a new charter? sure they revised it, but the revisions are stupid pandering to ignorant Western sympathizers" and "find me a document allows for saving a Jew authored by Gaza's government. Let me know where this document is."
There's a really unfortunate tendency to conflate any criticism of this war with "Hamas good" or even "Hamas okay" or "Hamas bad but not that bad" etc etc. Not claiming any of that. I'm on the right of Israel opinion polls because I want the war to continue until Hamas is eliminated because I do believe that the 1988 charter describes how they see Israelis to this day.
But I, like everyone else, contain multitudes, and see a straight through line from IDF concerns about targeting rules getting looser and looser and looser over the years since the 90s, what I've seen since October, and now this information we have in the TFA. I'd rather acknowledge that publicly and remain clearly morally superior than start long arguments over if its okay using things like 1988 charter.
What you're saying requires a belief that you are the official speaker of Hamas. And that they don't mean what they say, they mean whatever you say they mean.
It's a stretch. I can't say I believe you. I'll go with the documentation and official statements pending some more compelling evidence to establish your authority.
Dude this post doesn't make any sense, like it's not even attempting to respond to any of it. If you're on tilt, bless, this is overwhelming for me too. But it's bizarre to tell me I'm "trusting Hamas" when I virtue signalled 4 times I don't believe them.
If it's any help to either of you, I'm completely lost in what you're both arguing about, and sometimes on HN you can get caught up in an endless over-explaining trap that sends the thread off into the right margins and really makes whatever important point you were originally trying to make impossible to find.
We all have trouble (me especially) accepting the idea that our interlocutors here sometimes just aren't going to agree with us, no matter how many ways we restate our case. Sometimes the most persuasive thing you can do is just leave off.
No I'm saying that I'm trusting Hamas. I'm not trusting your implied claim that the new charter doesn't say that. It clearly does.
I gave a short response because it seemed like you were claiming that a new charter doesn't call for the killing of Jews. The new one only calls for the killing of the ones in Israel for now, because they are Zionists, even if not by choice.
I am pointing out that the implication is not for you to make. The meaning is expressed by the authors. The same ones who entered a neighboring nation and gave inarguable meaning to their already stated purpose. Furthermore, they NEVER deny the original 1988 meaning either. As a point, they don't.
As for 10% casualty; it means when making 10 calls for 10 kills, if 1 is a bad call that's acceptable. If 2 are bad, that's not acceptable. That was stated pretty clearly in the article. I didn't read it a second time, but I'm sure it's there.
So, Israel, even as demonized in this hearsay article, still sounds 90% better than Hamas.
Stated another way, even if Israel were to state that they intend to only save one Gazan civilian, it's still better than the stated purpose of Gaza. Your earlier comparison then is problematic.
I'm sorry for the percent sign explanation. When you tell me the article doesn't say that, I make a genuine effort to understand what you've missed. The article says 10% casualty, and I said 90% as a cup half full expression. Since you said the article didn't say that, I guessed that you didn't see 90 in the article. I tried to help you look for the 10.
I'm not calling you an idiot despite the seemingly implication. Not everyone understands how percentages work and I can't be expected to make any assumption about what you do or don't know.
It says that they are willing to kill up to 20 innocent people for e en the lowliest Hamas stooge in addition to wrongly 1 in 10. That is in order to correctly kill 9 its justified to kill 200 innocents adjacent in addition to 1 yahoo who was poor fellow who was miss-targered.
It obviously says the exact opposite of that unless you conflate multiple separate hearsay accounts. Injecting YOUR racism doesn't add meaning to the article, instead it only serves to discredit it.
Bloviating isn't the same as explaining. You make no sense and are actively damaging Israel. Are you a Hamas plant? Your posts are composed of verbal and mental gymnastics completely unrelated to the post you're replying to. I already told you I'm on Israeli right and agree with you the 1988 charter is what to rely on
You made the comparison:
"It's reasonable to view Palestine as a nation and it's reasonable to look at what's going on and see forced starvation of a nation coupled to, as we are discussing here, cruelly relaxed standards for enemy combatants that make a mockery of international law and are de facto indiscriminate by any standard."
Gaza's policy is objectively indiscriminate. Israel's is objectively not indiscriminate.
I don't care what political party you identify with, and I don't care which country I'm damaging. I'm with the "Everyone Must Learn Science and Remain Objective" party. You were objectively wrong.
Marked? I don't think that's how it works, but thanks for the sentiment.
Non-sequitor? The last comment is a literal quote from you, and an explanation about how it doesn't fit the charter that you agreed in the preceding comment.
You're offended when I explain the argument, and then when I don't, you say you don't get it.
/shrug
Look it's simple; Gaza is worse than Israel. Objectively. That doesn't mean Israel is a model of human morality. And I don't think anyone is claiming that. But let's not pretend it's the same as Gaza. Israeli troops aren't rolling in beheading children while dancing and posting videos, right? It's nowhere near, even if we take everything in this garbage hearsay article and multiply it by 1000, it's still better than Gaza.
There's nothing you can say other than, "Yeah, I shouldn't have made that comparison." Any other statement at this point just looks like you condone beheading children. How do you not see that that's what you implied unintentionally?
They are deliberately targeting civilians based on nebulous association knowing they will kill up to 20 others without even that thin justification.
There is absolutely reason to believe such missions could range from 10-50 civilians to one actual soldier.
They are claiming kills as justified that never received human vetting. Even the kills that would be lawful are by any reasonable analysis fruits of a poisonous tree.
Done at scale its hardly different than running a gas chamber.
Well it's like facebook pushing trump content and saying "well it's not us, it's the algorithm that decided". Same thing, I think it's to just put blame on something else, even if nobody sensible believes it.
One of the reasons for the adoption of the Hollerith Tabulator in the great 1890 Census - arguably the birth of computing in the United States - was the increasing concern about . . let's say ethnics. To be frank, there were too many of them. "Japanese," "Chinese," "Negro," "mulatto," "quadroon," "octoroon," "negrito", etc etc. So in 1890, we needed dozens of new categories, and the old methods simply would not work. At least in terms of usable - actionable[1] - data in a quantitative setting.
Its success was so marked that it was immediately decided in 1893 to move a Tabulator to Ellis Island, to count the ethnics from the source with Hollerith's new technology. Herman Hollerith had great success in his own lifetime, the technology eventually becoming the core of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, otherwise known, a decade later, as International Business Machines.
The establishment of this clear process surrounding race - actual race law - was, believe it or not, pretty novel in Western history. A lot of old-timey race policy - like the relationship between a monarch and the Jews, or what exactly a visiting Muslim could or couldn't do (like sell and buy slaves cough Venice cough) - this race stuff was almost always very, ah, what we'd call "tribal knowledge". A Jew in the Middle Ages could have far greater rights and lifestyle than in later periods, but those rights were completely unpredictable; this was true to greater or lesser extent for many "outsiders" in the early European era. Even in 1900 American innovation in race law - based on "Science!" - was a new thing, and extremely exciting to the enthusiasts of folk movements[2] crisscrossing our entire civilization[3] at the time. One of those was Willy Heidinger, who established Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft to produce license-built Hollerith machines. World events interceded, however, and the German civil service infrastructure to run a census would not be present until much later . . 1933, in fact, when things would get very spicy indeed in the world of race "science".
And then, of course, cataclysm: the end of the European Order.
On the European continent, a debt to truth was paid. A hundred million dead or maimed, nations wrecked, a whole world - a weltanschauung - burnt down to the foundations - below the foundations. But elsewhere - like in the New World - the lesson was not as stark. And in yet other places the inverse lesson was learned: once you determine a person is not a person, you must brutalize yourself and your population immediately, before the soon-to-be-unpeople realizes that the struggle is existential.
Let's wrap this up.
What 20th century Race Science/Race Law were trying to do was make sense of something as complicated as human culture but using the sciences they understood: 19th century statistics, the physics of iron and steam. Those were the sciences with the capital backing, so - of course! - those were the only science that mattered. Today, we're looking at another complex element of the human experience - human language, human consciousness - and again, we're looking at it through the science that's got the most capital backing it: computation. That's how "text" somehow, incredibly, came to contain "language". Or how "scarcity" was represented by "money" - as if there were any N-dimensional descriptions that could adequately vectorize either of those concepts.
Ultimately, when you really dig yourself into these sorts of artificial - if not downright dishonest - "science-y" establishments, when you start imposing them on the world, you don't break out of them easily. Or without damage. The people making use of your LLM widget do not understand the math - all they know, like the race science of previous centuries - is that it's Science-y. It might as well be wearing a Mitre and Crosier.
[1] What those actions were, is a subject for another post. Probably inside a soon-to-be-flagged topic.
[2] The American example in race law was also very exciting to a certain Mr. Adolf Hitler, as well. You can read all about it in Mein Kampf. Hitler's attitude towards America is really fascinating stuff, but an entirely other subject.
[3] And beyond! Ethnonationalism spread like fire, as colonized peoples realized this could be their big ticket towards peerage in the European age.
Just to make it clear: the firebombing of German cities full of civilians, and the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were gravely immoral. It doesn't matter if it had shortened the war or not (which is dubious anyhow). This is true even though the German state itself targeted civilians at a massive scale, and systematically destroyed entire cities along with its populace (most famously Warsaw). I'm going to assume that this is perfectly obvious to anyone with sufficient moral clarity (which rules out utilitarians).
> Everyone else is a civilian that can only be directly targeted when and for as long as they directly participate in hostilities, such as by taking up arms, planning military operations, laying down mines, etc.
There is some incredible magic that often happens: as soon as anyone is targeted and killed, they immediately transform from civilians to "collaborators", "terrorists", "militants" etc. Of course everything is classified and restricted to avoid anyone snooping around and asking questions.
We all know (if we stop and think) that a person can be both a teacher and a terrorist.
But according to media here almost every victim except top Hamas brass seems to be referred to by their whatever else they were besides terrorists and the terrorists (or even just soldier) part get hushed down.
It's contradictory to my understanding of what is happening.
By that, I mean, when the few remaining police left in Northern Gaza, who had reported to be critical to providing security for aid deliveries (and involved in coordination with Israel) where assassinated recently by Israel, and claimed as high ranking Hamas targets it pretty much cemented my opinion that nothing is true, or believable from Israel in this conflict.
How are you defining terrorist here as well? As other than the horrific events of October 7th, and the hostages from that day, the only visible acts of violence and terror associated with Palestine appear to be towards anyone Palestinian, journalists, aid workers and medical staff.
> How are you defining terrorist here as well? As other than the horrific events of October 7th, and the hostages from that day, the only visible acts of violence and terror associated with Palestine appear to be towards anyone Palestinian, journalists, aid workers and medical staff.
You can start with the large scale, multi year campaign of using MLRS ramps to shoot barrages of unguided rockets from Gaza and Lebanon into Israel.
That is indiscriminate - or even targeting civilians directly.
But because Israel has gone to extreme lengths to counter it there are few causalities these days and combined with medias extreme one-sidedness that means we don't even hear when they hit a hospital in Israel last year.
Cynically speaking, Iron Dome has been an expensive PR disaster for Israel, but that is what one get for caring about ones own citizens and not being allowed to just do counter battery fire until the enemy stops.
When people complain that disadvantaged people fighting asymmetrically
use "unguided missiles" it makes me think that we need to provide them
with the technology and means of production and infrastructure to shoot smart missiles instead.
That could in theory allow the asymmetris side to kill less civilians and
more military targets.
Would that make the whole situation better?
There would no longer be outrage that they use -unguided- missiles.
The unguided missiles that are used to today are of such poor quality
that they seldom hit anything. A majority are tracked by Irondome
but never targeted since the system predicts it wont do any harm
Properly targeted missiles would be far more likely to hit a target
unless Iron Dome manages to shoot it down.
In the end is it not the case that "unguided" missiles are an advantage
for IDF rather than a problem?
> As other than the horrific events of October 7th, and the hostages from that day, the only visible acts of violence and terror associated with Palestine appear to be towards anyone Palestinian
That's a wildly inaccurate statement. There has been continual rockets fired into Israel, as well fairly regular incidents of stabbings, shootings, etc.
Not intending to make any justification or moral comparison in either direction, but it is objectively untrue that violence/terror has only been in one direction post Oct 7th
Not sure what's the point of your last paragraph. Clearly there have been many documented visible "acts of violence" towards the IDF in Gaza. There have also been rockets fired from Gaza into Israel for weeks since Oct 7th and even in recent days. Plenty of "visible" acts of violence. By the way, Hamas also killed Palestinians they suspected of collaborating with Israel during this time.
Hamas Police is Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organization (e.g. where I live in Canada). I.e. everyone in Hamas is a terrorist, at least in Canada, the US, the EU, and I'm pretty sure in Israel. They earned that by indiscriminately attacking civilians and according to organizations like Amnesty International committing crimes against humanity.
Soldiers, even if they commit war crimes, are not generally labelled as terrorists. I know sucks to be a terrorist. They fight by different rules so they get different names (they wear uniforms etc.).
The palestinians have a right to violent resistance to the occupation. On the Gaza strip they're denied international relations and trade so they can only make very primitive military equipment, which means that to reach an effect at all they pretty much have to fire unguided rockets into Israel. When they tried non-violent protest against the occupation, the "March of Return", by demonstrating at the border they were systematically mutilated by the IDF.
There is an alternative, sure, prepare for a year and then invade Israel. Which they did, after decades of "mowing the lawn" as the israelis call it.
The terror organisation classification of Hamas isn't as much about the political party or its affiliated militia as manufactured consent to relations with Israel and traditions among colonial states. The modern 'West' usually calls its enemies terrorist, like it did during the Mau Mau uprising. This is why so few states agree with this classification.
You don't have to like Hamas but compared to the PA they're not very corrupt, and since they stopped doing suicide bombings they've been quite successful as a resistance movement. Since several years back they've also been quite good at unifying and coordinating the political parties and militias on the Gaza strip in preparation for and during periods of israeli military aggression, including with their main competitor in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, socialists from PFLP/DFLP/Fatah movement, Iran's Mujahideen movement and so on.
Hamas isn't just a political party with a militia, it's also a charity movement. To most people it seems weird to call people terrorists because they take care of their vulnerable neighbours and run soup kitchens and the like.
Nobody has the "right" to kill other people. That's not a right.
Gaza was not occupied, so they specifically didn't have the right you claim they had that doesn't even exist.
> On the Gaza strip they're denied international relations and trade.
This is also not true. When Israel left in 2005 they pretty much had control of their destiny. They chose to elect Hamas, that said its goal is to kill all Jews in the world. They chose to keep attacking Israel after Israel left. The full blockade on Gaza from the Israeli side was only imposed after Hamas came to power in 2007. Gaza still has a border with Egypt where they were free to negotiate any trade or relationships they felt like. Except the Egyptians didn't like them any better than Israel because they supported ISIS in Sinai.
> People keep saying “right to a violent resistance” but it’s not a thing
Your link says it is a thing:
“In international law, the right to resist is closely related to the principle of self-determination. It is widely recognized that a right to self-determination arises in situations of colonial domination, foreign occupation, and racist regimes that deny a segment of the population political participation. According to international law, states may not use force against the lawful exercise of self-determination, while those seeking self-determination may use military force if there is no other way to achieve their goals.”
> Gaza was not occupied,
Gaza was openly occupied until 2005, and after that Israel “disengaged” but still actively patrolled Gaza’s waters, maintained what was in effect a free fire zone on the Gaza side of the border (with declared entry rules and prohibitions within certain distances, but the shootings occurred both well beyond the declared distances and when civilians were complying with the declared conditions), and otherwise used military force to effectively dictate conditions inside Gaza.
Moreover, Palestine remains occupied whether or not the Gaza piece of it is.
Israel withdrawing its soldiers from Gaza doesn't mean that Gaza is not under occupation. There's no Palestinian soveriegn state. All of Palestinian lands and the entire Palestinian population are under occupation, and according to International law, the responsibility of the occupier, and have the right to resist.
I agree with almost all of this, but you lose me at "the right to resist". What, precisely, does that mean? The right to blockade roads in Gaza, to use force of arms to prevent IDF vehicles from entering Gaza? That makes sense. October 7th, though? Obviously not.
Nobody calls them terrorists because they run soup kitchens. People call them terrorists because they take children hostage and kill civilians. Destroying the Israel and killing its inhabitants is literally in their founding charter, and they act upon it whenever they get the chance. That is why they are terrorists.
No, they got the designation because they used suicide bombings in the nineties. But OK, so you'd call Israel a terrorist state then? And consider Israel the bigger problem due to the scale of their actions?
The Hamas charter is from 2017. Do you have any specific complaints about its contents?
There are dozens of sites collecting footage that Hamas itself put out during the attacks. There are hundreds of witness accounts. There are countless news articles from reputable news organizations corroborating all these accounts.
If you're honestly looking for the truth, it's not hard to realize what that it is.
> Thank you for posting this. Honestly, my social media bubble exposed me to exactly 0.5% of the videos on this site.
Those are just the tip of iceberg, unfortunately. A lot of the more disturbing stuff was censored to protect the families, but you can see journalists describing seeing a 47-minute compilation of... harder scenes.
> While I still think Israel is making the same mistake we did after 9/11, these videos help me feel a little of the vitriol fueling the IDF's actions.
Quite possibly. Though let me make something clear about my views - revenge is never ok, and doubly not ok if it's carried out against innocent Gazans.
Hamas invaded Israel and slaughtered civilians, and in addition effectively shut down the country by launching dozens of rocket attacks every day for weeks, and have promised to do it again if they remain in power. So removing them from power is morally and legally right. But revenge should never be the goal.
OK, so you remove Hamas and al-Qassam brigades. Now what?
Business as usual, for sure. PIJ would likely fill the vacuum, continue _their_ rocket attacks, and not be as restrictive and predictable as the al-Qassam brigades. Mujahideen brigades and DFLP:s and PFLP:s military wings would also fire some rocket salvos when they think it's appropriate, for example when people affiliated with them in the West Bank are arrested or harassed by Israel.
And you could go on, keep starving and bombing and on and on like Israel has done for more than a decade. Either you commit genocide or you endure the violent resistance or you make peace, and every time you 'mow the lawn' you raise the barrier to peace.
You obviously having been following this for more than six months, October 7th is where history starts for you. Very little in the footage on that web site is worse than what palestinians suffer more or less constantly, from the IDF and from settlers. Most palestinians in Palestine know someone who lost a toddler due to very treatable starvation or israeli gun violence or whatever.
> OK, so you remove Hamas and al-Qassam brigades. Now what?
If it were up to me - you help someone who wants peace fill the gap that Hamas left, you:
1. Make every effort to help Gaza recover. Directly as much as possible, and by getting the world involved.
2. Help a better government form in Gaza, one that actually cares about the people, about economic development, and that wants peace.
3. Work towards peace with whoever you can possibly find that is willing to talk peace.
> You obviously having been following this for more than six months, October 7th is where history starts for you.
That's ridiculous. I've lived in Israel for 30 years, do you really think I believe that "history started on October 7th?". In addition, you can find plenty of comments of mine where I am extremely critical of Israel's actions over the last 15-20 years, both in not pursuing peace, and in actively blocking peace in many ways. (I'm also fairly critical of the settler enterprise which goes back much further.)
> Very little in the footage on that web site is worse than what Palestinians suffer more or less constantly, from the IDF and from settlers.
Maybe if you only look at the specific video footage I sent. But in general, that's a pretty wrong statement. The majority of Palestinians, especially Gazans, never interact with the IDF, until the once-every-few-years back-and-forth between Hamas and Israel. And until October 7th, there wasn't any operation near its scale.
Palestinians aren't mass taken hostages, despite lots of rhetoric to the contrary. The IDF doesn't enter random civilian's homes and kill a grandmother they find, while live-streaming the slaughter on her own Facebook account for her friends and family to see. Etc.
I don't understand this constant desire to see everyone as equally bad here. You can think Israel does a lot of bad things (I certainly do) without having to think Hamas is equally bad.
> Honestly, my social media bubble exposed me to exactly 0.5% of the videos on this site.
Social media is cancer when it comes to delicate political conflicts and nothing exemplifies this more than the Israeli-Palestinian (formerly Israeli-Arab) war, where both "sides" get stuck in echo chambers. The roots of this conflict go back at least to the end of the 19th century (if you leave out the complex histories of the Jewish and Arab peoples before that) and both sides have legitimate grievances as well as their fair share of blame. For every claim that someone's going to make, somebody else can make a counter-claim.
OK, when I look under the "mass rape" tag there, it's just Amit Soussana, who says vague things like 'at one time a guard forced me to do a sexual thing'. The rest is people who probably suffered torture or could be just about anyone.
