[krapp]

I categorically reject the premise that giving Israel free rein to be as vengeful and unsubtle as they want is the only way they can degrade Hamas as an organization. If that's the case, then Hamas is perfectly justified in retaliating with equal violence against Israel. Either we hold modern societies, particularly our allies, up to standards of civilization or else we're back to eye for an eye.

Yes, we want to reel Israel in before they can commit genocide regardless of whether it degrades Hamas as an organization because Palestinians are human beings, not orcs. "Just let them keep killing until the problem goes away" isn't supposed to be an acceptable policy position in modern societies.

And it turns out it isn't - except to Israel, the US and Micronesian states which I assume are just vassals to the US.

[ZeroGravitas]

> back to eye for an eye.

One thing that's missed about the whole "eye for an eye" thing, is that at the time, it was a step forward from the status quo. A way to prevent a lost eye becoming a lost arm becoming a lost life, becoming 3 lost lives and so on.

Now it's become a by-word for barbarity, but it was state of the art of civilization at one point, thousands of years ago.

And sadly, if 'eye for an eye' was the rule followed in the current conflict, there would be less criticism of the Israeli government's response, as there'd be a lot less dead people.

[somewhereoutth]

How else do you suggest we destroy Hamas, given that they've already said they'd do October 7th again as soon as they can?

Hamas was never imposed on the Palestinian people, of which a sizable proportion support the elimination of Israel ("from the river to the sea"). Maybe the horror of the calamity befalling them might concentrate some minds.

[Qem]

> How else do you suggest we destroy Hamas, given that they've already said they'd do October 7th again as soon as they can?

Stopping blowing kids to pieces through indiscriminate air raids and ending apartheid would be a good start. That will cause a big recruitment problem for Hamas. Perhaps if people are given a bare minimum of dignity, if they have something to lose, I don't think they could be easily motivated to rush tanks by foot with handheld IEDs like in Saving Private Ryan.

[somewhereoutth]

Agreed that indiscriminate air raids are both militarily ineffective and terrible for civilians. But it is so easy to reach for them against an enemy without proper air defenses, as the chance of your own casualties is very low. It is also NATO/US doctrine - establish air superiority and then explode everything vaguely threatening.

[krapp]

>Maybe the horror of the calamity befalling them might concentrate some minds.

So when Hamas kills indiscriminately, it's evil, but when Israel does it, it's simply necessary?

[somewhereoutth]

Hamas opened the gates of hell, awfully hard to prevent what happens next.

Imagine if the Mexican army went on a rampage through Texas (again) - how could a similarly overwhelming response be avoided?

[krapp]

If the Mexican army went on a rampage through Texas, indiscriminately "opening the gates of hell" on Mexican civilians would not be justifiable. A similarly overwhelming response could be avoided because we are human beings, not demons driven only by an insatiable lust for vengeance and blood.

I think I'm done with this conversation. Good night.

[johnnyworker]

Opening the gates of hell is not an actual thing.

And the comparison with Mexico falls flat because the US isn't run by a government working hand in hand with religious zealots who talk about how Mexico actually belongs to them, and if they can just drive out or kill all people there, they could move there.

> "In the context of de-legitimization - Hamas is an asset (for Israel) and the Palestinian Authority is a liability"

-- Smotrich, https://twitter.com/BarakRavid/status/1741196470399783296

> If we act strategically correctly, there will be immigration and we will live in the Gaza Strip. We will not allow a situation where 2 million people live there. If there are 100-200 thousand Arabs in Gaza, all the talk about the day after will be different. They want to leave, they have been living in the ghetto for 75 years and are in need"

-- also Smotrich, https://twitter.com/GLZRadio/status/1741347524693127398

> Just as it is clear that the [Israeli] right wing was right, today everyone says it is clear all Gazans must be annihilated"

-- MK Moshe Saada, https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17424904213961198...

If killing 1000+ people is opening the gates of hell, what is killing 20k+ people and setting 500k+ on the course to die of famine or disease? Opening the gates of the Underverse? That's all Lord of the Flies nonsense. In reality, the terrorists of Hamas are responsible for their terrorism, and IDF and Isreali government for their crimes against humanity. One doesn't excuse the other, that's not how it even remotely works. That's only how you whip up people into actions they cannot justify and that cost them dearly.

