Q&A highlight
Postedabout 2 months ago
Key Takeaways
ps. Interesting trivia: Mahmoud Abbas (President of the Palestinian West Bank) and FATAH militia also are against Hamas. They always have been:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah%E2%80%93Hamas_conflict
Nothing is black or white.
The massive demonstrations in the street seem to counter your narrative though.
~15% of Israelis believe that a terrorist who shot up a mosque (literally all he did) is a national hero.
It shouldnt be that that hard to imagine that most of the rest are willing to look the other way in the event of a genocide against the same untermensch.
(It's an archive link because the original is paywalled).
> Nearly half (47 percent) of respondents agreed that "when conquering an enemy city, the Israel Defense Forces should act as the Israelites did in Jericho under Joshua's command – killing all its inhabitants."
There tends to be a lot more nuance[0] when it comes to polling results like these, the reality is that opinions amongst Israelis vary quite a lot. There are also a lot of problems with organizations like the UN historically wildly misrepresenting the food situation[1] which are likely to make Israelis question the accuracy of many of these starvation reports, especially from organizations that have historically made many highly inaccurate claims. UN backed IPC reports like those cited in the CNN article likewise have serious credibility issues as well[2], additionally there are extremely biased individuals like Michael Fakhri(the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food) cited in the CNN article that even publish comic books with some rather overt antisemitic tropes[3].
[0] https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-06-04/ty-article-opinio...
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-one-un-leaders-mistak...
[2] https://unwatch.org/hillel-neuer-on-sky-news-fabricated-u-n-...
[3] https://unwatch.org/legal-analysis-of-un-food-rapporteur-mic...
Edit: looking at the claims more specifically, this one is particularly easy to debunk:
> even publish comic books with some rather overt antisemitic trope
The supposed "antisemitic trope" is an image of a person holding a cracked globe. The blog post implies that this is supposed to be an image representing the antisemitic "masters of the world" trope. In fact, the image represents the UN rapporteur himself looking at how the lack of international reaction to Israel's crimes has left a crack in the UN-led rules-based world order.
On top of that, politics and demographics shifted rightward, and October 7th reinforced the belief that peace is not realistic in the near term. For many Israelis, moderation no longer feels like a safe or responsible option- it feels like a risk their families can’t afford.
This is a very dire situation. We’ve come to realize there are millions, perhaps tens of millions, across the region whose worldview includes the elimination of the Jewish state, and they are very committed to it. We can’t and won’t wage war on whole populations as that is not in our blood. Nor can we realistically change their beliefs in the foreseeable future or find something to offer that would produce lasting peace.
So today our choices feel grim and limited. That is why many Israelis believe we must: 1. Be excellent at predicting attacks and when necessary, strike first to disrupt them 2. Impose a very heavy cost on anyone who contemplates attacking us, so others think twice 3. Remain stronger and more capable than everyone around us
It’s a terrible place to be, and it’s not the future anyone hoped for. But until there’s a credible, sustained shift in the region, a process that would likely take generations of committed leadership, many here see little alternative.
https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/poll-show-most-jew...
In the US, we do... due to the structure of the Senate and Electoral College, low population states wield outsize influence on national politics. This goes as far as allowing the election of a president with <50% national support. Add in political gerrymandering (setting electrical districts to constrain the influence of certain demographics), and we have a national government that's opposed to policies that have wide support across the population in general.
Israeli society is deeply complicit in the mass killing and starvation in Gaza. The IDF is a citizen army. There haven't been mass refusals or resistance. It's not just Netanyahu.
Almost but not quite.
And/or the Israel-backed ISIS groups[1][2].
[1]: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sytu2q1mel
[2]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-netanyahu-armi...
No Proof Hamas Routinely Stole U.N. Aid, Israeli Military Officials Say
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/world/middleeast/hamas-un...
We don't know many of the interceptions Hamas was behind, but that isn't really important.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/02/middleeast/israel-halts-gaza-...
Secondly, nobody can tell who intercepted what, it could very well be that the IDF is intercepting them covertly.
> it could very well be that the IDF is intercepting them covertly
This seems like a pretty farfetched conspiracy theory. There are smart phones and other cameras all over Gaza, and zero evidence of this.
No it's not. Driving trucks full of food through hungry crowds will absolutely result in "shrinkage." That doesn't mean they're all Hamas.