It also shows Hellfire-burnt bodies at Nova and seems to claim Hamas killed them.
Could you be more specific about what footage there is so important? I mean, there were obviously civilians who were killed by palestinians during that day, which isn't surprising or something I contest. But sites like that and the documentary I've seen, what they show isn't a lot, it's nothing like the torture and arbitrary detention and murder Israel has been engaged in for decades.
> Amit Soussana, who says vague things like 'at one time a guard forced me to do a sexual thing'.
What do you mean by vague? That's someone who was raped recounting her rape. That tag also includes other testimonies of witnesses who saw people being raped.
Other testimonies and videos there show the militants entering villages and shooting civilians.
Look at around the 1:10 mark, you can see some more examples. There's also this website, though I can't access it: https://saturday-october-seven.com/, so I'm not sure what it contains.
> I mean, there were obviously civilians who were killed by palestinians during that day, which isn't surprising or something I contest.
So what are you saying? 1,200 Israelis died that day. Hundreds who were at a music rave. Hundreds who were families in their homes in various villages. We have footage for some of these deaths, but obviously not all 1200, so even if I show you twenty videos, you can still say "well that's just a few". What exactly are you looking for?
There are hundreds of articles of journalists who got access to the 47-minute video compilation that is not publicly available, but contains far more material showing the various things Hamas did. E.g. this Tweet/video I randomly found by Chris Cuomo: https://twitter.com/ChrisCuomo/status/1735473602806399155?la...
Look, it's totally right to criticize Israel, but denying the many atrocities committed on October 7th is pretty indefensible. If you're engaged enough with this subject to discuss it in online forums to the extent you are doing, I don't think there's much I can say that you haven't seen, or that you can't find with fairly cursory searches. Thousands of mainstream media sources, of all political stripes, document exactly the same thing, and there's plenty of footage.
And for what it's worth, just talk with almost any Israeli, like me, and we can just tell you about the many people killed. Without doing any searching for it or anything, I can tell you I know about 8 people who lost loved ones, friends or family, on October 7th. It's just as anecdotal as seeing random video footage, I know, but I'm a real person who's been here on HN for many years.
Many of those 1200 or so were soldiers. If you think numbers are important it's probably 797 or so you'd want, but it's unclear how many of those were armed. It's very common in Israel to be carrying a rifle as a civilian. It's also unclear to what extent the IDF killed israelis. We can be quite sure almost no palestinians managed to return to the Gaza strip though.
And yeah, it's just a few compared to what Israel is doing. In July last year Israel killed kids in Jenin with airstrikes. Up until September almost fifty palestinian kids in the occupied territories were killed by Israel, as everyday routine.
I don't think the resistance groups in the Gaza strip ought to have killed as many civilians as they did, but I find it somewhat understandable. It would have been better if the perpetrators were prosecuted than Hellfire:d together with israelis, to the extent that it took weeks before genetic testing lowered the death toll by a couple of hundred because the corpses had at first been counted as israeli and blamed on "Hamas".
I'm not denying any atrocities, but I'm very sceptical until I've seen very strong evidence due to the large amount of lies and half-truths that have been circulated by Zaka, IDF and israeli politicians. There were just one baby killed in the kibbutzim, by crossfire. Much of the reporting about sexual abuse has turned out to be hearsay or straight up lying. The woman who said she had identified sperm from many palestinians just relayed some made up stuff she had heard about. And so on.
I think the reaction to the violence of October 7th should have been 'OK, maybe we should adhere to international law and seek peace' rather than 'finally, let's become the ten plagues, let's eradicate Amalek once and for all'. I'm well aware that this is a minority position in Israel, and it's not for me to judge israelis, but if October 7th justifies undermining women reporting about rape and starving two million people, what wasn't the palestinians justified in doing on October 7th?
Your response reminds me of back when Noam Chomsky was going around saying that Khmer Rouge cannot possibly as bad as Americans say they are, and most of it is probably a CIA psyop anyway.
(The fact that he was wrong was not, of course, a valid justification for what US did in Cambodia back then.)
Relevant here is the probable alternative reality that the Khmer Rouge very likely would not have taken control and become "as bad as Americans say" were it not for the United States-backed military dictatorship of Marshal Lon Nol that they fought against and the horrific tonnage of American bombing directed at them in support of that US dictatorship (that exceeded WWII bombing tonnages in Europe).
I'm not making a strong anti US statement here, more an observation about the behaviour of the post WWII US and former colonial powers in SE Asia and elsewhere and the lengths they went to retain control of former colonies rather than foster democracy and self determination.
A lot of bad policy was undertaken which seemed to all result in far worse outcomes from the pushback.
Chomsky was publishing on this after the "evacuation" of Phnom Penh, though - and claimed that it wasn't a mass murder. Which is why it reminds me of Hamas apologetics after 10/7 that claim that nothing particularly horrible happened on this day (in fact, in some far left circles that I hang out, people even seriously say things like "they were all colonizers and therefore combatants", "there were no civilians killed, it was all legitimate targets in a war of national liberation" etc).
As far as Israel in general and US foreign policy specifically with respect to it, I'm pro-BDS, now more strongly than ever. I just don't see why that should somehow translate to viewing Hamas as anything other than the murderous thugs that they are. It's not an either-or.
The people that executed the October attacks on civilians committed murder, just as any forces that kill children are also murderers.
The people that executed those October attacks swore fealty to the Hamas of 2023 and represent the Hamas of 2023.
That Hamas is very different to the barely elected Hamas of 2006 who were then the lesser of other evils and swore blind to the people that they sought peace with Israel.
The bulk of the people in Gaza did not elect the Hamas of 2006, nor support the Hamas of 2023, nor deserve to be starved and murdered.
Somewhere in both stories lie similar questions; what actions transformed the Khmer Rouge that opposed Norodom Sihanouk in 1970 into the Khmer Rouge of 1975 more aligned with Sihanouk and prepared to murder those that ousted Sihanouk, what actions transformed the Hamas of 2006 into that of 2023. Both stories prompt asking what justifies, if anything, the slaughter of tens of thousands.
I don't dispute that Israel has been doing the kind of stuff that has produced the likes of Hamas for a very long time now. Nor that what Israel is doing right now is well into war crimes & genocide territory, and should be treated as such- i.e. no military aid whatsoever, severe international sanctions, its leadership subject to arrest and trial if it sets foot into any civilized country, and ideally a UN-sanctioned military intervention in Gaza to stop the bombings, by shooting down Israeli planes if necessary.
That said, by 2006, Hamas already had a fairly long track record of killing "collaborators" and "deviants", as well as several clear-cut terrorist acts against civilians (e.g. blowing up bus stops). The radicalization happened a decade earlier.
You say you don't deny atrocities, but you keep making statements that seem to "excuse" Hamas or make it seem like they weren't specifically targeting civilians for slaughter. And I don't understand. It is incredibly well-documented that they did target civilians. Not just by "Israel", mind you - there are thousands of articles showing this. Thousands of reporters who saw a fuller atrocity video and explained just how awful some of those acts were.
It's fine to think Israel is bad to, but how can you possibly deny acts that are so well-documented, or seek to excuse them? I'll show what I mean by some examples:
> If you think numbers are important it's probably 797 [civilians] or so you'd want, but it's unclear how many of those were armed. It's very common in Israel to be carrying a rifle as a civilian.
You write "unclear how many were armed". What's the logic here? If someone in their city is armed, because they are afraid they'll be attacked in their homes, and then someone attacks them, you think the attacker is then able to say "oh well but they were armed, so I'm justified in killing them"? What is the relevance to whether civilians in their own homes are armed for protection, in deciding whether or not it's an act of murder/terrorism to kill them?
And btw, I'm fairly sure the hundreds that were slaughter in a night-time rave were not armed, except for probably some security for the party. (Well there was security with guns there, does that make it a legitimate target?)
> Many of those 1200 or so were soldiers.
Let's be clear. Killing soldiers is not automatically legal or moral either. Invading an army base - fine, legal (though obviously, an act of war!). But shooting unarmed soldiers (as happened) and not allowing soldiers to surrender after you've taken over the base - not moral and not legal.
Also, some of those "soldiers" are counted because they are off-duty soldiers, e.g. ones that were in their homes or in the Nova party. Yes, they are technically soldiers, but again, not legal to kill them either.
> It's also unclear to what extent the IDF killed israelis.
Unclear in the sense that we don't know a precise number, sure. And some were definitely (confirmed) killed by the IDF. But... it's clear that the number is tiny compared to the overall dead. So yes, you can say "unclear" and be accurate, but that's exactly the kind of motte-and-bailey argument that only serves to obscure Hamas's culpability.
And btw, anyone killed by the IDF by accident is still Hamas's fault, because they were the ones who put everyone in this situation! It can also be some IDF commander's fault, and they might have to answer to Israelis about it, but that doesn't mean it's not Hamas's fault for attacking a village!
> We can be quite sure almost no palestinians managed to return to the Gaza strip though.
Do you understand that 250 hostages were captured and taken to Gaza? Do you think they walked there by themselves? Thousands of Palestinians had to drag those hostages in to Gaza, and you can see the triumphant videos of them being dragged around the streets with cheering crowds. So no, "almost no" Palestinians managed to return doesn't pass even a cursory sniff test here.
> And yeah, it's just a few compared to what Israel is doing.
Compared to what Israel is doing now? Yes. Israel is stronger. If it gets invaded and has its citizens slaughtered, it is able to inflict far more damage in return. Such were all wars in history won (e.g. compare casualties in Germany/Japan vs the Allies during WW2).
Maybe it would make sense to condenm Hamas even more strongly, both because they did despicable acts on October 7th, and also because of the horrible situation they've put Gazans in. And let's remember, they built an entire array of tunnels to hide in and keep attacking Israel, while building zero protection for any Palestinian civilians. Kind of the opposite to what Israel has done by spending vast wealth on things like Iron Dome to protect its citizens (and btw, this also protects Gazans in some sense too - because absent Iron Dome, the IDF would've had to stop the rocket attacks with overwhelming military force many times in the past!)
> I don't think the resistance groups in the Gaza strip ought to have killed as many civilians as they did, but I find it somewhat understandable.
Clearly.
> It would have been better if the perpetrators were prosecuted than Hellfire:d together with israelis,
Most weren't hellfire:d, and definitely not together with Israelis.
And yes, I would've loved for them to be arrested too - which many were. But are you really suggesting that priority 1,2 and 3 wasn't to stop them by any means necessary, while they were running around inside of Israel for two days?
I'm against anybody dying, ever. But in such a situation, if an arrest can't be made, then obviously killing them before they kill more civilians is better than not.
> I'm not denying any atrocities, but I'm very sceptical until I've seen very strong evidence due to the large amount of lies and half-truths that have been circulated by Zaka, IDF and israeli politicians.
Great. Don't listen to Israeli politicians or the IDF or Zaka. (Which is a convenient way to discount most of the people with the relevant facts, sure.)
So just listen to the thousands of reporters, to the governments of the US, UK, Germany, etc, who've independently verified much, or just listen to the Israeli public. Israel is a democracy - its government doesn't usually get away with lying, but even more importantly, there's freedom of speech. It's not exactly hard to confirm the hundreds killed, there are literally interviews with thousands of witnesses to the murders that occurred on that day.
> Much of the reporting about sexual abuse has turned out to be hearsay or straight up lying.
There are many cases where witnesses saw acts of sexual violence performed on women that were then killed. There's an NYT article about it, there's a UN report about it, that all say the same things.
There are a few hostages who've described what is happening to the hostages in Gaza. And yes, they're being somewhat vague on the specific acts that occurred, because they don't want to upset the families of hostages or their own families even further. But claiming there's no evidence because a witness says "I was sexually assaulted" but doesn't describe the specific acts done on them is... disingenuous, to say the least.
> And so on.
Great. So your strategy is to take the many wild stories that came out, most of which circulated not by official Israeli sources, but some that were and were later retracted. Take those stories, disprove them, and then say "well that proves there's no way to believe anything".
And then discount the thousands of witnesses, articles, examinations etc that have been consistent and proven since day one.
You say things like that, or like this:
> to the extent that it took weeks before genetic testing lowered the death toll by a couple of hundred because the corpses had at first been counted as israeli and blamed on "Hamas".
With the often-implied idea that things being retracted or later proven false is proof that you can't trust these sources.
Except it's exactly the opposite! The fact that wrong stories are shown to be wrong, that the death count is lowered when more info is available, is exactly proof that Israel is a democracy that's working correctly and that the truth is uncovered!
Under autocracies, you never have retrospectives and leaders saying they made mistakes. It's just deny, deny, deny. And you look at that, and praise them for their consistency, thinking that that makes them more honest.
> I think the reaction to the violence of October 7th should have been 'OK, maybe we should adhere to international law and seek peace'.
Great. Let's forget about the immediate aftermath of October 7th, which demanded a resposne while Israel was literally being invaded and attacked.
What is step 1 of your plan to "adhere to international law and seek peace"? Is it perhaps removing all soldiers from the WB, dismantling all settlements there, pulling back to the original borders? How is that different from what happened in Gaza in 2005? Which led to rocket attacks and eventually to October 7th?
You seem to think if Israel would just unilaterally give Palestinians all of some unspecified things they want, suddenly they would be peaceful. All of the history of this conflict has shown the oposite to be true - when Israel seeks peace, more terrorism happens. When Israel pulled out of Gaza, it led to this mess.
I'm very pro-peace, I think Israel has acted immorally for 15 years at least in not pursuing peace, and that Netanyahu carries a lot of moral culpability in the situation we're now in. Second only to Hamas.
But being pro-peace doesn't mean you get to throw out all logic or pragmatism. Quite the opposite - you have to be extrmeely pragmatic to get peace, since it's so hard and so important. If your step one of a peace plan would immediately be followed by Israel being invaded and quite likely attacked catastrophically, then it's a stupid peace plan which will only result in the death of far more Israelis immediately, and Palestinians in the counter-attack.
So without vague platitudes like "adhere to international law", what specifically would you have Israel do right now, given the current situation, given that Hamas is in charge of Gaza and that they have promised to carry out attacks again and again, etc. What is your step 1 that doesn't get followed by "and then a massive war breaks out in which hundreds of thousands die"?
I gotta say it's been interesting finding online discourse that denies an atrocity that occurred only a few months ago. Never really paid attention when people talked about holocaust denial and denial of the Armenian genocide but now finding comments implying hamas did not torture, rape and murder their way across southern Israel when we have literal video footage of these savages enjoying their orgy of violence makes me understand those people a bit better.
The footage picked out for, I think, the #Nova documentary doesn't really corroborate that claim. In swedish it's called Massakern på musikfestivalen, I'm not sure which name it has internationally.
It shows some indiscriminate killing, for example throwing handgrenades into rocket shelters.
Soon after October 7th there was a lot of video material circulated, claimed to be from Israel but which was really cartel snuff and similar. If you have some material you are sure isn't in this category then I'd like to see it.
Don't be obtuse, there are many more forms of terrorism than suicide bombing. Israel should be more careful with the Palestinian population as a whole, but Hamas specifically have always been shitbags, are still shitbags and deserve every single shell coming their way.
Maybe there are, but the reason they got designated as a terrorist organisation by a rather small number of states were the suicide bombings in the nineties.
Sure, they might be shitbags, they're led by politicians after all. Have you considered sending the IDF a message and ask them to change their priorities and start aiming their shells mainly at al-Qassam brigade militants?
2016 was the last suicide bombing by Hamas. Keep in mind those didn't stop because Hamas changed. They stopped because Israel built walls around the West Bank and Gaza, many other security measures, and joint effort between the PA and Israel to stop these. While suicide bombing attacks were thwarted there have been many attacks against civilians through the years (something around 13 attacks in 2023 preceding Oct 7th) using assault rifles or vehicles e.g.
Hamas are terrorists, yes. But that doesn't mean you destroy them at all costs. It doesn't mean you can "mow the grass" in Gaza at such high civilian cost. And while destroying Israel is Hamas's stated goal, it's about as delusional as thinking the Jan. 6 rioters could have overthrown the US government. 30,000 Hamas fighting with crude weapons against the IDF, one of the most powerful and advanced armed forces in the world? Come on.
Hamas is armed with pretty fine weapons including the latest AKs you can't even get outside Russia, Dragonov sniper rifles, RPGs etc. The attackers on Oct 7th were very well equipped, comparable to most modern military's infantry. This story about how primitive their weapons are is at least partly a lie.
The environment they operate in neutralizes a lot of the IDF's advantages. Dense urban, many civilians, tunnels. You can't bring F-35s to bear if you have battles inside your own towns. It took the IDF about 3 days to recover from the initial attack including scenes like tanks firing into Israeli houses.
There are a lot of Israelis with military background that claim that the Oct 7th attack wasn't far from being an existential threat. Hamas was planning to connect with the west bank and also to proceed much farther into Israel than it managed to. There were some heroics e.g. from the police in stopping that on the roads leading out of the south. In combination with a land attack from Hezbollah in the north that could have been a scenario that has some probability of getting 10's or 100's of thousands of Israelis killed at the very least. It's hard to imagine but then Oct 7th was also hard to imagine.
I haven't seen any sniper rifle besides the al-Ghoul in their combat footage since October 7th. Neither in PIJ:s, PFLP:s, DFLP:s, Mujahideens Brigades, or in Intifada al-Fatahs or the People's Resistance Committees'.
Claiming that IDF infantry and the armed resistance groups in the Gaza strip are pretty much equal in equipment is just insane. It's, you know, not even wrong.
How long would it take to walk to the West Bank? Are you sure they planned to "connect with the West Bank"?
People can have different opinions on the way Israel is conducting this war. I know I am conflicted.
But Hamas is not a legitimate resistance movement. It is a fundamentalist, oppressive, terrorist regime. You do not stand to gain anything by associating with them.
I don't care whether they're considered legitimate or not, to me that's up to the palestinians to decide. Currently they're the most successful faction.
They've also shown a lot of ideological pragmatism compared to e.g. Hezbollah, and their main competitor on the Gaza strip is a splinter called Palestinian Islamic Jihad which considers Hamas too pragmatic, too invested in 'soft' projects like social or charity work. I'm not as sure that the alternatives are better.
> I don't care whether they're considered legitimate or not, to me that's up to the palestinians to decide. Currently they're the most successful faction.
Except they killed all opposition.
Someone will have to root them out like the German nazis, put the area under military occupation until they are ready to elect a new government - just like postwar Germany - and sadly that someone is Israel since no one else steps up.
I'd personally love if some other country told Israel to get lost, rooted out Hamas and administered Gaza until they were ready for elections.
> You don't have to like Hamas but compared to the PA they're not very corrupt,
If your society's two choices are a.) lots of corruption, and b.) less corruption but with terrorism, then you've pretty much shown that you're incapable of self-governance as a people.
> and since they stopped doing suicide bombings they've been quite successful as a resistance movement. Since several years back they've also been quite good at unifying and coordinating the political parties and militias on the Gaza strip in preparation for and during periods of israeli military aggression, including with their main competitor in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, socialists from PFLP/DFLP/Fatah movement, Iran's Mujahideen movement and so on.
Sounds like if Israel didn't exist, these guys would just be fighting against Fatah instead. Or fighting between themselves.
Yeah, possibly. In the West Bank militia groups have been fighting PA forces recently due to them harassing and killing militia men and generally assisting the IDF in the occupation. After the 2006 election the PA tried to oust Hamas from the Gaza strip and got violently expelled.
On the other hand, over the decades since 2006 Hamas has co-existed with lots of political movements in the Gaza strip and helped make sure their militias continued recruiting and exercising. It has been a politically repressive environment for sure, in large part because you can't survive as a political movement under occupation without developing a serious paranoia.
Has HN descended to such lows as to idealize Hamas now?
Hamas terrorizes Palestinians, threatening those who dissent with cutoffs from basic amenities and even certain death. All of the aforementioned militia have good reason to distrust PA, because PA is the recognized representative of the Palestinian people by every single country in the world. No country gives a shit about Hamas. When aid is delivered to WB or Gaza, it's delivered in the name of the PA, even if they have lost control over Gaza for so many years.
And why does Hamas oppose PA? Because their ideal government is one with roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a designated terrorist organization in the West as well as every surrounding country in the Middle East.
One could argue that Hamas is the rightful representative of the Palestinian people. But is it really? Elections held in Palestine are often a sham affair, with threats and coercion abound. But even if they won with a resounding majority, the fact that Palestinians en masse chose to elect an organization that cuts their water supply to make rockets from pipes says a lot more about the kind of people Palestinians are, and why they shouldn't be supported too much (something which every Arab neighbour of theirs has figured out pretty much).
