[marssaxman]

> Suppose a man has already murdered most of your family, including several of your children, for no other reason than

...the fact that you have walled him and everyone he knows into an open-air prison, where nothing goes in or out without your approval, systematically keeping him, his family, his friends, his children, and everyone around him just this side of starvation, with no hope of release, for decades on end?

If I were him, I'd hurt you as hard as I possibly could, at every opportunity, with any means I could come by.

[richardfeynman]

Prior to 10/7, more gazans travelled abroad each year than Indians on a relative basis. There was no open-air prison.

[oscaracso]

That is an interesting statistic, but India is a subcontinent while Gaza is one marathon long. I would anticipate need to travel to vary inversely with area. Wouldn't it be queer if, at most, 6% of Manhattanites stepped foot off the island each year?

[richardfeynman]

Two clarifications. First, I’m talking about exits, not unique people. Pre-war Gaza logged ~500k documented exits/year (via Israel and Egypt) out of ~2 M residents; India logged ~21.6 M departures out of ~1.4 B. Both are trip counts, so repeat travelers are included.

Second, area is a red herring. Cross-border mobility is driven by policy, permits, visas, income, and border agency capacity—not square kilometers. Manhattan is integrated into a national customs/transport network; Gaza isn’t. Despite severe restrictions, Gaza still had hundreds of thousands of recorded border crossings annually.

That’s why the literal “open-air prison” claim fails. Prisons don’t run departure counters. If the term is metaphorical for harsh movement controls, say that. But if it’s meant literally, the exit data contradicts it.

[oscaracso]

I think we disagree on a great many things and it probably will not be resolved through an accounting of facts or reasoned argument. I will mention that as far as 'red-herrings' go, the OP did not mention 10/7 when they called Gaza an open air prison.

[richardfeynman]

Indeed, I can see facts won't sway you, or most people in the pro-Palestine camp.

Also, I didn't mention the 10/7 attack either. The narrative that gaza is an open-air prison has existed for years, and it has been manifestly wrong for years; that hasn't stopped anyone from claiming it.

[chaps]

You did in your first comment of this thread on August 31, 2025 at 5:51:18 AM GMT.

https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/45080674.json

[richardfeynman]

Additionally, when Israel gave Gaza to the Gazans in 2005, it wasn't fenced in yet the Gazans still attacked Israel, demonstrating the attacks weren't being about fenced in, but rather a visceral hate towards the yahood. The fences were built after the second intifada.

[cherry_tree]

> when Israel gave Gaza to the Gazans

You’re so deep in propaganda you don’t even see how this sentence demonstrates the entire issue huh?

[richardfeynman]

This is an accusation without meaning. You don't know what information I see, so you don't know whether I see propaganda at all. The reverse is true as well; I don't know what information (or propaganda) you see. But no, I don't see how Israel giving Gaza to the Gazans (something Egypt never did) demonstrates "the entire issue," whatever you happen to mean by that.

[cherry_tree]

You are commenting on a propaganda article.

You have posted the same authors links before.

You consume hacker news at all.

Your implicit assertion that you consume no propaganda itself belies your naïveté to politics as a subject.

[richardfeynman]

You are not commenting in good faith. The author, a respected computer scientist with deep knowledge of this issue, is not a propagandist; you just don't like what he says. I have been on Hacker News for well over a decade, I'm not some fresh two year old account like yours. And I didn't say I don't consume any propaganda (I'm sure I do), it's you who said I'm "deep into propaganda" which is a false and evidence-free statement.

[konmok]

Source? Also, is that "travelled abroad" or "decided escaping persecution was worth losing their home, never to return"?

[richardfeynman]

Source: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/movement-and-out-gaza-2022

"In 2022, the Egyptian authorities allowed more exits of people through their border. The 144,899 exits recorded during the year are 44 per cent more than in 2021, representing the highest figure since 2014."

That's 6.6% of the gaza population travelling out of gaza per year, higher than the percent of Indians who travel abroad each year. This statistic also doesn't reflect the hundreds of thousands of exits from Gaza to Israel each year.

The "open air prison" is a lie. You can impute whatever motive you want to them leaving. I'm sure escaping Hamas persecution was a part of it for many of them. Israeli prosecution wasn't really a thing and the "mowing the lawn" narrative is propaganda.

[dttze]

> In 2022, more people were let out of Gaza; however, their movement remained the exception rather than the rule, with the vast majority of residents, over 2 million people, virtually ‘locked in.’

Nice selective quoting.

[richardfeynman]

That's an editorial sentence; I was quoting a fact. The same fact appears in numerous other sources and gives lie to the open-air prison idea. Sorry you don't like that fact.

[konmok]

You keep insisting on that 6.6% figure, but you have yet to provide a single source that supports it. You made that calculation yourself, based on a statistic that you already admitted doesn't mean what you thought it meant, and doesn't correspond to the relevant statistic for India. Given how many times I've raised this issue to your attention, I would say you are now intentionally misleading people.

[konmok]

It's interesting that the article directly contradicts your own takeaway:

"In 2022, more people were let out of Gaza; however, their movement remained the exception rather than the rule, with the vast majority of residents, over 2 million people, virtually ‘locked in.’"

Additionally, that's 144,899 exits, not 144,899 distinct people exiting, nor is it even 144,899 exits made by Palestinians. So your interpretation is multiply incorrect.

Would you like to clarify what you mean by "Israeli prosecution wasn't really a thing"?

[richardfeynman]

Presumably, up to a few minutes ago you were unfamiliar with the accurate statistic I quoted. Noting your reaction to this new information: to double down and cast shade. Sorry you dont like it. And yes, with roughly 6.6 percent of gazans population traveling abroad each year, it's the exceptional gazans that travels abroad, much like it's the exceptional rural alabaman that travels abroad each year.

(The statistic I quoted also doesn't include the hundreds of thousands of exits from Gaza to Israel each year, or the undocumented exits through tunnels under rafah, so the exits were indeed much higher, not lower, than the official ocha figures.)

What I mean when I say that Israel persecution wasn't really a thing is that the men with guns in Gaza were Hamas, not the idf. If you were shot in the knee or thrown off a building for being queer, it was Hamas that was persecuting you, not the idf.

[konmok]

I'm not trying to cast shade, just trying to critically analyze information.

Again, could you provide a source for that figure of 6.6% of Gazans "travelling abroad" each year? As I previously mentioned, that article does not actually support that figure at all, so I'm not sure why you insist upon it. We could obtain a better estimate for the number of distinct exiting Gazans by counting the number of exit permits issued, since those are ostensibly required to leave. The article does say 18,000 permits were issued to workers and traders in 2022, but since it doesn't include permits to other civilians, nor does it mention the expiration period for these permits, I won't commit the intellectually dishonest act of trying to turn that into a percentage.

As for your claim about Israeli persecution, that's trivially false. There are too many instances of Palestinians being shot by IDF forces to list here, but there are casualty databases freely available online. Yes, Hamas persecutes Palestinians as well, I'm not defending them.