I didn't say they're all Hamas; again the relevant thing is that they're being intercepted and not making it to ordinary civilians.
> the relevant thing is that they're being intercepted and not making it to ordinary civilians
Hell of a straw man. People care that the aid is getting to militants. Israel said it was getting to Hamas. That's the justification for limiting aid. If it's not getting to people who are shooting at Israeli troops, then it's not a security risk to provide more aid.
- Groups of men with rifles tend to be belligerents in the conflict, even if we can't say definitively if they're with Hamas, PIJ or some smaller gang. Israel doesn't want an aid program where the bulk of the aid goes to their literal war enemies.
- Even if some of them are "civilian armed gangs" and not actual belligerents, the aid they steal still isn't getting to civilians (except when it's sold at extortionate prices). Hence the shift to GHF which, while it has its own problems, does actually deliver most aid to ordinary civilians for free.
Sure it is when Israel is funding other groups that are known for stealing aid. It changes the entire narrative.
Israel backs an anti-Hamas armed group known for looting aid in Gaza. Here’s what we know
https://apnews.com/article/gaza-armed-groups-hamas-israel-lo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip#Feb...
It's not like the Gazans have any money to speak of.
> (or is irrelevant)?
If the way to prevent starvation is to flood the zone with food shipments, it's a moral imperative to do that. That it will also help keep the enemy fed is entirely beside the point, since causing starvation is not a legal or ethical form of warfare.
This is more of an argument in favor of the other side. It immediately becomes clear why they don't have the money.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100612001046/http://www.mcclat...
https://ghf.org/press-briefing-ghf-addresses-personnel-matte...
The only material evidence GHF has shown are small chunks of SMS conversations that are perfectly compatible with the "Aguilar was trying to convince GHF leadership to change policies" hypothesis, and WhatsApp broadcast of Aguilar telling his staff they were doing a great job.
Meanwhile, Aguilar has multiple photos and videos showing the conditions aid was distributed in which you can see right now on Youtube, testimony of seeing the GHF security contractors firing into crowds (to which the GHF replied by saying its contractors only fired above crowds, still a Geneva Convention violation), statistics that showed that people got shot during every single GHF distribution, matching testimony from Palestinian doctors and journalists and IDF whistleblowers, etc.
The evidence is overwhelming unless your curiosity cuts off as soon as you read the GHF damage control statements.
given that there is "statistics" (comfortable provided by hamas) of people getting shot during every single distribution, do you find it strange that there is not even 1 video of people actually getting shot en masse ? surely someone would have thought that it will be amazing video evidence that will be easy to make, as it happens daily, and a way to make israel look real bad, yet - nothing. the only video that comes close to it is when bullets very precisely hitting absolutely nothing few meters away from people.
with regards to " IDF whistleblowers", in case you missed the memo, the famous haaretz article with whistleblowers was mistranslated from hebrew. in hebew was used expression with meaning of "shooting at air/ground to prevent advancement". it was translated to english as "shooting at people". haaretz got it's 13 pieces for this
Yeah, guess what, that's still a breach of Geneva Conventions.
(Also basic common sense. The golden rule of gun safety is "Never point the gun at anything unless you intend to kill it", there isn't a "but shooting just over their heads is perfectly okay".)
First, Israel has consistently denied journalists access to those distribution sites, so the only video evidence we should expect to find are from civilians. Civilians who are in the middle of a stampede and getting shot at do not, as a general rule, stop to bring their smartphone out and film whoever is shooting at them (usually footage of shootings is filmed by people in buildings, obviously doesn't apply here).
The best video I could find is this one, showing people cowering and shots landing between them: https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/7/15/video-sho...
That's a really tight crowd, and bullets are clearly landing very close to them. Even if we assume nobody was hit by a stray bullet (which I find very improbable), that's still an egregious breach of the Geneva Conventions. Also, it seems similar to a pattern Aguilar described: IDF soldiers shooting at sand mounds, not realizing/caring that their bullets had enough penetration to go out the other side and kill people.
As for non video evidence, we have: photos of wounded people being taken away from GHF sites, testimonies of Gazan doctors who treated people of all ages wounded/killed by 7.62mm M80 bullets, testimonies of international doctors saying the same thing, a video published by Aguilar where we hear a SRS contractor bragging about hitting someone during a distribution, whistleblower testimonies, Gaza Health Ministries statistics (which the IDF treats as reliable, according to IDF leaks), UN statistics, and a mountain of testimonies from Gazan residents.