It's unclear what you mean by dissent. Before October 7th dissent was likely the majority political position in the Gaza strip, they weren't very popular. Suspected collaboration with the occupier or its affiliates has been dealt with harshly for sure, and to some extent this has hurt LGBTQ persons specifically since Israel likes to identify them and pressure them to become collaborators.
Hamas opposes the PA because they are collaborating with the occupier. The ikhwan movement is feared by regional dictatorships because it is relatively egalitarian, hence they designate them as a terrorist organisation. It's been decades since they stopped using political violence, IIRC they did before Hamas began using it.
Elections aren't often held in Palestine, so they can't often be anything at all. Abbas knows he'd be ousted if he called elections, so he won't. His buddies in Israel and the US also prefer that he stays in power, so they won't pressure him to call for elections either.
As for aid, it goes through Israel rather than the PA. Same goes for money, the palestinians aren't allowed to have their own currency or financial system. Israel enjoys having the ability to refuse to pay out taxes they collect, for example.
Israel routinely cuts water supply to the Gaza strip, and in the West Bank it forbids palestinians to collect rain water through a rather nasty bureaucratic regulation while at the same time destroying or stealing wells. Under such conditions it's somewhat reasonable to use infrastructure to try to get rid of the occupier, don't you think? What would you do?
> Under such conditions it's somewhat reasonable to use infrastructure to try to get rid of the occupier, don't you think? What would you do?
Probably recognize that 30 years of violent resistance only ever ends up harming me more, and strive to elect leaders that will opt for trying a truly peaceful approach. Instead of starting wars every few years with a far more powerful neighboring country, maybe... not starting such wars is a better idea.
Abbas refuses to call elections and Hamas was trying to get in the PLO.
Hamas drove out the israelis from the Gaza strip, that's generally considered a success among palestinians and something many palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem wishes they had too.
When another country occupies yours, then it's not you that's starting a war when you attack them.
For the sake of other people who might run across your comments, the West Bank that Israel now occupies was captured during the Six-Day war from Jordan, who had previously illegally annexed it.
> that's generally considered a success among palestinians
Success narratives exist on both sides. From an Israeli perspective, peace talks with the Palestinians never went anywhere (unlike with Egypt, btw) - yet, whenever Israel went to war, it won. So it's not hard to understand why the mainstream Israeli stance has increasingly hardened. I fundamentally disagree with this, I think peace should be attempted over and over again until it works, but if you're going to apply realpolitik thinking to the Palestinian side, you ought to do the same for the Israelis.
- dealt with harshly -> torture and summary executions. Tied with a rope to a car and dragged through the streets. Thrown from a rooftop of a tall building. That sort of stuff.
- "Suspected collaboration with the occupier" -> being associated with the Fatah, PA, or just not doing what Hamas orders you to do in any civil or other matter. Basically any person that crosses Hamas members in any way. Think Mexican drug cartels hanging journalists from bridges and you won't be far off.
- occupation -> the existence of the state of Israel in any borders. occupier -> Israel.
- Gaza's occupation -> The blockade Israel imposed after Hamas took over Gaza by force and started launching attacks at Israel from Gaza. Please ignore the border with Egypt or Egypt's control over the Egyptian half of Rafah. Egypt doesn't exist. Waiting for the Muslim Brotherhood to take over there but in the meantime let's support ISIS in Sinai since an enemies enemy is my friend.
- "Israel routinely cuts water supply to the Gaza strip" -> Israel supplies water, food, electricity to what is essentially an enemy state that attacks it continuously. Gaza has its own power station, it has a desalination plant, it has wells, and it can also get all these things from Egypt or use the international aid money it's getting towards becoming more independent. Nah- let's dig tunnels and build rockets. Think Ukraine supplying Russia with water, food and electricity. Or South Korea supplying North Korea.
You are right that Hamas would win an election. Even more so after Oct 7th. The Pro-Palestinian crowd does its best to pretend it ain't so. They artificially separate Hamas, who the Palestinians want to represent them, from the Palestinians. Palestinians are peace loving people that need to be protected at all costs and the Hamas are people from another planet that just happened to have landed in the midst. There hasn't been an elections since 2006 so Hamas is not the legitimate government of Gaza and so we can't treat the Gazans as a side to this war. Even Israel says the same thing, our war is not with the "Palestinians" our war is with Hamas.
Yeah, sure. What would you expect? Israel tortures, maims and kills to pressure palestinians, how would you compete with that if you were a politician in the Gaza strip? At least there's a kind of brutality forced upon them that explains it, unlike US allies in the region, like the house of Saud, that doesn't have to publicly execute people but does anyway. Who, by the way, are ambigous about the palestinian issue because they suspect that Hamas is too egalitarian, too democratic, to warrant their support.
If they were that bloodthirsty, how come they haven't killed more in their own population? How come they weren't ousted by the local population?
Israel controls the means for sustaining life in the Gaza strip and uses that power arbitrarily, that's occupation. If you treat a couple of million people that way they will for sure try to hurt you badly. And it's not weird that they do, it's not surprising or savage, it's rather very reasonable to do. You would too.
Who are you quoting? Sinwar is popular because he successfully organises resistance towards the occupation and apparently doesn't do it to enrich himself.
Russia had reasons, but I don't think they were particularly good reasons or enough to warrant the invasion.
What means do you think would be justified for Ukranian resistance? Would launching rockets at civilian quarters in Russia be OK? Or stabbing ordinary Russians in public transport? Is shooting at cars indiscriminately OK? At what point you think the western countries would consider withdrawing their support?
You have an interesting opinion of "successful resistance". What happens in the West Bank and Gaza is really difficult to call "success" for Palestinians. Can you elaborate what you meant with "successful"?
Happy to hear you don’t think rape and hostage taking are legitimate resistance. To follow up on this point – you believe Hamas didn’t do that? Or how do you simultaneously call them "charity resistance org" and disapprove of the extreme violence?
Not sure what you're getting at. Contemporary stabbings in Jerusalem and the West Bank are mainly aimed at soldiers, same goes for shootings. There are exceptions, but doesn't seem very common.
I'm not following the conflict in Ukraine as closely but aren't there militia factions there attacking into Russia?
Hamas has been relatively successful, more successful than their competitors. What success in some universal sense would look like, I don't know. Currently Israel has pretty big problems though so it seems kinda successful in some general sense?
What do you mean by "extreme violence"? Reading this I get flashbacks to photos of people run over by israeli tanks and the kid who in november last year filmed himself when experiencing a lack of drones for the first time, so I think that's the kind of violence that has made the strongest impression on me from the last six months or so. Impulsively throwing handgrenades at people in a shelter is gruesome, but it lacks the calculation and sadism of running someone over with a tank and turning them into mush, or forcing kids to grow up under the constant hum of weaponised drones.
As far as hostage taking and 'legitimacy', it's hard to come up with alternatives. Israel routinely takes palestinian kids off the street in occupied territories and put them in military detention centers, commonly abuses or tortures them, and keeps prisoners indefinitely on weak or non-existent grounds. To force Israel to release prisoners through other means than hostage exchange would likely require quite a bit more violence, and I'm not so sure that is preferable.
I didn't call Hamas a charity organisation, I mentioned that they also do social and charity work. Which they do, and that's how they started.
It's very common in the area to hand out sweets to other people.
Where can I read about the toddler case and "slashed throats of elderly"? It's somewhat understandable though, almost every palestinian knows about a toddler killed by the occupation, a grandparent killed by the occupation, a family deprived of their home and land on some flimsy justification, and so on. That some of them lash out at anyone should be expected, people tend to become abusive from abuse.
Yes, some palestinians see the conscription as something that makes every israeli guilty in the occupation. Some israeli jewish leftists have a similar view, they see israelis that don't engage themselves politically against the occupation as part of it. Still, as far as I can gather, most of the militant activity in the West Bank and Jerusalem seems to be aimed at soldiers in service at the moment. In Israel there has been some attacks with cars, where at least one, I think in Haifa, hurt civilians.
Still, nothing that compares to deliberately and proudly starving a couple of million people.
Controlling the borders, airspace, communications, finances and so on amounts to occupation.
Israel does not have "equal civil rights for every citizen". It's not just about palestinians being discriminated against, but also LGBTQ-persons and women. You know that Israel does not allow same-sex marriages, right? If you're gay and want to get married you have to travel abroad. A lot of things are done in religious courts, and some of them have weird powers, like being able to decide that a dead soldier's sperm can be harvested.
It's not "a few". I didn't mention carpet bombing. Israel kills about 75-200 palestinians in the Gaza strip per day over the last month or two, most in bombings of people who are sleeping in their homes with their families. Many while they are out looking for food, or helping with food distribution. Israel is habitually deceptive or straight out lies about its behaviour in the Gaza strip.
If sensible is an ideal to you, how do you explain Israel's incessant attempts to escalate against much stronger foes than the palestinian militias? The IDF is already in trouble against people in flipflops carrying RPG:s, why are they seeking conflict with forces that are equipped with targeted munitions, air force and the like? Why are they killing UNIFIL personnel? Is it sensible to kill US citizens in the Gaza strip?
And if "media and others" bother you, shut them out? I see some embarrassing haiku headlines in passive voice from NYT sometimes, but it isn't more than I can handle because I keep my exposure to bourgeois and imperial mass media to a minimum. I think Eylon Levy got fired and started his own media bureau, maybe you could watch only that for a while and then pick some of his favourite tropes and try to fact check them for a bit of 'reality check'?
> Georgia, the Baltic states, and Ukraine have all been drafted into an American campaign to surround Russia
None of this is true. The US government has for decades preferred to accomodate Russia at the expense of the security of their neighbors and chose to ignore imperialistic ambitions of Russia until the position became untenable. Even now, when Russia has launched the largest war in Europe since Hitler invaded Poland, the US is withholding military aid out of misguided hope that Putin will take the exit ramp that the Americans are offering. But Russia does not have a Khrushchev, instead they have a Hitler-like debiloid who keeps doubling down on a mistake of historic proportions.
If Russia became a normal functional European country instead of being an expansionist dictatorship, my country wouldn't even need a military because Russia is the sole reason why that exists at all. The fact that everyone bordering Russia are arming up is the result of Russian abusive behavior towards its neighbors in the past and in the present. If you go around looting homes, then don't get offended when people start setting up fences and security cameras - or as you'd call it, a vast anglo-american conspiracy to encircle honest thieves.
> Remember the Cuban missile crisis? How the US panicked over Russian presence in Cuba? There's an analogy here.
There is no analogy here. Europe had been rapidly and unilaterally demilitarizing until 2014, whereas Russia moved nuclear weapons nearer and nearer to Europe, recently installing them into the unstable dictatorship in Belarus. Russia just announced that they will be forming two new armies, larger than the ground forces of UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other European countries COMBINED. Instead of responding to a threat (as their propaganda tries to depict), Russia is exploiting the historic weakness of European countries that have tried to build mutually beneficial relations with Russia over the past few decades instead of maintaining Cold War confrontation.
A much better analogy are the naive attempts to seek peace with Hitler in 1938 and 1939, believing that surely Hitler will stop at Poland, and the incredible discussions at the time whether it's ethical to bomb military infrastructure in Germany in response to the invasion of Poland or if the risk of damage to private property is be too large. Kicking the can down the road meant that four years later, allied air forces were carpet bombing German cities day and night without any disregard for such trivialities. Is that what you want, B-52s over Moscow?
European countries that had such relations with Russia now have them with Azerbaijan instead, as a proxy. Could for example look at trade in automobiles, or fossil gas.
Are you suggesting that palestinian militants routinely use sexual abuse?
If so, how come the reports from released hostages are so vague about it? Why would any media give credence to stories from Zaka-affiliated individuals if there were decent primary sources that didn't have financial incentives to make stuff up?
And if you have a problem with sexualised abuse, I take it you react negatively to the IDF undressing people and forcing them to participate in propaganda videos or parading them in humiliating and degrading ways?
What are the documented, visible acts of violence towards the IDF this year? I'm not questioning there haven't been any but it's difficult to imagine a more aggressive, punitive force at present. Everything I hear about them is them being the aggressor/instigator and in a high level of cases executioner.
On the execution of civilian police I don't find it acceptable to label civilians as you want and then execute them. Those are obvious war crimes. In the case I'm talking about the group of police were some of the last able to assist aid getting through and had been doing that in coordination with the IDF.
I find the reporting we get (UK) very IDF/Israel based, with no real perspective from Palestinians, but still it's clear that the deaths and suffering in the current conflict day to day are pretty much all a result of Israel's deliberate actions. It's not excusable what is happening.
Does it matter what you are called if you are deliberately committing war crimes?
If nothing else what will Israel be like as a place to live in with so many people who have deliberately and consciously decided to kill, starve, maime and persecute so many others? How will Palestine and Israel ever recover?
The resistance groups in Palestine publish videos of their operations pretty much daily, and the bigger ones publish text messages about their operations and political commentary several times daily.
If you follow their communications you'll see a lot of sniping, light artillery and RPG:d vehicles.
The mainstream israeli position is to hurry up and get it over with, there are daily protests demanding a change in government to one that, unlike Netanyahu who is perceived to use the military campaign to stay in office and avoid prosecution for corruption, would make a quick prisoner deal and then end the palestinian resistance as soon as possible.
Edit: And if you want to take a look at how IDF/Israel presents itself you'd look for soldiers on TikTok (preferred by israelis) or Facebook (preferred by foreign fighters), and Telegram channels like dead_terrorists. You'll notice some pretty stark differences.
Should probably also mention that you'll come across very NSFW, quite traumatising material.
The person you're debating with is not interested in genuine debate. Look at their profile - it's an alt account for their religious dogma they're too embarrassed to associate with their public persona.
That is backed by them refusing to answer you with specific examples, engaging in a gish-gallop instead.
Trying my best to assume this comment in good faith... Low compared to what? For reference, in the recent war in Ukraine (post 2022), there have been approximately 11,000 Ukrainian civilians killed and approximately 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed [1].
Not to get into the debate about that other war, but there have almost certainly been many more Ukrainian civilians killed than the 11 000 formally confirmed deaths. That's just the number that can be properly verified, mostly in Ukrainian-held territory, and nobody is entirely certain how many have died in the Russian-occupied regions. Ukraine claims a much larger number have died, including more than 25 000 in Mariupol alone, for instance, but that can't be independently verified because it's still Russian-held.
This is at least as true in Gaza too is it not? And over a much shorter time frame, with a significantly smaller population.
The expectation is that there are at a minimum 15/20% dead under the bombed and decimated buildings. It could well be much, much higher, even double, or triple is not infeasible, given the large scale untargeted bombing, population dispersement and recognised IDF tactics that don't allow for groups to even consider searching and rescue operations in most cases but leave possible survivors buried under the rubble to die slowly and horribly.
The current numbers are just not even close to verifiable given the circumstances, but are statistically clearly far worse in terms of civilians on all measures.
One significant difference is that Ukrainian authorities goes really far to evacuate civilians while Hamas goes really far to prevent civilians from evacuating.
Earlier it has been said that based on previous reporting from previous incidents we can roughly trust the total numbers Hamas release evem if they are obviously wrong in that they claim every death to be an innocent civilian.
And if they could, why would they help Israel displace the palestinian population from palestinian territory?
The only resistance groups in the Gaza strip that might have militia units for women that I know about are PFLP and DFLP, and I forgot which one I've seen a video of militia women from. They are probably very small and not deployed at the moment. This means that kids and women aren't in the 'brigades', and that a majority of killed palestinians are "civilian" for sure.
Israel claims that every male they kill is a combatant, and israeli pundits and politicians routinely equate terrorist and palestinian and say things like 'there are no innocent civilians in the Gaza strip'. Neither is true, many they kill are elderly or obviously unaffiliated with the 'brigades'.
Of course, this is irrelevant, since Israel is starving the entire population of the Gaza strip and kills or maims pretty much anyone they see in the areas where they operate, sometimes even other IDF soldiers or hostages.
All reporting I've seen has made it clear that any movement of population in Gaza has been subject to IDF and more broadly Israeli control.
Every reported case I have seen appears to have been demanded by Israel, and the Palestinians have had no choice in it.
I'm not sure we're you think Hamas are involved in this at all?
It's all been forced displacements by Israel. And none of it has been willing. Where people have stayed and not moved often they have died, even with not the slightest involvement with Hamas.
Addressing your second paragraph:
Not quite sure if your point, but the numbers of deaths/casualties are broadly (my interpretation) seen as being as accurate as are available, and likely to be a significant undercount of the real number.
I have to say the continual questioning of, what by a number of significant indicators, looks to be an undercount of the total number of people deliberately killed by Israel, in such a short period is appalling.
It's highly likely that when we say 30,000 it's a wrong figure because it's 40,000 Israel deliberately killed.
If it's wrong and it's only 20,000 Israel killed it doesn't matter. They should still stop the killing.
Not saying it isn't, and I wasn't trying to make a comparison between the two conflicts. Only pointing out the inaccuracy of the quoted Ukrainian numbers.
Also Ukraine is a large country, civilians who were not drafted have mostly evacuated westward, and Poland and other countries have taken in other countless Ukrainian refugees. Meanwhile, Egypt has built barbed wire fences to prevent Palestinians from crossing the border and taking refuge there. And no other countries are presently accepting large numbers of Palestinian refugees at all.
The barbed wire fences were equally built by Israel, are they not? Israel definitely controls that border.
The current geopolitical outcome of Egypt accepting large numbers of Palestinian is that Israel does what it is doing now to Palestine, to Egypt at some point in the future.
Sadly, whoever takes the fleeing will likely have tremendous headaches in the future -to their own government- because of the people.
Jordan took a large number in the past and they were terrible guests -attempting to overthrow the sovereign government- and got expelled. Black September left a very bad taste in nearly everyone’s mouth. Governments friendly towards Palestine are very much against physically taking them after those events
I think the Egyptian fence has been built by Egyptians.
That border is even more tightly controlled than the Israeli one AFAIK.
Also, some useful conext:
The Israeli border wasn't always like today. It has been progressively tightened step by step as nutjobs on the Arab side used whatever leeway they had to stage suicide attacks and smuggle in rocket parts.
That response is just random propaganda. Can you provide some actual verifiable facts please, or at the very least, something based on your experience and insight?
Egypt currently definitely is, other than in very individual cases.
From Google:
=================
Egypt, however, has warned against an influx of refugees. It facilitates humanitarian aid into Gaza, but has said a mass exodus of Palestinians out of Gaza into Egypt is a red line, saying it fears Israel might never let the Palestinians go back.
=====================
And Egypts real fear is that the Palestinians in Egypt will try to take back Palestine. Which wouldn't be very good for Egypt and engage them in a war with Israel.
Usually you would compare it to other instances of urban combat.
E.g. you might compare it to ukrainian battles that took place in cities, but you wouldn't compare it to ukrainian battles that took place in the middle of nowhere where no civilians were.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio has some things to compare against. Part of the problem is it is often hard to identify who is a civilian, and often different battles will categorize them differently. For example, in the iraq war us was accused of significantly undercounting civilian casualties. All this makes it hard to do direct comparisons.
A similar anti-terrorist war featuring large amounts of urban conflict, eg Iraq (3:1) or Afghanistan (4:1.1) — since much of Ukraine is designated armies across open fields.
That article appears to state that the use of human shields by Hamas is not true and fabricated by Israel.
It's not a term I've seen any real evidence for. If anything the opposite is true according to the linked and Guardian article. Israel is pursuing a policy of killing suspected members of Hamas in their family home/building when they are not engaged in warfare, using dumb bombs that guarantee there will be significant civilian casualties, likely in the low to high 10's and possibly higher.
How would that work? Is the IDF somehow forced to kill civilians? If so, how come the palestinian resistance groups aren't and considered accountable for it?
Since we're quoting might as well: "Under the cover of thousands of rockets fired from Gaza, they killed indiscriminately in streets, houses, kibbutz communities and at a rave music festival.
It took more than three days of heavy fighting for the Israeli army to regain control, and left the country deeply traumatised by violence unseen since the country's formation in 1948.
Police are still working to assess the scale of the sexual violence that was reported alongside the killings."
So even if the ratio is slightly lower (also debatable whether every death they count as “combatant” is accurate), this makes a fundamental difference in terms of IDF’s behavior compared to that of who they designate as “terrorists”?