[scarecrowbob]

The Mexico comparison is flat out weird and ahistorical.

In that sense, the comparison is quite in line with the rest of the conversation on this site.

I am a direct descendant of people who signed on the Texas Declaration of Independence. Those folks moved to an "empty" area where there were a bunch of people who they didn't consider to be "real" people (because my ancestors were objectively racist) and then when the government of the area forbade keeping chattel slaves they performed an armed revolt and established a racist state. That racism was so important to them that Oklahoma has a panhandle.

If the descendants those people are scared that a tide of brown folks are going to do the same thing to them, I can understand why- I don't agree that other groups of people operate with the same sociopathic view towards their fellow humans, but their fears aren't mine.

Unfortunately you're not going to find much of a critique of that incorrect view of how humans deal with each other amongst the tech bros- they are such a product of this time and place that it's like asking fish what they think about the water.

The entire focal point of the power that generated Texas is the idea that that there are "real" humans who have rights and are people, and then there are folks who aren't. And the real folks have a destiny to be the historical victors, and the rest of us just better hope their machines break before they make the planet uninhabitable for the rest of us, because they have the guns and the bomb and if they draw a line on the map it is as real as they are, and if you don't respect that line you're not a real person anyhow.

So of course folks who are happy to think of "Texas" as if it had just been existing there forever, without history, think it is okay to kill 20k people as if it were some kind of historical necessity.

It's a similar racism that exists everywhere in these colonialist situations. It's not the only element in play in any of these situations but it's an important structure.

That racism is such an vital element of that power that it appears invisible, often even to folks who are suffering its effects.

Johnnyworker, I appreciate the fight you're engaged in on HN.

I generally have a couple of searches open for different topics; for the last couple of months mostly about the situation in Palestine. I've enjoyed seeing some of your writing across several threads.

Typically the people on this site have some pretty horrific ideas about the world, full of bizarre premises that appear (to them) as banal and natural understandings of the world.

I don't especially blame them for that viewpoint; if you've never spent a lot of time around, say, the reservation system for indigenous folks in the US or if you've never, like, read a materialist history of what the US has done in Guatemala, Indonesia, Korea, Vietnam, and so on- if you've never gotten any other history than that of the far-right US victors in the second world war, you might be forgiven.

Power creates specific subjects, and those subjects are often blind to certain facts about how power works to create a world that seems uncreated, natural, and necessary.

People who have been able to function well under these highly authoritarian regimes are interesting; that is why I read what they write here.

It is an important viewpoint to mark because it is the viewpoint of the people with the guns, people who think they will never have to even see the carnage they create, much less suffer a similar fate.

They are happy to see power work on other people because it maintains the fantasy that power is not working upon themselves.

"If you never think to move, you'll never see your chains" and all that nonsense. Or, if you prefer, it feels to me like people in these systems often take some comfort that power is operating on "the bad guys" because that is how they feel like sane good guys. If power only works on brown bodies, then it must not be working on their own hearts and brains.

Anyhow.

I don't think you'll change any minds here- I personally don't think it's worth engaging on the topic of imperial power with folks employed to work at the heart of the imperial core.

But still, it' is nice to see folks at least speaking up occasionally. Keep up the good fight.

[johnnyworker]

Thank you, so much. Maybe you give me too much credit in that I do it for a form of moral self hygiene, too. I'm German, and trying to grapple with the Nazis and the Holocaust is something I'll do as long as I live. So this strikes home on several levels, the trauma that the Nazis seeded into Israel, the way the Holocaust is now used to dehumanize Palestinians or to smear critical people as anti-semites, and the all too familiar (having read dozens of books on the subject) tropes and fallacies used to defend these crimes, the dehumanizing language, the thinking of people in blobs. All of it.

Hannah Arendt is my favorite person in the world, period, so if I don't say anything about this, I cannot use the site for other discussions with remotely a good conscience. So it's selfish, that way. But I also hope and wish it helps a little, somehow.