But if the only "actual" evidence you accept is video evidence in an area where the IDF is forbidding journalists, then the best I can give you is the link above.
Also, I'm stopping this discussion here, because the bullshit asymmetry principle is at play here: it took you 10 seconds to write your "there's no evidence because I say so" comment, and it took me one hour to sift through the media reports to write this rebuttal.
(Though for what it's worth, I do wish the evidence was better collected, and not scattered across MSM reports. In particular, I wish Aguilar had published a full dump of all the photos and videos he took.)
EDIT: This site aggregates social media reports related to the Gaza war. Some of them include footage of dead people near GHF sites, though none I could find that included the moment the person got shot.
If they flooded Gaza with food then Hamas would benefit less from the supposed stealing/reselling.
Seems to me, if the claim is true, Israel is trying to give Hamas more power, not less.
> But recent intelligence has shown the extent to which Hamas has been able to build many of its rockets and anti-tank weaponry out of the thousands of munitions that failed to detonate when Israel lobbed them into Gaza, according to weapons experts and Israeli and Western intelligence officials. Hamas is also arming its fighters with weapons stolen from Israeli military bases.
> “Unexploded ordnance is a main source of explosives for Hamas,” said Michael Cardash, the former deputy head of the Israeli National Police Bomb Disposal Division and an Israeli police consultant. “They are cutting open bombs from Israel, artillery bombs from Israel, and a lot of them are being used, of course, and repurposed for their explosives and rockets.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/28/world/middleeast/israel-h...
And quite a bit of what's being talked about wrt to re-manufacturing Israeli unexploded ordance was stockpiled prior to Oct 7th. Israel did not start bombing Gaza only after Oct 7th (and in fact had been bombing Gaza as late as Sept 23, 2023).
Gaza is on the ocean: they could have been brought in via boat.
Otherwise the answer is largely tunnels.
Before May 2024, Egypt was the primary route for aid to get it, but getting from Southern Gaza to northern Gaza was incredibly dangerous.
The blockade was also imposed by Egypt[0] and Hamas certainly provided no shortage of security related justifications for the blockade. Unfortunately those security concerns turned out to be accurate[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas
> In February 2020, former Mossad Director Yossi Cohen and Israeli general Herzi Halevi, under Netanyahu's orders, went to Qatar to plead Qatari officials to continue the payments for Hamas.[8] Later, in September 2023, David Barnea, the Director of Mossad since 2021, went to Qatar to meet Qatari officials to discuss about the payments for Hamas.[10][44]
(...)
> Israeli intelligence officials believe that the money had a role in the success of 2023 Hamas-led attack.[10]
A few months prior to October 7th, Natenyahu had allowed the highest number of work visas for Gazans to work in Israel proper. They genuinely thought economic prosperity would bring an slowdown and eventual end to terrorism. Now try and find Israelis who support the idea of 10s of 1000s Palestinians cruising the borders for work each day - thanks to Oct 7th.
Doesn't quite fit the narrative you want to portray, does it?
What videos?
Yeah, Benjamin Netanyahu certainly got complacent thinking he could keep a genocidal terrorist group like Hamas under control with that strategy. Qatar and their support for terrorists has long been a problem as well.
Do you also believe 9/11 was an inside job? Both claims are IMO equally unrealistic.
food tracks fluctuate between 2000 and 3000 a month prior to oct 7th. a few more dozens of of tracks with "non-edible consumables" and "medical supplies". rest of tracks are construction materials
ps. good chunk of farms were actually not for gaza consumption but for export (to israel and other places). stuff like strawberries, some leafy greens, etc. but in general farming in region is hard. there is no water. droughts been severe. Israel survives by desalinating majority (80%) of potable water (and supplying it to jordan, west bank, gaza) and recycling 90% of waste water for use in agriculture.
Before the war Gaza had the ability to produce much of its own food. To subsist totally on imports, about 500 trucks a day is what's needed.
Not to mention that the blockade was enforced by Egypt as well.
Both Israeli Arabs & Palestinian Arabs. This is not some, 'oh no! it just happened.' Everyone who has actually spent time studying this conflict, the state of Israel has a policy of systematic rape, torture, mass incarceration, murder, and dehumanization of Palestinians at an industrial scale that's been in place for decades now.
They're just going mask-off in a way Western audiences can't pretend not to know about it any longer.