When the US fights a war we get drones bombing weddings, private mercenaries gunning down civilians in the streets of Baghdad etc. Armies engage in a very brutal practice called war which is different than the more brutal practice we tend to call terrorism. During most wars any western army fights (or really any army) there are usually many incidents one might call war crimes. Now in a post-truth world where words have no meaning you can call anyone anything you want.
When the US went to war after 9/11 what do you think its casualty rate was overall (even ignoring the fact that it didn't fight under similar conditions)? How many children did the US kill (by the way the US considered every male >14yo to be a combatant AFAIK)?
46,319 civilian casualties. I think a guess of 50% under 18yo is probably not off the mark. Some claims this number is under-reported.
52,893 "taliban insurgents killed". I'll bet a fair amount of those also under 18yo.
2,400 ISIL-K.
There are a lot of differences between these wars. Gaza is much denser. The US was under no time pressure and wasn't getting e.g. continuous rocket barrages falling on it.
The IDF in general does not intentionally target civilians. It targets military targets. It might be very loose or too loose in this targeting and in this conflict but it still does as a rule. The Hamas on the other hand does intentionally target civilians and engages in other activities like mutilation and rape. It also uses civilians as shields and intentionally embeds in civilian environments for cover. There's also the little matter of who started the war.
So if you want to designate all military as terrorists then we'll have to find a different word for terrorists.
> Armies engage in a very brutal practice called war which is different than the more brutal practice we tend to call terrorism.
35000 dead, almost 2 million homeless and starving, ~10000 more buried under rubble and ~10000 taken prisoner is somehow less brutal in your eyes than
~1500 dead and several villages deserted, 10000s of thousands homeless, and 200 taken prisoner?
You and I have different definitions of brutality, so afraid I’m this discussion is at its end.
The “biased” video I posted is simply a recording of an interview of a survivor of the kibbutz on an Israeli talk show. Do you have any substantive critique of the video, besides just lazily dismissing it as biased?
You can find interviews with commanders and soldiers about it on israeli television as well.
If you watch footage from Nova you'll see large patches of obvious damage from Hellfire missiles, and footage from kibbutzes commonly show damage way beyond what you'd expect from handgrenades or RPG:s.
I don't know about the "Israeli Zionist European settler Jews", but a plurality of all Israeli Jewish people are indigenous to MENA, so summing the population up that way is a little bit racist. I may be misreading you, though.
I believe the poster above was referring to the biggest representatives of the extremist minority of Israel who are cheering this conflict on in those terms. Not all of Israel is pro-genocide, but those that are are more likely than not to be in that group.
Ironically: the extremist minority in Israel is probably more likely to be of MENA origin, not less. Ben Gvir is from Iraq, for instance. The Mizrahim are generally more conservative, and the Ashkenazim are generally more liberal.
You keep referring to "indigenous" Palestinians and implying that Israelis are themselves interlopers. That simply isn't true. The fact that Netanyahu is Ashkenazi doesn't erase the ethnic identity of the plurality of Israeli Jewish people who are from the region, and for whom Israel is --- like the Palestinians --- their only real home.
A lot of ugly stuff is certainly said by right-wing Israelis (who are, generally speaking, more likely to be indigenous than the left-leaning Ashkenazim). But there's also a great deal of erasure of hostile Palestinian advocacy in your summary as well.
These discussions would be simpler if we could keep focus on the actual misdeeds of the Netanyahu administration, and stop trying to generalize problems out to Israel as a whole. It's not that it's impossible to make such an argument, but as you can see from your comment, those arguments are treacherously difficult to construct reliably without leaving gross, obvious, and sometimes even overtly racist generalizations in them. If you want to condemn the entirety of Israeli society, you aren't putting enough effort into your comments to do so here.
At the end of the day, I don't think it's worth it to try to litigate that kind of question. We're not going to resolve Israel vs. Palestine in an HN thread. But if you must try, the guidelines ask you to try harder than that.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
> the plurality of Israeli Jewish people who are from the region, and for whom Israel is --- like the Palestinians --- their only real home.
All but a tiny population of pre-existing Jews in historic Palestine are settler colonialists living in territory violently ethnically cleansed of the indigenous Palestinian population to make way for Jewish settlers.
If Israel is ever forced to abide by international humanitarian law, or through boycott divestment and sanctions, Israel is forced to become an actual democracy where Palestinians are treated as human, first class citizens-- either will lead to Palestinians being able to exercise their UN mandated right of return. With the changing demographics many Ashkenazi will likely leave voluntarily back to Europe/US-- many not only have another place they call home, they retain dual citizenship.
There will likely be a turbulent period with terrorist attacks by Jewish extremists. Palestinians who lost their families to Jewish violence may also engage in revenge attacks. There may also be terrorist attacks by (American/European) Christian Zionists in a last ditch attempt to start the war in the region, that they dream of. But, under Muslim Ottoman rule, people of all religions in Palestine, including Jews, lived mostly peacefully together, so it is possible that they can again. We also have the S. African example-- many of the white European settler colonialist Afrikaners remained citizens of a free S. Africa, but they no longer rule / oppress the indigenous population.
> stop trying to generalize problems out to Israel as a whole.
95% of Israeli Jews support the current genocidal massacre of Gaza. This _is_ Israeli Jews as. a. whole. Another poll showed 80% of Israeli Jews didn't think the genocidal bombing was enough, they wanted greater destruction i.e., greater death-toll.
You seem to think history of the atrocities by the settler colonialist Jews of Israel began with Netanyahu. The Jewish Zionist atrocities began prior to the founding of Israel. There has never been a period in Israel's history when they did not engage in atrocities against the indigenous population.
Netanyahu is a monstrous man, but if he were to be replaced today, his replacement would likely be just as bad, or worse. Israel is a sick society overtaken by blood lust (similar [but worse] to the US after 9/11 blow-back for US atrocities in the middle east [including support for Israel and their atrocities]).
I was unable to locate the study, but a professor of Middle East Studies (in an interview) mentioned a study conducted in Israel which found that those (Ashkenazi Jews) who experienced the Nazi concentration/death camps were more likely to be more aggressive and ruthless toward Palestinians than other Israelis.
Interestingly, Israeli society was also crueler to Jews who experienced Nazi concentration camps. These people were looked down upon as weak. No idea if this dynamic factored into the cruelty these concentration camp survivors exhibited toward the Palestinians.
We disagree, but Israeli polls, Israeli social media posts, Israeli leadership's public statements, and most importantly, Israeli actions, support my statements. Israeli Jewish society, as a whole (including Kibbutzniks living in a kibbutz on stolen land), is responsible for ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide, with extra responsibility to Ahskenazi without whom there would be no Zionist settler colonial project of Israel on Palestinian land.
> erasure of hostile Palestinian advocacy
An occupied, oppressed people, even if they were not experiencing a genocide at the hands of their oppressors have a right to defend themselves both morally, and under international law.
> overtly racist generalizations
I'm sorry that you perceive things that way. It is not my intent. I've been bending over backward to attempt to separate the genocidal monsters in Israel and their supporters, from Jews in general-- non-Jewish supremacist non-Zionist Jews are some of the strongest voices against Israeli atrocities and least likely to be forcibly silenced (but, I recall, in the US, every Muslim [I am not one] being forced to declare how evil the 9/11 attackers were, and I want to see the same with American Jews calling out the genocidal apartheid regime of Israel [or, at least, admit that they too are genocidal racist monsters]). I am also not willing to pretend that Zionism isn't a European creation. Nor that the genocidal monsters in Israel are not Zionist Jews-- recent settlers on stolen Palestinian land. The latter is important, as it is, in one sentence, what the entire "middle east conflict" is about.
I would speak just as vehemently about the German Christian Nazis committing genocide against Romani and Jews of Europe. I just don't think Israeli Jews should get a pass on genocide and other crimes against humanity, just because someone else committed similar atrocities against the ancestors of some of them. And, it infuriates me that within discourse in the US and W. Europe, it is considered "antisemitic" or "racist" to criticize a murderous, racist, apartheid, genocidal, settler colonialist regime just because the oppressors and perpetrators of violence are Jewish. Imagine if criticism of Nazi Germany was instantly shut down by people claiming racism against Christians.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
You mainly have simply repeated yourself in your comment. (I am guilty of this to some extent too [necessarily so, otherwise is to concede that Israel has a right to ethnically cleanse, engage in genocide, etc., which I vehemently do not believe], but I hope you will see some of my comment as substantive content as well)
All but a tiny population of pre-existing Jews in historic Palestine are settler colonialists living in territory violently ethnically cleansed of the indigenous Palestinian population to make way for Jewish settlers.
This isn't just false, it's luridly, categorically false. A plurality of Jewish Israeli citizens are of MENA origin --- from Morocco, Yemen, Iraq, Ethiopia, and other countries in the region. They're the "Mizrahim", they're a huge chunk of the population, Israel is literally their only homeland, and they tend to be more right-wing than the "settler-colonialist" Ashkenazim, who tend towards the left.
> from Morocco, Yemen, Iraq, Ethiopia, and other countries in the region.
So, you agree with me. These are Jewish settlers from OUTSIDE Palestine. These followed after the initial European Jews had already engaged in violent ethnic cleansing.
When the English directed their colonialism against Ireland, the settlers were "from the region", but still settler colonialists.
This is what happened to the Palestinian _survivors_ of the original Nakba (violent ethnic cleansing of Palestine to make way for Jewish settlers):
Zionist Jews poisoned wells, planted bombs/threw grenades into bus stops and shopping centers, mortared Palestinian villages, etc. to mass kill Palestinian civilians and "encourage" them to flee.
What Israel is doing is putting Jews, Zionist or not, in danger everywhere, as many see the people of "The Jewish State" as committing genocide, and the Zionists are doing their best to conflate Zionism and Israel with all Jews (criticism of Israel is "antisemitic").
Outside the US and parts of the EU (especially Germany) news outlets are actually reporting on the genocide-- In the US, CNN even sends all their Israel stories, to Israel to be censored to ensure the "proper" narrative on the Israeli genocide and other atrocities i.e., Americans never hear about them.
E.g., did you see images of the row of Palestinians lined up, face down, on the ground, hands zip-tied behind their backs, then run over by a truck, crushing them-- on your US news broadcasts (or German)? Someone, anywhere in the rest of the world might have. The Israelis are committing monstrous acts for most of the world to see, while claiming that they represent all Jews.
I'm curious, why do you defend them? "Never again" should mean Never again for anyone.
Your apparent claim that poor rural Moroccan and Yemeni Jewish people forced from their communities by mobs enacting pogroms throughout the Middle East and North Africa are "settler colonialists" unworthy of "defense" is racist, and not in a "the real racism is against white people way"; it's Racism Classic(tm).
This is a long-dead thread and we need not keep it alive.
> This is a long-dead thread and we need not keep it alive.
Agreed.
You haven't outright admitted it, but your technique of repeatedly accusing those criticizing Israeli policies/atrocities as being racist while never addressing any of the Israeli atrocities is SOP for Zionists.
Good luck. Hopefully some day, you will consider the lives of the indigenous Palestinians of equal value to those of the brutal genocidal Israeli Jewish Zionist settler colonialists who stole the Palestinians homes, land, and the lives of their children, parents, brothers and sisters-- people who never had a quarrel with Jews before the Zionist Jews, of Europe, attacked them, and stole-- everything.
This is probably obvious, but just to make sure: This is the opinion of skinkestek, and not an objective truth. As another Norwegian, I do not share this opinion.
To avoid a back and forth here, people should feel free to find a way to analyse the confidence levels that newspapers use when quoting the different sides.
- what entities are quoted using netral or confidence signaling language like "sier" (says), "i følge" (according to) and similar, "data fra" (data from)
- what entities are quoted using language that gives low trust connotations: "påstår" (claims, but in Norwegian signalling low confidence)
Feel free to also compare how the claimed Israeli bombing of a hospital early during Israels response affected the front pages, vs when it became clear that it was a rocket engine from Gaza that had hit a mostly empty parking lot ourside a hospital and left a dent in the asphalt.
Since I argue in good faith I also encourage you elygre to provide similar ways to try to get something measurable to show your perspective.
I pride myself (for the lack of a better term) with being able to change my views based on listening to others and have done so both when it comes to drug policies (I have gone from very strict to liberal), economics (I used to be anti socialism, now I have come to appreciate and defend our current Norwegian system very much), and I used to defend Israel in ways that I don't do anymore.
On the flip side, in this war many of the Gaza combatants are either irregular forces or militants deliberately wearing civilian clothing.
So if some guy in a track suit and flip-flops uses an anti tank grenade launcher, discards the empty tube, walks away, and gets lit up, then the next day the Internet is awash with videos of the “IDF murdering a civilian!”
For reference, I think both sides are in the wrong in this conflict, and Israel more than Gaza.
However, the Internet is full of armchair international law experts that are being played like a fiddle by Hamas’ propaganda arm.
Speaking of international laws of combat: no protections apply to non-uniformed combatants pretending to be civilians. None. They can be tortured, executed on the spot, whatever.
If you want protections to apply to you, then wear a uniform or never go anywhere near a gun.
“Francs-tireurs (a term originating in the Franco-Prussian War) are enemy civilians or militia who continue to fight in territory occupied by a warring party and do not wear military uniforms, and may otherwise be known as guerrillas, partisans, insurgents, etc. Though they could be legally jailed or executed by most armies a century ago, the experience of World War II influenced nations occupied by foreign forces to change the law to protect this group.”
Sorry I hadn't read the whole thread: I agree the "false colors" sense of perfidy generally is granted due process. I was thinking of the "feigning surrender" sense of perfidy, which is pretty much universally met with summary execution.
This is my fault; I hadn't read the whole thread. There's two acts that constitute perfidy: one is wearing false uniforms or displaying false colors; I agree that isn't usually met with summary execution. The other one is taking back up arms after signalling a surrender. That is absolutely met with summary execution.
> However, the Internet is full of armchair international law experts that are being played like a fiddle by Hamas’ propaganda arm.
And Israeli hasbara? I see a lot of this take, that everyone is just blindly trusting, eg, casualty counts from the Gazan health ministry, but there seems to be very little questioning of and critical thinking about the propaganda the IDF is spreading in this conflict. Why should we take their word for it that killing a bunch of aid workers[1] was just a mistake, for example?
> Speaking of international laws of combat: no protections apply to non-uniformed combatants pretending to be civilians. None. They can be tortured, executed on the spot, whatever.
Speaking of "armchair international law experts", this is completely wrong.
BLUF: Failing to distinguish does not deprive you of fundamental guarantees of humane treatment, including the prohibition of torture and summary execution - both of which are war crimes.
The individual obligation to distinguish is linked to Prisoner of War (POW) status - those who do not distinguish, do not get the protections of that status. That is the only consequence of the failure to distinguish. All those persons who are not POWs are automatically civilians, as made clear by the residual clause in Article 4(4) Fourth Geneva Convention (GC IV). While civilians can be interned for "imperative reasons of security", they are entitled to their own detailed treatment obligations (Articles 79-135 GC IV). In any case, even if they are somehow not entitled to that treatment, the fundamental humane treatment guarantees of Art 27 GC IV [1] and Art 75 Additional Protocol I [2] (which, as customary law, applies to all parties to a conflict) nonetheless apply. If we argue that it is a non-international armed conflict (which knows neither POW status nor the obligation to distinguish), Common Article 3 [3] similarly obligates humane treatment. Humane treatment is also a norm under customary law [4].
Under these rules, you cannot torture people and you cannot summarily execute people [4]. Read the provisions yourself. In fact, summary execution and torture are actual war crimes [5]. If you want to punish a person, you need to give them a fair trial (IHL does not prohibit the death penalty).
You seem to be hinting at the Bush-era "illegal enemy combatant" theory but even the Bush Admin never argued that those persons are not entitled to humane treatment (it was mostly about fair trial rights), and the US (as its lone defender) has long since abandoned the position.
Whether Hamas is actually subject to such an obligation to distinguish is highly controversial. On one level is the issue of conflict classification, since POW status and the obligation to distinguish only exist in the law of international armed conflict (IAC). If we accept that there is an IAC (e.g. because of the military occupation), then the question still arises if Hamas somehow "belongs" to the State of Palestine or if they should just be seen as civilians directly participating in hostilities or as being in a parallel non-international armed conflict between Hamas and Israel. In turn, if we accept that there is an obligation to distinguish applicable to Hamas, then Israel also needs to treat Hamas fighters that distinguished as POWs (and, as set out above, if they failed to distinguish, as civilians).
> On the flip side, in this war many of the Gaza combatants are either irregular forces or militants deliberately wearing civilian clothing.
I'd be more inclined to believe that this was all it was, if the IDF didn't just blow up a convoy of foreign aid workers who had already received clearance and pre-registered their route with the IDF.
Sure, accidents happen, but it speaks volumes to the general level of diligence that goes into approving each strike, and this makes me very skeptical that other incidents that get coverage are simply attacks on plainclothed militants.
In the linked article the only check the IDF was still using on the target list provided by the AI was discarding any and all targets it selected who were women, as they don't believe Hamas would use them as fighters.
> At the height of the phenomenon, Avraham Burg, former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, speaker of Israel's Knesset and interim President of Israel, stated his view that, given Israeli indifference to the tortured lives of Palestinian children under occupation, suicide bombings come as no surprise.
... Palestinians have been tortured from birth for decades. Acting surprised when they fight back is either disingenuous or stupid, or both.
As long as PA pays pension to terrorist families, UNRWA teachers teach math with "how many jews killed" and Iran and Qatar actively sponsor islamist terror, the society will remain the way it is now.
Does child soldier only mean toddlers though? I thought it was more commonly 16, 17 year olds.
Presumably recruiting 17 year olds is against international law.
But for a guerrilla fighting group that doesn't care about international law, a 17 year old is almost the ideal recruit. They can fight almost as effectively as an 18 year old can, and if they die in combat you can also claim, technically truthfully, that the enemy is deliberately targeting children.
It seems that you're claiming the only way to violate international law is to bomb all their people at once.
This is very wrong.
Targeting hospitals without clear proof of military activity is against international law. As is collective punishment, using starvation as a weapon of war, and many other things which are currently being livestreamed to the world.
If you understand a topic this poorly, why not read a little about it before 'contributing' to the discussion?
I'm convinced that there's no way to fight a war without pissing someone off.
Even more so, it's impossible to fight an _assymetric_ war without pissing a lot of people off.
> Targeting hospitals without clear proof of military activity is against international law.
What's "clear proof" is in the eye of the beholder.
> As is collective punishment, using starvation as a weapon of war
I'm actually willing to give Israel the benefit of doubt here, as they actually have no experience whatsoever in coordinating large scale aid deliveries, even if delays somewhat further their goal of punishing palestinians.
> UK government lawyers say Israel is breaking international law, claims top Tory in leaked recording
So what? Every major player on the world stage breaks international law whenever they damn well please, UK, US, Israel, China, Russia, they all do, to the point where in my eyes "x is breaking international law" is a completely worthless statement. Nobody is really going to do anything about it if you're on the right side of the new iron curtain.
This might be very cynical from me, but honestly, can you name the last time when the words “international law” carried any real weight?
It's far less complicated than you make it out to be. I'm on whichever side that doesn't deem it acceptable to deliberately kill kids by the thousand. Whatever else you type does not change that determination.
> I'm on whichever side that doesn't deem it acceptable to deliberately kill kids by the thousand.
Unfortunately, that side doesn’t exist in this world. Civilians have died in every war ever known to man. Whether they are kids or not is completely irrelevant.
Now whether the right-wing soldier who has seen his friends murdered in a music festival and has been sent in with a tank into Gaza care? Very likely less so. Does every member of this right wing government care? Likely less. However the independent court system in Israel can also enforce the various conventions Israel is a signatory to (e.g. the Geneva convention). The situation where young soldiers are in Gaza armed to the teeth fighting an enemy that blends in with civilians is the creation of Hamas.
If Israel follows international law 100% you will still see a lot dead toddlers in this kind of warfare. So just that fact doesn't prove much.
I wonder if we track this sentiment how far back it would go, I'd suspect it goes back about as far as there have been public complaints about child deaths.
You are aware you’re parroting war propaganda, right? I mean sure, this does happen in some cases I’m sure, for that matter I have seen the IDF _on video_ use Palestinians as human shields. But the entire article is about the fact that nobody is even looking if there are civilians there before dropping bombs, and 20K+ of women and children are now dead as a result.
"When people cite deaths from numbers supplied by Hamas, they are parroting terrorist propaganda."
No. Stop it. Numbers provided by the Health Ministry historically have been largely verified. The 30 000+ figure is not in question. All you have is a propaganda talking point doubting its source, not questioning methodology or providing a reasoned alternative figure. The fact Israel can't, and doesn't care enough to, provide numbers of its own IS THE PROBLEM.
