| ▲ | dralley 3 hours ago |
| The problem is that both sides lie flagrantly with such frequency that very few claims about the war can be taken at face value. On the other side there was the famous "hospital bombing" news event early in the war where it was claimed that 500 people were killed, and then within a couple of hours it became obvious that the explosion was caused by a misfiring Hamas rocket, with video from multiple angles of the failure, that it hit an empty parking lot in front of the hospital and only blew out the windows and burnt a few cars, and that no more than a handful of people had been killed. And also the repeated claims that Israel were lying about the tunnels under Gaza Hospitals, and make videos of one such strike (a bunker buster penetrating the parking lot just outside the entrance) go viral, only for Hamas to later announce that one of the replacement leaders for Sinwar had been killed in that strike, and for excavation to find the bunkers / tunnel network underneath that very hospital. As well as, earlier in the war, a Hamas bunker w/ data center equipment directly underneath the UNRWA HQ in Gaza. None of that justifies genuine instances of war crimes and atrocities that Israel may have committed, but there's a reason why people tune out some of the extreme claims that fly around. |
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| ▲ | cholantesh 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| But not the video in the OP which demonstrates that the IDF were, in fact firing on aid workers and refugees as they had been accused of, and certainly not the hours of footage of the IDF brazenly taking human shields over the years while insisting they didn't, or the reports of the IDF arming settlers. Curious that you can't enumerate any of these, and you're happy to take at face value a claim the IDF makes but doesn't allow independent third parties to verify (a Hamas bunker w/ data center equipment directly underneath the UNRWA HQ in Gaza) while abjuring such behaviour. |
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| ▲ | dralley 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Independent 3rd parties were brought in to verify, though. I already said I don't condone any instances of legitimate war crimes. I don't think enumerating everything that has ever happened by either side is very useful. But it's a fact that both sides lie flagrantly about atrocities. Lots of the footage in the early days of the war that was claimed to be from Gaza was actually recycled from the Syrian civil war. If you want me to start listing some BS that Israel has done, fine - the calendar stunt was ridiculous (if you have followed the conflict, you probably have heard of it). What goes on in the west bank is disgraceful. There are plenty of statements by Israeli politicians that are basically genocidal language (though you can play that game with most countries, random US politicians say psychotic shit all the time). | | |
| ▲ | cholantesh 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >Independent 3rd parties were brought in to verify, though. Reuters was given an IDF escort as they were walked through the tunnel system, during which a room with some servers was called a Hamas data centre, and they nodded along. That's not quite the same thing. >Lots of the footage in the early days of the war that was claimed to be from Gaza was actually recycled from the Syrian civil war. Lots of footage that Hamas or advocates for Palestine released or Twitter randos? Not all of those things are equivalent to Israel making a claim. | |
| ▲ | cess11 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Can you link to those reports? |
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| ▲ | Vasbarlog 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > problem is that both sides lie flagrantly And yet one side is committing genocide. |
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| ▲ | dralley 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | October 7th was genocide, though. You cannot possibly in good faith argue that what Israel is doing is genocide but what Hamas did wasn't. Also, to be perfectly honest, we've seen 4x as many people killed in Sudan as in Gaza in the same timeframe, including entire cities being wiped out by gunmen filming themselves literally going door to door and shooting people begging for their lives, lying on the ground or in hospital beds. 6,000 people were killed over a single weekend in el-Fasher and barely a peep from the media. What Israel is doing in Gaza is more similar to what Russia did to Grozny during the 2nd Chechen war than it is to most of the events historically termed "genocides". Which, to be extremely clear, is not at all a sympathetic comparison. The conduct of the Russians was incredibly brutal and disgusting and unjustified (then and now). I would not want to be compared to them. But, like, you do have to have standards for what words mean. If the low-tech butchers of the RSF have killed hundreds of thousands in the same timeframe, it's not crazy to be more cautious with the "genocide" label. | | |
| ▲ | 7952 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The difference between Hamas and Israel is the magnitude of effect. And that for most of the war one party had much more capacity to change its course than the other. But either way criticism of the semantics and focus of media just seems irrelevant and overly abstract. It focuses too much on the group and not enough on the individual. Which drags the argument into the realm that ethno-nationalists of either side occupy. Death is always a tragedy and unnecessary killing is immoral. Anything deeper than that stinks of ignorance and is grotesque. | |
| ▲ | incahoots 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Here I thought leaving reddit would provide a break of low quality bait, yet here we are. | | | |
| ▲ | throwaway3060 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Even then, Gaza is far more dense than Grozny; almost certainly the Grozny campaign was conducted with far more deliberate indifference to any concept of morality. | |
| ▲ | Vasbarlog 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What Israel is doing is genocide. The International Association of Genocide Scholars say so https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IAGS... . Is there anyone who is arguing, in ”good faith” as you say, that the atrocities of October 7th were a genocide? | | |
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| ▲ | khazhoux 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And the other side just. won’t. stop. attacking. That’s really the problem, innit? Palestine can’t stop poking, Israel overreact. 20 GOTO 10. | | |
| ▲ | Vasbarlog 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | You could say that about Israel too you know. The other side just. Won’t. Stop. Attacking. Israelis can’t stop sniping children. |
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| ▲ | suzzer99 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | And one side started it by killing 1,200 civilians and kidnapping 250. Which doesn't justify genocide. But it does factor into the response when one side is governed by a death cult that has no problem letting scores of their own civilians die if it furthers their cause. | | |
| ▲ | Vasbarlog 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Oh, I didn’t know that the whole conflict started on October 6th. One side is governed by a death cult for sure, if you look at how many children they indiscriminately kill. | | |
| ▲ | mhb 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | When do you suppose the conflict started? | | |
| ▲ | Vasbarlog 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | When the first Israeli settler stole the home of a Palestinian. | | |
| ▲ | thenaturalist an hour ago | parent [-] | | Yeah nah. Best get some history reading on. Hint: Palestinians were Jews living under Roman rule after the Romans renamed Judea and Samaria. Islam entered Judea & Samaria through its violent colonization from the Arabian peninsula through the world. |
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| ▲ | cess11 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | About 700 israeli civilians were killed, out of which an unknown number was killed by the IDF. Quite a few, if the large amount of hellfired cars are anything to go by, and the kibbutzim inhabitants weren't very happy about being shelled by tanks. Are you referring to the jewish israelis by "death cult"? |
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