Israelis and their Western supporters try to make out their actions as that of fringe far-right loonies like Smotrich, etc. Nope. Systematic rape, torture, murder, of non-Jews has been their policy for decades now. You're just finally learning about it after so long. The ultra-orthodox don't make up a plurality of the population and used to not serve in the military until recently. So, if their abominable ideology is state policy, it's because Israelis are okay with it.
[0]: https://www.timesofisrael.com/plurality-of-jewish-israelis-w...
>Israel has denied the allegations. [from linked CNN article]
People are waking up.
I'd like some evidence for each of these three. I'm aware of the policy of interrogation which might count as "a policy of systematic torture". Can you do systematic rape and murder?
>“There is no famine in Gaza. Period,” the [Israeli] official said, adding that “Israel and the IDF are trying to strengthen the humanitarian situation in Gaza with partners.”
If you want to see what Netanyaho looks like when he's covering things up [lying] just watch the 2024 documentary The Bibi Files — about his corruption charges (which features over an hour of Netanyaho lying to investigators about his accepting roses and leaves [wine and cigars]) — complete with his shit-eating-grins galore...
https://www.propublica.org/article/biden-blinken-state-depar...
Israelis (including those who use this platform to repeat the same warmed-over genocide denials for the umpteenth time) know it's happening too. That's why the argument is usually 50% "it's not happening" and 50% "but they deserve it".
Please understand that this is a war crime. You can not use starvation of civilians as a weapon or as leverage against combatants.
America withholding its own aid is not a war crime.
She had seen war and genocide first-hand in Bosnia and that provided the impetus for her to study how America had responded to various genocides.
I will repeat the last paragraph of her Preface for some context.
>Before I began exploring America's relationship with genocide, I used to refer to U.S. policy towards Bosnia as a "failure." I have changed my mind. It is daunting to acknowledge, but this country's consistent policy of nonintervention in the face of genocide offers sad testimony not to a broken American political system but to one that is ruthlessly effective. The system, as it stands now, is working. No U.S. president has ever made genocide prevention a priority, and no U.S. president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on.
[0] https://samanthapower.com/books/a-problem-from-hell-america-...
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Hell-America-Age-Genocide/dp/...
(I am commenting on the general US policy and not making a statement about the current situation in Gaza.)
We sold weapons to Burma, China, Russia, ISIS, Sudan and Somaliland [1]?
We're absolutely complicit in Gaza, the DRC f/k/a Zaire and Bosnia. And we helped defend the Yazidi and Ukrainians. Honestly, looking at the list, that's a better record than Russia or China have had since WWII.
The more time I spend in tech the more I realize there's a deep moral rot here covered up by noveau-rich wealth
I feel like the community is censored or rather finds inconvenient to talk about it because of the big role that Israel plays in the tech scene. SV has an ethos of avoiding name calling and finger pointing at members of the community, since they know it's a long repeated game they are playing.
But I'm glad to see some prominent voices step up. Particularly, PG and Amjad Massad (Replit) have been very vocal. I hope their voice makes people feel like it's OK to call out human right violations when they see them.
Then there's the other extreme of the tech scene that simply decided to play politics for its own gain. The All In Pod crew as the poster children of this. Their cynicism is s transparent and disgusting in how they kiss the ring to get favor of the king in turn. I think that's a bit of what triangle man is trying to get, and it's certainly what sama was trying to do when this admin started.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/04/25/g-s1-...
But I have never seen rampant obesity in Hamas prisoners that the IDF have captured alive? Hamas can't be extorting the Gazan people for those calories, the Gazan people have no money at this point by and large due to the huge swath of destruction of property and infrastructure via bombing-- only Hamas has those underground tunnels or somesuch.
So like... what is going on here
This claim is made by supporters of the war _outside of Israel_ for external consumption. If you look at what the Israeli cabinet, generals and politicians are saying for internal consumption... it's pretty deliberate.
are you saying un supports the war then?
But hey, between hungry peasants and buff hamas soldiers we do know who has the guns.
This is a truck. You are a hungry person. How do you even stop a truck? And why, if you could just... follow it to a location where it was supposed to despense stuff to you?
Not saying that the claim is true, just that your logic is faulty.
So what is going on is that the IDF are lying to justify their genocide. There is a massive propaganda machine at work to muddy the waters.
https://apnews.com/article/mideast-wars-photo-gallery-hostag...