Just parrot 'terrorist figures' and you have a license to continue. "Women and kids have killed" as a license to continue killing women and kids. Except you don't and this ugly tribalist brutality will never be forgotten.
When a country is run by literal terrorists, there are no figures that can be trusted. I'm not sure why that's difficult to understand. How many did Hamas themselves kill because they tried to leave an embattle area because Hamas wanted to use them as human shields?? You want to blame Israel for everything, but HAMAS IS THE PROBLEM.
Without Hamas using the entire country as a staging ground for terrorism (and continuing to do so), none of this would have happened.
"Hamas is the problem" but how then to explain increasing settler land theft, and supportive government decisions, in the West Bank where Hamas is not in charge? Who is common to both conflicts?
Keep squeezing those people and eventually Israel will have the terrorist pretext it needs to annex the West Bank entirely. Rein in the settlers and you might have some credibility. Until then this will remain an obvious war on all Palestinians.
It's also interesting (and I guess typical for end-users of software) how quickly and easily something like this goes from "Here's a tool you can use as an information input when deciding who to target" to "I dunno, computer says these are the people we need to kill, let's get to it".
In the Guardian article, an IDF spokesperson says it exists and is only used as the former, and I'm sure that's what was intended and maybe even what the higher-ups think, but I suspect it's become the latter.
I read that article and feel your interpretation is very misleading/wrong.
The Guardian article makes it clear prior to those denials that those higher-up appear to not to care how accurate it is and appear to be making a conscious choice to accept the fact it is highly flawed on the basis that it might kill some of whom they would legitimately claim as valid targets.
It's clear from the operational details discussed in the article the critical target number is largely number of kills, regardless of whether they are any actual material threat, or not.
Cull predominantly the male population and their family members, not assassinate active threats is the overall impression I got of the Israeli strategy.
I must add that anyone claiming the use of AI and inference models in this way is in anyway justifiable needs to seek help. The claim of 90% accuracy is almost certainly over claiming by over 100%.
Quote: "I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added-value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval. It saved a lot of time.”
The median age in Gaza in 2014 was 18. According to researchers in the US, 50%-61% of buildings have been damaged or destroyed. If Israel didn't kill tens of thousands of children it would be a statistical miracle.
Not sure how we got to "tens of thousands of children" when even the Hamas reports don't claim that. I think 12,300 is the last claim I saw a little bit back which is not "tens of thousands" but I agree is a large number.
You're assuming the children are evenly distributed and buildings are attacked randomly and evenly. None of which is true.
Many buildings have been demolished with explosives or bulldozers while empty. Many buildings were damaged during combat with walls being breached to provide access.
In many cases buildings were attacked in areas that have been ordered to evacuate. (yes not all cases).
There's no doubt many children have been killed. We've all seen terrible photos of individual children dead. I don't think it's "tens of thousands" and I'm not sure we'll have accurate numbers. Other than that as you note there's a large number of children and so they've definitely and unfortunately impacted.
The article under discussion says that even by internal Israeli calculations in the early days of the war on a typical day “another thousand Gazans have died, most of them civilians.” Given the population demographics of Gaza, I do not think it’s a stretch you might get to 20,000 minors killed.
The article also questions your claim that the IDF was careful to protect civilians by eg destroying empty building. On the contrary, the IDF accepted extremely high civilian deaths to kill even one suspected minor militant.
I didn't claim that the "the IDF was careful to protect civilians by eg destroying empty building". I made no particular observation about the IDFs efforts or lack thereof to protect civilians.
I'm claiming many of the destroyed buildings have been empty. This really has nothing to do with the article. I'm addressing the parent's logic/argument. There have been many examples of buildings destroyed while empty, for example to make up the new boundary area Israel has created from the border. The attempt to calculate casualties via the number of destroyed buildings is a very poor methodology. Your statement and mine are not mutually exclusive- it's possible the IDF targeted buildings that had many civilians in them to get at one target. I don't know the demographics of those civilians. I don't know whether what happened in the early days of the war continued throughout the war. I would agree that early in the war Israel very likely accepted a larger number of civilian casualties to get at Hamas targets. I think the new thing potentially in this article is questioning the degree to which the targets were valid military targets.
What do you possibly get about trying to hairsplit the number OF DEAD CHILDREN. Oh, yes, you’re right. It wasn’t 20,000 so we shouldn’t say “tens of thousand” it was just twelve thousand three hundred children.
“Impacted” is definitely one word for it. Murdered another.
Hopefully I get you to be more accurate and specific when discussing this loaded emotional topic. Words literally kill. I think using defusing language is conductive to de-escalation.
Words are important. And you're right those are different words. The word murdered has a specific meaning, e.g. "to kill (a person) unlawfully and unjustifiably with premeditated malice". The word impacted means: "strongly or directly affected by something especially in a negative way." The word "child" also has a definition. In this context it usually refers to people under the age of 18.
I'll turn the question back at you, what are you trying to get out of claiming "tens of thousands" or "murdered"?
I think the word murdered is IMO more appropriate to the children Hamas killed in Israel on Oct 7th and civilians it has killed in Israel over the years and less appropriate for the children killed in Gaza by IDF action during a war. That said my heart breaks for every single child, whoever they are, that lost their lives. It's not their fault. This war didn't need to happen. We should try our best to protect children, here and everywhere, and I do recognize that at some level you're trying to do so, thanks for that.
I'm just really annoyed with the use of language that is meant to evoke emotions and leaves incorrect impressions. This is all bad enough without riling people up to make it worse. There's little doubt what images someone seeks to invoke by saying "10's of thousands" and "murder". Even if I interpret it as people genuinely wanting to minimize human suffering I think it ends up with the opposite result and is really not how anyone involved here makes progress. Also I know we live in a post-truth reality but I for all of us to have debates based on facts is still important. For me as someone who is generally pro-Israeli I have no problem with fact based criticism of Israel. What I have a problem with is that the anti-Israeli side is basically making stuff up. If something is factual then it is. If there are unknowns then we should openly say they're unknowns. And no, if you're pointing out something is a lie, you're not "justifying the killings of children". If you point out certain information is still not clear or comes from questionable sources you're not either.
The US and even Israeli governments consider these numbers as accurate. The Health Ministry provides the social ID numbers of every death so the deaths would be impossible to fake.
I don't think the US or Israel made any statements regarding the accuracy of the composition of the numbers. Only that the total ballpark numbers are more or less accurate. If you have a link to the US government statement about the breakdown accuracy of the numbers I'd be interested to look at that. Also this is extrapolating from previous rounds of violence and this one is very different.
Do you have a link to the officially published name, sex, age, ID, of all the victims so far, by date, in the conflict?
When large buildings are demolished by bombs and can't be excavated because of active violence what's the process for figuring out who potentially was or wasn't in that building? with all the refugees moving around the chaos how do you know if someone who used to live there is dead or sheltering somewhere else out of contact?
Hamas reports everyone as civilians (or doesn't make a distinction).
"Of the 21,703 identified fatalities whose details have been shared by the Hamas-run health ministry, 13,207 were women, children or elderly (61%)."
"Until recently, however, the ministry had been reporting a figure of 72%."
"Mr al Wahaidi told Sky News that this was a "media estimate". He was not able to explain the basis for this estimate or who had produced it."
"Since speaking to Sky News, he has stopped using this figure in his reports for the health ministry. It continues to be used by the government media office, a separate branch of Gaza's government."
...
"media estimate". Another by the way is that I think we should assume that given the significant bombing campaigns are more or less over the more recent casualties likely include less randomness and more targeted. I would guess that the ratio of women/children/elderly is much lower in more recent stages of the war.
There’s a simple explanation about why the numbers are now a “media estimate”. The health ministry used hospital figures, which are now unable to obtain because they have no health infrastructure anymore. I’m sure Israel would love for the health ministry to stop counting deaths since they don’t have the tools to accurately do so, but it’s absurd to assume that would be more truthful than media estimates.
I'd like to look at it. I just don't want to download Telegram's app. I haven't given up yet. The article was just a by the way while Googling and had this nugget of the made up 72% number in it.
They have released those at points in the past; I'm not sure if they're doing it on an ongoing basis, and their numbers include a large number of unidentified casualties. I think those usually make up about a third or so if I remember correctly.
Not included are a large number of missing people, and all the people who die of secondary causes like maltutrition, disease outbreaks, and poor access to proper medical care.
Nobody really knows what the real casualty figures are, but I'm inclined to take the Gaza Health Ministry's numbers seriously -- as do Israel and the US, as you already mentioned.
Because you can cross reference these with the Israeli controlled population registry and make sure e.g. the same person isn’t listed twice under a different name, that they are actually dead, that they are actually from Gaza, etc.
This link again. People keep posting it and it keeps—rightly—getting flagged. This source is a schoolbook example of lying with statistics, and so far HN seems prerry aware of that.
Wouldn't it be better to discuss it and for you to take it down point by point and show everyone why it is "lying with statistics"? I only have a B.Sc. and my only observation was the sample size seemed to small and there might have been some cherry picking of the date ranges. You might be correct but we're not getting to discuss that and what are the proper statistical methods one can apply here if we had the data (and I don't think we have data).
This link being wrong however doesn't negate the fact that the only numbers we have come from Hamas that is 1) in most western countries is considered a terrorist organization 2) is one of the sides in this war 3) clearly benefits from distorting the numbers 4) shouldn't be considered a reliable source for anything.
The numbers discussion seems to always come back to in previous rounds of violence those same numbers seemed more or less in the ballpark though there have been major revisions in the past re: the ratio of combatants. (I don't have the link handy but I can find it if you dispute this last bit).
When this latest series of attacks started there was still some room to charitably interpret what the IDF had to deal with, but we've had months of constant action and very obvious suffering and death that the IDF has been imposing upon Gaza, either intentionally or through sheer apathy. They've long since lost the "oh but think critically" excuse. The amount of suffering they are inflicting is not at all justified, it has gone far beyond just a tit-for-tat retaliation.
Since when has war ever been tit-for-tat. Since the beginning of time, if a nation where to attack and make war with another nation, they had to measure carefully the consequences if they were to lose... because losing meant losing everything. This is no different. Russia attacking Ukraine is no different. No one is tracing and counting every bullet Russia fires and certainly no world court is saying anything at all to Russia… or to Turkey, or Iran, or Syria, or anyone else… except for Israel. Gaza attacked Israel and like any nation that goes to war, they will either win or lose. Consider carefully before declaring war against your enemy…. Everything is at stake.
You're right that the violence and devastation Israel has laid upon Gaza has historic precedence. Genghis Khan completely destroyed cities that he considered cultural enemies, to give one example. You'll find many instances of genocide in the history books, even post WW2. Israel is not unique in that regard either.
But why does it matter? Does historical barbarity justify present day barbarity? It doesn't, and we all know it doesn't.
It's not the case that Israel is held to a higher standard. Russia has been widely condemned, blocked from international finance, and faces severe sanctions. On top of that, western countries have given substantial military and intelligence aid to Ukraine. Russia had reasons for their invasion of Ukraine (just like Israel has its reasons), but so what? Russia being angry at Ukraine is not a justification for destroying the country.
I also take issue with your characterization that Gaza "started it". This is a 70+ year conflict with many chapters of violence in it, and innocent Palestinians make up the bulk of the casualties. Israel is not the victim here.
Finally, it's not accurate to talk about Israel/Gaza as two nations at war. Israel controls everything coming in and going out of Gaza, electricity, water, etc. Palestine is not an independent country or a state, it's part of Israel except its citizens have no rights.
>When people say you’re not “thinking critically”, they’re saying you’re trying to portray one of the modern conflicts with the lowest civilian deaths (versus combatants) as a crime against humanity while ignoring numerous others — eg, genocides in Niger or Myanmar, and forced expulsions in Armenia/Azerbaijan.
Why is it that this is always mentioned? As if ignorance of one crime against humanity makes us incapable of criticizing the other? And where exactly are the public spokespeople from our governments talking about how any of these genocides are justified as the killers have a "right to defend themselves"? Not to talk about how an attack that killed 4000 people justifies killing 25000 non-combatants.
> They’re not interested in a tit-for-tat retaliation: they’re intending to destroy the political and military structures that made the attack possible. A smaller country can’t cry “that isn’t fair!” when they start a fight and get beaten — this isn’t a scuffle between kids at school.
This is not even comparable to what is occurring when the world is condemning Israel's actions. If Israel was interested in removing the political structures that made Hamas's attack supported by Gaza then they could've stopped the settlement of the west bank, supported the stability of the Palestinian state, and countless of other actions which would have lowered the risk of creating terrorists in Gaza.
If you followed the conflict you’d have seen that Israeli concessions (especially the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza) have only made the Palestinians more radical.
The overwhelming states goal of Palestinians is the destruction of Israel and any Israeli concession leads towards that.
Israel doesn't want peace because they're winning. Every year Palestinians lose territory, and the land that remains becomes more and more uninhabitable.
Israelis don’t want peace because every time it was attempted, it only led to more violence and misery. The suicide bombings around Oslo accords in the 90’s, the second intifada of 2000, the terror enclave that became of Gaza after the disengagement in 2005; peace is a dangerous pipe dream.
The last time Israel “attempted” peace was before the majority of Palestinians were even born. The only peace talks that had any chance of working were held by Rabin who got promptly murdered. Israel also never stopped killing Palestinians and refuses to return the land they have unlawfully occupied.
It was never theirs to begin with and they turned it into a prison. They destroyed the Gaza airport and harbor. Build a fence around it so nobody could enter or leave. Refused to negotiate with the elected officials of Gaza.
Israel still has settlements in the west bank and has annexed the Golan heights. No matter which border agreement you believe is the lawful one, Isreal hasn't honored any of them.
You’re just moving the goalposts. Israel did withdraw from Gaza and let them run it on their own. The Palestinians had full sovereignty and could have made the place into a Singapore. They built the world’s largest terror base instead. Do you know what an insane undertaking is building the amount of underground infrastructure they did? Could have built factories instead.
You know perfectly well that they are not allowed to build factories because, guess what, factories can also be used to make weapons. Gaza is not even allowed to import basic medical equipment like X-Ray machines. So much for "full sovereignty".
People have repeatedly pointed out how your facts have no bearing on reality.
Israel never prohibited any factories. They have cars, computers, and a powerful army with ballistic munition know-how that’s rare. They could have smuggled in anything. Who said there are no X-ray machines in Gaza? Gaza had many hospitals before October 7th, ironically probably more than Israel itself.
So what Gazans did after the disengagement:
1. Electing Hamas into power
2. Ceasing having elections, instead opting for a Taliban style religious Islamist rule
3. Arming themselves to the teeth
4. Routinely shooting missiles, mortars and RPGs into Israeli civilians
Cars, computers and everything else is imported. There is no manufacturing to speak of.
> Small-scale industries in Gaza City include the production of plastics, construction materials, textiles, furniture, pottery, tiles, copperware, and carpets.
Your claim that Gaza had more hospitals than Israel is absurd. Israel has 5x the population, for starters. A cursory Google search indicates Israel has 10x the number of hospitals.
I recognize your arguments because I've heard them all before. Repeated ad nauseam by people who grew up in Zionist households and got all their news from comically partisan sources. They sincerely believe what they say and fact checking their claims is completely pointless because evidence means nothing in face of a lifetime of indoctrination.
Like ultimately if there's no two state solution, then it's either a genocide or expulsion of the Palestinians or a one state solution. If it's one state it can either be Jewish or democratic, but almost certainly not both.
> We all should have worked harder at solving the problem, but a genocidal militant group
Yes, 'we all' should have worked harder when Benjamin Netanyahu actively funded Hamas and expended all possible efforts to prevent a viable Palestinian state. Genius thinking right there.
"We all should have worked harder" is such an absurd thing to be saying alongside that sorry excuse you've presented.
The entire point of human rights and rules of war is that there are certain rights the people of even small countries that started the fight are entitled to. You don't just get to excuse relentlessly bombing hospitals and aid workers. "We thought it was a military target, but we will not disclose why, nor will we disclose what we're doing to not make this mistake in the future" is not a get out of jail free card for genocides, especially when it never seems to come with any actual signs of improvement.
Campaigns to stop genocides in other places having been unsuccessful does not justify smaller genocides taking place elsewhere. That's not critical thinking, that's whataboutism.
Particularly considering that not only is America's supposedly democratic leadership not condemning the atrocities, they're actively offering the aid to continue it while claiming to want peace.
Being from India, I can relate to the troubles with islamic terrorism that Israel has faced, which is why I mentioned having initially been sympathetic. But if India engaged in this large scale indiscriminate slaughter of muslims, it'd have been rendered a pariah on a similar tier as Russia. As it stands it's already constantly accused of being undemocratic and violating the rights of Muslims, despite never having undertaken deliberate, remorseless government sanctioned slaughter of this scale.
It took far less for the current Indian prime minister to be banned from Western nations when he was chief minister of a state. All he had to do was fail to stop a much less deadly riot and get repeatedly exonerated from accusations of wrongdoing by several courts.
I've pointed out two things, bombing hospitals and bombing aid workers.
There's also targeting children, having no qualms about the collateral damage when they bomb houses to get at single targets and so on. Using systems like the one described in the article to offload further responsibility, such that if by some miracle Western nations do try to introduce the IDF to the concept of accountability, they can just blame the computer and promise to do better.
I'm using emotionally charged language because these are supposed to be emotional topics. "Critical thinking" on its own is just a pathway to justifying extreme inhumane cruelty.
I was watching one of those ww2 movies with typical evil Germans (Nazis) in it and there was this scene where the SS officer dude is about to burn down a hamlet or something because of "partisans" hiding in there.
We, Americans, are being forced to change our morality and humanity to suite an "indispensable ally". (Both of which are definitely open to question).
That said, how cute that they are blaming both the 10/7 event ("intelligence failure") and their daily killing (for our viewing pleasure) of civilians, on AI.
I think "intelligence failure" is accurate but not in the sense that was offered. It is an intelligence failure of a people to recognize that they are on the wrong side of humanity and history. You can't blame that on AI. I think it a cultural failing - an overly inflated and exaggerated sense of historic grievances, a conceit regarding God Almighty's affections, and a misread of the Global Room, and clear contempt for the "nations" watching.
> there was this scene where the SS officer dude is about to burn down a hamlet or something because of "partisans" hiding in there
And we fire bombed multiple German cities, the British with an explicit policy of killing German civilians who lived near factories. Many things are horrible and either permitted explicitly by international law or, by convention and precedent, technically illegal but widely tolerated.
Nazi Germany is nothing like Occupied Palestine. Nazi Germany had millions of people's blood on its hand at that point. That is why it was "widely tolerated".
And your bring this up is a case in point of intelligence failure I alluded to. People may seem to "tolerate" mandated group think but we're still mostly Human beings and have empathy and can tell the difference between Nazi Germany and Palestine. At some point the silent consensus will be quite vocal.
Germans are still paying for their crimes in WW2 ... Something to keep in mind.
> Nazi Germany had millions of people's blood on its hand at that point. That is why it was "widely tolerated"
This is a myth. We didn’t fight Germany to stop the Holocaust. (That said, I agree on the moral unequivalence. Hamas aren’t the Nazis. But not every German was a Nazi, either. We ultimately draw lines on even collective punishment.)
If we don’t want to use Dresden, take Vietnam. Or Cambodia. Or Afghanistan or Ukraine or the Uyghurs or Kashmir. (Or Sudan, right now. Or Eritrea in ten minutes.) It sucks. But the international laws with relevance are the ones that aren’t being systematically violated by every regional power. We aren’t changing our standards to suite Israel, this is just the first conflict in a generation we’ve bothered to pay attention to.
> what specific rules of war do you believe have been broken?
Basically every single one. We will end much faster if you just read the laws.
And this is not "a belief" or a "lets debate for a year more if this is or not a genocide while sipping tea and killing faster". The ship of good faith has parted many months ago.
Your comment is a stellar example of the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle in action. You'd have us wade through untold reams of international law for specific references, a task that would likely take hours, just to rebut your glib denial of the current state of play. Oh well, I've got some time to kill...
Shit That Should Land Israel's Government and Military Apparatus In The Hague, Abridged:
- (i) Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities;
- (ii) Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives;
- (iv) Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;
- (v) Attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives;
- (iii) Intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, as long as they are entitled to the protection given to civilians or civilian objects under the international law of armed conflict;
The Israeli army has a storied history of bombing the shit out of aid workers that goes back decades, everything from shelling UN aid warehouses with white phosphorous munitions to calling in artillery strikes on aid convoys. This behavior is well-documented and certainly not limited to the current conflict.
