Listening to interviews of the people from the west who have been to Gaza (doctors and nurses) I think it has been pretty clear what kind of violence is being perpetrated towards the civilian population. Things I found especially disturbing was Nick Maynard accusation of using teenagers as target practice, and Anthony Aguilar's description of the absolute horror of the GHF relief sites.

But these are just a few of many. There have been more stories of children shot in the head or chest than I can count, and when the stories of snipers shooting children started to fizzle out, it was instead drones that did the shooting.

Together with the absolutely abhorrent things said by Israeli ministers and parliament members I have had no doubt that this has been a genocide for quite some time.

The hardest thing to accept has been the complicit western media. On one side they have reported about killings, but then promptly reported the Israeli spokesperson's response to the accusations despite them being caught lying over and over again. Like the massacre of the ambulance drivers that first was not communicated with cogat. When it was shown to be communicated to cogat, they did not have their emergency lights and sirens on. When films surfaced of them with their lights and sirens on it was going to be "investigated". That led nowhere, despite the soldiers actively trying to hide their tracks by burying all the victims - some with ther frikken hands tied.

This pattern has repeated itself over and over and over, yet news outlets like the BBC or CNN seem to say to themselves "ah, but this time they are telling the truth".

My own government have been more preoccupied with hiding it's own cowardice than with standing up for any kind of principles. They believe in nothing and I have nothing but contempt for them.

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abdusco 4 days ago | parent [-]

Everything Israel says is taken at face value and parroted by the western media, but anything Palestinians say is scrutinized and cast doubt and smeared as "Hamas lies".

The only way that neither side can object is from international journalists. Guess what, they're not allowed in, lest the truth comes out.

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7402 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I don't know what you're reading, but on HN, almost nothing Israel says is taken at face value, everything Israel says is scrutinized and cast doubt upon. I don't see a lot of questioning of statements derived from Palestinians, Hamas, or Al Jazeera.

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jjani 4 days ago | parent [-]

Almost no post on HN related to Israel remains unflagged.

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7402 4 days ago | parent [-]

Well this one isn't.

People flag articles because they disagree with them, but also because they just think the discussion may descend into uninformative yelling. My point concerned the discussions that do appear, rather than which articles make it through unflagged, but even there it appears they don't support the narrative of "only good things about Israel appear in the media."

There's a relevant discussion in this recent post from a couple weeks ago:

Ask HN: Are we allowed to discuss Israel on HN? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44947788

"We want to give the topic of Israel and Gaza fair exposure, as it's obviously an important story and it would feel wrong to pretend it's not happening. At the same time, every time we have one of these stories on the front page, it turns in to a hellish flamewar, we have to spend all day moderating it..."

	▲	jjani 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Correct, this one is a very rare exception. There's indeed multiple reasons that it happens. But it does happen to the huge majority of them.

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jjani 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They are allowed in, after which they're summarily executed by the IDF.

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idiomat9000 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

This war doesn't really have anything to do with religion anyway. Besides: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasbara

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breppp 4 days ago | parent [-]

Except one of the belligerents believes:

"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day"

"Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land. Resisting and quelling the enemy becomes the individual duty of every Moslem [sic], male or female"

"Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight."

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Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 4 days ago | parent [-]

I mean, they all sound pretty indoctrinated to me. If I had been born in a war torn country I can imagine finding those fairy tales quite aluring. Religion here is the pretext neighbors use to justify their anger.

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tguvot 4 days ago | parent [-]

for the past two years the Hamas leadership had been talking about implementing "the last promise" (alwaed al'akhir) – a divine promise regarding the end of days, when all human beings will accept Islam. Sinwar and his circle ascribed an extreme and literal meaning to the notion of "the promise, " a belief that pervaded all their messages: in speeches, sermons, lectures in schools and universities. The cardinal theme was the implementation of the last promise, which included the forced conversion of all heretics to Islam, or their killing.

https://judaic.arizona.edu/sites/judaic.arizona.edu/files/20...

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Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 3 days ago | parent [-]

I have no issue with countries fighting Hamas. I have issues with countries sending bombs somwhere where the median age is less than 20 years old. In the USA half of the population wouldn't even have the right to drink but here they are deemed too radicalized already to deserve carpet bombings.

My take is that if a 100th of the war budget of Israel had been allocated to building schools and peace propaganda in palestine none of these decades of violence would have happened.

The only situation where bombs defeat a radicalized population is when they eradicate said population, and that sounds like a genocide to me. See Vietnam for a concrete example.

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breppp 3 days ago | parent [-]

> My take is that if a 100th of the war budget of Israel had been allocated to building schools and peace propaganda in palestine none of these decades of violence would have happened

The UN has invested around a billion yearly in UNRWA, an agency whose half of budget (twice than what you propose) is supposed to educate Palestinian children for peace, mainly using funds contributed by the west.

UNRWA however has removed the holocaust from its human rights curriculum, has many Hamas members on its payroll, including some teachers who held hostages and regularly talks about Jihad and martyrdom in its curriculum.

So, yeah peace education? that works less when you are under a control of an islamist terror organization or ran by the local population that does not have fully bought to your peace idea yet

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Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 3 days ago | parent [-]

Thank you I didn't know that. I'm inclined to think it was already too late by that time. I still believe what I said above.

	▲	tguvot 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		this is the atlantic article from 1961 about unrwa camps. journalist went to visit them in lebanon, gaza and then went to visit arabs that remained in israel. there are many interesting things in this article, but one of the most interesting it's that back than in unrwa schools was taught that all land was stolen and that they will liberate it by force. https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/archives/1961/10/208-4/132...

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4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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