Plenty of Hamas fighters looking in pretty great shape.
given the current US administration and their hard-on for Israel, I can't imagine this is a faked report. if it were faked, it'd be to agree with Israel
They have been willing to constantly fight, and constantly keep getting killed by an enemy with overwhelming advantages, for their cause for two years now. Why would you assume that being able to escape with their lives is suddenly more important to them?
From Hamas?
And then what? Look at the West Bank to see what happens when you don't resist the occupation and fully cooperate with the colonial state. You get slowly cleansed anyway.
> Also the idea of amnesty to all Hamas members looks pretty generous to me
Israel specializes in assassinations and has a history of relentlessly pursuing those it deems its enemies. If you were a Hamas fighter, your choice would be to either die fighting for a purpose, or be killed in exile without a purpose anymore.
Valid point for the safety of Hamas members though, would be hard to come up with an arrangement that convinces them that they are going to be safe
Hamas has. If you put this deal to a plebescite in Gaza, do you really think they'd vote for more war?
Yes?
Just so I understand the hypothetical, the Jewish resistance in Nazi Germany (not really a singular thing, but I'll read this as the French Resistance and ghetto leaders) are offered amnesty, i.e. an end to the Holocaust, in exchange for literally anything? Why wouldn't they take it? It's literally a choice between life and death.
And again, it gives time for regrouping, clear thinking, rallying support. Turning it down seems to scream that the offer, in this hypothetical an end to the Holocaust, in our timeline a ceasefire, isn't actually that important. At that point, both sides are choosing to fight. European Jews didn't choose the Holocaust. I don't think Palestinians are choosing this war, but if they turned down a peace deal, they by definition are.
Thats not true at all. Most people in palestine do not want to throw their lives away for nothing. Most of them want peace. Its only Hamas that would apparently prefer to get killed and have gaza be flattened instead of accepting peace.
Edit: the post I was replying to was claiming Hamas/the Palestinians perpetrated a genocide in Israel. It has since been edited to be a completely different thing.
Genocide is legally a set of acts committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.
So yes, what Hamas did on Oct 7 was not genocide, and similarly what Israel does on any given day in Gaza is not genocide. Rather they are both part of ongoing campaigns that arguably are genocide.
However, there's no such thing as "unsuccessful genocide". Wanting to commit genocide and even terrorist bombings which target the population you'd like to exterminate are not genocide. To be committing the crime of genocide, you have to actually be in a position where you are actively displacing or exterminating a population.
Israel is committing genocide in Gaza since October 7th, because they are actively working towards a goal of eliminating the Palestinian population from the Gaza territory, or at least from the majority of it. They have already achieved a part of the genocide. They're not going all scorched earth and killing by the millions for the same reason they're not launching one of their illegal nukes in Gaza: they fear international reaction if the move is too sudden and overwhelming.
Hamas, by contrast, is not committing genocide in Israel, because it's not actively killing or starving or displacing any part of the population of Israel. I'm sure Hamas would love to do that, but it's a simple obvious fact that they're not succeeding. This is like claiming that Al Qaeda has an ongoing campaign of genocide of the West, because of 9/11 and some other attacks on, say, British troops.
I think the evidence is quite overwhelming that Hamas had clear genocidal intent, even if they did not have the means to accomplish that intent.
One of these is better than the other.
Weirdly, many people disagree over which one that is.
Did you read the article this discussion is about?
How could one cause a famine accidentally, without intent to murder civilians?
There isn't credible evidence of a famine in Gaza. I'm not saying things are great(it is a war zone after all), but they certainly haven't gotten that bad. Look at pictures of Palestinians on the street in Gaza and compare them to pictures of people in countries where there is actual famine, they look nothing alike.
They do some finances and politics but aren't involved in running Gaza or the military/militants.
They're psychotic idiots.
> lets them escape with their lives
On the other hand: how idiotic would they have to be to believe the Israelis will let them escape with their lives, given all the evidence to the contrary?
Assume it is a hostage situation, 2,000,000 Hostages. Israel has killed 60,000+ hostages trying to rescue hostages. Starvation also counts as killings to me, but I supposed "Starved" is less direct than "Shot"
There is an editorial voice reserved purely for blunting reporting on American and Israeli state crimes that drives me nuts.
1204 more comments available on Hacker News
Not affiliated with Hacker News or Y Combinator. We simply enrich the public API with analytics.