- (xxv) Intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies as provided for under the Geneva Conventions;
Do we really need to review the current state of play with relief aid in Gaza given it hasn't been 5 days since an Israeli patrol greased a convoy of aid workers? Shit's gotten so bad foreign governments have taken to air dropping aid.
Additionally as I'm sitting here combing through the Geneva Conventions there are a few things that stand out:
- Part I, Article 3, 2) seems to be in olay between shelling the fuck out of aid workers, bombing hospitals out of existence, and the several documented attacks on emergency response vehicles.
I'm certain there's more here but you aren't getting more of my time than the initial hour I budgeted to the task of putting together this reply. Have fun with the supplemental reading...
It's because actions speak louder than words. The bombings Gaza has suffered is worse than Dresden during WWII. There is a famine in north Gaza. 30 000+ Palestinians have been killed. There is live footage of Palestinians waving white flags but still getting sniped by Israeli soldiers. The same soldiers that laugh while blowing up mosques and running over corpses with their bulldozers. When someone show you who they really are you should believe them.
Dresden wasn't full of guerilla army disguised as civilians, and there weren't even the tools to target specifics as we have today. Any civilian was evacuated from north Gaza 5 months ago, secured by IDF under Hamas attacks. Those who stayed there insist on sticking to a war zone and risk to be labeled as terrorists. blowing up mosques and houses is nothing compared to raping innocents with no one to defend them miles away. And while they hold hundreds of the same innocents underground and keep provoking Israel's destruction, I see no reason to care about their precious houses. Israel is judged by Western morals in a barbaric medieval war that it was dragged into.
Some have. Most of the IDFs current critics haven't. They get the news and conclude reasonably that the IDF deserves criticism over how it's conducting itself.
For example: "The army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians"
When a computer generates a target list of thousands, that's how tens of thousands of innocent people die.
By the standards discussed in the article, anyone with a beef with Israel could justify targeting possible a majority of buildings in Israel. After all, most of the population is required to serve in the IDF.
Are they trying to legally or morally justify those attacks?
Last year I would have said that Israel was reasonably well behaved and Hezbollah and Hamas’s rockets fired into Israel were utterly unjustifiable terrorism and served no valid military purpose.
It seems like Israel is busily lowering itself it to its enemies’ level, and it’s not particularly clear that its attacks serve a legitimate military purpose to a much greater extent than Hamas and Hezbollah’s.
Compare to the US’s war in Afghanistan. Regardless of whether one believes that the war was a good idea or we’ll executed, at least the US seemed to be trying to make Afghanistan livable for its non-militant residents, and they perhaps even succeeded for a while.
Nothing, they are unguided and not targetable. They have almost 0 military value as far as targeting goes. They're "lucky" if they hit something outside of Gaza. You can see them being used for distraction/confusion (like on the morning of oct 7 in a mass firing), or as reprisals for IDF massacres (for deterrence, not working very well at that either), or for "we targeted grouping of soldiers" in Gaza envelope (usually unsuccessfully). Only thing they ever target successfully is the hearts and minds of Palestinians horrendously victimized by Israel, some of whom can feel that something is being done, I guess.
They're certainly not used to target any specific buildings in Israel. Only thing with targeting capability that Hamas ever repeatedly showed successfully used in videos is their home made Yassin-105 RPG shell and other RPGs. And these are used as short range defensive weapons, pretty much.
> That is, only members of the armed wing of Hamas (not recruiters, weapon manufacturers,..
I think the loop-hole here is that a weapon manufacturing facility is almost certainly a military strategic target, and international law allows you to target the infrastructure provided the military advantage gained is porportional to the civilian death.
So you can't target the individuals but according to international law its fine to target the building they are in while the individuals are still inside provided its militarily worth it.
But presumably if you can target the building e.g. at night when nobody is there, that's preferable to targeting it during the day when there may be more civilian workers.
Exactly! The key difference is that the worker still count as civilians in the calculus that considers whether an attack is proportional (anticipated military advantage vs expected civilian effects) and whether the attacker took all feasible precautions to avoid and minimize civilian loss, including attacking at night, using tailored weaponry, giving a warning, …
Practical AI did a podcast episode about the dangers of using AI models as a shield to hide behind in justifying your decisions. The episode was titled "Suspicion Machines" and based on the libked article [1], and I think it's worth a read/listen.
That is, only members of the armed wing of Hamas (not recruiters, weapon manufacturers, propagandists, financiers, …) can be targeted for attack
It seems wrong that you can't target weapon manufacturers, can you cite a source? Weapon manufacturers contribute to the military action, and destroying weapon manufacturers contributes to military advantage.
You can target the manufacturing plants since they are military objectives but you cannot target the workers. If any war-sustaining activity would make you, as a person, a target, pretty much anyone could be bombed: farmers, bankers, power plant engineers, truck drivers, ...
For a source, you can check out the Red Cross document I linked. Specifically, Ctrl+F for "continuous combat function" and read the commentary on recommendation V. The Guidance is considered authoritative in legal circles.
It is not the primary source of their weapons, nor is it the primary source of their explosives. It might be "a primary source" now as your linked article mentions, but certainly not THE primary source. Hamas is primarily given weapons by Iran.
They claim to be producing a lot of them locally in the Gaza strip, based on russian or iranian design. They've proudly showed videos of factories producing al-Ghoul rifles, Tandem anti-tank grenades, light artillery grenades, rifle ammunition.
This is an explicit ideal in the 'Resistance Axis', to develop the ability to produce military equipment locally and not be dependent on brittle trade routes or smuggling.
The West Bank seems to get rifles from several sources, both american style that probably comes from PA or IDF and russian style, probably smuggled through Jordan from Iraq, Iran, Russia. They produce IED:s locally, quite crude ones, not the directed type with concave copper plates favoured by iraqi militias. Eventually they'll learn to make those too, I'm sure.
This is a very 'anti-war' opinion by a lawyer affiliated with the Red Cross, not some sort of treaty or other convention. As an example, the Geneva Convention's scope of protection is much narrower.
While the DPH Guidance has it's controversial parts (Rec IX), the guidance on interpreting "directly participating in hostilities" is quite authoritative.
And that should be emphasized: the Geneva Conventions allow the targeting of military objectives, combatants (i.e. members of armed forces) and "civilians directly participating in hostilities". The Guidance just interprets the latter and arguably widens the scope, because - without the invention of "continuous combatant function" - you could attack e.g. members of Hamas' armed wing during an attack and in preparation of one. Now you can attack them at any time.
> First, the interpretive Guidance is an expression solely of the ICRC's views. While international humanitarian law relating to the notion of direct participation in hostilities was examined over several years with a group
of eminent legal experts, to whom the ICRC owes a huge debt of gratitude, the positions enunciated are the ICRC's alone. Second, while reflecting the ICRC's views, the interpretive Guidance is not and cannot be a text of a legally binding nature.
The purpose and of the Interpretive Guidance is to provide recommendations, as the document itself states, in an attempt to persuade states. It does not claim to be authoritative.
I did not assert that it would be legally binding. However, it is considered to be quite authoritative by lawyers, including military lawyers. The two most controversial parts concern the idea of "continuous combatant function" to define members of an armed group, which some want to see defined more narrowly or more broadly (latter: US), and recommendation IX. However, the criteria for direct participation on hostilities are widely accepted as the authoritative interpretation by States and scholars of that term in the Geneva Conventions.
Of course, the document itself would not make a statement on its authoritative nature since, despite the broad consultation with experts, they cannot predict the wider reaction.
The ICRC stated that they couldn't reach consensus and that the Interpretive Guidance provided their own recommendations and does not necessarily reflect the majority opinion of participating experts.
The DPH meeting reports show there was considerable contention beyond the requirement of a continuous combat function or IX. Dissension was significant enough that over a third of the experts involved asked for their names to be removed from the Interpretive Guidance prior to publication which led the ICRC to remove all the experts' names.
Then there are all the papers published criticizing the document for reasons that go beyond just the two most contentious issues, several by experts were among those consulted by the ICRC (e.g. Schmitt, Parks).
Given the dissension, I find it strange that such a document could possibly be widely accepted as the authoritative interpretation of what constitutes DPH by States as you claim.
That's not exactly a prediction. It was was standard operating procedure for Warsaw Pact nations. They used human intel which was possibly even worse because it could manipulated out of malice.
> Only those who have the "continuous function" to "directly participate in hostilities"[1] may be targeted for attack at any time.
The problem with Hamas is that they don't shy away from hiding combattants in civilian clothings or use women and children as suicide bombers. There is more than enough evidence of this tactic, dating back many many years [1].
By not just not preventing, but actively ordering such war crimes, Hamas leadership has stripped its civilian population of the protections of international law.
> Otherwise, the allowed list of targets of civilians gets so wide than in any regular war, pretty much any civilian could get targeted, such as the bank employee whose company has provided loans to the armed forces.
In regular wars, it's uniformed soldiers against uniformed soldiers, away from civilian infrastructure (hospitals, schools, residential areas). The rules of war make deviating from that a war crime on its own, simply because it places the other party in the conflict of either having no chance to wage the war or to commit war crimes on their own.
Oh yes they can, that question has been settled in the aftermath of the Yugoslavian Wars [1, page 148]:
> 46. The law is thus clear: a hospital becomes a legitimate target when used for hostile or harmful acts unrelated to its humanitarian function, but the opposing party must give warning before it attacks
That has nothing to do with your original statement. Yes, hospital can lose their special protection but must then be given a warning that gives them enough time to evacuate and only if that warning is unheeded, it loses special protection. But all the other rules protecting civilians still apply (distinction, proportionality, precautions, …). In any case, this has nothing to do with the whole civilian population being stripped of their protections. They still have their human rights and cannot be targeted.
So pretty much every hospital, school, and over 60% (nearly 300,000) residences have been destroyed in Gaza, leaving well over a million displaced. You are a genocide supporter.
An entire civilian population cannot be stripped of its protections of international law. This type of dehumanising rhetoric is the exact filth that leads to genocide and other atrocities (as we can see happening live in recent months).
> That is, only members of the armed wing of Hamas (not recruiters, weapon manufacturers, propagandists, financiers, …) can be targeted for attack - all the others must be arrested and/or tried.
In theory, yes. In practice--in which make believe world is this true?
Always interesting to me how western diplomats do not just right out reject bombing of diplomatic buildings, but search for stupid justifications, if it's "others" being bombed and not their team.
Or politicians who don't reject targeting of other politicians' families for killing, when it's the politicians they "don't like" or whatever, and even tacitly support it. Or who don't say a word when a hospital is attacked and hundreds of people murdered in it over several weeks, and ultimately destroyed, but blab something about right to self-defence constantly, or IHL which according to legal experts is used mostly to enable mass murder, not to stop it. Kinda paradoxical for a law that was meant to prevent needless suffering.
It's like all these people have a death wish, because they're setting standards for future wars. And there will be future wars, even in Europe. Anyway, I lost all respect for all the idiot politicians I sadly voted for, who justify day and night the murder of medics, whole families, children, starvation, etc., when it's "the other", and are all up in arms when it's "us". I certainly won't be fighting for any of them, when the war comes here. They have 0 standards. I'll let them die according to their wishes and standards.
I am okay with the notion that war is dirty and that Hamas will try to pretend to be civilians or whatever. I have some questions:
- if the weapons always wait for them at target locations, who is transporting the weapons at any given target location and why is that not the focus?
- if we know they try to use infrastructure like hospitals, the IDF clearly knows where Hamas is aiming to shelter in, why not militarily occupy hospitals but then otherwise allow them to run without delay vs sniping anyone who shows up in a window?
- how is it possible the IDF allowed premature babies to die in their incubators once medical staff left a hospital in Gaza (aka unoccupied facility for IDF to sweep through), such that once medical staff returned they were presented with their rotting bodies left untouched in the incubators?
- how were Israeli unarmed civilians waving white t-shirts get mistaken for armed Hamas combatants and shot dead when trying to escape from their capture?
- how did the World Kitchen convoy, which had provided the IDF their route and time and coordinates with clearly labeled trucks, get shot with targeted missiles from above?
> It is very convenient to criticize it when you're not in it
Israel 'criticised' Hamas for their monstrous attack six months ago, started a war over it. Perhaps you're saying Israel should have just accepted it?
You know, perhaps this whole mess Israel is now involved in is a product of its own behaviour, and killing of loads more Palestinians is not likely to bring peace but further hate and evil.
I found that putting solid facts in front of Israeli supporters just got me downvotes.
Anyway
>> It is very convenient to criticize it when you're not in it
> Israel 'criticised' Hamas for their monstrous attack six months ago, started a war over it. Perhaps you're saying Israel should have just accepted it?
That is not rhetoric but a straightforward question.
That's totes rhetoric: what you wrote there is a sarcastic false dichotomy to make a point seem obvious — a leading question.
Ironically, given I now know which side you think you're taking, that bit you're proud enough of to quote, defends Israel's behaviour by suggesting the only possible alternative to their current actions was to simply accept Hamas' previous attack.
I was pointing out the hypocrisy of telling the world they should look away from what's being done in Palestine because war is dirty, but should sympathise with Israel after Hamas's awful attack, because war is dirty.
You don't care about Palestinians but you expect the world to care about Israel, despite committing obvious warcrimes.
I very much want peace for both sides, a stable society and good life for everyone, Arab and Israeli. You clearly don't share that wish. You have no morals, no moral authority, and what you are doing is putting Israel's future at greater risk than Hamas could, but you're so shortsighted and self-centred you're blinded to that.
Again with the arguing against a totemic representation in your own head, rather than reality.
My position[0] is: When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.
[0] which may or may not have anything to do with the down-voters you complain about: I didn't vote, I don't know who did or what they think and; as I said earlier, what you wrote initially looks like something each of the big groups on this topic can find something disagreeable with.
I have, in all sincerity, been misunderstood less by GPT-2 than you display with that.
You wrote:
> You don't care about Palestinians but you expect the world to care about Israel, despite committing obvious warcrimes.
False. I thought this was clear from the metaphor I chose to use (which is, of course, why I chose to use it). Hint: who might be the elephants who are fighting, and who might be the grass who is getting trodden on?
(Answer: civilians are the grass, combatants are the elephants — and it case even that was not clear, note that I did not say whose civilians and whose combatants, this is deliberated because the answer to that is simply "yes").
> I very much want peace for both sides, a stable society and good life for everyone, Arab and Israeli. You clearly don't share that wish. You have no morals, no moral authority, and what you are doing is putting Israel's future at greater risk than Hamas could, but you're so shortsighted and self-centred you're blinded to that.
False. That first sentence, before you threw insults at me due to you painting a picture of me in your mind and arguing with that without testing it against reality, is in fact a wish that I share.
But unlike you demonstrate here, I am not — or try not to be — so hubristic to think I can read the inner state of others' minds, especially not those who disagree with me. I suggest reasons that can be investigated, tested, and allow for them to be refuted if false. I will prefer to say "it sounds like you think ${foo}?" rather than a blunt "you think ${foo}". Note the second part of my original response, where I showed you I was unclear which side you were trying to support: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39920847
Furthermore, I know that I know nothing about international geopolitics — an easy thing to determine as I have literally zero political or military education — and thus the free version of ChatGPT is genuinely going to less wrong than me about any possible way to improve this situation. So while I want peace and liberty, I do not presume (any longer) to suggest a way forward:
> So ignore what other people think - make your own point based on facts.
If I ignored what other people think, I would be like you: confused by downvotes, and substituting my own imagination for genuine curiosity as to why.
And that, right there, that is my point. (I wonder if you will read it and gain insight into my mind, or reply in further confusion? Your mind is clearly alien to me, so I do not know).
> Try answering: is Israel's response proportionate and acceptable or not?
I believe not.
You'd already know that if you'd bothered to read what I wrote instead of whinging about it.
I don't know that my beliefs are correct, 'cause I'm not trained in law, politics, or warfare, and the whole thing is surrounded by propaganda. If you call my self-awareness "a lack of clarity", you're hubristic.
Your turn. Answer me this: Who did I call the elephants, and who did I call the grass?
> You'd already know that if you'd bothered to read what I wrote instead of whinging about it.
I'll openly admit that I often don't read things carefully but in this case I don't believe you were making things clear at all. Quoting stuff in Greek to me doesn't actually help comprehension.
> Your turn. Answer me this: Who did I call the elephants, and who did I call the grass?
You said "My position[0] is: When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers" which you then said of "(Answer: civilians are the grass, combatants are the elephants — and it case even that was not clear, note that I did not say whose civilians and whose combatants, this is deliberated because the answer to that is simply "yes")."
And this is a relevant because you are trying to spread the blame among civilians, instead of clearly saying which civilians.
As of yesterday, over 33,000 Palestinians had been killed and 75,000 injured. There is deliberate starvation brewing over there and the hospitals had been mostly or entirely smashed. Israel has committed war crimes. The IDF are turning a blind eye or even helping illegal settlers on Palestinian land. There's more.
Just because there is blame on both sides doesn't mean the blame is equal on both sides.
Debating is difficult enough with the ambiguity in natural languages. If you don't even try and be plain what you're trying to say, difficulty will be compounded. If you were agreeing, why not say "I agree" or "I agree but what about..."? I don't know what a totemic representation is, elephant metaphors were ambiguous (obviously the civilians suffer most, I know it, you know that I know it, so what point are you trying to make?), Quoting stuff in Greek and then telling me to google it instead of saying it plainly – not wise.
You made a simple thing difficult (and yes, doubtless I'm partly to blame as well).
There seems to be little evidence to your statement “Israel seems to trying much harder to avoid civilian casualties than […]”. All estimates I have seen seem to indicate astonishing rates of civilian casualties, hence why Israel is getting so much criticism of basically indiscriminate killing in Gaza…
Even though you may not be necessarily wrong on how little regard those armies in those previous wars (and indeed all warring parties in those wars to some extent) had for the civilian population, the situation is Gaza is made so much more drastic because there’s already nowhere for the (already displaced for decades) population to go amid all this assault and bombing (not to mention the widespread starving and all those other factors, which combined led to the “genocide” claim levied by some). That’s also a reason why all western countries are trying to dissuade Israel from the Rafat assault.
Also, we have the idea that human beings are supposed to learn from those previous tragedies and do better, and that we’re in a much more civilized, peaceful and prosperous place than before, so it’s likely a disillusion and horror for a lot of people to see such a nightmarish scenario unfolding again in 2023. Some intrinsic parts about human nature and human societies will never change unfortunately.
20 seconds "to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male". And then "for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians".
For as much as the IOF likes to market this expression, I only ever see them do it in the actual sense, like chaining literal 12 year-olds to the front of armored vehicles
also I am fed up with this tendentious 'discussion' that only allows you to hear one side of the story and where everyone else is just flagged off. I should rather stay away from HN (anyway it is no longer what it used to be) Sayonara.
I didn't flag you, but I did think your comment felt like whataboutism. That's an accusation I've had leveled at me in the past, so I know how it feels and don't say it lightly, and I don't mean it in an accusing way.
At the end of the day, most arguments are not about factual disagreements. They are about, what is the most important consideration right now? And I would posit that the most important consideration right now is that we have automated killing that may rise to the level of what will someday be categorized as a war crime.
There are other tremendously important topics, like how have both Israelis and Palestinians suffered since the formation of the country, should there's be a ceasefire and/or a hostage release on both/either side, and many more incredibly important things.
We can't discuss them all at once, and I believe considering the impact of AI on warfare at scale needs a place to be discussed with as little distraction as possible.
It makes sense. Blowing up a military HQ with a clerk in it makes sense. Blowing up a clerk walking on the sidewalk seems like a wasted effort.
You can come up with all sorts of justifications for anything. At the end of the day, time and time again, over the top escalation usually hurts the stronger party. Asymmetrical warfare doesn’t garner sympathy or military advantages to the stronger party.
I don't understand your point here. They are targeting militants with the system:
> Formally, the Lavender system is designed to mark by all suspected operatives in the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), including low-ranking ones, as potential bombing targets.
> (γ) Statutory requirement to decrypt communications
> 76. Lastly, as regards the requirement to submit to the security services information necessary to decrypt electronic communications if they are encrypted, the Court observes that international bodies have argued that encryption provides strong technical safeguards against unlawful access to the content of communications and has therefore been widely used as a means of protecting the right to respect for private life and for the privacy of correspondence online. In the digital age, technical solutions for securing and protecting the privacy of electronic communications, including measures for encryption, contribute to ensuring the enjoyment of other fundamental rights, such as freedom of expression (see paragraphs 28 and 34 above). Encryption, moreover, appears to help citizens and businesses to defend themselves against abuses of information technologies, such as hacking, identity and personal data theft, fraud and the improper disclosure of confidential information. This should be given due consideration when assessing measures which may weaken encryption.
> 77. As noted above (see paragraph 57 above), it appears that in order to enable decryption of communications protected by end-to-end encryption, such as communications through Telegram’s “secret chats”, it would be necessary to weaken encryption for all users. These measures allegedly cannot be limited to specific individuals and would affect everyone indiscriminately, including individuals who pose no threat to a legitimate government interest. Weakening encryption by creating backdoors would apparently make it technically possible to perform routine, general and indiscriminate surveillance of personal electronic communications. Backdoors may also be exploited by criminal networks and would seriously compromise the security of all users’ electronic communications. The Court takes note of the dangers of restricting encryption described by many experts in the field (see, in particular, paragraphs 28 and 34 above).
> 78. The Court accepts that encryption can also be used by criminals, which may complicate criminal investigations (see Yüksel Yalçınkaya v. Türkiye [GC], no. 15669/20, § 312, 26 September 2023). However, it takes note in this connection of the calls for alternative “solutions to decryption without weakening the protective mechanisms, both in legislation and through continuous technical evolution” (see, on the possibilities of alternative methods of investigation, the Joint Statement by Europol and the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, cited in paragraph 33 above, and paragraph 24 of the Report on the right to privacy in the digital age by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, cited in paragraph 28 above; see also the explanation by third-party interveners in paragraph 47 above).
> 79. The Court concludes that in the present case the ICO’s statutory obligation to decrypt end-to-end encrypted communications risks amounting to a requirement that providers of such services weaken the encryption mechanism for all users; it is accordingly not proportionate to the legitimate aims pursued.
> (δ) Conclusion
> 80. The Court concludes from the foregoing that the contested legislation providing for the retention of all Internet communications of all users, the security services’ direct access to the data stored without adequate safeguards against abuse and the requirement to decrypt encrypted communications, as applied to end-to-end encrypted communications, cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society. In so far as this legislation permits the public authorities to have access, on a generalised basis and without sufficient safeguards, to the content of electronic communications, it impairs the very essence of the right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the Convention. The respondent State has therefore overstepped any acceptable margin of appreciation in this regard.
> 81. There has accordingly been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention.
I think that depends on what you mean: a general state of emergency or a specific situation where the police deem there to be an emergency (e.g. classic hidden bomb scenario)
Regarding (2), the Court found that a statutory obligation to decrypt E2E-encrypted data upon (judicial) request to be disproportionate, but it could still be imagined that – if more narrowly construed – a law could be considered to be proportionate. But the Court does seem quite unwilling to entertain the idea of backdoors for E2E encryption.
Regarding (1), the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) allows so-called derogations from certain rights in "time of war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation" (Art 15 ECHR), insofar as they are necessary and the state of emergency has been properly declared. The right to privacy is such a right, so a State that faces an insurgency may declare a state of emergency and, as part of its emergency measures, could probably demand the decryption of E2E communications if it's necessary to fight the insurgency (e.g. it's a guerilla group using an E2E messenger) - but hard to judge in the abstract.
Slightly misleading: The Court's judgments are legally binding upon the State members of the Council of Europe. However, it is true that there is no armed enforcement mechanism – something that most domestic courts lack too – and instead decisions are enforced and monitored by the Council of Ministers (the equivalent of the UN General Assembly). However, most of its decisions are complied with most of the time by most nations (safe for Russia and Turkey), frequently because domestic courts will abide by the Court's rulings to overturn laws through its own decisions.
For a better understanding: The Court held (in the circumstances of this case) that a legal obligation to decrypt E2E communications is a disproportionate interference with the right to privacy.
The law in question specifically obligated messengers such as Telegram to hand over communications alongside the "information necessary to decrypt electronic messages if they were encrypted".
To come to that conclusion, it referred to the wide-scale impact such a weakening of E2E through backdoors would have and referred to "calls for alternative 'solutions to decryption without weakening the protective mechanisms, both in legislation and through continuous technical evolution.'" Looking at the cited material, these include traditional policing, undercover operations, metadata analysis, international police cooperation, live forensics on seized devices, guessing or obtaining private keys held by parties to the communication, using vulnerabilities in the target’s software or sending an implant to targeted devices.
While a ruling on a specific case (and law), the Court seems quite skeptical towards any "requirement that providers of such services weaken the encryption mechanism for all users". If I were the UK government, I would be quite worried that the UK Online Safety Bill will be overturned by domestic courts (or the European Court) on the basis of this ruling.
(It should be noted that, although the backdooring of E2E was considered to go beyond how the right to privacy may legitimately be restricted, the right to privacy is a so-called derogable right, i.e. a government can, upon declaration of a state of emergency, derogate from the right insofar that is necessary to address an emergency "threatening the life of the nation" (Art 15 ECHR))
>While a ruling on a specific case (and law), the Court seems quite skeptical towards any "requirement that providers of such services weaken the encryption mechanism for all users". If I were the UK government, I would be quite worried that the UK Online Safety Bill will be overturned by domestic courts (or the European Court) on the basis of this ruling.
It's worth noting that UK courts can't overturn Acts of Parliament.
The best they can do is issue a declaration of incompatibility, which enables ministers to use secondary legislation to correct any defect rather than having to go through the process of passing another act (if they have the political will to do so...).
Having said that, a lot of how the Online Safety Act tries to get things done is through secondary legislation and statutory codes and guidelines; these all can be quashed by the courts (unless the Act constrains the way the other instruments are made in such a way that it'd be illegal not to make an infringing instrument) so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
I wholeheartedly recommend How Parliament Works¹ for people who want a deep dive on these points. It is nowhere near as dry as you'd imagine for a five hundred page book about parliament.
While used copies are super cheap I'd also recommend picking up a current revision. Recent years have seen far more use(or attempts to use) some of the more obscure tools of both houses. The updates include more explanation of those topics, along with descriptions of recent cases before the courts.
The best isn't necessarily a declaration of incompatibility, that's mostly specific to ECHR.
In general if parliament passes legislation that contradicts earlier legislation that wasn't repealed and it wasn't deliberate then a judge can determine that parliament didn't intend to override that earlier legislation and that the new legislation doesn't apply in a given context.
Parliamentary supremacy exists, but only where parliament takes a deliberate action.
> Parliamentary supremacy exists, but only where parliament takes a deliberate action.
Well, it exists under English law, it is an open question whether it exists to the same extent under Scottish law. As Lord Cooper said in the 1953 case of MacCormick v Lord Advocate, "the principle of the unlimited sovereignty of Parliament is a distinctively English principle which has no counterpart in Scottish Constitutional Law". Lord Cooper suggested that, at least in theory, an Act of the UK Parliament could be ultra vires under Scottish law if it were contrary to the Treaty of Union. In the 1975 case of Gibson v Lord Advocate, Lord Keith suggested that possible examples of such invalid Acts might be a hypothetical Act to abolish Scottish law and replace it with English law, or a hypothetical Act to establish the Church of England (or the Scottish Episcopal Church) as the state church in Scotland, usurping the traditional role of the Church of Scotland; although he refrained from definitively ruling on those questions (since the outcome of the case at hand did not depend on them).
The only constitution that the UK has consists of Acts of Parliament. So I don't know why it should seem odd; the US courts can't strike clauses of the US Constitution, and the UK courts can't strike Acts.
Amusingly, the UK government is currently trying to pass an Act to the effect that black is equivalent to white, i.e. that Rwanda is a safe country to which asylum seekers can be sent. This is analogous to the State of Indiana trying to legislate that the value of Pi shall be 3.2. You can't legislate a fact.
It's definitely odd! That's not a reason for UK courts not to strike down acts, or more properly, to have judicial review.
Take Canada. Canada has a Supreme Court and no written constitution. The formal divorce between Canada and the UK was not long ago so we inherited the same legal framework (modulo Quebec but it doesn't play a role here). Yet the Canadian Supreme Court can and does strike down federal laws! Actually, provincial courts can too, and then the federal government gets to appeal to them to the Supreme Court if it wishes.
Take Israel. There's no written constitution. Just the Basic Laws. They're just laws, they can be amended at any time. Yet, the Supreme Court can and does strike down laws. It's even striking down changes to the Basic Laws. That's part of the current political strife.
There is a worldwide movement for judicial review. Usually, supreme courts start with conservative powers and then grow them. Judicial review is not explicitly called out in the US constitution either. The US Supreme Court had to assert that it can strike down unconstitutional laws. This took about 15 years and some careful wrangling. The particular argument of Marbury v. Madison doesn't apply to the UKSC of course.
But there are already law review articles spelling out other legal theories that could be used to assert that the UKSC has the power to strike down Acts. I suspect the UKSC will follow other supreme courts and free themselves of Parliament in the coming decades.
Canada's constitution has written and unwritten parts. The Constitution Act of 1982 (which includes the Charter of Rights and Freedoms), for example, is a written part of Canada's constitution. Changing the charter would require the procedure for constitutional change, which is rather difficult. It's not something that can be amended like a normal act of the parliament.
That's fair. I was using the term "written constitution" from the perspective of a US reader.
There's no document that says "I'm the constitution, that's it".
Canada works under the idea of an open constitution. There's a collection of documents that become entrenched and are considered part of the constitution. There are endless debates about exactly which documents should be considered.
Since the amending formula has made changes impossible, basically all we can do is hope the Court will expand the constitution in a way that serves the public.
It's unclear that we really wanted to give the Supreme Court this power. And some argue that this makes the Canadian Supreme Court the most powerful one in the world. Certainly not even the US Supreme Court can decide the contents of the Constitution, only its interpretation.
And that's before we get to Quebec and their crazy theory about what section 45 means which would make the whole idea of a constitution a mess.
And of course, we're not going to mention the notwithstanding clause.
> There's no document that says "I'm the constitution, that's it".
Umm section 52(2) of the constitution act? I mean,i guess that is not exhaustive, but its most of it.
> There are endless debates about exactly which documents should be considered.
I think you are significantly overstating that. There is some debate, but its mostly theoretical and rarely comes up in practise.
> Since the amending formula has made changes impossible
Its not easy but its not that hard, just nobody agrees on anything. The process for ammending the canadian constitution is roughly the hard as the american one (except for stuff to do with the monarch). Americans need 75% of states, we need 70% of provinces which must contain 50% of the population. Basically the same.
> And of course, we're not going to mention the notwithstanding clause.
What about it? I might personally not like it, but i don't see how it confuses anything in the constitution.
For those that aren't up on their Canadian law and wondering what the "notwithstanding clause" is--
The notwithstanding clause allows a government to make a law "notwithstanding" parts of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The only thing it would take for the federal government to remove the freedom of the press is to pass a law explicitly declaring it it is being removed notwithstanding section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That law now does not violate the Charter, however it is time limited to 5 years, which is the maximum length that parliament can remain in power without an election at which point it would need to be renewed.
The main things that cannot be overridden this way are our right to vote, that legislative assemblies must be re-elected at most every five years, that legislatures must sit every year, and that we have the right to move within or enter and leave Canada.
The original idea was that this provided a balance against the judiciary. Even if the court were to declare something violated our rights, the legislature could just say "okay, we acknowledge that and pass it anyway". The primary balance against this being abused is simply that it would be unprecedented and everyone's scared to touch the "nuclear" button. The federal government has never invoked this clause.
The only reason I can see to "not mention the notwithstanding clause" is because it directly contradicts the idea of the Canadian Supreme Court being the most powerful in the world. Except in a handful of very specific situations, their power is to declare something unconstitutional or against our rights at which point the legislature can simply shout "NO U" and it's in force anyway.
> The only thing it would take for the federal government to remove the freedom of the press is to pass a law explicitly declaring it it is being removed notwithstanding section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
IANAL and not sure how the implied bill of rights works in the modern context, but historically laws restricting the freedom of the press have been struck down even without the charter
However, The main thing i was trying to say though was simply that the rules around the notwithstanding clause are really clear. I think the original poster was trying to say is that what is constitutional can be ambigious, but the notwithstanding clause doesn't really contribute to that as it is pretty unambigious in how it works.
I think that in the UK, judicial review doesn't apply to Acts of Parliament. It applies to administrative decisions, so things like employment tribunals, benefits decisions, medical decisions and so on. Judges aren't supposed to be able to reverse legislation (although, in practice, they can fatally undermine it).
The Supreme Court of Canada does not strike down federal laws. It follows section 52 of the written constitution [0] that states the following.
52 (1) The Constitution of Canada is the supreme law of Canada, and any law that is inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution is, to the extent of the inconsistency, of no force or effect.
All the SCC can do is rule whether or not a law (of any jurisdiction, including federal, provincial, or otherwise) is consistent with the Constitution of Canada. If a law is not consistent with the constitution, then the law has no force or effect, according to the law. That's not "striking down", since the inconsistent law or portion thereof was never valid in the first place.
That's what "striking down" a law is. Even in the US!
From the Opinion in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association:
> And courts do not have the power to “excise” or “strike down”
statutes. See 39 Op. Atty. Gen. 22, 22–23 (1937) (“The
decisions are practically in accord in holding that the
courts have no power to repeal or abolish a statute”);
Harrison 82 (“[C]ourts do not make [nonseverable] provisions inoperative . . . . Invalidation by courts is a figure of
speech”)
> But the federal judiciary has no authority to alter or annul a statute.
The power of judicial review is more limited: It allows a court to decline
to enforce a statute, and to enjoin the executive from enforcing that
statute. But the judicially disapproved statute continues to exist as a law
until it is repealed by the legislature that enacted it, even as it goes
unenforced by the judiciary or the executive. And it is always possible
that a future court might overrule the decision that declared the statute
unconstitutional, thereby liberating the executive to resume enforcing
the statute against anyone who has violated it. Judicial review is not a
power to suspend or “strike down” legislation; it is a judicially imposed
non-enforcement policy that lasts only as long as the courts adhere to
the constitutional objections that persuaded them to thwart the statute’s enforcement.
That being said. You said the written constitution of Canada. From both the UK and the US perspective that's really confusing. Canada's constitution is partly written and partly unwritten and slowly expands over time as other documents are entrenched.
From the US perspective, the Canadian constitution isn't the same kind of entity as the US constitution, it's just an Act of Parliament. From the UK perspective this means that anything goes because obviously Parliament should get to change its Act as it wishes (one of the core tenants is that past Parliaments cannot bind future Parliaments).
> that Rwanda is a safe country to which asylum seekers can be sent
Putting aside whether the UK government's approach is a sensible one (which in my view it isn't) we should be aware that:
"the UNHCR, with financial support from the EU, has transferred refugees from Libya to Rwanda under a scheme called the Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM) [..] The ETM offers vulnerable refugees, taken into detention by the Libyan authorities, a choice to have their application processed in Rwanda."[0]
"In 2019, the [Rwandan] Government established the Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM) Centre that hosted 824 refugees evacuated from Libya. Currently, the transit centre hosts 371 evacuees while working on long-term solutions continues. By the end of 2021, 462 refugees had resettled to third countries so far."[1]
So Rwanda was apparently safe enough for the UNHCR to offer to process some refugees there.
The UK courts partly relied on evidence that those asylum seekers were not always treated in accordance with the convention. The Supreme Court judgment noted cases of refoulement (expulsion to the state the asylum seeker is fleeing from) as well as structural deficiencies in the decision-making process. (https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2023/42.html at paragraphs 89 and onwards).
They also suggested that the UNHCR was mostly processing applications for asylum in third countries for ETM evacuees. An obvious difference with the UK scheme is that we expect Rwanda to grant asylum themselves.
The reason people are trying to get to the UK from France (and other countries) is they are trying to apply for asylum in the UK. Not in France, in the UK. And the reason they have to do that in the UK is the fact the UK cancelled the possibility to apply for asylum at its embassies. So if you don't want people coming from France to ask for asylum, enable the option to apply at the embassy and you are done. Simple, and you will save many lives.
Now of course the same applies to all western countries. There are lots of people trying to come here, some for legitimate reasons, some not, and also we need some of them because of shortage of workers, even if we don't say it loud, because even more would try to come. All western countries allow to apply for asylum only on their soil, thus creating a humanitarian catastrophe, because while the right to asylum is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it does not say how hard can it be to apply.
But all of this is to say it does not matter whether France is or is not a safe country. We could arrange for international cooperation where asylum seekers could ask for asylum and while their application is processed they would stay in some safe country, but next to no safe country will do this because of internal political reasons, so what remains is treating asylum seekers like hot potatoes and not people. It's a sad state of affairs, but there are too many factors and no easy way to direct the blame.
> The reason people are trying to get to the UK from France (and other countries) is they are trying to apply for asylum in the UK
Why is applying for asylum in the UK more appealing to them than applying for asylum in France?
> But all of this is to say it does not matter whether France is or is not a safe country
If we accept that France is a safe country then doesn't it follow that there is no need for anyone to cross the English channel in a small boat in order to claim asylum?
Unless of course you are someone who is being persecuted by the French and are therefore seeking safety with the English, but since it's been over 200 years since those two countries were at war with each other so that sounds somewhat unlikely.
Gerald Knaus[0] observed last year that although there is a right to asylum, there is no right to migration[1].
> Why is applying for asylum in the UK more appealing to them than applying for asylum in France?
I don't really care about that. There are plenty of people applying for asylum in many countries.
> If we accept that France is a safe country then doesn't it follow that there is no need for anyone to cross the English channel in a small boat in order to claim asylum?
No, this is not how this works. You can't force them to apply in France. They are people and they have their rights. And France is a sovereign country, you can't force them either. Maybe you could try to negotiate with France and the EU, like the EU negotiated a deal with Turkey, but I understand currently UK prefers to do questionable deals with Rwanda before engaging with EU members.
I fear this attitude is partially responsible for the fall in support for what I guess we can call "centrist" parties. The harder this issue is pushed, the more the radical parties win support.
> You can't force them to apply in France.
"The Dublin Convention covering the European Union stipulates that asylum seekers are returned to the country where their entry into the union was first recorded, and where they were first fingerprinted"[0]
Well, perhaps not UK -> France thanks to Brexit, but according to the Dublin convention you certainly can return them to the first safe EU country in which they were recorded.
See "Asylum Shopping"[0] - a term for the practice by some asylum seekers of applying for asylum in several states or seeking to apply in a particular state after traveling through other states.
"In Ireland, two-thirds of asylum seekers whose applications failed were found to be already known to the British border authorities, a third of the time under a different nationality, such as Tanzanians claiming to be fleeing persecution in Somalia"[1]
I understand that, but it's not like the governments wouldn't like this issue to go away; things really don't work the way some people would like, for very fundamental reasons, like human rights.
> Well, perhaps not UK -> France thanks to Brexit
exactly.
> according to the Dublin convention you certainly can return them to the first safe EU country
Yeah, and so what does a YOLOing country like Hungary do? Exactly, it does not register them and just ignores them so they can go to the next country. So what do you do when you are next in the line like Slovakia, my home country? Exactly, you just pass them on till they get to their target country (Germany mostly in our case). This also happens in thousand-strong waves.
So again, it's not like the UK is unique in this, it's an issue in all of Europe and the US and there are no easy solutions. Even a fascist like Meloni does not have a solution.
In the US, it's quite hard to change the constitution. It requires agreement from 2/3rds of Congress followed by ratification by the individual legislatures of 3/4ths of the states. Such a thing has not been done since 1992, and not on a politically charged question since 1971.
We’re a 235-year old republic. Changing the firmware once every 10 to 15% of the time seems fine.
> and not on a politically charged question since 1971
This is a feature. If a question is charged it should be resolved first federally, through the states, and then politically, via the legislature. Only once there is consensus should it be elevated to Constitutional status. That is the only way to get a Constitution Americans believe in with intergenerational force.
The problem is that in reality it gets “resolved” through the executive branch or by legalisating from the bench. That ultimately degrades all political institutions.
Can FBI arrest you for marijuana possession in a state where weed is “legal”? It should arrest you, weed is illegal, the government just decided to not enforce its own law. The government can just say “It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute X”[1] and everyone is ok with that.
If even simple laws get bent so easily, what’s left of the constitution? The words inside the Commerce Clause stayed the same for hundreds of years, yet what it “means” (ie how it’s used by the Federal Government to assert its power) have changed profoundly [2].
I believe that a constitution should get a full rewrite once every 50-60 years. That's to only way to ensure that the constitution remains legitimate and relevant.
The US does not really have a constitution. There is a set of documents that claims to be the constitution, but it's so out of date that it can't serve as one. Then there is the Supreme Court, which can change the actual constitution easily with its creative interpretations. Because there is no need for a widespread consensus for changing the constitution, its legitimacy remains questionable at best.
The Constitution is a divining rod to cut through hundreds of years of patchwork caselaw and legislation. Its true use is in a psychological "what would God/The Constitution want?" sense.
Does it make rational sense? Not really, but my reading of history shows a stronger national identity if tied to something "beyond." Whether that be God, Pharaoh, the Founding Fathers, what have you.
>Its true use is in a psychological "what would God/The Constitution want?" sense.
That's its purpose as the holy writ of the civil religion of the United States. And indeed, the Supreme Court derives their authority to judge the Constitutionality of matters from, in essence, divining the will of the Prophets (Founding Fathers) in interpreting this divine scripture. And as with the Pope, they remain infallible even when they contradict themselves, as well as unaccountable.
However, my reading of history has shown that strong national identities built around the worship of state and national myths tend towards dark and bloody ends.
In reality, The Constitution is what it is. A 200 year old legal fiction. A compromise between flawed, mortal men written to serve the needs of an agrarian society far closer to medieval than modern, created with the expectation that times and needs can change.
You cannot use that process for constitutional questions.
Consider the dispute in the USA over the correct intepretation of the 2nd Amendment. A state (such as NY) implements legislation embodying that state's interpretation of the amendment. SCOTUS rules that the legislation in fact violates the amendment. No change is possible until the constitution is changed ... or the composition of the SCOTUS is modified, and a new court decides that stare decisis is not relevant, which leads to a different type of change to the constitution: interpretation.
The only way to change the actual text of the constitution is to change the constitution, and that does not require consensus, just a super-majority.
And given that the point of a constitution is to set the bounds within policy-making takes place, rather than to enact policy on any specific issue, this is a very important thing.
Past attempts to shoehorn answers to specific policy questions into the constitution have been disasters, but even if they hadn't been, using constitutional amendment as a vehicle for policy is effectively the same as having no constitution at all.
There is also a convention of the states that can change the constitution. It has been talked about by various groups from time to time, but has never happened.
the latter has never happened and the constitution is very vague about what they would entail, and I think is what the earlier poster was referencing (there has been some recent noise around them)
Ban on alcohol was lifted by 2/3 of each house approving. Instead of going to the state legislators, it went to state conventions convened specifically for that purpose.
good question. I'm not clear after reading Wikipedia how that happened. US congress called for this which is how amendments are normally handled, but then it seems to have done something weird.
I'm not interested enough in the question to dig deeper to figure out what is what. I'll leave this as a "I stand corrected" but if you care do dig deeper.
Unfortunately we've seen several times recently that not everyone "knows" things work the same way. A lot of what is "known" might be accepted by Parliament and our courts today but has historical foundations that we might generously call shaky if you look more closely into their origins.
If you're claiming to be a democracy but no-one really knows exactly what your constitutional foundations and system of government are and there is no clear mechanism for the people to change them then are you really a democracy or are you just playing one on TV?
For now we have a system where we elect MPs using a deeply flawed voting method on a timetable that MPs themselves can change any time they like, those MPs then result in a Prime Minister being appointed, that Prime Minister then forms a government in largely presidential fashion, the members of that government with executive authority wield much of the real power despite being at least three degrees removed from any popular mandate, and the main check to prevent this system running wild is a second house that is unelected and increasingly consists of political cronies with no particular qualifications except being mates with a previous Prime Minister.
They aren't immutable, but they can only be changed by Parliament:
"the courts cannot overrule its legislation and no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change. Parliamentary sovereignty is the most important part of the UK constitution"
Judicial review isn't necessarily an obvious or completely desirable concept. It's not in the US Constitution either, and Marbury v. Madison is still somewhat controversial.
From the outset, officials in all branches of government have sworn an oath to uphold the constitution in the conduct of their duties, and the constitution explicitly states that it is the supreme federal law, so it seems that Marbury vs. Madison would follow logically from the justices' obligation to only issue rulings consistent with the constitution as they understand it.
One could regard the legislature as having an equivalent duty to refrain from enacting statutes incompatible with the constitution, and the executive as having an equivalent duty to refrain from enforcement actions inconsistent with the constitution, but historically, the judiciary seems to have been the only branch to take its duty seriously.
Parliament is sovereign. Basically, as long as Parliament says so, it can do what it wants, although it can be slowed down by institutions like the Supreme Court or the royal family. There is no real separation powers.
Which _sounds_ bad, but the UK has an extremely long history of relative stability compared to basically anywhere else on the planet, so something must be going right.
> Which _sounds_ bad, but the UK has an extremely long history of relative stability compared to basically anywhere else on the planet, so something must be going right.
The more I learn about British history, the more I think this reputation for stability is merely due to how well all the civil wars (and parliament inviting in a new royal family) were brushed over.
When was the last time the British had a civil war or invited in a new royal family? Having issues hundreds of years ago hardly seems worthy of denying the stability of a country. Many countries have come into existence and no longer exist in that same period of time.
If that's sub-threshold for you, I'd also add the 1919 to 1921 Irish War of Independence as, likewise with the Troubles, it was part of the UK at the time.
Personally, I would also argue that almost all of the independence movements in the former colonies count as examples of the governments of the UK being "not stable" even though those colonies were outside the nation itself, and that would even extend to cases like Malta where independence happened peacefully after a proposal to give them a seat in Westminster, and not just cases like Cyprus where they used guns to kick us out and yet somehow the British Sovereign Base Areas are still there.
> or invited in a new royal family?
1689, which you may feel is a while ago now, but the USA Revolutionary War was 1775, and proportionally speaking that invitation was only 34% longer ago than the formation of the USA, so I wouldn't call it an "extremely" long history relative to that… even if you don't want to count the Revolutionary War itself as an example of instability in the British government, which I would as the British was the other party in that conflict.
I don't really consider the Troubles to be a Civil War. Even Wikipedia is making a distinction and calling it an "irregular war" or "low-level war".
So the last time a civil war happened was 100 years ago. That seems decently stable. The war itself was quite minor as well. Wikipedia says 2300 people died with 900 of them being civilians. A two year war with less than 1,500 soldiers dying isn't exactly that unstable. It is more of a dust up (I understand it is causing all sorts of conflicts even to this day).
When it comes to Cyprus and the like I don't really call it unstable. Did Cyrpus leaving cause any issues to the UK? Would the average person have even known where Cyprus is located let alone what was happening? Calling it a civil conflict or whatever may be technically correct but feels different. English isn't even an official language of Cyprus (I assume it was back when the UK was in charge?). People in the UK probably didn't have family in Cyprus. People a thousand miles away leaving isn't that big of a deal.
As for the US Revolutionary War, there were 10s of thousands dead from the war. This was more than just a dust up. How is a few hundred years not a long history? I've seen some estimates that say the average existence of a country is 150 years.
What I'm arguing against is the claim "the UK has an extremely long history of relative stability compared to basically anywhere else on the planet".
For that, "decently stable" isn't good enough, it has to be remarkable stability.
> Did Cyrpus leaving cause any issues to the UK?
Given this happened during the collapse of the British Empire, it's difficult to say exactly what fraction of the many issues facing the UK in that era were due to any specific one of the many things that changed in rapid succession. For example, the Cyrpus conflict began before the Suez Crisis, but continued for several years after.
However, the continued presence of the air bases suggests that it was considered important by the UK government.
> English isn't even an official language of Cyprus (I assume it was back when the UK was in charge?).
English was the sole official language during British colonial rule and the lingua franca until 1960, and continued to be used in courts until 1989, and in legislation until 1996.
It's sometimes described as the 'good chap' theory of governance. Everyone is expected to be a gentleman, so flexibility is possible with an absence of formal guardrails.
It obviously handles capture by bad faith actors fairly poorly; the hope is that such people or movements can be stopped before they get that far. Johnson was pretty marginal as a PM from this point of view.
Thanks, haven't heard of the 'good chap' theory of governance before. Lovely name that emphasizes how inadequate such system is in the 21st century. Or perhaps it was never adequate:
I think this is generally true? It’d be weird if there were some laws from 30 years ago that nobody wanted, but were not legally allowed to be changed. You’d just change them anyway and nobody would care.
It's generally true precisely because British parliamentary democracy formalised the concept, mind you. Before that, yes, rulers made laws that would perpetually benefit them and their successors.
Yeah, I don't think it's quite as simple as commentators are making out, because ECJ rulings have roughly constitutional-level effects in disapplying Acts.
Well it does, in written bits in various places, and some as precedent.
However it is a bit more complex. England has a constitution (that collection above), Scotland has a different (and somewhat incompatible) constitution.
The incompatibility being where the seat of Sovereignty lies. In Scotland with the people, in England with the Monarch (but wrested away by Parliament).
So when the two countries formed the new state of Great Britain, and dissolved their prior states, they granted it a minimal constitution. However they couldn't grant more than they had, and the Scottish grantors did not hold sovereignty. Hence claiming that UK Parliament is sovereign is to presume that England annexed Scotland.
That continuing incompatibility is (IMO) why we've never had a single written GB/UK constitution, and probably never will. It will require addressing the fact that we're acting as if Scotland was annexed, and to put that in writing will cause its own problems.
Frankly, the US system isn't exactly a resounding vindication of written constitutions either. Arguably the UK system has displayed considerably greater flexibility. For example the US president is still basically an elected George III.
Prefacing this with the fact that I never had a good feel for UK law due, in part due to it being a common law system vs. the common law system I’m more familiar with on mainland Europe. Plus, I’ve not kept up with what, if anything, the UK maintained concerning supranational jurisdiction after Brexit.
That said, what you describe is similar to that of some EU countries.
Take the Netherlands for example.
In the Netherlands, courts can’t test laws passed by the Dutch parliament to the Dutch constitution.
Even the Dutch Supreme Court doesn’t have that power (and Dutch legal scholars will therefore deny that the Dutch Supreme Court is a so-called “constitutional court” like the Germans have, for example).
Still, in practice, this is a non-issue because the legal hierarchy places international and EU law above Dutch law, making it the supreme law of the land.
Subsequently, this allows Dutch courts to test against international and EU law, which, for the most part anyway, have similar provisions to that of the Dutch constitution when it comes to (human) rights.
I suppose the question I’m asking is if in practice, the situation is the same or similar in the UK?
As a canadian, this is interesting, because i always thought our system was a copy of the UK system, but our courts strike down laws for being unconstitutional all the time.
It is a copy. The UK has a constitution. The UK constitution just isn't a simple document one can hang on the wall. The UK constitution is a body of knowledge and traditions. Recognize and do something a particular way for a few hundred years and it can become constitutional irrespective of whether it was nicely codified in a single document.
One can even say that the US and Canadian constitutions don't actually say all that much. They survive because they are so open to interpretation by courts ... which makes the body of constitutional knowledge needed to render decisions not all that different than that needed in the UK.
Most people understand "a constitution" to mean something written down that you can point to, that has the force of <something> behind it, that cannot be trivially elided by a government.
None of these are true of the UK "constitution", whether it is one document or 5000 precedents.
Any document written in a spoken human language will be open to interpretation - there's no getting away from that, regardless of the language, culture or country the document comes from. I still consider that a step up from the bullshit assemblage of "constitutional law" that claimed to be "the UK constitution".
It means that a Dutch court can't test the constitutionality of laws made by the Dutch government in concert with parliament.
In legal parlance translated from Dutch, these would be called "laws in the formal sense."
The way it works is that the Dutch government (i.e., the Dutch ministers and the King, albeit the latter only in a ceremonious role) proposes a bill, and the two Dutch legislative houses (House of Representatives and Senate) vote to pass it.
A law that is a product of this process is deemed a "formal law" or "law in the formal sense." Courts cannot test these against the Dutch constitution (i.e., look to see if they're constitutional).
Other forms of legislation can be tested against the constitution by courts.
These are called "material laws" or "laws in the material senses" because, materially, they function as a law in the sense that they prescribe something and are generally binding. Still, they haven't been established in a "formal" manner through the process I described above that involves the government and parliament.
Examples of such material laws are municipal ordinances and royal decrees issued by the Dutch government (akin to the American executive orders by the US president).
Some laws that have been materialized through the process described above are also considered material laws instead of formal laws, but that's more a matter of exception when they don't have a generally binding character for all citizens (e.g., a permission law for the marriage of a specific member of the royal family).
A judge can't look at these formal laws and rule that they're unconstitutional.
Ironically, the Dutch constitution itself (art. 120) prohibits this test.
The logic at the time was that they wanted to prevent the judicial branch from second-guessing the legislative branch and that if it misbehaved, the voters could punish them during the next election round.
Additionally, they wanted to enshrine that the government, in concert with the two legislative houses, should be the unimpeachable sole authority to create laws.
However, this means that the Dutch constitution functions more as a set of guidelines for the highest level of legislators than a strict set of rules to abide by.
That said, nowadays, there is some political will here and there every couple of legislative sessions to reform it so that the courts are allowed to test against the constitution, with some ideas even going as far as establishing a formal constitutional court for this purpose.
As someone who used to practice there, I think it's more a matter of trivia that raises eyebrows in your first year of law school than something with many practical consequences.
As stated before, international and EU treaties have taken over the Dutch constitution's role in keeping the legislator in check. So far, legislators haven't sought to cross the lines in remarkable ways.
Nevertheless, I'd welcome testing constitutionality as an extra layer in the legal firewall, provided it's designed in a way that leads to results seen in the German, French, and Scandinavian models, as opposed to the results and effects caused by the SCOTUS in the US.
This is why there's such a fight over the Rwanda bill: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68283703 . ECHR is effectively constitutional law in the UK, not an ordinary Act of Parliament. Courts have ruled that deporting people to dangerous countries breaches ECHR. The government is trying to legislate the ""fact"" that Rwanda is ""safe"" in order to circumvent that, because they're not quite yet ready to throw out ECHR entirely and haven't had decades to pack the courts.
Well, yes, there's some nuance here. Where there's an Act of Parliament that says courts can dis-apply other Acts of Parliament then the courts can do so.
But the Human Rights Act does not do this, even though it has quasi-constitutional status, and as far as I know now that the European Communities Act has been repealed no Act of Parliament does this.
A better case to cite than Factortame would be R (Jackson) v Attorney General, where the House of Lords (in its judicial function before that was removed to the Supreme Court) entertained the idea that in extremis parliamentary sovereignty was not absolute.
If the government continues its showdown over Rwanda the Supreme Court might be forced to re-visit that idea.
But the law as it is applied right now means that courts cannot overturn actsof Parliament.
> Just this week, on Wednesday, Britain’s Supreme Court struck down the latest attempt to implement the Rwanda plan. (Having a “Supreme Court” that strikes down Acts of Parliament is a fairly recent development in Britain.)
We have a Supreme Court. It's the old House of Lords judicial committee with new robes, though: the powers are nearly identical and the legal business of the HoL has been done by the most senior judges since the 19th Century.
The nuance here is that many Acts do not set out a whole scheme: they allow government to make subordinate regulations with the force of law. The Acts are (essentially, kinda) immune from judicial review, but the implementing statutory instruments aren't. (They haven't had full parliamentary scrutiny and are in practice just executive instruments - so can be struck down without parliamentary sovereignty problems as ultra vires the government).
> The Court held that a legal obligation to decrypt E2E communications is a disproportionate interference with the right to privacy.
*when no adequate safeguards against abuse are in place
Unfortunately it is not as straightforward as that it's incompatible altogether. Per this ruling, it's only incompatible when there are no good safeguards (they use the word "adequate" in one place and "suitable" in another, neither is very specific about what it means)
Yes, that is very true. The Court generally does not oppose surveillance measures in general, as long as adequate safeguards are in place. However, I read the relevant paragraphs (paras 76-79) to be quite a strong rejection of any statutory obligation that would effectively require the installation of a backdoor undermining E2EE. The criticism of a lack of adequate safeguards and the risk of abuse is more focused on other aspects of the law.
That also becomes clear in the key paragraph 80: "The Court concludes from the foregoing that the contested legislation providing for the retention of all Internet communications of all users, the security services’ direct access to the data stored _without adequate safeguards against abuse_ and the _requirement to decrypt encrypted communications_, as applied to end-to-end encrypted communications, cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society"
The Court does not qualify the requirement to decrypt E2EE communications with the same safeguards requirements. That of course does not exclude the possibility of the Court finding that a more narrowly-construed law is not in violation. But the Court clearly signals its skepticism towards any "requirement that providers of such services weaken the encryption mechanism for all users" (para 79).
Yes, this was a problem all along with arguments against surveillance (/encryption weakening) based on "it can be abused by bad actors" - it implies that one would be ok with surveillance if it could not be abused by bad actors. While it's tempting to use such arguments (it looks like they had effect in this case at least) it remains necessary to emphasize the true reasons one takes a stand against surveillance e.g. authoritarian overreach or a fundamental right to privacy.
Do you think that phone taps and mail-opening warrants, issued by judges, based on evidence submitted to the court that such warrants are appropriately targetted and based on existing evidence and reasonable suspicion, are intrinsically "authoritarian overreach"?
Not inherently, but they become overreach when they start claiming that they should be able to apply to E2EE protocols.
If you want the data from an E2EE protocol, serve an appropriately targeted and scoped warrant to one of the endpoints. This also provides an opportunity for legal challenge (e.g. for scope overreach).
> For a detailed description of safeguards that should be set out in law for it to meet the “quality of law” requirements and to ensure that secret surveillance measures are applied only when “necessary in a democratic society”, see Roman Zakharov, §§ 231-34, and Big Brother Watch and Others, §§ 335-39
I am not a lawyer and not motivated enough to go read those decisions, but if anyone is curious that is probably the place to start to figure out what might count as "adequate safeguards".
To tack onto this I don't think most people in the UK understand what the ECHR does and why leaving the EU didn't alter our obligations under the ECHR.
The media carries a lot of responsibility for that but not all of it - nearly every person in the UK carries a little box with access to a huge chunk of the sum total of all human knowledge, they just choose to not to use it.
If that sounds elitist or arrogant it's because I've about reached my limit with ignorant people refusing to understand the world is messy and complex.
It doesn't sound elitist or arrogant - quite the opposite. It just assumes that people know what's true and what's not up front, and know when the media is telling them the truth. Their little box doesn't only tell them true things.
You can’t remove the administrative state. It’ll be happy to sustain the illusion of “democracy” for you by throwing a few of its representatives under the bus every now and again, but in the end all of the candidates you get to vote for are 100% acceptable to the administrative state and are anointed by it.
The coverage I heard on the BBC and NPR in the States about Brexit and UK public sentiment was a complete inversion of reality. I'm reluctant to believe anyone telling me what the UK wants.
Nobody really knows what public sentiment is in the UK, because nobody is asking. They're all just telling the people what they 'want'.
The sample sizes for any polls are tiny, and the areas/people that are sampled are not comprehensive.
It's fairly likely that the people (or a majority of) want the Tories out, as all sides are suggesting that and it's about the only consensus we see.
Brexit was such a mess of misinformation and rushed voting, on something that the majority of people had no idea 'what' they were really voting for, that it should never have been taken as binding - and it probably wouldn't have been if the remain vote won.
At this point, it's unclear if the UK will start to even recover in the next 5 years, or just keep getting worse.
I think the post you're replying to is rightfully observing that that semantic ambiguity creates harm, by equating the position of a country's government to the position of a country's people. Being more specific and saying "a faction within the UK government wants to..." seems like a better framing for any discussion.
The UK leaving the ECHR, at this point, seems incredibly far-fetched; even amongst the Tories it's hardly a consensus position, and they realistically only have a few month of working time left before the next election.
>> information necessary to decrypt electronic messages if they were encrypted
That reminds me of Lavabit, which I once used as my primary email. In response to demands for decryption information, Lavabit handed over their private keys. On paper. Typed out. Possibly with a typo somewhere on page 6, or 12.
ECtHR is not an EU court. UK is part of Council of Europe, which also includes Russia. Being member of Council of Europe entails mandatory treaty law of ECHR.
The UK government almost seem to be deliberately passing multiple pieces of legislation that they know will be overturned due to ECHR, because they believe such rulings would strengthen their argument for withdrawing from the convention.
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Not sure in what world Merz's coalition could ever be considered centre-left. It's a coalition of the conservative party (which moved much further right under his leadership) and the centrist Social Democrats (who equally moved to the right/center under current and former leadership). Calling them "centre-right" could perhaps be acceptable, all while "conservative" is also a widespread label.